Leading With Intention

by Jeanne Spiller

  This shared leadership—among the guiding coalition, Principal Tapley, and the faculty—defined why they come together and what they want their school to become. This shared leadership is a critical component of school leadership teams and continues throughout the school year. The leadership team provides ongoing guidance and support, reviewing data, monitoring SMART goals, assisting with leadership of collaboration, and helping to build common understanding of the PLC process.

  Shared Leadership Among Staff Members

  Just as Principal Tapley did, sharing leadership whenever you can by providing opportunities for staff to lead is a powerful leadership strategy. Seek ways to show, not tell, your staff about the importance of change initiatives or instructional strategies that have been successful for their colleagues by giving them the opportunity to hear success stories and challenges their colleagues have faced. Middle school principal Jessica Barnes uses one staff meeting per month for staff to lead professional learning breakout sessions on strategies teachers have found to be effective (J. Barnes, personal communication, January 2018). Staff members sign up to present, or the principal enlists people to present after observing them using exceptional strategies while conducting classroom walkthroughs. Staff then sign up to attend two twenty-five-minute breakout sessions a month. The principal includes sessions for specific content areas and those focused on instructional strategies that cross content areas. Session topics include increasing student engagement in the classroom, deep inquiry in the social studies classroom, and strategies for effective small-group instruction. The principal empowers teachers to lead by sharing their expertise.

  Reflection

  How will you ensure you have the right people as members of the guiding coalition? What does shared leadership currently look like in your school or district?

  As mentioned previously, the second big idea of a PLC is a collaborative culture (DuFour et al., 2016). This means “in order to ensure all students learn at high levels, educators must work collaboratively and take collective responsibility for the success of each student” (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 11).

  Collaborative Responsibility

  There are many good reasons school leaders form collaborative teams. We hear leaders say that they create collaborative teams because they know the research on collaboration (versus teachers working in isolation) overwhelmingly shows it is best practice.

  They understand that when teachers meet regularly to review student work in response to a common assignment, the teachers gain a greater understanding of their students’ knowledge, skills, and reasoning and are able to adapt their classroom practices accordingly (Borko, 2004). This finding aligns with the intentional work of PLCs, including common planning of instruction, assessment, and interventions, and the idea that when teachers collaborate, students benefit from the collective expertise and wisdom of the group. These are all valid points and true benefits of collaborative teams; however, it is important to consider that collaborative teams in a PLC also create shared leadership and collective responsibility for student achievement. In collaborative teams, members share ownership of student learning. In their conversations around student work and the evidence they gather from common formative assessments, team members collectively identify the needs of students and work together to share a plan of action to meet those needs. The focus is not on my students; rather, teams work to serve our students. This shared ownership creates the energy you need for school improvement.

  Setting Up Collaborative Teams

  As the school leader, you have a responsibility to establish, implement, and monitor high-functioning collaborative teams. Establishing these teams is just as important as choosing members of the guiding coalition. For PLCs, DuFour et al. (2016) identify several types of organizational structures for collaborative teams:

  • Same-course or grade-level teams are those in which, for example, all the geometry teachers or all the second-grade teachers in a school form a collaborative team.

  • Vertical teams link teachers with those who teach content above or below their students.

  • Electronic teams use technology to create powerful partnerships with colleagues across the district, state, or world.

  • Interdisciplinary teams found in middle schools and small high schools can be an effective structure if members work interdependently to achieve an overarching curricular goal that will result in higher levels of student learning.

  • Logical links put teachers together in teams that are pursuing outcomes linked to their areas of expertise. (p. 64)

  When deciding on the best collaborative team structure for your school, consider whether having students in common or instructional content in common is your primary concern. Elementary teachers at the same grade level who teach all of the same subjects typically function best as a grade-level team.

  Middle school teams typically function as either interdisciplinary teams or disciplinary teams. For example, middle school teachers at Woodlawn Middle School in Long Grove, Illinois, winners of the 2018 DuFour Award, meet in interdisciplinary teams twice per week and disciplinary teams three times per week. Interdisciplinary team meeting agendas typically include discussions regarding students and focus on strategies for ensuring high levels of achievement for all students in the grade level. Disciplinary team meetings include conversations to gain collective understanding about learning standard expectations, instructional planning based on common formative assessment (CFA) data, and other discussions focused on grade-level and subject-specific topics. High school teams are typically disciplinary or subject specific with team meeting time usually focused on common courses, or focused on a common curricular area with teachers who likely teach different courses within that particular curricular area. No matter what the structure is, it is critical for collaborative teams to share essential learning outcomes.

  In our work with schools, we have seen some wild and crazy team configurations: teams too large to function well together and teams with very little common purpose. For example, we have seen teams as large as fourteen mathematics teachers. If you are in a school with large departments such as this high school, we recommend you create opportunities for teachers to work more closely with a few of their peers—not in a large department-like setting. For example, ask the teachers to think about the content specifics within their department. This mathematics team could focus on four content areas: (1) mathematics foundations, (2) geometry, (3) algebra 1, and (4) algebra 2. They can create collaborative teams around their common content areas with two teams of three and two teams of four. This would make it easier for the teachers to find common purpose for their work together. In our experiences, they will be able to focus on content, the prioritized standards (essential skills and concepts) they want students to master (to address critical question one), their assessment plans (to address critical question two), their intervention plans (to address critical question three), and their plans for extension (to address critical question four). It will still be important, however, for the larger mathematics department to come together occasionally to discuss course standards and expectations vertically or examine department-level data, but collaboration is more manageable and focused when teachers can concentrate on a specific content area or grade level.

  As DuFour et al. (2016) note, some teacher teams may be made up of singletons—teachers who do not share students or content. In this case, it is important for the team to have support in determining a common direction or a shared focus that is meaningful and will support the overall goals of the school. For example, at Eblen Intermediate School in Asheville, North Carolina, the principal put together a specialist team of singleton teachers to collaborate. This team included teachers of Spanish, physical education, health, band, art, and chorus. At first, Karen observed a group of people that did not seem to have a focus. They were struggling to find common meaning in their work, but were willing and able to work together; they just lacked an understanding of what their common purpo
se might be. Two things happened to change this. First, the team spent time understanding the general purpose of collaboration and determined a logical method to gather, discuss, and respond to student evidence so they could deeply understand student learning and set goals for improvement. Second, the team determined that their specific common purpose would be writing, and writing evidence would be what the team would examine and respond to together. This common purpose became clear to the team after members attended a schoolwide professional learning opportunity on the importance of and need for writing in the school. They began by creating a common list of vocabulary words that core teachers identified as being challenging for students. The team created a word wall in the hallway and a plan for both speaking and writing using the vocabulary list in all classes. They confidently worked together to create checks for understanding and small formative assessments that would demonstrate their students’ growth in understanding both the vocabulary and producing quality writing. The team continued to check in with core teachers to make sure their plan was supporting student needs. By recognizing that writing and vocabulary support are common needs in the school, this team of teachers ensured they made an impact. Karen often says this collaborative team really led the school-improvement work by showing that if singletons could function as a collaborative team, then content-area and grade-level teams should be able to make a significant impact in their cycle of collective inquiry.

  Reflection

  How do teams collaborate currently in your school? Is it working? How do you know? Which teams need to consider new ways of working together in your school or district?

  Figure 3.2 shows a template and sample responses you might find helpful when considering how to structure teams. (Figure 3.3 shows sample responses.) We encourage you to take the time to build your teams and then provide them with the time and information to support their understanding of how they will contribute to shared leadership in your school.

  FIGURE 3.2: Template for critical considerations when structuring teams.

  FIGURE 3.3: Example of critical considerations when structuring teams.

  Visit go.SolutionTree.com/PLCbooks for a free reproducible version of this figure.

  Guiding Team Work

  As you continue your collaborative work, all teams will need direction, guidance, and support in keeping the focus on student learning. This is where shared leadership is essential. Assign team leaders who can be trained to facilitate meetings effectively and lead their teams in the important work of ensuring all students meet grade-level expectations or higher. Help them understand how to develop team meeting agendas that engage the team in a cycle of inquiry to answer the four critical questions of a PLC (DuFour et al., 2016).

  1. What knowledge, skills, and dispositions should every student acquire as a result of this unit, this course, or this grade level?

  2. How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills?

  3. How will we respond when some students do not learn?

  4. How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient? (p. 36)

  These critical questions guide the work of teams, and when teams remain focused on these questions, they intentionally keep student learning as the focus of their time together. When leaders foster, support, and guide teams in becoming proficient at answering these critical questions, they maximize the benefits of a collaborative culture by empowering teams to proactively share ownership for student learning. In this way, PLCs provide an opportunity for leadership to be shared among multiple members of teams (DuFour et al., 2016). Robert Eaker and Janel Keating (2012) contend that the collaborative nature of PLCs is beneficial for teachers because as they become more knowledgeable, they are empowered and have the opportunity to work as leaders.

  In addition to the four critical questions, DuFour et al. (2016) provide eighteen critical issues for team consideration that highlight the important work of teams and further guide the team in taking collective responsibility for student learning. By considering the eighteen critical issues, team members will have a clear picture of what they need to focus on, and leaders can better focus their leadership efforts and expectations for collaborative teams. Consider critical issue ten, the development of frequent common formative assessments (CFAs) that help the team determine each student’s mastery of essential learning. When teams create and use CFAs to check in on student learning, they “become more knowledgeable about their standards, more assessment literate, and better able to develop more strategies for helping all students learn” (Bailey & Jakicic, 2012, p. 1). This knowledge helps teams answer PLC critical question number two, How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills? and empowers teams to act on the student learning evidence they obtain. In order to gain these benefits, leaders must cultivate the capacity of their staff in this area by providing learning opportunities that build their proficiency in developing and using the data from CFAs effectively. In fact, each of the eighteen critical issues for team consideration is an area around which leaders will want to build knowledge and skills for their staff.

  1. We have identified team norms and protocols to guide us in working together.

  2. We have analyzed student achievement data and established SMART goals to improve on this level of achievement we are working interdependently to attain (SMART goals are specific and strategic, measurable, attainable, results oriented, and time bound).

  3. Each team member is clear on the knowledge, skills, and dispositions (that is, the essential learning) that students will acquire as a result of our course or grade level and each unit within the course or grade level.

  4. We have aligned the essential learning with state and district standards and the high-stakes assessments required of our students.

  5. We have identified course content and topics we can eliminate to devote more time to the essential curriculum.

  6. We have agreed on how to best sequence the content of the course and have established pacing guides to help students achieve the intended essential learning.

  7. We have identified the prerequisite knowledge and skills students need in order to master the essential learning of each unit of instruction.

  8. We have identified strategies and created instruments to assess whether students have the prerequisite knowledge and skills.

  9. We have developed strategies and systems to assist students in acquiring prerequisite knowledge and skills when they are lacking in those areas.

  10. We have developed frequent common formative assessments that help us determine each student’s mastery of essential learning.

  11. We have established the proficiency standard we want each student to achieve on each skill and concept examined with our common assessments.

  12. We use the results of our common assessments to assist each other in building on strengths and addressing weaknesses as part of an ongoing process of continuous improvement designed to help students achieve at higher levels.

  13. We use the results of our common assessments to identify students who need additional time and support to master essential learning, and we work within the systems and processes of the school to ensure they receive that support.

  14. We have agreed on the criteria we will use in judging the quality of student work related to the essential learning of our course, and we continually practice applying those criteria to ensure we are consistent.

  15. We have taught students the criteria we will use in judging the quality of their work and provided them with examples.

  16. We have developed or utilized common summative assessments that help us assess the strengths and weaknesses of our program.

  17. We have established the proficiency standard we want each student to achieve on each skill and concept examined with our summative assessments.

  18. We formally evaluate our adherence to team norms and the effectiveness of our team at least twice each year. DuFour et al., 2016, pp.
69–70)

  Reflection

  How are teams currently configured in your school? Is it working? How do you know? How do you currently support teams in answering the four critical questions of a PLC? Which of the eighteen critical issues for team consideration are strengths for your teams?

  Building Leadership Capacity

  Often in schools where deep implementation of shared ownership is a priority, school leaders take the time to build leadership in teachers who are facilitating collaborative teams. This important focus helps teachers build leadership skills so they are prepared to effectively facilitate collaborative discussions, support members, and develop other leadership abilities to guide team success. It is one thing to say that you have teacher leaders; however, it is another to know your teacher leaders understand how to lead the right work.