This article details the steps in a content-focused planning conference. The exclusive focus for 15 minutes on digging into the content itself yields a much clearer learning target and a better lesson.
RBT Downloads
Adult Professional Culture - Draft Chapter
The level of trust, openness and deep collaboration among the grown-ups has turned out to be the critical variable on how schools do with student achievement and especially with closing the achievement gap. It is, in fact, the sine qua non of sustainable improvement. The attached chapter, a draft from a new upcoming book by Jon Saphier, explains why.
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Bibliography on Adult Professional Culture
Jon Saphier's suggested reading list on Adult Professional Culture.
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Quotes About the Power of Feedback
This powerpoint summarizes research about feedback with potent language.
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The Chain of Objectives through Formative Assessment and Criteria for Success to Student Ownership
Most significant teaching skills operate in relation to others. They shouldn't be studied in isolation. For example, giving students useful feedback is empowered if we and they are clear on the criteria for success. The feedback can be about which criteria are met and which are not yet. Similarly, there is a relation between exemplars and the criteria...one should be able to identify with the kids where the exemplars meet the criteria. Similar relationships exist between student self-evaluation and student goal-setting.
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The Big Rocks of High Expertise Teaching
This document breaks out the highest leverage instruction strategies supported by decades of research.
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Let's Set a Course to Lead Schools for Equity
What does it take to make schools a force for good and for justice?
It takes skillful school leadership by individuals who learn how to envision true equity, accelerate learning, and eliminate obstacles for underserved students.
In this article, Jon Saphier outlines 10 different and parallel pathways to Equitable Schools that provide all students with a fair chance at a good life (emphasis on ALL students).
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High Expectations Teaching: Making the Growth Mindset Come Alive in Daily Practice.
This is a PowerPoint presentation developed by Jon Saphier used for High Expectations Teaching work.
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Where to Show Up and What to Do
Where to Show Up and What to Do
By Jon Saphier
If I am a principal who wants to improve the teaching and learning in my building, there are about twelve places for me to show up and act. But to act successfully in these places there are some requirements.
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I need to get out of my office often enough, and therefore be good enough at time management with the help of a skilled secretary.
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I need to have the foundational knowledge of what good teaching looks and sounds like in order to support my staff to get better at it
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What do you do when the kids didn't get it the first time?
Effective and engaging teachers thoughtfully plan and deliver their lessons. Unfortunately, sometimes a teacher comes to the realization (usually after administering a formative assessment) that the students, in fact, did not master what was intended. Learn what you can do about it in this article by Nancy Love, RBT Director of Products and Programs and author of The Data Coach's Guide to Improving Learning for All Students, and Mary Ann Haley-Speca, Senior RBT Consultant and co-author of The Skillful Teacher.
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How School Leaders Create High-Functioning Teams that Use Data to do Error Analysis and Plan Re-teaching
There are two big ideas in this article, and they are interdependent.
First: error analysis and then planning for re-teaching in a different way the content that the students are struggling with is a critical act if we want to improve student achievement. Group error analysis and planning for re-teaching by teachers who teach the same content is a high-leverage (if not the highest leverage) activity to spend time on during team meetings.
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Learning Forward 2017 Pre-Conference Presentation
"What Teacher Teams Do To Maximize the Impact of Formative Assessment"
Learning Forward Pre-conference Presentation (PC114) by Nancy Love, Nina Smith, and Robin Whitacre
December 2, 2017
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Learning Forward FAR Session Materials
"Coaching Teams to Use Formative Assessment for Results" - December 7, 2015
by Nancy Love, Robin Whitacre, Nina Smith
Sudbury Post-Assessment Video
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Learning Forward 2017 Concurrent Session
"Targeting Reteaching to the Essence of Students' Errors"
Learning Forward Concurrent Session (1309) by Nancy Love and Nina Smith
December 4, 2017
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Supervising and Coaching Principals
This article describes in detail what supervisors of principals can do on school visits and at principals' meetings so that those events improve the instructional leadership capacity of the principal.
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50 Ways to Get Students to Believe in Themselves
This document lists the ways teachers and schools act when they want all the students to believe in themselves and act from that belief. It is divided into verbal behaviors, classroom mechanisms, focused instructional strategies, direct teaching of effective effort, district policies, and key ways to connect students to families and community.
50 Ways to Get Students to Believe in Themselves
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Inside the Black Box of Collective Efficacy
This article by Jon Saphier describes what school leaders do to create collective efficacy among their faculty. It has a special section on the role of trust in the process and how leaders build it.
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Common Planning Time (CPT) Rating Scale
The purpose of the Common Planning Time (CPT) rating scale is for self-evaluation, improvement planning, and analysis of how effectively teams that share content are using their time. Rarely can a team be pigeonholed at exclusively one level. One may find some teams doing activities listed at one level and simultaneously other activities at another level.
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Content Teams and Error Analysis -- How School Leaders Create High-Functioning Teams that Use Data to Plan Re-teaching
This article describes what high functioning PLCs or Common Planning Time teams do. The Appendix to the article provides a rating scale for the developmental level of the team.
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John Adams' Promise - How to Have Good Schools for All Our Children, Not Just for Some (ESSAY 1)
Curriculum reform, structural reform, funding reform, organizational reform - all these 20th century efforts have failed to make a significant dent in the achievement gap and the performance of disadvantaged students, especially in cities and poor rural areas. Could it be that we have focused on many good targets but missed the most important one.
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John Adams’ Promise - The Significance of the Geographical State and the Ten Processes of Education Reform (ESSAY 2)
You can’t fix a problem if you don’t define it properly. A central issue for improving schools in the U.S. is this: there is a common core of professional knowledge about teaching and learning that gets results for students. Large segments of it are missing in action from each of the ten processes that form the supply chain of our teacher workforce. No one is accountable for seeing professional knowledge even shows up in these processes, much less in an integrated way. This is eminently fixable, but only if we redefine the problem and radically refocus our resources.
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John Adams' Promise - Including Student Results in Teacher Evaluation - A Case Study in Focus on Teaching Expertise (ESSAY 3)
In this era of accountability in education, teachers are asked to be accountable for student results as never before. In Montgomery County, MD, this accountability appears in the written evaluation of every teacher. This paper describes: (a) how this accountability avoids a reductionist numbers game tied to test scores; and (b) how joint responsibility for student learning has come about through a powerful alliance of union and administrative leaders.
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The Courage to Lead
There are cases available all over the country that show that individual schools and occasionally whole districts with many children in poverty get very good achievement results - in some cases as good or better than nearby affluent suburbs.
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Conversations That Produce School Improvement
Schools that make the most learning gains for students have leaders who ensure the frequency and quality of professional conversations. Conversations among adults about teaching and learning permeate the building. That means they happen at all times of day, in formal and informal settings, and all the adults involve themselves.
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Bonfires and Magic Bullets
This essay makes the case for both why and then practically how we can make teaching a true profession. It answers the questions: what characterizes a true profession? What is getting in the way? What are the steps to take? This essay has been widely used as a study group resource and reading-in-common by educators throughout the country.
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Growing Lilies in the Desert
This essay describes a practical plan, now well underway in Massachusetts, to fix the dysfunctional personnel pipeline that creates our educator workforce. The plan builds the large knowledge base about teaching and learning into all the levers of influence that impact what teachers know and can do. It makes the case that the geographical state is the unit of enduring change in American education. It goes on to describe how state policy and law can press the levers of influence on teacher capacity into alignment, both with each other and with professional knowledge.
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Supplements to The Skillful Teacher: Introduction to the Motivation Section of the Skillful Teacher
For those who have wondered where the domain of feeling and the whole child enters into the picture of skillful teaching, this section is for you.
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Barry Jentz Program Overview
A summary of the RBT program by Barry Jentz "How to Make Decisions That Transform Your Leadership and Organization".
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SST Reading Assignments
Reading Assignments are in a protected area. Access to this area is restricted to program participants. Login credentials are required. PLEASE SEE YOUR BINDER OR ASK YOUR CONSULTANT FOR LOGIN INFORMATION.
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Structured Interview Design
Structured Interview Design is a fast-paced, knee-to-knee protocol that gives each participant a chance to share their views on an issue. It structures each person listening to others and creates a large data base for discussion and decision-making.
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SST Collegial Discussion Readings
Collegial Discussion Readings are in a protected area. Access to this area is restricted to program participants. Login credentials are required. PLEASE SEE YOUR BINDER OR ASK YOUR CONSULTANT FOR LOGIN INFORMATION.
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SST Worksheets for Experiments
Worksheets for 2015 programs are in a protected area. Access to this area is restricted to program participants. Login credentials are required. PLEASE SEE YOUR BINDER OR ASK YOUR CONSULTANT FOR LOGIN INFORMATION.
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ATSR Supplementary Materials
The supplementary materials for Analyzing Teaching for Student Results (ATSR) program are in a protected area. Access to this area is restricted to program participants. Login credentials are required. PLEASE SEE YOUR BINDER OR ASK YOUR CONSULTANT FOR LOGIN INFORMATION.
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ATSR Collegial Discussion Readings
Collegial Discussion Readings are in a protected area. Access to this area is restricted to program participants. Login credentials are required. PLEASE SEE YOUR BINDER OR ASK YOUR CONSULTANT FOR LOGIN INFORMATION.
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Crosswalks for Teacher Evaluation
See below for the links to download the Crosswalks for Teacher Evaluation, which map various rubrics to relevant sections of the 6th edition of The Skillful Teacher and The Skillful Leader III: Strengthening Teacher Evaluation.
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ATSR Binder Replacement Pages
Please consult this section for any replacement pages for your ATSR handout binder. PLEASE SEE YOUR BINDER OR ASK YOUR CONSULTANT FOR LOGIN INFORMATION.
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Strengthening Teacher Evaluation: Taking Action to Improve Ineffective Teaching (The Skillful Leader III) Excerpts
To review Strengthening Teacher Evaluation: Taking Action to Improve Ineffective Instruction, visit the links below to view selected chapter pages.
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Strengthening Teacher Evaluation: Taking Action to Improve Ineffective Instruction (The Skillful Leader III) Supplements
The listed items are supplemental materials to accompany Strengthening Teacher Evaluation: Taking Action to Improve Ineffective Instruction (The Skillful Leader III) textbook.
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Transforming Ineffective Teams: Maximizing Collaboration's Impact on Learning (The Skillful Leader II)
To review excerpts from Transforming Ineffective Teams: Maximizing Collaboration's Impact on Learning (The Skillful Leader II), visit the links below to view sample pages.
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Transforming Ineffective Teams: Maximizing Collaboration's Impact on Learning (The Skillful Leader II) Supplements
The listed items are supplemental materials to accompany Transforming Ineffective Teams: Maximizing Collaboration's Impact on Learning (The Skillful Leader II) The Skillful textbook.
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Data Binder Replacement Pages
Please consult this section for any replacement pages for your Data handout binder. PLEASE SEE YOUR BINDER OR ASK YOUR CONSULTANT FOR LOGIN INFORMATION.
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Data Collegial Discussion Readings
Collegial Discussion Readings are in a protected area. Access to this area is restricted to program participants. Login credentials are required. PLEASE SEE YOUR BINDER OR ASK YOUR CONSULTANT FOR LOGIN INFORMATION.
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Data Introductory Materials
Introductory Materials are in a protected area. Access to this area is restricted to program participants. Login credentials are required. PLEASE SEE YOUR BINDER OR ASK YOUR CONSULTANT FOR LOGIN INFORMATION.
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