INSTRUCTIONAL ROUNDS NETWORK ANNUAL STATEWIDE MEETING Liz City April 10, 2015

Objective Leave with at least one idea or tool that you will DO to help you improve learning more effectively

Guiding Questions for the Day What is/could be the role of teachers in using rounds to accelerate learning? How can we make the next level of work more helpful for both visitors and hosts? What’s our next level of work in using rounds to accelerate learning?

Agenda Welcome, review objectives and agenda (I like... I wish... What if...) Ask questions about rounds (Question Formulation Technique) Going deeper with the next level of work (5 Whys and promising practices) Lunch In-district rounds (Promising practices from CA and IA) So what? Wrap up

I like... I wish... What if... Frame=instructional rounds At your table: I like... Get up, find 3 colleagues: I wish... Find 3 new colleagues: What if... *Protocol from the Design School at Stanford ( bootcamp-bootleg/)

ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT ROUNDS

Question Formulation Technique Two Rules: Formulate all responses as questions Write questions down verbatim—no revising For More Information:

Step 2: Prioritize Choose the three questions you think are the most important Write “Instructional Rounds” at the top of chart paper Step 1: Brainstorm the questions you have about this topic Come up with as many questions as you can Write questions exactly as stated Idea 3 Idea 1 Idea 2 Most Important Question

Step 4: Prioritize again Choose the three questions you think are the most important Step 3: Branch-off Take the most important question and brainstorm again Come up with as many questions as you can Write questions exactly as stated Idea 3 Idea 1 Idea 2 Step 5: Choose the one question you’d most like to discuss today

Discussion groups Choose a question you want to discuss Roaming to other groups is fine

GOING DEEPER WITH THE NEXT LEVEL OF WORK

Oviatt Elementary—5 Whys

Oviatt Elementary—Emergent Learning Plan

Another example

Example, part 2

Lunch “Betterment is perpetual labor. The world is chaotic, disorganized, and vexing, and medicine is nowhere spared that reality. To complicate matters, we in medicine are also only human ourselves. We are distractible, weak, and given to our own concerns. Yet still, to live as a doctor is to live so that one's life is bound up in others' and in science and in the messy, complicated connection between the two. It is to live a life of responsibility. The question then, is not whether one accepts the responsibility. Just by doing this work, one has. The question is, having accepted the responsibility, how one does such work well.” ― Atul Gawande, Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance

California Rural Network Jill Hatanaka Mark Odsather

Why ask why?

How ask why?

Developmental view of improvement

Next level of work Start with the pattern --do a root cause analysis (5 whys) Consider a developmental trajectory for this aspect of practice Make a learning plan that is working toward shifting or building on this pattern. o What adult learning would you focus on next at the school level / at the system level? o What do teachers need to know and be able to do for the next level of work? o How would you create the conditions for that learning to happen? (next week, next month, next year)

To what degree will our NLOW suggestions be helpful to the host school/system and to the network? Focuses on shifting or building on a pattern of practice Responds to the problem of practice Identifies who the learners are Identifies specifically what learning needs to happen Names an explicit ways to support that learning Builds from the structures and resources that exist

IMPROVEMENT AND INNOVATION

What is a practice of improvement? A routine way of getting better at what you do, particularly at the team and/or organizational level A discipline “What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline. Discipline is hard--harder than trustworthiness and skill and perhaps even than selflessness. We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures. We can't even keep from snacking between meals. We are not built for discipline. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at.” --Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Why does having a practice of improvement matter?

Why? You won’t get everything right the first time (or even the second, or probably the third...) To deliver on audacious aspirations for all youth, organizations need to learn, too, not just individuals Organizational learning requires routines and ways of learning

Why? Limited resources of time, energy, and human capacity to learn at any moment—focus those resources on figuring out complex problems, not on managing process Powerful learning is countercultural; need a powerful, consistent way to counteract “culture of nice” Adults need powerful learning, too, and they might not know how to do it together To sustain learning over time and across leadership transitions

Innovation...

So what? For you? For your network? What are you going to DO to improve learning more effectively based on today? Why?