Staff Development Council of Ohio

July 2009

President’s Message
By Michelle Kennedy
SDCO President

michelle Creating Communities of Professional Learners! In this time of economic crisis, we find ourselves facing reductions in staff and resources. How will we ever accomplish success and student achievement? All educators realize the necessity to collaborate with others in order to prosper. With "high-stakes" accountability, we must work together and learn from each other. Only our professional growth and collaboration will produce results.

The SDCO Board of Directors has worked as a professional community. We have shared our thoughts, ideas, and expertise through our book study, our annual conference and follow-up sessions, our monthly meetings, and in small group problem-solving sessions. We have worked together many different ways; face-to-face meetings, telephone conference calls, and by using technology. We have utilized our limited resources and capabilities to grow as an organization. We have seen the importance and have become a community of professional learners.

PLC: Give 'em "L"
By William Sommers, PhD
Sommers Dr. Bill Sommers was a featured speaker at the 2009 Annual SDCO Conference. He recently co-authored the book Leading Professional Learning Communities: Voices from Research and Practice with Shirley M. Hord, PhD.

The newest TLA (three letter acronym) in education is PLC, Professional Learning Communities. When my colleague and friend Shirley Hord and I work together, many educators tell us they have PLCs. We ask, 'what are you learning' (Hord and Sommers 2008). Most of the time we get a response like, 'we are doing a book study.' We say, 'OK, so, what are you learning?' They say, 'we are meeting on Tuesdays.' We say, 'so, what are you learning?' Then, there is usually a pause and a look of being uncomfortable.

New Group Membership Discounts for 2009-2010
By Larry Pfrogner
Center Director, Ashland University/Elyria and Cleveland Centers and former SDCO Membership Coordinator

larry We are pleased to announce that your SDCO Membership dues will not increase for 2009-10. You should be receiving a reminder when it's time to once again renew your membership and continue uninterrupted access to your membership benefits:

Quarterly emailing of the SDCO Professional Newsletter
School district discount to the K-12 Teaching & Learning Center website
$15 Professional Development tuition discount voucher from Ashland University
Member discount for SDCO's annual conference
Annual professional development resource newsletter
SDCO Membership Networking Directory
Opportunity to combine paying SDCO dues along with NSDC dues

New for 2009/10 are group membership discounts. Instead of our annual individual $35 rate, you may choose to have your entire department, building, or district join for as low as $10/educator.

New SDCO Board Member Tapped: Michele Winship
By Sherri Houghton
SDCO Executive Director

winship The SDCO Board would like to extend a warm welcome to the newest member, Michele Winship. Winship currently serves as an Education Reform Consultant with the Ohio Education Association. Prior to coming to OEA in March 2008, she spent 8 years in teacher education at Capital University. Prior to that she was a high school English teacher for 15 years. She has been a member of OCTELA for 25 years and a member of the executive board for 8. Michele's experience in professional development has focused on local professional development committees and the creation of critical friends groups. She has been a professional development consultant for over 15 years and has worked on several state, regional and local initiatives. Michele received her BS and MA from The Ohio State University in English Education as well as her PhD in Teaching and Learning with concentrations in professional development, assessment and education reform.

Great Teachers Make Great Schools Conference August 9-11
By Deb Tully
Ohio Federation of Teachers and SDCO Board Member

tully REGISTER NOW for the "Great Teachers Make Great Schools: 2009 Teacher Conference" to be held in Columbus Aug. 9-11. The conference is hosted by Battelle for Kids with support from the Ohio Federation of Teachers and Ohio Education Association.

This new professional development opportunity is for teachers, teacher leaders and curriculum directors. The program will address school improvement issues designed to help enhance student progress and achievement.

Teachers will have the opportunity to connect and learn from each other, attend interactive workshops and earn graduate credit or CEUs.

Battelle Conference Greatest Teaching Strategy Contest

Greatest Teaching Strategy Contest: A feature of the Great Teachers Make Great Schools: 2009 Teacher Conference will be sharing great strategies with each other. Do you have a great strategy you'd like to submit? You can win a prize package worth $500!

Teachers work daily to implement strategies that improve student learning. Think you have a great teaching strategy? One that is universal, practical, creative and proven to impact students in a positive way? We want to hear about it! Share your great strategy by entering Battelle for Kids' first Greatest Teaching Strategy Contest.

Central Ohio Follow-Up Meetings for 2009 SDCO Annual Conference
By Tyrone Olverson
SDCO President-Elect

tyrone The May 2009 SDCO follow-up session focused on what constitutes a PLC and what advantages might PLT's provide schools. The follow-up activity is designed to meet the request of the May 2009 SDCO participants. Participants at the May 2009 session asked that we focus our June follow-up on specific hands-on activities that engage staff members. Participants want to leave the session with engaging tools to begin discussions that promote the use of PLT's within their own school environments for greater student achievement.

Substitute House Bill 1 Proposes Changes to Ohio's Licensure Structure
By Michele Winship
Education Reform Consultant for Ohio Education Association and SDCO member

winship As Sub H.B. 1 makes its way through the legislative process, the licensure structure proposed by Governor Strickland in January remains largely intact. The proposed 4-tier licensure creates a career ladder for educators and presents a number of possibilities for districts to consider in determining how best to use its teachers in the upper licensure tiers. It acknowledges the role of ongoing professional development in an educator's career and creates opportunities for teacher leadership in addition to the administrative pathway. Moving to the Senior Professional and lead Professional Educator Licenses requires meeting criteria at the accomplished or distinguished levels of the Ohio Standards for the Teaching Profession (available at http://ode.state.oh.us keyword search "Ohio Standards"). In addition, the Ohio Master Teacher Program becomes one route to the Lead Professional Educator License. Teachers with Lead Professional Educator Licenses will be eligible for the Lead Teacher position allowing them to mentor Resident Educators and provide support for colleagues. The Educator Standards Board is charged in this legislation with developing the framework for the proposed residency program as well as adopting additional criteria for the Lead Professional Educator License.

Collaborative Learning Not Just for Kids
By Andrea Callicoat
Teacher at Waggoner Road Junior High School

callicoat As teachers we are constantly instructed to teach our students using collaborative learning groups; however, too often we fail to model this to our students. What better resource do we have for teaching our students than our fellow teachers? We know the climate of our building and the needs of our students. We see each other daily and have the same goals in mind. In fact, many of us are teaching the same subjects as one another, yet too often we fail to tap into the valuable resource we may have right next door.

Your First Days of Schools
By Michael White, Amy Crouse, Cara Bafile and Harry Barnes
The Leadership and Learning Center

Pictures for Learning photo:
Nancy Biddinger

You can take some comfort knowing that the first day of school is like a blind date for everyone. Even with their years of experience, veteran teachers are just like you, coming to a new school. No one, not a teacher or a student, returns to the same school they left last year. Mr. Harms might be a twenty-eight-year veteran of seventh grade math. Congratulations! But this year there's a new assistant principal, a new seventh grade book, or a new schedule. Maybe Mr. Harms gets the Rempala twins this year, two boys who think "No Child Left Behind" means that they should annoy everyone.

Is Teaching Really a Team Sport?
By Mike White, Amy Crouse
Leadership and Learning Center,
& Tyrone Olverson
SDCO President-Elect

Pictures for Learning photo:
Lathers Elementary

When historians get around to listing the most astonishing discoveries about student achievement, here's a finding that won't make their list: When teachers get together to talk in concrete, precise language about instruction and student work, their teaching dramatically improves and student achievement rises (Schmoker, 2006; White, Crouse, Bafile & Barnes, 2009).

Sadly, what might make our historian's list of astonishing discoveries is that we knew it was all about teaching and collaboration, but rarely collaborated in our schools.

Read All About It
By Tyrone Olverson, Waggoner Road Junior High School Principal http://www.reyn.org/taxonomy/term/2/feed and SDCO President-Elect,
& Mike White, Leadership & Learning Center

Pictures for Learning photo:
Amy King

Parents who aren't insisting that their children spend some significant time this summer reading are missing a grand opportunity that will benefit the kids for the rest of their lives. Whether the books are classics or comic books, the reading of them is what counts.
Children spend so much time during school in enforced reading that some of them come to regard the activity as a drudge. Read during the summer? Are you kidding? We get enough of that in school. Summer's a time to relax.

Professional Development in the News: Summaries of Articles and Links
Hayden By Kellie Hayden
SDCO Board Member

Hayes Mizell selects these for PD in the News for the National Staff Development Council. These are summaries of the summaries with links.

Study: Student Achievement Goes Up When Teachers Work Together Schools get better student achievement results when teachers work in teams to identify student learning problems and cooperatively develop instructional solutions. That is the conclusion of a study on teaching improvement programs published in the May issue of The Elementary School Journal. Twenty-five hours of instruction-focused meeting times per year were given to the teacher teams. http://snipurl.com/gzoxu
Give Teachers Time to Plan, Collaborate The Des Moines Register's Opinion section reported that the U.S. Education Secretary Anne Duncan "clearly understands the importance of having a great teacher in every classroom." And, teachers also need time to work together to design lessons, identify struggling students and provide the students with help. Duncan also said, "Any great teacher is part of a team, and any great team needs the time and ability to work together, to take stock on a continual basis of what is working and what is not." http://snipurl.com/h0a4s
Stimulus to Fund Teacher Training South Milwaukee School District officials believe that using stimulus money on professional development for teachers will continue to help even after the money is gone. A recommendation was made to the school board that $245,000 be spent over two years to hire a writing and reading coach to work with all grade levels. http://snipurl.com/h03hd
Layoff and Rehire as Professional Development Professional Development Staff A newspaper in Indianapolis, Indiana reported that "the superintendent will recommend 300 teacher layoffs, but "as many as 120 could be hired back with federal stimulus money as a professional development cadre that teaches classes while groups of other teachers get training." http://snipurl.com/h34oo
Schools Partner with Rec. Dept. for Early Release Relief In Danvers, Massachusetts the school has worked out a deal with the Danvers Recreation Department to provide after school programs onsite at the five elementary schools for a small fee when teachers have early release days. Teachers will use the nine early release days for professional development and for an ideas exchange. http://snipurl.com/h3hvj

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