Staff Development:
The Power of Teacher Performance

Transmitted via New York 's Public Broadcasting Stations, produced by the New York State Education Department and the New York State Broadcast Network; recorded at the studios at Bulmer Telecommunications Center, Hudson Valley Community College.

For additional information, call or write:

John Quinn
Room 668 EBA
Office of Curriculum and Instruction
New York State Education Department
Albany, NY 12234
(518) 474-3954
E-mail: jquinn@mail.nysed.gov

For copies of the videotape and Facilitator Guide, contact Suzanne Carroll, Questar III BOCES, (518) 477-6749.

(Music)

>> Rochelle: Hello. I'm Rochelle Cassella. Welcome to the first program in the 2000/2001 "Tools for Schools" series, professional development programs for educators and administrators, designed and produced by the New York State Education Department's Broadcast Network. It's that start of another exciting year for education in New York State. This year's eighth graders will face assessments in science, social studies and technology. High school students take a revised American history Regents exam. They'll also need to score at least 55 on Regents exams in English and math in order to make graduation. And the students who entered eighth grade last month, the class of 2005, will be the first group required to pass five Regents exams before graduation. It also will be a year of learning for teachers. The New York State Education Department expects all school districts to begin implementing their professional development plans. Those plans were to have been developed last year by committees of teachers, school administrators, union representatives, parents and a curriculum specialist. The goals of these plans are to provide the quality of teaching and learning in a way that will improve student performance. Professional development plans, the elements needed to make them effective, and what they look like at three very different schools, the focus of today's program. You may remember that professional development is one of the six tools for schools we introduced in last year's series. The tools are those elements common to all high-performance schools. So before we begin today's show, we're going to do a quick review. Tool number one, leadership: Administration that has a vision of excellence for all students and responds to the needs of students and staff, enabling excellence to grow. Comprehensive planning, tool two: Based on data analysis, knowing what students need, creating a plan that ensures that they get what they need. Tool three, staff development: Training for staff that is ongoing, job-embedded and related to improving student performance. Tool number four, engaging curriculum: Instruction that is standards-based, accounts for the various ways in which children learn, and engages students' interest. Tool number five, use of resources: Not just money but using time, in-house expertise, community relationships in a way that best helps students perform. And tool number six, involving parents and community: Making sure that parents and the community members understand what's at stake and what students are expected to know, and then creating partnerships that encourage community participation in helping all students learn. Now back to the topic at hand, professional development. It conjures up thoughts of superintendent days and off-site workshops. But the reality is that's not what professional development should be.

(Music)

>> So how many did we have yesterday?

>> Seven.

>> "... ambled down..."

>> We're going to go over a couple more.

>> Tom Shiland: A professional is a person that is constantly looking for ways to improve themselves. If you're doing that, I think you're a professional.

>> Steve Dana: Shaw Jamison (phonetic) has built the Frameworks of Instruction. It's a model that people use in evaluation of staff; it's a model that people use in terms of goal-writing. One of the four domains is professionalism, and being a professional requires expanding one's horizons; it requires continuously seeking new information.

>> Mike Ford: And the research is real clear on where we can spend our money to get the greatest results. It's not on lowering class sizes; it's not on paying our teachers more. It actually has to do with having the best trained people.

>> The research is clear: The quality of a classroom teacher is one of the most important factors in determining student performance. But professional development is one area school districts traditionally have ignored. For example, while industry spends up to 10% of its operating budget on professional development, school districts generally spend less than half of 1% of their budgets training teachers. Raising student standards means raising teacher standards. So the New York State Staff Development Council and the National Council on Staff Development have adopted these components as essential to a successful professional development plan: The plan must be based on the New York State Learning Standards. Districts need to ask themselves: What do teachers need to know in order to teach students the skills called for by the New York State Learning Standards?

>> It's malpractice for any teacher today to not know the standards, to not know what the new assessments are requiring of them.

>> An effective professional development plan is based on data: Information gathered from 4th and 8th grade math and English language arts assessment scores, reviews of student work, school report cards, even surveys of teachers.

>> Gerald Mager: Shaping the professional development around the opportunities and challenges of the district, we recognized that some forms of professional development are probably more appropriate under some circumstances. So, for example, some school districts will encourage their teachers to engage in a series of workshops that are provided by a college or university or provided by an agency or provided through the local BOCES, all of which are then connected to real challenges and opportunities within the school district. Teaching is a performance-based art. It's one that requires observation, feedback and skill. There's got to be staff development that supports the work that's being implemented in the workshop and moves it to the classroom.

>> Staff development is most effective when it is job-embedded and relates directly to the work teachers do in classrooms.

>> Observation of another teacher, reading professional literature that is related to the work that we're doing, visiting another school, engaging in study groups. We have begun to recognize that people who actually practice teaching are among the people who ought to be the best students of that work and ought to be interpreting their work in new contexts and to each other.

>> So we tend to think of staff development as the adult version of a pullout program. It's a place we send our teachers to. If it's a workshop ten miles away, we send our teachers to go hear a consultant talk. And then we think when they come back, they'll be fine. But it's a ridiculous thing.

>> An off-site workshop may be a start to professional development, but the New York State Staff Development Council believes that professional development needs to be continuous and sustained if it is to result in change.

>> If we recognize that and accept that value, accept that sort of premise, then we can pull together a variety of forms for professional development that makes sense.

>> The final element essential to good professional development is one many districts have done on a very primary level: Evaluating the effectiveness of their professional development program.

>> We have got to focus in on what impact does it have on students and on student learning?

>> Rochelle: Another element of professional development they didn't include was watching "Tools for Schools" programs, but we all just take that for granted, right? For more discussion on those and elements of a professional development plan, here in our studio, Dr. Gerald Mager from Syracuse University. Gerry, we're delighted to have you with us. The first question has got to be if teachers are well prepared in teacher prep programs, there's certifications, degrees required, why do we need this ongoing professional development?

>> Gerald M. Mager: Well, you understand that teacher preparation is generally practiced because we don't know where the students are going to end up. Prospective teachers may come to Syracuse, Oneonta or a college on Long Island, and when they go through their teacher preparation programs, they develop a knowledge base on learning and learners, on methods of teaching, on curriculum. They become more familiar with the content of the learning standards, but we don't know what school district they're going to specifically end up practicing their teaching in. As you may know, the new regulations related to teacher preparation in New York State have substantially enhanced the way programs of teacher preparation are designed. They weave field experience along with campus study. They insist that prospective teachers in New York State be given experience and positive experience with students who have differences such as special education needs or English language learning needs, students who come from different kinds of backgrounds, and working with families, parents and the community, and those are important building blocks for a prospective teacher. But we don't know, for example, that even our student who performs well in student teaching and in prior field experiences in one setting is going to be able to take that knowledge and take those skills and take that sort of a posture, the value structures that they developed there, into really an unpredicted setting in their first year of practice. Presumably they will make choices about what makes good sense for their employment, where they would like to get a job, what they would like to do, where they would like to begin their professional career, but they don't always have those choices. Even when they're able to go with the schools that are almost just like the ones that they were prepared in, they are challenged to interpret their knowledge in the new context. And so even the best teacher preparation programs still only set up the candidate for good practice in the first years and then beyond.

>> Rochelle: Okay.

>> Gerald Mager: So there's always a need for support for the beginning teacher and, for that matter, for the continuing teacher as the context in which they are expected to practice changes.

>> Rochelle: And we're going to see that in our videos that are coming up. But one of the big questions I know administrators are going to sit there and say -- we saw the figures dealing with how much industry puts aside for professional development as compared to what school districts do -- where do they find the money; where do they find the time? And I'm not putting you on the spot by saying "Gerry, you have got to give us a solid answer."

>> Gerald Mager: Well, I think, you know, one of the ways of thinking about the question is that it's not just the administrators who have to find the money. I think this is really a commitment we all must have. Parents must have it because if we're going to have good educators for our schools, and that's not only teachers but counselors and other personnel, service workers and even the administrators themselves, must be provided opportunities for their own professional development. The world of education, the world in which we live changes so drastically, so dramatically, that we can't assume that people who are even well prepared are going to have the knowledge or the skills that will allow them to practice indefinitely without continuing that development. So I think there is money, by the way, available. The State has made money available through the teachers center organizations and through the SETRC system; more money is coming in from the state legislature, for example, for mentoring programs. We have to focus that money in the high-needs areas; we have to be sure that the money that we use in school districts focuses on the needs that the school district has, so it's not money that seems to miss the most important needs. And the time is also an issue for schools, and school districts are thinking of creative ways of addressing that particular challenge as well. Extended school days, extended school years, finding time during the school day when teachers can work together, with kids in many cases, to enhance their own professional development.

>> Rochelle: Terrific. Time now for us to take a look at some of these plans in action, okay? We're going off to the New York Finger Lakes area, home to the small district of Phelps-Clifton Springs. The staff development plan we see here focuses on getting the district's 27 new teachers off on the right foot, beginning with a week of orientation even before school starts.

>> Now, here's your task. I want you to review the materials that you have on the concept that's on your card, making sure that you're all clear as to what that concept means and what it means in the classroom. And then in just a few minutes, I'll give you the next set of directions. Okay? So go ahead and make sure that all three or four of you understand that concept.

>> We talked about in our group yesterday about really pointing out to little children what effort is and really recognizing how it puts a lot of effort into a process.

>> When you think about interest, you want to make them interested and you think about the learning.

>> The environment more and...

>>When I first got hired here at the Phelps-Clifton Springs School District and knew that I was going to have a new teacher orientation, I expected to get the basics. I expected to get the basics on payroll information, all policy and procedure.

>> Now that you have an understanding of your concept, give us a review of that concept for the rest of the group. You're either going to design a T-shirt that would explain that concept...

>> Finding appropriate activities at appropriate levels so children can be successful, we could do like a building block thing.

>> How much more do we have to have?

>> Chalkboard.

>> And expectations.

>> ...or you could write and then perform a rap or a song.

>> *Come on now...*

>> Now we have to start talking about --

>> Interest.

>> Right.

>> *Come on *

>> I never had an orientation like this, and I keep thinking back and thinking, "Oh, if I had only had this for my first job, it really would have made the transition a bit smoother." >> We looked at our data. Some of our data told us, number one, that this September we would have nearly 40% of our teachers that would be untenured, in their first two or three years of teaching.

>> Joe, are you going to be explaining your shirt or is the group going to do it?

>> We coupled that with how successful have the new teachers been over the last couple of years that we've been hiring? Unfortunately, we have had some young folks joining the staff that had not succeeded. So we knew that we were struggling with some folks that didn't have all the skills and knowledge they should have and at a time when we were going to have a lot of them.

>> We chose to create a new report card and what we wanted to do was focus on the fact that the letter grade is still important but it's not the most important.

>> We discussed the congruent versus the noncongruent methods of teaching.

>> New teacher support is real exciting. We have so many of them. We start with a week of intensive time this summer where we're talking about basic skills of instruction that we have noticed our teachers have struggled with over the last couple of years. So we want to give these folks a leg up on basic pedagogical knowledge, how do we help our teachers with managing student behavior...

>> * and your laughter, too *

*come on, motivation *

*come on *

* let's celebrate *

>> We felt that for students to be successful, they need to have clear expectations...

>> I'm getting new ideas from other teachers, as well as other counselors, as well as administrators. So things that I thought I knew, when a topic was brought up and I thought I knew a lot about that topic, a lot of other people had feedback to give and more information to offer that will be very helpful.

>> A lot of it is a great refresher for me. It's not often that I'm unfamiliar with it, because I have the teaching experience, but it's an excellent refresher course; it's an excellent way to transition into a new job. I feel much more comfortable with the idea of being in a new position.

>> Samantha, what number are you going to write on the bus?

>> 12.

>> What does a number 12 look like? Oh, nice job. A one and a two.

>> Okay. Read the title to me. "Tuck Everlasting." Okay.

>> We're also going to visit our teachers regularly and give them feedback. Most of our brand-new teachers will be observed the first or second day of school with the intent of giving them help.

>> Make sure you're following along. The other thing is if you do lose your place, raise your hand and ask me. That's what we're here for.

>> They'll spend a couple of hours with their principal; they're going to spend a couple of hours with their mentor this week, as part of the plan. The copy machine, how do I get things run off in the office? Where's the supply closet?

>> You're going to go to Microsoft Word and you're going to open Word. I want you to highlight the history and I want you to copy what they have in the history; I want you to open Word and I want you to paste it into Word. Have you guys done that before? Oh, good.

>> Then for the remainder of the year, every new teacher is going to be expected to go watch three other teachers teach. We want them to go watch our folks teaching the way we teach here in Phelps-Clifton Springs, so they're going to go out and do that. We're also going to ask them on a monthly basis to meet with both myself and the teachers' union president. So we're going to meet on a monthly basis and extend the summer training. It will give us an opportunity to revisit some of the concepts, to add new pieces, and to help them know where they need to build.

>> The first day, with all the prep, I felt confident; I felt like there were people that I could turn to if things went wrong. I had people checking up on me. There were familiar faces in the teachers. I felt confident about the material I was presenting, but I knew that if something went wrong, that I had the support. So I definitely appreciated having the time before.

>> Guys, technical difficulties means no homework. You lucked out! You lucked out!

>> Budget's a struggle. Every year it's a struggle. We were able to -- we're not nearly where we ought to be. We're still hovering near 1% of our budget, as well as everybody else is, but we're growing. This year we were able to invest in a reading recovery staff development program for our teachers at the primary level by taking money from elimination of one position that we no longer needed. We pay our water bill every month. We pay our electric every month. Because we have to. Well, we need to get the mind-set that our professional development is just as important.

>> Rochelle: Okay. Gerry wins the prize. He noticed that we spelled "superintendent" incorrectly in the graphics, not once but twice. So you don't have to send us any cards and letters! We'll make sure that we fix that next time around. (Chuckling) We are delighted to welcome right now Mike Ford, Phelps-Clifton Springs superintendent -- d-e-n-t -- and the president-elect of the National Staff Development Council. Delighted to have you with us. Mike, we saw in your plan those elements that were called for in the plan, job embedded, ongoing, data-driven. How do you evaluate that evaluation part? How do you know that this plan is working for you?

>> Michael Ford: It's such a difficult component, Rochelle, because when we look at professional development, we often do what we call level one evaluation, which is "What did you think of the session you attended?" And you hear a lot about the quality of the doughnuts and the temperature of the room. For us, we do want to get a reaction from our teachers about what they felt about the experiences they had in professional development, but we also need to try to triangulate the data, evaluate our process. We need to look at it from a variety of perspectives, from looking at our new teachers' classrooms and through the observation process, from the feedback that we get from their mentors as our mentors work with those teachers. And finally, eventually, we want to look at student performance: Are we giving our teachers the skills and tools that they need to be able to help our students achieve what we want them to achieve? So we're looking from all three perspectives.

>> Rochelle: The bottom line is the goal is for improved student performance, but I think it's interesting that that's not the only way you're evaluating if it's working, if your plan is working.

>> Michael Ford: You can't just look at test scores. If you look at just test scores, you may have exceptional staff development but it may be the wrong staff development to deal with your test scores. You know, safety, school safety is a major issue for our schools around the state. We have to provide staff development in that area. We're not going to see any performance increases in students from doing it, but we'll have safer schools.

>> Rochelle: The mentor program, how do you go about selecting who is going to mentor whom and is that a contractual situation? How do you set that up?

>> Michael Ford: It is part of our contract. Our contract does call for each new teacher to have a mentor. We have a mentor internship committee that works on that, and the principals have a major role in helping pair up people. We try to pair up first grade people with first grade people, and of course once in awhile we can't do that, so we have somebody that doesn't have a partner and so we find another grade level. A phys ed teacher in the elementary school, they might be the only phys ed teacher in the building, so we mentor them with someone else. But it's all collaboratively done with our association. We have a great teachers' association and we partner in this whole endeavor.

>> Rochelle: We're going to talk a little bit about how that union cooperation is so important, especially when we go to Half Hollow Hills. You talked about eliminating a position to help fund staff development. I bet those people over there are going, "Yea, look at that! They really did it!" What other kinds of funding methods have you used to help pay for some of what you're doing?

>> Michael Ford: Well, part of what we're looking at now is trying to utilize some of the funds that we have allocated, for example Title I. So many of our districts have taken their Title I allocations and put them into salaries. Well, that's an area that we can get the staff development funds from if we can back off some of the salary problems that we have in that area. Obviously, we looked at grants, although I'm always a little leery about just getting grant money to fund staff development because it's soft money and it goes away after the grant runs out. I think that's part of what feeds this whole bulimic nature of staff development, where we binge and we purge. We run full force with something because there's grant money to do it, but we don't embed it into our culture. That causes us to then lose that program and lose the initiative that we felt so strongly about to initiate.

>> Rochelle: Embedding in the culture is very important because the idea is that staff development is important and it doesn't make any difference if it's Mike Ford sitting in the superintendent's office or Rita Stein sitting in -- and we'll introduce Rita in a little bit -- or Gerry Mager or Rochelle Cassella or Joe Blow. So how do you go about making sure that the staff development plan you have really exists beyond any one individual in charge?

>> Michael Ford: Well, I think that was the beauty of the professional development planning process, that you have a committee of folks all invested in this, from our association to our administration to parents, curriculum specialists in the district, and superintendents. They each worked together to collaboratively create a plan. In our district, our goal is to create a community of learners, to have a sustaining system that would continue the growth opportunities for every employee. Our plan has a statement that learning is not optional for any employee in the district. And we believe that wholeheartedly. As much as it's not optional for any of our students, it's not optional for any of us. It doesn't matter what our job title is in the district; everybody must be a learner. But we don't want to do that with a hammer; we want to do that with opportunity. So we're excited about those things that we're putting in place now for our teachers, for our veteran faculty as well as our new faculty, from action research projects that are being done in classrooms where a teacher says, "I really want to look at how do I effectively teach spelling? I have not been pleased with how I have been doing it over the years, so I want to do action research in my own classroom;" people that want to get together and study various books, to provide those opportunities for people to read and to learn; on-line courses, giving people the opportunity to adjust time in staff development. It doesn't just have to be from 3 to 5 after school on Tuesdays. If a teacher is one of those folks that wakes up at 4 in the morning to start their day and they want to go on line for two hours and take a course, we should allow it and promote it. So we're looking at all of those options to create this vibrant community of learners among our adults.

>> Rochelle: Gerry, just quickly before we go on to our next video piece, you like the idea of action studies and study groups. You see them as the wave of the future?

>> Gerry Mager: I do. I see it as the future of research on teaching because it really eliminates the gap between research and practice. It allows people to learn about their practice and to develop that knowledge that is appropriate in that particular context and also to share that with other people who may benefit from that understanding.

>> Rochelle: Terrific. Great. Thank you. On to Suffolk County, to Half Hollow Hills Central School District. Professional development is also not an option. All teachers there are required to take 15 hours of training before the end of the school year next June. To facilitate meeting the requirement, the district itself offers some 200 courses, and I have a course booklet here. Look at this! This is the catalog they have and in here is 200 courses that teachers choose from. We visited Rita Stein's class on incorporating character education into your classroom.

>> Half Hollow Hills is truly a community of learners.

>> I have taken many P.D.P. courses to improve in the academic areas such as how children learn science, hands-on math. I have taken many computer courses.

>> The teachers, the administrators, the paraprofessionals, the custodians, the bus drivers, the grounds people are all involved in continuously learning and improving. It's part of the environment here.

>> I have also taken some of the computer courses that the district has offered and one of them was using computers to help implement the standards in the classroom, which as a fourth grade teacher with the state testing was very important to me.

>> We certainly don't want to go to doctors that were trained 20 years ago; things are different. We have to change with the times. We have to upgrade our skills.

>> What we focused on in our program is the purpose of school. It's very simple: Learn well and stay safe.

>> It began with a negotiated agreement that called for at the very beginning 5 hours and then 15 and ending after 4 years with 22.5 hours of professional development for every teacher in the district. We did a needs assessment with the administrators and the teachers: What do you want to learn? What do you think you need to learn to maximize the achievements of students in your classes?

>> The classroom is better because they're in it and they have to feel that kind of recognition from you, that school doesn't just happen to them; that they don't dress for school like going to a wedding or going to church or going to synagogue, that school is more important and a better place because they're in it and they're in your classroom.

>> What we tried to do with the courses that we offered was address the needs identified by the staff: Classroom management strategies, dealing with students with special needs in the regular classroom, a great need.

>> Even the playtime, they don't know how to play games with each other or socialize with each other the way that they used to. You know, I'll take out checkers and they'll look at it, "Am I supposed to play that with someone?"

>> Where we spent time sitting and playing things like Candyland with our children, they don't have a lot of those experiences.

>> But I also want things to entertain them. Like I have seen children just go on the computer and play different games, which is good in one way, but play together and entertain yourselves; use your imagination more. They look at me like, "What do you mean?"

>> When we were children, we went outside and played with whoever was there. Now moms make play dates and everything is structured and scheduled, and who they want to play with their child is the person they play with, not that they learn to play with everybody.

>> They hadn't taken courses, if they taught social studies or physics or chemistry, on reading and writing, very special subject area skills. All the assessments deal with writing. So we had to work with the teachers on how to break down questions, on how to do webbing, on how to diagram out sentences, courses on circular webs, courses on Claris work, on how to integrate technology within your classroom. Technology is a tool, like a pencil, like a pen. It's a tool. How do we use it? All those kinds of things were identified. How to get the children to address each other's needs, caring community, collegiality, some courses on how to deal with parents, how to get parents on your side.

>> Homework, home/school communication, the way we can communicate with parents and help them do their role in helping their children learn well and stay safe. What is the parent's role helping a child learn well and stay safe?

>> The parent needs to provide equity, what their child needs to succeed in school as well. There's equity in the classroom, but there also has to be equity at home. There has to be an environment at home that allows the student to succeed.

>> The whole purpose of it is to maximize student achievement. How do we get students to perform the very best and be the very best that they can be? So we have to evaluate the impact of our courses on student achievement.

>> Giving up that ownership and, you know, listening to the other ideas or be able to come to some sort of consensus rather than it being "my writing," and they'll come to you and say, "I don't agree with the rest of the group. Can I have my own answer?" And you have to say, "No, you're working all together. You have to come up with an answer you can all agree on."

>> Course offerings are varied and interesting. There are a lot of computer courses, but we also have a lot of the courses like multiple intelligences, cooperative learning. There are a lot of courses that help meet the standard-based tests in fourth grade and eighth grade, so people see them as something very valuable. They're not fluff, something just to fill time to meet a requirement. They're things that they can really apply to the classroom.

>> I said one of the things I would like to do with my class, and they always enjoy this, is role-playing. They set up the skit or situation, or you give them one, and then they act it out. They enjoy that and they can model the behaviors that way.

>> So political systems gets connected to democracy under the heading of power and authority.

>> I have been teaching for 31 years. I have two advanced degrees beyond my Bachelor's, and I don't believe I ever took a course on special education or what exactly was A.D.D. or A.D.H.D., what was the effect of Ritalin, what are the students thinking and feeling with special needs in my classroom? And I thought this course was terrific.

>> So even though you may have more information, just try to pick out what you think among yourselves is the most important. Okay? Nice job.

>> Last year, I began working in a blended social studies 9 and social studies 10 classroom. It was almost like, "Aha! Now I understand what was going on all these years." I mean I sort of knew, but to actually put it into a context that reaffirmed a lot of the things that I had felt was wonderful. And it also offered practical strategies for meeting the needs of students with special needs.

>> ...everything you knew about the world history theme. Mrs. Gordon and I discussed this yesterday during our planning period, and we thought if you could come up with four bang, bang, bang -- four things --

>> When we say "power and authority," what are four words that come to your mind right away that you can relate to that theme? You're not writing full sentences but just words that relate to the theme, Adam. Again, go back to your notebook. What I would do, maybe look at some of the vocabulary words that we have been giving you that relate to each theme. That might help start you off.

>> And now, as part of the professional development plan in this district, I will be asked, Beth and I will be asked to in-service our colleagues.

>> As you leave, you must take a Smartie. Thank you. Great job. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Nice job. You're the best. Nice job. Alicia, get out of town! You're terrific!

>> Rochelle: The class that Rita was teaching is Connecting Character to Conduct. "Helping Students Do the Right Thing" is the booklet she has available, and if you have more interest or questions about that particular staff development piece, we'll have Rita's information up on the web site. We'll give you more information about that later. But we want to talk right now with Rita Stein -- delightful to have you with us -- about the evaluation part of your program. We talked with Mike about how he's going to evaluate. Evaluation is built right into that whole contract negotiation and requirement for staff development. Tell me how it works.

>> Rita Stein: When teachers opt to take a professional development course, they have to get their principal's approval. It's not a central office function. It's principal and staff member. So it has to focus on the building needs, a district need. The building principal then reviews it and approves it. When the staff member is evaluated at the end of the year in their summative evaluation, there's a discussion of how the professional development program was integrated within their classroom performance, and then at the end of the year, what occurs is that the principal and the teacher discuss what professional development course they're going to take the following year. So it's a cycle. So the professional development is not an entity in and of itself. It supports student learning; it supports the building and district goals as projected, as viewed by the building principal and the staff member together; it's a shared vision. It's a real exciting notion.

>> Rochelle: So the idea is that I just can't go in and pick from one of the 200 courses and say, "Ah, I think I'll pick this one because it sounds interesting to me." The idea is that it has to be linked back to what's happening in my classroom and what the data tells me is in need in my particular classroom?

>> Rita Stein: Absolutely. The exciting thing about our program is that in addition to the one 15-hour course that our teachers are taking this year, it's sort of exploded and our teachers are taking four and five courses. So the principals are just so thrilled that it's sort of like a monster in and of itself; it has really exploded. Our teachers are taking so many courses and teachers are teaching teachers, and that's the beauty of it. We have a community of learners. Mike talked about a real community of learners, and the discussion in the cafeteria and the teachers' room is, "What course did you take? How was it? What kind of program did you like?" It's a different kind of conversation and it's very exciting for all of us. The administrators teach courses. I teach a course; we all teach courses. And the enrollment is based on how well you teach. So that is the equalizer of all of us: Do you have enrollment in your class?

>> Rochelle: So the other idea goes back to the teachers who are also teaching, the academy of teachers who are teaching your courses, you say they also take a course in how to teach adult learners.

>> Rita Stein: We want to make sure that we are teaching in the way that adults learn.

>> Rochelle: Which goes back to what we were talking about in the classroom, teaching in a variety of ways in which students need to learn, right?

>> Rita Stein: It's very exciting because sitting with all the -- we call ourselves the academy, and it's the administrators and the teachers, and we learn about how to run a class for adults, how to set parameters for the adults. What is your role as a teacher as opposed to a colleague? It's a very different role. And we support each other. What we're planning on doing is having a web site where we can talk to each other about, "This happened in my course. What do you think?" What do we do with teachers that are perhaps absent for a course? Do they get credit? How many absences can you have? It's a very interesting discussion. It's a very important discussion.

>> Rochelle: Gerry is nodding and smiling because this goes right back to what you were talking about, teachers talking with one another.

>> Gerry Mager: Well, you know, Rita is illustrating the importance of context-specific knowledge and skills, and values for that matter as well. Teacher preparation is general, but it really has to be practiced in a specific context. And who better to help people learn how to do that than people who are already knowledgeable about that context, who have been successful there and who can have the kinds of skills that she's describing that help them help others? That's the kind of knowledge base that is really going to produce student achievement and, for that matter, larger issues of satisfaction and joy in classrooms and in schools.

>> Rochelle: Terrific. We also heard Lou saying that now he's going to turn around and teach a course as well. So it's that whole idea of everybody gets to be an expert at something as well, which is something that we talk about with students in the classroom. The other issue I want to hit with you before we move on is when your classes are offered. I thought this was so interesting. we were talking about when is the best time to offer classes? Tell us what your teachers wanted and what you're seeing there?

>> Rita Stein: This is really exciting for all of us because as administrators we try to predict, "Well, our teachers want this and our teachers want that." And we said, "Well, let's do a needs assessment." And we used something we modified from the National Staff Development Council. We asked them, "When do you want to take the courses?" We have a changing teaching staff now, a lot more younger teachers and senior teachers with different needs at this point. And they preferred to take their courses on weekends, and we went, "You've got to be kidding!" Well, I'm teaching this weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. A lot of our staff members are teaching weekends because during the week they're at college courses; some have young children or they have elderly parents, and they have difficulty in schedules, but Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday, they can wear jeans and a T-shirt; they can come together. We try to offer several courses at the same location; we give them a lunch break together so they can have lunch and talk about the different course offerings. It's worked out really, really well. But it was really eye-opening for all of us.

>> Rochelle: That's exciting. So if your automatic assumption is that nobody is going to want to come and do this on a Friday night or a Saturday or an evening, that's not necessarily so. Great. Thank you very much. Well, Public School 321 in Brooklyn is a member of Community School District 15. It's considered a high-performing elementary school with most students doing very well on the fourth grade state assessments. But that doesn't mean that there isn't any room for improvement, and everyone from District 15's superintendents, the P.S. 321 principals and teachers, believe that professional development is one means of helping the school's students continue to achieve. As we visit the classrooms and some grade-level planning meetings at P.S. 321, listen and watch carefully because you're going to see many of the elements important to staff development that we have been talking about, things like common teacher planning and discussion time, peer observations, teacher study groups, all inexpensive professional development that's related to the real work the teachers are doing.

>> "Something twisted inside me. "Would you?" Pap asked. "Pap!" "Listen," Pap said, "we couldn't find a better home for her than here."

>> A comprehensive professional development plan is really multifaceted. I think most important is a culture, an atmosphere in the school, a community that everyone in the school is learning all the time, that we all go into this as learners.

>> Turn to somebody next to you and talk about what you think might be about to happen.

>> What do you think, Sandra? Do you have predictions? >> I don't know.

>> Do you think --

>> Yeah.

>> When we talk about what it means to be at P.S. 321, one of the first things that I'll say is that if you come to this school, you need to be committed to always learning.

>> Who else has something that they want to learn?

>> How many different kinds of maps are there?

>> Sometimes we use video. We found it's really effective when teachers are willing to video a lesson and classes. Sometimes it's privately, and I would always give a teacher an option, take it home and see if you want to share it with your colleagues or not, but it's enormously valuable to us to all look at something together.

>> Jeannie was saying a globe will tell you where places are but a map tells you where places are and how to get there.

>> We have a side-by-side system. I might work with a teacher. I might put a student together. "Let's try to figure out together why this child is having difficulty." "Why don't we have a conference together? Then we can talk about it."

>> I have been trying to get them to succinctly say what happened in the last chapter and then feed that into the main idea of the book.

>> You're meeting with colleagues before school to plan out your social studies. Maybe you're in a study group on a new professional book that came out that you've signed up for.

>> The main idea but then also the chapter break, the idea that chapters as they build, support --

>> Right. Big idea and smaller ideas.

>> Right.

>> It means going to grade meetings every two weeks. It means being serious about the grade meetings and maybe reading a chapter of a book beforehand, maybe sharing some material, maybe bringing a piece of work that we're going to analyze.

>> You know, they read this over the summer and then I read aloud to them now, and it's really rich. It's really rich.

>> And you gave it to them?

>> Yes.

>> And you had questions to think about?

>> Yeah.

>> What we want people to do in these grade meetings is to think about their units of study. We're focusing specifically on reading, writing and social studies and how their units of study might develop over the year, understanding these will change as they get to know their kids, but to have a long-range view, a big plan, and to be able to say, "These are the units of study that I think make sense in my grade; these are the units of study that I want to do in this order," and also look across the units of study to where reading and writing go together.

>> If I'm doing a character and I know I want to teach character study in reading and I know I want to teach realistic fiction in writing this year, let's do them at the same time. If I'm doing a craft study, maybe I can use that same author and reading in the fall so I don't have to get the kids really familiar with the books at the same time I'm trying to look at their writing on the books.

>> My first reaction is usually to plan social studies and science for the year because that somehow seems like a really good spine to wrap things around and because they're not as settled. I always do that and I just have never done it this way for reading and writing. >> We were there to map out as a grade what's going to happen and when. It was very helpful for us because when we were mapping out, we kind of got stuck and were saying, "Well, we don't know our children as readers yet, as well as we will. We don't know when we're going to move into something else," and our colleague, Chris, had this great lesson plan. She had everything detailed.

>> What I have done is I've put down sort of the literary aspects that I want to cover. What I don't have is the overview of reading lessons, what the kids are going to be doing, you know, the actual approach in terms of the kids' behavior. But then when I can do my mini-lessons, that's where that comes in. But I know sort of the big question that I want to get covered at that time.

>> I can wait with that, knowing, "Okay, we can do this, even though we don't know our children as readers yet as well as we would like at this point," but it gave us a sense of where we can go.

>> Especially because it's kindergarten, I think there's going to be a lot of structures, so a lot on, you know, how long are you focusing on these partnerships...

>> This morning's meeting was extremely valuable to me because one thing I need to learn is the curriculum and the structures and the expectations of kindergarten. And hearing what other teachers are doing, I'm not only hearing about what the long-term plan needs to look like but I'm hearing about the ideas that they have to share so that I can help facilitate the plans as we need to implement them.

>> When you start doing this, it's to kind of see how the reading and writing go together, if they do, when they do, and knowing that in advance, if we're planning it out, that helps you kind of pace when you're introducing certain kinds of books.

>> "Three little pigs." This one starts different than the other stories we have been reading. The other stories all start like "once upon a time," do you remember that?

>> All: Yeah.

>> This doesn't say that. It says, "Three lively pigs lived together in a barnyard with their mother."

>> We also worked very closely with Teachers College reading and writing project. We have a staff developer that comes into our building between 18 and 25 days. We hire subs. That's part of my budget. I build in sub days so that we can have lab-site classrooms. We have every single teacher in the school participate for a cycle -- it may be a five-day cycle, a ten-day cycle -- where a staff developer who has a particular focus that fits in with our school's professional development priorities might do a demo lesson in a fourth grade class, let's say, and there are four other teachers watching her.

>> So you're going to read this challenging piece of paper, this challenging little article, with your partner. Try to figure out what this thing is talking about. What is it saying about government?

>> It was from the staff that we really decided on our professional development focus for the year from a combination of the staff, the standards, city mandates, district mandates, but as we analyzed our kids and so what happened in our classrooms, I think we all came to see that we have a group of struggling readers, of kids who are not reaching standards who, in a school like ours, could fall between the cracks.

>> There is a book of rules that tells our government...

>> ... how to do its work.

>> It's called the United States Constitution.

>> We kind of decided together as a staff. We had a lot of talk together about having a professional development focus on meeting the needs of struggling readers better.

>> Shall we read it again?

>> Yeah. It's kind of hard. "The leaders of the different states got together to create this government."

>> And we do get certain things from the district, certain budgeted items that cover some of our professional development class. For example, 100 sub days to send people to Teachers College, calendar days. Some staff developer time. In addition to the 100 sub days the district gives us, I wrote in another 125, because without freeing up teachers to go visit each other, go visit other schools, I don't think it can really happen.

>> I want to say you guys did a really good job of trying to read this hard piece of writing about the government and this hard topic. So everybody pat yourselves on the back. You did a very nice job. I'm very impressed.

>> What we do is look at our overall budget, because we do a school day's budgeting, and we see what other money we can eke out of the budget for professional development, through creative scheduling, for example. So by having something like a grade recess where several classes can be covered by two teachers, we can build in extra professional development time; it doesn't really cost us more money. I put in a lot of money for professional books because we study together as a school. Every year we have a book we read together. Last year we studied a book on spelling by Diane Snowball and Faye Bolton. I bought it for the entire staff. Everybody had it.

>> "The wolf watched from behind a tree as the little pig and his friends worked on the house. "Heh, heh, it won't be strong enough to keep me out," he thought." Is he right?

>> All: No.

>> We hope not.

>> Teaching can be really isolating. You can be in your own world, especially if you don't have a partner to teach with. And so when you get together with other teachers on your grade and you really talk about what you're doing, it's great; it gives you lots of ideas. When you have the big picture in mind, when you can see it all the time, when you're sharing that with your colleagues, you can really see the children develop through that and you really see results. You see things -- you see things work.

>> What did the words tell us? Did he get away from the wolf? The picture shows him getting caught, but the words tell us something different. It says that he gets away, right? He wiggles free.

>> Good teachers are always thinking about how they can make things better, and the staff development pushes you to do that.

>> Rochelle: Great faces. We apologize that Liz Phillips couldn't make it with us today, but we would like to thank P.S. 321 for allowing us into their classroom for the video. One of the things I think is very interesting is that we focus on the planning time, the common planning time that P.S. 321 makes available as part of this professional development. And in our old, traditional mind-set, Gerry, we wouldn't think of common planning time as professional development.

>> Gerry Mager: Well, it's so interesting because you see what they were doing, and it's so well illustrated in the video clip, that teachers are taking their daily practices, the things that they see Monday morning at 9 a.m., and they're thinking with one another about these things, about the experiences they have had. That's so important for having them convert that experience into knowledge, knowledge that will not only sustain them the next Monday morning and the Monday mornings thereafter, but that they can share with one another and can inform one another's practice as well. Embedding the opportunity for people to convert their understandings from just experience into knowledgeable pieces of information that they can hold on to is how that happens.

>> Rochelle: That reflection. Okay. We have also seen in all of our pieces how important it is to the success of a professional development plan that they have the input and support of the teachers' union, as we see in this story.

>> It's important for us to include all these folks, including school boards, including parents, including other community agencies, community leaders.

>> I'm blessed with the best teachers' union in the state. I have the best union president in the state, and she's going to hold us accountable. This week we're doing this new teacher training and I'm focusing on these five days and she remembers that on that action plan it said that these teachers are going to be attending an hour-and-a-half workshop once a month, so she has the schedule done.

>> We analyzed some of the data from the student assessments and saw that we needed to change as a leadership unit, as a teaching unit, so that we could provide the kids with a better education and be able to have them be more successful on the assessments. The major part of the association backed the plan thoroughly. We had some people questioning the amount of time they should put in for evenings or summertime, and when the option was given that they would have release time from the classroom, that they would be able to have the same opportunities as everybody else but on their schedule, they backed the plan also.

>> The success of the plan itself is the belief that the organization will grow and achieve more in direct relation to every individual growing and achieving more. So no one is outside of the circle.

>> The number of hours was probably the toughest part of negotiations. For the first year, the teachers needed to do five hours. For the second two years, it's 15 hours, and for the fourth year, it's going to be 22.5 hours. And that was a concern of ours. We were worried about how the membership would react. And really it's been much, much better than we expected. And I think that's because of the terms of the way it's written. Everything that the teachers take as P.D.P. and any of the others that they take after they have fulfilled their requirement counts as in-service credit and that counts for column movement and some salary enhancement. We find that it's almost competitive signing up for the courses, and a lot of them get closed out; there isn't enough room for everybody who would like to take them. And a lot of the courses are offered on Saturday, too, or Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, to make it convenient for people, and people have come to those things; they have responded.

>> Rochelle: You also have to make them quality courses and if they really relate to what teachers are doing in the classroom, they will come. A quick note: both the New York State United Teachers and the National Education Association have a professional development program for new teachers. For more information, you can contact Tom Beaudoin at NYSUT, (518) 459-5400, or Rosa Soria at NEA, (518) 462-6451. There's addresses and web site information available there as well. Now on to our tool tips, those items of interest from the schools we visited.

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>> Rochelle: If those tips moved a little too quickly for you, you'll be able to find them on our newly expanded web site. In addition to the tool kit, you'll find the entire facilitator's guide, hyperlinks to additional resources, our program survey which we would like you to complete while you're there, and a complete program schedule, along with a list of changes we have made to our programs based on what you told us you wanted to see. We'll be adding other features in the future so you'll want to know how to get to this important resource. Our address is                http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/satellite/html.

That's what you're going to see there: Tools for Schools, bookmarks, teleconference transcripts, facilitator's guide, lots of resources. That's all the time we have available today. Thank you to my guests in the studio, to the teachers and students who let us into their classrooms and to their training sessions. Make sure that you're with us on Wednesday, November 8th, from 3 to 4 p.m., when we look at differentiated instruction, a tool to help all students achieve their maximum potential. I'm Rochelle Cassella. Have a good day and check out the facilitator's guides coming to a school near you.