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Session 1: Building a Change-Focused

CultureNovember, 2013 Network Teams Institute

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Introductions• Greet each other at your tables, sharing name, role, place

of work, and reaction to the following quote:

• “We found that schools with high relational trust were much more likely to demonstrate marked improvements in student learning. Relational trust is the connective tissue that binds individuals together to advance the education and welfare of students. Improving schools requires us to think harder about how best to organize the work of adults and students so that this connective tissue remains healthy and strong.”

“Trust in Schools, A Core Resource for School Reform.” Bryk and Schneider (2003).

The Norms for Collaboration

• We ask you to process thinking with each other often and hope that you will be thoughtful about your own development of relational trust with your NTI colleagues.

• Use the Norms Inventory to think about the strengths you will bring to collaborative discussions and places where you might need to be more conscious of being your best self.

• (p. 4-7)

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Big Ideas that Guide Our Work

Guiding Questions:

•What elements are present in classrooms where students effectively talk about texts, tasks, and each others’ thinking?

•What does it look like when professionals are collaboratively engaged in substantive change?

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Learning Targets – In Your Participants’ Journal

Overall Learning Objectives of this November 2013 Network Team Institute

New Participants Only:I can describe the structure and content of the 3-8 ELA Modules.

Teacher Targets:I can describe collaborative, change-focused professional cultures.I can describe the relationship between students’ speaking and listening practices and vocabulary development, reading and writing.I can effectively use protocols and the other collaborative classroom structures in the 3-8 Modules to develop students’ knowledge along with their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills.I can evaluate the Common Core Standards related to Speaking and Listening of students’ thinking and talk and provide feedback to help them improve.I can give and receive constructive feedback that supports quality module adaptation. Leader/NTI TargetsI can describe collaborative, change-focused professional cultures.I can provide focused feedback to support teachers in building collaborative classrooms.I can support the development of a collaborative, change-focused culture schoolwide, including ways to manage counterculture behavior.I can give and receive constructive feedback that supports quality module adaptation.

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Learning Target for this Session

• I can describe collaborative, change-focused professional cultures (we will be working on this target in several sessions over the next two days).

• We will do this work in a way we hope you can envision it being done with your kids, in your schools, or in the schools you work with.

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World Café Protocol

• Follow along in your participants’ journal while I describe this protocol.

• (p. 8)

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First Steps• Divide tables of 10 into two groups of 5.

(1 minute)

• Each group of 5 selects a Recorder, who takes notes and STAYS BEHIND when others rotate. In addition, they select a facilitator and timekeeper. (1 minute)

• The Module Implementation Case Studies are out on tables and are copied on two different colors of paper (#1 is blue, #2 is green). Find the case study on your table. (10 seconds!)

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Setting Up the Note-catcher

• The Recorder sets up a piece of chart paper as follows:

Case Study Number 1 or 2 at top. A t-chart with “What are the issues?” on one

side and “How can a change-focused culture be built?” on the other side.

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Digging In

• Participants read the case study independently. (5 minutes)

• Participants brainstorm answers to both questions at the end of the case study while the Recorder takes notes on the chart paper (use only the top half for this first round). (7 minutes)

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Transition

• The Recorder stays behind.

• The rest of the group transitions to another table with the other color case study at it. (You do not need to stay together as a group...all just find new seats).

• 2 minutes! Go!

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Adding Thinking• Greet your new group (2 minutes)• Read your new case study, independently (5 minutes)• The recorder (the person who stayed behind) reviews what the

last group said about the issues and resolutions. (3 minutes)• Brainstorm – stretching beyond the ideas of the first group

(5 minutes).• Review all of the recommendations on the chart (including the

recommendations done by the group before) and select one you feel would be most powerful. Circle or star it. (2 minutes).

• EL Facilitators will collect the charts for display in the appropriate time and space.

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Discussion at tables

• How did the protocol and norms build a foundation for professional, solutions oriented conversation?

• What did you notice about your own self (your comments, your behavior) during this protocol? How is that similar or different than the way you interact when there is no intentional protocol or norms in place?

• How, if used over time, could processes like these build relational trust?

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Synthesizing Thinking

• What is important to remember about the why and how of building collaborative, change-focused cultures?

• Use the Session Reflection page in your Participants’ Journal, p. 23

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For Future Work and Thinking

• In your notebook -- “Protocols: A Facilitator’s Best Friend.”

(p. 14-20)

• Online – “Trust in Schools.” The link is in the facilitator’s guide that is posted on EngageNY for this session.

• Session Reflections (p. 23)

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