This session will explore the value of workgroups as a tool for building buy-in and developing best practices in a national non-profit. Breakthrough Collaborative has used the workgroup approach to standardize teacher training across the organization over the past few years, building expertise and site leadership in the process. This workshop will examine Breakthrough's experience and encourage participants to leave with takeaways for creating change in their own organizations.
Creating Buy-In and Consistency: Using Workgroups to Create Change in a National Non-Profit
1. Generating Buy-in and Consistency Using Workgroups to Create Change in a National Non-profit Heidi Erbe, Director of Instruction, Breakthrough San Francisco
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5. History of Organization 1978: First Breakthrough site started 1989: First Breakthrough replication site started 1991: National office opened to support replication- range of roles- fundraising site start-up, coaching, training, branding affiliation 2009: Improving Teacher Training Initiative started
This slideshow was created by Breakthrough Collaborative. Local affiliates can use this template to present your program to various constituents in your area. Feel free to adapt or modify these slides as needed to represent your site and the Collaborative as a whole in a straightforward, brand-aligned manner. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please contact imckinzie@breakthroughcollaborative.org or call 415-442-0600. Breakthrough [Affiliate name] at a glance
Additional Question: What challenged to you face?
Today, you will have the opportunity to consider promising practices for building buy-in to national initiatives and leadership capacity in your network by exploring the Breakthrough workgroup model for developing and replicating best practices and identifying two ways you might apply the practices to your organization.
Mandates do not consistently produce 1) student outcomes 2) director longevity nor 3) best practice codification.
The Intern Teacher Training Initiative (ITTI) began in March 2009 as the “Improving Teacher Training Initiative.” Funded by Gap, Inc. Foundation, ITTI was designed to bring together best practices from Breakthrough sites with strong outcomes and promising practices to examine and integrate research-based practices in instructional planning, instructional delivery, classroom management, curriculum development, assessment, and the use of data to drive instruction. The initiative was developed to address simultaneously the Gap Foundation’s commitment to providing high-quality internship opportunities for underserved students and Breakthrough Collaborative’s desire to standardize the intern teacher portion of Breakthrough programming, which varied widely from year to year and from site to site with the most extreme example of variation being teacher-training week schedules that ranged from two days to two weeks, and to quantify the impact of intern teacher training beyond the annual measure of intern teacher satisfaction. We wanted to create a model that drove excellence through collaboration and continual refinement, instead of having top-down, push-out programming from the national office. The model combines the research from the field with the reality of the unique Breakthrough experience. We also wanted to honor the second half of our mission, which is to recruit, train, and inspire outstanding college and high-school students to pursue careers in education. We wanted the Breakthrough teaching experience to provide high-impact transferable skills and serve as a type of teaching residency, preparing young people to pursue careers in the field successfully. Finally, we wanted the Breakthrough teaching experience to be common across the Collaborative, so that when you said you were a Breakthrough teacher, everyone knew what that meant, and it didn’t change dramatically from site to site and summer to summer.
2009 Met in St. Paul in 2009 Shared practices Piloted practices in summer 2010, including Fred Jones’ Tools for Teaching, Robert Marzano’s work on Building Academic Vocabulary, work from Mickey Garrison, The Art and Science of Teaching by Marzano 2009-2010 October 2009—ITTI teams met in NH in 10/09 Evaluated, refined, revised practices January 2010 Replicated practices Implemented practices in summer 2010 Surveyed intern teachers, mentor teachers, and directors about practices Reviewed student achievement data and teacher satisfaction and support measures Fall 2010 Met in NH in October Reviewed, refined, revised for November replication November 2010 Trained 10 additional sites in the implementation of the ITTI framework January-June 2011 Provided buddy site support among ITTI sites, as well as regional mentor-teacher trainings and trainings for 2 sites unable to train in November Built curricula to support ITTI implementation and Core Skills Plan for fall 2011 Continue to evaluate, refine, implement, and expand model with feedback from student achievement data, summer evaluations, and pipeline partners Leadership Sites = rfp process for involvement; In-person meetings; Pass-thru funding; Brainstorming to Develop Prototype, whereas the Replication Sites = in-person trainings; pass-thru for implementation & site visits; goal was to critique strategies for further refinement.
If we value a common model, of course, the selection and development of that model is key. We wanted the following: Comprehensive model with a transferable foundation for the pre-service teacher while challenging and deepening the practice of third-summer teachers, directors, and mentor teachers Collaborative conversation with shared practices at the site and national levels Cycle of developing, testing, refining— excellence through collaboration. The model that you are going to be learning this week is based on decades of research and is a synthesis of several successful practices. It has also been piloted, evaluated, and refined by intern teachers, mentor teachers, and directors at 12 other affiliates across the Collaborative and is currently being implemented at over 30 sites nation-wide.
If we value a common model, of course, the selection and development of that model is key. We wanted the following: Comprehensive model with a transferable foundation for the pre-service teacher while challenging and deepening the practice of third-summer teachers, directors, and mentor teachers Collaborative conversation with shared practices at the site and national levels Cycle of developing, testing, refining— excellence through collaboration. The model that you are going to be learning this week is based on decades of research and is a synthesis of several successful practices. It has also been piloted, evaluated, and refined by intern teachers, mentor teachers, and directors at 12 other affiliates across the Collaborative and is currently being implemented at over 30 sites nation-wide.
ITTI positively impacts teacher preparation and support. If anyone asks, 3 indicators in which ITTI did not do better are as follows: Assessment—equal scores (we have addressed this by making it clear in the revisions that AP is a form of assessment) Understanding the student population– (-2%) (ITTI teachers out-scored non-ITTI teachers during the summer session in this area, but we found that because we trained in January, many directors didn’t have time to lengthen their training weeks sufficiently to provide both the training they typically provided in terms of understanding middle-school students and the Breakthrough population and the new ITTI training. You’ll want to make sure you don’t cut important sessions like that, though you may find that you can be more focused in them.) Awareness of future careers in teaching– (-3%) (Again, this was something that ITTI sites didn’t have time to address in training week, but during the summer session, ITTI sites outperformed non-ITTI sites in this area, as well.)