This year, a team of teachers at my site read the book We Got This. Equity Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be, by Cornelius Minor. I highly recommend the text, in order to become a more reflective teacher, to center student voices, and to ensure that classroom practices and curriculum work for students. It is a rich source of planning and reflection tools. In this post, I want to share a few of the tools that we have used and found to be extremely useful.
The tool that initially drew me into We Got This is: One Way to Think About a Universal Design for Learning Framework. It is essential that we think about flexible ways for students to access material and express their learning. The Universal Design for Learning Framework provides a variety of strategies to provide students with choice, while removing barriers to learning. The “One Way to Think About a ULD Framework” tool provides nine questions to consider when planning a lesson or unit.
The Thinking About the Kids in My Classroom tool provides a way to reflect on: groups of students, what it takes to be successful in a particular class, and the barriers that might be in place. The strength of the tool is that it focuses on changing teaching practice to remove barriers. At my school, we made one revision to the tool when we used it with teachers. We decided not to name each group, in order to shorten the tool and avoid labeling kids or groups. After filling out the chart with collaborative partners, teachers reported the ideas they were going to try out to their grade level teams. The discussion was rich and new ideas sprouted from the sharing.
We used A Guide for Planning Change Quickly over several weeks. Again, teachers worked on the tool with collaborative partners. Then they shared out with grade level teams. Over the next week strategies were implemented and teachers reflected on their impact. The process continued each week, with a final celebration on the final week. The questions on the guide scaffolded conversations and problem solving. The name and nature of the tool supported a sense of trying new things and that it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time. This improved our focus on continuous improvement.
“The work is not instant. There is no quick path to success.
Things won’t always go well the first (or second or ninth) time.
We are allowed to fail, reflect, improve, and try again.
This is the only way.
-Cornelius Minor
It is important to note that throughout the school year we made an intentional effort on using asset-based language when describing students, families, and ourselves. Each team had a trained Process Observer who focused on our language and reported themes at the end of each meeting. This gave us permission to correct our language as we spoke, and over time shifted our conversations toward action.
Next year we may use “We Got This” as the mantra at our school. We feel it is an important way to approach our work, especially during times of change. It supports a sense of collective teacher efficacy, one of the highest indicators of accelerated student growth. According to Hattie’s meta-analysis, Collective Teacher Efficacy has an effect size of 1.57, nearly four times the average growth of .40! We also hope to use the Blueprint for Shifting Your Mind-Set from Punitive to Proactive tool as a way to ask for, and act upon, student feedback. It is truly empowering for students to see ways in which their teachers improve classroom practice based on their feedback. If we want students to be advocates and social justice leaders in the future, this is a start.
Resources:
We Got This. Equity Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be, Cornelius Minor
https://udlguidelines.cast.org/
John Hattie – Effect Size