Collective Responsibility & Collaborative Practices at MHS
By: Jason Gingold
In previous blogs, we wrote about Montpelier's four pillars of "building limitless futures for every learner." This post explores how Montpelier High School's commitment to every student means teachers are building a system of "collective responsibility and collaborative practices" to share standard planning time and are responsible for student learning.
At the beginning of the year, MHS established a Guiding Coalition, a team of teachers from each department to help lead and guide our plan to be collectively responsible for every student's learning. The MHS schedule allows time for core instruction, intervention (Solon Block), and teacher collaboration (7:30-8:15 time) which assist in practicing the best collaborative systems. In addition, we are prioritizing and articulating the essential learning outcomes across courses and have started universal screening of students (REN STAR) assessments to identify students needing intervention. All of these crucial tasks are vital to supporting students in their learning. And what we have been working on in different departments is the collaboration between teachers to help students meet proficiency levels.
Montpelier High School has courses like Biology and Global Citizenship with more than one teacher teaching a section. For example, Tom Sabo and Katy Chabot teach biology. They collaboratively design and follow the same unit plans, lesson plans, and assessments. Collaboration by teachers allows students who need assistance to seek out either of them for support, and it does not matter which teacher a student has. The learning outcomes are the same. Tom and Katy also have common time to discuss student work and review data to see which students understand the core concepts and who needs re-teaching during a Solon block. This same collaboration system happened in Global Citizenship with Helen Sullivan and Perry Bellow-Handelman.
Helen Sullivan and Perry Bellow-Handelman taught the same units and lessons, administered the assessment (presentation), and reviewed the student work with a shared understanding of how the summative would be assessed. Then working together, they called back students who needed to be re-taught or re-take the assessment. By working together, they could re-teach, evaluate, and confirm students completed the unit with an understanding of the standard. And by working together, they could serve students from either section of Global Citizenship regardless of who the teacher was.
Before February break, we witnessed a third example of collaborative practices in Algebra One with Tammie Beattie and Whitney Machnik. First, they met before the unit and planned together. Then they taught the lesson and were consistent in language, their learning standards, and common forms of assessment. Then they assessed students and reviewed the scores to identify which students needed re-teaching, who was proficient, and who needed re-assessment. The intervention was completed within five days of the first summative assessment.
Teachers with joint planning and collaboration time also have more support for one another's work. Students are likely to stay caught up and can work with either teacher on getting help during Solon block. MHS is finding by having teachers collaborate and work together to plan and assess student learning, there is an improvement in student learning, and fewer students seem to need to catch up in the first round of instruction. MHS is building intentional systems to support students and teachers' instructional planning and learning to increase collaboration.
