Cycle #2 - reflection on data & a plan for action

DATA: TEACHER TALK & REFLECTIVE POSTINGS

It was suggested to me by some of my colleagues, and confirmed by the discussion I had with my teachers, that perhaps one of the reasons that the teachers were not engaging in more collaboration or responding to my prompts for collaboration was that they lacked confidence in themselves as professionals. During our last meeting, one teacher actually stated that he felt like he was always "putting out fires" and never had time to grow instructionally; he added that this made him feel like he was less than proficient as a teacher at this point in his career (less than 3 years of experience).

They also complained in their postings about the lack of time they were given to collaborate with each other because all of their planning time was absorbed with administrator-led meetings or professional development led by someone outside the content-area team. Therefore, this teacher said that they had no practice talking with each other as professionals and had been "missing a slice of the ELA pie" (see comments in previous post, Cycle #2 - action & more data). The teachers seem to have some deep resentments about the fact that they haven't had these kinds of opportunities in the past - opportunities to reflect, to ask questions of each other or to share their unique ideas and talents - stating that they feel shortchanged.

At this point, I felt that the teachers were ready for another try at reflecting on student work and the learning context in which it occurs. I based this decision on the data I collected from the teachers' reflective postings on our discussion board. One teacher stated, "In order to improve as a teacher, I need to reflect on how I get my students to produce work, and in turn how I evaluate the work." This teacher seemed to be realizing how valuable student work could be as a tool to inform instruction. Another teacher teacher felt that "the most important thing we can do for one another is togive suggestions and ask questions of each other...we will recognize the things we have picked up along the way and the things that have worked for us." Here, I sensed an opening up to the risk-taking that sometimes comes with collaboration. A third teacher seemed to recognize the essential link between common standards and quality of student work: "...working together gives us a chance to know that we are measuring the same things when we talk about standards and expectations, that students don't get graded on different scales for similar work". From these reflections, it appeared that the teachers had made some important connections in their work and would be ready to give collaborative analysis another try.

I decided to scaffold this conversation a little more with a protocol that used more precise prompting than the Collaborative Assessment Conference (McDonald et al, 2007). For this purpose, I chose the Learning from Student Work protocol (Thompson-Grove, 2000). This protocol offers the facilitator some probing questions that help to analyze the student's apparent understandings (see below). I again used the discussion board format for our shared documents and reflections. I posted a link to a student's draft of her feature article, and I also included via attachment a copy of the rubric we are using to assess students on their finished writing for the unit. This was another way of scaffolding the conversation - the rubric would give teachers a basis and language for their comments.