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Leadership > The Change Process
Teaming: Working Together for Change
Table of Contents:
Introduction
An exhausting year, the hardest so far, everyone said. So much change under way already. Mainstreaming the special education students; implementing portfolios, authentic assessments, site-based decision making and other requirements of the state's education reform act; expanding the new public safety magnet program, the three teams in the ninth grade, and the professional development alliances between the school and a local university--each undertaking a major change, each complicated and time-consuming. With these shifts it grows harder for any teacher to brush aside innovation as merely an option chosen by others which he or she is still free to ignore. "It touches everyone now," the principal declared.
This was our second visit to Lincoln High School, a middle-sized suburban high school located in the south-central part of the country. Of Lincoln's eleven hundred students, about 75 percent are white and 25 percent are black; 40 percent come from low-income families. During our visit, from April 13-17, 1992, we spoke with many people in the school community and observed in classrooms to gain understanding of what it is like to learn and to teach at Lincoln at this point in its effort to become an Essential school. From our conversations, observations, and reflections we produced the following snapshot.1
We decided to make teamwork and teaming the focus of this second snapshot. By teamwork we mean the ability of all the people in the school community to work together in various activities and dimensions of school life. Teaming at Lincoln refers to grouping students so that approximately one hundred students stay together for about two-thirds of the day with four or five teachers. Of course, teaming depends on teamwork. As the teaming initiatives have taken hold, some more firmly than others, attention this year has increasingly focused on the Van Plan, a design to team the entire school, created by a half-dozen teachers as they drove home from the Coalition's Fall Forum in Chicago the previous November. The curriculum committee, which previously discussed block scheduling and teaming, took up the Van Plan and spent many Monday afternoons crafting a new master schedule for the 1992-93 school year. By March, the revised plan assigned every tenth-grader to one or another of three teams for four hours each day (all ninth-graders would also be on teams, as happened in 1991-92). Up to 110 juniors and seniors could join a new eleventh/twelfth-grade team. The other upperclassmen could arrange a traditional schedule; scaling back the Van Plan's ambitious design for total teaming, the committee decided that not everyone had to join a team.
Lincoln's bold step was built on its recent history of creating teams, but the scope of the Van Plan exceeded previous structural reforms. So it was not surprising that strong feelings arose--anxiety and excitement, doubt and optimism. (The second section of this snapshot describes these reactions.) What becomes clear is that how the school went about making the changes was as much an issue as what occurred when teaming was in place.
It would be unfortunate if all the time and passion devoted to creating, revising, and adopting the new master schedule distracted the faculty from the central reason for even having teams: better teaching and learning. This paper, therefore, begins with sketches of two classes in which the researchers believe teachers and students are demonstrating good teaching and learning--where lively instruction engages students in meaningful work. Not every Lincoln classroom is as strong as these two; there is still much work to do. The snapshot ends back in the classroom, which is where we hope the Lincoln faculty and administration concentrate their efforts, as they keep in mind the reason why they invested so much emotional and intellectual capital in creating more teams.
[Return to Table of Contents] Keeping Teaching and Learning Central
The school is crossing a threshold, as more than half of the students this coming fall will be teamed. Neither John Thornton nor Fran Murray, however, works alongside other teachers on a team. When the bells ring, they are on their own, although each keeps in touch with colleagues after class. Mr. Thornton and Ms. Murray are not loners, opposed in principle to teaming. If they stay at Lincoln High, they will probably become members of a team.
[Return to Table of Contents] John Thornton's Class
When you go back and get your power amplifier, double-check the IC orientation. Be sure pin one is where it's supposed to be. Make sure you don't have any of the capacitors backwards or we'll have premature Fourth of July. And take an ohm meter to verify that you don't have a zero ohm condition, indicating a short. Now once you get the power amplifiers that work, I don't want to have them smoking! So be sure you double-check your work when you set it up.
Some of the tables in the back have been pushed together. Please move them apart. And be careful with the table with the ferric chloride solution--I don't want that spilled on the floor! If you need a soldering kit, take one of these, but bring it back. By the way, yesterday at a meeting we were given a good pat on the back by Miss Burke for the work we're doing.
When Mr. Thornton finishes, the kids get their projects and assemble at their tables. David is at the ferric chloride solution, etching his plate. As he works, he explains how he covers the circuit board, a slab of plastic with a thin copper layer on top:
I'll cover what I want to keep with an acetate stencil and put the board into the ferric chloride. The solution eats away all the copper that is not covered by acetate, leaving paths for the current to flow to different parts. Once I have that, I'll drill holes through to solder on electrical components like ICs, capacitors, and resistors.
We ask David, "What part of the project are you working on now?" and he answers, "The SAD [serial analog device] 1024. It runs the power through this, and then it goes through the buffer. And this hooks up to the power amplifier. You can take a Walkman and plug it in and it'll boost it to about twenty-five watts."
David has his own business cards. He and two friends install car stereos, and they buy the components for their clients, as well as installing them. His current project at home is taking apart the back seat of his own car to rig up new speakers. When he plays the system, the seat will rise several feet to unleash stereo sound powerful enough to rattle windows a block away.
As David and his classmates speak, their talk is punctuated with technical details about wattage and speaker magnet weights. To many, their conversation would sound like a foreign language; even so, it is clear that they are fluent in this language and enjoy the ease with which they can speak. Occasionally someone calls across the room for information. It is loud because of the acoustics, not because of yelling, and all are working as they talk.
Mr. Thornton compares his students to unmined ore, an upbeat image that reaffirms the worth of what they bring with them to his class. He builds on their interests, particularly in music and cars. He talks with pride about these students:
David and these guys know what a power amplifier is, and they know what mixers are. When we talked about filters, they plotted the responses on one of these dB meters I brought in. Then they'll say, "Wow, I saw the same figure when I was out shopping for a speaker cabinet! It was right there on the label inside the speaker."
If he told them to pull out a textbook and "graph for the sake of graphing," Mr. Thornton says, he would lose them; "There's got to be an application for them." He fantasizes about taking an entire class to a Circuit City store:
One group would select the tuner, another would pick the CD player, a third would get the power amplifier, and the fourth group would choose the speakers. They'd not only buy everything, but they'd actually put it into somebody's car; then we'd go through it step by step to inspect what we did. Everybody gets a passing grade if they did their part. That to me is what learning is all about.
The same approach could work in other subjects, Mr. Thornton believes. If he were teaching English and assigned one of his favorite books,
The Old Man and the Sea, he would have students find old advertisements for fishing equipment and also dig up the National Weather Service reports for that year. He would send them to local fishing stores to learn more about bait and rods. What he would not do is begin with a book report: "They'd put in a huge title to fill up three lines, then leave a big space, then have three words on each line, double-spacing, and keep on like that, finishing with a big 'The End,' just to give me five pages."
[Return to Table of Contents] Fran Murray's Class
Right after the bell, the students are busy with their assignment, a "sponge" activity to do when they walk in. This morning, the class is working through an algebraic equation. After a few minutes, Ms. Murray goes over the solution with the students, asking questions constantly, coaxing, providing clues. Then they move to the central task for the day. On the overhead, she draws a model of a table with additive inverses and absolute values. Continuing to question and prompt, Ms. Murray completes one entry in the table, showing how the job should be done. She then begins to set up groups. During this time, the students are attentive and quiet, and virtually all seem to be following the lesson. Only one girl, Nina, is not with the rest. She has her head down on her desk. At one point as Ms. Murray goes around the room, she gives Nina's back a part, saying sympathetically, "I guess you're having a hard morning." Ms. Murray knows that Nina's grandfather died during the school's spring break. Rather than telling students to get themselves into groups, Ms. Murray passes out colorful cards with geometric shapes ("Triangles over here, please, circles in the far corner"); then, on the overhead, Ms. Murray jots down the social skills they will work on along with their math concepts. There is a master list on the back bulletin board, and for every group activity, Ms. Murray and the class select several. Today they agree on three skills: no put-downs, with Ms. Murray adding a comment about not calling each other names; checking
(they were to read each other's papers); and listening. She writes those on her overhead as she speaks. They pick some roles, also listed on the back board: recorder, observer, and seeker. Last fall Ms. Murray added seeker because students had trouble getting along, and the prospect of summoning her seemed to prevent disruptions.
Once the roles and skills are established, Ms. Murray asks the students to move their chairs into groups and reminds everyone to sit close together in a square. She says, "I'm going to count to ten, and I want you to be in groups by the time I reach ten." As she starts the count, everyone bunches their chairs together, an impressive feat, since some have to move across the room. At ten, all four groups are working on the additive inverses. Ms. Murray walks around the room, answering questions, usually asking questions back. She coaxes one student to give an answer, then asks the student who asked the original question if that helped. She often refers to work completed earlier in the spring, reminding them how everything is building on what they have learned and is fitting together. One group has a student who briskly directs the others: "OK! Is everyone ready? OK! We have to do this timeline." Fran later said that he was in group therapy and her other students often find him overbearing. Today he is directive in a quiet way. No one in his group seems annoyed.
Nina's head is still down on her desk, yet she holds a pencil upright in her hand. Fran comes over to give her another pat, and she asks the group to be understanding. They pass their papers to Nina throughout the hour, sometimes pushing them right under her nose and arm. From time to time the top of her pencil moves, and she is in fact trying to check the papers.
Although Fran Murray's class is obviously shaped by her friendly relationships with students, her notion of caring includes mutual obligations. "Just being a nice guy, making life easy, giving them a way out--that's not what's best for our kids." Curving the grades when students do poorly on a test weakens both students' and teachers' responsibilities for learning. So does allowing truants quick ways to make up six weeks of missed assignments. "Caring has to go both ways. You have to be--I don't like this word--an authority. Set strong goals and expect them to live up to those goals as you encourage and nurture them." Fran worries that Lincoln High is prone to starting and celebrating new initiatives without enough attention to program goals and evaluation. "Pushing for the program is OK, but we always need to ask ourselves what we expect students to get." Fran pushes herself to experiment and innovate. She has picked up exciting ideas from a district algebra collaborative for using graphic calculators and making group tests. On her own, she has decided to include more applications in every class: for example, electricians' fees, angles of ski slopes, and average heights of females from birth to age twenty. Some of her most effective methods mark the classrooms of good teachers of any subject: using cooperative learning and frequent writing, answering questions with more questions, urging students to teach each other, and creating stories to demonstrate understanding of abstract notation. She would like to work with science teachers, perhaps paired once a week, to share what she knows. [Return to Table of Contents] Can Students Identify Good Teaching and Learning?
Even with lively instruction by dedicated teachers, it is not easy for students to appreciate active learning or understand concepts in depth. The dimensions of the challenge are large. When students see the need for teamwork in solving genuine problems, the odds are better that they will value what the Coalition seeks. Even so, it is a big job and quick victories are rare, as the comments of Vanessa and David indicate.
For Vanessa, math with Ms. Murray is the best of her classes. She opens her notebook to show off her quizzes, "sponges," homework, and class work: "I pay attention. Have to." Last year she could daydream and talk in class. "That was a blast. But this is better." Not only is her best friend in four of her classes, she is also proud that she finally learned how to add and subtract negative numbers. She draws pictures of balloons to explain how she has learned: "See, these are air puffs and these are sandbags. You put your balloon on positive three, then take two air puffs away so the balloon sinks." She shows how five plus negative nine should be figured. "Have to put in nine of these old sandbags so the five sinks down to negative four." When asked to subtract negative nine from five, she fidgets and says, "That makes me so mad--it doesn't make sense to me." When asked why we study negative numbers, Vanessa shakes her head: "I don't know. I know what it is but I don't know why." She can repeat procedures--she knows all the roles for group work, and she remembers the number line laid out on the floor of the classroom, which Ms. Murray calls "the algebra walk"--but deeper understandings elude her. Even though David loves electronics, he claims that he still dislikes math. Last semester he failed geometry, and this spring he thinks his average is a D+. He failed health class last year and only earned the credits by going to the late-afternoon Extended School Services, a second-chance program at Lincoln. David knows that he could easily raise his math grade by turning in more assignments--even incomplete or wrong answers earn some points--yet when he does math assignments, he frequently leaves them at home.
David has never heard of the Coalition of Essential Schools. He does know that Lincoln High has made changes recently. In his opinion, the evidence of improvement is the fresh paint in the building, better security, and a tougher stand on tardiness. He does not mention anything about instruction, yet he values the underlying principles of the Coalition, even if he does not know or use the lingo of "student-as-worker," "Exhibitions," or "less is more." David enjoys group work, prefers to show off his skill by making things he can use, and appreciates teachers who have high expectations. Whatever his feelings about math, he knows the value of interdisciplinary learning, because from personal experience he realizes that measuring the thickness of wire helps him solve problems in electronics. He can give examples of the now-fashionable word authentic:
A real test is the working of the classroom. Trying to get people that don't want to work, to work. Cause it's just like a car: some guys might work on the engine and some other guys are doing the wheels. You need both. That's what we're doing. The SAD part of the project won't work without the buffer. The buffer can't work without the SAD. The power amplifier can work by itself, but it won't be as clear or sound as good.
David knows what it means to work together.
[Return to Table of Contents] The Impact of Teaming on Lincoln
Before examining the many issues raised by the expansion of teaming at Lincoln, we will describe, in brief, how teaming efforts at Lincoln evolved into their present, still-developing form.
[Return to Table of Contents] Recent History of Teaming
The expansion of teaming has been taking shape since the late 1980s. In 1988, the Zephyr team arose to ease the transition from middle school to high school and reduce the high dropout rate of freshmen. The team veterans acknowledge the tentative and halting first steps of the early years: "That first year we just worked on behavior and attendance. It wasn't until the second year that we started our environmental unit." Staff turnover, especially of science teachers, complicated curriculum planning, even though the team won a second planning period. Some observers wondered if Zephyr took too many field trips. The team persisted, proud of their efforts and pleased by the growing number of visitors.
A smaller team, a pairing of an English and history teacher, also began in the late 1980s. Their version of American studies for juniors featured a range of activities: mask making, family trees, interviewing local citizens, acting out book reports, and hearing guest speakers. They, too, refined and improved their collaboration. One parent reported the progress through the eyes of her three children: "My oldest said it stunk. The next year, 1989, I heard that it wasn't wonderful, but he lived with it. Now I hear great things about it from my youngest." Several more teams formed in 1991, in order to have every ninth-grader on one of three teams. So far, the achievements of the new teams center on conversations about individual students, parent conferences, and fewer referrals to the front office. As with most new teams, pedagogical changes, including interdisciplinary units and dramatically different use of time, lie in the future. "I'm still the math [teacher]; I go to my room and do my thing," one teacher reported. They have spent much time learning how to work together, getting to know each other's strengths, and figuring out how to make decisions, plan, and follow through.
Although the teams differ considerably, there is the underlying faith that if the master schedule changes significantly, then instruction will also change sooner or later. The principal sees teaming as a good way to "create the conditions" for better teaching. She welcomes the variety among the teams: "I don't want to say to people, 'Everybody has to look like this.' Maybe that's been a problem, teachers believing we're saying that. No, that's never been what I've wanted." She recognizes that many fine teachers at Lincoln have not been on teams, and she acknowledges that sometimes the teams haven't made good use of their opportunities. Still, provision of large blocks of time for four or five teachers eases the way for teachers to coach rather than lecture, for students to tackle projects, not worksheets, and for students and teachers to get to know each other well instead of avoiding close contact.
What Lincoln is trying to do with the expansion of teaming sets it apart from, and ahead of, most other Coalition schools. Few sites have made the bold step of teaming as many teachers and students as Lincoln plans to do. Usually a team encompasses only a handful of volunteers, and often they live a separate life from the rest of the school, with a few rooms of their own and the accompanying isolation typical of schools-within-a-school. What Lincoln is creating is also exceptional in light of the school's size. It is much easier to team when a school is small, especially if de facto teams have already taken hold. Furthermore, the change is a marker of how far Lincoln has moved since the 1980s, when a ninth-grade team was created. A veteran English teacher remembers four colleagues then struggling without an integrated curriculum, a common planning period, or shared space in the building. They had several weeks together in the summer, but each one wrote his own curriculum. One of them recalled, "I kept saying to myself, this is not what a real team should do." [Return to Table of Contents] Teamwork and Mainstreaming: A Major Challenge
Teamwork is more than just the internal relationships within formally identified teams.
In Lincoln's recent history, a major innovation which called for imaginative teamwork throughout the school was the summer 1991 decision to mainstream all the special education (ECE)
students. The shift caught most staff by surprise, even though the possibility had been discussed periodically. Quite a few teachers, therefore, felt blindsided by the change when school began last fall. Several aspects of mainstreaming may foreshadow what could arise this fall in response to teaming's expansion. What constituted true mainstreaming was not always clear. Did numbers matter? In a section of consumer math, for instance, fifteen of the twenty-one students were ECE. Was that mainstreaming? One team wanted to pull aside the ECE kids because the overall range of abilities in the team was so vast. Was that mainstreaming? To what extent should ECE students failing in one class be reassigned to a less demanding section of the same course, where the odds of passing were higher? Was that mainstreaming? Those questions were not as volatile as the ambiguity about the place of ECE teachers in regular teachers' classes. On teams, the specialists sometimes stayed at the edges, acting like aides or clerks, as the regular teacher held center stage. Elsewhere, when they followed individual students through their classes, they appeared so rarely, perhaps twice during the year, that no role other than a quick check-up was established, and even that seemed to vary in usefulness. A few regular teachers resented the special education teachers' independence and relative freedom to arrange their days as they wished, with some more diligent than others. In turn, the ECE staff saw how several teachers either would not or could not change their instruction to accommodate a wider range of abilities and disabilities.
Opinions varied as to mainstreaming's impact on students. As an assistant principal said, "It's difficult and frustrating .æ.æ. we're all learning.æ.æ.æ. In a way, we mainstreamed the teachers along with the kids." Some teachers celebrated the ECE students who worked hard enough to earn the regular grade, instead of taking the ECE grade option, yet other teachers resented counselors who occasionally raised a grade on the basis of the student's Individualized Educational Program (IEP). Most of the concerns focused on the behaviorally disordered students, with the majority of teachers feeling they were not all well served by placement in regular classrooms.
The same cries of "we're moving too fast" were heard in the spring of 1992, when the new master schedule crystallized. When the number of teams rises this fall, the same uncertainties about teaming--what is this? how can we work together? what are the results?--will probably arise, as they did when mainstreaming was instituted.
As a result of the initial snags as well as early successes, fine-tunings are likely, just as next year's revised ECE program will feature new options for job training and for teaching the behaviorally disordered students.
[Return to Table of Contents] The School Community's Concerns about Teaming
Apart from the experiences with mainstreaming, it is already clear that other questions are on the minds of Lincoln faculty in regard to teaming. The creation, revision, and adoption of the 1992-93 master schedule generated some controversy about what teaming would mean, as well as some dispute about
how the school went about making the decision. There was grumbling on both counts. Students, parents, and teachers raised questions and voiced concerns. In the following section, six perspectives on teaming--four of individual teachers, and two of students and parents in general--are sketched in order to lay out the wide range of experiences and opinions on teaming. The profiles deliberately highlight anxieties and doubts. It should be remembered that not everyone in the school shares these views. Furthermore, much of the concern may turn out to be the natural fear, confusion, anger, and uncertainty which people in many schools feel in the face of major change. In fact, it would be surprising if those powerful emotions did not surface in the wake of restructuring. Chip Smoley's Views
Although he would like to see hard data on teaming, in its absence Chip relies on his own observations and conversations with students. He thinks the junior year English/history pairing has improved. He hears some kids say that they don't do enough English, but Chip knows that without the familiar grammar book, they might not realize that rewriting a history paper is indeed English. Chip is sure that he can identify a former Zephyr team student by the second week in September. "They are the ones who say, 'Homework? On the first day, we get homework?' And then, three days later, they ask, 'When do we get a free day, Mr. Smoley?'"
What worries him more than the track record of previous teams is the way decisions about the master schedule have been made (or not made) in recent months. He appreciates the open-door policy of the curriculum committee, which meets every Monday afternoon. What he perceives--and resents--is an implication that "if you don't show up, you shouldn't complain about what we decided." He also regrets the two-month delay in responding to five pages of questions generated in small groups at the faculty meeting where the 1992-93 master schedule was presented. He wishes there had been a survey--perhaps a questionnaire, not necessarily a vote--to see how the faculty really feels about the creation of more teams. Chip also wants to know how slots would be filled if two or more teachers applied, or if several teachers on their own volunteered themselves as a team. "Everything's been suggested, from drawing names out of a hat to submitting mini-resumes to the steering committee. Those are important decisions, and I think the uncertainty has hurt morale."
Wendy Campbell's Views
While Wendy holds very different views from Chip's, she too is frustrated.
She claims that the assessment figures speak well for teaming. On her own, she tallied her former students' grades in math, English, and science in the year after she taught them. She also counted how many became leaders in school clubs. She was thrilled with how well they did--better, she said, than students not on her team. But she decided against publicizing the comparisons. "We knew that if we showed those results at a faculty meeting, it would make everyone mad. Boastful, that's what they'd say! I'd only use those results if parents were upset or the program were threatened." She is proud her students did well, but, she says, "We didn't rub it in anyone's face--they dislike us anyway and that would have made them hate us more." As Chip worries about moving ahead too quickly, Wendy recalls the hours spent studying all the sophomore and junior transcripts. The original plan for teaming included math and science for every senior, which Wendy defended by proving that the great majority of the upcoming seniors needed credits in both subjects to graduate. What would happen if they needed Algebra 2 and biology, but those teachers were not on the same team? Another long look at the transcripts indicated that usually the Algebra 2 students needed chemistry. She devoted many hours to the curriculum committee and steering committee meetings, and she appreciated the time spent by several administrators who stayed in a motel for two days to forge the final details of the master schedule.
Wendy's concerns stem from the struggles she endured--and sometimes provoked--last year as a team member. She quarrels with the administration about the team's responsibility for covering the in-school suspension class, which she dislikes in principle and resents in practice for eroding her team's planning time. She complains about the way the counselors and assistant principals assigned new students to her team and switched old students from one team to another, without asking either team's approval. She resents the pressure last fall to offer two subjects targeted for the most able students. Occasionally the team appealed to the principal in hopes of reversing the assistant principal's decisions, but, she says, "If we had bothered her on every issue this year, we would have spent our lives in her office." Derek Dee's Views
Derek, a math teacher, admits, "Dealing with fourteen-year-olds all day wears me out. I need variety." A senior class, in contrast to the freshmen, is a "gravy train" because, by then, "a lot of the trouble is weeded out." Unequal workloads annoy him; when he was department chair, he made sure everyone had at least one top-track class. This year he had 120 ninth-graders, with only ten or twelve he considered attentive and motivated. One period, he says, was wall-to-wall special ed kids. That's tough. You lecture and walk the aisles. All ninth-graders, with massive problems: drug use, wrecked homes, bad love life, pregnant girls, girls wondering if they are pregnant, breaking up with boyfriends, sitting here crying and whining. I'm trying to teach math, but it's like talking to a brick wall. Some of the problems that bother Derek the most are beyond the reach of even the best team. Students, he says, "come in here in turmoil, not because I did anything wrong. They're so upset they kick the wall or pick a fight." He estimates that 15 percent of his students have been in drug rehabilitation and at least 50 percent need professional therapy. Derek wants to work with kids who want to work. He has taught adults in night school. "They do their part. They've had their fill of four-dollars-an-hour jobs and are looking for a better life." Those were the students he sought: students who would come to him with a work ethic. "I can't take somebody that doesn't have any desire and change that."
He admires the principal: "Valerie Taylor and that whole crew are trying to make a better world, I have no doubt. They are willing to try an awful lot of stuff." What he wishes they would try is a crisis center "so when I get ready to kill a kid, I can send him some place besides the hall or downstairs, especially when the principals are out and about. When all hell breaks loose and I want to get one guy out of here, we have big trouble. I can't leave to take him down, but I can't trust him to go on his own." Derek feels that his team this year agreed on several rules which they enforced consistently. That helped, as did the agreement for everyone to slow down so the special education students would not be totally lost. Teaching study skills and giving points every day for participation encouraged more students to try. Derek is pleased with the graphs and charts he coordinated with the unit on ecology his team developed. But no team could give him what he craves: "better kids, on grade level, who are academically motivated." He decided to retire.
Pat Clark's Views
Pat's sophomores have as many emotional complications as Derek Dee's freshmen. Ozela has herpes; Harriett weights 350 pounds; LaTosha's stepfather is in jail for murder; and Beth Ann, a manic-depressive, has been hospitalized four times. Jim is hyperactive and often jumps out of his chair; Sean works eight hours daily and usually dozes off in class. Lou routinely farts in class. Oprah sucks her thumb, and when she starts, Michael does too. Two boys, best friends, are so shy they fear speaking in front of others.
On her own initiative, apart from a team, Pat searches, with more optimism than Derek, for new ways to teach. She values conferences and has gained useful ideas from the Coalition's Fall Forum, the Commonwealth Institute for Teachers' summer seminar, Foxfire gatherings, and local presentations. She invites guest speakers to her class, and she takes her students to plays and concerts. Pat thinks about her teaching all the time and keeps a journal filled with lengthy reflections. Like Derek, she knows that some efforts fail, but unlike Derek, she comes back with undiminished determination:
The traditional methods I once used do not work. I am trying to find another way to capture the kids' interest in reading, without threatening them. I want to encourage them to like it enough so they won't run away from reading. I think if we keep writing, their reading skills will improve. So far, I haven't had any real disasters. I do wish I could get better results faster. I haven't found a way. I haven't found in the articles and books I read that other people know a surefire way either! I hope there is a way. I'll keep working on it until I find it.
Pat likes the idea of team teaching. Teaching at other schools, she joined two teams and loved both. She relished the moral support of her teammates, and felt she had more access to the principal and a better chance of getting small grants for supplies. But Pat now teaches two sections of foreign language. With next year's teams blocked for four periods, she wonders if she will have to drop the language teaching. She loves teaching it and worries that fewer students will be able to take foreign language as one of their few electives. In this way, teaming will both help and hurt her.
Students Voice Concerns
The seven students in the conference room sound wary at the prospect of teams next fall. The upperclassmen are particularly upset. Several students circulated petitions against teaming and went to the steering committee to voice their concerns. Could they still take yearbook? Could they pick the teachers they wanted? Why spend four hours every day with the same people? Would this hurt them later in college? The freshmen and sophomores also worry about the teams. The teams bring back memories of middle school: "It's like they're trying to put us back, treating us like little kids again." They do not want to be babied, they say. High schools should offer independence, chances to meet new people and move around the building: "Nobody likes to be cooped up, stuck in one room all day with the same old faces." Several able and diligent freshmen doubt that the Zephyr team pushed them far enough. Why didn't they have more homework? How come they got A grades without doing much work? Why did sophomores they knew tell them they would be lost next year? Why did other freshmen do algebra that "we can't imagine doing? .æ.æ. They ask if we've done it too, and it's embarrassing because we're on eighth-grade stuff, like plotting negative and positive points."
Parents Voice Concerns
A group of parents also wonder if the more talented youngsters have been stretched enough. One mother hopes her daughter would take biology rather than general science, and she is puzzled why teachers do not correct spelling more often. "They need to give the honors students more work," she feels. The parents respect the reasons for mainstreaming but fear that "when they're all together, it may pull some back, even if it helps some others." Cooperative learning is acceptable to them; that method makes sense, even though they doubt that everyone contributes fully or gets to work quickly when a unit lasts six weeks. Where the parents differ the most is in the amount of contact they have with the teams. Some have heard immediately from the teachers whenever they have called; others are miffed they did not know sooner if their child was failing a course. One mother admits that "after being around here for years, I still didn't know which team would be best for my son." Another woman says she relies on the advice of a good friend active in the PTA, and a surprised father confesses that he had not known that it was possible to request a particular team. They are all relieved that their children sometimes knew how to push for change. One girl wrote a letter to the principal, and a boy switched classes when "the teacher threw up her hands because a bunch of them didn't want to learn. A few did, but the ones who really wanted to learn were suffering. So he got a transfer to another team."
Still, those parents like the idea of teaming. The shortcomings and disappointments were not inherent in teaming and could be fixed by having more demanding teachers along with sending more information home. No one suggests abolishing teams or returning to the regimented classrooms they had endured as students. They have experienced teaming in their workplaces and that makes good sense to them. All they want is assurance that their children are challenged and the knowledge of what is going on. They are proud to be associated with the school, admire Mrs. Taylor's leadership, and praise the many teachers who are willing to innovate. Asked what he would do if tomorrow he were principal, one man smiles and says, "I'd hire Mrs. Taylor as my assistant principal."
[Return to Table of Contents] How Does Teaming Affect Work Conditions?
Implementing teaming at Lincoln has had an effect on several aspects of teachers' working conditions and attitudes: their workload, their sense of equity and fairness, and their morale.
Teaming's Impact on Workload
In most high schools, teachers shape their working lives over time to find niches which they prize. Job satisfaction often stems from claiming a special program, favorite elective, winning sports team, popular chorus, or some other unique opportunity where it is possible to shine. Alternatively, some teachers welcome anonymity and isolation; that is their niche. In either case, teachers who remain at a high school find ways to arrange a tolerable workload. Often that accommodation takes years to establish and requires savvy negotiation. Its hard-won results are usually cherished.
Teaming can rearrange those accommodations. For Pat, her elective brought her extra gratification. She has other sources of stimulation, but sometimes a teacher whose entire load is electives feels squeezed when the expansion of teaming restricts students' access to those courses. One veteran teacher at Lincoln was willing to do more than the three preps (the contractual limit) in order to attract more and better students. "Right now I just kind of hang on, try to survive, and enjoy the ones I do get." Some electives, she fears, will get dropped entirely, others will be scaled back, and others will be preserved. The pain won't be distributed evenly, she predicts.
Teaming also affects the required core subjects. Derek Dee struggles with 120 ninth-graders and yearns for variety in the form of upperclassmen. Yet a load of five senior English classes (which awaits one unteamed teacher) may be quite burdensome in light of the substantial writing and rewriting for the portfolios mandated by the state's education reform act. The trade-off of fewer preps for less variety does not appeal to everyone. Maybe the variety might take another form: with a wide range of students in one team, perhaps six levels of math will be necessary; even if several levels are formally called the same thing, the prep time necessary to truly personalize the instruction may be substantial.
Teaming's Impact on Equity
The assignment of students affects everyone. In the original design, teamed teachers had approximately thirty fewer students then the unteamed teachers, and they had two planning periods, one more than everyone else. In the past, some Lincoln faculty claimed that the privileged conditions of the team meant more work for everyone else, and the team, in turn, was sure it was working harder than ever. The workload discrepancies narrowed as the revisions of the master schedule moved along this spring, but the "You've got it easy," "No, not at all, my life is harder" exchanges continued. In addition, issues of equity arose around the distribution of the strongest and weakest students. Would each team receive equal shares? What to do if only a few seniors in May, on the first day of arena scheduling
(a first-come, first-serve process of choosing teams), signed up for the new eleventh/ twelfth-grade team? Could students be recruited or assigned there? By whom? Those questions about fairness might have popped up regardless of the procedures Lincoln used to create teams. Such anxieties may be inevitable. But the concerns about equity were heightened by some reservations about how decisions were made. Lincoln prides itself on using consensus as the way to make decisions, although some teachers claim that they still do not understand what consensus means. A few teachers wonder if it means that the most vocal keep talking until the skeptics are eventually worn down. Other teachers and administrators point out that the meaning of consensus has been discussed repeatedly, and that the opponents of particular changes seek a vote so they can defeat a proposal quickly instead of pondering its merits. They also note that there are well-established procedures for motions to revert to the steering committee when there is no agreement among the entire faculty. In their minds, the system is clear and fair. To others, it gives an advantage to the loud, the persistent, and those willing and able to attend dozens of meetings. In an early-March faculty meeting, Chip Smoley asked if the proposed master schedule was a "done deal." He expressed a concern shared by some faculty: the decision seemed set. Others teachers picked at the work of the assistant principals, who renamed the original plan, revised it, and later recruited a few teachers for some slots. But from the assistant principals' perspective, the original was unworkable, the details had to be handled by people who understood all the constraints on the schedule, and without recruitment some team slots might remain vacant.
Teaming's Impact on Faculty Morale
In the discussion at the March meeting of what and how the school was changing, the faculty with reservations were not identical to the group previously known as resisters.2 A wider spectrum of the faculty fretted about the expansion of teaming than they had about other changes Lincoln has undertaken recently. Teachers, such as Fran Murray, who had never teamed but taught in the spirit of the nine Common Principles, voiced concerns; so did teachers on teams who had rarely taught according to Coalition precepts. Old and young faculty had questions. Male and female teachers spoke up. The alignment on teaming correlated to some degree with allegiance to the Coalition. That does not mean that faith in Coalition ideas suddenly vanished. It suggests, instead, that loyalty can be rivaled by other immediate concerns and priorities that bear directly on the nitty-gritty of who, when, where, and with whom someone teaches. Workplace conditions that create and maintain security in teachers' everyday lives can overshadow ideological commitments to innovative pedagogy. One way to think about the emotions aroused by the expansion of teaming at Lincoln High School focuses on the interplay of agreement, trust, and energy. Those three traits are critical components that act together to allow teachers to sustain a stable environment in which they teach. It is possible to operate in a climate of disagreement when there are ample supplies of energy and trust in the decency of others. But when supplies of trust become overdrawn, when decision making is seen as a "done deal," energy alone is probably not enough to mitigate the stresses of daily life. When the reservoir of agreement, trust, and energy is too low, daily life can become harried.
In the past, Lincoln often endured disagreements without eroding the sense of mutual trust or the drive to work hard. Sometimes a few people lacking trust or energy came to a new issue ready to quibble and obstruct; their opposition, in other words, stemmed from, rather than caused, their wariness or lethargy. But this spring, some faculty who before had a large measure of both trust and stamina lost a bit of both as a result of the disagreements. It could be that energy, agreement, and trust resemble the three engines on a 727 jet. The flight is fast and safe when all three are operating. If one engine sputters or fails, the other two can carry the plane, although the pilots and passengers won't go as far as originally planned. But if two of the three engines give out, the odds of a safe flight drop. Fortunately, engines can be restarted, and a challenge ahead is the restoration of trust and drive in the minority of the faculty who were deeply disgruntled this spring. What other challenges may await Lincoln High?
[Return to Table of Contents]
Making Teaming Work to Improve Instruction
Between the extremes of total autonomy and constant surveillance, Lincoln needs to find ways to support the teams in the constructive spirit of a "critical friend," to use a popular Coalition phrase. Advice and help should extend beyond an occasional workshop. The central challenge is keeping a focus on instruction. The details of teaming--rooms, budgets, trips, paper work--should not distract attention from pedagogy. Because a schedule is only a means to the end of better teaching and learning, teaming by itself guarantees nothing. It can offer opportunities and favorable settings in which instruction might improve. Whether or not good use is made of those chances depends on other factors than the schedule.
We offer some suggestions for reflection on how to make teaming work to improve teaching and learning at Lincoln High School.
- What if a respected veteran teacher spent part of each week (or each day, if possible)
as a mentor to the teams? He or she might watch, listen, ask questions, and in other ways facilitate the work of the teams. This colleague would be neither an administrator/evaluator nor an aide there to do chores. The notion of a peer coach does not preclude creative, new alliances with administrators. One can imagine part or all of a ninth-grade course in each team, taught by an assistant principal or a counselor (as happens in many private schools), and in turn the teams could try to relieve the administrators of some tasks. Having many strong teams, for instance, would mean fewer disciplinary referrals.
- What if a copy of the minutes of all the major committees was put in the mailbox of every staff member? Knowledge of changes under way might be deepened if everyone had a copy, instead of keeping the minutes in the front office. The easy excuse, "I didn't know," would be removed. The larger issue is communication: when schools move away from the traditional hierarchical organization, the flow of information takes on greater importance. Knowledge and power now go together. Wise decisions should be based on accurate and complete information.
- Teacher isolation might wane this fall, only to be replaced by team isolation. What if each team swapped ideas with the other teams? A meeting every other week, with one representative per team, could generate helpful exchanges of ideas and experiences. Interdisciplinary units, ECE students, portfolios, and other instructional topics could spark productive discussions.
- What if the teams listened closely to students' views of learning and teaching? For example, many students' wariness about teaming is no secret. How much of that fear is grounded on incomplete and inaccurate information, circulated by gossip and hearsay? Just lecturing students on the similarities between changes in their school and changes in the modern workplace will probably not be enough. A local company may have every employee on teams, but frequently student knows other places where teamwork isn't mandatory. And they are quick to point out that sloppy teamwork at work brings stiffer penalties than the consequences they see when classmates goof off. Students need to be convinced by experiencing the benefits of teaming.
- Even so, what if a pamphlet was made available for students
(and their parents) that explains in simple, clear language the teaching and learning that Lincoln prizes. Vivid examples of student work should be included; in fact, the students themselves might write the pamphlet. In any case, the material should be as concise and direct as the issue of Horace, the Coalition's newsletter, which featured Lincoln's athletic department's views of the parallels between teaching and coaching.
- What if Lincoln asked for more advice and assistance from the allies it already has? A former Lincoln teacher now at the Lindeman Academy, the district-sponsored professional development academy, understands the obstacles well-intentioned teams face; she has much to offer. Faculty from the local university could alert Lincoln teams to some excellent articles on the recurring problems teams encounter; and from the Coalition, Lincoln should make use of Pat Wasley's case studies of teams. The ongoing exploration of Deming's work on Total Quality Management should be apt and useful, as the teams start to define quality work. The researchers from the University of Wisconsin who are studying Lincoln should be asked for feedback. Whatever the approach to getting advice and assistance, much is already known about teaming, and Lincoln has ready access to the literature and the people who know it.
- Discussions of teaming usually focus on couplings--adults with adults, teams with students--as the placement of people captures attention. What if the school emphasized the importance of who comes to Lincoln in the first place, regardless of how they are scheduled after they are there? Often educators put great stock in new programs and unintentionally underestimate the crucial matter of the people who make up a school. As a magnet school, what students does Lincoln want to attract? What marketing strategies will draw the students the school seeks? What talents and values do new faculty bring? To what extent can Lincoln decide who the rookies will be? How are the newcomers introduced to the Coalition after they arrive?
On the other hand, what efforts are made to keep the excellent teachers who might consider leaving? If a top-flight research university lost as many of its stars as Lincoln has in the last five years, its national standing would drop considerably. Valerie Taylor spoke wistfully:
[I worry about the talented faculty]
who have been taken from us. That sounds like an obituary. Lots of folks have been picked up by the state or the district--some of the heroes I could always count on--and I worry about the health and fatigue of the ones still here. This takes its toll.
The most awesome master schedule could be created, without friction, but if the faculty lacked the verve, pedagogical flair, and whatever else makes an outstanding teacher, then the expansion of teaming would be a hollow victory.
[Return to Table of Contents] Another Look at Teaching and Learning
We end this snapshot, as we began, with a visit to a classroom that will raise questions about what makes good teaching and learning. These are questions that ought to remain central in the midst of the major organizational changes the school is experiencing in regard to teaming.
[Return to Table of Contents]
A Visit to Mr. Edwards' Class
After Sam Edwards calls the roll, two boys close the window shades, then a movie begins. It is a graphic film, with pictures of hearts, surgery, and lots of blood. At the first sight of a heart beating, one student calls out, "Is that real, Ed?" Another student asks, "Does a heart really make that sound?" Mr. Edwards nods. Seven minutes after the film started, five students' heads are down, but everyone else seems to be watching, including Mr. Edwards, and the class is fairly quiet. From time to time, students toss out questions and Edwards gives short answers.
"How long does that surgery take?" "Four or five hours." "Don't they take any rest?"
"No."
The movie ends after fifteen minutes, and Mr. Edwards sits on the table at the front of the room and starts talking. "When I first saw this, I felt sick. That hatchet used to pull the sternum apart, the heart jumping around...; they have to cool the heart, slow it down, before they can operate. I wish the movie had shown you that."
Mr. Edwards continues his lecture with the students occasionally popping a question at him. In a few minutes he talks about circulation of the blood, artificial heart machines, how to prepare the ribs for surgery, and the expense of surgery. Then he turns on his overhead projector and says, "You all give me your attention now, please." He writes an outline on the overhead as he shushes them to be still. "You're hummin' and chantin'." Starting with monotrenes and marsupials, he asks the students which marsupials have belly buttons; do dogs? cats? chickens? horses? He urges a boy to crawl under a horse and double-check.
One student asks a reasonable question: "How does a mother horse tie the belly button since there hasn't always been veterinarians around to do it?" She wonders if horses chewed it off. Mr. Edwards replies, "Yes, madam, mother horse chews it right off."
He continues with his list, without making connections between these categories and the movie. He moves briskly and covers a lot of material, punctuating his talk by some stories about different kinds of bats. One student asks if bats in South America land on cows and bite them. He leans his head back, sticks his arms out to the side and twists his head and body. The students don't laugh much, although several, later, say they like his sense of humor. As this lecture continues for ten more minutes, there isn't much commotion in the room. Mr. Edwards does move a talker to the front row, and occasionally students yell to each other. One boy is rocking back and forth in his chair, knocking it against the back wall. Twice students get up, to throw away a piece of paper and to pick up a jar. A boy sitting in the front right-hand corner does no work; we were told he is staying in school until he can drop out.
Mr. Edwards gives a quiz with eight minutes left in the period. He asks them to recall what had been on the overheads. He tells them to write down several categories of mammals and give an example of each one. "Don't look at your notes." The students do not seem to cheat, but Mr. Edwards does not check closely to see if they looked at their notes. Several students are asleep, and there are some conversations, including a few students giving each other answers. At least half of the students do the quiz, but some skip it.
At the end of the class one boy asks, "What are you picking up, Ed?" "Your assignment."
"What assignment?" Sam Edwards combines interesting films, organized lectures, a sense of humor, and immediate reinforcement through quizzes. As with most experienced teachers, he uses the opening and closing minutes of the period effortlessly for taking attendance, entering grades, and handing back quizzes; and he knows the line between typical teenage talkativeness and chaotic hollering. He relies on a set of routines he likes and which the students accept. [Return to Table of Contents]
Concluding Reflections
We return to the issue with which we began: could working together improve teaching and learning? Who is doing the work in Mr. Edwards' classroom? Who is exhibiting? With a film nearly every day, how much chance is there for students to work together? More to the point, what is the chance that membership on a team could tempt Mr. Edwards to try instructional methods in the spirit of the Coalition? How will his life be better if his tightly scripted, teacher-directed style gives way to approaches where part of the success of each hour hinges on what the students do? How will the students' hearts and minds be better? The answers to those questions will be one assessment of teaming this year.
[Return to Table of Contents] NOTES
- Pseudonyms were used for every student, teacher, and administrator mentioned in this paper. Some details of the long quotes and classroom vignettes were changed to protect student and teacher anonymity. Although occasional use was made of notes from the first visit in October 1991, nearly all the material here comes from our interviews and observations from April 13-17, 1992. We talked with thirty-five faculty members and administrators, interviewed or shadowed twenty-six students, saw fifteen classes, and attended three meetings. Pat Wasley, director of the study, joined us for two days, and she sent Hampel her notes and tapes. Two teachers kept journals for this project, and throughout the year they both sent us rich materials. We thank the teacher who masterfully scheduled our visits.
- During our first visit to Lincoln the previous fall, the faculty seemed broadly divided into three groups: restructurers, those who supported the changes with enthusiasm; reviewers, those who were fence-sitters and had many concerns about change; and resisters, those generally opposed to the changes the school is undertaking.
[Return to Table of Contents] The Lincoln research team was headed by Robert L. Hampel, professor at the University of Delaware and author of The Last Little Citadel (1986). The other members of the Lincoln team were Laraine Hong, a former elementary and college teacher, now working for the Bellevue, Washington, school district and author of a forthcoming Teachers College Press book recounting a stormy year in her elementary school; and Neill Wenger, a cognitive psychologist who has taught in elementary school, consulted for the Pew Foundation, and is currently co-authoring a multimedia textbook.
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This resource last updated: June 10, 2002
Database Information:
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Publication Year: 1992
Publisher: CES National
School Level: High
Focus Area: Community Connections
STRAND: Leadership: the change process
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