SUPERINTENDENTS’ NETWORK FACILITATORS WEBINAR VIA ZOOM January 14, 2015 Liz City

Agenda Around the horn Rounds and developmental learning Question Formulation Technique Wrap up

PRACTICES OF IMPROVEMENT

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

“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

Overview of the Rounds Visit …Problem of Practice Observation of Practice Observation Debrief Describe Analyze Predict Next Level of Work …

The Data Wise Improvement Process Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning. 2 nd ed. Ed. Boudett, City, Murnane. Harvard Education Press, 2013.

After-action review What was planned? What happened? Why did it happen? What could be done to improve it next time? For more information on After-Action Reviews, see: Strategy in Action, p , and

Top Tips 1. Think big, act small—keep the focus small 2. Practices of improvement take practice—lots of repetition! 3. Practices of improvement by themselves are not enough—they need to be part of an improvement strategy

Developmental: VAre students doing the talking, doing the work and persevering ? A developmental range of practices Developmental: VAre students doing the talking, doing the work and persevering ? A developmental range of practices Status vs. Developmental View of Improvement Status View: Are students doing the talking, doing the work and persevering ?

Identify High Leverage PatternOrganizational ContextRoot Cause AnalysisDevelopmental View of ImprovementAdult Learning Theory Deepening The NLOW

Creating tighter connections between patterns and suggestions Which patterns stand out to us as visitors and to the hosts as particularly high leverage places to invest for improvement? In other words, if we could shift this pattern of practice, we believe it would be consequential for student learning. Identify High Leverage Pattern

Q and A with hosts: What do we need to know in order to make helpful suggestions? What have you been working on and what is planned? Existing Systems and Structures? Instructional leadership? Teaming? Use of data? Professional learning? How are they used? Organizational Context

Try to identify the root explanations for a problem Identify various perspectives on a problem Determine how various causes relate to each other Determine which causes are within our locus of control for improvement (5 Whys is one root cause analysis protocol) Root Cause Analysis

Developmental view of improvement

Needs Improvement ProficientAdvanced

Developmental view of improvement Needs Improvement ProficientAdvanced

In what are students doing the talking, doing the work and persevering? A developmental range of practices In what are students doing the talking, doing the work and persevering? A developmental range of practices Think Developmentally… Where are we now? What is the next step?

Developmental View : In what ways are questions promoting higher order thinking? Teachers are asking higher order questions periodically and student responses highly scaffolded Status vs. Developmental View of Improvement Status View: Are there questions that promote higher order thinking? Status View: Are there questions that promote higher order thinking? Teachers primarily ask recall and understanding level questions Teachers are asking higher order questions and students are selecting learning supports as needed to respond Teachers and students are developing and asking higher order questions. Students are independently developing ways to respond

How can we best support learning? Individuals, teams and organizations have implicit learning theories Rounds exposes the theories to inquiry and learning Rounds helps us develop explicit, shared learning theories Students learn best when… Teachers learn best when… Administrators learn best when… Adult Learning Theory

Identify High Leverage PatternOrganizational ContextRoot Cause AnalysisDevelopmental View of ImprovementAdult Learning Theory Deepening The NLOW

Pulling it all together: Time to make Next level of Work Suggestions Make a learning plan that is working toward shifting this pattern of practice. WHY do you believe this pattern exists? (root cause analysis) WHAT adult learning would you focus on next at the school level? (developmental view) HOW would you support that learning? (Organizational context, Teachers learn best when…) (next week, next month, next year)

To what degree will our NLOW suggestions be helpful to the host school 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 (school and system level supports) Builds from the structures and resources that exist

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

Wrap up Next webinar: February 11, 2015 Liz available for 30-minute local network chats Meeting evaluation—webinar in a word