Collaborative Response with Kurtis and Lorna Hewson
Ross Romano: [00:00:00]
Welcome in everybody. You are listening once again to the Authority Podcast on the Be Podcast Network. Thanks so much for being with us. My guests today are Curtis and Lorna Hewson. They're award winning educators with experience in the classroom, school and district leadership and beyond.
They're the co founders of Jigsaw Learning and the co authors of Collaborative Response. Three foundational components that transform how we respond to the needs of learners. The book is published by Corwin and that's what we're talking about today. Curtis and Laura, welcome to the authority.
Lorna Hewson: Hi, Ross. Thanks
Kurtis Hewson: so much for having us. Yeah, really, really happy to be here, Ross. Thank you.
Ross Romano: Yeah, it's a, it's a pleasure to chat with you. And, you know, I'm looking forward to talking about this book here. And, [00:01:00] why don't we start all the way at the beginning about the origin story? So collaborative response, where does this idea begin?
Kurtis Hewson: Well, it begins right back in a school. It was a school that Lorna was... Teaching in, part of her role was teaching within that school, and she was already engaging in part of her role at a district level position as well. I had come into this school as a principal, and this was back in 2006, so, Forever ago.
16, 17 years ago at that time, and Coming into this school, it was a great place, good teachers doing good things for students, overall, some of our key data measures were showing that the school was having success. It's interesting when we go back and share some of the starting places for this work, there was gaps.
That was happening within this, this school. So a couple of the things that were happening is we were seeing [00:02:00] success for most students within the building, but if you had asked every person, they would have said, no, no, our, our vision that we have is success for all, but we weren't necessarily structured to be able to ensure that there was a bit of an underwriting, whisper within the school of, well, there's certain kids that we just can't reach or have success. So that was the first thing.
Lorna Hewson: And then great teachers doing great things, but primarily in isolation of each other. So, really fantastic practice happening in each classroom.
But other than teachers. Sharing a unit plan or a lesson plan, there hadn't been a lot of definitely not structured, opportunities to be able to collaborate in an effective way, focused on student learning.
Kurtis Hewson: And really at that time, I think we reflect back and understand we're a very collegial organization, but we were [00:03:00] not leveraging the hundreds of years of teaching experience that were within the building at that time. And the other thing that we were finding is we had really good structures and supports that definitely predated my joining of the school for our most at risk students.
But there, because of that, there were two things happening. There was a large number of students that We weren't really having collective attention being paid to, or there were some students that we were pushing to the more intensive supports and probably adding labels or codes to students that didn't necessarily need that level of intensity, but because the support was in place for our most at risk students, it meant the school wanting to Place more students at that level, which was problematic as well.
So, we began putting structures and processes in place. We [00:04:00] did a lot of learning and thought around professional learning communities. At the time, a response to intervention was just starting to get a little bit of a foothold, and thinking through some of those concepts as well. And also, as we are in the province of Alberta, Canada, trying to put a little bit of, What does it mean within our, our own context as a lot of the literature was coming out of primarily United States, which was great, but we just needed to think through what would it look like for us.
So, to take a long story and shorten it right up. We began to put some pieces in place that we'll share today. Schools began to start to visit, we started to get requests out. We needed to put language. To it and what we were doing and we needed to put a little bit of a simplicity, we often refer to it now as simplexity, but a little bit of, of an ability to [00:05:00] describe it to others.
So we referred to it as our collaborative response. That we've established and that there were three foundational components that were really critical, but we also know that as we've engaged in this work now over almost two decades, it's not as simple as just three foundational components, the interconnectivity and connections between all three that we'll explore here today is really, really important.
important and and complex work in an organization. So that's, kind of how we got that start. It was from a very organic place, very practical, and the learning that we did over probably the next five years served only as the genesis for this work. It's still consistently being formed in our understanding through working with schools, districts from, beginning in our province of Alberta, Canada and extending out to [00:06:00] other countries.
And our intention originally was just to serve the students of our school and to build. Teaching practice across our school, in our very small school in, in Alberta, but, as we mentioned in that natural organic growth happened over time and now we provide support all over the place.
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Ross Romano: Lorna, you made reference earlier to the fact that what the book is presenting is a school wide approach to addressing those individual student needs. How did you kind of determine at the beginning of the work and as you were, that a really comprehensive school wide approach is, is necessary at that level versus leaving it to the classrooms?
Lorna Hewson: Yeah, we, I think that the one of the biggest things that happened at the beginning was for us to [00:07:00] recognize that there was great success happening in those classrooms, but we did as we began to examine our data very carefully recognizing that we had a group of students year after year who were not seeing success.
And so we realized that there was, A core group of students who are consistently being missed and not for any fault of anyone. It, it truly was about how we set up that systems approach. And so, going to your question, Ross, it really was about the only way that we are able to attend to all the needs of every individual in our school, not just in each, each classroom.
was to be able to have a system of supports that are, attending to the needs of all the children, but also supporting teachers at the very
Kurtis Hewson: same time. And [00:08:00] I think with that, what was also critically important is The understanding that our classrooms are too complex, for one person to have all the answers for every child that, comes in at any level.
And I think that's where the traction for the work has really come. The idea that we're exemplifying that old adage of it takes a village. We talk about every child deserves a team through this work. But it's, it's impossible for one person to know how to attend to everything that's happening for the students within their classroom, within their course.
We need to rely upon one another and to do that, we again need a systems approach to be able to accomplish that effectively.
Ross Romano: Yeah, that every child deserves a team. You just said that's kind of the driving message right throughout this book here. Tell us more about that and, and how you kind of develop that thinking and what you really [00:09:00] mean by it and what that looks like in the work.
Kurtis Hewson: well, I think it's interesting when we look back historically, and we had, of course, as a school, you're always building upon your next layer of learning, professional development, and we had done a lot of work around differentiation and personalization and that. But I think one of the errors of thought that came through some of that was the idea of building a plan for every child, because sustain sustaining that is incredibly hard, and I think that's been one of the things within the education realm, is that idea of personalization being about, well, if you have 25 students in your class, you probably need 25 plans or 25 lessons if you're truly differentiating and that's impossible.
I just don't think it's sustainable in any way. So we talk about through this work about creating layers [00:10:00] of collaboration so that we can make a really clear and articulate mechanism so that every student is being impacted by those layers, recognizing that some are going to take more intensive conversations with a higher degree of specialists at the table.
Others will not require that, but that we can be very fluid, but it's through the layering of teams, and we talk about four really intentional team layers that then start to align with our continuum of supports that again is fluid and flexible for students and the intention is that through this we're not talking about Ross in every conversation because we all know that we have teachers that, boy, it's hard for me to attend to everyone else because I've got all my attention on these three or four or as a school being able to say we're Putting so much of our energy and resources [00:11:00] into just this select few, with good reason, that they are students that we need to put incredible supports in place, but through this, we try and ensure that there's a space for every conversation and every student being impacted from that team approach.
So again, it's not the every child deserves a team. Therefore, every child has their own individual plan and their own individual team, but it's through the multi layered teaming approach that we can ensure we hit each and every student through that.
Lorna Hewson: And when we have those four layers in place, we actually have a space to potentially talk about any child's needs based on their JAGED profile.
So when you think about for, for one student who is really challenged in numeracy, we have a team who can come together to be able to talk about those needs. But perhaps that same child is really successful in literacy. [00:12:00] And doesn't need the same level of support in literacy. The same thing we see with, in terms of we, many, many schools have such incredible support designed for students with more intensive needs.
And that's well established in most schools already, but we sometimes haven't been, really thoughtful and intentional about students who excel. When do we talk about them? When do we talk about the practice that, supports what's happening in each and every classroom, and when do we talk about students who just need a few strategies here and there to be able to support them.
Kurtis Hewson: I think that's been one of our key learnings through this as well, Ross, is the understanding that We can respond to the needs of students, but do it in a way that's building the collective capacity of everyone, and I think that was one of our key ahas as we worked [00:13:00] through the process of, you know what, this is not just about Ensuring no student slips through the cracks, which is important, which is what we do through collaborative response, but we're doing it in a way that's building each and every person's capacity with every conversation.
I think this is what makes this work, this framework that we share, so unique that it's not just about collaborative. tiering the students and putting it, every, every student making sure they get the support they need, but we do it in a way that every adult. is growing as a result of the collaboration that happens.
Again, that idea of our collaborative response is helping students and staff at the same time.
Ross Romano: If you're going into a school and you're going to help them begin to implement some of these strategies of collaborative response, are you initially attempting to get [00:14:00] some feel for the existing culture within that school? The their mentality toward collaboration and how it exists.
And, and if so, kind of, how are you going about that? Right? Cause if you go in there, I was talking about this with somebody recently who was looking to, okay, in my next role where I work, I want to make sure it's a collaborative culture. And when we talked about, well, if you just go there and you ask them, do you.
promote collaboration here, they're just going to say yes, right? So you want to ask it more open ended and kind of see do they really know what they're talking about, right? Do they, are they making it up on the spot? Do they really, can they clearly convey exactly what they do around collaboration?
So what are some of the ways when you're first coming into a new school environment and you're looking to ascertain that, some of the things you might ask them about or some of the things you're looking to hear from them?
Lorna Hewson: Ross, we start right from the very beginning. with [00:15:00] the conversation or the recognition that the some of the things that we're going to talk about or we're going to engage in through this work are absolutely happening.
Kurtis Hewson: You're already doing a number of the pieces.
Lorna Hewson: And we want people to recognize that there are Already really fantastic supports that are happening in the school, and we're not about to change it all.
That's not what this work is about. But being able to recognize that there are some important, important components when we think about those four layers of teams that we consider. And there might be small tweaks in certain areas. There might be significant shifts. So really spending that time up front to recognize that we are definitely, going to look at the, the practices that are working in your school and, how they're supporting students.
Kurtis Hewson: We often talk to that, we sometimes when we first start [00:16:00] working with the school and most of our work now is with school districts where we're engaging with. all of their schools to bring this as a divisional, focal or framework that they're developing. But we often, start off with people feeling really overwhelmed because, well, just tell us the steps.
What are the linear steps to take? And we say through this work, multiple entry points, depending on where you're already at as a school, and that through this work, it's a learning journey, you're going to learn as an organization as you engage in the work, and it's really hard to suggest step one, then step two, then step three, because I might not know what step three is until we're partway through step one for your particular school context.
So sometimes that can be Overwhelming, or we've even heard frustration at the start of, well, can't you just give us [00:17:00] the recipe or the map to do this? And no, it's when you think about systems thinking within an organization, it's too complex to boil it into one, one recipe that will fit everyone. And so when we talk about collaborative response, we're really talking about a mindset that's informed by some very explicit practices that we can.
adjust and help build upon, but like Lorna said, it's always starting from a, what are you already doing? And we have not been in a school, at least within the last decade, where we come in, they go, Oh, we don't collaborate here.
Lorna Hewson: Like you said, everyone will say that they collaborate, but it's to the degree that what does collaboration actually look like in your building, in your context?
And ultimately, what would we want to be able to see in building that collaborative
Kurtis Hewson: cult? I would say in 90 percent [00:18:00] of the organizations we engage with, we're taking good practice and just building upon it to make it. Highly aligned, highly connected, and we often say to schools, we're, this will not necessarily make life easier.
This is a hard work, hard work that we're engaging in, but you will certainly see more impact for your efforts come out that we will see more success for students and, that and working better together. We also have really seen impact around. wellness for the adults when we feel supported, when we feel part of a really impactful team, not, I feel really isolated within my classroom.
Because it can be an isolating profession if, intentional processes and structures are not, not in place for sure.
Ross Romano: Yeah. And so, you know, in the opening, [00:19:00] I introduced the title of the book and the subtitle, Three Foundational Components That Transform How We Respond to the Needs of Learners. So, what are those three components that are covered in the book?
Kurtis Hewson: Yeah. So, just to give that quick overview, the first one is collaborative structures and processes, and it's within that that we talk about four very intentional layers of collaboration. We would argue through our experiences, every school needs all four of the layers that we talk about, and we often say the good news is, is you likely have at least two, if not three, of them already in place.
It's within that foundational component that we talk about a very specific type of meeting that is radically different than the way most schools engage, but we still understand that there's layers of that collaboration that's in place. So that's the first. The second foundational component is the data and evidence, so that when we get into those collaborative [00:20:00] conversations, do we have some data and evidence that is not only flagging who we should be paying attention to, but also helping determine what should we be focusing on, and in time, is what we're doing having impact.
Do we have evidence of that? And then our third foundational component is the continuum of supports, which really becomes the, if we've identified this is an area of focus, if we have identified a specific student, the continuum is the, so what should we do? For it, and it's interesting from our first foray into trying to put this together within our own school again, through a lot of trial and error, the foundational components in nearly two decades haven't changed the concept.
But the languaging has, we've evolved and understood that this third component that we used to refer to as a pyramid of interventions, which at the time was very consistent [00:21:00] with the response to intervention language and professional learning communities, we actually found that that was not an intervention. Actually, the aligned languaging that clearly, shares what it is that we're doing through that, that foundational component. So those three are really critical. And again, we would say through this work, we've seen us having to pull them apart to understand, but then it's the putting all three of them together in a really succinct way that we get to that place of schools feeling like they're accomplishing more.
With the same resources they've always had with the same people, really what we're trying to do is maximize and leverage expertise within the building through those three foundational components and how they link together.
Ross Romano: And,
you mentioned a response to intervention, and so there may be some, Similarities and [00:22:00] approaches and terminologies that people would hear between RTI, MTSS, and your collaborative response. Can you, describe that a little bit? Some where if there are some similarities and differences and with those, processes that some of our listeners may be quite familiar with.
Kurtis Hewson: You know, the interesting thing of this is when we, first, we had self published a book about eight years ago when we had taken it initially to a publisher, we got back and had the, the, feedback of, I think you should rename this to Response to Intervention. It sounds very similar, and it is, Once that title is on it, the sales will look just a little bit different around this.
And we were at a place of there's some subtle differences that are really, really critically important, which led to self publishing initially as we were building upon this. So you're right, there are Similarities, and of course, greatly influenced, by [00:23:00] the work of Response to Intervention and MTSS.
Anyone who has background around professional learning communities will also see, influence. We've definitely built. Our thinking and our thoughts upon those foundations, I think there's some very subtle but intentional differences as well.
Lorna Hewson: And, it's funny because any time that we began work with a school division or with schools themselves, and they talk about having done the, especially the research and the foundational understandings behind professional learning communities, response to intervention.
Multi tiered. That they are in a place of readiness, because what we often hear after we begin those conversations, what we often hear is, okay, we've done all of this work in understanding the, the why, but we haven't ever been able to figure [00:24:00] out how do we actually put this into play and collaborative response.
Is the this is how we do
Kurtis Hewson: it. So I think one of the key differences that we see through the work is what we alluded to early on that idea of responding to the needs of the students, we don't think is and what I mean by that is within any RTI approach that we've seen or interacted or, or built upon, we've seen really sensational ways to support students and ensure that this tier two student is therefore getting these supports.
And then if that's not successful, we move the student to tier, tier three. We talk about a four tier. model within this and the idea is that we don't ever tier kids. We tier the supports, and that may sound like just a small interchange of words, but it's huge in [00:25:00] mindset, so that rather than us saying, well, this student's a Tier 3 student, therefore, you take them, or another group is going to take over responsibility, we still say, no, this is our student, We're just adding a next layer of support into play, and with the four tier perspective on our continuum, we're not talking about adding one more on top of what's traditionally three tiered models.
What we're trying to do is take tier one, And break it apart so that we can identify at tier one what are the universal non negotiables that we would expect to see in our school for each and every student in each and every classroom. Now that's, that's very powerful. learning and debate and discussion that happens at that.
But then being able to say at tier two, what are all the things that we could do for some students, some of the time in some classroom, it's [00:26:00] essentially a way to really actualize differentiation as well as universal design for learning. And this is why we discovered that referring to it as a pyramid was not actually visually accurate, because it makes sense when you tier the students, but when you tier the supports, we actually want to narrow tier one into what are the five to ten big rocks.
Let's say we were focused on developing, as Lorna mentioned before, a literacy continuum of supports to support our work. Well, what are the five to ten big rocks we all agree we should all be doing in our classroom that research would support and back up, but then tier two bulges, It expands so that what are all the things we could be trying at the classroom before we ever look at tier three, which becomes supports provided by someone other than the classroom teacher, and then tier four becoming supports provided by, Someone external to the school, whether that's an external [00:27:00] agency or, a divisional supports that we, that we access.
By tiering those supports, then we can make direct linkages to the four layers of team. And each one of those team spaces becomes the place where we're responsible for that school. Examining that particular tier of support, and it's all about engaging in a conversation that's going to make everybody stronger as we're actualizing that, that continuum of supports.
Lorna Hewson: Our continuum of supports is really about our response. So it is about the adults responding, how are we responding to the students based on their needs. So
Kurtis Hewson: what we were finding. When we first engaged in the work, and it was very, very, very heavily influenced by response to intervention, we were finding in the school that, yeah, we were getting good supports in place for students, but it wasn't reducing the amount of students.
coming to the school based team through [00:28:00] either referral or just how we needed to be able to respond. And it didn't necessarily always feel collaborative in the sense that, we're building up skill sets of everybody through this so that over time. Less of our students need the more intensive supports in in place.
So the idea of the collaborative response was really twofold. First off, when we're responding to the needs of students, how do we make it collaborative, so that yeah, we're, we're responding, but we're doing it so in a way that Every staff member is getting stronger through every conversation. And then the idea of response was we had collaborative teams working together on building common assessments and instructional very much influenced by PLC literature.
And the problem was sometimes what teams were working on or doing wasn't always responsive to what was happening [00:29:00] in the day to day within the classroom. Now, as we got better with data that That began to get tighter over time, but there, there was a gap there, and it was really about how do we build up strong differentiated practice within the school, which is why we often say the heart of collaborative response is what we refer to as the collaborative team meeting.
It's one of the layers that directly aligns to that tier two, which for us is. classroom practice that we put in place for some students some of the time. It's basically what is our collective toolbox of differentiated practice and how do we keep building and expanding on that with each and every conversation about students so that everyone's getting stronger through the process.
Ross Romano: Right. And when we think about areas of potential resistance, I think one of them, when we hear the [00:30:00] word collaboration is a lot of people are thinking meetings. And so, you know, what's your perspective on meetings? Should we get rid of them, have fewer of them, just make them better?
Kurtis Hewson: We would subscribe to your last comment there of how do you make them very, very intentional so that we actually talk through the work, that there's a contradictory statement that we pose out to schools that we're going to reduce the amount of meetings in your school by adding one more. And what we mean by that is by adding this collaborative team meeting that we'd like to describe here just a little bit is very, very intentional in its design.
It's tight in the process, but in time, it's going to reduce the number of meetings that are happening in the building. And we're talking not just formalized meetings, but the hallway conversations, the after school conversations. Because by introducing this collaborative. team meeting, which is intended to be [00:31:00] happening every three to five weeks, essentially monthly, in place.
You're going to build up more and more and more capacity, more sharing of ideas and strategies. When we introduce it into schools, the typical response is, this feels different than a lot of our conversations about. So it feels way more action focused, way more solutions. oriented, and we do see it over time that we actually reduce the amount of meetings that we have and what we can accomplish in 30 minutes through some of the really intentional structures and processes that we discuss within the book.
That may have been a conversation that took us an hour previously.
Ross Romano: Yeah, one of the things you write about as far as the intentionality and structure of the meetings is the defined roles that. team members should play in those. Can you talk about those a bit?[00:32:00]
Kurtis Hewson: Yeah.
Lorna Hewson: Yeah. So, just going back to what we What Curtis was just sharing around that, having additional meetings. And I think traditionally, what we've tried to do is to pull people together to talk about one student at a time. And that's one of the significant shifts when we think about this collaborative team meeting, that is very different than what we've done traditionally in bringing a number of people together and creating that wraparound with.
For some students, we still need to have that in place. But there are a lot of things that we can be doing as a collaborative team to be able to meet the needs of multiple students, rather than one at a time. So you mentioned that idea of, of having roles and That's one of the critical components of a collaborative team meeting is that we establish rules within our team to [00:33:00] ensure that there are certain things that are attended to and we'd say that there are three really critical roles.
Facilitator, of course, who leads the, the meeting, Record Keeper, who records the actions and the decisions that are happening, and then a Time Keeper. Now in, in the book, we talk about a lot of other roles that are options, but really. Ensuring those three roles are the roles that are going to help to, accomplish as much as you can within the short amount of time that you have for that designated collaborative team meeting.
Kurtis Hewson: So, with the roles, we often, when we first introduce schools that, feels awkward putting it in, it feels a little bit mechanical. Our meetings are working fairly well, we don't need this, and we... Undoubtedly, through the conversation, each one of them come back and say, okay, this actually has taken what we thought was working really [00:34:00] well and.
Now our efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity has just gone to a new level by putting some of the really intentional meeting structures in place, like determining of the roles, like the infusion of norms that are built in, like coming prepared with a pre meeting organizer so that we're ready for the conversation, all those different things that we talk about in the book are So critically important to be able to, again, maximize the time that we have available.
It's funny too, when we first started this work, we didn't understand the use of roles, and as a principal, I come in to lead these conversations, and I thought I was doing everyone a favor by You know, taking the lead and, at that point, I would say I wasn't facilitating, I was chairing the meetings.
I'd chair the meetings, I'd take the notes for us, and I'd keep an eye on the time. I would take on all these roles because I thought it was just everyone else, you just engage in the [00:35:00] conversation, I'll take the heavy lifting, and it was the wrong thinking because I wasn't building capacity among anyone within the table.
We now see schools where they can come in place and say, all right, who's facilitating today? And the other thing I found too, as I reflect back, is as a principal, I wasn't doing any one of those roles well because I was trying to do them all. So, I wasn't listening intently to what people were saying, I wasn't trying to bring others into the conversation because I was so busy trying to take the notes of what people are saying.
I was missing things in the notes because I'm also trying to li like I was trying to do it all. Where now, we come in and say, alright. Whoever's facilitating, we need somebody else taking the notes. And when you get these roles that come into play, it distributes the leadership. It ensures that everyone has a little piece of the ownership for the success of the conversation.
And again, it takes meeting effectiveness and productivity [00:36:00] to a whole new level. We talk about it very specifically in that collaborative team meeting specific process. We often see this starting to get all of those structures starting to be adopted into every layer of teams into staff meetings because they work.
Ross Romano: What would be on your end of meeting checklist if you were, recapping and trying to determine, was that a good meeting? Was that an effective meeting?
Kurtis Hewson: So I think Ross to answer that. Why don't we take one step back and just give a quick explanation of the four layers of team and why that second layer of the collaborative team meeting was so important because I think it'll help inform the response to, to the question you just asked. So, within, our school and we see it in many, many schools.
Three of these layers are typically in place, especially if there's been any work done around professional learning communities or response to intervention type [00:37:00] work or tiered supports. Our first layer we talk about is collaborative planning. Do teachers have opportunities to come together and work and any school that's done any work around professional learning communities go, yeah, we've got a fairly good handle on this is just an
Lorna Hewson: opportunity for teachers to come together to look at curriculum, look at instruction, do some planning, creating common assessments.
Kurtis Hewson: So that's that first layer of team, I'm going to skip the second one to go. to the third and fourth for where we were at as a school and then why the second layer became really important. That third layer, we refer to it as the school support team. Within our school at the time, it involved the principal, the assistant principal, we had a learning support teacher, we had a family school liaison that worked between us and the high school.
The four of us would meet every Thursday morning to be able to, discuss the students that were being referred. be able to put plans in place for additional students. Typically on that agenda we might talk about [00:38:00] two to six kids on any given week. Sometimes the same student would be on our agenda for three weeks in a row just because of what was happening.
The
Lorna Hewson: intention is to be able to provide more intensive supports to specific students outside of the classroom. Now some of the supports might be provided. physically inside the classroom, but beyond what the classroom teacher is providing. So that team is really caring for that intervention level of supports at the school.
Kurtis Hewson: And we've often worked with schools where they'll say that's our special ed team type structure. And yeah, that, that would align very well. Our fourth layer that we talk about, we use the umbrella term of a case consult, but really it's any type of meeting that you have in your school where one student's on the agenda.
And we often say it's an incredibly inefficient way to run a school if that's the only way we respond to students is [00:39:00] one student on the agenda at a time and you'd be in meetings non stop even in a school that's smaller. But, of course, it's necessary that we still have that layer in place. What we were finding is, by having all of those three, as I mentioned, sometimes the collaborative planning wasn't always responsive or building the right skill sets amongst our teams that we were needing.
And by the time we were getting up into that school support team, we were getting overwhelmed. We couldn't keep up with all the requests. So the second layer that we intentionally introduce is what we describe as a collaborative team meeting. And it looks like you're talking about students, but actually you're only using students to leverage a conversation about practice.
So here's what it looks like. And then I can get to the end of meeting checklist because it's going to look a little bit different depending on the layer. So what this would look like is we start the collaborative team meeting with celebrations, and we say, Lorna, who's a student you'd like to celebrate?
She says, I'd like to celebrate [00:40:00] Ross. I've seen this incredible improvement within the room. And then we ask a critical question of, so what do you think you did that led to that success? That's a really intentional part of the process because we're trying through that component of the collaborative team meeting and we would argue in the other layers you start introducing celebrations as well because we're trying to get Lorna to not only be able to reflect on her practice and what she's done that's made a difference, but we're building collective efficacy through this when she can start to say here's what I did and here's the success that it had, but others in the room are learning.
They're taking, okay, that's a great idea that you had, I could do that with another student. So we start with that, and then, we turn our attentions to students of concern, and Lorna, in time, this is why the data and evidence starts to become valuable, because we start using the data to surface students who are close.
Not the students that are our, greatest concern or most at risk because
Lorna Hewson: [00:41:00] we already have right intensive support
Kurtis Hewson: right because we're already there already our attention in the more intensive layers of team, but rather, Lorna is going to bring forth Jasmine and. She's close, but here's one key issue that I'm seeing.
Jasmine is struggling with multi step problems. As soon as there's multi steps introduced, she really struggles. So then, we might have to ask a couple clarifying questions to make sure we understand the key issue. But then we take all the attention off the student and off Lorna, the teacher, by asking everyone else in the room, does anyone else have a student where multi step problems is a concern?
And we identify, yeah, there's five, and through these different classrooms, and then we turn the attention to say, okay. What could we do to help students with multi step questions? And that's where we can look at our continuum of supports and see what are some ideas we've already generated. I could say, well, this is something I've tried in the past.
Lauren is saying, oh, that's a great idea. What if [00:42:00] we did this and we just, open up a very short period of time to just brainstorm. And then we come back to say, so Lorna, what's one thing that you want to try for Jasmine in your room? Typically when we start this, Lorna is going to oftentimes say, well, put me down for that action.
It was something I was going to do anyway, or it's something that she's really comfortable with. But what we see through the process and as we build up vulnerability is. teachers start to stretch. They start saying I really like Ross's idea, but I don't know how to do that. I need help, or I don't know where to find that resource.
It doesn't happen right away, but we find that through that conversation, everybody's toolbox starts growing. Everyone starts to understand if I'm struggling in this, this might be a person I should talk to because they've had really good ideas and it's creating space where everyone's walking away with actions, but it's not that I've come for somebody else to take this student [00:43:00] or for I've done everything that I can.
It's trying to create a space where. What else could we be trying before we need to move Jasmine's conversation up to the next layer of team? So, to go back to your original question, that end of meeting, it really depends where we're at. In the collaborative team meeting, we often end with, Does everyone understand the actions they're going to take away?
Next, we often come back to our collaborative planning layers to talk about, you said you'd try a visual, putting a visual schedule in place for the student. How did that go? What did that look like when you did it? But then in that meeting, we also say now, is there anyone that we need to refer to our school support team?
We're not going to talk about them in this space because we might not have the right people around the table. But anyone that we would want to be able to refer, so it's through doing this that yes, we're responding to the needs of students, but we're doing so in a [00:44:00] way that is building everybody's skill set.
And by having very tight and intentional meeting structures in place, we can see incredible efficiency and productivity that happen through that. So again, at the end of the meeting, it's clear what's everyone's next step. That they're taking away, and I, I can imagine too for any listeners out there understanding that even though Lorna says that she's going to go back and put a visual step by step anchor chart on the wall to help Jasmine with that multi step problem, she heard that idea from some other teacher and really liked that,
she'll put that in place. It's actually probably a universal strategy that's going to impact a lot of students, and now it's one more tool in her tool belt to be able to access. So again, that's why we say everybody grows through the conversation, through the support, and by adding that one more team meeting [00:45:00] that when people see it they go, oh my goodness, this This radically changes how we're looking at students by adding that one more, we start to decrease the number of more intensive conversations that we have or the one student at a time.
Ross Romano: So, I as we're closing here, I want to kind of narrow us down to a couple of key takeaways for our listeners, especially school leaders. And I would love those to be around, you mentioned, right, teacher efficacy and student learning, right? So when we talk about collaborative response and the impact it has on those things, what are the one or two takeaways that you would like our listeners to make sure that they understand.
Kurtis Hewson: I think the first big thing is through that collaborative team meeting process, we are building incredible amounts of. Or building upon high degrees of collective [00:46:00] efficacy, because we're not coming in with a, I've done everything, somebody else take the student, or while there's nothing that we can do until the student does this, or the parent does this, or until we get more resources deployed to us, we're really creating a space where we can, focus in on Here's one thing I could try and see if that works.
So it's through that, that we're just creating huge levels of. Efficacy and strong team components. So that again, we often refer to the idea that they're not your students or my students, they're ours. And how do we support one another within that. So I think that's one of the big things.
Lorna Hewson: Yeah, and I think another thing when we think about, student learning and the impact that especially the collaborative team meeting has on student learning is that, what we often see is [00:47:00] that without that layer of team in place, then teachers have really no other ability to be able to to access support other than going to those most intensive layers.
And so when we put our collaborative team meeting in place, we've got all kinds of strategies and ideas that are being employed for students that perhaps that's all they needed. And if we don't have the the opportunity to put those strategies and ideas in place. for some students, then our automatic, our automatic response is that we need additional support outside of the classroom.
So we often think about with that in, in place, then rather than students moving up the continuum, they are actually moving down the continuum to access just the typical supports that would be provided at the [00:48:00] classroom level. If that meeting is not in place, or if those, that type of conversation generating ideas between teachers, building that collective efficacy, is in, is not in place, then we're jumping kids forward.
Kurtis Hewson: I think the other thing that we see, Ross, over and over again, and it was our lived experience, but now we see it in schools and divisions that we work with, is the idea by putting some really intentional, formalized, collaborative structures in place that have things, like we mentioned, the roles, the norms, those pieces, We start to see incredible shifts that get made in the informal collaboration that just happens within the day to day, and we saw it as simple as someone previously coming into a staff room to vent about something that was going on, where now it's coming in and saying, I've got this, anyone have an idea?
Something I could try? Like the mindset [00:49:00] just shifts incredibly within, within a school, and the Informal connections and collaboration that happens is immense. I may have been teaching across the hall from somebody for the last decade, but I've never had a chance to actually go and observe, watch them teach.
When I get into these conversations and they reveal, well here's what I do in my room, here's a website that I utilize, here's a resource I've found really effective, that may open up a professional doorway that I never really understood. How, what that person does. And that might be somebody that next time I have an area that I'm, I'm not sure where to go next, I'm going to go down the hall and reach out to that person, as well, it's the informal collaboration and connection just becomes absolutely massive.
We were talking last week with a staff member in a very large high school that says, said when they had implemented this [00:50:00] approach, the. Connections between staff members just have intensified, which has been really, really critical to just general well being within the school. Nobody feels alone.
Lorna Hewson: And especially in a high school where they're often meeting as departments.
When now they have that opportunity to really get to know other staff members who are not in their department and understand what kinds of things that they're doing to provide support
Kurtis Hewson: for. So we often in those scenarios say. Collaborative plan with those in similar grades, similar subjects, similar departments, collaborative team meet with people you don't normally talk about.
So again, you're creating layers of collaboration within the school that just enhances the whole organization. So I, I think that's where we see huge impact is. We're empowering our teachers, and [00:51:00] we're basically saying, where's the expertise, how do we leverage it, and we do good things in this building, how can it impact more and more students.
Lorna Hewson: And ultimately creating that powerful culture of collaboration.
Kurtis Hewson: Absolutely.
Ross Romano: Great. So listeners, the book is Collaborative Response. It's published by Corwin. We have the link below in the show notes where you can find it. Curtis and Lorna, where else can listeners learn more about your work?
Kurtis Hewson: If you go to jigsawlearning. ca, that's a great place to jump off. We have... free webinars, online workshops, a number of resources. We also host a number of podcasts ourselves, so there's links to that as well to be able to learn not only from us, but from a number of schools and school leaders that are engaging in this work.
Ross Romano: Excellent. Listeners, check all that out. We'll put the links to that below with all the information on where to connect, with that. And with Curtis and Lorna and their [00:52:00] resources and the book, please do subscribe to the authority for more in-depth author interviews like this one and visit be podcast.network or be podcast network.com to learn about all of our shows.
Curtis and Lorna Houston, thanks for being on the authority.
Kurtis Hewson: Thanks so much,
Lorna Hewson: Ross. It's been a great time.
Kurtis Hewson: Yeah, wonderful to be able to share with you. Thank you so much.
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