MCCSC makes Critical Friends
Incoming teachers will receive CFG training
By Nicole Kauffman
331-4357 | nkauffman@heraldt.com
June 18, 2007
When Bachelor Middle School teacher Terry Daugherty attended a five-day conference on Critical Friends Groups, he was looking for “that one good thing” he could take back to his classroom.
But unlike many other workshops and programs, Critical Friends steers away from gimmicks and quick fixes.
“All of a sudden it was like that V-8 moment: ‘Wait a minute, this is a whole style change,’” said Daugherty, who’s been teaching more than 30 years.
Soon, more teachers to the Monroe County Community School Corp. could have their own such moments. Critical Friends exists at various schools in the district, but starting this fall, said MCCSC Superintendent Jim Harvey, every new teacher in the district will be trained for the program.
What are these groups?
Critical Friends is a program of the National School Reform Faculty, a division of Harmony Education Center that began in 1995 at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. The NSRF has trained several thousand Critical Friends coaches around the country.
In a program session, teachers of various subjects focus on one real-life situation that’s usually brought up to the group’s coach ahead of time — it can be a discipline issue, a lesson plan or a situation with a colleague or administrator — and the group discusses it using a specific protocol that frames the conversation.
CFG coach and Harmony teacher Michele Mattoon describes it as “a professional, small learning community, a way of looking at student work, adult work, texts that might be improved for professional development using each member of the group. Using the expertise you have in that group to improve everybody’s practices.”
Protocols are tailored to specific schools and teachers, and teachers, no matter what they teach or how many years of experience they have, leave with ideas gleaned from the input of everyone in the group, Mattoon said. Groups are kept to seven to 12 participants, so everybody’s voice will be heard.
“That’s the power of it,” Daugherty said. “What’s amazing is, in helping a teacher work on a math problem, everybody takes something away from it that they can use in their classroom. ... What works is all these voices, you’d have to walk around the building two, three times (to get them all). And they all learn something from the process.”
For Batchelor teacher Amy Martin, hearing what’s going on in other classrooms has been helpful.
“A lot of what I do here is in isolation,” she said. “If I have (an issue) with discipline, or a lesson I want to look at with others, I can actually take it somewhere, instead of just imposing on a teacher I see in the hallway.”
According to the NSRF Web site, “As ‘critical friends,’ (members) observe one another at work regularly to provide feedback in challenging but non-threatening ways.” The “non-threatening” aspect of that is important.
“It’s all about trust-building, saying, ‘It’s not super fabulous already,’” Mattoon said.
Harvey calls the collaboration inherent in the CFGs “an excellent tool and a skill for a teacher to have.”
Groups at work
MCCSC first embraced the program when John Maloy was superintendent. He publicly expressed some interest in professional learning communities, and the NSRF responded to that, said Steve Bonchek, executive director of Harmony Education Center.
Daugherty and Martin were so impressed with Critical Friends, they put its practices to use at their school as soon as they could. They both are CFG coaches.
“Immediately, we wanted to take it back to Batchelor,” Martin said. The school now has three CFGs, each with about 10 teachers.
Mattoon said their response is typical. “Something really magical, I think, happens on that third day, where people kind of go, ‘Oh, I get it,’” she said.
Harmony has been using CFG practices for several years, even employing their format at staff meetings. In addition to getting all voices heard, it helps keep things focused.
Harmony teacher Sallyann Murphey likes being part of a high-school-specific group.
“For the past 18 months, we’ve been working solidly on our graduation requirements and re-examining everything,” she said.
Daugherty said his teaching has changed for the better since he joined a group.
“I’ve become a more reflective teacher, asking and looking for more reflection from my teaching, looking for different ways to get that reflection from (my students),” he said.
He said a benefit of being in the group is to look at what’s important — a big-picture perspective — instead of just looking at what’s immediately necessary. Looking at what’s immediately necessary is a practice teachers easily fall into, along with using what’s been the norm in the classroom, as opposed to what might be a better method.
“You lose perspective when you’re in it,” Mattoon said. “Especially when it seems to be going OK. And OK is really not as good as great, or exciting, or fabulous. That’s where we really want to be.”
On the Web
To learn more about Critical Friends Groups, visit www.nsrfharmony.org.
Copyright: HeraldTimesOnline.com 2007