by: Jeff Heyck-Williams
Wednesday afternoons at Two Rivers look and feel different. The hustle and bustle of kids diligently working, problem solving, and collaborating during the school day is replaced by the hustle and bustle of teachers diligently working, problem solving, and collaborating to improve their instructional practice. This past Wednesday for example, teachers spent half an hour reading a chapter on how to differentiate a mathematics task from Math for All: Differentiating Instruction by Linda Dacey. They followed this with another half-hour discussion of the selection, and then hour figuring out how to apply the strategies for differentiation that they learned from the reading to a sample problem-based task for a math class. They concluded the afternoon, planning for how they will differentiate in their own classes.
We dedicate a lot of time to professional development of teachers at Two Rivers. We start off every school year with a three-week orientation before students even arrive. Then, every Wednesday afternoon, we set aside three hours for our teaching staff to focus on their practice. In addition, we have several full days of professional development throughout the year.
All of this begs the question: why would we allocate such a precious resource of teacher time to growing and developing our teachers? Wouldn't time be better spent by giving kids more instructional time?
With these questions in mind, we make the precious allocation of time to teacher professional development without hesitation because we believe (and our data has proven this to be true) that improving our students' learning is contingent on improving our teachers' learning.
To meet the needs of the diverse community of learners, teachers have to be able grow and adapt their skills. Teaching is not a job in which a teacher can take a scripted lesson plan and come up with effective learning for all of her or his students every time. Teaching is dynamic, challenging work that requires a huge volume of specialized knowledge and skills to do effectively. In other words, teaching is a profession. As a profession, it requires continuous targeted growth and development.
That is to say, we must maintain in the words of Carol Dweck a growth mindset. In her work, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck delineates two broad mindsets that people potentially bring to a task or their work: a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. She writes "In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits... They... believe that talent alone creates success - without effort," and in contrast "In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work - brains and talent are just a starting point." Through her work, she has shown that people who have met with success time and time again have done so with a growth mindset, a belief that through effort we can get better. This concept applies to any endeavor, and thus it applies to teaching.
If we are serious about improving the outcomes of education we must maintain a growth mindset, engender that in our students, and also significantly engender that in our teachers. This means spending time and money on having great educators improve their craft. I intentionally point out that I'm not just talking about the struggling teachers that are failing students everyday in too many schools. These teachers definitely need support to improve their work. However, I'm also talking about our best teachers that teach at successful schools like Two Rivers. By allocating the resources of time, money, and energy to growing these professionals, teachers get better at what they do. This translates into better outcomes for kids.
