When Curtis Middle School in San Bernardino was designated one of the lowest-performing schools in California, something had to change. Test scores were dismal, morale was low, turnover was high, and school culture had a toxic, teachers-versus-students quality. With 98 percent of students living in poverty and 47 percent designated as English language learners, Curtis seemed to face insurmountable obstacles. The California Department of Education sent in a state audit intervention team to turn Curtis Middle School around. But when change came, it came from within, and it was greater than anyone expected. From 2002 to 2006 Curtis showed greater growth on standardized test scores than any other school in San Bernardino County, achieving more than triple its growth targets. By 2005, Curtis was among the top schools for improvement in California. Attendance was up, suspensions were down, athletic and academic teams were winning, and students and teachers were excited. The school culture had been transformed.
The key to this successful turnaround? Teachers who became leaders on their own campus.
Tapping Our Strengths
After the state's initial audit of Curtis, the school district reached an agreement with the California Department of Education to give Curtis an 18-month window (from January 2003 to June 2004) to restructure its leadership and make instructional changes. The school formed a new administrative team composed of four new administrators, some of whom the Department of Education had assigned. Our leadership team was made up of all Curtis administrators and several teachers we had identified as leaders.
As the new administration began to assess the situation, it became clear that Curtis needed a new approach to staff development. We completely revamped professional development at Curtis, emerging with a model that centered on both teacher needs and teacher leadership. A closer look at how we turned the school around gives a glimpse of a professional learning community in action.
We began by assessing our teachers' strengths and, just as important, their attitudes, including their willingness to embrace change, their rapport with students, and their inclination to work with the new administrative team. It quickly became clear that certain teachers not only engaged in exemplary teaching practices, but also had potential to initiate change. The school had never tapped this potential, much less synthesized all the existing teacher potential into a single focused movement.
Administrators cleared the way for teachers to become on-site experts in their fields and leaders in the school's reform. We identified one or two exemplary classroom teachers in each core area—math, language arts, science, and social studies—to act as content specialists. We selected teachers who called forth high levels of student engagement, who had good teacher-student rapport, and who wrote high-quality lessons. In addition, they showed excellent classroom management skills and the ability to generate instruction-centered conversation with other teachers.
These content specialists maintained the same full-day schedule as other teachers. One day a month, however, each specialist demonstrated a model lesson using selected schoolwide strategies for all teachers in their department. Content specialists also facilitated instructional collaboration among their colleagues.
- Developing literacy through the reciprocal teaching strategy.
- Teaching writing through the Jane Schaffer program.
- Creating standards-based instruction by developing curriculum aligned to state standards, common instructional units, lesson design, and accountability systems.
As the role of our content specialists evolved, so did our goals for professional development. We focused on differentiation in the third year and assessments and rubrics in the fourth. This past year, we took differentiation deeper by training teachers to use all levels of Bloom's taxonomy in their planning, questioning, and instruction. Our plan was to systematically expose all teachers to the chosen strategies and have teachers immediately begin implementing them.
Our Ongoing Staff Development Cycle
Our next step was to lay out exactly what our ongoing staff development model would look like and develop a calendar for its implementation. We created a five-step monthly cycle of research, observation, collaboration, implementation, and assessment and worked a two-hour block of staff development time into our weekly schedule.
Research: From Excuses to Dialogue
During the first part of the cycle, Curtis faculty, administrators, and staff members research the focus strategy for that month. We gather in the library and read together a professional article dealing with the strategy in question. We encourage everyone to engage actively with the text by underlining and taking notes.
After completing the reading, teachers break into groups of 7–10, usually according to content area, and move to various rooms on campus. Content specialists and department chairs lead each group discussion guided by three questions: (1) What new understanding did you gain from the article? (2) How does that new learning relate to the classroom? and (3) What implications do you see for future use? The conversations that follow these assigned readings have evolved from flurries of excuse making to rich instructional dialogues.
Observation: “Demonstration Day”
The cycle then moves from theory into practice. One day each month becomes “demonstration lesson day,” when every teacher on campus observes a lesson based on the focus strategy they have just read about. Each of our content specialists demonstrates a standards-based lesson using the technique in question (such as synthesis-level questioning) by teaching that lesson in his or her own classroom. Because specialists apply the strategy to whatever content each of them is teaching at that particular time, giving the demonstration lesson does not disrupt the pacing of a unit.
Every teacher observes a lesson during his or her conference period. (We view these observations as “other professional duties,” as written in the collective bargaining agreement.) Core area teachers observe lessons in their content areas; physical education teachers, teachers of elective courses, and resource teachers (such as special educators) observe different content areas on a rotating, monthly basis. Even our content specialists observe other content specialists because it's vital to everyone's professional growth that all teachers observe a lesson. Each demonstration lesson looks different because the specific content and activities vary from teacher to teacher, but the focus is unequivocally the same. We consider it especially powerful that each educator observes a standards-based, exemplary lesson in his or her own school.
Collaboration: Key to a Learning Community
This classroom observation serves as the basis for the rich instructional collaboration and dialogue that take place among the teachers the day after demonstration day. Teachers who observed the same content specialist meet in small groups to discuss what they observed. Content specialists (whom we have trained in Cognitive Coaching) facilitate this discussion, guiding the conversation around three questions: (1) Which strategies, insights, or “ah-ha's” did you notice? (2) What questions did you have regarding the lesson? and (3) How can you use these strategies in your classroom?
Each group has forged a different style of collaborating, but all groups operate under two basic assumptions: Instruction will always be the focus, and all teachers will participate. One group arranges desks in a circle, with teachers commenting in the order in which they sit; in another group, members comment more randomly. The important thing is that all members have input. Facilitating teachers need to feel comfortable hearing peer feedback on their lessons and using that feedback to lead the discussion.
The collaboration ends with teachers brainstorming ideas on what might and might not work when they try out this strategy in their classrooms. Teachers move into the planning mode as they prepare to implement a lesson using the demonstrated strategy. This authentic collaboration is the key to a real learning community. Collaboration has destroyed the walls of isolation that once existed on our campus. As a beginning teacher explains,I know exactly what is expected of me. . . . and the students know what is expected of them. There is a level of consistency here at Curtis that goes from classroom to classroom, from grade level to grade level.
Implementation: Trying It Out Together
Once teachers have researched a strategy, seen the strategy modeled, and shared ideas about using the strategy, they are then held accountable for implementing it with their own classes. Administrators choose a schoolwide day for implementation, about a week after the demonstration lessons. On that day, administrators go into every class on campus to ensure that teachers are implementing the strategy. Implementation day has become nonthreatening because teachers know they are expected only toattempt the strategy. We make it clear that we are not expecting perfection, just an honest effort. Administrators gather informal data regarding how the strategy is being implemented. This formative assessment of the entire staff drives further decision making on staff development. For example, as teachers began implementing questioning related to the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy, it became clear that many teachers needed more time to grapple with and understand these concepts before they could use them well with students. So we scheduled additional collaboration time on higher-level questioning techniques during the next staff development session.
Assessment: Trusting and Pushing One Another
About a week after implementation day, teachers meet in their departments to assess how the implementation went. They look at student work that they collected from the lesson they taught using the focus strategy, as well as at other data. With help from their colleagues, teachers informally self-assess and decide what they could do differently the next time. For example, a teacher who had tried rubrics for the first time realized that in the future she needed to write rubrics that had a better balance between holistic language about expectations and quantifiable elements of good work. We have seen tremendous growth within these groups as the teachers come to trust one another and leave excuses behind.
Curtis administrators regularly discuss with content specialists and the leadership team whether the professional development program is meeting teacher needs and how to adapt strategies accordingly. Such discussion occurs informally throughout the month and formally at a monthly leadership meeting that follows staff development time. Teacher leaders sometimes share that their departments are struggling and need another lesson or additional reinforcement on a concept.
A longtime Curtis teacher describes how the new professional development model leads to continual teacher growth:The culture here really pushes everyone involved . . . beyond their comfort level. It pushes them to be more, to rise above just mediocre, and that's students, teachers, administration, staff. Everyone here is challenged to be more, and they're empowered to be more.
Curtis's Transformation
Curtis Middle School has transformed itself into a true professional learning community, not because we gave ourselves a title or formed additional committees, but because the administration aligned itself with teacher leaders to change the school from within. As a result of this teacher-driven model of ongoing staff development, instructional strategies are now reinforced across content areas, and there is vertical alignment of strategies from 6th to 8th grade.
Curtis now has a school culture of collaboration. With support, our teachers have flourished in a most challenging environment. Teachers now see themselves as partners with administrators, students, and one another. They openly share ideas, not only in meetings, but also at the copier, between classes, and on weekends. The once-tarnished reputation of Curtis has been put to rest and replaced with hope.
