One day our school’s assistant principal announced that our department would be provided with substitute teachers for an entire week so that we could attend a professional development opportunity. Educators, you know how rarely this happens, so we knew it must be important.
It wasn’t clear what the focus of the training would be or why we going, but about a week later a few instructional manuals showed up on each of our desks. We arrived at the workshop interested, but as the days progressed we saw little connection between what we were learning and the challenges we faced in our classrooms.
Following the training, we were given common planning times to collaborate; we appreciated the time together, but with no particular expectations provided, we used the time to “divide and conquer” lesson planning with little deviation from our previous instructional methods. The administration began doing “walkthroughs”—five-minute observations in our classrooms—but it was not clear what they were looking for, and we never saw results. A lot of time and resources were expended, but little change was made.
Does this story sound familiar?
Our administration did a lot of things right: they provided classroom coverage so that we could pursue professional development, organized planning times so that we could collaborate on implementing the training, and made provisions to evaluate our implementation. So why did this initiative fail?
Fortunately, we have a framework to guide us when analyzing this situation. Kenneth A. Leithwood outlines three categories of actions that leaders must consider when working towards organizational change:
- Setting direction – Communicate a vision, promote shared goal setting, elicit stakeholder “buy-in,” communicate high expectations
- Developing people – Provide learning opportunities and individualized support
- Redesigning the organization – Build collaborative culture, provide time, space, and resources to carry out work
Optimizing activities within all three categories will help position your organization for success. In my example above, direction was lacking. Our department arrived in a professional development opportunity with little understanding of the objectives for the training, and common goals were missing. We had opportunities to collaborate, but we had little direction in regard to the goals or expectations of this collaboration. There was a lack of follow-through. Our administration evaluated our classrooms but did not share the results.
Setting direction, developing people, and redesigning the organization are critical considerations when implementing CLASS professional development. Let’s look at an example utilizing one of Teachstone’s professional development programs, Making the Most of Classroom Interactions (MMCI). In this post, I’ll focus on setting direction and then examine developing people and redesigning the organization in subsequent posts.
MMCI is designed for teachers and consists of ten two-hour sessions, each covering one dimension of the CLASS measure. MMCI consists of videos that demonstrate both highly effective and less effective interactions, as well as activities and prompts for reflection and application. It is an intensive professional development program that is highly interactive and relevant to classroom practice.
To maximize this learning opportunity, teachers need their leaders to set direction. This course will be most effective if teachers can answer the following questions before they engage in instruction:
- What is the CLASS measure and why are we using it within our organization?
- Why was this professional development program chosen and why was I asked to participate?
- What are our organization’s goals in undergoing this professional development?
- What is expected of me as a result of engaging in this opportunity?
- How will this learning opportunity affect my classroom practice?
Supporting teachers in answering these questions promotes investment, engagement, and ambitious performance. Stay tuned to learn more about developing people and redesigning the organization as it relates to MMCI.
