Collaboration, Learning, and Results
It is no secret that educators are busy, so convincing content-area teachers that literacy is valuable is only one step on the way to improving literacy at a school. Once we were able to convince science teachers like Cami, the teacher we introduced in the preface (see page xvi), that we all need to teach literacy to the benefit of our students, the natural next step was finding time and building collaboration. Cami knew the science, and we understood the literacy. Together, we needed to join our expertise.
For the purposes of developing students to think like scientists—to meet the learning standards of the science curriculum—we wanted to collaborate with Cami to create literacy strategies that were aligned with the outcomes in her science classroom. We knew her planning time was limited, so we wanted to make sure that our support in the area of literacy was thoughtfully integrated with the learning outcomes of her science units.
Collaboration plays a crucial role in the success of any school dedicated to building effective teams in a PLC culture. When experts collaborate, innovative ideas emerge in ways that support student learning and generate positive results. When collaborative time is used wisely—when the action steps of a team are clearly designed, intentional, and focused—it is possible to make great progress in student learning. Across North America, schools are making a commitment to this core principle, they are tackling long-standing concerns in education by bringing together teacher teams to make stronger curricular and instructional choices, and they are getting better and better at making use of assessment practices that support the formative development of all students.
This chapter helps you identify how to initiate collaboration by applying PLC fundamentals and build teacher teams within your school to support meaningful collaboration that leads to student growth and reflective teaching practices. We offer guidance for leaders and examine how to approach meeting logistics before delving into the details of the work teams carry out in collaborative meetings, including analyzing standards and setting goals, identifying students’ existing literacy skills and needs, and finding connections between the content area and literacy skills.
Collaboration Within a PLC
PLCs are a pivotal force for progress in schools, as they are all focused on three big ideas: (1) a focus on learning, (2) a collaborative culture, and (3) a results orientation (DuFour et al., 2016). Within our literacy work with science teachers, we kept these three big ideas at the core of our work, and we directed our commitment to literacy in science by continuously addressing the four critical questions of a PLC (DuFour et al., 2016).
1. What do we want students to learn?
2. How will we know when they have learned it?
3. What do we do if they haven’t learned it yet?
4. How do we extend learning for those who are already proficient?
We recognize that teams are configured in varying ways depending on the school. For instance, you might have curriculum teams, grade-level teams, content-focused teams, or teams that are singletons (teams of one). No matter how your teams are currently structured, when working toward integrating literacy-based strategies, we hope your teams will begin collaborating with a literacy expert in your building—an expert who might be able to provide insight into varying and supportive literacy strategies that can be integrated into your instructional practices. But as we wrote in the introduction to this book, if your building does not have a literacy expert, we designed this book also to function as a thoughtful, collaborative substitute.
While the size and scope of work in a PLC can differ greatly from one PLC to the next, the initial focus of teams often starts with a specific, discrete task that later evolves into more layered tasks and discussion topics. By simple definition, a team is a group of professionals working interdependently to achieve a common goal. PLC architect Richard DuFour (2004) notes successful teams:
▶ Have common time for collaboration on a regular basis
▶ Build buy-in toward a discrete and overarching common goal
▶ Build a sense of community
▶ Engage in long-term work that continues from year to year
▶ Grow—but do not completely change—membership each year
In addition to these characteristics, in our experience, it is helpful to have a team leader or point person who creates agendas and monitors discussion (this can be a rotating role); it is also important to encourage open, honest, discussion-based dialogue in order to respect and include all ideas concerning student learning, and we recommend that the core membership find opportunities to reach out and include other colleagues. Remember, collaborative team meetings work better when they are focused on actionable items that will serve to extend the professional learning of the teachers. The following sections go into more detail on the configuration of teams, the role of leaders within a team, and the logistics for team meetings.
Team Configuration
At this point, we want to make a few explicit recommendations for configuring teams effectively when working on literacy-based strategies. There are a number of different approaches to establishing a team, and in many schools, resources vary—for instance, at many schools, there might not be literacy experts trained in the value and capacity of literacy strategies. Sometimes we need to think of teams differently if we are thinking about how to make changes happen. Here are four considerations when building teams focused on literacy.
1. Ideally, incorporate a literacy expert on a curriculum or a content-focused team to serve as an informed thought partner. An individual with literacy expertise can help support instructional changes with a greater variety of approaches and can also help in selecting strategies that are better aligned to the course outcomes. For purposes of the science classroom, the literacy expert can help to adapt strategies that are focused on critical-thinking areas, such as understanding how to read data, synthesizing information, or drawing conclusions.
2. Some teams work horizontally, meaning they work within their specific grade level or within a particular content-based course with many sections and many teachers. Some teams work vertically, where they meet with teachers from different grade levels to ensure curricula are interconnected and working to build learning year to year. When considering literacy-based strategies, consider how your teams are constructed and the purposes of your teams’ goals for integrating literacy-based strategies. Why and how should the strategies be applied to support students throughout a particular grade level or within a content-based course that many teachers instruct? When and why should a team use a strategy? If working vertically, how and why might a team teach and reteach strategies year after year? How do these strategies become habits over the sequence of courses and throughout grade levels?
3. Some teams will not have a literacy expert. In these cases, consider what other resources can serve as a strong, literacy-informed, and reflective collaborative partner. Consider the expertise that might come from the ELA department. Is there a reading or writing teacher available to come to your team meetings? If not in your building, is there a literacy expert in a building within your district—an expert in an elementary, middle, or high school building who might be able to help? Is there an expert in the special education department with a background in the area of literacy? Seek to use the resources available to you.
4. Consider how your team might make collaborative use of this book in more directed ways. Or, if you are a singleton team, how might this book be a resource to help you reflect on your current teaching practices and help you to grow in your own learning? To improve, teams often need to seek outside resources that do not currently exist within the schools they are working in. In these cases, widen your definition of a team and consider the larger community of educators who are willing and ready to help other teachers to learn. Reach out to professional organizations or attend conferences that can help connect your team to discussions that will influence positive changes.