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Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Compass PD 35: Using Data to Create the Plan for Next Year
Curriculum, Instruction, and Professional Development Leaders, join us for a deep-dive discussion with education expert Dr. Carrie Hepburn from Compass PD as we navigate the nuances of district leadership and talk about enhancing instructional practices and curriculums in November and December. Carrie shares her insights on gathering meaningful observational data through classroom visits and Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and the significance of forging solid relationships with teachers and students.
Strategizing is critical when planning for change in curriculum, instruction, assessments, and professional learning. Carrie unravels the importance of having a plan in place and how it can potentially safeguard against disruptions. This episode is packed with valuable insights and practical strategies that can revolutionize your approach to district leadership.
Helpful links that support this episode:
EPISODE 20: Leading the Organization Essential Skills for Curriculum and Professional Learning Leaders
EPISODE 26: Navigating the School Year with Data and Strategy
EPISODE 29: Mastering District Leadership, From Budget Planning to Effective Communication
Episode 12: Is PD Planning and Curriculum Overwhelming?
Plan Outline (example of what Carrie used in previous district)
Mastering the Art of Professional Learning: Unlocking the Five Critical Attributes for Success
Hello, hello, hello. District leaders. Dr Carrie Hepburn here from Compass PD andI am thrilled to be here with you today for another episode of the Compass PD podcast. In our previous district leaders episodes, we've delved into some essential elements of district leadership, focusing on four big buckets. Since August-ish, I've been trying to talk with you about four big buckets calendar, communication, budget and data. These are the four big buckets that impact all of your work in curriculum instruction, assessment and professional development. They're the buckets that, like nobody ever told you about. When you became a leader in your district in the curriculum instruction and assessment department, like you had dreams that you would be delivering high quality professional development, creating exciting, engaging curriculum for students and getting everyone as excited about data and assessments as you are and you are. But probably you know the reality of your job is those are small parts of your job the calendar, budget and different types of data and analyzing that data are all the driving forces of your work. So if you're new to me, I want to let you know.
Speaker 0:Or if you've been listening, in episode 20, leading the organization essential skills for curriculum and professional learning leaders, we started the school year off where I was talking about the importance of setting up a system that allows you to control your calendar, the communication, budget and data. This groundwork really sets the tone for the entire school year. Then, in episode 26, I built on that. I continued building on those foundations, exploring how data and strategy are crucial in guiding your leadership journey. Then, in episode 29, which was around last monthish, I talked about mastering district leadership from budget planning to effective communication. I shared some insights on budget planning and effective communication. I'm not revisiting all of these concepts today you can check out those previous episodes leading up to today but I want to illustrate how these four essential buckets come together and shape your overall success of your work as a district leader. All of these episodes I've talked about will be linked in the show notes so you'll be able to access those fairly easily. So here we are, november-ish, and I've been urging you to take control of your calendars. By now you should have spent time visiting buildings, building leaders, coaches and gotten into classrooms talking with teachers and students and attended PLCs. Why is this so crucial, you might wonder, but it's because by doing these activities, you're gathering valuable observational data, and today I want to remind you and start building on that data and explaining how all four of those buckets come together.
Speaker 0:As you know, question one that we talk about on the podcast all of the time we try to keep a similar structure is what should be on your radar right now as a curriculum, instruction assessment or professional development leader. So I want us to dive into what you might be noticing as you're in classrooms, as you're having conversations, as you're in PLCs. One of the things that you might be noticing is that instruction needs to be improved. Instruction in classrooms may be falling short of your expectations. This can look like lack of student engagement, lack of student motivation, boring instruction and a noticeable absence of the transference of learning in your student work, which could be on assessments and discussions or any other classroom evidence. If you're seeing instructional gaps, it's time for you to engage in some profound philosophical thinking. I want to urge you not to like jump in immediately and try to fix the situation. Something that I'll see is like people getting defensive as leaders like this isn't what we expect, this isn't what I taught them, this isn't what the curriculum or professional development says it should be. So I want you to pause for a moment and do some thinking so that you can start developing a plan for the following year, because actually the work you're doing now is for next year and I know that's hard to kind of wrap your brains around. But I want to help you create a system that allows you to be proactive and not reactive.
Speaker 0:So I want you to take a couple of minutes, like would you pause the podcast after I ask these questions and do some deep reflection Based on your observations. Does the instruction I am seeing in classrooms resemble the assessments that are within our district curriculum? Another question is are our assessments designed like high stakes assessments? So I ask you to consider these two questions, because a lot of times when I'm in districts and asked to do curriculum audits, the first place I look is how standards are unpacked and what assessments look like and what the scoring guides whether it's proficiency scales, progressions, rubrics, what, not what those look like, because that oftentimes tells me what instruction will look like.
Speaker 0:Another question then I would have you consider is have teachers received professional learning on their standards, like true professional learning on their standards, on big ideas regarding those standards and how to use district approved resources to create engaging learning experiences aligned with the curriculum and assessments but that are relevant to the students that are in front of them. That's a big mouthful, but it's a deep question for you to consider and that's not something I can truly address today, but it's something that I need you to think about as a district leader. Do teachers understand their standards? Do they understand what big ideas are Because, honestly, there are more standards than they can possibly teach in a school year? Do they understand what an engaging learning experience looks like that's aligned with what the expectations are of mastery by the end of the school year? And, honestly, do we? Though, if we don't understand, that's okay and I tell teachers this all the time like, if you don't understand, that's okay, we can do some learning around that. That's not certainly something we can dig into today, but it's something that you need to reflect on and understand. So, as you reflect on these questions, know that the work you're doing now is preparing for next year. I know that that can be disheartening at times, but changing expectations in the middle of the year isn't fair for anyone and it leads to dysregulation and causes additional stress on all stakeholders. One of my mentors once told me you have to go slow to go fast, and I've learned that this is so true. So, depending on your organization and what you want to accomplish, I want to share with you a couple of ways to address the situation of instruction not meeting your expectations. So if you're looking at making a systems change, one that's systematic, the kind of change for the long haul, I encourage you to think through what curriculum, instruction and assessment looks like in your district.
Speaker 0:A predictable problem I run into is that districts purchase a resource for a curriculum and all of the learning for teachers is around that resource. There are a couple problems with having a curriculum, a resource, being your curriculum. First of all, it reduces teaching to a script and just flipping a page. So it's just like what's the next day, say I'm supposed to do. What's the next day, say I'm supposed to do it, says I'm supposed to teach it. Like this it's not working for all kids. I don't know what to do, but this is what this curriculum, which is a resource, I say curriculum. So those of you that can't see me, I'm doing air quotes says that I'm supposed to be doing, right, I will visit schools and study their resources and teachers are following the program verbatim and what happens is it's boring. It's boring because there's an art in science to teaching and learning, and part of that art in science is actually bringing the curriculum to life. It's actually empowering our teachers with knowledge so they can get excited about what they're teaching and they can adapt it to the students that are in front of them, making sure that it's relevant to the students that are in front of them.
Speaker 0:It isn't just about flipping that page. In order to bring a curriculum to life, it requires knowledge about the content and knowledge about the science of learning. This might be a significant shift for your district and can require big systematic changes, such as implementing a curriculum cycle and a professional learning cycle that aligns with that curriculum cycle. Only some people are comfortable with this kind of change. The foundation of that work involves groups of teachers unpacking standards, developing assessments, developing scoring guides, designing learning experiences that scaffold students from the beginning of a unit to the end of a unit mastery level that would be demonstrated on the assessment. But research shows us repeatedly that increasing teacher knowledge and empowering teachers leads to higher achievement and happier teachers. So that's one option and I get it.
Speaker 0:If that doesn't work for you and your district right now, that's something that takes time. That's something that, if you're looking at November and December. You have time and I can help you with that, or my organization can help you with that, or you can begin creating your own system as instructors. There is another, less intrusive option, and that less intrusive option is that districts can provide high quality PD on things like instructional strategies, learning design and differentiation. These learning experiences can be the beginning of a professional development, a professional learning cycle, and could support the start of a curriculum cycle later on down the road. Currently we're working with an entire district facilitating the learning on high leverage instructional strategies, and that's going to take three years. So this kind of work isn't a check off the box. This dramatic change takes time. This dramatic change is done a little bit at a time. Systematic change creates safe structures and systems that allow you to make decisions that are best for schools, that are best for teachers, that are best for students. So in this particular district we're gonna spend three years delivering professional learning to their teachers at their level so elementary, middle and high school and then we'll follow up that whole group PD with modeling, coaching and conferencing the transference.
Speaker 0:When you think through developing a system, a systematic structure like this is transformational. What you see is the impact of the learning in the classroom. To learn more about like developing curriculum and professional development cycles, I encourage you to watch episode 12. Is PD planning and curriculum overwhelming? This episode is worth watching the video because I used visuals to support the learning. The overall goal is that learning for students should be current, relevant, engaging and transferable outside the classroom. When we develop instruction like this, student engagement and motivation skyrockets. Instruction isn't dull and learning at high levels can be witnessed. You will see the impact on student achievement results and on your high stakes assessments.
Speaker 0:So ensuring that your calendar has provided you with multiple opportunities to engage with principals, coaches, teachers and students allows you to collect valuable data to make plans for the following year, because right now you'll be thinking about your budget. So, as you start considering all of these things, do we want to make like a complete overhaul on what curriculum instruction, professional learning, looks like, or like thinking we're gonna do a curriculum cycle and a professional development cycle? Or you wanna start small, maybe, with a professional development cycle that is impacting, like the instructional strategies? You need to start having conversations with district leadership so you can gather feedback, make plans and start communicating the information with appropriate stakeholders. So all of this kind of comes together. Do you see how I did that? Using our calendar to collect data to start making better budgeting decisions and plans for the future, and communicating with other people? If you can get these four buckets under control calendar, data, budget and communication it's gonna benefit you tremendously as a leader.
Speaker 0:As you've been making the rounds, you might notice or hear discrepancies and expectations. Those discrepancies can be regarding instruction, assessment pacing and more. If you see these discrepancies, reflect on the following questions and consider how you can make changes to communication for the rest of the school year. This is something you can change now, how you communicate. So I want you to think about what did communication look like for teachers regarding curriculum expectations, pacing expectations, assessment expectations, instruction expectations?
Speaker 0:Something that I've done in the past is the newsletter. I talked about the newsletter in earlier episodes and the newsletter was something that I use to communicate with teachers regularly. I always brought them back to my newsletter and made sure those things were addressed in the newsletter. Another thing I think about is how often have teachers received communication through emails, plcs, newsletters, coaches, principles regarding curriculum pacing, instruction expectations and assessment expectations? Sometimes those things like where things are located, where the information is housed, where the data goes. All of those things are a lot of information coming at all of the people that you serve, so having multiple ways to get that information is critical.
Speaker 0:Another question I want you to think about is what does your pacing calendar, scope and sequence or assessment calendar look like? Has it been highlighted regularly? Is it realistic? Sometimes, when we start studying these things, we notice that it's not realistic. Because another question do your building leadership's goals and visions align? Just to kind of recap really quickly, what is on your radar right now as a district leader, if you've been following what I asked you getting into classrooms, gathering that data, instruction is probably something that's on your radar and probably something that's a concern. So I gave you some questions to consider regarding instruction and now you have some decisions to make. So, do we want to make big, systematic changes? Are we wanting to think small? So that is on your radar right now and thinking through that first and developing a plan is going to be critical for you when it comes to starting to communicate that plan and making a budget regarding that plan.
Speaker 0:Another thing that I mentioned was that you're probably noticing discrepancies Discrepancies regarding understanding of open sequence instruction, curriculum and assessment expectations. So I gave you some more questions to consider for that and I want you to use those questions to help you develop a communication plan starting next month, starting immediately. How can I help clear up any of these discrepancies? All of this is data for you. This is all to help you grow your organization and help your organization meet those big, ambitious goals that you have set and your district has set.
Speaker 0:So question two we're going to move into what are some predictable problems district leaders are facing right now. A predictable problem is all of the interruptions that are happening right now. So there's a ton of interruptions happening in November and December. Right, Things like unplanned celebrations, events, activities, trips, emergency meetings and assessments can disrupt the flow of instruction and assessments. A valuable exercise right now is to sit down with your administrators at each level and in each building and map out a calendar of district expectations and each building's expectations. And I want you to look at that together collectively and think can our teachers do all that we're asking them to do? Do they have competing expectations from the district and the building? How can we streamline our work, minimize interruptions and simplify the process to ensure that our teachers can do their important work.
Speaker 0:It only takes me a couple minutes in a conversation to get on a soapbox about how much instruction is lost with one day a week of missed instruction. One day a week of lost instruction results in an entire quarter of missed instruction for our students. At maximum, we have 180 days with our students. We don't have a minute to lose. We have to set a tone and urgency to the work that's happening in our schools, to the work that's happening in our buildings, to the work that's happening in instruction, because it's important and we have to do everything we can to protect that for our students and for our teachers. Right? Another predictable problem for district leaders right now is planning for updated curriculums and budgets.
Speaker 0:So right now, what's on your mind is next year. I know it. You're thinking about what curriculum or what curriculum? So it could be writing curriculum, which is my preferred mode, or it could be people adopt a resource as a curriculum, and that is some people's preferred mode. So first of all, you have to have a plan. What does the future look like over the next couple of years? You need to be thinking in a longer term than just immediately by now, if you've been following me on the leadership portion of the podcast, you should have access to some data that can help you make wise decisions. Using that information, you probably are noticing trends. Creating a hierarchy of skills, a hierarchy of needs, will be helpful for you in developing your plan. To give you an idea of how developing a plan might look, in the show notes I've linked and outlined that I created for elementary regarding their curriculum writing, their professional development around the research and evidence-based practices in that particular content area, what the adoption of resources and what the implementation looked like, and so when you can think through these things.
Speaker 0:It's hard and it's best when you can do it in community. It can be overwhelming and many of you know that every level is a beast. But elementary can be incredibly challenging because every classroom teacher teaches multiple content areas. So navigating curriculum, professional learning, adoption of resources, implementation requires a systems approach. So that's again why I advocate for our curriculum professional development cycle. It creates a system approach. So you can see my plan, my outline of the plan. It's not detailed or anything, but it gives me an outline so that I can start creating a plan for my budget, so I can allocate those resources over a period of time, over a period of years. It's not all about changing everything all at once. Now I need you to know that this doesn't mean that teachers aren't overwhelmed, but it provides a structure to navigate change. It isn't perfect, but it's guided me through communication, budgeting, calendar creation, which right now, you might be thinking about your district calendar for the following year or years upcoming. If you think about a professional development cycle, it would be wise for you to be thinking about your calendar and how your calendar can reflect that cycle.
Speaker 0:Before we wrap up, I want to leave you with an essential to remember you're the leader and you set the tone for everything. I need you to breathe, use kind words with yourself and use kind words with others. None of this right now is a reflection on you, for you to take it personally. So, as you're gathering data, as you're hearing things, this is an opportunity for you to reflect. This is an opportunity for you to make a plan. This is an opportunity for you to think systematically, and so I don't want you to go in and try to make changes right now and overhaul the system or feel defensive. So that's where the breathing part comes in. I need you to breathe and listen.
Speaker 0:I want you to avoid making big changes right now, because it's unfair to everyone. Instead, I want you to use this information to create one significant goal for next year and use your budget, as you're thinking about your budget, to support it. So, if it involves increasing student motivation, develop a plan to increase teacher knowledge of instructional strategies that enhance student motivation. Dart small and focus on one area at a time. Believe me, there's a whirlwind of things happening in education and it's going to continue. It's not going to stop. So one big goal. Use your budget to support that one big goal. Thinking about that.
Speaker 0:Compass PD has a big goal of impacting the learning of 1 million students, and you could help us meet that goal by subscribing to our podcast and sharing it with a fellow educator. If you find this learning helpful, our team works with leaders in school districts daily. Contact us and we would be happy to help you reach your ambitious goals. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Compass PD podcast. Stay dedicated to your leadership journey and remember that you can shape the future of education in your district. Until next time, take care and have a great learning day.