Plan sharing is paying off for teachers

CEDAR HILLS — At Deerfield Elementary School, teachers are setting aside time to chat with each other about students — how they are behaving in class and whether they're hitting academic marks.

It's not faculty lunchroom gossip. Rather, it's a new way to map education plans — and teachers say they're seeing results.

"I was having trouble having my kids write," first-year teacher Rachel Guffey said about her attempts at writing workshops. "Then (a fellow teacher) said I should get them started on a prompt."

Such give-and-take between teachers is being done on Mondays, when students in the 54,000-student Alpine School District are released early so teachers can meet and discuss curriculum, lesson plans and test scores.

It's sort of a teacher-planning period, except it's done in groups.

Alpine officials want teachers to form "Professional Learning Communities," a collaboration concept coined by educational scholars Robert Eaker and Richard DuFour.

"Historically, teachers had a lot to figure out on their own" during teacher planning periods, said Jane St. John, director of marketing for Solution Tree, which publishes books and organizes seminars based on Eaker's and DuFour's ideas. "The Professional Learning Community approach says, 'How do we better collaborate as teachers so the students better learn the materials they are required to learn?' "

In 2003, Alpine administrators went to Rochester, N.Y., for a seminar about Professional Learning Communities. Eaker visited Alpine District in 2004, and a pilot program was developed.

This school year has been the first that teachers at schools in the district have been using the program.

During collaboration time, teachers meet in small groups by subject or grade level. Activities focus on four questions: What do we expect students to learn? How will we know that they're learning? What do we do when they don't? How do we continue to raise the bar?

At Deerfield Elementary, the questions are summarized as curriculum, assessment, remediation and differentiation.

"There are all kinds of schools and districts doing early-outs," said Barry Graff, administrator for K-12 educational services in the district. "The standard early-out day and your focus on collaboration is really different. At the elementary, we did it when I was a principal and a teacher. I went in my classroom and kind of did my own thing."