End of the First Year in Teacher Based Teams

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During the last three months of the first year, teachers worked on a variety of activities during Teacher Based Teams. A big chunk of time in March and April was spent preparing for Ohio Achievement Assessments. Teachers came together to discuss what had been done in previous years for test preparations and what should be done for this year. Activities were created both as a team and as individuals. Other work completed during TBT times including creating and assigning work for common assessments.  

Towards the end of the year, TBTs began to discuss what they would like to do for the next school year. One of the very last activities was taking the Ohio TBT 5-Step Implementation Rubric.  This information gave the team clear direction on where we were in the TBT process and where we needed to go.

Our Building Leadership Team shared with the District Leadership Team what our successes and struggles were for the first year of TBTs.

Here were our strengths:

•having our staff trained in the TBT process

•creating 3 TBTs in our building

•establishing a TBT meeting schedule

• having each TBT create norms and a SMART goal to guide their work this year

•Developing a TBT Meeting Notes Template so TBTs could have a record of their meeting and assign tasks to be completed before the next meeting

•Giving everyone access to the TBT notes via a folder on first class as a communication tool so everyone knows on what work each TBT is focusing

Here were our struggles:

•scheduling issues (TBT meetings need to be longer in duration and had less often and during a time that doesn’t interfere with instruction)

•having a common time for intervention/extension built in the schedule so that teachers can act on the data they analyze in their TBT more effectively

At the beginning of May, a group of teachers attended the training Professional Learning Communities at Work: Bringing the Big Ideas to Life from Dr. Rick Dufour and Becky Dufour. This training moved us forward with what TBTs could be and what they could do for our students. 

In the next blog, I will share the big take-aways from that training and how it began to shape the future of our TBTS.

In an upcoming blog, I will also share how our teachers worked together to problem solve to make our first year struggles change into solutions for the next year.