Puzzle of Practice
In order for teachers to scale up their expertise school-wide, they need to collaborate efficiently and effectively. Reeds Springs wanted to refocus existing collaborative structures by putting students back at the center.
Collective Goal
Teacher leaders and school leadership participated in 4 days of job-embedded professional learning with a focus on developing Impact Teams: A Student Centered PLC Model and part of the Core Collaborative’s EmpowerED Learner Series.™
Collective Action
The Core Collaborative partnered with district site leadership and teacher leaders to Unpack Standards for Success, a collaborative process in which teachers get to know standards by understanding cognitive rigor, determining the standard’s relevance in the world we live in, and developing the specific criteria needed for successful mastery of the standards. In addition teacher leaders learned a process for analyzing students work to plan differentiated instruction; this process is called Impact Teams.
Impact
When interviewed about the result on advancing teacher and principal effectiveness in the district, Dr. Chris Templeton – the assistant superintendent of Teaching and Learning said:
Reeds Spring School District has been a “PLC” district for nine years; however, our teams have yet to utilize our data effectively to guide instruction, and more importantly, impact learning. In May 2015, the district had the great opportunity to work with Barb Pitchford as she guided administrators and two building grade level teams in the Impact Team process. The administrators and teachers were all in agreement that the Impact Team process “makes perfect sense” and the Impact Team protocol is an excellent protocol for focusing the work of the teachers around what matters! Impact Teams are the missing link for our teams!