Facilitating Communities of Practice

overview

Our high school has multiple bodies where we engage in communities of practice.  We have Local School Leadership that focuses on the approval of decisions that affect budget, scheduling and delegating leadership responsibilities.  This body has parents, students and staff who work together to make these decisions.  This body has some impact on student learning as they approve professional development topics and dates for the whole school.  This body has deeper impact on student well-being as policies for school protocols are approved in this forum.

Our Instructional Leadership Team has a focus embedded in improving student learning and well-being.  They became a formalized body this school year and have been working on building a space where all stakeholders can participate in reshaping our school’s mission, vision and goals to align with the needs of stakeholders.  This body engages with representatives from every department who are intermediaries between staff and the ILT members.  This body also designs professional development for Local School Leadership to approve.  This body works to design systems that will optimize conditions for student learning and well-being.

As our high school is an LAUSD Community School, we have a PSW and Community School Representative who work with parents, students and community partners to build supports for stakeholders on campus.  They address challenges the school faces while working to build systems that support health, well-being, and academic progress.  Their efforts are focused on designing supports on campus as needed.

Our school also meets by department (e.g. Math, SPED, ELA etc.) to create space to made department decisions to have consistency in how we build curriculum, assessments and instructional projects for the classroom.  This aspect focuses on student learning.  But these bodies also focus on student well-being as teachers will collaborate on specific needs of student well-being and build solutions to support students, even if the needs are not academic.

The population we chose to focus on are students with disabilities (SWDs) in the English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum.  CAASPP reports indicate an equity gap between general education students and SWDs in the area of ELA for the last three reportable years.  The school’s mission and vision includes the pursuit of academic excellence for all students and the data indicates an equity gap for SWDs.  We want to support SWDs in the pursuit of academic excellence by supporting their learning in ELA.  We chose to investigate potential gaps and solutions as part of our professional learning process.

main activities

Our planning meeting was designed to build structure to our process.  We developed norms, roles and a meeting schedule.  We all agreed that building a strong organizational structure would lend itself to consistent communication and engagement in our process.  We decided to based our focus by reading and analyzing the school’s Mission, Vision and Goals.  The discussion led to everyone agreeing to focus on reading comprehension as all of us have experience in teaching ELA.  During the planning meeting, we determined that we would do some individual research on campus to identify a specific population with an equity gap so we could further narrow our focus.  We wanted to improve student learning and well-being, but wanted to make sure we bring a well-researched position so that our investigation focuses on a population that is underserved on our campus.

In our second meeting, everyone brought their research and discussed potential foci.  Ultimately, we all agreed to focus on supporting students with disabilities (SWDs) in ELA instruction.  We used CAASPP data, which shows a significant performance gap between SWDs and General Education students in the area of ELA for the last three reportable years.  We decided to focus on progress in 10th Grade ELA Inclusion Classes because teachers in that subject area have expressed some desire for support.  Having their buy-in and cooperation will promote positive growth in our learning process.

We decided to focus our efforts in Inclusion classes because we feel we will have more access to SWDs as well as SPED teachers who can help us build systems.  We determined that if we make progress in Inclusion classes, Gen Ed teachers will be more open to incorporating new methods in their classrooms.  

I was able to co-facilitate the team members by guiding our conversation so that everyone had an opportunity to provide input and express their opinions based on their research and expertise.  I guided the group to ensure our focus is research-based.  I chose a meeting time and place that was most convenient for all group members, so that schedules wouldn’t have to be rearranged.  

The team members were able to take ownership of the group by choosing to focus on a population they are invested in and a subject area they have expertise in.  I encouraged the use of current professional relationships in order to determine the classrooms in which we should start our learning process.  

I was very validating of our team members and their efforts and I complimented them on their individual efforts.  I thanked them for their participation and expressed how meaningful this work will be on our campus.

reflection

My strengths in co-facilitating this community of practice are that I am positive, validating, empathetic, organized and I started by inviting team members with whom I’ve built professional and relational trust.  My positivity allowed my facilitation to be optimistic and forward thinking.  My ability to be validating helped me to identify the strengths and experiences of my team members in a way that empowered them.  My ability to be empathetic allowed me to facilitate meetings in a way where everyone felt understood and all viewpoints were valued.  My ability to start our community of practice by inviting team members with whom I have built professional and relational trust allowed the group members to quickly engage in the work as a lot of the communication and element of community had already been established.  The strength of the initial foundation of this community of practice will allow us to build professional and relational trust with other staff members and slowly build strength to more stakeholders over time.  Starting strong will help us to be more sustainable and effective.

While I invited a solid group to build our community of practice, one of my areas of growth is the need to learn to build relationships with more staff members that I am unfamiliar with.  I was able to harness my relationships with my team members to have them build connections with teachers for our project.  I was able to support their efforts and facilitate organization and follow up, but it would help my leadership practice to build and harness relationships with other stakeholders better.  I am often shy and like to stay in my own social circles, but my ability to overcome this will support my leadership strength in the future.

In addition to my need to build relationships better, another area of growth is my need to develop people as professional practitioners.  Leithwood’s 2021 article explains that “stimulating growth in the professional capacities of staff” is key to developing people.  This was a great experience for me in working on that, but I am still very new to this skill set.  I was able to organize the community of practice and facilitate discussions and goal setting, but I need more experience and practice in coaching and staff development.  As I have been in the classroom with students, my skills in developing adults are still in a novice stage and I need more experience as a leader with communities of practice to further develop these skills.

Our initial implementation results include positive feedback from teachers and also from our interviews with students.  Students indicated they like the work product and teachers reported students who were not engaged in prior units as much were more eager to start their projects for this learning unit as they liked the different options listed.  Surveys with students also indicate a positive outlook, which shows immediate progress in our goal to increase student interest in the content area.  The observation and coaching sessions with participating teachers indicate they are pleased with the support, collaboration and communication with our community of practice.  All our stakeholders agree we are addressing an area of need for students with disabilities, and that the supports are helping those students so far by including frontloading, accommodations and choices.

The community of practice team members gave me feedback that I was understanding of their points of view and I validated their opinions.  I was told I was a good facilitator as I made sure everyone was given a chance to express themselves, participate fully and have a say in group decisions.  In our discussions, they said I was organized in facilitating how we built and implemented systems and I followed up with everyone regularly so nothing fell off our radar.  They said I created a good structure that everyone could rely on.  One suggestion they made was that I need to do more work to develop more staff relationships so that I can better facilitate future projects and communities of practice.  They understand that my work in SPED has limited some interaction with other staff members and that I will need to overcome my lack of exposure with building staff relationships.

In Leithwood’s 2021 article about equitable school leadership, he explains that through a literature review of equitable leadership practices indicate that leaders who establish directions and secure accountability in their communities of practice have more equitable outcomes in their practices.  (Leithwood, 2021)  I was able to set clear parameters and directions in my community of practice during our project.  I also ensured accountability ensuring every member chose their roles and tasks to complete.  I followed up with team members between meetings to ensure they were on target to complete their chosen tasks.  I built a system of accountability that facilitated progress and equity in our community of practice.

CAPES

Supporting Documents