GCSD leaders sayProfessional development builds a "shared vision"



GUILDERLAND — Farnsworth seventh-graders shuffled their feet as they walked rhythmically in a circle on the green grass next to the school parking lot.
Their teacher, Keir Aspin, called it "kinetic learning." He was teaching them a dance done by the Iroquois at the change of the seasons to renew life in their fields. He learned about it at the re-creation of a Seneca village, he said, and shared the lesson with his colleagues.

This was all captured on a film made by Nicholas Viscio, Guilderland’s media director, and shown to school board members last week as part of a presentation on professional learning in Guilderland schools.

Another scene in Viscio’s film showed Donna Lawrence’s fifth-graders at Pine Bush Elementary School busy at a variety of tasks in developing a bill for Congress. Children, moving from station to station, could use their differing strengths — ranging from drawing to speaking — as they went about their work.

Lawrence got the idea for the lesson from a workshop. Some years, the final project is a poster; other years, a video, Lawrence said.
"I had to be trained to use technology," she said. "I never had a computer course in college. I’m that old."
High School English teacher Aaron Sicotte spoke about the study groups that had improved his teaching. "It’s not just a one-day affair, but a continual process," he said of professional development at Guilderland. "It’s about building this community."
Nancy Andress, the assistant superintendent for instruction, had started the presentation by telling the school board, "There must be support for teachers who want to take risks."
She also quoted Thomas Sergiovani, who had come to Guilderland, from his book, Leadership in the Schoolhouse: "The idea of making classrooms into learning communities for students will remain more rhetoric than real unless schools become learning communities for teachers, too."
While New York State requires a certain amount of staff development, Guilderland goes well beyond that, Andress said. Its goals are to build a "shared vision" of effective instruction, to allow all staff to grow professionally, and to create "a culture of shared values around instructional improvement that will blend the work of all staff and administrators into a coherent set of actions."

Nancy Brumer, the district’s new staff developer, told the board what her job entails. She said she is a trainer, coach, resource provider, program manager, consultant, task and process facilitator and a catalyst for change.

Andress also went over the costs for professional development, which will total about $706,685 this school year. Grant funds this year total about $53,265, Andress said.
Brumer concluded with a quotation from Albert Einstein: "The deeper we search, the more we find there is to know, and as long as human life exists I believe that it will always be so."

Measurement and money

While school-board members generally sounded appreciative of the report, they were sharply divided over the need to measure the results of Guilderland’s professional development program. There was also some disagreement on the need to pay for the program.
Hy Dubowsky said that professional development was critical for the health of any organization, but he also asked, "What are the outcomes"...Do we have a sense of where we want to go, where we are, where we have been"" He said that should be tied to the expenditure of time and money.

Brumer responded by describing a session she had attended at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, had addressed a cathedral full of teachers, she said. Some things don’t bear fruit until years later, he had said; the Picassos of the world make bright and bold innovations at an early age while the Cézannes of the world plug away and develop over time.
"We can’t measure everything," said Brumer. "Professional development is helping teachers to hone their skills...to reach those Cézannes of the world."
"With all due respect, I disagree," said Dubowsky. "I’m looking for some quantification...We need to show some real-time measurable progress." Having a Ph.D. in program analysis, Dubowsky said, he knows such measurements are possible.
Board member Peter Golden said that Brumer’s assertion that the data showing student achievement is raised by teacher training is "a dangerous place to go."
He said, "You’re looking at a causality that may not exist."

Both Andress and Brumer responded that research had shown a relationship between professional development and student achievement.
Board member Catherine Barber said she appreciated the creative approaches shown in Viscio’s film. "Sometimes things that get kids excited about learning are difficult to measure," she said, suggesting a seed planted now can bloom later.
Board member Gloria Towle-Hilt said she considered the cost, less than 1 percent of the annual budget, a "very small price to pay" for the benefits of professional development.
Board member Barbara Fraterrigo asked what she called "a heretical question." She asked why the taxpayers should foot the bill for teachers’ development while those in other professions, ranging from barbers to doctors, pay for their own.
Board President Richard Weisz took exception to the question. As a lawyer, he said, he pays out of his own pocket for the professional development of associates at his firm. "The taxpayers are the employers," he said, likening it to his paying for the associates’ training.

Weisz listed four reasons to justify the spending. First, he said, excited students stay in school. Secondly, professional development helps retain staff. Third, student performance is tied to teacher performance. And fourth, it improves staff morale.

Weisz suggested evaluating by looking at comparable school districts without the same level of professional development.
John McGuire, at his first Guilderland School Board meeting as superintendent, said, "I found an advantage to being the new guy." When he was interviewing for the job, he said he asked various contingents at Guilderland, "What do you value"" He said he was consistently told professional development was "a component of this culture they valued."
He also said asking how to get the "best bang for the buck" is a "powerful and timeless" question.
"There are no sacred cows," said McGuire.
Professional development at Guilderland, he went on, is based on field-tested best practices. "We don’t bring slipshod consultants to Guilderland," he said.
McGuire concluded that he looked forward to working "very accountably" on professional development at Guilderland "so it continues to be a lighthouse to our district."