Feature Story

Think Big, Start Small

- by Robin J. Heyden

Debbie Daniels has some very big goals for the state of Kentucky.  “We want to bring high quality instruction to every classroom, every student, every day.”  Debbie is the Director of the Kentucky Cohesive Leadership System (KyCLS) for the state. In that capacity, she oversees the instructional support network for 174 Kentucky school districts - that’s 1,249 schools, 43,788 teachers, and some 668,000 public school students.

Kentucky schools are faced with all-too familiar challenges – students performing below average, not motivated or engaged with their school work and instructors struggling to teach higher-order thinking skills. As Debbie describes it, “it’s not just about struggling schools, we are looking for improvement across all grade levels and all content areas. It isn’t an intervention for a particular group or performance level we’re seeking, it is an intervention strategy for every kid.”

To accomplish these ambitious goals, Debbie and her colleagues went in search of the best tools and programs. It was quite clear that, before they started on any particular course of action, they first had to get educators across the state to come to agreement about what makes for high quality instruction. Another extremely ambitious goal.

In the summer of 2006, Debbie came to Cambridge, Massachusetts as part of the Executive Leadership Program for Educators project (ExEL) which is a Harvard University program focused on working with high need district and state superintendaents and, while there, she was introduced to David Perkins and the WIDE program. She was immediately struck by the match between WIDE’s Teaching for Understanding curriculum and Kentucky’s state assessments which call for “performances of understanding” at higher order levels of thinking. In the Teaching for Understanding framework, Debbie saw a way to get the state’s education community to that baseline agreement on what makes for high quality instruction. Once there, they could work together to devise curriculum with built-in opportunities for students to demonstrate their understanding.

After taking the Teaching for Understanding (TFU) 1 and 2 courses herself, she refocused KyCLS and State Education Department funds to begin a state-wide program. The funding covered the WIDE program’s course fees for participating Kentucky teachers, administrators, and state department staff. Debbie put out a call for volunteer districts.  “From the beginning, I wanted this to be done on a volunteer basis. Volunteers are willing participants, who look for ways to make positive changes.” She started small, working with the existing leadership teams at the first volunteering districts.

Most Kentucky schools have a leadership team. The team membership varies from school to school (sometimes an assistant superintendent, an instructional supervisor, the principal, and always a couple of teachers) but their goals are always the same - to build capacity within that school, give resources and support for everyone, and provide resilience so that the departure of any one person doesn’t result in a loss of momentum.

The leadership teams in those volunteer districts took the TFU1 course and quite a few went on to take TFU2, Data Wise, or the Leading for Understanding (LFU) courses.  In addition to their online instruction, they met face-to-face a number of times throughout the courses.  Debbie reports that the team model worked very well for them. “When there are four or five educators, from the same school participating, along with their principal and maybe a supervisor, they provide support for each other.” The TFU methods also helped them model a functioning professional community for their colleagues. Throughout the courses they learned to work together, debate and discuss, challenge each other with constructive feedback, and share with those outside their immediate circle.

From 2006 - 2008, the list of participating districts grew. Today, a full third (52 of 174) of the state’s districts have taken WIDE courses and apply the teaching for understanding methods in their classrooms.  How have things changed for those teachers?  Debbie says:

• they now have a common language with which to discuss and plan,
• they are working to define characteristics of high quality instruction in every content area,
• educators now know the difference between learning and understanding,
• there is a higher level of enthusiasm and excitement among the teachers; they are more engaged and invigorated about their work.

And how have things changed for the students? Debbie reports they have observed a marked increase in student enthusiasm and engagement. Interestingly, the students help to expand the program.  Debbie illustrates this with a story from one district’s elementary school teacher, “The kids love the way I teach now, they like the approach.  And when they go to other classrooms and tell the teachers what’s going on in my classroom, those teachers come to me and ask what I’m up to.”

The best way to understand the changes taking place in Kentucky, is to focus on an individual teacher, at a particular school, who made a specific instructional change.

Meet Melanie Benitez.  Melanie teaches sixth grade at Engelhard Elementary School in Jefferson County, near the Ohio River.  Melanie volunteered to take TFU1 along with her principal, Theresa Mayer, and a few others from their district. Based on what she learned through her TFU experience, Melanie decided to redesign a math activity on the concept of volume.  Kentucky is a big coal producing state and the students see large barges, carrying coal, everyday on the river. In Melanie’s new teaching unit, she gives the students a number. Their task is to design a (scaled) barge that will accommodate that volume of coal. They can vary the height, width, and length of the barge but it has to fit in the river and it has to carry the prescribed amount of coal.  After the students build their scale-model barges, Melanie comes along with a container carrying the specified volume of coal. The students test each of their models by dumping the coal so they can see for themselves whether or not their models work. (Click here to see a video clip from Melanie’s classroom)

For Melanie, designing this unit was a big “ah ha” moment. In her previous lesson plan on volume, she would introduce the concept, explain what volume was, and then ask the students to practice calculating volume with sample problems.  Often the problems involved real-life situations, like the coal barge. In her revised activity, Melanie does not tell the students what volume is – the kids figure it out for themselves.

As Debbie explains it, “we don’t know what challenges the students of today will encounter as the adults of tomorrow. They will have to explore, research, and problem solve in arenas that we cannot predict. So the best thing we can do for them is to teach the process of inquiry and problem solving.” Or as David Perkins would say, we need to “educate students for the unknown.” Equipped with these skills like these, Perkins says students become nimble and life-long learners.

Certainly a contributing factor to Kentucky’s success thus far is the concept of “reversioning”.  In the example of the coal-barge volume lesson, Melanie was able to improve an existing activity by thinking in terms of performances of understanding.  As Debbie explains, “If teachers think they have to start all over again with a completely new system, they will resist.  We show them that rather than ‘start over’, they will ‘reversion’ their strongest existing activities to improve their quality and make them every stronger.” Melanie Benitez “reversioned” a good mathematics lesson and, in the process, took it from good to great.

When asked what K-12 education in Kentucky will look like three years from now, Debbie confidently envisions that leadership teams from every school in the state will have taken the TFU courses and will be active participants in district partnerships. Sometimes, she confesses, that she feels impatient – “I’d like to see more change happen faster”.  But she quickly reminds herself that they are all working hard to overcome many, many years of old habits and patterns.  “Systemic change like this takes time.  But it’s worth it.”