Miils Teacher Scholars in Edweek

Anthony Cody, in his July 23rd EdWeek blog, A Dialogue with the Gates Foundation, named Mills Teacher Scholars “the best model of collaboration I have seen in recent years.” The post features both a video of MTS Program Associate/ New Highland Academy teacher Aija Simmons at the OUSD Teacher Conference and the MTS video of the Teacher Inquiry in Action Forum.

Here is an excerpt from Anthony Cody’s Living in Dialogue blog:

Let’s take a look at the best model of collaboration I have seen in recent years, the teachers at New Highland Academy in East Oakland. This team of teachers worked with the support of a team at Mills College to engage in thoughtful inquiry into their practice. They met regularly to look at student work and talk about where their students were struggling. When they looked at their students’ work, they saw that while the curriculum they were using was helping the students learn to decode, their comprehension was lagging. They chose a set of strategies to help their students to find meaning in what they read, and worked across the school to try this out.

Here is how teacher leader Aija Simmons explained it:

“The Answers” are what we all problematize. Because what “the answer” is for me in this moment might not be the answer two years from now. So the good thing about inquiry is that I’m constantly understanding that there’s a new question, this is a new group of students, it might work better than the last thing but I’m continuing to probe myself, so that I’m pushing myself to deeper understandings about how my students learn, and I’m coming back to the question. I have had several inquiry projects that I’ve looked at over the course of multiple years, but I use them as professional developments. People have the same question that you have, and as you come together, and you begin to think more and share your ideas of inquiry, and get more tools, we’re moving ourselves forward.

They saw tremendous results. But the biggest lesson was not just the result, but the ownership these teachers had of their own expertise. By engaging in this process, where THEY figured out the big challenge before them, and THEY figured out what to do about it, and how to monitor their students’ learning, they were acting as professionals. The energy you see in these teachers is what happens when you give people autonomy and the time to use it. This energy is destroyed when mandates and models of professional growth are imposed from above.