After a brief discussion about SMART goals, draft goals were generated during this session.  We are still working to finalize their goals for their deadline of October 6th.  

I was honored to work with such a talented group of professionals.  Keep up the wonderful work!!

If you would like assistance with facilitating your team using the collaborative inquiry process, please feel free to contact Margie Johnson at margie.johnson@mnps.org.

According to John Hattie (2015), “the largest barrier to student learning is within-school variability” (p. 1).  He recommends that what works best in education is empowering schools to leverage the collaborative expertise of the educators within a building.  If often tell teams that I work with that if we had the answer, then we would have implemented it already.  However, education faces complex issues today.
 
Therefore, MNPS’ Collaborative Inquiry process, developed by the MNPS Community of Practice (Haynes Middle, Margaret Allen Middle, Two Rivers Middle, West End Middle, and Wright Middle), is about empowering MNPS educators to use data and educator expertise for addressing a variety of complex issues in order to ensure all MNPS students are successful. 
 
I am excited to share that three schools started the 2017-2018 school year off by engaging in collaborative inquiry to have deep conversations about a variety of topics. 

• In JE Moss Elementary’s session, they reviewed last year’s vision and mission statements.  Then, they reviewed multiple sources of data to establish SMART goals for literacy and numeracy for 2017-2018.  To read about their collaborative inquiry meeting, click http://www.mnpscollaboration.org/je-moss-elementary-leadership-team-meeting--2017.html
• Ms. Beatriz Salgado is new to Goodlettsville Middle, so she wanted to leverage educator expertise in developing new vision and mission statements for the 2017-2018 school year.  The leadership team convened on Monday, July 24th.  To read about their use of the collaborative inquiry process, click http://www.mnpscollaboration.org/goodlettsville-middle-vision-and-mission.html
• A cohort of CTE teachers learned how the MNPS Data Warehouse can help them support student success.   The collaborative inquiry process was modeled while teaching them about the most common data warehouse reports.  To see their work, click http://www.mnpscollaboration.org/cte-cohort--july-26-2017.html
• Mr. Todd Irving, also being new to Joelton Middle, wanted to leverage educator expertise to develop new vision and mission statements for the 2017-2018 school year.  On Friday, July 28th, Joelton Middle’s leadership team convened and used the collaborative inquiry process to develop vision and mission statements.  To read about their collaborative inquiry journey, click http://www.mnpscollaboration.org/joelton-middle-vision-and-mission.html

 
If you have a collaborative inquiry story to share and/or need support with the collaborative inquiry process, please feel free to contact…
 
References:
Hattie, J. (2015).  What works best in education: The politics of collaborative expertise.  London, UK: Pearson.

In June 2017, Mariana Merritt, MNPS Coordinator of Family and Community Engagement, Pre-K, attended the Leading Collaborative Inquiry Teams workshop.  A challenge at the end of the workshop was to use some of the structures, strategies, and principles at your next meeting.  Mrs. Merritt was up to the challenge and is willing to share with us strategies she used and how it affected her meeting.
 
On July 15, 2017, Mariana Merritt facilitated the Parent Ambassador Annual Meeting.  Since this group just formed, their first task was to develop a vision and mission statement to guide their work for the 2017-2018 school year.  During her reflection, she shared three strategies that helped her effectively lead this collaborative team.

Thanks to Mariana Merritt for allowing us to learn with her.

If you have a collaborative inquiry story and/or need support with collaborative inquiry, please email Margie Johnson at margie.johnson@mnps.org.

References:
Lipton, L. & Wellman, B. (2015).  Leading groups: Effective strategies for building professional community.  Charlotte, VT: MiraVia, LLC.
MNPS Community of Practice. (2017).  MNPS collaborative inquiry toolkit website.  Retrieved from http://www.mnpscollaboration.org/
Wellman, B. & Lipton, L. (2017).  Data-driven dialogue: A facilitator’s guide to collaborative inquiry.  Charlotte, VT: MiraVia, LLC.

• Meeting #1--The culture and climate walkthrough data were used to present the strengths, areas of growth, and recommendations.
• Meeting #2--Participants were asked to engage in exploring and discovering the data and make recommendations for improving culture and climate.

Using a Venn Diagram, participants compared and contrasted the two meetings.....

To read more about the meeting and access resources, please click HERE.

If you have a story to share about using collaborative inquiry for empowering educators OR would like to learn more, please contact Margie Johnson at margie.johnson@mnps.org.

On June 13-14, I had the privilege of leading a workshop entitled, Leading Collaborative Teams.  During this workshop, participants learned strategies, structures, and principles for effectively leading collaborative teams.  Now, they are part of the CIA as well.  Look for upcoming webinars and face to face gatherings as we continue to build our community of practice.

If you would like to learn more about Leading Collaborative Teams,  click HERE and/or contact Margie Johnson at margie.johnson@mnps.org.

In the last blog post, we talked about how it’s that time of year to begin planning for the 2017-2018 school year.  Dr. Dottie Critchlow is taking the SIP process one step further by modeling the collaborative inquiry process with her network principals to establish network improvement goals and plan.

The discussion began by activating prior knowledge with an activity entitled, Got it! Need It!.  Individuals identified what they knew about the SIP process and what they need to know (see below chart). 
 
We also discussed their vision for the network (see below chart).

During the exploring and discovering phase the critical part is to avoid making inferences and explanations about the data.  Instead, this phase is about sticking to just the facts and reporting observations. 
 
This phase begin with a brief overview of collaborative inquiry and a quick calibrating activity.   Principals then divided into small groups to make observations of their assigned data reports from the MNPS Data Warehouse.  The reports used for this session were:

Some excellent observations were made of the data (see below charts).

With the needs assessment complete, the principals then collaborated to develop SMART network improvement goals.  For the 2017-2018 school year, their goals are:

• Using the district literacy assessment, a decrease of x% of students in the lower quintile; an increase of x% of students will be at or above grade level; and an increase of x% of students will demonstrate growth in literacy by the end of the 2017-2018 school year.  (Note that exact percentages were not set as we wanted to wait to see which benchmark assessment will be used.)
• 100% of schools will develop and implement a comprehensive behavior plan by the end of the 2017-2018 school year.
  

The wordle represents the words used during the day to describe the staff's vision for John Early.

To access the vision and mission statement drafts, use this LINK.

Remember the Where's Waldo? series?  You could follow him on his adventures and try to find him in the illustrations.

I am excited to share that over the past 4 weeks collaborative inquiry is being used in several places throughout MNPS.  Below are summaries and links to pages with more information, so we can learn more about how schools are using collaborative inquiry to support student success.

If you need support with collaborative inquiry and/or have a spotlight story to share, please feel free to contact Margie Johnson at margie.johnson@mnps.org.

Glencliff Elementary--September 15, 2016
Ms. Julie Hopkins, principal at Glencliff Elem, and her leadership team used the collaborative inquiry process to begin discussing and developing a communication plan for 2016-2017 school year.  Learn more about their collaborative work HERE. 

Haynes Middle Health/Medical Science Design Center--September 19, 2016
Haynes Middle Magnet Design Center's leadership team used the collaborative inquiry process to review culture and climate data, identify theories of causation, and chart next steps, which included leadership team members using the collaborative inquiry process to allow staff members to make observations of the data to get their feedback prior to identifying theories of causation.  Learn more about their collaborative work HERE.

Two Rivers Middle--September 20 & 28, 2016
In September 2016, Two Rivers engaged in the collaborative inquiry process to use i-Ready data for establishing SIP goals for literacy and numeracy for the 2016-2017 school year. Learn more about their collaborative work HERE.

Curriculum and Instruction Meeting--September 30, 2016
During September 30th, Curriculum and Instruction meeting the collaborative inquiry process was used to review middle school literacy plans, make recommendations, and see the Tales of Two Feedback Conversations.  It was a model of Dr. Springer's ELP meeting, which was held on September 29th at JFK Middle Prep. Learn more about the collaborative work HERE.

Two Rivers Middle--October 10, 2016
On October 10, 2016, Two Rivers Middle used the collaborative inquiry process to take a data dive into their district benchmark data.  Grade level subject area teams made observations of the data, generated theories of causation, and developed next steps for supporting student success during the next 9 weeks.  Learn more about their collaborative work HERE.

John Early Middle--September 28 & October 10, 2016
John Early Museum Magnet Middle Prep used the collaborative inquiry process to review culture and climate data, generate multiple theories of causation, and chart next steps.  Dr. Margie Johnson facilitated two meetings.  The first one was with the administrative team.  The second meeting was with the entire faculty.  Learn more about their collaborative work HERE.

CTE Cohort--October 11, 2016
A cohort of CTE teachers learned how the MNPS Data Warehouse can help them support student success.   The collaborative inquiry process was modeled while teaching them about the most common data warehouse reports. Learn more about their collaborative work HERE.

More exciting things happening this week in the world of collaborative inquiry.  Remember, there's no checklist for collaborative inquiry as it is a cultural norm for the way we work together to honor, value, and leverage the expertise within MNPS.

 A what???  That's what I usually hear when I say the words, "Innovation Configuration" to people.   What is it?  Why do I care?  How could I possibly use it?

To help answer those questions, REL Appalachia created two videos to add to our Collaborative Inquiry Toolkit.  You can find them on the About page of our toolkit: http://www.mnpscollaboration.org/about.html. 

The 2016 Nashville Analytics Summit was hosted at the Omni Hotel with more than 400 participants from various organizations in the Nashville area.  The Summit focuses on a fundamental issue in organizations today: how to effectively leverage analytics.

Dr. Margie Johnson presented a 90 minute workshop on August 11th sharing about the MNPS data warehouse, its implementation and lessons learned, particularly the development of the Data-Informed Decision Making Ecosystem.  The ecosystem is the framework used by MNPS for building the capacity of employees to use data for making informed decisions.  To access the workshop materials, please click on one of the below pictures.

Vote now to send MNPS to the SXSWedu 2017 conference in Austin, TX! We have two innovative session ideas we want to share with our education community, but we need your vote to make that happen.

Implementation Road Map to Expected Results - Learn about a cool tool for implementing education initiatives!  Discover how educators and researchers can use it to define and guide implementation of practices that lead to expected results. Click here to vote: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/64916

Walk Your Talk: The Teacher Data Use Survey - Learn about a new tool designed to assess teacher data use and the supports that make it happen along with a user-friendly tool for reporting TDUS data. Click here to vote: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/64502

By voting for MNPS' conference proposals, you let the SXSWedu proposal reviewers know that people want to hear more about MNPS' innovative work that is making a difference in students' lives.

VOTING ENDS SEPT 2nd.

Last week, Laura Hansen and Margie Johnson from MNPS' Information Management and Decision Support department presented 5 sessions at the 2016 STATS DC conference.  This year's theme was, "Better Data from the Inside Out," with sessions about a variety of topics related to data, including data collection, data management, data privacy, data quality, data standards, and data use practices.  If you are interested in learning more about this conference, please go to http://ies.ed.gov/whatsnew/conferences/?id=2531.

Laura Hansen served on a NCES Forum Workgroup that unveiled a new publication around Student Data Privacy, and can be found here: https://nces.ed.gov/forum/pub_2016096.asp. She also presented 3 conference sessions:

• Make Data Work for Students: Opportunities in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)
• Student Data Privacy Consortium—A Common Contract Framework
• EDUCaTION wiThout d@tA sdradnat$

Margie Johnson and Mary Laurens Seely, from MNPS' Research, Assessment, and Evaluation department, are part of a national Data Use Standards Working Group for educators.  One session Margie presented was about the workgroup's publication of  PK-12 Data Use Standards for Educators (https://slds.grads360.org/#program/data-use-standards).

Margie also presented about the MNPS REL Appalachia partnership work around collaborative inquiry entitled, Best Practice for Enhancing Collaborative Data Use in Schools.

To learn more about the sessions and access materials, please go to http://www.mnpscollaboration.org/2016-nces-stats-dc-presentations.html.

We would love to hear about the data work you and/or your team is doing.  Please feel free to contact Margie Johnson at margie.johnson@mnps.org to share your story or to get support around data use.