By: Laura Lorenzen with Jeff Heyck-Williams
From the initial founding of Two Rivers, we have been guided
by the belief that to be a truly great school, we must reflect upon our
progress; research, explore and analyze best educational practices; and
evaluate student data -- all with
the aim of providing the highest quality of instruction to prepare our students
to have “rich and varied options for their future.”
The Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) is a little-known
part of Two Rivers that plays a large role in guiding our educational practices. Composed of teacher leaders,
Instructional Guides, the Elementary School and Middle School Principals,
Executive Director and other members of the school leadership, the ILT meets
regularly to explore cutting edge issues and to seek continuous improvement in
our classroom instruction. The
primary charge of the ILT at Two Rivers is to give direction to the entire
organization in reaching our mission through defining an instructional focus
each year and developing action steps related to our instructional focus that
help us continually improve learning.
The ILT, perhaps more than any other group at Two Rivers,
takes time to analyze and reflect upon the ways in which our organizational
structure and day-to-day activities are contributing to the accomplishment of
our mission. From this view
“on the balcony”, the ILT is then in a unique position to develop
forward-thinking action steps.
GROUNDING OUR WORK IN
RESEARCH
To guide our reflection, members of the ILT take time
engaging in rigorous research: reading, writing, speaking with experts in and
outside of education, and participating in dialogue about best practices. For example, in the last couple
of months, the ILT has read two articles about organizational leadership; the
article “The Work of Leadership” by Ronald Heifetz and Donald Laurie and a
chapter from The Power of Adaptive
Leadership by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow and Marty Linsky. Both pieces highlighted the difference
between adaptive and technical challenges. Technical challenges are challenges that can be addressed
with the current skills and beliefs simply by changing how an organization
acts. In contrast, adaptive
challenges are challenges where a response requires a change in beliefs or core
values. These readings inspired
rich discussions about our vision for the school, adaptive challenges facing
Two Rivers as we move forward to accomplish our mission, and steps that, as
leaders, we can take to help the school overcome those adaptive challenges.
However, our observations and plans for improvement are not
simply based in consideration of current organizational and educational theory
alone. The ILT also conducts robust
analysis of school-wide and classroom data. We view data broadly as anything that can be used as
evidence for a given perspective or argument. Thus we certainly look at the standard testing measures that
have become a norm in American schools.
However, we also take into account other vital forms of data including
classroom observations, personal interviews with teachers, students, and
parents, as well as examining the products that students produce in class.
To collect these other forms of data the ILT has spent time
making observations in classrooms at Two Rivers and other schools with reputations
for high quality programs. In
these observations we explore the best practices, to learn what works and what
would fit within the mission and culture of Two Rivers. This year, our observations began at
home with a Two Rivers’ learning walk.
In visiting three classrooms – Ms. Jane’s 1st grade class,
Ms. Kathleen’s Kindergarten class, and Senor Cody’s 5th grade
Spanish class – we were able to observe how teachers have already begun to live
our instructional focus for 2012-13.
Children were active, engaged, and independent. Five and 6 year olds were playing with
math concepts and explaining their thinking about those concepts. Our learning walk inspired still more
discussion about how to deepen the work at Two Rivers and how to bring this
inspiring vision to the broader community.
As stated above a key function of the ILT is to examine data
from a variety of assessments, including the Measures of Academic Progress
(MAP) from the Northwest Evaluation Association and the Achievement Network
(ANET) tests, as well as our state test, the DC-CAS. In this analysis, the
members of the ILT identify overall patterns of achievement as well as where to
target individual student needs.
Our analysis of the data last year led the ILT to overhaul our Middle
School math program, resulting in gains of over 15% in our MS student DC-CAS
math scores over the previous years.
This was one of the largest gains in the entire city, and makes Two
Rivers Middle School one of the top performing Middle Schools in DC.
ASSESSING EXPERT
THINKING
From this research and the rich discussion it spawns comes
rich and exciting work. In the past
two years, the ILT has led several key initiatives at Two Rivers. Among the most groundbreaking was to
develop and field test an assessment of expert thinking. Our focus on expert thinking is
grounded in the belief that, in order to succeed in the 21st
Century, students must be able to do more than simply memorize rote information
or perform routine procedures. Yet
while leading educational experts have begun to describe what it means to engage
in expert thinking, little to no guidance exists on how to measure whether
students are truly engaging in expert thinking.
The ILT Task Force on Assessing Expert Thinking developed a
tool that proved it is possible to assess the ability of students at multiple
grade levels to evaluate, analyze, and synthesize information – in other words,
to engage in expert thinking – in one class session. The Task Force’s work also provided important information
about the type of instructional practices that are needed in order to build
expert thinking in students. And,
finally, the Task Force developed a Two Rivers Taxonomy of Expert Thinking that
grouped the different dimensions of Expert Thinking into five distinct
categories consisting of specific actions.
This year, the Task Force on Assessing Expert Thinking will
continue this work in order to expand our assessment of expert thinking school-wide. By defining the specific expert
thinking categories and creating an assessment tool that gives information on
individual student’s level of mastery of those skills, we will both have a
better sense of how our students are growing as well as give clear direction to
our teachers about the kinds of skills our students should be developing.
DEFINING OUR
INSTRUCTIONAL FOCUS
Finally, the ILT also defines and refines our instructional
focus for the school year. The
Instructional Focus becomes the center of our professional development
activities for the year and guides our practice. This year’s instructional focus is to provide daily
opportunities for students to construct and demonstrate in-depth understanding
by creating and facilitating tasks for all students that help them cultivate
expert thinking and complex communication while applying basic skills and
knowledge. As the ILT’s recent
learning walk made clear, the Instructional Focus is already being lived out in
the classrooms, with remarkable results.
Throughout the year, we will be sharing some of the cutting
edge work engaged in by the ILT and the Two Rivers community. Few schools in the country are engaged
in the type of rigorous research, reflection, and analysis that characterize
our community. We are proud of
this work and our continued commitment to excellence in education that have
made us a leader in 21st Century education.
