Learning Teams Strengthen Instruction
January 7, 2009 - Teachers are talking excitedly about what’s happening in their schools. There is a cultural shift underway transforming the way teachers teach and students learn. The change isn’t the result of gimmicks or magic solutions. Wake Forest Elementary teachers work in a learning team to review academic work and use data walls to display student work. |
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Schools have borrowed a page from the world of business where teams work to solve problems. It’s a new way of educational thinking. Instead of teachers staying in their classrooms, developing their lessons and working with different groups of students one year after the next, teachers are talking to each other. It’s a new for educators and it is transforming instruction in the Wake County Public School System.
Teams of high school principals and teachers are meeting over the course of this school year sharing what’s working at their schools. Teams of school social workers have been meeting to study attendance. Students that miss more than 10 days of class in a school year have a difficult time passing exams and earning promotion. Social workers are sharing what they are learning about keeping students in school with principals and teachers.
At Wake Forest Elementary, Melissa Flake meets with other kindergarten teachers and school specialists.
“We’ve talked about children that we are concerned about, what we can do to help them beyond what we are already doing in the classroom. Can we get parents to come in and tutor? Can we pull them into a group and tutor them?” said Flake. “We also talk about enriching those children who have already met the objectives we are trying to teach. What can we do to take them to the next level?”
Stephen Elrod, a Wake Forest Elementary third grade teacher, says learning teams work through shared experiences and seeking common solutions to student needs.
“What’s great about the learning team is you have different teachers, but you also have different experience levels and so for a brand new teacher to hear what an experienced teacher is using in his or her classroom just helps that teacher become stronger,” said Elrod. “You can just see the conversation, the planning and the learning that occurs in the learning team for the teacher trickle down to the student.”
Teachers meeting in learning teams, using data to drive decisions and experience to find solutions to meet the needs of individual children is a gift the school system received from the Triangle High Five corporate leaders: The News & Observer Publishing Company, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, SAS, Progress Energy and Capitol Broadcasting Company. They brought national experts and frequent training opportunities to Triangle educators as part of a five-year, $2.5 million project that began in 2004.
Some schools and school system offices were early adapters to the transformative process of using learning teams. Matt Wight, Wake County Principal of the Year, points to the change learning teams are bringing to Apex High.
“Teachers embrace collaboration. They embrace sharing best practices and using data to improve student achievement,” said Wight. “It shows in our school’s results.”
At Wake Forest Elementary, principal Denise Tillery looks at the school’s three years of work in learning teams and agrees it has changed the culture of the school.
“We learned the process is more important than just the concepts of the learning team,” said Tillery. “It’s definitely a journey. Looking back and reflecting on where we were three years ago and where we are now, it’s tremendous!”
It’s a journey bringing excitement to teachers and improved, targeted instruction to students.
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