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Designing a Culture for Deeper Learning

www.newtechnetwork.org

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Sit with the group of people who know the same kid, per the pre-workshop email

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Facilitator

Kevin Gant

Director of Network Innovation at New Tech Network

11 years at New Tech

19 years in classroom

Work with schools K-12

Original teaching assignment: Physics, Chemistry, Math

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Focus

Classroom culture. You will also consider school culture, but the action will be focussed on classroom level work. We wish teachers to engage in some level of “diagnosis” and action. Today is part 1, that includes diagnosis.

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Theory of Action

ToA: If individual teachers intentionally design activities to cultivate both the skill and culture of a learning community, then students and teachers will be better prepared to take on deeper learning such as projects requiring students to collaborate, exercise agency and drive the collective growth in content and the learning outcomes.

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Getting Started with the New Tech Learning Outcomes

Traditional

Project -Based Learning

Learner- centered Culture

Student Centered Instruction & NTN LOs

New Tech Learning Outcomes

(NT Inst. Practices)

(NT Inst. Practices) +

(NT Culture Practices)

(Whole School NT Model)

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Introductions

Name
Grade and/or Role
One good thing about the culture in your classroom and one challenging thing about it.

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Driving Question for today’s learning:

How do we design and sustain practices that support ALL students?

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Here is the plan for this workshop...

Examine your school or classroom, and consider the culture there.
Narrow Your Focus on one or two areas of culture
Explore several practices designed to support inclusive and culturally responsive school/classroom
We use this Website to deploy resources.

In general, we want you to think about culture at the classroom level, but we are curious about school considerations too.

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Warm Up

Think first, and don’t respond verbally yet:

Imagine walking into two different classrooms that you have heard about. One has a reputation for having a “toxic” culture. The other has a reputation for having a “healthy” culture. How do they differ?

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Warm Up Process- What is Culture?

2-3 of you in breakout rooms.
Share your thoughts and write them down here.
If you get done before others, read the other groups’ ideas, and look for patterns.

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Start your definition

With the people in your group, use the examples of “toxic” and “healthy” culture to come up with a quick definition of culture so far. Your definition should be 2 sentences or less (recommend LESS). Be ready to share with the large group.

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Examining your culture

We will go from the individual level to the institution level as you consider the culture of your classroom / school.

Individual → Empathy Map.

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Opening Questions for Empathy Map

Choose a marginalized student (you define “marginalized”).

Why did you choose this student?

How are you defining “marginalized”?

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Part 1 - Empathy Map - Individual

What do they need to DO?

Feel safe and included enough to learn in your classroom/school

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Part 2 - Extend to larger system (classroom or school)

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Which Grade to do?

Let’s do one empathy map per grade level.

You choose which level you want to join, and change your name in the Zoom Room.

I would like to do 5th grade.

Bob Ross → 5 - Bob Ross

I’ll then put you into groups, and you decide who you will map.

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Empathy Map Debrief

Choose any, or more than one of these to answer:

What did consideration of the individual tell you about your classroom? Your school?
How might your knowledge of this student guide further discussions into culture?
From part 2 (the second empathy map) - is there any area (of the 4) that you feel might merit the most immediate attention? Which and why?
What did you think of the 4 categories in part 2?

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Possible Break

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Read about the 4 Elements

Lesson plan: Read about it, Talk about it.

7 minutes reading

Share Out:

What do you notice from the reading? (a quote is good here)
What do you think? What are the implications for your classroom or school from this reading?
What questions do you have?

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A Definition of Culture

“Culture is the way we do things around here.”

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Go Back to “Toxic Vs Healthy”

Where did your initial thoughts agree with this formulation?

Where are they different?

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Narrow your Focus

Discuss with a colleague: What are at most 2 areas that you want to explore/address more in your classroom? Share your rationale for your choice(s). You can focus only on 1 if you like, but we will revisit during our next session.

4 Areas:

Relationships
Identity
Rituals
Norms

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Homework

Choose 1 or both or neither

Do something this week that you can report back on.

Do an empathy map of one or more of your kids in your classroom.

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I used to think…. Now I think….

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Feedback on the design Session I

Please take this short survey (5-8 min.)

LINK to SURVEY

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See you tomorrow 12:30 - 3:30 am PT

Deep dive into the 4 Elements of Culture
Introduce the NT Culture Practices
Plan a PDSA to try out some new practices

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NT Culture Practices

After lunch Session

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Welcome back!

Recap from last session

Toxic Vs Health Culture
Empathy Mapping
4 Elements of Culture
Consider 1-2 areas of focus

Remaining Outcomes:

Questions of 4 elements
Introduce the NT Culture Practices
Plan a PDSA to try out some new practices

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Additional Facilitator

Stacia Snow

Also Director of Network Innovation
Resides in Hudson, NY
Taught at Tech Valley HS in Albany, NY

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Warm-up Activity:

Recall the questions we addressed last time.

Consider sharing your response to ANY of these questions:

Did you share this list with anyone at your school? How did that go?
Did you chat about any of the 4 Elements of culture? (Relationships, Identity, Norms, Rituals)
Which of the 4 elements are you considering after you did the empathy map, read about the 4 elements?

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Questions Aligned to the 4 Elements of Culture

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Phase 1: Read and Discuss with your group

Collaborative groups on your staff. This can be grade levels or departments, or PLCs, or something else you prefer
Read the questions. About 6 min.
Find 1 or 2 questions that stand out to you.
Go around in your grade level/table, sharing the question(s) you are interested in and why. Feel free to let the conversation flow after your share, which might include answering the question.
Move to the next person.
Facilitator will go to each room after 15 minutes to assess where you are.

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Phase 2: Make a decision, and share it

GOAL: Use these questions and your work so far in the workshop as a diagnostic. Determine which of the 4 elements you wish to focus on. You can choose one or two.
Each person shares which of the 4 areas (relationships, rituals, identity, norms) they are going to focus on, and why. If there is a question that is really driving the choice, share that question too. You might also share - is this the same area you were thinking of this morning, or has it changed? (It is ok to change)
Each person shares out.

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Connecting Your Area of Focus To Your Practice

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The Culturally Responsive Classroom focus for this workshop...

Actively seeks to understand the classroom/schools role in BOTH perpetuating and challenging inequities.
Establishes an authentic connection with students based on knowing them personally, building trust and mutual respect for one another.
Gives feedback in ways that can be heard by the student and develops individual agency in the learning process.
Designed to meet the needs of the student

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BREAK

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NTN Learning �Organization Framework

This framework is how we build the capacity of the system to adapt in the ongoing pursuit of College and Career Readiness for all students. This framework creates a path to improve performance around short-term strategic goals and long-term capacity/durability of the school.

NTN Learning Organization Framework: Quick Explanation

The interior represents a structured cycle of inquiry and process for improvement in relation to a specific focus. A focus is the specific thing about student learning that a school wants/needs to change. For the sake of this explanation, lets assume the school wants to improve the quality of student writing.
The sides of the triangle represent key conditions that enable or impede learning and improvement at the organizational/system level.
As a school pursues a specific focus, invariably they will encounter some of these conditions as impediments to progress. A common example is that as schools begin to try to do deep inquiry around Looking at Student Work as a source of data they recognize that they do not have the structural conditions to do such work – specifically, they lack the time and space to engage in that type of work.
As the school continues to look at student writing, they actually begin to make structural adjustments to the school that enable collective learning. Let’s say that they modify their master schedule the following year to create a 90 minute time each week devoted to adult learning.
Consequently, what has happened is that the school has actually gotten better at two things. First, they have improved the quality of student writing by working through the structured cycle of inquiry. Second, and more importantly, the have increased the capacity of the system to improve in the future by making a structural change. In effect, the school has gotten better at getting better.
Taken as a whole, the framework provides a way to organize the work/school so that they have the capacity to learn their way out of problems they didn’t anticipate, while simultaneously improving short-term performance around strategic objectives.

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Here is the plan...from Intention to Action

Explore and Design an activity (or activities) designed to support inclusive and responsive school culture (PLAN)
Implement the activity and flex your culturally responsive muscles (DO)
Take notes on the implementation and reflect personally or get some feedback from your colleagues. Not a bad idea to revisit the 4 Elements Questions. (STUDY)
Set some next steps for classroom culture based on what you learned. (ACT)

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PDSA- Planning time

INDIVIDUALLY: Use PDSA worksheet provided to start your plan. (15-20 min). Let the facilitator know if you want to work on it with someone else - a breakout room might work for you.

EVERYONE: We’ll share a place for providing summaries in about 15 min.

INDIVIDUALLY: Back to design time once we’ve discussed summaries. Facilitator will check in to see how much time you will need.

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Presenter: Share your goal and plan (4-5 min). Be clear about audience, which of the 4 elements you are looking for, and data you will be gathering during the session you run.
Group Conversation: focus your feedback on (4 min total)
How the plan help achieve the goal? (2 min)
What are the potential pitfalls in the plan that might move you farther from the goal? (2 min)
Presenter: Final Thoughts- back to the group (1 min)

Feedback In Triads (10 min each)

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Share out

Each person - share out your general plan, and share with us the sub-questions you generated in your PDSA

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Do these things:

Diagnose yourself with the warm demander chart
Get a review of your course every quarter at least
Understand that your sophomores are PREDICTABLY fundamentally different than your freshman, and they will remain so.

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Please fill out the survey

Item #10 on Agenda
It will ask you about the most recent event: Select “New Tech Culture Practices”
Turn off your video while doing this.
Turn on your video when done.
We will close the workshop together once 90% of the folks are done.

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I used to think…. Now I think….

I used to think that the protocol was not as effective as “critical friends”	But now I think that the protocol is good, but does need some more boundaries.
Protocols often were items were I knew what to do.	This workshop changed my perspective so that I can work relationships which will help performance
That culture was a side effect of NTN	It drives the success of our students
Students came with identity from family and culture	Identity is what the student wants to make it. It is about who they are.
Teachers needed to put up a wall to keep their personal lives behind	It is up to us to reveal some of that information to build relationships with students
Culture is something you only learn at home	It is important for us to teach culture at schools
Culture was important	It is the backbone/foundation of the school
Culture is something we reserve for our students.	Culture is meant to be used also with our colleagues so that we can all learn together.
Ritual are for fun	They can be a tool for personal student growth.
Culture simply focussed on relationships and identity	Culture can focus on equitable opportunities
Culture is cumbersome to focus on.	We can do small intentional pieces to have an overall gain.
I didn’t think it was important	Culture is about everything
Culture is something that just happened	We have to actually build upon it.
Having students collaborate is easy, nd they should know how to work together	It has to do with us, the school culture, and teaching them how to collaborate.

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I used to think…. Now I think….

I used to think...	...but now I think

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Feedback on the design of Session II

Please take this short survey (5-8 min.)

LINK to SURVEY

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Session Take Away: Reflection leads to Action

What? (Plan)	So What? (Do/Study)	Now What (Act)
What did I learn from this experience and what tools/processes, etc. helped me come to this understanding?	Why is this important for my work as the school/teacher leader (with regard to supporting my staff/colleagues )?	What commitments will I make and next steps will I take to apply this new learning?

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Debrief:

Keep?

Stop?

Add?

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www.newtechnetwork.org

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The Culturally Responsive Classroom...

Actively seeks to understand the schools role in BOTH perpetuating and challenging inequities.
Establishes an authentic connection with students based on knowing them personally, building trust and mutual respect for one another.
Gives feedback in ways that can be heard by the student and develops individual agency in the learning process.
Creates an environment of “productive struggle” that feels socially and intellectually safe for students to stretch themselves.
Intentionally designs learning based on how the brain works and reflects BOTH social and intellectual high-leverage activities that build complex thinking skills over time.

Adapted from: Hammond, Z. (2014). Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. United Kingdom: SAGE Publications.

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Assumption: Teachers have already engaged in NT Practices, engaging in Bookend Lessons. (Need more info about that?)