Monday 20 November 2017

Implementing CRM week 8


Our CRM day is every Thursday. Because report cards were due and we had a plan to dedicate a good portion of our professional development day on Friday towards CRM, I asked teachers to decide how they felt they needed to use their time. For our school PD we had two main goals regarding CRM:  develop a common set of working agreements (each group had different ones) and continue to refine and to develop  our pyramid of interventions.
To develop our common norms we had teachers sitting in their CRM groups. Each group reviewed their norms and identified their top four norms using a cooperative learning structure. Once each group came to agreement, each CRM group member then found a partner from another group where they compared their lists and then engaged in conversation to create a new list of four norms. The partners then joined another pair to create groups of four where once again they created one list of four norms. Finally each group shared a norm one at a time and we recorded each one on a white board. Duplicated norms were not recorded. In the end each group was very similar and it only took ten or fifteen minutes to come to an agreement. The end result was the following five norms:

Positivity
Honour the process
Purposeful 
Demonstrate a growth mindset
Equal voice/shared participation

After we developed our norms we discussed the TQS and how it fits in with tier one supports. We also further clarified our understanding of the difference between tier 1 and 2 strategies/interventions and reexamined our pyramid from last month. We asked teachers to underline those that they felt needed to be moved into a different tier and  highlight those that needed more clarification before determining which tier it belongs in.

The CRM portion of our presentation can be seen here.  PD day presentation

Thursday 16 November 2017

Implementing CRM week 7

This week saw our first Collaborative Team Meeting (CTM). We have engaged in some pretty in depth conversations around the model up to this point using the embedded CRM time to work through the book, develop working norms and meeting templates, discuss essential agreements, review core agreements and develop a continuum of supports. We have also administered a universal screen in math and spent some time exploring the jigsaw website. Teachers have also started using the time to work collaboratively on projects that support our improved literacy goal. We have not yet created a visual display board, but felt we have spent enough time on the “theory” and needed to  start having CTMs.
Our Inclusion support teacher, our instructional coach and I met previously to go over the routine of the meeting and make sure we were prepared. We gave teachers a copy of the
student record sheet and asked them to have a few students identified to bring
to the table. Although we discussed the roles (e.g. interrupter, recorder, facilitator), we did not assign them, but we plan to at our next meeting. I openly shared some of the facilitator guide
questions/prompts by writing them on a white board along with our norms so that everyone could see potential questions a facilitator might ask should the meeting start to go astray. My goal is to build capacity within  the CRM groups so that the facilitator does not have to intervene very often.
The meetings went well and were different in several ways. In one group, when asked about a student and if there were other students that could benefit from the interventions, the teacher identified several. This quickly became a conversation around Occupational Therapy support
and I found myself running down the hallway to pull our OT into the conversation, to which she readily agreed. She then became an important part of the discussion. At a teacher’s suggestion we also invited one of our school's Educational Assistants who specializes in literacy support. She was able to contribute to the conversation as we talked about how to support students with literacy (our CRM and school focus). A lesson learned from this was to look at the students being brought forth in advance and try to ensure that the right people were around the table. It was very beneficial for me as I learned about the students, different strategies that I  previously knew nothing about and was able to offer support for one of the students mentioned. Another teacher brought a student forward and it was very beneficial that she led with data she had collected. She had a literacy and math assessment done and was able to articulate where the student was struggling. This quickly led to action planning.  We did not get through a lot of students in our 80 minutes together (more in the group that ended up grouping several students), but we expect that will improve as we become more familiar with the process. The next morning I emailed the “action items” to each group and plan to follow up next week before they start their collaboration work. Overall we were satisfied with the process, but acknowledge we have refinement to do and are looking forward to our next CTM in four weeks. I believe that the “ready, fire, aim” philosophy held true. We could have spent another month trying to get prepared for our first CTM, but you really do just need to do it so that you have something to build on.

Sunday 5 November 2017

Implementing CRM week 6

I had communicated to staff that CRM time would be considered “sacred.” Leading by example, I blocked off my calendar all day every Thursday so that neither myself nor my secretary could book in appointments. I keep my cell phone put away and only check it between meetings. Only on very rare  occasions has someone come to pull me away from a CRM meeting and usually it has only been for a few minutes. This past week, however, I left the school missing my first CRM day. For two days I visited a variety of schools meeting with administrators and teachers learning about their school’s CRM journey. I had chatted with Kurtis Hewson at my district’s CRM  leadership workshop where he was presenting and by the end of the conversation he offered to facilitate my tour of schools. I was also fortunate that he was scheduled to be in Edmonton and he offered to be my guide for the day before flying out to visit another district. The schools in Edmonton that I visited were Daly Grove, Winterburn and Kildare. The following day I visited Ponoka Elementary and Stettler Elementary on my way home to Medicine Hat. Each school is at a different part in their journey and all were very welcoming. I got to sit in on a staff meeting, observe CTMs, talk with teachers and support staff, see how CRM software works, walk through schools and ask an abundance of questions of Kurtis and other administrators. I also was given a lot of resources, so many that I have had to file them away to sift through as our school continues its journey with CRM. Just as I encourage teachers to get into other teacher’s classrooms I would highly recommend administrators to get in other administrator’s schools. I owe a huge thanks  to Tim Bowman, Sharon Fischer, Heather Kennedy, Marilyn Schmitke, Cheryl Belyea and of course Kurtis Hewson.