Bob Maxfield and Suzanne Klein spoke with Larry Thomas, facilitator of the Galileo Institute’s professional learning series on Re-imagining Teaching and Learning, to reflect on the workshops as well as hear his perspective on the challenges facing educators moving forward. Fourteen school district teams of teachers and administrators attended the six-session series, with Oakland University School of Education and Human Services faculty and Intermediate School District leadership staff serving as thought partners. Utilizing the topics of rebuilding trusting relationships, quality instruction, equity, technology, and systems thinking, teams assessed what would be helpful to their educational systems, their schools, their classrooms and most importantly, for their students and their families during the workshops and in the follow up conversations back in the districts.
Rebuilding Relationships and Trust - Relationship building was an underlying theme in the design of the series. Trust is at the center of quality relationships; consequently, relationships among teachers, students, parents, administration and community were focal points of the discussions resulting in the collaborative development of strategies to address and strengthen these relationships. Participants worked to develop a sense of community and supportive networks beyond their current district or county. Series facilitator Larry Thomas, introduced the use of noteworthy cards to promote acknowledgement and affirmation among participants for contributions that sparked new thinking or further reflection.
Learning v. Schooling - Session two challenged teams to examine current pedagogy, offering the opportunity to make some changes to the system to increase student motivation and ownership of their learning. The guest facilitator, teacher Grayson McKinney, brought a broad spectrum of instructional practices which underscored the importance of deep learning, relevancy and application through project based learning to build students’ skill sets for the future.
Attending to Equity for All Students - While working on rebuilding relationships, and improving instruction, “our theory of action was to ensure that all students, families and teachers were getting what they needed in order to provide the best education for all of our kids.” Guest facilitator Dr. Robyne Thompson‘s extensive knowledge in the area of equity grounded her presentation which shared videos, personal perspective, and informational resources.
Technology to Support and Extend Learning - The digital divide and the challenges of remote learning quickly became evident during the pandemic. Teacher Jen McCollum, as guest facilitator, honed in on the evolving use of digital platforms and the role of districts in supporting students, teachers and parents by assessing and then building the skills necessary to support and extend teaching and learning. Her three-tiered approach to harnessing technology for digital communication and learning validated the importance of technology not as a driver, but as a support to learning for students and adults.
Structures, Systems and Leading from the Middle - Co-guest facilitators, Michelle Black and Principal Catherine Russel, introduced leading from the middle as a high leverage strategy to drive systems change. In leading from middle, teacher leaders help support other classroom teachers, bringing feedback information back to the central office, while superintendents work at the regional and state levels to affect policies to support education. Districts on the Move: Leading a Coherent System of Continuous Improvement by Jay Westover was a resource utilized in this workshop.
Systems Thinking – The final session facilitated by Mr. Thomas focused on systems thinking using tools and protocols that participants could employ when working with others. District teams had been given time to organize their thinking and to develop comprehensive strategic action plans. Each district team was then matched with another team to present an overview of their plan and receive feedback using specific protocols to question and clarify components of the plans as well as encourage and lift up important ideas.
Survey feedback from participants about the workshop series was extremely positive: participants wanted additional time to collaborate across the three counties and with their district teams to create systems and protocols to drive and sustain continuous improvement in their district.
Larry reflected further on the importance of time as districts approach the reset. “We never have enough time to do the kinds of things to really get at good solid core instruction with kids, that’s meaningful and equitable, that has built rapport for kids; all the pieces that we had as our titles for the sessions. Learning comes best when we have good protocols and systems to have time spent with educators in meaningful ways, and so we tried to practice in this series using a lot of different protocols and then also talking about the value of them, so that people could think about how that would fit in their classrooms first and foremost, in their grade level meetings, in their district meetings and so forth. We were trying to take the time to model and give them resources that would take not just the content of learning but make that time effectively used in order to make the system better than it currently is.”
He passionately challenges educators to be cognizant of all kids’ needs first and foremost, whether you are an individual, a grade level team, a school, a district or across districts. “Finding the vision and finding polite ways to say ‘no’ to things that are not going to have the impact for kids that you want to have or allow you the time and space to get better than you are with your practice is core." Other thoughts were to attend more to the social emotional learning and trust. "Finally, lead effectively and more from the middle and be strategic with the ways leadership takes place.”
Link to an overview of the workshop series: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13HSiB7WNwTmmq76dnWuXpX1VIUjIwV0auia7fO4yLyk/edit?usp=sharing
