Culture is the Ultimate Form of Capacity

I thought you might be interested in these thoughts about culture, collegiality and promoting excellence...


Walk into any truly excellent school and you can feel it almost immediately — a calm, orderly atmosphere that hums with an exciting, vibrant sense of purposefulness just under the surface. Students carry themselves with poise and confidence. Teachers talk about their work with intensity and professionalism. And despite the sense of serious business at hand, both teachers and students seem happy and confident rather than stressed. Everyone seems to know who they are and why they are there, and children and staff treat each other with the respect due to full partners in an important enterprise...




Schools that foster this kind of culture embrace the following concepts…

• Fostering effort and productivity.
• Improving collegial and collaborative activities that in turn promote better communication and problem solving.
• Supporting successful change and improvement efforts.
• Building commitment and helping students and teachers identify with the school.
• Amplifying energy and motivation of staff members and students.
• Focusing attention and daily behavior on what is important and valued 

High-performing schools  prioritized "a hunger for improvement," "raising capability — helping people learn," "focusing on the value added," "promoting excellence — pushing the boundaries of achievement," and "making sacrifices to put pupils first." 


Jerald, C.D. (December, 2006). Issue Brief. School Culture: "The Hidden Curriculum." Washington, DC: The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement. www.centerforcsri.org.


This message is from an article on the Reading Rockets site. If you would like to read the article in its entirety, go to:        http://www.readingrockets.org/article/26095

Academic rigor

Below is information from an article on the integration of math and ELA that Kim shared with me. I have a copy of the whole article if anyone is intererested. What I loved about this specific piece is that it relates directly to "Inquiry Circles" and student engagement.

Qualities of rigor

Active engagement
Create learning experiences that get students actively involved in their own learning and the learning of others

Inquiry and Curiosity
Develop open ended lessons and provide a context that gives students encouragement and support to pursue extensions of those lessons

Confidence
Create a classroom environment in which students are comfortable taking intellectual risks

MeaningfulnessDesign learning experiences that are personally and culturally relevant

Critical thinking
Emphasize the how and the why, not just the what

Problem solvingOffer opportunities for students to gain increasing ability to solve rich mathematical tasks as well as be thoughtful problem powers and problem silvers


Two definitions relate to rigor:
One defines rigor as "the goal of helping students develop the capacity to understand content that is complex, ambiguous, provocative, and personally or emotionally challenging."

The second defines rigorous as "demanding strict attention to rules and procedures; allowing no deviation from a standard"

LWT May visit update

Our Focus of Inquiry Statement: “In what ways do we see learning conversations/accountable talk beginning to become embedded in daily practice throughout the curriculum?”

·       students are having learning conversations using appropriate content language as a natural strategy for their learning…

·       use of high level questions and comments by teachers and students that indicate their understanding of and reflection on concepts.

·       evidence of Accountable Talk tools (rubrics, Q Matrix, Checklists, etc…) being used by staff and students 

Here is our Focus of Inquiry and a list of the three top characteristics that we would like to ask the teams to focus on. Again, we are looking at this process to show or give us information about how successfully we are implementing this practice. We are now asking the question, “Have the students begun to embed this as a part of their tool box of learning strategies?” Do they implement or use this without prompting? Do they use higher order questions to elicit more, or clearer, or better information, from their teachers or their peers. Learning conversations take on many forms and how effectively are we (staff and students) beginning to use them?

Please remember, that it is not important for us to walk into the start of a lesson, indeed in most cases you can observe more AT happening during the inquiry or processing stages. We are coming in to see learning conversations and how comfortable the students are having these conversations and if they are using appropriate questioning and vocabulary.

This time I will put a schedule on google docs and allow you to choose the time that you prefer. We will have 3 teams and will be going through all classrooms.  

Please be your self! Do what you always do. Please see me if you have any questions!

Thank you  

VoiceThread

Our class has been working on using voice thread.  Here is a link to our latest one: http://voicethread.com/share/1960001/

Feel free to view or comment on it.  The district has a voice thread account if it looks like something you'd be interested in doing with your class.  Email Angelo for an invitation.  Enjoy!