Delving Into Community Conversations

Many thanks to Janet for the cozy candlelit CFG meeting this week during the power outage!  During that meeting Tonya asked the questions: 

How can we leverage our all LS inquiry planning experiences? Can we extend those common experiences in more depth as a CFG?  

One way we agreed we could do this is to start videotaping some community conversations/kid talks/science talks/grand conversations to share with our CFG.  Because of winter break the timeline for this is abbreviated, so I wanted to make sure I got a reminder out about this early--if you don't already have a video of a conversation you want to look at more carefully with your colleagues, please tape one before our next meeting on Wednesday, January 14th. The hope is that this is a safe forum for all kinds of kid talks--please feel as welcome to bring a video of a total flop of a conversation as you are to bring a successful discussion.  The important criteria should be that you have something you want to learn more about--how to gauge how quieter students are processing the ideas, how to help dominating students balance their voice, what kinds of vocabulary children are demonstrating for building off one another's ideas, etc. 

As an example, I know that when I look at the community conversations happening in our class, particularly early in the year, I'm often dismayed by how frequently my own voice is inserted into the conversation.  I sometimes wonder if that guidance is as necessary as I think it is in keeping the conversation going for children who are just learning how to engage in dialogue. I've sometimes tried it with less teacher presence and had the conversations fail. You can read an example of one of our conversations where this dilemma is apparent here. 

I am wondering: Are there stages of growth for community dialogue? If so, what stage are these children in?  What kind of scaffolding can I provide as a teacher to gradually move them toward more independence, broader participation, habitual connection? 

Another conversation we had at our meeting was around the question What would be required to make observation a regular practice?  Among that list were:
-connect the observations to work that already is a 'have to.'
-look for already existing opportunities
-identify a planning time to observe so you don't feel like you're missing time with your kids
-look for ways observations begin to seem like a meaningful and integral part of the work instead of an extra responsibility
-use observations to begin to tell the story of the way individual students, particularly those who may be seen as challenges, are learning and growing
-use observations to develop case studies

One challenge some of us might consider in the next month is to invite another CFG member to do the videotaping for our community conversation, or to come in to be another set of eyes to help you watch a child, lesson, or experience. 

Looking forward to delving into this work with you all--wishing you a restorative holiday!

PS  The articles Tracy referenced about behavior and young children that we were looking at in Beginning School can be found here. 

Planning for A Greater Presence

At Wednesday's CFG you will need:

-Your favorite note taking device

-Your computer or tablet to access these protocols:  
http://www.nsrfharmony.org/free-resources/protocols/observation

-Your calendar

Our work will center around observation protocols, though perhaps these questions may guide us toward opening up our definition of what it means to use them:

-What experiences, positive and negative, have formed your associations around the word 'observation?'

-What changes would you need to make in your daily or weekly schedule to consider yourself connected to another classroom?

-What kind of collaboration or support can you envision enhancing your own classroom? Who might be able to provide it? What kind of invitations would initiate it?

-What do you think might change if LS teachers had a greater presence in one another's classrooms?  Of these changes, which seems the most achievable on a short term basis? Which would require a more detailed plan? 

Visiting Our Colleagues

It felt wonderful to be with so many of you at the last CFG meeting.  We made two commitments:

1) To visit at least one other CFG member's classroom (or to watch a traveling teacher teach) before the next meeting.

2) To bring our calendars to the next meeting prepared to make concrete plans for more time in one another's classrooms.

Because we shifted last week's meeting, our next meeting is coming up fast! We will meet in a little over a week on November 5th.  With conferences this week, that means we'd better start visiting!

If you want some guidance, I'd suggest these first visits following an observer as learner format, where the visiting teacher comes in with his/her own question (i.e.: What accommodations are other teachers making for children who need to move to listen? What kinds of mini-lessons are you using to launch your Readers' Workshop sessions? What language or actions are children using to show they are listening to one another?) and visits to learn more from the teacher s/he is observing.  Jotting a quick note to the teacher you visited afterward with a thank you and a 1-2 sentence note about something you learned while visiting or a question you hope to apply to your own classroom can help start a dialogue and can help foster trust for peer observations.

I can't wait to find out what we'll all learn from one another! May the inspiration begin...

“If we want to grow as teachers -- we must do something alien to academic culture: we must talk to each other about our inner lives -- risky stuff in a profession that fears the personal and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, the abstract.” -Parker Palmer-

Developing a Teacher Research Question

Claire asked for some examples of teacher research questions and I thought there might be others who would like to see some resources.  Here's a helpful excerpt from an article on teacher research by Amy Anderson:

THE RESEARCH QUESTION
A research question is designed to get to the heart of what goes on in the classroom, asking “what’s going on?” in relation to behaviors or strategies. It’s worth spending significant time thinking about this central component of teacher research. MacLean and Mohr suggest using guiding questions in order to focus attention in the research process:
What are you curious about in your classroom?
What puzzles you in your classroom?
What problems do you want to solve in your classroom?
What seems most or least successful about your teaching?

It might be helpful to frame inquiry as a “What happens when…?,” “How…?,” or “What is…?” question.

“What happens when…” allows teachers to explore the effects of a particular practice, strategy or intervention. “What happens when I implement read-alouds in my classroom?” invites teachers to observe the effects of read-aloud strategies from a cognitive or behavioral perspective, for example.
“How…” questions lead teachers to consider the details of a practice or behavior. For example, “How do ELL students interact during recess?” invites teachers to try to understand social behaviors of particular students that might suggest ways to facilitate interaction in the classroom.
“What is…” questions suggest thoughtful consideration of a method or strategy and its place in classroom practice. “What is the role of inquiry in my science classroom?” requires careful reflection on the role and possibilities of inquiry in the classroom, its potential for student learning, and the qualities of inquiry in the classroom.

Choosing a compelling question is critical for it guides the research process. It can be tweaked over time as teachers discover that they are really interested in thinking more broadly or narrowly about an issue, for example, but the research question needs to emerge from an area of inquiry about which teachers are passionate, for this keen interest sustains the research process. 

Free Educational Lecture

The Arbor School is sponsoring a free lecture on 'Mastering Self Control' 

by Professor Walter Mischel

Sunday November 23, 2014
3 pm at the Lincoln HS Auditorium

You can hear an interview with Walter Mischel, read a book excerpt and see a recreation of the marshmallow test here.

October Meeting

It looks like moving the CFG to October 23rd works for everyone I heard from, so we'll make that change. We will meet in the Platt Global Classroom. At this meeting we will take a look at where we all feel like we currently are on the Cycle of Inquiry in relation to a teacher question we'd like to pursue in our classrooms this year.   We will also spend time at the meeting reading the article Janet sent faculty called "The Right Questions," and participating in a text-based protocol, as well as considering observation and student work protocols that could help inform our teacher research questions. There is a collection of protocols in the previous blog post for your reference.

Looking forward to seeing all of you a week from Thursday!

Kirstin

Our First Meeting of the Year

Hello, friends,

I'm looking forward to seeing all of you on 9/25 for our first CFG of the year!  Our agenda should have reached you by email; please let me know if you didn't receive it. To welcome our new members we'll spend some time going over our touchstones, doing a reflective activity to help us think about the relationship between our teaching style and individual students (related profiles here), and we'll take a look at protocols for observation/looking at student work that may guide us through the months to come. You can find the protocols in that collection here.

We'll see you at 3:30 in the Morris House Conference Room!  Please bring your CFG binder if you have one, a journal or notepad and a pencil or pen.  You may want to grab some water, tea, etc. before you head up, too.
See you soon!
Kirstin

2014-2015 CFG Calendar

Thanks so much to everyone who joined us for lunch or gave feedback about calendar dates.  It looks like a Wednesday-Thursday rotation will again allow the maximum number of participants this year.  I had to switch one date due to a HAC retreat, so you'll notice a break in the pattern early in the school year, but most of the year will follow a Wednesday-Thursday pattern.  Please add these dates to your calendar!  All meetings are scheduled for 3:30-5:30.  Locations are unconfirmed and may change--I'll update you as I learn more.  Janet, Colesie and Erin have offered alternative spaces, so we may have some meetings in their cozy spots!

To all meetings please bring a journal or paper, pencil or pen, your CFG binder if you have one.  If you're a new member, you may want to obtain a binder for keeping protocols and articles. Our dates are now as follows after receiving some date change requests from Lyn:

Thursday, September 25th in Morris House Conference Room
Thursday, October 16th in Morris House Conference Room
Wednesday, November 12th in the DVR November 5th in Morris House Conference Room
Thursday, December 11th in the DVR
Wednesday, January 14th in the DVR
Thursday, February 19th, location TBA
Wednesday, March 11th in the DVR March 18th, location TBA
Thursday, April 16th, location TBA
Wednesday, May 27th, location TBA

Our September meeting is open to all faculty/staff, whether exploring to see if the CFG meets your professional development needs or committed member.  Please join us!

Welcome Back!

Ah, friends, it's good to be together again!  Please join us on Thursday, August 28th for our annual back-to-school lunch gathering. This will be a time for us to welcome interested faculty/staff who want more information about the CFG and to set our calendars for the year! Grab your lunches and meet us in the outdoor seating outside the Dining Hall (on the south side).  Not quite as beautiful as the garden near Morris House, but easier to get your lunch to!  Please bring your calendars so we can find the most inclusive dates and times possible.

I'm reading a wonderful book by Terry Tempest Williams called When Women Were Birds:  Fifty-four Variations on Voice.  It's a book of reflections by the author after her mother had, in a long tradition of Mormon women, willed her daughter all of her journals when she died.  When the author opened them, she found each and every one blank.  When Women Were Birds is the author's reflection on all the myriad of possibilities those empty journals might say and mean about her mother's voice.   A few passages in this book remind me of all of you:

'The stars are our ancestors,' write Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Swimme in The Journey of the Universe. 'Out of them, everything comes forth...For stars, creativity depends on maintaining a state of disequilibrium...It is the dynamic tension between gravity and fusion...outward expansion and contraction...Stars are wombs of immense creativity.

***

Conversation is the vehicle for change.  We test our ideas.  We hear our own voice in concert with one another.  And inside those pauses of listening, we approach new territories of thought.  A good argument, call it a discussion, frees us.  Words fly out of our mouths like threatened birds.  Once released, they may never return.  If they do, they have chosen a home and the bird-words are calmed into an ars poetic.  The [members of] my family didn't always agree, but it was in their company I felt inspired and safe.

Thanks to all of you for being that family of safety and inspiration. I can't wait to see what ideas we test, what new territories of thought we explore this year together.

Preparing for Thursday

Many thanks to Erin for offering the warm and wonderful Community House for our meeting on Thursday!  Please see your emails from Erin for directions.  David has also offered to support this retreat-style meeting with some delicious treats, so look forward to some snacks and tea.

After looking over our notes from our last meeting, I've planned the agenda to give us opportunities to both connect with one another about our work from the year as well as to facilitate some goal-setting for next year.  At the Lower School Curriculum Task Force today we looked at a daunting timeline of all the initiatives we are exploring, piloting, and implementing in Lower School.  Tracy and I had a chance to talk about this after school and the subjects of simplicity and overlap came up. When planning this month's meeting, I considered these questions:

• How can our whole-school focus on inquiry help us see the common threads of the work we are doing?  
• How can our own teacher inquiry serve to teach us about how to nurture our students on their inquiry journeys? 
• Where will the children's questions and our questions lead us in regards to our other areas of focus (social-emotional, ICC work, enhanced math thinking, etc.)? 

Instead of beginning our meeting at 3:30 with our usual reflective writing, we'll begin with ten minutes to read and mark the article we'll use in our protocol.   I'm including the link to that article here in case you suspect you will arrive after 3:30 or if you'd like to bring it up on a device to read.  (Not sure about internet connections there, so maybe load it before arriving). I will also bring print copies. If you need guidance about the kinds of passages to highlight, we will be using the Three Levels of Text Protocol. 

Looking forward to seeing everyone on Thursday!
Kirstin

PS:  A spring gift, The Well Rising from William Stafford:

The well rising without sound,

the spring on a hillside,
the plowshare brimming through deep ground
everywhere in the field--

The sharp swallows in their swerve
flaring and hesitating
hunting for the final curve
coming closer and closer--

The swallow heart from wingbeat to wingbeat
counseling decision, decision:
thunderous examples.  I place my feet
with care in such a world.

May Meeting

Hello, friends!
It sounded like Thursday 5/22 was best for most people, but the MH Conference Room isn't available.  Shall we meet in a classroom?  3:30-5:30--Any volunteers?
Hope you can all join us!

Rescheduling May Meeting

Hi, everyone!
We'll need to reschedule our May meeting--please anticipate the May 8th date as cancelled and look for a new date for our final meeting soon. Would Wednesday May 21st or Thursday May 22nd work for people?  Email me to let me know your availability and I'll confirm when I know when everyone can make it. Thank you!
Kirstin

Tuning Protocol for Tomorrow

Hello, friends!

I'll print the agendas for tomorrow, but if you'd like a paper copy of our Touchstones or the Tuning Protocol with you, please visit these links to print them or check your CFG binder. Janet and Tonya and perhaps Jackie will present the work and wonderings they have related to their Heroes project.

We'll also spend a little time following up on past protocols, so if you've presented work or questions this year, we'd love to hear an update on how things are going!

Until tomorrow,
Kirstin

Wiggins Article

On Thursday we'll have the pleasure of thinking through the beginnings of a contagious idea in Deborah's room using the Charrette, and will delve into a Grant Wiggins article using the Four A's Protocol.  In case anyone would prefer to read the article on their tablet or computer instead of in print, I'm including a link here we can reference during our meeting.

Looking forward to seeing you all!
Kirstin