Forming, Norming, Storming--Kicking off the School Year

I often cringe when someone asks a group I'm in to do some "norm setting." It usually feels too soon. Or too late. If it's too soon, the group develops a generic list of expectations that have no teeth to them or grounding in the reality of the work before them. If it's too late, the group develops a list of norms in a passive-agressive reaction to existing irritants ("No screens!"), or the group feels beyond the point of no return and isn't willing to say what they need. Allea iacta est. It's tough to squeeze that toothpaste back into the tube.

So, I was intrigued when this Edutopia post titled, "The Science Behind Classroom Norming" popped up in (teacher nerd alert!) my newsfeed this week. The word "science" caught my eye; "if there's a science to it," I thought, "I should probably try to better understand this!" Not really. I was primed to dislike the article before I even opened it because of my thinking about norm setting. I actually cringed a little bit, already skeptical about what was coming, but then I clicked on the link and found some food for thought for the coming school year.

The author first makes the claim that "the mechanism for norming is group talk" and then goes on to define norming as when a group comes to "an agreement among members of a classroom or school about how they will treat one another." The power of the relationship between action and words, though, should not be discounted in the process. My sophomores set non-verbal norms relative to use of classroom space simply by placing themselves in the same seat each day; habits become norms. So norms will develop--stated or not.

Here is my hopefully less-than-cringe-inducing thinking about norming heading into this new school year:

1. Timing matters. 
Mr. Finley highlights the stages of group development (forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning); understanding the stage of a group is key to hitting the sweet spot for norm setting. In my facilitation experience, however, groups seldom adhere to the order outlined here by Mr. Finley. They'll form, norm, storm, go back to norming, perform, then storm again. Sometimes, after a storm, they transform because people leave the group.  Most teams go through some sort of storming after a poor performance in a highly anticipated game, for example. Group growth comes when a facilitator can help them move among the stages. Being thoughtful about where a group is allows us to know which conversation to facilitate when.

So I'm not going to do a norm-setting exercise on the first day of school (or the first day of meetings, for that matter). Not on the second day of school, either. I'm going to give my people some time to get over their anxiety about the start of the school year and to get to know one another well enough that I can task them with cooperating on group problem-solving activities. My big plan? I am going to shoot to formalize class norms in the moments before a storm hits. It's the Goldilocks plan--not too hot, not too cold... just right.

2. What's my role? Leader? Guide? Mentor? Consultant? 
A diagram in my experiential education files dated 1999 and credited to Laurie Frank places those four roles on a spectrum for group facilitation. She posits that in the earliest work with a group, the person facilitating must be a leader (although that term is open to broad interpretation). As the group continues to develop, the facilitator can move into a guiding role. It's that point where I'd like to be before I ask the group to set their own norms. In the past when I've facilitated norm setting with a group too soon, my voice has carried too much weight in the room. Mr. Finley mentions that he has his favorite norm: "I always add my favorite norm to the list: enter class with the academic swagger of Matthew McConaughey, ready to take care of business." I love the flair for this norm, but I'm not sure if I am comfortable adding my own ideas to my group's list, however, if I really want the students to own them.

3. Anticipate accountability issues. Norms! 
I ask my students to sign off (really--with a pen!) on the norms after we've come to an agreement on what they'll be. With one class last year, those stuck so well that when a new student joined at the semester, the students asked him to add his signature to our class agreement. Those students bought into the norming process. In my other class, however, the poster hung on the wall, and our stated norms became a room decoration. I'll need to consider my role in holding students accountable to their agreed-upon norms; otherwise, the group may re-norm without any of us noticing (and that won't necessarily be a good thing).

What might be a good thing for accountability, though, is if my students are fans of Cheers and can yell, "Norm!" every time someone breaks one... kidding. Well, only sort of.

George Wendt as Norm in Cheers

4. Revisit and revise--group processing 
I'd also like to think this year about ways to get more bang for our buck out of a norm-setting exercise. I am lucky to have my block-scheduled students all year long. We'll need to revisit the norms periodically (every term?) as the group progresses--performs, storms, re-norms--over the course of the school year. I'd like to make the norms document a living document for my students.

And the year begins...
Mr. Finley shares some of his favorite exercises to support the norming process in his post. Neat ideas. I appreciate the bigger picture questions his post raised for me, though. Wrestle on, friends.

Taking the words right out of someone else's mouth...

I don't want my teaching blog to become a series of posts written by other people, but the words of this teacher really struck me. I came to public education late in the game. I was working in private schools for a while before moving to the school where I currently teach, and I honestly had no idea that 100% proficiency by 2014 was not only a goal but a standard teachers were being held to until a faculty meeting early in my first year. I remember being quite dumbfounded when someone brought it up, then laughing out loud. And I remember finding it really strange that no one else was laughing out loud, as well. I still find it strange.

What David Reber writes below articulates my frustrations with the conversation about public education better than I could.

In what other profession...

August 27th, 2010 by David Reber

I’m going to step out of my usual third-person writing voice for a moment. As a parent I received a letter last week from the Kansas State Board of Education, informing me that my children’s school district had been placed on “improvement” status for failing to meet “adequate yearly progress” under the No Child Left Behind law.

I thought it ironic that our schools were judged inadequate by people who haven’t set foot in them, so I wrote a letter to my local newspaper. Predictably, my letter elicited a deluge of comments in the paper’s online forum. Many remarks came from armchair educators and anti-teacher, anti-public school evangelists quick to discredit anything I had to say under the rationale of “he’s a teacher.” What could a teacher possibly know about education?

Countless arguments used to denigrate public school teachers begin with the phrase “in what other profession….” and conclude with practically anything the anti-teacher pundits find offensive about public education. Due process and collective bargaining are favorite targets, as are the erroneous but tightly held beliefs that teachers are under-worked, over-paid (earning million-dollar pensions), and not accountable for anything.

In what other profession, indeed.

In what other profession are the licensed professionals considered the LEAST knowledgeable about the job? You seldom if ever hear “that guy couldn’t possibly know a thing about law enforcement – he’s a police officer”, or “she can’t be trusted talking about fire safety – she’s a firefighter.”

In what other profession is experience viewed as a liability rather than an asset? You won’t find a contractor advertising “choose me – I’ve never done this before”, and your doctor won’t recommend a surgeon on the basis of her “having very little experience with the procedure”.

In what other profession is the desire for competitive salary viewed as proof of callous indifference towards the job? You won’t hear many say “that lawyer charges a lot of money, she obviously doesn’t care about her clients”, or “that coach earns millions – clearly he doesn’t care about the team.”

But look around. You’ll find droves of armchair educators who summarily dismiss any statement about education when it comes from a teacher. Likewise, it’s easy to find politicians, pundits, and profiteers who refer to our veteran teachers as ineffective, overpriced “dead wood”. Only the rookies could possibly be any good, or worth the food-stamp-eligible starting salaries we pay them.

And if teachers dare ask for a raise, this is taken by many as clear evidence that teachers don’t give a porcupine’s posterior about kids. In fact, some say if teachers really cared about their students they wouldinsist on earning LESS money.

If that entire attitude weren’t bad enough, what other profession is legally held to PERFECTION by 2014? Are police required to eliminate all crime? Are firefighters required to eliminate all fires? Are doctorsrequired to cure all patients? Are lawyers required to win all cases? Are coaches required to win all games? Of course they aren’t.

For no other profession do so many outsiders refuse to accept the realities of an imperfect world. Crime happens. Fire happens. Illness happens. As for lawyers and coaches, where there’s a winner there must also be a loser. People accept all these realities, until they apply to public education.

If a poverty-stricken, drug-addled meth-cooker burns down his house, suffers third degree burns, and then goes to jail; we don’t blame the police, fire department, doctors, and defense attorneys for his predicament. But if that kid doesn’t graduate high school, it’s clearly the teacher’s fault.

And if someone – anyone - tries to tell you otherwise; don’t listen. He must be a teacher.

We teach elephants to climb trees...

Fight or flight... the courage to teach

In my dreams, I am really fast. Smoking fast. In the water, on the bike, on the run.
In reality, I am anything but. I'm pretty fast in the water--I finished in the top 20% at both the Ironman races that I did. I can get there on the bike with proper training. But I'm a slow and steady kind of gal on the run, and that isn't going to change.  If Cannondale called me tomorrow and said, "Hey, we just happen to be looking for a slow runner with average cycling skills and a decent swim stroke to round out our team of sponsored triathletes," I would quit my job and train full time. I love the idea of being paid to sweat.

Why am I writing about this on a teaching blog?
My fight or flight reaction is kicking in. I'm under pressure (somewhat self-imposed, somewhat externally applied). Options: wrestle the gorilla or start writing letters to Cannondale.

The school year officially starts in two weeks. Two weeks from today, actually. And I have only two students currently enrolled in my class. There will be more, but we have to wait for the students to get their immunizations in order and such. So for this part, it's best to just breathe and wait and know that the seats will be filled and the school year will roll forward.

The pressure is in the training that I'm delivering to our staff this week Thursday and Friday. With permission from WIDA, we are using some components of the CLIMBS course training to train our staff how to better work with our ELLs. I have put incredible care into developing the materials for these two days of training. I've spent hours thinking about transitions between activities and grouping and how to best emphasize the most salient points. I've woken up in the middle of the night thinking of ways to convince the staff that this work is important and worthwhile. I've written, rewritten, noted, printed, copied, and collated papers for the whole staff.

I pulled Parker J. Palmer's book, The Courage To Teach  down off my shelf again and started to read the first page, and I was struck by his own reflection after a bad first day of teaching that it might not be too late for him to find a new career. I didn't read beyond that first page. I just was caught up in the idea that it probably isn't all that uncommon for people faced with challenges to look for an out, no matter how far of a stretch that out might be. (The chances of Cannondale calling me between now and Thursday are not very strong.)

So here is the thing about doing a training like this. It is like wrestling a gorilla. The difference here is that sometimes the gorilla is like a personal trainer that you hire to put you through your workout and sometimes the gorilla is a bit of a wildcard. I feel like I'm not sure which gorilla will be showing up on Thursday and Friday, and that is where my anxiety comes from.

Courage, KKB. Courage. (And keep those fingers crossed for Cannondale's call.)

Why would they? Why wouldn't they? On the Atlanta teachers and testing.

I admit a little bit of glee at the mental picture of Atlanta teachers getting together with a stack of standardized test booklets and a few pizzas and some number 2 pencils to make a party out of changing their students' answers on the state tests. "Pass me some pepperoni. And what was number 22 again?"

NPR was doing a talk show segment today on the testing scandal. The question they kept asking was, "Why?" And to my surprise, I was sitting in the car saying, "Why the heck not?" But let me answer why.

Teachers in public education work in a fundamentally flawed system. And when you work in a fundamentally flawed system, you grow tired of trying to measure up in a fundamentally flawed system to a fundamentally flawed standard that no one thinks that we can reach.

To tell teachers that our "goal" is to reach 100% proficiency by 2012 or 2013 or 2014 is just asinine. Seriously? 100% proficiency? I can tick off the names of several students who will prevent that national goal from happening. And they won't prevent that goal from happening because they are trying to prevent it from happening, they will prevent that goal from happening because they didn't hold a pencil until they were 12 years old. So the idea that they would be proficient in reading and math at grade level in their second, third, or fourth language within a year or two of arriving in the country is just asinine. 

Then there's the AYPs. Our school has 18 benchmarks that we have to meet. Other schools have 2 or 3; it all depends on the population of the school. And here comes that magic number again, 100%. You have to hit 100% of your benchmarks to show adequate yearly progress. And it is an all or nothing deal. You can hit 17 out of the 18 benchmarks, and you still won't make AYPs because of one sub group. So hell, even if we are making progress, then we aren't making enough progress. What the hell kind of a system is that?

Then there is the actual testing system itself. We don't test kids at the beginning of the year and then test them at the end of the year to measure progress or to check the quality of our teaching. No. We test kids at the end of each school year. And the test measures whether or not they are meeting standards at grade level. Who cares if we've taught a kid to read better than he had the year before? Who cares if we've taught a kid math that he didn't previously understand? If he isn't at grade level, then we're not making progress.

And did I mention that we measure apples against oranges? We don't look at the class of 2015's progress from one year to the next. Nope, we compare one seventh grade class of students to an entirely new class of seventh grade students. Whose progress are we showing by doing that?

And don't even get me started on the unfairness of the testing for students for whom English is a second or third or fourth language. That is an entirely different post.

Back to the Atlanta teachers and that pizza. Why? Because the system is broken. And sometimes, when you are working in a broken system, you lose your way. I've never compromised my integrity when it comes to the state tests, but I do understand the weariness of working under a broken system and wondering if anyone else knows that it is broken. More absurdly, I wonder why we are always talking about all the problems with the system, and no positive change is happening.

The end of one year runs into the beginning of another...

Funny how that works. We have been out of school for two weeks. I'm not sure what it is that is preventing me from shifting into summer vacation mode, but my brain refuses to power down. Things I'm wrestling with right now:

• A change in leadership. The principal whom I absolutely adore and admire is retiring as of June 30th, and I was on the committee to select his replacement. That went well, and I'm really excited about the person that we have taking over the helm. I am interested to see what direction the upcoming year will take for our school. (And I will miss a person whom I have come to consider a friend.) Also, the ESL district boss (I don't know a better way to put it...she has so many jobs, but in my world that's her role) who has been an amazing person to work for is retiring at the end of July. I have no idea who will be trying to fill her shoes, but there will possibly be some changes in the coming year. (And I will miss another person whom I admire greatly and have come to consider a friend.) 
• A change in staffing. My friend and fellow ESL teacher is headed out on an adventure to China for at least the next two years. Our enrollment is up. So we are hiring not one but two ESL teachers to work in the building next year. And while historically that end of the building has been separate from what I'm doing on my end of the building, I'm going to have to be more involved in that other classroom next year. I'm excited about the possibilities.
• KTIP. I'm going to be trained this summer to be a resource teacher for KTIP. It's a Kentucky program to help first-year teachers reflect on their teaching practices and determine if they have the tools to be successful in the classroom. I went through it a few years ago. This upcoming year, I think I'm going to be a resource teacher for one of the new ESL teachers. 
• Summer training. We are doing a training for our whole staff on working with ELL students and making appropriate modifications on July 28 and 29 at our school. This is on my mind ALL the time. I have been doing a similar training at the district level for the last two years, but I want to do something outstanding for our teachers. I hope to inspire them to work with the new ESL teachers to better support our ELLs.
• Technology. The ipads and ipods are always on my mind in terms of how to best use them. I didn't get a lot of the info off of them for the summer for storage, and I have to figure out the best way to store the videos that my students made before cleaning those off for next year's kids. We are also about to start designing our own web pages as teachers in the district, and I'm excited for that. I have a class blog, but I'd really like to have more that is student friendly. So as soon as I get the green light, I'm going to start working on a class web page this summer. 
• CLIMBS. I am hoping that with the change in leadership we will continue to offer this at the district level. I LOVE doing that training even though it's really stressful. I love the challenge of it, and I have enjoyed revising it again and again to every time I've worked on it. I love working with teachers from other schools. 
• National Board Certification. I'm doing the Take One version of that this year. That's just one part of the four part National Board process. I'm excited about it, but I know it will be a time commitment. I'm not worried about it... it's just sitting there in the back of my head. 
• Random thinking. Revising my units for the beginning of the school year. Doing work with System 44 to improve comprehension for my students. Painting a wall in my classroom that always gets marked up with pens and pencils. Sharing the technology with the new teachers (I have to learn to play nice in the sandbox.) Why the heck can't KYTESOL get their act together and post their call for proposals on the website? Getting involved with changing the testing system for ELLs. 

I guess that's it for this morning. No deep thoughts here. Just a dumping ground for the way my brain is working this summer. All this thinking, but I don't think I'm getting a lot done. Time for a second cup of coffee.