Puzzle of Practice

In order for teachers to scale up their expertise school-wide, they needed to collaborate efficiently and effectively.   The East Central BOCES supports 21 districts in Eastern Colorado.  Through a grant that focused on data-driven decision making the BOCES wanted to improve existing, traditional PLC structures and put students back at the center of the learning.

Collective Goal

Teacher leaders and school leadership participated over 10 days of job-embedded professional learning with a focus on deep implementation of the Impact Team Model, A Student Centered PLC Model and part of the Core Collaborative’s EmpowerED Learner Series™.

Collective Action

The Core Collaborative partnered with district site leadership and teacher leaders to Unpack Standards for Success, a collaborative process in which teachers get to know standards by understanding cognitive rigor, determining the standard’s relevance in the world we live in, and developing the specific criteria needed for successful mastery of the standards. In addition teacher leaders learned a process for analyzing student work to plan differentiated instruction; this process is called Impact Teams.  A Core Collaborative partner consultant facilitated Impact Team meetings with model teams from model districts that volunteered for the capacity building initiative.  BOCES coaches continued the learning by supporting each model district at their point of need in implementation of the Impact Team Model Team Approach.

Impact

When interviewed about the result on advancing teacher and principal effectiveness in the district, Jodi Church, Staff Development Coordinator at the East Central BOCES described the result of the professional learning:

“At East Central BOCES we rely on Dr. Paul Bloomberg’s wealth of knowledge and the resources from The Core Collaborative to support us as we guide Impact Teams.  Many of the districts in our region have unique structures and The Core Collaborative has given us strategies that enable teachers in any situation to be successful.  We have seen a shift from teaching curriculum page by page, to guiding students through the learning process.  With Paul’s support, teachers understand the importance of creating clear success criteria aligned to each standard and that self and peer assessment are integral parts of the formative process.  Students in the East Central BOCES region are becoming self-directed empowered learners!”