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

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

3. Common Vision…Common Good!
“The Shift” from teaching cultures to learning cultures WE-Centric schools and Classrooms
HEART
BELIEFS/VALUES
Informational
Transformational
Developing Authentic Transformational Servant “WE” Leaders
Transforming Work/School Cultures…One Life At Time! (Remember the Bamboo!)

4. Clarity Around Student Learning
Believing WE
Shift Leadership
Mindset
Shift Norm of Isolationism
Shift to WE Language
Creating WE
Learning
Culture
Cultivating Trust and Openness
Developing Healthy Team Communication
Breaking through Comfort Zones and Working Together for change
Learning WE
Being WE
A culture of inclusion, value, and appreciation
WE is practice in the daily routines of the Culture

5. The BIG “Shift” IDEAS:
Cultivate a COLLABORATIVE CULTURE through development of high performing teams.
Focus on STUDENT LEARNING, not teaching.
Four Questions about Learners:
1. What is it we want “all” learners to know?
2. How do we “know” if they learned it?
3. What do we do when they don’t know it?
4. What do we do when they already know it?
Driven by RESULTS, not intentions.

6. Cultivating WE Learning School Cultures
Framework for Collaborative Learning Teams
1. New Structures and Procedures
Highly functioning learning teams have formalized, collaborative ways of identifying essential learning goals, assessing the extent to which students have mastered those learning goals, and responding to differentiated student needs. Establishing structured procedures for each of these processes is essential for efficient collaboration.
2. Improved Communication
Teaching has long been defined by isolation. Educators have worked alone to address the needs of students and rarely looked beyond their own classrooms. Schools functioning as WE focused learning cultures see teachers engaged in frequent conversations , using communication to build understanding about learning and teaching. This collaborative work is built upon established systems of communication within and across learning teams.
Student Learning
The primary goal of any learning community–improving student learning––is limited only by a school’s ability to establish new structures, improve communication, enhance teacher learning, and develop collective intelligence.
3. Enhancing Student Learning
The most effective learning communities are defined by a spirit of reflection, and action orientation , and a focus on “collective inquiry. Teachers are continuously revisiting instruction together, working to tailor practices to match the individual need of the student population they serve. Instructional capacity improves as teachers share ideas across classroom and as they experience systematic training in action research or support.
4.Collecitve Ownership and Intelligence
Teachers take ownership of all students and respond as a collective entity to challenges and opportunities. They make efforts to identify and then amplify indentify and then amplify instructional practices that work–––and eliminate those that are ineffective. Teams create warehouses of the best practices that all members of a faculty can draw form to develop and understanding of student needs.

7. The Shift Requires: Two Types of Change:
Structural Change – Changing policies, procedures, 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.

8. What is most important?
“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

9. 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

10. Assessing a School Alignment WE Learning Culture
Pre-Initiation Stage
The school has not yet begun to address the principles and practice of WE Learning Focus
Initiation Stage
An effort has been made to address this principles and practice, but the effort has not yet begun to impact a critical mass of staff members..
Developing Stage
A critical mass of staff has begun to engage in the practice. Members are being asked to modify their thinking as well as their traditional practices. Structural changes are being made to support the transition
Sustaining Stage
The principles or practice is deeply embedded in the culture of the school. It is a driving force in the daly work of staff. It is deeply internalized and staff would resist attempts to abandon the principles or practice.
Four Point Continuum
Framework for Collaborative Learning Teams

11. Creating “WE” Focused Learning The Shift from I to We (From Teaching to Learning Cultures)
WE-centric learning schools and classrooms create the conditions necessary for success in today’s world by promoting:
Co-creative environments in which students, faculty and staff, and parents are actively engaged in the common pursuit of a shared vision of ensuring all students learn
Caring relationships that cultivate and celebrate individual talents and aspirations, respect difference and diversity, and support challenges through creating collaborative cultures
Conversational Interaction (listening for understanding)- communication marked by caring, candor and open curiosity, that expand possibilities and promote breakthroughs that fuel continually improvement

12. Presented by: Michael J. Stabile, Ph.D. FutureNow Consulting
For more information: Contact Mike Stabile at or
visit our website at