Dufour TBT Trainings

To find Teacher Based Team trainings from the Dufours check out this website:

http://www.solution-tree.com/

I highly recommend their work in moving schools forward with Teacher Based Teams.

The Dufour Training and How It Helped Us

The Dufour Training

At the end of our first year in Teacher Based Teams, 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.  If you are interested in learning more from the Dufours’ thoughts on Professional Learning Communities, check out this website: http://www.allthingsplc.info/

Our New Direction

The teachers that attended this conference agreed to share what they learned with the staff and within their Teacher Based Teams. Last year our TBTs worked collaboratively to review data of the students as a group. As a result of our training, this year our goal is to look at the individual student’s work through common formative assessments and change instruction and intervention based on those results. Then, we will come back to see what’s working best and make adjustments for our boys and girls as necessary.  

Team Norms

During our first year, teachers established team norms. This came up again at the Dufour training. The training helped us remember the importance of being accountable to each other, to remain positive with each other, and to remember that all team members are valuable and should be heard.

During the training, the Dufours suggested teachers call those to task who choose not to adhere to the norms.  There were several suggestions offered to help teachers with this work. Our team did not reach a conclusion about what teachers could do to help other teachers in this situation. Most teachers felt uncomfortable telling another teacher that he/she needed to follow the norms when he/she wasn’t. The lean was that the principal would step in and assist if this should become an issue.  

Why Common Assessments

The Dufour training focused on the importance of common assessments. When teachers create common assessments, they are creating an agreed upon rubric to judge student work. What is proficient now becomes the same across the grade level. It creates a common language for us to discuss student progress and teacher instruction.

Moving Forward

Teachers worked together before the school year started to establish SMART goals, set team norms, and establish a schedule for common assessments and data review for intervention groupings. At the end of the first year, the East team decided that we needed a more consistent and longer period of time for teachers to meet in Teacher Based Teams. We also needed a regular daily time to provide intervention for our students based off the analysis of the TBT day. In the next blog, I will share what our solution was to make TBTs and intervention a regular part of our school week.

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.