|
Teleconference Transcript
Transcript of NCSET teleconference call held on June 24, 2003
Applied Collaboration
Presenters:
Scott Johnson, Lead Trainer, Minnesota Department
of Education
Barbara Jo Stahl, CSPD Consultant, Department
of Education
Jean Davis, Training Coordinator, Department of
Education
Maureen Hawes, Project Coordinator, Institute
on Community Integration
MS. HAWES: My name is Maureen Hawes. I am a project coordinator
at the Institute on Community Integration at the University of Minnesota
and I am going to be facilitating our discussion today. Today we
are going to be talking about Applied Collaboration, which is a
Staff Development Training Model. What we are going to be doing
is talking about this model and how we roll it out in the state
of Minnesota, and then specifically we’re going to be talking
about the teacher training and the administrative training.
Before we get started I just wanted to give everybody a reminder
that in order to reduce any background noise, individuals on speaker
phones can press mute while they are listening, if they are not
talking. This will help cut any background noise.
I have with me Barbara Jo Stahl from the Minnesota Department of
Education. She is a CSPD representative there. I also have Jean
Davis who is the Applied Collaboration State Training Coordinator
and Scott Johnson who is one of our lead trainers in the state and
each of them will be discussing a separate piece of the model.
What we are going to do is provide an overview of the model for
about 45 minutes or so and then we’ll take questions at the
end. I just ask that if you do have any questions if you could just
state your name and where you are calling from and that will be
great, so we know who we are talking with. So I think I’ll
go ahead and have Barb start. Barb, -- Please, go ahead.
MS. STAHL: Thanks Maureen. Greetings to all of you. Thanks for
calling in. We are going to be talking about something that we have
had in Minnesota for the last 12 years in a variety of forms, and
its intent is around Applied Collaboration with a focus of improving
access to general education for students with disabilities. With
the current focus on both No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and IDEA,
this collaborative model allows us to really take a hard look at
the general education curriculum and determine how a student with
disabilities can be successful in that arena. The model pairs a
special education teacher who has knowledge of the IEP with a general
education teacher who has knowledge of the curriculum to create
some strategies and also some plans, so that there is an increase
in access to the general education curriculum for students with
disabilities. The focus of this joint venture is the general education
and special education teachers working together to increase the
success of students with IEPs in their general education classroom.
If you really want to create a collaborative relationship and
support more general education and special education, really work
to benefit students with disabilities in the general education classroom
you have to have administrative support. So, another guiding principle
is that there is an increase in administrative understanding of
the leadership and practices that boost the educational benefits
for students with disabilities and we truly believe that this doesn’t
just happen without paying attention to it. So, in addition to offering
training to teams of general education and special education teachers,
we provide an Administrative-Leadership component which provides
the framework for supporting collaborative relationships between
teachers and within schools.
The components of Applied Collaboration are focused on research-based
collaboration strategies for teams of general education and special
education teachers. So, we bring those two peoples who normally
will be working together because they share common students and
we focus our efforts around the research-based strategies that would
be most beneficial to work in curriculum areas.
We have two strands of training for teachers in this program, a
collaborative strand, which gives teachers the skills and tools
necessary to create and maintain collaborative relationships and
an instructional strand, which provides these collaborative teams
with instructional strategies that are utilized in the classroom
and increase the success of all students.
In other words, the training model has all the components for
creating a culture where both the general education and special
ed teachers, and administrators come together and develop some plan,
so that they can benefit from this collaborative relationship between
the general and special ed teacher. When we take a look at the emphasis
special education is focused on, it’s obviously on increasing
access to general education but it’s focused on individual
skills attainment or individual strategies that need to be employed
in order to increase the access to education, that’s necessary
for kids with disabilities. It’s been successful--we focus
on learning styles, individualized instruction and specialized instruction.
In order to do this we have a statewide training model which we
have taken to scale throughout the state. We have regionally based
facilitators for educational reform. We provide 100 trainings of
Applied Collaboration or instructional strategies workshops throughout
the state. We have been working in conjunction with the state improvement
grant and have a piece of this and then also, as most states are
doing, we are intimately involved in the planning for NCLB. This
training looks as a piece that would benefit many areas with the
new piece of legislation.
Our region 11 is our metropolitan region, which is Minneapolis,
Saint Paul and the Seven County Metro Area, and then the rest of
the regions, one through nine are Greater Minnesota and we attempt
to flow special education funds through some regional coordinators
to support these workshops. We have around 14 Applied Collaboration
training teams. These are folks that are people who have worked
together, they have tried the information in their classrooms and
they are also excellent trainers.
Once again, the Applied Collaboration training model is a pyramid
with the top of it being the administrative vision and administrative
leadership workshop that allows collaboration to be supported and
nurtured in the educational environment. Then we have training in
either collaborative strategies or instructional strategies for
teacher teams. We have just introduced within the last two years
the opportunity for paraprofessionals to attend the workshops with
team members, but the key and the focus of this is, to have a general
educator and a special educator who come together to plan to increase
the success of kids with disabilities in that general educational
curriculum.
So I am going to pass it off to Jean Davis and she is going to
be sharing with you a few of the more specifics on how this actually
rolls out, what the team trainings look like and how would all work.
Without Jean, all of the 100 statewide training sessions wouldn’t
occur smoothly and successfully, so I am going to turn over to Jean.
MS. DAVIS: Hi, I am going to talk a little bit about the training
of the trainers. How we came up with our teams of teachers. They
applied, filled on an application, talked about what kinds of collaborative
work they had already done in their classrooms, the kinds of strategies
they used, their experience as trainers. We have reviewed those
applications, talked with each of those teams and made a decision
on whether or not to include them as part of our training cadre
of trainers.
Every year we get those people together for four days to do staff
development for them, to make sure that they are aware of the latest
legislative changes in our state, particularly new strategies that
are evolving and have met with success and just to keep them on
road that we feel confident that they will provide good training.
We give them training skills and lots of materials for them to keep
improving their skills and part of the fun of doing that is having
them say that it’s the greatest training even for them to
come and get the staff development training. So we feel like we
really keep them up-to-date with the latest changes so that they
are providing good information for teams of teachers.
And the way we have rolled out the training through those regions
that Barb was talking about that I coordinate the training. Schools
have contacted us and we provide the trainers for them. They go
out and provide one day of training. The training again has either
the collaborative strategy strand or the instructional strand. A
lot of schools will use the collaborative strand as they begin to
look at collaboration. It’s really the beginning of collaboration,
how the general ed and special ed teachers come together and begin
to work together. And that session we always believe or I should
say it’s both sessions have plenty of work time.
Teachers have told us that the most -- one of the most valuable
parts of our training is that we present information and then they
are actively involved either with a lesson plan or a piece of their
curriculum and with their IEPs. They have the opportunity to learn
strategies and apply them to a lesson and IEP, which often isn’t
afforded in the schools if they don’t have the time to plan
together. This is a great opportunity for them to just really sit
and think about the students that they have in their classrooms
and the kinds of accommodations that they might need to make for
those students.
We talk a lot about specially designed instruction and helping teachers
understand how students qualify for specially designed instruction
and exactly what that means for teachers and who is responsible
for the specially designed instruction. So, a piece of our training
also is, deciding or really looking at your roles and responsibilities,
having people sit down and talk about -- what do you think I should
be doing, whether you are going to do and how do we meet the needs
of all the students in our classrooms, which I think is a real valuable
part of our training. Our training is based on a five-step process
of collaboration where teachers are negotiating together to talk
about these students. The five steps is a model designed so that
we are looking at what is that that we really want students to learn
and what are the intended outcomes and the student’s task.
Secondly, the teams will talk then about the learning needs of
the students and the resources that they have available to meet
those needs. They look at their assessment tools that will measure
their acquisition of the intended learner outcome and then based
on those student needs they discussed adapting the curriculum or
the methodology or the delivery techniques and then, monitor and
provide ongoing feedback for the students. This step is using pre-established
assessment tools to measure each student’s acquisition of
the intended knowledge, skills, and concept and that’s a big
part of our training. It’s having those people work through
those five steps and along the way we give them guidance and work
time with each step so they understand how their work set.
The second strand of training is the instructional strategies.
Often schools will look at this if they have done some collaboration
in the past-- our trainings are non-sequential. We talked to them
about where are you in the collaborative planning process and what
they are building in their school and then they make that decision
while we need to have teachers start at the beginning and just learn
how to talk with one another to plan or while we’ve kind of
done that little bit and we are ready to look at some instructional
strategies. So that -- the other strand of teacher training is the
instructional strategy strand in which we provide 10 different research
based strategies that we work through with the teachers and talk
about again using that five-step process, looking at the strategies,
how can we make accommodations and increase that access to the general
curriculum for students with disabilities.
All of the strategies are research supported teaching strategies
and, again in that training we leave a lot of time for the teachers
to have work time together to look at their IEPs and their lesson
plans and what they thought. That’s an important part of the
training as we asked people to come as teams and we asked them to
bring a part of their curriculum or a lesson plan or something and
from the general education perspective and then also we ask the
special ed teachers to bring an IEP, so that they can be talking
about a particular student if they would like or a number of students
in their classroom and to do some real applied training and work
together.
I think that covers what I was going to talk about and Scott Johnson,
who I work with closely and has been involved in this process from
the beginning, is going to talk about the administrative training.
MR. JOHNSON: Thanks Jean. I will talk a little bit about the administrative
strand of training and having listened to Barb and Jean, I will
try to build some bridges between what they have said and how they
have stepped into the need for administrative training and then
Barb is going to talk briefly about the paraprofessional piece.
I will then come back and bridge into new research on how this system
supports NCLB.
To begin with, as Barb indicated, we have been at the process
for roughly 12 years and like any new initiative, we learned and
we have struggled and some things gone better than we expected,
but one of our early recognitions was that if in fact this training
was like to be successful for teachers we needed to begin with attaining
administrative support.
There was an abundance of research and our own experiences told
us that if in fact these teachers came on board with a collaborative
vision and then went back into their buildings or districts and
didn’t feel that they had the support necessary, it was all
for naught. So, through the give and take and our own understanding
of this, we put together a strand of administrative training as
Barb indicated earlier. Administrative vision is really at the top
of our pyramid.
What we currently provide is a day and half session for leadership
teams where we bring in teams consisting of superintendents, principals,
special ed directors, coordinators, and technicians within the building/district.
We also invite lead teachers - people who can influence systemic
change within their buildings. During this time we start up with
an evening of looking at research, a lot of it coming out of the
early 70s with the change model of the University of Texas. We look
at what we know about change and the barriers that we encounter
within our systems when trying to implement change.
What we do with the teacher training, we also do with the administrative
training. That is, we ask people to reflect not only on the research,
but also how that research plays out within their own buildings
and within their own districts. We also rest on some of the research
coming out of Illinois with Rick DuFour on creating collaborative
cultures and Michael Fallen who has looked at change -- trying to
get these administrators and lead teachers to an understanding of
the change process and also a rationale for change.
Critically important to this leadership training strand is that
special ed and general ed administrators come together just as they
do in the teacher training. They need to be on board and have the
similar discussions. We bring these administrators together and
look at the characteristics of effective change and then ask them
to go about the process of creating a vision for change within their
building. This change specific to the needs of special education
students encountering general ed curriculum. We are also going to
be looking at identifying changes for successful collaboration.
What we have found out through our practice is that many people
support the idea of collaboration, they just don’t have the
time or the tools to implement. We pull in not only the research,
but also very qualified people to present and to provide time for
prospective collaborative teams to discuss topics related to effective
collaboration. At the end of the training session we create an action
plan. Unfortunately, we have all experienced going to trainings
where action plan are created but never acted upon. At our training,
we really support the idea that the action plan is in fact a plan
that needs to be implemented. So we go through an examination of
who is in fact going to be responsible for implementing this plan
when participants get back to their settings. We adhere to staff
development guidelines that indicate we should not host one-day
workshops. We contended our trainings are not one-day workshops.
We provide the needed information and the workshop (staff development)
continues once they leave our setting and go back to their buildings
and districts. I’ll pass it on to Barb, now, who will talk
briefly about paraprofessionals and how they fit into this model.
MS. STAHL: Thanks Scott. Paraprofessionals, for all of us in the
states, are increasingly becoming a group that we feel are meant
be part of quality staff development activities. We provide the
opportunity based on the team’s need to invite the paraprofessionals
that work with the students with disabilities to the training sessions.
It increases the paraprofessional’s information about the
competencies in the service delivery. It also increase the paraprofessional’s
involvement in team building and collaboration activities. We feel
that this is important because, often times, it is the para who
has the most direct instruction time with a student.
We also give them the opportunity to learn the research-based
instructional strategies and for those team that have chosen to
bring paraprofessionals into this training of the general ed and
special ed teachers together it has allowed them to further define
the roles and responsibilities as the teachers being the instructional
leaders and the paraprofessionals as the supports but gives the
paraprofessionals the instructional skills necessary to be successful
working with students with disabilities . We think that for many
areas both IDEA and NCLB, that this model would support meeting
some of those requirements of NCLB.
We have this discussion quite frequently amongst our group that
Applied Collaboration really does seem to align so much with what
we are hearing. IDEA talks about access to general education; Applied
Collaboration is all about providing access to general education
for students with disabilities, recognizing that as general educators
and special educators come together, they can fully recognize what
barriers exist.
With more recent NCLB, there is renewed emphasis on meeting the
needs of each child. And as I expect many of you know, special education
is being called to task on this. We want to make sure, as does NCLB,
that we provide each child with access to the same expectations,
to the same standards, to the same rigor that we expect of students
without disabilities. Applied Collaboration endorses the belief
that a high quality education is, in fact, a right, not a privilege
-- a right for each child regardless of whether or not they have
been determined to have a disability.
NCLB also talks about accountability. As Maureen will talk about
with you briefly, we are also looking at accountability for students
with disabilities. There is accountability for our staff to deliver
high quality instructions to students regardless of whether or not
that student has a disability.
Applied Collaboration has, from its start, advocated for increased
competencies that would maximally allow students with disabilities
access to general education including standards. We work with teachers
to recognize their responsibility for the education of all learners.
Using research based strategies and practitioner-trainers who do
this on a daily basis within their classrooms; we have looked to
increase student learning.
MS. HAWES: I am just going to talk briefly on the components of
the evaluation that we have done for our training model. As we have
mentioned, this has been evolving over the past 10-12 years or so,
but recently with a new Projects of National Significant grant that
we received about three years ago, we have included an evaluation
that looks at how effective the training is for teachers as well
as students.
The Institute on Community Integration developed a project evaluation
to take a look at the training model. This evaluation consists of
three key components. First, we did a content analysis of individualized
education plans of students whose teachers had gone through this
training. The content analysis looked at topics such as increased
representation of standards and references to the general education
curriculum within that IEP, and also accommodations and modifications
that were included in IEPs. We also surveyed general and special
education teachers that went through the training as well as administrators
that participated in the Administrative-Leadership retreats. Finally,
we held focus group with those different groups to gather some information
on how the training was actually being implemented in the classroom.
In addition to those pieces, we also have an evaluation piece
that’s included in the state improvement grant and with that
we are evaluating the trainings that our teacher-training teams
actually go out and do in buildings and districts. So, those are
the basic pieces that we are looking at with our evaluation. We
have done a formative evaluation, and we, and a result, have changed
and modified the training according to the information that we received
back from the evaluation, and basically we feel like the training
is solid and is a benefit to teachers and the students in the classroom.
That is just a quick overview of our evaluation process for the
training model.
MS. DAVIS: I would like to add some of comments that we have gotten
from teachers. One special ed director said, “This is an opportunity
to have others share my point of view and put staff in the frame
of mind to facilitate change.” A general education teacher
said, “The power of knowledge is incredible. It is impossible
not to have this training affect my strategies, ideas and philosophy.”
And a special education teacher said, “This training is a
way of rejuvenating our energies by getting us direction and doing
what is specific here.” And I think all of those were very
powerful and comments that we must often get from teachers is that
it made a significant change in the way they look at all of the
students in their classes and accept the responsibility for all
students, and I think that has been the greatest impact that I have
noticed from evaluations and the comments from teachers.
MS. HAWES: Well I think we have given you a lot of information.
We have gone through it pretty quickly. Why don’t we open
it up for questions, see if we can answer any questions you might
have. I might just ask that if you do have a question, if you could
introduce yourself and tell us where you are from, and we will go
from there.
MS. LUIS: Hi, and I have got a question about the evaluations.
Are the evaluations protocols available to save us from reinventing
wheels, the kind of content analysis you do to the types of focus
group questions -- the survey questions and so on?
MS. HAWES: Well, what we are doing right now -- we have a Web page,
which is http://appliedcollaboration.net,
that we just got up and running. The final piece that we have to
put on there is our evaluation information and you can look on there.
We don’t have it up yet but we will have it up, I would say,
within the next few months. All of our information as far as the
evaluation that we have done, what our surveys look like, what we
did with our content analysis and so forth. So, Fran if you look
on web page in the next couple of months we should have all or most
of the evaluation information up, and there is also contact information
on that page that you could send an e-mail to me. I am the coordinator
and we could talk further in detail about the evaluations.
MS. LUIS: Thank you.
MS. HAWES: Sure. Next question, anybody?
Can we talk a little bit about customizing the training for a
specific district? Can we touch on that a little bit --?
UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: Sure. Minnesota has tried to be responsive
to the needs of the districts because we do believe and I think
we have got the research -- to show us, that in fact, it is making
a difference for students. What we have asked districts to do is
to contact their regional coordinator, and that coordinator will
then contact trainers and those trainers, along with our help, will
design training around the specific needs of the requesting district--
perhaps there are some specific issues that need a little bit more
emphasis within one district. Our trainers are not only tremendous
trainers; they are excellent teachers, and we expect them to be
able to customize the training based on the needs of the districts.
MS. HAWES: Questions?
UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: Dan and Dale, Arizona. You mentioned
on the Web site, you have the information regarding the evaluation
protocols, do you also already have or plan on having some of the
materials that you use in your workshops or examples of the workshop
materials or other pieces of material in place to help us say set
up this type of system in our area.
MS. HAWES: Sure. If you go to our Web page, we have an overview
of what the training model looks like. We go through it step by
step. We have an example of what our training curriculum includes
as well as an expert from our training manual is on. We hope to
be putting up just a few of the strategies that we present at the
training. Of course, we don’t put all of them up there, but
you can go online and get information on what the training manual
looks like, how you can get more information on the training and
just a basic overview about how this would look in a particular
state. The Web site is http://www.appliedcollaboration.net.
MS. LUIS: In any of the trainings, are you looking for a way you
can match the NCLB requirement for highly qualified personnel, in
any way helping with credit transfers or doing what would be needed
either for the teachers or for the paraprofessionals to meet requirements?
MS. STAHL: This is Barbara from the Minnesota Department of Education,
and we are definitely looking at how this would it meet the whole
total requirement for NCLB? We’ve got some sort of large scale
initiatives with credentials that is now being looked at in the
school. Also paraprofessional competencies; this would serve to
prepare paraprofessionals in one of those areas. As far as highly
qualified personnel with regard to general education and special
education, this would definitely support it but our state is still
very much in the process as I know all of you are to figure out
what that model’s going to look like.
LAURIE: This is Laurie from Dale, Arizona also.
Question about how you’ve used this in the high schools with
the focus on transition for our students.
MS. STAHL: I’m going to talk a little bit, but one of the
things that this training has focused around in a lot of cases is
high school and how to have kids have access to general education;
I need to stress that it is an academic model, that is a model that
increases the focus around trying to create a situation where that
general education curriculum is accessed by students with disabilities
and all their accommodations or modifications that are included
in the classroom to be successful. With a transition school age
student, 14 or above, that academic plan is part of that transition
plan. So, this would very, very much fit in the companion piece
and allow that to have its roller in place along with the other
five areas of transition.
MS. DAVIS: I think also that the instructional strategies that
we are presenting are not just for teachers to improve their strategies
of teaching, they are really strategies that they teach the students
in order for the students to be more independent and be able to
advocate for themselves and so it’s a dual role of those instructional
strategies… to help the students become more able to access
the curriculum on their own. And so, I think those skills are always
helpful when it comes to transition because the more that those
students can feel that they can take an active role in that curriculum
and be a part of it can only benefit them as they continue on after
high school.
UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: I’m a secondary level teacher
having spent 20 years as a language teacher. I think it’s
critical- the dialogue takes place at the training site. These topics
do come up, and I think it’s imperative that these teams get
together and have these discussions so that general educators also
recognize their responsibility to really meet the needs of the students
with disabilities including things like transition.
MS. HAWES: Thanks. Questions -- no more questions? If we could
just talk a little bit about -- if you could touch on after the
training takes place, what kind of technical assistance is available
to districts.
MS. DAVIS: One of the benefits of our training teams is that we
really try to have teams available in all parts of the state. And
so, often those teams after they have presented will get calls from
teachers or from districts that have had them and ask them to come
back, maybe to do some additional training. They’re always
available for the kind of telephone questions kinds of things. We
have done some individual things with Scott and his training partner
Pat, they will go back and do some technical assistance. So, that
again, is on an individual basis. A district that maybe heard the
initially training or like we’ve said when we began this,
we had sort of individual teams of teachers coming, not district
teams and they would go back to their district and say -- it’s
a great training and we’d like to do some follow up. So, we’ve
done all different kinds of technical assistance, again, based on
what the district needs and wants.
MR. NURSE: I joined a little bit late. Did all these collaborative
training teams -- how does the family -- is family part of the training
team?
UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: At this moment, we’ve not had
family members as part of the training team. This is two teachers
usually possibly a pair of -- one general education, one special
education and what they’re doing is -- is running curriculum
based or not curriculum based but instructional strategies around
an academic model in order to work with from -- to bring back and
work in the curriculum with both the students and how they deliver
the curriculum. So, at this point in time, families have not been
included.
MR. NURSE: The reason why I asked that is because, you know, I
think so much of the curriculum engages participation or support
from families and sometimes the communication between professionals
can be somewhat challenging, but can even be more daunting and how
families interface with that -- with that communication.
MR. JOHNSON: Tom, I would say that we certainly wouldn’t
deny access to the training for family representatives. We frankly
have not advertised it that way, but I also have to say that having
done a number of these trainings around Minnesota, it’s not
uncommon to have family representation at a training session. What
oftentimes will happen is when we promote the training within a
district, the district recognizes the benefit of inviting those
family members to be a part of the district team.
MR. NURSE: Well, I was also wondering about things like, you know,
like advisory council chairs or state advisory councils, credit
representative or things like that. So, it’s just kind of
maybe some of that family interface but I -- the focus is primarily
on curriculum integration like I understand.
MS. HAWES: One of the things that we try to do
and promote, in collaboration with our State Director of Special
Education, Norena Hale, is to keep all committees and advisory groups
informed about this, the Special Education Advisory Council very
much has been a partner in looking at this training over the years
and also informed us about it’s benefits and has assisted
us in telling other folks about it and getting the training into
districts. So, SEAC Council -- Special Education Advisory Council,
is definitely a group who knows about this training and has promoted
it.
MR. NURSE: Thank you.
MS. HAWES: Yes. Well, we’re getting towards
the end here. As I said, if anybody is interested in getting any
more information on this training model, you can go to our Web site
and download different pieces of the training there and get an overview
of it and there’s also contact information on there. If you’d
like to talk directly to one of the trainers or the coordinator
you can get contact information at www.appliedcollaboration.net.
I wanted to let you know that our next teleconference is going to
be July 31st from 1 until 2 o’clock Central Time once again,
and the topic’s going to be “Developing Leadership Skills
in Youth with Disabilities,” and if you’d like to get
a transcript of this teleconference, you can get that at the National
Center on Secondary Education and Transition’s Web site which
is http://www.ncset.org/ or the phone number is 612-624-2097. So,
I think that’s about it. I just want to thank Barb and Jean
and Scott for sharing their information with us today on this training
model, Applied Collaboration, and we look to hearing more about
it.
END OF TELECONFERENCE
^ Top of Page ^
|
