Geese have a mission. They fly south for the winter and then north in the spring. The barriers are enormous. Yet they do it. Year after year efficiently with a collective effort to 'get it done.' They communicate; they share responsibility; they trust one another.
Geese Fly Further Together: The relationships you have with one another is critical. The trust you have gives lift and allows for constructive conversation. Providing one another support means more than just agreeing all of the time. It's also about helping one another reach the goal. Provide feedback and allow others to benefit. Please specific about how it can be done and why. Think Efficiency!
Geese Support one another when it gets tough: You have a hard job. There is not doubt but sharing the burden with support and care allows the team to do the work. You are as strong as you allow yourself to be. If you think you can't you are usually right. However, if you think you can you are also right. Supporting one another means self-care and collective care. NOTE it's so difficult on a good day. You need one another.
Geese take turns leading: Everyone can be a leader in your PLC. What does it take commitment and a reflection on your collective goal. Leading means knowing. Knowing begets doing. Doing creates results. Share the load. Don't be a passive member.
Geese Cheer for one another: HONK HONK HONK. Means keep going. You are doing a great job. Thank you for helping our group move forward. You have the means to provide one another the support through feedback and the specificity through celebration to motivate through the journey. Make a point of efficiently finding an example of our mission in action and CELEBRATE it!
Geese are Focused on their purpose. They don't fly haphazardly; they move forward together with the purpose of finding a better climate to sort out the winter. Remember that our purpose is growth and growth mean high proficiency. Likewise, it is highly likely that your stress levels will go down when you find you are making a difference. The purpose is to move together as a group to reflect on your success and how you got there.
When you take the lessons of the geese into your own hands you are working to build efficacy. Efficacy is the ability to produce. It is also the belief in your ability to effect the change necessary to meet goals. It's more than collaboration. It's more than getting together to talk every day. IT is the result of collaborating effectively over time. You keep going when it's tough. You collaborate because you believe in the group's collective belief to change the achievement profile of the entire grade level. You build knowledge by learning from one another. You are optimistic, confident and resilient because your created the conditions for successful learning experiences for children and your peers.
Take a look at these graphs
What do you see? It's a dramatic change over time across every grade level. It's possible and you need to realize that you make this happen.
The purpose for your team is more than just what your goal is, it includes the culture of the group. Your team members are the guide to live our mission to become...
I know the success of third grade reflected in the graphs is not solely the third grade teachers. The success seen is a team effort from those who had our students in 2nd, 1st, kindergarten, and preschool. It's our support staff and sped teachers who are encouraging and supporting our students needs. Our coaches lifting instruction. PD and PLC that narrow our focus on data driven instruction. I believe my role in working as a team has been easy since joining Bloomer. I know our staff and my team truly believes in our students and our collaboration is what is impacting student achievement.
ReplyDeleteWe collaborated more as a team and all contribute ideas. This way we are all on the same page when trying to teach the same material.
ReplyDeleteI believe that I was part of a team that worked like the geese: flying together as a new team 2 years ago, encouraging each other when hard times came within any classroom, sharing teaching points for specific lessons, sharing strengths as leaders at different times. Most of all, keeping up our grit to keep going, shake off the things that didn't work, reflect on what was and plan for the next needs in lessons. We focused on what individual kids needed to grow in their skills.
ReplyDeleteLast year (2nd Grade) I, along with my team, really focused on the standards being addressed in each lesson and wrote the learning intentions based off of those standards. This helped me as a teacher to really focus on the "meat" of the lesson, knowing what the students needed to accomplish and how I was going to get them there. It helped shift my focus to the what was important. I have continued this into my new 3rd grade journey.
ReplyDeleteI know this is the impact I have had by looking at the graphs. It was fun to see how students progressed from Fall '20 in 2nd grade to Fall '21 in 3rd grade. I got to keep almost ALL of my same students, so to see those scores increase from Fall to Fall and physically seeing that growth in my own classroom has been very impactful to me.
I worked together, with my team, to teach the whole child and to use daily/weekly observations and assessments to guide our teaching. We also, worked as a team to write learning intentions that are specific and clear.
ReplyDeleteA Oswald
ReplyDeleteThe positive change resulted on the graphs are through the work of frequent and effective PLC's. The PLC's allows us to compare classes, what their strengths are, and what they need to improve on so we can reach all students and increase achievement.
Looking through the lens of the standards and not just the resources has helped with clarification for students and teachers. Reminding myself to talk less & allowing students to talk more & progress struggle. Working as a team consistently to better ourselves, our lessons, through data and improved lessons.
ReplyDeleteThere's definitely a correlation in the steady increase of scores and some of our focused building efforts. Things like writing clear LI/SC focused on standard (not the resource), minimizing teacher talk so students have more time to engage in the learning, spending more time in team collaboration, looking at and responding to data, and focused professional development have had a direct impact on our teaching, and on student achievement.
ReplyDelete1st grade - We affected this change by consistently using our DFA and CFA data to direct our instruction. During instruction, we created our learning intention and success criteria using the standards, and then used them frequently during the lessons so that the students would know what they were learning and how to know if they were successful. We differentiated our word work and math instruction frequently.
ReplyDeleteBeing on a team also let's get to know students better like their strengths, triggers, and what helps push them forward to being the best version of him or herself. You really see team work at bloomer in so many ways and I'm so Blessed to be able to be back on Bloomer's team again this year.
ReplyDeleteS Mohr (2nd Grade)
ReplyDeleteI know that my team worked really hard to think about and develop lessons and learning intentions that aligned with the standard. We also worked together as a team to collaborate and give feedback to each other. We could then give more consistent instruction and feedback to students.
I notice the increase of scores in cohort groups and think it is definitely a result of the building teams having time to collaborate and dig deeper into the standards along with having clear LI/SC's. Students are being able to not only be held accountable but hold themselves accountable as they learn which is helping to create eager learners. Less teacher talk is another reason for the increases, I believe. We are being more strategic with our questions and allowing students to have the time they need to process and show/tell their thinking and work.
ReplyDeleteThis growth has been possible by each team's focus on making Bloomer a better place to be through developing clear learning intentions and success criteria, feedback to students that aligns with the LI and SC, as well as having high expectations.
ReplyDelete