Sharing Collaborative Inquiry Among Charter/District Schools

Prospect Hill Academy

PSI is engaged with Prospect Hill Academy Charter School as they partner with two K-8 Somerville public schools, the Winter Hill Community School and the Healey School, to showcase and develop the core professional development model used at PHA: Collaborative Inquiry.

Liz Murray, PHA Middle School Director and SNIP Participant, with students

Collaborative Inquiry is embedded in the belief that powerful learning occurs when teams of educators intentionally collaborate to design instructional plans and evaluate the effectiveness in their classroom instructions. The cycle is iterative and ongoing with the goal of sustained, systematic, and demonstrable progress over time.

This model is on the one hand surprisingly simple, yet on the other hand challenging to implement as it requires educators to shift the paradigm from more traditional professional development and informal common planning time to structured and disciplined collaboration with focused outcomes. Teachers within the same department work as a team and meet weekly to establish their common desired student skills, teaching goals, and standards of evaluation. Department faculty also collaborate regularly across subject areas - For example, history and English and reading teachers at the middle school use common techniques in teaching vocabulary to reinforce the skill in students' minds.

Throughout the year, curriculum reviews with the school leaders serve a dual purpose: Using student outcome data, teacher teams are held accountable for meeting their goals, and the reviews provide valuable space for ideas and support centered soley around student instruction. In many respects, the shift required is cultural in nature because teachers must forgo the typical practice of planning lessons in isolation in favor of consistent collaboration. Teachers work with colleagues to analyze data, determine unmet student needs, and test teaching strategies supported by academic research in their classrooms. To be most effective, collaborative inquiry practice requires a systemic approach and committed leadership at multiple levels to move the work forward.

PSI is helping to facilitate and document the ongoing work at the school team and administrative levels and will be documenting the process for further use and implementation. A full report and usable tools and resources will be available later in 2010. Until then, please read our interview with project coordinator Jessie Gerson-Nieder of Prospect Hill Academy below.

One of the strengths of the collaborative inquiry process at the Healey and Winter Hill has been the number of teachers willing to commit their time and effort to the process. Almost every grade level has participated in at least one CI cycle including the:

• Healey 5^th Grade Math Team
• Healey 8^th Grade Humanities Team
• Healey 3^rd and 4^th grade Neighborhood teachers
• Healey 3^rd and 4^th grade Choice program teachers
• Healey K-2 Neighborhood teachers
• Winter Hill 8^th Grade Humanities Team
• Winter Hill 6^th Grade Math Team
• Winter Hill 7^th Grade Math Team
• Winter Hill 8^th Grade Math Team

The Instructional Leadership Teams at both schools have also lent their considerable expertise to the process.

Interview with Jessie Gerson-Nieder: 
Collaborative Inquiry Coach, Prospect Hill Academy 

PSI:  In your own teaching experience, what benefits have you seen in using Collaborative Inquiry?

Jessie: When I became a member of my Collaborative Inquiry team, I realized that even good teaching and strong lessons are markedly improved when working in a focused and rigorous way with a team of committed fellow teachers. I also realized how much about the efficacy of my lesson I had previously been taking on faith. I was pretty sure my students were learning what I wanted them to learn-I graded homework, class work, projects, essays, and tests. But the process of using data to deliberately identify critical skills I wanted students to master, working with colleagues to come to a clear understanding of what mastery would look like and strategically evaluating the success of my lesson objectives was a revelation. Collaborative Inquiry gave me the information I needed to truly differentiate my instruction by crafting student groups and lesson plans to meet students where they were and move them to where they needed to be. It made me fully realize the importance of common language, priorities, and strategies across grade levels and content areas and gave me an increased sense of confidence that I was giving my students the best education possible.

PSI:  At the Somerville district schools, what initial steps are teachers taking to embrace and use Collaborative Inquiry?

Jessie: Teachers at the Winter Hill and the Healey, under the leadership of principals Steve Tuccelli and Mike Sabin, have demonstrated an impressive commitment to and understanding of the challenging work of Collaborative Inquiry. Pilot teacher groups have been meeting regularly to look at data, unpack standards, identify non-negotiable skills, develop common rubrics and collaboratively plan rich lessons around those skill areas. They have developed their own entrance and exit slips and shared the successes and the areas of need that this new focus on regular interim assessment reveals. The teacher teams have made great progress in a short period of time and the work is now expanding to include triple the number of groups, putting the project ahead of the timeline laid out in our action plan. The teachers, with their willingness to commit their time, effort, and expertise to this project deserve a great deal of credit for that forward momentum. 

PSI: Collaborative Inquiry emphasizes using student performance data to guide curriculum planning.  What are some challenges and limitations to utilizing data in decision-making, and how do you address them?

Jessie: I think that because of the realities of high stakes testing and because data seems so unequivocal in a field that is full of difficult decisions and uncertainty, it risks becoming an end rather than a means. Ideally, teachers should understand data well enough to evaluate its full meaning and potential usefulness as they work to plan the best learning experience possible for their students. In Collaborative Inquiry, data isn't just MCAS or MAP scores- although those are certainly valuable, it can also be exit slips, teacher designed assessments, or a common question identified on a well-crafted homework assignment. By expanding the definition of data in this way, and by offering more context and training in how to unpack and understand standardized test results, Collaborative Inquiry supports teachers as they approach data with a sense of purpose and ownership rather than trepidation or resentment.  In addition, it answers the question "Now what?" Too often, schools analyze their data at the beginning of the year; identify areas of strength and weakness and then stop. Collaborative Inquiry sees data work as an ongoing parallel process to the work of planning and teaching excellent lessons that address the needs indicated by that data. It is a powerful partnership.