www.AALF.org

AALF

Anytime Anywhere Learning
More information »


Patchwork Quilts and Effective 1:1 Learning
Author: Karen Ward, AALF | May 11th, 2011

patchworkquilt

Effective professional development includes cycles of continuous improvement for adult learners and higher achievement and success for students. These cycles can be illustrated by sharing a recent experience. I was working with the humanities teachers at a 1:1 middle school (years 7-8). We were focusing on one of their department SMART goals. As the meeting progressed one of the teachers commented that, in her mind, 1:1 schools could be compared to patchwork quilts…after some discussion we all agreed. Both represent diverse unique pieces, people, roles, and layers that, when strategically coordinated, result in an effective and beautiful whole.

Constructing patchwork quilts is like constructing effective 1:1 professional development opportunities because both are best accomplished by using the right tools and by understanding that there are few rules one must adhere to yet there are proven guidelines that ensure higher levels of success. Effective and strategic leaders include the following:


Essential tools: these are not literal but figurative tools, including:

1. Destination tool: Establish and communicate school-wide 1:1 expectations or goals. How will you know you have "arrived at your destination" if you do not know where your destination is located? These goals or expectations represent your destination(s) and must be broad enough so that they can be addressed and achieved in each unique department or grade level. Teachers can take these overarching goals and expectations and translate them into SMART goals for their own work.

2. Learning culture tool: Create and sustain adult collaboration and learning time--many educators call this common time professional learning communities. This is structured purposeful collaboration time with an expectation that participants will be sharing what they learn from their work with the school as a whole. Adult collaboration means that all teachers/leaders will be collaborating with one another ...there are no "passes" with this work!


Tested rules

1. Make a commitment to deprivatizing: Build a culture where teachers are rewarded for honestly sharing their work. At the same time, it is essential that this commitment is made by each participating teacher or leader as well. This is not the time for independent instructional contractors; it is crucial that we capture the wisdom of effective 1:1 teachers so that others can grow in their practices as well.

2. Be strategic: Calendar regular times for teachers and leaders to collaborate together. Do not let anything take the place of or get in the way of this collaboration time! Teachers will collaborate more willingly if they know there is a scheduled time for this work and if this schedule is honored.

3. Create opportunities for job embedded learning. Use outside consultants, coaches, and professional developers to support or "push" educators to new understandings or levels, but also look for opportunities for educators to learn from their own practices.


Proven guidelines:

1. Establish norms for this collaboration time. Norms represent the standard way a group of people engage with one another. Norms also provide a safe environment and structure for teachers to talk with and deprivatize with one another.

2. Acknowledge progress. True and effective professional development requires all educators to apply themselves in ways that they have not before and this is hard work so acknowledge the outcomes of this hard work! Job embedded professional learning meets the needs of teachers, and so the reciprocal outcome is that the needs of students are met as well.


Let me provide you with an applied example of these tools, rules, and guidelines by continuing to share my experience with the group of middle school humanities teachers.

One of their school-wide 1:1 goals focuses on promoting writing in various settings while increasing student knowledge, skills, and understanding about the writing process. Working during their department collaboration time, the teachers identified online discussions as a scaffolded writing strategy that they as an entire department could support. They articulated SMART goals within this strategy and they identified online discussions as a specific instructional practice. They then went on to describe a beginning level of implementation (both teacher tasks and student tasks) for online discussions. Over the next two weeks each of the teachers implemented the beginning level for both types of tasks, carefully noting their questions as well as any changes or improvements they would share during their upcoming collaboration time. On the scheduled date they returned to their department collaboration meeting with samples of student work and their notes. They spent 60 minutes collaborating on the process and their observations notes. They made changes in their written description of the beginning level of this instructional practice. By the end of the meeting they each made a commitment to implement the revised practice. Over the next month they would repeat this process two more times. During that time they identified online resources they felt best supported this work (example: Collaborize Classroom, Paper Rater, Big Myth, Awesome Stories, Wordle, and Word Sift ), they identified online discussion norms to teach and enforce with their students, they created an online discussion rubric that each committed to use once per month, and most importantly, they learned from one another while raising the rigor of their student work. Next, they were ready to create a written description of an intermediate level of implementation, just as they had a beginning level. They recognized that they needed an outside resource to push their thinking with this next level, and that is when they contacted me.

Together we are working on articulating tasks within this intermediate level by repeating the process described earlier. These are exciting and challenging collaboration meetings! Each teacher represents a square in their schools patchwork quilt because they are each unique educators working within their unique classrooms, however when they come together and employ the tools, rules, and guidelines of their adult learning they are constructing their own department patchwork quilt (figuratively speaking) ...and their students and school are profiting from their work!




Related Communities
This article is not related to any community.
 

« Return | Top


Creative Commons License
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons License