Beliefs and Values (blue)

Everybody should be focused
Serve Children
Learn at own pace
All children will learn given the proper culture
Have to meet individual needs of children
Children can be individual learners
Children can be independent learners when given a variety of modalities to learn
Student info drives instruction design
Students taught at their level
Taking kids where they are and moving them forward
Serving Students
Better meet the need of both students and teachers – allocation of resources
Parents need to be involved
Recognizing needs of all children
Children have some accountability for their learning
Students need a tool
Expectation for success
Adult learning impacts student achievement
Professional development is necessary
Important to use data
Data driven decisions
Feedback
Need for evaluation
Data is important proof
We can move all children when we know where they’re at and where they need to go
Assessment to drive instruction
Trust
Safe Environment
People can change
Learning from each other
Valuing teachers as professionals
Courage
Collaboration
Taking risks
Looking to help each other – not compete
Trust the process …and each other
We learn more from each other than in isolation
Willingness to confront the brutal facts
Teamwork
Relying on each other
Share
What classrooms should look like
Knowledge is gained through a process
The tool must work for the practitioner
Synergy
Responsibility
Self reflection
Reflect
To critically examine our process is good
There’s value in taking the time to take stock in where we are
No matter what the restrictions, we can always build the capacity to be better teachers and for the students to be better learners
We need to make the time to self reflect in order to move forward

Patterns and Themes (red)

Systemic approach
Planning – next steps base on identified needs of students and teachers
Research
Alignment
Focus
Change process takes time
Learning is messy
Professional development
Adult learning
Using experts
Collaboration between students and teachers
Teaming & Collaboration
Effective teaching practice – approaches, interventions, rigor
Individualized education
Student academic success
Effective teaching practice
Ongoing assessment – students/teachers, data collection/tracking
Feedback
Collect and use data
Success is to be measured
Using data/info to direct instruction
Ongoing communication among all members
Communication
Celebrate successes

Principles and Processes (yellow)

Reflective processes
Practices are constantly reflected on
Clarification is necessary (class/school/district)
Focus on individual
Responding to needs of all children
Commitment to excellence
Discovering/uncovering gaps
Everyone is a learner – parents/teachers/kids
Clarifying process essential to learning resources reflection
Building common knowledge
Data driven decisions
Unified sense of purpose
Narrowing focus
Sense of urgency and community among all stakeholders
Literacy is the foundation
Shared decision making
School wide practices

Conditions (green)

TIME
Time to discuss – vertical as well as horizontal collaboration
Language arts block
Time for collaboration
Time training
Release time for teachers
Time for teachers to make centers
Need resources of time and product
Time and materials for testing
Staff development – do teachers know what to do?
Daily routine
TRAINING
Clear directions
Coaching needed
RESOURCES
Storage
Need to have a leveled book library
Writing materials
Technology resources
Need real data
Resource warehouse for data
Focus
Agree on focus
Have to have benchmarks & standards
Defined standards before teachers can write maps
Outlines and guidelines
Questions to ask
Models
Commitment
Perseverance
Agree to change
Willingness to collaborate
Leadership
Facilitation needs careful consideration – who will do it?
Organizational skills
Interventions

Other (pale yellow)

Practices empower stakeholders
Simple practices >> creative complexity
Channeling people’s conversations and energy in service to students
Practices addressed specific needs BUT their power came from the fact that they touched on more universal applications
People see value once they employ the Promising Practice – “snowball going down a hill” - gets bigger and bigger
Most people have basic structure/guidelines but individual also has freedom/choice in using them