1. Creating a Collaborative WE Learning Culture
Empowering
Thinking
Equipping
Leaders
Transforming
Cultures
…one person at a time.
Creating a Collaborative WE Learning Culture
Framework for Collaborative Learning Teams

2. Activity: How do you personally “feel” about change?
In a small group use the “Communication Cards”
How do you personally “feel” about change?
How do you “feel” about leading instructional change?

3. Thoughts to Consider Michael Fullan (2003)
“The principal of the future must lead a complex learning organization by helping to establish new cultures in schools that have deep capacities to engage in continuous problem solving and improvement
Most principals currently do have the capacity to operate in this new mode. To expect great leadership in the absence of capacity is to squander an opportunity and resources.
Some principals are not even on the continuum of school development. They are managers, at best running a good shop.”

4. Why a Collaborative Learning Culture?
Why a Collaborative Culture?
“Throughout our ten year study, whenever we found an effective school or an effective department within a school, without exception that school or department has been a part of a collaborative professional learning community.” McLaughlin and Talbert
Why a Collaborative Learning Culture?
Quotes

5. Why a Collaborative Learning Culture?
Why a Collaborative Culture?
“Improving schools require collaborative cultures…Without collaborative skills and relationships, it is not possible to learn and continue to learn as much as you need to know to improve.” Michael Fullan
Why a Collaborative Learning Culture?
Quotes

6. Four Foundational Questions
Collaborate About What?
STUDENT LEARNING
What do we want our students to learn?
How will we know they have learned it?
What will we do if they don’t learn?
What do we do if they already know it?
Four Foundational Questions
Meetings, Team Meetings, Professional Development

7. What Gets in the Way?
A professional norm of teacher isolation

8. DuFour, DuFour, and Eaker
What is Collaboration?
A systematic process in which we work together, interdependently, to analyze and impact professional practice in order to improve our individual and collective results.
DuFour, DuFour, and Eaker
What is Collaboration?
Definition

9. WE Collaborative Culture
Shift to a Collaborative WE Culture:
“Despite compelling evidence indicating that working collaboratively represents best practice, teachers in many schools continue to work in isolation. Even in schools that endorse the idea of collaboration, the staff’s willingness to collaborate often stops at the classroom door.” Rick DuFour, On Common Ground, pg. 36
WE Collaborative Culture
Quote

10. The “Shift” From and “I” Focused to a “We” Focused Learning Culture
Traditional School Model Thinking
“I”
“WE”

11. Creating “WE” Strategic Process
The Wilderness of CHANGE Journey Process
Based on John Kotter’s - 8 Stage Process of Creating Major Change
1. Establish a sense of urgency
2. Create a Guiding Team
3. Get the vision “right”
4. Communicate for Buy-in
5. Empower for Broad- based action
6. Generate Short-term wins
7. Don’t Let Up (Consolidate gains and produce more change)
8. Make “it” stick (Anchor new approaches in the culture)
Framework for Collaborative Learning Teams

12. Framework for Collaborative Learning Teams
Traditional “I” Thinking vs. “WE” thinking
Part to whole • Whole to part
Linear cause & effect • Processes of change
Static snapshots of change • Interrelationships
Content • Context
Rigid Structure • Flexibility
Resistance • Adaptability
Reactive • Proactive
Push for growth/solution • Remove factors limiting growth/solution

13. The Shift Requires Two Types of Change
Structural Change – Changing policies, procedures, schedules, programs and rules of a school.
Cultural Change – Changing the assumptions, beliefs, values, expectations, and habits that drive the day-to-day work of the school and shape how its people think, feel, and act.
Framework for Collaborative Learning Teams
The Shift Requires Two Types of Change

14. Framework for Collaborative Learning Teams
“Structural change that is not supported by cultural change will eventually be overwhelmed by the culture, for it is in the culture that an organization finds meaning and stability.” -Phil Schlechty
Framework for Collaborative Learning Teams
What is most important?

15. The BIG “Shift” IDEAS:
Cultivate a COLLABORATIVE CULTURE through development of high performing teams.
Focus on STUDENT LEARNING, not teaching.
Driven by RESULTS, not intentions.

16. Framework for Collaborative Learning Teams
The Shift “FROM” – “TO”
Framework for Collaborative Learning Teams
From Isolation
To Collaboration
From each teacher assigning priority to different learning standards…
From each teacher determining the pacing of the curriculum…
From individual teachers attempting to discover ways to improve results…
From privatization of practice…
From decisions made on the basis of individual preferences…
From “collaboration focused” on matters unrelated to student learning and achievement…
From an assumption that these are “my kids” and those are “your” kids
To collaborative teams building shared knowledge and understanding about essential learning
To collaborative teams establishing the priority of respective learning standards
To collaborative teams of teachers agreeing on common pacing
To open sharing of practice
To decisions made collectively by building shared knowledge of best practice
To collaboration explicitly focused on issues and questions that most impact student learning and achievement
To an assumption that these are “our kids”

17. Reflection and Application
So What?
•What has this section on The Shift to a Collaborative team culture focused on learning meant to you as an instructional leader?
•What are your insights or take aways?
•How will you apply this to your team?