Successful schools share a number of critical success factors: good leadership, a shared vision, research-based Best Practices, an effective accountability system, and parent and community involvement. An emerging and often overlooked success factor is the manner in which teachers and staff design, pursue, and are accountable for their personal and professional development. My school, New City School, a public charter school in Northeast Minneapolis, uses the Learning Community Model as a structure for administration, teachers, and staff to grow both personally and professionally.

Professional Development
My definition of professional development includes a personal dimension. A school staff is made up of diverse individuals with an array of personal and professional needs and aspirations for themselves, their students, the team, and their school. With this in mind, New City School created a process whereby teachers’ and staff’s personal and professional goals are linked to our overall school mission and vision.

Every year I meet with each staff member to assist them in developing an individualized Professional/Personal Development Plan (PDP). Teachers are responsible for thinking about two goals: their personal goals related to the broad notion of becoming a better teacher; and more specific professional goals related to a curriculum area, such as social skills, math, science, arts integration, social studies, reading, writing, or parent communication. Inviting teachers to bring their personal goals to the process recognizes them as whole human beings with professional and personal aspirations about their work.

Shaping school goals
Getting a group of people to make collective decisions is a messy but necessary business. We use a process for collective consensus when deciding about our professional development for the school year. Early in the school year, teachers and staff attend a professional development meeting with markers at their disposal, and chart paper all over the walls. I ask, “Based on our mission, parent and student surveys, test scores, and our approach to curriculum, what skills, knowledge, and attitudes do we need and want to support our teaching and learning this year?” The buzz and work begin. Teachers are talk with each other as they walk around the room writing their ideas on the chart paper. This process is called a carousel walk. Soon there are many ideas on the charts to be discussed, categorized, negotiated, and voted on.

Less is more
The work in and for a school is endless. There will always be a new skill to learn, new knowledge to gain, new attitudes to acquire, and new mandates to meet. However, we must learn not to take on too much at once. It has benefited New City School to take on only a few initiatives each year and to go in depth with them. For example, last year we focused mainly on writing as our overall school-wide goal. Within this content area, teachers brainstormed many professional-development opportunities. We categorized these ideas and voted on which we wanted to pursue for the year. Here are examples of topics in writing that we studied and received training in:
• Writing study groups
• Writing to read
• The power of storytelling to teach writing
• Teaching the many different writing genres
• Teaching children how to use and maintain a writer’s journal
• Recordkeeping and writing
• Drawing and writing
• Coaching children in their writing
• Conferencing with children about their writing
• Components of the Writers Workshop
• The writing process

Focusing on writing in this way encourages teachers to learn in depth. Our teachers’ confidence in teaching writing has become apparent, and they are happier. The payoffs include a renewed interest in their own writing. Professional development becomes personal as well as practical, and this makes it enjoyable.

Accountability
Accountability is not a single measurement that sums up an outcome through a quantitative number. Rather, accountability means diverse approaches that consist of self- and collective reflection, quantitative and qualitative data, and ways to systematically monitor and check individual and collective progress. Accountability is a process, not a product.

Protocols and Check-ins
One of the most successful structures that we use to hold us all accountable is protocols. Protocols are structures to allow teachers to present and clarify their work, answer questions from their colleagues, and brainstorm ways to enhance their teaching. The process holds everyone accountable. This year we developed a protocol for writing. In a meeting, teachers shared what element of writing they had been teaching, what was working, and in what areas they needed help. Using protocols as a way to hold people accountable makes professional development real and transparent, and gives teachers the sense of working together. (See Sample Protocol below.)

Another aspect of accountability is having set times to meet with teachers regarding their professional development. These meetings are intended for them to check in with me about their progress, successes, and where they need my help.

As a staff, we often check in with each other about agreed-upon initiatives by doing collective checklists, surveys, and various quick evaluation tools. By using many methods of holding people accountable, I’m trying to develop a non-hostile orientation to accountability that says, “We have agreed on this, so when and how will we check in with each other to assure that what we said is getting done?”

Record-keeping
New City School has a catalogue of its professional-development undertakings for the past two years. This has been important for us for two reasons. First, when new staff are hired, we can hand them a three-ring binder on “Writing”, for example, and they can get a sense of what professional development activities we have undertaken. Also, depending on the training and workshop, there may be valuable and usable frameworks, articles, and other hand-outs.

Second, it provides a record of our professional history as a staff. It becomes a symbol of our collective journey to grow personally and professionally. We can reflect upon, be proud of, and take stock in our collective work.

It’s easy to do, but you must be relentless and systematic with this undertaking! Have a supply of three-ring binders ready as you begin a professional-development initiative. Every document related to that training should be archived, such as planning notes, presenters’ plans and notes, participants’ handouts, surveys and projects, and other documents. It can be fun, and it is and eventually rewarding for the staff and for the school.

Sample Protocol for Collaborative Inquiry of Teacher’s Goals and Student Work

Purpose: To enable teachers to look closely at their work to “fine” tune or improve an assignment in light of the student’s work.

1. Presenting teacher has an opportunity to share about the context for the student work, which might include information about the students and/or class, assignment or prompt, learning goals (or standards) addressed, and evaluation methods used (rubric, scoring, criteria, and so on).

2. The presenting teacher frames a focusing question for feedback related to the student’s work. Here are examples of focusing questions:

• “How can I support students in developing and demonstrating their research skills through this project?”
• “How can my rubric give students more feedback to support their revision of…?”
• “How well does the assessment tool (e.g., rubric) I use match the learning goals I have for the assignment? How could it be improved?”
• “In what ways does this student work meet (or fail to meet) this particular school and/or state standard?”

3. The presenting teacher distributes the student work to be looked at and allows time for reading.

4. One by one, the teachers respond to the work, saying:
• what strikes them about it
• does the work meet the desired goal or goals
• what’s surprising about it

5. Teachers collaboratively brainstorm ways to answer the presenting teacher’s focus question noting correlations and gaps between the teacher’s goal and the student’s work.


Dr. Terrance Kwame-Ross is the principal of New City School in Minneapolis and a nationally certified presenter of the Responsive Classroom.