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Jul 9, 2020

#132




I have over the last few months been thinking about changes and planning for change be it change that is desired (ie. programme changes) or change that is thrust upon us (ie repercussions on all aspects of school life as part of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing planning for re-opening for the 2020/2021 school year).


While speaking with some colleagues and discussing various possibilities, I was reminded of this model shared with me during The Principals’ Training Center Creating an Effective School class (Summer 2014).



I appreciate the simplicity of the model, not to mention its scope beyond school settings and wanted to share some reflections from a change implemented in the 2016/2017 school year. For a few years prior, a number of us had been wanting to move towards a more inclusive EAL model that would include push in (rather than solely pull-out) support. For a variety of reasons beyond our control this was not feasible for serious discussions until the 2015/2016 school year.

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When planning to implement the mixed-delivery co-teaching EAL model in our Elementary School for the 2016/2017 school year, these five components (vision, skills, incentives, resources, and action plan) were used as part of our proposal for the pilot scheme. The proposal included information pertaining, but not limited, to:


  • Rationale and research to support this programme change.

  • Scheduling (co-planning, co-teaching, and co-assessing time per the stages of the teaching/learning cycle for the EAL teacher and HRT teacher and how much support (in terms of time) students would receive).

  • Data on numbers of students in the programme (the co-teaching model was focussed on those students at a more advanced stage of learning English. Whilst we have always used multiple measures to determine level of support needed, their level would - according to WIDA MODEL - be approximately 3.0 and above).

  • Training both in-house and a proposal for a weekend workshop with Dr. Gini Rojas. (Upon approval, I organized the workshop entitled, Key Principles for ELL Instruction: What We All Need to Know and Do for April 2016 for approximately 50 of our staff, predominantly elementary school teachers. This time was carefully chosen as we had - per the survey results of December 2015 had some success (see below for a brief summary of the survey results) and were - with regard to ES buy-in and the upcoming school year - at a tipping point).


As the year progressed, resources were shared via email and/or during elementary school faculty meetings, grade level meetings, and EAL team meetings. In addition, I created a website with definitions of co-teaching, resources shared during meetings and resources from the weekend workshop with Dr. Rojas as well as links to various sites pertaining to co-teacher, co-operative strategies and more including Nordmeyer’s Collaboration - A Menu for Supporting ELLs (with some great examples), NFI Dimensions of Co-teaching (Ideal to complete at the start of the year at the end of the year and half way through/end of each term), ASCD’s February 2016 issue, Helping ELLs Excel and (page nine of) New Mexico Public Education Department’s Co-Teaching: Principles, Practices, and Pragmatics [Unfortunately, the website has not been maintained/updated since I moved from Student Support Services to Admissions at the end of the 2016/2017 school year].


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Following our initial implementation period, a survey was sent to all our ES EAL teachers and ES Homeroom teachers who were co-teaching The survey was designed to elicit information as to how the implementation process had gone thus far with the view to being able to identify strengths and/or weaknesses of the implementation process/programme and consider next steps so as to further support ES EAL teachers and ES Homeroom teachers for the rest of that academic year and beyond.


Regarding vision, it was evident from our survey results that the implementation was successful. Mindful that our co-teaching partners were carefully chosen and that many of our HRTs expressed interest in being in a co-teaching partnership, there was - generally speaking - belief in the co-teaching model/buy in from the start, and thus these results were somewhat expected.


In terms of the NFI Dimensions of Co-teaching, it was very clear that the categories of “Roles and Relationships” and “Attitudes” were seen as distinct areas of strength in the partnerships and that areas for further development were “Assessment of Student Learning” and “Evaluation of Lesson Effectiveness”. Based on informal discussions as well as when considering the nature of implementing change and the fact that M’KIS was in the early stages of implementing Lucy Calkins’ Writing Workshop, such data with regards to skills was envisaged.


With regard to the open ended questions relating to resources, skills, incentives, and action plan, there was a wide range of responses as were to be expected and time/scheduling (as is most often the case) was the key concern.

In one of our recent Admin Council meetings someone made - with regard to hiring - the comment that “We hire for teams”. When I joined the school, I do believe people were hired for their individual strengths. This simple comment made me think about the ways our school has changed over the last few years. This change in hiring practice has been a key change and has - amongst many other changes - allowed us to build upon the integrity of our previous model so as to optimize the ways in which we support students within our ES EAL programme.




Mindful of Socrates’ notion of the importance to focus on the new, I do hope that this model (which includes five components: vision, skills, incentives, resources, and action plan for success) can be of assistance as you plan ahead for changes (be they changes you wish to make or those imposed upon you).


References:

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