Identify and Justify Goals
As a condition of our longer term involvement in the school, the school elected a building-level literacy leadership team (LLT). Given that the school had over 130 teachers and 41 support staff, we needed a group that could function as a communication route. We recommended that the school elect this group of people to ensure that there was a balance of perspectives and ideas about the work ahead. Consistent with Taylor and Collins’s (2003) and Cobb’s (2005) recommendations, we understood that literacy leadership had to come from the school and that members of this elected body could serve as change agents and ambassadors for literacy instruction.
During our first session with the LLT, we explained the components of the formative experiment and the plan for our collective work. In response, one of the members said, “We’ve had a lot of consultants with a lot of answers, but they didn’t work.” Acknowledging this, we discussed the development of their Replica Tag Heuer Carrera school wide literacy plan and reminded them that we did not have a plan to impose upon the school. The conversation then moved to the first component of the formative experiment: a pedagogical goal. The members of the LLT were clear: They had one goal, which was to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). As an English teacher said, “It’s not lofty, but when you hit that mark, you get a lot of freedom. And that’s what we need, a little freedom.” We argued that meeting AYP was not a pedagogical goal and urged them to consider the idea that making AYP was a byproduct of meeting their own goals. This conversation lasted nearly two hours, and we were regularly reminded of the reality faced by teachers working in failing schools: They begin to define success not in terms of student progress but rather in terms of performance on state tests.
Through a process of give and take in which we discussed and debated pedagogical goals, we realized that we all agreed that student achievement was important, and we acknowledged that students at Western did not yet have habits that they could deploy automatically while reading and writing. As such, most students were unable to complete many classroom assignments and performed poorly on the state achievement tests. By the end of our first meeting, we had agreed on a pedagogical goal, namely that students would develop literacy habits that they could take with them from class to class, and eventually to college.
That afternoon, the LLT presented the goal to Omega Speedmaster Replica Watches the rest of the faculty at their regular staff meeting while we observed. They answered questions skillfully and guided their colleagues in a conversation similar to the one we had during the day. They acknowledged the importance of “gaining freedom” as well as the value of thinking beyond state tests. They also noted that their work on small learning communities was not in vain but that they now needed to turn their attention “from structure to instruction.” The chairperson of the LLT, a peer coach staff developer, then made a motion that the school approves the proposed pedagogical goal. In an anonymous paper vote, 82% of the teachers approved the goal. In announcing the decision, the principal commented, “We’ve really come together on this. I can’t remember a vote with more agreement. We’re on our way to freedom.”
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