Project Success Results (ETEC 500)
Project Success – Year 1 Results
We need each other to test out ideas, to share what we’re learning, to help us see in new ways, to listen to our stories. We need each other to forgive us when we fail, to trust us with our dreams, to offer their hope when we’ve lost our own.
Margaret Wheatley
Project Success is a simple idea, begun Sept 2009-10, to tackle a complex issue: how can we improve success for our vulnerable learners? We gave interested schools a small grant to allow them to collaborate to explore that question in return for their commitment to attend six district meetings to share what they learned and to learn with others. Many eyes, we believe, will make us all wiser.
In Sept 2011-12 we added the “strands”. These strands focused our attention in particular areas that we believed will strengthen our schools projects by extending and deepening support and also our broader project: success for all.
Grade Two Strand: Will focusing on interventions for grade twos who are not yet meeting expectations on reading performance standards improve success?
Technology Strand: Will learning together to use technology effectively enhance the success of school projects?
Teacher-Librarian Strand: Will learning together to support collaboration, inquiry and technology enhance the success of school projects?
Next Steps:
Year One Project Report 2012: Project Success 2011-12 Final Report
Reflections:
What are the supports that would help us to further cultivate our practice of pioneering leadership?
- A repeated theme has been the power of collaboration to work and learn together. It seems obvious that collaboration is an essential ingredient for learning new things (and with a rapidly changing world, the learning curve is steep) and to support diverse learners for success. No one of us has everything that is necessary for even one child. Nonetheless, many of us resist “collaboration”. As we ponder this resistance – and the ways some schools have gained 100% participate in their project – we have identified that the resistance is against working together to meet goals we haven’t set with methods we don’t agree to and tested against measures that we feel are meaningless. As we reflect on our successes and challenges this year, we have developed some strategies for effective collaboration.
- It isn’t only that the “more, the merrier” and “many hands makes light work,” but that unless there is broad participation, our strength is diminished. For each child to succeed, everyone in the school has to do whatever it takes, to connect at every opportunity, to share their strengths and get supports for challenges. Thus, whatever strategies we consider, we need to ask: will this invite participation? What’s more, when people continually refuse the invitation, we need to ask why. What can we do differently that will make the invitation more appealing?
Implementation, surprises, and consequences? Regrets?
- Given a broad question, choice and flexibility, the danger is in “spinning wheels” and shallow dispersed action. Unless the school team schedules meetings to gather, connect, review, celebrate and build collaboratively on individual or small team actions, the impact to student learning will be limited.
- A learning community that is broad and includes all players in that community as learners – student to student, student to teacher, community members to teachers and students, students to parents – yields the richest results.
- No Regrets!
How does theory learned in this course offer me insights about how I might nurture a change in the culture of my community?
- As Margaret Wheatley writes, “Measures are meaningful and important only when generated by those doing the work. Any group can benefit from others’ experience and from experts, but the final measures need to be their creation.” She suggests that measures that most resemble feedback will make the biggest difference.
- This connects with our own experiences as district or provincial assessments become a point of contention rather than an opportunity for connection. What’s more, as we shift our goals to include success for all students, our current measures often seem inadequate and even counter-productive, pushing us to move at a pace or in a direction that doesn’t serve unique learners.
- However, without measures, it’s difficult to identify who needs support, whether the support is working and what is worth doing more. We need to continue to work together to develop measures that matter. As school teams have discovered, not only is this vital work – how can we improve student writing, for example, when we aren’t even clear on what good writing is? – but it is slow work. There aren’t any shortcuts. Like diet programs, the ones that work quickly only work for a short time – if they work at all.
How does this project affect practice or what new perspectives have you discovered in reflection?
- When school or district teams share their learning as they are learning, progress is accelerated. Someone poses a problem, another has an idea, suggests a process, a partner, a resource, a shift in direction and movement continues. What’s more, as the teacher-librarian group noted, reflecting with others as we are learning “increases/reignites our passion, our satisfaction, our belief in a vision for the future.” The grade two group added, “we don’t feel like we are the only ones with this problem!” Blogs, regular meetings or more formal professional learning communities, coaches, mentors, co-teaching, team-teaching, and regular celebrations (not just at the end) allow us to engage deeply in the learning process and gain/give support to further our goal. This transparent process also allows us to replicate and/or build from the work of others.
Next Steps:
- To meaningfully engage all educators – and to truly use the strengths in our community – we can’t define the solutions. Schools that have had the most success have used a broad question and encouraged participants to choose how they will tackle the issue. They also allow for flexibility, shifting directions, revising frameworks, adjusting schedules so that participating is easy and each person feels that their contribution – at whatever level they are able to provide it – is deeply valued.
| Pioneer Trail | ||||
| Bullet Trail |
