T/TAC - Training and Technical Assistance Center at the College of William and Mary

Collaborative Leadership

A Middle School Charts a Course for Collaboration

By Denyse Doerries, Ph.D.
May/June 2004

This is the third in a series of interviews with administrators who have created collaborative environments that support inclusive educational practices.

Stephanie Bourgeois is the assistant principal for eighth grade at Gildersleeve Middle School in the Newport News Public Schools. Mrs. Bourgeois and the principal, Mr. Robert Surry, are working collaboratively to create an inclusive environment that supports learning for both students and teachers. Gildersleeve has 1,280 students in grades 6-8. The composition of the student body is fairly diverse with 10% of the students identified as having a disability and 14% as gifted, 34% represent minority groups, and 38% of the students receive free and reduced-cost lunch. The school has seven special education classes for students with learning disabilities, emotional disturbance, and hearing impairment, and two self-contained classes for students with mental retardation. Gildersleeve is fully accredited. All students are tested on the SOLs in reading, math, and writing.

Question: Research has shown that the leadership of the principal/administration is critical for successful inclusive education. Please describe the process that the administrators in your school employ to create an environment that fosters success for all students.
Response: We have been in the process of building inclusive practices into our school environment for the past four to five years. Mr. Surry, the school principal, is very supportive but, because I have prior experience as a special education teacher, he designated me to take leadership in this area. At first, it was very slow going. Getting the staff to move away from their comfort zone was very challenging. Students have traditionally been included in physical education and related arts classes, but co-teaching between general and special educators did not exist. When we began this process, the only option we provided was mainstreaming students into selected classes with no support.

Our impetus for change came from two places. First, the fact that we were caught in the middle between an elementary school and a high school that were both employing a co-teaching model in social studies and in English motivated the faculty to question our practices. When the students arrived from the elementary school, we were placing them in a more restrictive environment and then, when they transitioned to the high school, they were expected to be ready to be fully included. This did not seem reasonable.

The second motivating factor occurred as the school began looking for strategies to improve the SOL scores for students with disabilities. Because general educators were perceived as the experts in content, and special educators the experts in instructional strategies, it made sense to work more collaboratively.

We initially asked teachers to volunteer on inclusive teams, but there was a definite reluctance to venture into this “unknown” arena of collaboration from both the general educators and the special educators. As a result, Mr. Surry and I decided to start by hand picking two core teams of four teachers and two special education teachers each to work together to develop a co-teaching model. I had started an inclusion model before in another school and, through that experience, had learned the hard way that the personalities of the teachers on the teams can make co-teaching a success or a failure. So we chose staff we thought might work well together, and then we conferred with them. The teachers had to be convinced.

We ended up with two out of four teams in eighth grade, two out of four teams in seventh grade, and one out of four teams in sixth grade using a collaborative model. The majority of the teachers on these teams report enjoying the experience. Only one teacher was not happy.

The seventh-and eighth-grade collaborative teams start with their students in seventh grade and follow them to eighth grade in a looping process. Because the teams work with the students for two years, they come into the second year prepared to provide focused instruction from day one. Not only do the teachers love this structure, but our nine-week criterion-referenced tests showed the two collaborative teams scoring as well as or the same as the two talented and gifted (TAG) teams.

The collaborative teams provide many benefits both to the students and the adults. One of the benefits for the students is that each of the collaborative teams has six adults--four general educators, a special educator, and a paraprofessional--working to meet student needs. The benefits for the adults include not only the sharing of ideas, but the ability to create programs that match student needs.

The composition of the collaborative classes (student and teacher) depends upon the needs of teams and students. The team evaluates the Individualized Education Programs (IEPS) of the students, and then decides how to best assign the teachers and paraprofessionals. The team has total flexibility with regard to distributing students within their classes. If an IEP changes, there will be a change within the collaborative team to meet the student’s needs. Typically, 100 students are assigned to each team, with about 15 requiring some level of special education service. The teams decide the best way to divide the students based on the subject matter and the needs of the students.

Question: What has contributed to the success of your program?
Response: A number of things had to be in place to help make the program successful.

• Help from objective experts outside of our school. The Training and Technical Assistance Center (T/TAC) from the College of William and Mary provided long-term technical assistance in inclusive practices over two years. Specifically, they helped to facilitate discussion among the faculty and the inclusive practices steering committee, and to direct us to what we had to do to make this work.
• Administrative support from the central office. Without that support in terms of resources, personnel, and professional development opportunities, none of this would have been possible.
• The teachers’ enthusiasm. Teachers sharing their enthusiasm with the faculty and staff has been an important part of its success.
• The professional development plan for the school. This was also integral to the success of this project. As part of their individual professional development plans, the collaborative teachers developed a schoolwide professional development program that they presented to the faculty this fall. These teachers also created a Gildersleeve Middle School Inclusion Handbook that describes the program, creates a common vocabulary, discusses various models of inclusion and variations of co-teaching, presents a guide for paraprofessionals, and gives an overview of classroom strategies. In addition, these teachers are starting to meet with other teams to share strategies that have worked in their classrooms.

Another part of our schoolwide professional development that provides a foundation for our success is the creation of learning teams, or content-based teams, that meet to analyze content-area data, discuss instructional issues, and share ideas. These teams were an outgrowth of the administrators attending a Rick DuFour training last summer on creating learning communities.

Teachers typically meet once a week with their collaborative teams and once a week on their learning teams, which provides embedded professional development. Even our related arts teachers meet once every other week as learning teams. The following questions give structure to the teams’ discussions.

• What do we expect students to learn?
• How will we know what students have learned?
• How will we respond when students do not learn?

Question: What are some of the biggest challenges for your school?
Response: Two of our greatest challenges are differentiation and grading and scheduling.
Differentiation and Grading--One of the continuing challenges for the collaborative teams is differentiating instruction for students and developing fair and reasonable grading practices.
Scheduling--Another challenge is the scheduling of classes so that all the content areas have a learning team meeting, students have extra SOL prep classes, and special educators can meet with their grade-level teams. Further, scheduling students with more severe behavioral and cognitive deficits into collaborative classes is complex because their special education teachers typically are responsible for more than one grade level.

Question: Can you summarize some advice for other school administrators?
Response:

• Find outside resources to support the initiative.
• Take one step at a time. Slow down to focus on one piece in order to do it well before moving on.
• Extend an invitation to those teachers you think might be interested. Do not force teachers to participate. Even if a teacher is a little hesitant, you may want to find someone else, at least in the beginning.
• Stick with it for a while. Don’t change your focus too quickly. The pay-off for all the students is worth every bit of effort it takes to find the right combination of teachers
  

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