ELT Initiative

The teachers at the Martin Luther King, Jr. School knew they could do better. After one year of implementing an expanded and redesigned school day, they decided that they were not reaping all the benefits of the increased time they now had for collaborative planning. In their second year of implementation, they found out just how much more productive they could make this time.

Located in Cambridge, Mass., the Martin Luther King, Jr. School is a preK-8 school that serves an economically and racially diverse student body. In its first year as an expanded learning time school, King added 30 minutes per day for teacher teams to meet together while their students had elective classes. During this time, teachers met in grade-level teams with school-based literacy and math coaches. They shared student work, discussed students, and occasionally met with coaches from the Literacy Collaborative, the university-based organization that provides the curriculum the school uses. Teachers worked together during this time to problem solve and discuss successes and challenges they experienced in the classroom. For the first time they had a regularly scheduled time to meet with other teachers day in and day out.

Scheduling collaborative planning time is especially difficult in most elementary schools, where classroom teachers are typically responsible for many subject areas and are with their students throughout the day. The King teachers and administration therefore worked hard to expand time for collaborative planning when they redesigned the school day for ELT. However, by the end of their first year as an ELT school, there was a strong sense among teachers that the collaborative planning time could be better utilized. “Teachers wanted more structure, more organization in these meetings. They felt they could do more with the time if they had more guidance on how to use it,” explained Principal Carole Learned Miller.

First, the teachers thought that even if they had less total time for collaborative planning, longer, uninterrupted blocks used more effectively would be better. A leadership team of teachers was appointed to revamp the schedule. They reorganized the electives period that the students attended while teachers were meeting in grade-level teams. Instead of 30 minutes of electives each day, the schedule was changed to have 60-minute elective blocks two times per week. Instead of 2.5 hours of meetings per week that were broken into 30-minute chunks, the new schedule allowed for two 1-hour slots for teachers to collaborate. Each week, one hour of this time would focus on literacy and one hour would focus on math.

With the nuts and bolts of the schedule out of the way, the leadership team turned to the content and structure of the collaborative planning time and how to make sure they used it well. By surveying the teachers and instructional coaches, they learned that faculty wanted the time to focus more squarely on differentiated instruction. With the diversity of students at King, teachers always needed to consider extensions and modifications to each lesson so each child could engage in the work at the level that challenged him or her.

Another key improvement the team made was to suggest that all teachers at a grade level, including teaching assistants, special education teachers, and graduate interns be included in the collaborative planning time. They also decided to have each meeting focus on collaborative lesson planning where everyone attending would jointly develop the week’s lessons in math and literacy, further ensuring coordination between how different teachers were approaching the curriculum.

As the year began, the coaches facilitated the meetings and brought lesson planning sheets that the team would complete as they planned each lesson. Early in the year, many teachers waited for the coaches to make suggestions about lesson ideas, as if it was the coaches’ responsibility to throw out ideas. Some teachers held back or were hesitant to share ideas freely. But the faculty found that with practice, they began to work better as a group. Soon, knowing that they would be jointly planning the weeks’ lessons, teachers began to bring materials, previous plans, student work, and other materials they needed to create lessons for the upcoming week. By consistently meeting week in and week out, they got better at sharing ideas freely, generating new ideas together, and building on each other’s thoughts. The coaches also kept track of the agenda of each meeting, making sure to identify next steps and carrying any necessary topics onto the next week’s agenda. Often the teams were not able to figure out every detail of each lesson for the week, but would at least determine the goals for the week’s lessons, instructional methods they were going to use, and the work that students would do. They also left each meeting with clear next steps and knowing who was responsible for key tasks.

Teachers found that the best outcome of their new approach to collaborative planning time was that it helped teachers and support staff so that all were now on the “same page.” For example, because the special education teachers and aides were now part of the planning team, the King teachers now found that every teacher in the class clearly understood the goals and structure of each lesson before the day started. In the collaborative planning meetings, teachers, special education teachers, and teaching interns were able to divide teaching roles, so each knew exactly what to do during the entire class including the mini-lessons, small group work, and workshop times.

Through the collaborative lesson planning, individual teachers and their teams were better able to prepare for the diversity of students in their classrooms. Instead of trying to devise modifications and extensions on their own, teachers now had a group of colleagues who worked together to brainstorm and decide on ways to meet the needs of each child. Not only did they generate better ideas together, but classroom teachers, special education teachers, and teaching interns were better prepared to introduce the modifications and support students in accomplishing them. This improved coordination resulted in better transitions during lessons and better support both for students who needed additional assistance and for students who benefited from more challenging work.

A secondary, but no less significant outcome from the new structure and focus, was the conversations the joint lesson planning created. Because they were doing the real work of creating and organizing lessons, their conversations became more centered on instruction and student learning. These conversations became more thought provoking and, in turn, helped to deepen the quality of their lesson planning.

In recent years, teachers and staff at the Martin Luther King, Jr. School have built a culture of continuous improvement at their school. Although they were pleased to have more time to collaborate during their redesigned and expanded school year, they weren’t satisfied with simply having more time. By focusing their work on lesson planning, developing a structured approach to collaboration, and including all members of each team in this work, they found ways to improve how they worked together. Through the course of the year, teachers discovered that planning together also meant learning together.

Takeaways on Collaborative Planning Time