Lebanon High: Rediscovering the Possibilities

Toni Enloe
Mar 22, 2010

It has been a while since your LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies training and your faculty was once excited about the possibilities but things got busy at school and momentum waned. What can you do to reenergize and refocus the staff?

Lebanon High was facing some of the same issues but with the encouragement and support of the Superintendent, the Assistant to the Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, an energetic faculty, and school leadership, they decided to address their needs head on. After analyzing school data, an enthusiastic administrative team mapped out a year- long plan to refocus on LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies. Components of the plan included a refresher training on the LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies model, conferencing days with a LEARNING-FOCUSED instructional specialist, on site professional development on the Extending Thinking strategies, and sending administrators and teacher leaders to a Training of Trainers Workshop.

The faculty and staff at Lebanon High had been trained over the course of five years. Prior to the start of school, some teachers participated in LEARNING-FOCUSED Scaffolding Grade Level Learning training while others from the math department participated in LEARNING-FOCUSED Math Instruction. All staff and faculty participated in a LEARNING-FOCUSED refresher. During the refresher training teachers were reacquainted with the LEARNING-FOCUSED Model, introduced to some recent updates and given the opportunity to plan. As part of the follow-up to the training the faculty met a couple of times during the year with a LEARNING-FOCUSED Instructional Specialist to talk about what was working well and discuss any questions they might still have.

Gary Zelinske, assistant principal, designed a staff development plan that would utilize the 2 hour late start mornings once a month to address Extending Thinking strategies. When asked why they chose to focus on Extending Thinking Zelinske stated, "We knew how important Extending Thinking skills are and how they can deepen student understanding of content." During each meeting they focused on one or two of the eight strategies. In some cases they identified a couple of strategies that complemented each other (ex. analyzing perspectives and constructing support) and focused on those. Each staff development workshop modeled the Acquisition Lesson format (EATS). Teachers reviewed the steps for each target strategy, practiced the strategy and designed an Extending Thinking activity. The next month they were charged with teaching the lesson they had designed. Mr. Zelinske thought the training went well for the first time. After reflection he offered the following advice, "Focus on only 1 Extending Thinking strategy at a time and allow more time for staff to implement it as part of their class- 2 or 3 months instead of 1 month for 2 of the skills." He recognized, "It was too much for the staff. We went over at least 2 at a time and 3 the first month which we thought were the simpler ones -compare/contrast, etc." He summarized it by saying, "We also needed a higher level of accountability from the administration. We did lay out a plan but should have been more detailed and clearly laid out what we wanted done and by when...smaller chunks of information with clear modeling and practice in the training and time to implement with a good plan and a high level of accountability.

In an effort to provide additional support at the school level, the principal, an assistant principal, a member of the central office staff, and several teacher leaders participated in the LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies Training of Trainers workshop at the LEARNING-FOCUSED National Conference in February 2009. Participants returned to school to share what they had learned with their departments.

The faculty and staff at Lebanon continue to move toward pervasive implementation improving their AYP status by meeting 7 additional targets last year. This year they are emphasizing formative assessment (distributed summarizing with Assessment Prompts) and summarizing at the end of class. In addition, they will be focusing on reading comprehension strategies and vocabulary. They will still continue to monitor all other LEARNING-FOCUSED strategies that have been implemented.

Many thanks to Gary Zelinske, Assistant Principal, Lebanon Senior High.

For more information about Training of Trainers workshops and Unlocking the Secrets Version 7 (a Learning-Focused update workshop), check out the products menu on LEARNING-FOCUSED home page.

Our What Moves You solution is an ideal option for 1 - 2 hour professional development sessions!