Three weeks ago, as the school year was starting, I had the opportunity to work in a Midwest high poverty middle school with the mathematics department and team of teachers. There were 16 total teachers grades 6-8 and all were very hardworking and caring professionals.
Only they had one major problem: There was very little evidence of improved student learning over the past 5 years.
Understandably, they were very frustrated. An examination of student work and results highlighted evidence of falling behind previous years’ results, and falling behind the student performance in other content areas of the school as well. The Principal wanted to know why.
From my perspective, despite working really hard on their mathematics assessments, their personal lesson design, their methods of assigning grades and rigor, and the various ways they were engaging students into meaningful RTI work, there was a major flaw in their work – they were not doing any of their work together.
There is evidence in our best schools that no mathematics teacher should be left alone to create solutions to the complicated and evolving challenges of helping students learn mathematics at high levels.
I asked these 16 teachers if they wanted to become a great mathematics department with a highly engaging and successful mathematics program for each and every child. To their credit, they said yes!
This, then, has begun a journey for them for the 2016-2017 season, where they will become more aware of each other’s daily practice and how to work together as a team around evidence of student learning. They will learn to erase inequities in their daily practices and decisions and to solve their problems together.
They are now on a journey to only work hard on teacher actions that really matter. As the saying goes, they do not need to work harder, they need to work smarter. They need to maximize their impact and potential as professionals by working together.
To that end, I met with the Principal, and encouraged her to send as many of those 16 teachers as she can, to our national Mathematics in a PLC At Work™ Summit in December.
The what?
My colleagues and I are hosting a two-and-a-half day professional development PLC Mathematics Summit event in Orlando from December 5th-7th.
If you are a follower of Solution Tree and their high quality and powerful Professional Learning Community (PLC) and RTI culture, then you understand the collaborative power of this event, and the high quality nature of all Solution Tree events.
If you are a member of NCTM, you understand their consistent and sustained message regarding the teaching and learning expectations for each and every K-12 child in mathematics.
This powerful marriage of NCTM mathematics content leadership and Solution Tree’s PLC and RTI process leadership has created an unusual event for teachers and school leaders that are interested in pursuing deep, meaningful, and sustained change around the learning of mathematics for each and every child.
The pursuit of equitable learning experiences in mathematics is urgent. And, every session of keynotes and breakouts is designed to address that urgency, and provide practical and targeted solutions for elementary, middle, and high school teachers, coaches, and administrators.
As I explained to the middle school principal, our Mathematics Summit is unique in that this is not a typical event with numerous sessions that may or may not be connected. We believe the best strategy to achieve our K-12 mathematics teaching and learning goals is to create schools and districts that operate as professional learning communities—more specifically, operate within the PLC at Work™ culture as explained by Richard DuFour and his colleagues (2016).
Thus our entire faculty of seven national thought leaders is accessible to the attendees during the entire 2.5 day experience. We make sure that every session connects to the professional learning community process for mathematics teachers, addresses issues of equity, and delivers significant insight into student learning for each and every child.
John Hattie (2012) states in Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning:
My role as a teacher is to evaluate the effect I have on my students. It is to know thy impact, it is to understand this impact, and it is to act on this knowing and understanding. This requires that teachers gather defensible and dependable evidence from many sources, and hold collaborative discussions with colleagues and students about this evidence, thus making the effect of their teaching visible to themselves and to others (p. 19).
Embracing Hattie’s advice, this PLC Mathematics Summit cuts through the constant stream and noise of how to fix mathematics education to focus on the real work of teachers and teacher teams: to improve learning. In session after session, we provide specific, coherent and practical solutions for helping collaborative teachers and teacher teams respond to the four critical questions of a PLC at Work™:
- What do students need to know and be able to do?
How do we understand and ensure the Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum for Mathematics?
- How will we know when they have learned it?
What are the critical elements of highly effective mathematics assessments?
- What will we do when they haven’t learned it?
What are the critical elements of an effective RTI response in mathematics and the necessary grading practices to inspire student learning?
- What will we be our response when they already know it?
What are the critical pathways for deepening student learning of the mathematics standards progressions?
As I finished my day with these 16 middle school teachers and their principal, we were all exhausted and a bit overwhelmed. Where should they start? What was most urgent for them? How could they go deeper into the work we had done for that day?
My response was to ask them to send a team, including the team leaders from each grade level, and the instructional, to our December Summit. This will give them 2.5 days to work on their 2016-2017 and beyond plan, get free advice from 7 national mathematics experts and thought leaders (practitioners in the field), and be more fully informed about the best we currently know and understand about the nature of our professional work in mathematics.
I promised them that I would personally sit with their team during team time and help them with their plan. I promised them, too, that this would be a time of celebration and connecting to others, for all of the hard work they are doing as well.
I hope you can join us this December, and that you will go our of your way to say “Hello” to me, and to let me know how I can personally dig in with you to solve the many challenges you face today. I have had the privilege to do this all summer and fall at our sold out PLC Institute events. I hope I will get a chance to meet you this December!
See you December 5th,
Timothy D. Kanold
[author_bio id=”390″]
