An Interview with Terry Daugherty, a NSRF National Facilitator
by Michele Mattoon
Training Coordinator
National School Reform Faculty
Tell us a little bit about yourself. How were you introduced to
NSRF? How did you get CFGs started in your school?
I have been a Middle School Science teacher, deep down to my
core, for 37 years. I began teaching by using a hands-on, self-paced,
Inquiry based Science curriculum. Beginning my career
in that environment always caused me to use a unique filter in
which to judge what I wanted to do in my classroom. I have
taught in the same school for 35 years. Many of those years did
not require me to look outside my door to others. I had even
compared teaching to running a small business.
My NSRF exposure came after I had experienced another type of
PLC training. I did not see that PLC training relating well to
what I was working on to improve my work in the classroom. A
year later, I was invited to what I thought was a Mathematics
summer workshop. It turned out to be a summer CFG training
by NSRF, paid for by a Mathematics Professional Development
grant.
I spent the first 3 days of training, looking for what I call the
“killer app”. The “killer app” is something that I can use in my
classroom that would make this training valuable to me.
Thankfully, by the end of the 4th day, I discovered my true
“killer app”. It was the whole concept around the CFG (Critical
Friends Group) to help support teachers to improve our
instruction in our classroom. I was so focused on the protocols,
I totally missed the power of the CFG as tool for teachers to
transform their practice. That was a true “Ah-ha!” moment for
me.
I came back to my school with another trained colleague. We
decided to get our principal to allow us to show some of the
protocols to the staff during staff meetings. We also invited
teachers to an after school meeting where we tried out a
‘Looking at Student Work’ protocol. We sat in a room together
and looked at some unknown student’s work and speculated
what we were seeing. When we were finished, we may have had
the same look as the first people who discovered fire. We were
amazed at what we had learned from each other about this
student by doing this collaborative work.
The next year those of us in that room began a monthly CFG. We
met and began building a trusting environment so that we could
ask the tough questions of each other. We began looking at
improving instruction with the purpose of increasing student
learning. We did some “fish bowl” lesson tuning at a staff
meeting, where the staff sat around us as we did the protocol.
We used observation protocols, to help our own classroom
practices.
The next year we trained more CFG facilitators and invited our
staff to join one of the three CFGs. We urged all new staff to be
in one of the CFGs and invited our principal to join our original
CFG. We had 80% of our staff participating in CFGs.
We had a common language about the work we did. We had
high expectations for what we could achieve. We were not as
scared to try new things. We began to design our teacher
meetings. It was not uncommon to hear, “We need a protocol to
use for this.”
We began introducing CFG work in our student’s work. We had
students tuning each others work and dilemmas protocols to
solve road blocks. They were using World Cafes to guide their
future learning and Chalk Talks to help reflect where they had
been.
Did this improve student achievement in our school? I don’t
know. Did we think we were doing good work? I know for sure
we thought we're improving. This year our school achieved the
“impossible”-- a state Four Star rating. We were already proud
of our students, so the rating was “icing on our cake”. Was our
six years of CFG work responsible for this? I can not prove that
it did, but I believe it had to be connected.
What has been the impact of CFGs and CFG practices in your
work?
My CFG training transformed me to become a teacher who seeks
more student reflection. I expect more transparency with my
communication with my students about my intentions and
doubts. Instead of asking a student “Why are you doing this,” I
am more likely to ask, “What can I do to help you get on task?”
I seek true answers to the question, “What is it about my
classroom that causes some students to fail, or choose to fail in
my classroom?”
I now know many of my fellow teachers much better than “hi”
or “any coffee left?” I have been involved in meaningful
conversations where we have built both trust and high
expectations for each other. I have colleagues who can
challenge my thinking in a supportive way. I can do the same
for them.
Can you describe some high points of your CFG experiences?
The high point in my CFG experience may not sound like one.
We were having a very serious leadership discussion, after
looking at our latest test results. These results showed no
improvement with our poverty and ethnic gap.
I made the suggestion of looking at our results in a more
detailed manner and to do more research on what other schools
were doing. One of my fellow CFG colleagues gave a very strong
challenge to my thinking. She said I was involved in “totally
Discourse I” thinking. She meant I was not looking at this
problem in a new way that tested my conventional thinking. I
was at first surprised and in denial. I then thought deeper and
listened to some better thinking that questioned “what were we
doing so that some of our students did not learn?” We came up
with more unconventional ideas that looked at what we were
doing.
I was really proud that one of my fellow teachers could
challenge our thinking so openly and that it did change our
thinking. There was no big faculty split, no hard feelings, no turf
wars. We just knew it was part of our growth process.
What are your goals in terms of your work with NSRF?
I would like to see a repeat of the experience in my school, in
other schools, and in other school systems. I can no longer
imagine working in a school that does not operate this way. I
would like to change professional development from the model
of only “experts” can come in to teach us all a new thing, to a
model that says the people who are going to change our practice
are the trained facilitator and staff sitting around the table.
Reprint from Connections Magazine 2010