Prosocial learning communities: one step at a time, these three school districts are successfully working at the process of reform, using coaching to bring about change.

In quantum mechanics, it is believed that whatever you focus on expands. So it is with schools. Many districts serving low-income minority youth are focusing on different aspects of the school culture to develop the prosocial learning communities needed for all students to succeed. The three districts featured herein are using various types of coaching as a means to build their prosocial learning communities.

Coaching is a multi-faceted process that helps develop district ideals into realities. The lessons they are learning are offered here as feedback from the frontlines.

Honest conversations

Lou Obermeyer, superintendent of the Atwater Elementary District in California since August 2002, maintains that "honest conversations are the core of the institutional culture necessary to building positive learning climates at the site level." These conversations are best facilitated by administrators and translated into instructional action by teachers, eventually in partnership with students.

Obermeyer initiated this process in her first superintendency in Atwater through an administrative retreat. She focused on possibilities and creativity, a book study targeting the necessity of trust and relationship in a leadership cadre, and openness to taking meaningful action responsive to the unique needs of the children. Atwater's K-6 schools successfully parlayed these studies in 2003-2004 into all the elementary sites meeting their federal Adequate Yearly Progress and state Academic Performance Index objectives handsomely.

The Atwater administrators had been given significant support through staff development that targeted Dufour's (1993) learning communities strategies and trust-building and highly effective instructional strategies. The school site administrators and the administrators in charge of curriculum, Title I and English Language Development had monthly staff development and access to individual coaching.

The training emphasis has been scientifically based and organized around guidelines established by No Child Left Behind, Title I, Reading First and other federal entitlements.

The candor of the principals and their willingness to work collaboratively and collegially is remarkable at Atwater. Sharing resources and strategies seemed to strengthen their resolve to make the challenges of API and AYP attainable.

Lessons learned: Principals are key to developing a school culture responsive to student needs. The superintendent must set the stage and then support the principal's focus on the students.

Developing connections

Wendy Webb, superintendent in Youngstown, Ohio, maintains that school reform in a poor urban district requires building positive learning climates by developing connections with the students, parents and teachers and sustaining those relationships. She is the change we wish to see. She is one of the most hands-on, student/parent/teacher-centered superintendent that I know, and this is no small feat in a district of 11 elementary, four middle and three high schools.

She employs parents to call other parents from the superintendent's office to announce new policies or procedures, or to request information regarding concerns and issues that are facing the parents. She walks the neighborhoods prior to school opening, welcoming families back to school after summer break; she does storytelling in neighborhood libraries; she makes school uniforms available in every church so children can access them easily; she makes sure that monthly meetings are held for parents with questions on homework; and she meets monthly with students to talk about school.

She uses the tools of social marketing with parents and students to determine priorities and programs. Increased parental involvement in all areas of school service has resulted in practices that have improved school cultures, increased test scores and brought focus to students.

She has established teacher advisory councils for curriculum as a means to establish curricular objectives with teachers. The Curriculum Instructional Council has a defined protocol to conduct meaningful dialogue that no longer consumes district time in constant grievances, negativity and teacher withdrawal from the work effort. This venue provides a real voice for teachers.

She uses personal coaching and technical assistance for her Cabinet to design strategies to attain her primary objective, building productive, prosocial learning environments in an urban, highly impacted school district.

Lesson learned: Parents, students and teachers must become re-enfranchised if reform in a poor urban district is to be fully realized.

The value of relationships

In a presentation to her Reading First principals and coaches on Valentine's Day 2005, Supt. Jean Fuller offered that Bakersfield City School District made 45 commitments to start Reading First in 15 schools with 15 coaches.

With the help of Aida Molina, Bakersfield has evolved in short order to 15 positive learning communities with 365 teachers that embrace educating every child as a responsibility congruent with the rights of the child.

Bakersfield has a highly honed system of coaching and training deployed in an urban poor community. The coaches conduct academic conferences with the site administrators to check student progress. They are responsible for modeling lessons, providing support to teachers through observations and feedback, and helping contribute to the quality of the classroom culture.

The coaching process underscores how important and valuable relationships are in building positive, focused school communities. The 15 Reading First sites are becoming remarkably different schools and beginning to operate as prosocial academic centers using a cognitive and social architecture that is based on relationships, relevance and rigor. Each is summarized:

* Relationships matter. Learning can only take place when teachers have positive relationships with the students and each other, helping them make connections and make materials tangible to their backgrounds and prior knowledge, thus making instruction more responsive to the students.

* The relevance of what is being done with students must be "friendly" and meaningful, and valuable lessons need to be understood for their potential value now and in the future.

* Both teachers and students need to know and aspire to rigor, thus helping students learn from lessons that are memorable, deep and purposeful. Rigor means using reasoning ability, higher-order thinking skills and metacognition in every lesson, and it means pushing the envelope and raising the bar.

Students must be allowed to participate as partners in the effort. The following strategies help shape the student-teacher academic partnership and can be used as the springboard for developing student choices to learn and enhance prosocial academic environments:

* Provide students with a reason to master the content through fluid intellectual challenges that require reasoning and problem solving.

* Link knowledge and skills to crystallize intelligence through strong visual and kinesthetic components in every lesson so that students can "tag" it, categorize it and retrieve it.

* Connect vocabulary-building with the goals in which students can "see" themselves getting smarter by enhancing vocabulary. Vocabulary can best be enhanced when instruction includes the three "I's": illustrations, interactions and intonation. Each 'T' provides a memory tag to a given word beyond context.

* Ensure that learning tasks are structured to support academic goals.

* Demonstrate how learning and development of skills builds the ability to think (metacognition).

In summary, relationships, relevance and rigor are essential elements of the cognitive and social architecture in all of these districts. These three R's foster academic success and produce focused, prosocial learning communities.

Lesson learned: The commitment to a shared goal can motivate a school system to become capable of developing powerful, prosocial learning communities.

Building trust

Beyond the R's, chief practitioners such as the superintendents mentioned here act on the belief that every individual, every interaction contributes to the success of a school in reform.

Lesson learned: Striving to build success in every interaction requires a moral perspective that assumes the best possible motivation for behavior, treats others as capable and creates opportunity from mistakes, experimentation and corrections.

Most of us have to be coached to develop these skills. Coaching can connect students and teachers in a process that results in world-class schools. It is a high-risk venture that requires vulnerability and the willingness to risk being guided and given feedback about current practices and needs, and possible new directions.

Lesson learned: Trust between the stakeholders is key to building quality learning communities and the quality of these relationships shape results.

One step at a time

Atwater, Youngstown and Bakersfield are making gains because of what they are doing and what they are attempting to do. They are striving to become a different kind of school system, not just one that makes API or AYP this year. They are not perfect or finished with change, by any means, but they have begun the process of reform effectively and will need to continue their hard work. They are not waiting to have change done to them. They have identified a goal to create the prosocial learning environments and have set about to do so through coaching, one step at a time.

References

DuFour, Richard and Eaker, Robert. (1993). Professional Learning Communities at Work: Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement. Bloomington, IN: National Education Service.

Michelle Karns is a school improvement consultant and author. She can be reached at [e-mail].