The Heart and The Arms

October 1, 2021

As noted in my last post, the core of building a collaborative environment is in doing the right work. We can have all the meetings in the world, with the best snacks and fun that money can buy, and yet, without focusing on the right work, we will not build collaborative environments. And student learning and adult practice will almost certainly remain stagnant without building collaborative environments…

Doing the right work can be organized into four Critical Questions, coined by Rick DuFour and Bob Eaker:

1) What do we want students to know and be able to do?

2) How will we know when students know and/or can do it?

3) What will we do when students don’t know or can’t do it? and

4) What will we do when students ALREADY know or can do it?

Our Fundamental Purpose

The fundamental purpose of school is to ensure high levels of learning for all students.

As much as we need the social interactions, and we love the extra-curriculars, and we thrive on the emotional support gained–these are all means to the end. And the end is high levels of learning for all.

In this context, Question 1 becomes the foundation for all collaborative work: What do we want students to know and be able to do?

Some might be saying, “now Chad, we already have this clearly defined. The state or district tells us what students are to learn.”

Yes, you are right. And unfortunately there are just too many of those darned standards. It is estimated that we’d have to change our K-12 system into a K-22 system in order to get to all of those standards. Ask any teacher of high school seniors if they want to have students stick around another 10 years and I’m sure you know what answer you’ll get! Heck, ask the students and their response will be even more adamant…

So prioritization is critical. And this is where the work of each team in the school doing the right work comes in.

The Arms vs. The Heart

I love my arms. I use them for all sorts of things, including writing this very article. From the time I get up in the morning until I go to bed, they are a really important tool used to get by. Simply put, I can’t imagine living without my arms.

My heart is also incredibly important. It beats and beats and beats and beats. Without it–even for just a few seconds–life is over. It’s not just important, it’s critical. It is a must have.

While I love my arms, I could most certainly live without them. There are lots of folks who do just this. It is no doubt incredibly difficult, but it is certainly doable.

Are you connecting this notion to standards? There are standards that states and districts identify that are the heart. And there are those that are the arms. (And there are those that are not included in standards that may also be as important as the heart).

The team has to engage in the difficult work of distinguishing between these. What are the absolutely need to knows? And what are the nice to knows? The heart. The arms.

A Few of My Favorite Things

One of my best beloved songs is from The Sound of Music: A few of my favorite things. While it’s a wonderful song and can bring happiness as we navigate challenges in our life, it is most certainly not a theme to drive this work. The need to knows are not just a collection of all of our favorite things. These are the essential, most important, non-negotiable learnings that, without a student learning them, we will not move on in class.

These essential targets, power standards, or whatever you call them, are identified by starting with adult earning. Recall that one third of the term, Professional Learning Community, is “learning.” We start, ourselves, with learning.

We study the standards, we talk to our colleagues in the next grade-level beyond us, we research the needs in business and industry, we study tables of specifications on state and national exams…you get the picture. We always start with our learning, adult learning.

Then we get to work prioritizing.

Bill Ferriter (@plugusin) has compiled a great resource called The Big Book of Tools for Collaborative Teams in a PLC at Work®. It’s fantastic. I highly recommend it for guiding every step of the journey addressing the four Critical Questions. Here are three potential options that may be helpful for you in identifying the need to knows versus the nice to knows–the heart versus the arms.

Next Steps

While the three tools are focused specifically on student learning outcomes, I think they also have applicability to our work with adults and in our personal lives.

What goals do you have in your own life? What learning do we want our staff to engage in? What is most important with our students?

Use these tools through those lenses, too, and see what happens. What learning should be most Prominent and Vital? What has the greatest Relevance, Endurance, Alignment, and Leverage?

It seems to me that this work has implications for our work as adults, too…

Until next time, happy prioritizing!

BONUS!!

On October 30th it’s the one-year anniversary of the launch of my first book! If you’ve read it, please consider posting a review on Amazon. If not, what are you waiting for?! 🙂

Tag me on social media (@ChadDumas for Twitter) with a link to this blog or my book, and I’ll enter you into a drawing to receive some great prizes–one lucky team will receive a free day of training (valued at $3,000–you just pay expenses) or six distance coaching sessions (also valued at $3,000), and another will receive books for you and your colleagues. I’ll draw after November 1st, and prizes need to be used by December 2022. Let’s celebrate, and put the C in PLC!

Questions for Reflection

To what extent does your team prioritize learning targets to guarantee key outcomes?

The Heart and The Arms