Discomofort & Depth Will Work for a Team by any Other Name

This week I was wrestling with the fact that our PLC teams work well together, some better than others, but as a district we can’t seem to be able to take the next step with them.  Whether you call your collaborative teams PLCs or TBTs or WTFs it doesn’t matter, but what does matter is HOW you are using the time and WHY you are having the discussions and if you find your team’s discussions not going very deep you might consider reading on. In an earlier post titled “They do not understand shallowness because they do not experience depth” I focused on how our students benefit from going through productive struggle because it allows them to have a deeper understanding of the material even though they are more comfortable with wading in shallow conversations that have no depth.  It is this idea of comfort and lack of understanding of depth that got me thinking more about our collaborative teams.

Bill Eckstrom @billeckstrom addresses the idea that comfort can actually be a problem in his Ted Talk titled “Why Comfort Will Ruin Your Life”. In this video he talks about how being taken out of his comfort zone (even if it was involuntary) actually was important for him to grow as an individual. He used a great analogy about goldfish to emphasize how your environment can dictate your growth.  A high comfort/low stress environment will actually limit your growth as compared to a low comfort (relatively higher stress) environment.   High comfort environments have the potential to lead to “stagnation” or at best a feeling of “order” which can limit the way you think and act.  However, an environment that is too stressful has the potential to lead to “chaos” according to Eckstrom, so the sweet spot to shoot for is one of “complexity”.  “Complexity is nothing more than changed order, but when your order is changed it is no longer is predictable and this unpredictability leads to being uncomfortable” and ultimately an opportunity to grow (productive struggle).  So, I believe part of the reason we are not taking the “next step” in our PLC teams is because we are operating at a comfortable level with our shallow discussions and might not even realize it because we haven’t really experienced the depth needed to get into complexity.  This got me thinking about how can we support our teams’ ability to collaborate more and encourage deeper conversations during these professional development opportunities.  

In his book titled “In Praise of American Educators”, Rick DuFour points out “the most powerful avenue for developing educator talent is high quality collaborative, job-embedded professional development” (p.81).  He went on to state that there are three keys to building this collaborative culture: being part of a meaningful team, providing time to work together, and ensuring there is clarity in doing the right work (p.125).  I would argue that PLC, TBT, etc. do get people together in meaningful teams and, if supported correctly, can provide time within the day for that collaboration to take place.  However, it is the third part that we must work to focus on if we are to nurture this most powerful avenue for developing educator talent, that is to say, “doing the right work”.  

In my mind, “doing the right work” means that all of our conversations in this collaborative time together should be centered around pedagogy, data analysis, or common assessment development.  If we find ourselves discussing anything outside of these three during this collaborative time together we should STOP...PUT IT DOWN...and refocus on at least one of these three areas.  Here is a little “cheat sheet” that will hopefully encourage your team to move from shallow/comfortable conversations to more deep/uncomfortable conversations focused only on these three ideas.

Focus Areas: Please focus on one of the three areas for your PD discussions  

1. Pedagogy-Could include, but is not limited to, the following examples

• Sharing a best practice
• Collaboratively assessing samples of student work to discuss how to grade it (inter-rater reliability) and to refine the process
• Short videos of colleagues to analyze and discuss
• Practicing elements of an effective lesson based on a research-based strategy
• Identifying particularly difficult topic to teach and develop/share ways to teach it effectively
• Reading and discussing an educational/researched based article
• Discussing timely interventions that can be implemented for scaffolding learning

2. Data Analysis- Could include, but is not limited to, the following examples

• Analyzing data (as a class) to assess progress and identify areas that need improvement using hard data brought to the PD Discussion.
• Review of student answers from a test to dig deeper in order to determine where  students struggle.
• Utilizing a data analysis system to help identify areas of strength/weakness of a student
• Comparing school data with similar cohorts outside of the district

3. Common Assessment Development- Could include, but is not limited to, the following

• Creating deep lessons for particularly challenging topics or skills

• Developing and refining common, curriculum based assessments that emphasize writing and thoughtful engagement with content
• Creating “anticipatory sets” for specific topics, skills, and concepts to stimulate interest in the content
• Generating rich, thought-provoking questions for common text
• Building whole lessons as a team and practicing how to teach them
• Asking does a particular test question measure what we need to know about our students. (also a data analysis question)

Expectations

It is not expected that your team will cover all three areas for each PD Discussion.  The goal is to dig deeper into each of the areas, so you might find the team covers one area for the entire PD Discussion.  We would like your PD Discussion focus to be less of “What are we teaching?” and more of “How are we teaching?” as well as “Why are we teaching it that way?”.

If you find that what you want to cover in your PD Discussion focus does not fit into one of these categories, lesson planning as an example, then please avoid discussing the topic during PD Discussion time and meet, if necessary, at a different time. Email or Google forms will be especially helpful to disseminate  info to your team.  We encourage planning to take place during common planning time when possible.

When meeting in your PD Discussions, please try to avoid altogether or minimize topics such as:

-Lesson planning for the upcoming week(s)

-Updating Pacing Guides

-Discussing test format (diving deeper into a test question is great)

-Planning for a field trip

-Superficially covering many topics (mile wide vs. mile deep)

-Using the time to organize or sequence a unit.

-Spending time discussing dates and timelines.

-Specific building issues ex. special events, dismissals, playground/lunch issues, etc.

Having these discussion should not be about being accountable, but rather being responsible for being sure that we (teachers & administrators) use this time effectively.  The more we can stay in that “complexity” sweet spot the more we will grow and this can only take place if we challenge ourselves and our team to leave the shallow conversations behind and wade into deeper conversations which will ultimately help our students become learners.