Our Planned Learning Expeditions at Greer for this Spring

Listed below are summaries of the learning expeditions that our grade level teams have put together for the very first time. Some are being implemented right now and others later this spring. The summaries are in the words of our teachers and instructional coaches. I know we have a lot more hard work to accomplish but we are proud of getting this far.

Kindergarten

Kindergarteners will investigate and understand the basic needs and life processes of plants and animals. They will explain how living things change as they grow and describe what living things need to survive. Each class will study one animal in depth as a case study that they relate to other living things. The product of this expedition will be a ‘how to’ care manual that will be developed by students for an animal fostered by each Kindergarten class from the SPCA. The manual will include photographs of the animal in the classroom and in-depth information on its behaviors, habits and needs, as studied by the students. The manual will be available to the SPCA and prospective families for future use when caring for this species. Students will investigate how the SPCA supports our community and will gather resources needed for the animals such as cleaning supplies, blankets, animal food, and volunteer support.

First Grade: Souper Soup

First grade is currently in the middle of our first expedition, Super Soup. Through the lens of soup, we are tackling a variety of standards, while providing authentic learning experiences that are relevant to our students. Integrated standards and topics include:

• Science: states of matter and dissolving, seasons, and the needs of living things
• Math: volume, measurement, and fractions
• Writing: functional and non-fiction writing, revision, writing with clarity, and publishing
• Social studies: community service
  

Students are developing is a grade-wide cookbook, which will include a recipe from each student. By cooking a variety of soups in class, reading about different cultural soups, experimenting with vegetables, talking to expert nutritionists, and visiting farms, we are building background knowledge so that students can successfully write soup recipes. We are formatively assessing their learning through each step of the process and meeting individual needs through modeling and one-on-one conversation. We are keeping an Expedition Journal to record our work and students actively use previous pages to find and write vocabulary words, add more details to drawings and record their thinking.

Additional plans include a return visit to the farm to see how it changes in spring, consultation with the nutritionist to make sure our soups are healthy, a visit to the food bank to see how soup can help our community, and a calendar to show people, plants, animals, and the weather in each season.

Second Grade: From Seed to Plate - the Cycle of Waste

We are looking at 3 separate investigations: How do plants grow? What happens to food waste? How does weather affect growth? Our product will be a public service announcement. This expedition will involve science (life processes, living systems, weather, scientific inquiry), math (measurement, estimation, data collection/graphing, calendars) and literacy (oral, reading, writing).

Student projects along the way will include planting and caring for vegetables, as well as keeping an observation journal. We are beginning seeds in the classroom and will plant outside in a school garden as weather permits. The Local tennis club has pitched in with a grant to revamp existing garden beds as they explore “Healthy bodies, healthy eating.” They will also be involved in measuring cafeteria trash and various composting projects as they learn about the cycle of waste. Some classes are creating in-class compost bins, others are participating in vermiculture, and everyone is contributing to the grade level compost bin for long-term use. Students will create, maintain, and document various weather stations. Also, classes will complete case studies with animals to compare life cycles and systems. For fieldwork we will visit a compost business, a local farm for hands-on experiences with where food comes from, as well as others opportunities not yet scheduled. Our hope is that students will be able to make a difference in the amount of food that is sent to trash.

Third Grade: Into the WIld
Third grade’s Spring expedition is based on animals. The guiding question for the first case study, entitled What’s For Dinner is “How do animals meet their basic needs?” The students distinguish between predator and prey, create a food chain, design a plate showing what omnivores, carnivores, and herbivores eat, and describe the importance of producers, consumers, and decomposers. They also perform research and write a report based on an animal of their choice.

The second case study entitled, “Survival of the Fittest” has the guiding question, “How do animals adapt to their environment?” The students begin with a gallery walk of animals that showcase their physical adaptations. They move on to read a common text on animal adaptations and then expert texts on hibernations, mimicry, migration, and camouflage. The students continue to their animal research reports in this case study. In art class they make their own paper which will be used to make “Animal Fact Cards” as a product. We had a guest speaker from the VMNH outreach program talk to us about animal adaptations, with objects for the kids to explore hands-on. The students will perform a mimicry experiment and hide butterflies to exemplify camouflage.

There is a third case study that will be finalized for next year. It will deal with the human impact on animals and conservation. Throughout the expedition we are using quick checks, graphic organizers, art projects, drawings, and note taking to assess the children. As each item is completed we are displaying the work, along with the Learning Targets, in our community.

Fourth Grade – Through the Eyes of Eagles

The Through the Eyes of Eagles learning expedition will allow 4^th graders to explore the interdependence of every part of ecosystems by studying the purpose and importance of each aspect of the ecosystem of the bald eagle in Central Virginia. Learning experiences are designed to help students form answers to the questions: Can eagles survive in Charlottesville or Central Virginia or Albemarle County? Is survival enough?

Each student will choose one part of the bald eagle’s ecosystem to draw (scientific, museum quality). They’ll include a short explanation of what would happen to the ecosystem if their part were to disappear. The final draft of their drawings will be displayed along with other student panels to show the interrelationships within the ecosystem. The final gallery presentation will be hosted offsite with an audience of parents and community members.

Their study of the eagle’s ecosystem will bring students to the water sources in our area that are shared by all of the plants and animals in our ecosystem. Students will test water at four different local locations and produce a water quality report analyzing the health of the watershed. They will also research and suggest action steps for community members to take that can reduce water pollution.

Fifth Grade

As a part of our study of Virginia History, we are taking a very local focus on Charlottesville/Albemarle from the end of the Civil War through the Civil Rights Movement. Specifically, we’re learning about our school’s namesake – Mary Carr Greer. Our project has three main parts:

1. Who was Mary Carr Greer?

Students will follow the Carr/Greer family from emancipation through Mrs. Greer’s principalship in Albemarle County. We are working with Mrs. Greer’s descendents to learn more about her as a person and why our school was named for her. We’ll ultimately rededicate our school in her memory at the end of the school year.

2. Virginia History Timeline

We’ll be working to expose our students to a variety of primary source documents and recordings to help them build a timeline of our local area – from the end of the Civil War through the present – with attention to issues of rights, freedom, and equality in education.

3. Community Biographies

Students will interview local community members about their experiences during school desegregation and Massive Resistance here in Virginia. Small groups of students will interview their subjects and produce a biography that we’ll ultimately display as a gallery for our interview subjects and other community members to view.

What do we do next?

Our school just completed our mid year review in the form of a "gallery walk". Each team reflected on their progress with their students both in terms of student achievement but also in use of instructional strategies (a big focus for us is assessment for learning) and then created a display for all of the other teachers to take a look at and give feedback.

We have a professional learning day in a week so this year we decided that we did not want the mid year review to seem like an isolated event but instead wanted to build on this major information sharing on February 21st. At the gallery, we asked for each teacher to do some reflecting and provide some idea of an area or areas we could focus on for our conversations. After reviewing this reflective data over the past few days, it is a hard call. We know in our journey as a school that we need to be more consistent in our language and instructional practice. Should we use the day to build on what we are already working on this year? Should we introduce something new? Should we do a little of both?

I always find analyzing this kind of feedback from every staff member to be a fascinating process. We often share it all right back to the staff so they can see where everyone is coming from. Sometimes though, when receiving all of these ideas and feedback, it is hard to stay focused. I don't want to seem to slow moving as a leader, and ignore the call for faster change, but I also don't want to go to fast, and pretend that everything has changed when it hasn't.

So, what will we do. We probably will try to do some sharing and consistency development around our initiatives for this year, but also try to spend some time honoring where we want to go in the future.

I find myself thinking all of the time about the next step. I find these reflective moments are more challenging yet more fruitful when I ask the entire staff to weigh in on the decision as well.

Why is the Edreform world having trouble finding turnaround principals?

There were two fascinating pieces in the New York Times last week that centered on issues in the principalship. I don't often get my education news from the times but the juxtaposition of these two articles just one day apart was too much to resist.

The first article centered on the national effort to use different turnaround models for the most struggling schools in each state. Quick summary, these schools often leave the same principal in place that they had before or they really struggle finding people to take the positions. Not a real surprise to me because the turnaround principal job has got to be one of the hardest in education and for the people who take on the positions, there is absolutely no guarantee of success.

The second article focused on New York City Public Schools effort to collect unpaid lunch bills by charging school principals with the collection duties or else the money comes out of their individual school budget. Which, as a principal, seemed to me a completely insane policy. If you want principals to be instructional leaders in schools, it seems obvious to not saddle them with even more non-instructional duties.

How are these two things related? The reason we have a turnaround school principal shortage is that we keep putting up roadblocks to principals who are put in these positions. If we want more people to go after these jobs, they have to be given a ton of support, and not lunch bill collection duties to complete. It may seem like an absurd policy, but probably most districts in this country expect principal to be superheroes, to be strong instructional leaders, manage everything in the building, and make sure all policies are followed.

The principalship is a very unglamorous position. I happen to love it, and I embrace that element of the job. But if you are trying to turnaround a school, you better not have to collect lunch money too.

Collaboration Kills says Joe Klein.

I tried really hard to stay digitally away from the Teach for America summit this weekend. Both the TFA is the enemy and TFA is the answer tweets and blog posts make me weary. As a TFA alum, I too have mixed feelings about the organization. So I stayed away, except when working on making some revisions to Chapter 3 of my dissertation, I accidentally just clicked on the video of this morning's panel and hopped around for literally two minutes before I stumbled upon this quote from Joe Klein: "Don't buy into this notion that if all the adults just collaborate, it will be just fine for the kids, the adults have been collaborating for a long time, and the kids are getting screwed." It is about 1 hour and 18 minutes into the panel and after the quote many cheered.

I get it to some extent. I am now just a small city, elementary school principal and have no ideas about big city battles between administration and unions.  So, I am not one that will pretend I know the answers.

But, to go back to the quote, if you mess with collaboration, you really make me angry. The sound bite about collaboration got applause from the TFA audience because it conjured up images of union teachers collaborating only around how little they were going work the next day or something.

What worries me about all of this is the notion of leadership that TFA seems to engender. Just tell people what to do, blast them if they don't follow the mandate, and if they question things they don't have the best interests of the children in mind.

What if there is another way? What if there are school leaders out there, TFA alum like myself included, that fully believe in collaboration. That believe that involving all of the voices in a school in the slow and messy process of improving and building a dynamic learning environment. That believe that test scores measure some things but not every thing. That seek out feedback and input at every step of the process, no matter how difficult and time consuming.
I don't think our kids are getting screwed either.

I know, I know, I am just a principal of a little elementary school. What could I possibly know about leadership and change and human behavior? I think I had spent more time both teaching and leading a school than anyone else on the panel, except maybe one. I guess I know that much more than them.

Solitude and Leadership

I read a great essay a week ago, "Solitude and Leadership" By William Deresiewicz in American Scholar magazine. It is based on a speech he gave to cadets at West Point. It is really worth the time to read and makes a few key points. We need original thinkers in leadership positions. To be an original thinker with vision, a leader needs to find some time to be alone and comfortable with new thoughts. A final point he makes is that multitasking is extremely detrimental to the kind of thinking a visionary leader needs to do.

Two quotes:

• "For too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don't know how to ask them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they are worth doing in the first place...What we don't have in other words are thinkers...people, in other words, with vision."
• Multitasking with technology, TV, newspapers, etc. is "just an elaborate excuse to run away from yourself. To avoid the difficult and troubling questions that human beings throw in your way."

So, a few thoughts as I head into this new year.

I want to multitask less. For me, that means being more thoughtful about how I use my time (and looking at my iPhone less).

I want to read more complete books and less snippets of things.

I want to take time for solitude.

I want to deal with the difficult and troubling questions head on.

This essay is worth a read, it has a lot more to say than this post gives it credit for.

Happy New Year!

Instructional Rounds at Greer

I am inspired to write this blog because of Pam Moran's wonderful post "Spring of Hope" and then @chadsansing's tweet response to it:" piece on where we are, what we need 2 do: share, believe, act me: devil is in the how, what, & why".

I never pretend to know all of the answers to hard questions like Chad's but I love exploring potential answers in my work as a principal.

Greer Elementary is in school improvement with the Virginia State Department of Education and one of the things we need to do as a result is write a school improvement plan with the VDOE. They empower us at the school level to choose 5-7 improvement strategies from a list of a couple of hundred. One of the strategies is to develop a system of peer observations in the school. We chose this strategy for some simple reasons: it was a lot better than some of the other ones, it had real potential to change culture in our school, and I was personally tired of paying lip service to peer observations every year and never really implementing them.

So with the leadership of our instructional coaching team at Greer, Ken Ferguson and Sue Harris, we dove into the book Instructional Rounds. Ken has especially been instrumental in leading the effort of rounds in our building from developing our unique philosophy behind it and working out all of the details.

A couple of choice quotes from the book:

• "The rounds process is an explicit practice that is designed to bring discussions of instruction directly into the process of school improvement. By practice we mean something quite specific for observing, analyzing, discussing, and understanding instruction that can be used to improve student learning at scale. The practice works because it creates a common discipline and focus among practitioners with common purpose and set of problems."
• "The process of rounds requires participants to focus on a common problem of practice that cuts across all levels of the system."
• "You improve schools by using information about student learning, from multiple sources, to find the most promising instructional problems to work on and then systematically developing with teachers and administrators the knowledge and skill necessary to solve those problems."
• "Language is culture. Culture is language. How people talk to each other about what they are doing is an important determinant of whether they are able to learn from their practice."

The book is powerfully written and gets at what it calls the core of interaction between student, teacher, and curriculum. It provides some vignettes of fictional schools that have looked at data until they were collectively blue in the face without ever really analyzing how they interact around the core in the classroom. So, we adopted instructional rounds as one of our strategies.

Here are some of our rounds strategies unique to Greer:

• Every single teacher and administrator is involved in rounds. We decided against piloting. We are all in. If we ever want to make teaching public at Greer, we could not have this be an opt in event.
• Every teacher gets coverage two hours a month to practice observing from video and then spending time observing in different classes.
  
• We have focused relentlessly on having everyone practice non-judgmental feedback. It is a harder skill to learn than people think.
• The teacher involved in rounds on a given day debrief after school.
• We took feedback from every teacher after a few months of rounds and had the school improvement team do old fashioned sorts and wordle sorts with the info to come up with our school challenge of practice. Our challenge of practice- how to improve as a school at checking for understanding multiple times in a lesson.

I am pretty realistic person. Not everyone in our school sees rounds as a wonderful, transformational process. Some see it as a waste of time. Some like it. It is very different than just about everyone's experience either teaching at Greer or at any other school. Most schools do not develop systematic procedures for peer observations. But, we are sticking with it. I personally see it as a three-four year culture changer. It will take a long time to really affect change.

PLC meetings can get old. For those of us schooled in the Dufour model, we can sometimes look at test data every which way til Sunday and still never really talk instruction in a meaningful way. Rounds helps get at it.

But one caution. Although the book is written more for division rounds teams, the first few chapters are essential for understanding the process. Rounds are not walkthroughs. Rounds are not observation checklists. Do not implement the process if you are just doing that because you will not change culture in a building. "Language is culture, culture is language" and we cannot make that phrase meaningful until we foster powerful conversations among a staff around what is actually happening in the classroom.

#blog4reform!

Some Notes from Chris Lehman's talk on the Educator's PLN: Progressive Schools Need Systemic Structures

In some quiet moments in my office this week with our students out for winter break, I have had the chance to listen to @chrislehman 's talk on the Educator's PLN and I picked up some interesting ideas that either validated what we are doing at Mary Carr Greer Elementary or challenged me to think about where we are as a school. Chris is the principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia which is a progressive, magnet high school. Our school is elementary and just plain regular public. We are in the midst of an overall change/improvement process using the core ideas of both Responsive Classroom and Expeditionary Learning. While I do not use the terms progressive or traditional very much, we are definitely on a path as a school to increase the level and spirit of community and the level of engagement with our students and our teachers.

So, here are the ideas or quotes from Chris:

• "Progressive schools need systemic structures". It is a simple yet powerful quote. Greer right now is struggling with implementing learning expeditions, student led conferences, and new technology while maintaining our assessment model among other things. I firmly believe that we need systemic structures to flourish as a school but I am also realizing that we are not close to having them yet. We will have them but it will take time. We need to develop systemic structures for our planning of instruction, delivering it and also our assessing of our student learning.
  
• "A common language of teaching and learning drills down to the process...The way we talk about project based learning and inquiry is the same across all teachers." With systemic structures comes a common language and vision for teaching and learning. I find myself hearing "common language bla bla bla" coming from many educators but I don't often see it. I don't often see it because I know how hard it is to accomplish in my own school. It takes a hell of a lot of work and is hard and maybe harder to do in a regular public school. I know it is worth every ounce of effort.
• Grade levels have essential questions, the school uses a common lesson planning format, teachers work over the summer to develop these. We have made some amazing steps with this work at Greer but again have a long way to go. Our last summer retreat with our staff had each grade developing essential questions in social studies and science through some intensive work. We had that time because of the quirk of making up a vast amount of snow days. How do we find a way to do that this school year? An individual school will not grow without this intensive summer work.
• A committee structure guides all of the work at the school. We are in our second year of a committee structure at Greer and again, have seen some amazing growth with it. I also feel that it is probably two or so more years away from getting really powerful. This work takes a long time!
• The school requires a unit plan for teaching interviews. When a teacher is scheduled to come for an interview, they are given every piece of information about the school in advance so there are no surprises. They are also told to design a unit given what they know about what the school believes about teaching and learning. Hiring is always a consensus decision. I have generally been a good recruiter and hirer of teachers but I think this would be a great advance for us at Greer. It would be more in depth and more democratic.
• "Our school is a hard place to work"- I love this quote. Greer is also a hard place to work. It used to be hard because we had the most students coming from poverty of any school in our entire district. It is now becoming a hard place to work because we have such high expectations of ourselves. We are getting there, but like everything else, we have a long way to go. And a hard place to work does not also mean fun, joyful, supportive and caring as I am sure it is at SLA.
  

So, I loved listening to the talk after the fact and it has me inspired for 2011! My main goal from the talk is to find ways to add and grow systemic structures for the kind of teaching and learning we want to take place in our school.