Going to Scale with Robust Student Talk
When the teachers at Revere High School issued a loud call to renew training and coaching on a professional development initiative that had swept the school before COVID, it raised eyebrows.
Where did the enthusiasm come from that survived these three tough distracting Covid years? What made senior teachers want all new hires to gain proficiency where the faculty had invested three years of their learning previously? What were the skills? How had they become a common commitment across teachers, breaking down silos across departments?
The skills in this case were these: Teacher skills to ensure robust interactive talk among students at a high level of thinking for all students, not just some!
The content of the training simultaneously aimed to:
- Build a talk environment of trust and respect among the students,
- Instill a sense of safety to be wrong, and
- Convince low-performing, low confidence students that they had able brains.
As teachers began to see the results of using these skills, no wonder they gained enthusiasm for the training! Nothing convinces colleagues to try something new as much as seeing the results with their own students.
I found the Making Student Thinking training very helpful to empower students in their learning. I am seeing more students become drivers of their learning. |
This article is not just an argument for the skills; it is a summary of the well-planned process the school implemented that resulted in school-wide faculty learning. The plan combined teacher leadership with administrative facilitation and support. It is a model any school can implement IF there exists stable leadership with the correct insights, and the capacity to identify teacher leaders who model constant learning and willingness to influence their peers.
First, I'll describe the skills, and second, the process over three years that led to all members of the faculty acquiring the skills.
Six Strands
MSTV brings together six strands of successful teaching and learning at once.
It’s the combination of these things that produce the results.
The Skills and Their Results
The topic: Teacher skills to ensure robust interactive talk among students at a high level of thinking for all students, not just some!
This set of skills goes far beyond the typical “talk moves” associated with “accountable talk” (Asterhan and Resnick 2015, West and Staub 2001). When it is in action, this constellation of twenty-four principles for teacher behavior accomplishes very important outcomes:
- builds classroom climate of mutual help among students,
- teaches the skills of good group work,
- demands higher level thinking,
- creates safety to not know or be wrong,
- supports productive struggle,
- gives the teacher good “checking” information about when students are confused, and
- invites trenchant analysis of student struggles by getting into their thinking
The Process - The Key to Success
Now the process – the key to success. It unfolded over three years.
Step 1: Initial Professional Development:
Teacher volunteers, with certain people urged by the principal to participate, took a rigorous online PD course with coaching (RBT's MSTV Course) and application assignments with individual feedback. The individuals invited were known to be influential teachers with a positive attitude toward new learning.
Step 2: Formation and Development of Collaborative Teachers:
Selection: Administrators (in Revere it was the H.S. principal, Lourenço Garcia), with participation by the instructor of the course, selected 10 people who took the course and 1) showed proficiency with the skills, 2) had credibility with their peers, and 3) were willing to open their classrooms to colleagues who wanted to see what these skills looked like in action. These 10 teachers were called “Collaboration Teachers”. They were willing to share their ongoing process of learning. They were not claiming to be experts in the practice (though they were really quite good.)
- Training and Support: Collaboration Teachers received ongoing training and support including:
- An extra full day of face-to-face professional development by RBT where they practiced the skills in small groups, facilitated by the original instructor of the online PD course. This began to bond them together as colleagues doing something important for the school and sharing their learning together.
- A half-day of coaching in their own classroom by the instructor. This coaching included the expert coach videoing the teacher and analyzing the video that day with the teacher for presence, absence, or missed opportunities for the 24 MSTV elements. This was non-judgmental, objective feedback based on evidence. The feedback conversation was based on the list of 24 principles in the course.
Step 3: Spreading the Word and Sharing the Results Within the School
- A few of the collaboration teachers presented their learning about the new skills at a faculty meeting – in Revere this happened in May of the first year - and gave testimony to the positive effects on their students. The key teacher leaders at Revere H.S. were Althea Terenzi, Nancy Barile, and Ethan Costello.
- The principal endorsed their work at this faculty meeting and described the visits to the Collaboration Teachers’ classrooms that would be made available to all staff members.
- The principal set up a visitation and coverage routine so any teacher who wished could visit a Collaboration Teacher where the skills could be viewed. During visits, the visiting teacher used the list of 24 behaviors as a checklist to record evidence of which behaviors occurred during the visit. Such a visit would include shadowing the Collaboration Teacher when s/he is in motion in her classroom interacting with individuals or small groups rather than just sitting in the back of the room. The visiting teacher and the collaboration teacher had lunch together (or met at some other chosen time) to review the evidence collected.
Step 4: Additional Cohorts with Internal supports
- All HS teachers were given the opportunity to take the online course.
- Althea Terenzi, an outstanding Revere High School practitioner, was hired by RBT to give feedback to participants on the application assignments in the online course.
- Althea and Evalynn Bulger gave work sessions on MSTV for experienced teachers and those new to the school on PD days the district had.
- Visitation schedules for teachers to observe the Collaborating Teachers’ classrooms continued. Administrators facilitated the scheduling and coverage, sometimes providing the coverage themselves.
Step 5: Sharing With the District
- Revere High School Administrators spread the word to leaders and asked if other teachers who took the course would like to visit the Collaboration Teachers. Administrators facilitated the scheduling and coverage, sometimes providing the coverage themselves.
- Central office leaders sent a concrete message about the significance of the topic through a workshop for all administrators as an introduction, and co-observations by all administrators outside the H.S. of a teacher who was already good at the skills so administrators knew what it looked like. The co-observer was a high ranking central office administrator who had taken the course or the actual course instructor. The leader here was Dianne Kelly, the superintendent.
- Selected teachers from middle and elementary schools were invited to the third cohort of teachers in the course, which happened in year two.
I am typically am very cynical toward programs like this having taught for almost 15 years. I have been through numerous professional development experiences in which I am presented with new programs that promise to "revolutionize" education but which turn out to be fads which our district moves on from barely a year later without any serious attempt at implementation. The MSTV program, however, was a very refreshing change. After the first few modules, I began to realize that this program was actually relevant and potentially useful. After implementing my midterm project, I found myself actually feeling bad that I had not been doing this all along! |
Revere MSTV Participant |
Conclusion: It's the process that make the difference
By the third year of the work at Revere High School,over 80% of the staff had taken the course and were using the skills with gusto. After a hiatus as we all dealt with COVID, the Revere teachers are now clamoring to get back to the work. This is a testament to the impact of work on student success, but more importantly, a testament to the effectiveness of the process that enabled the skills to take root.
Making Students Thinking Visible happens to be the content we used in Revere, but any addition to one's teaching repertoire, whether it be a generic pedagogical skill or a content specific pedagogical practice, could be the content. The point is to generate teacher champions for the new practice and get lots of peer observations going across the faculty along with productive peer analysis and conversations. The steps have to be understood, the administration has to clear the path and model interest and tangible support, and the champions have to be teacher leaders.
References
Asterhan, Christa S. C. and Lauren Resnick. Socializing Intelligence Through Academic Talk and Dialogue. American Educational Research Association. Washington, DC: 2015
West, Lucy and Fritz Staub. Content focused Coaching. Heineman. Portsmouth, NH: 2001.