This document outlines the goals and plans of a teacher leadership group at Downers Grove South High School. The group aims to establish online cross-departmental collaboration among teachers as the school transitions to a 1:1 Chromebook environment. At their first meeting, the group establishes norms and protocols. They then identify goals, driving forces, and potential barriers for their initiative. Finally, they assign tasks to each member to take action on before their next meeting, such as creating an initial Google Community format and gathering topics for collaboration. The overall goal is to foster improved teaching practices and digital learning skills among staff through their online collaboration initiative.

1. Running head: TEACHER LEADERSHIP IN ACTION: PART 3 1
Teacher Leadership in Action: Part 3
Michael McGinnis
American College of Education

2. TEACHER LEADERSHIP IN ACTION: PART 3 2
This application is setting protocols and norms for our teacher leadership
initiative group. Our group consist of Matt Quatman, Chris Hernandez, and myself and
we are all high school teachers at Downers Grove South High School. Our teacher
leadership initiative is to better connect cross-department collaboration on our new 1:1
Chromebook environment to start next year. We all felt that many teachers in our school
get pigeon holed in our departments and don’t get to collaborate with other great
teachers outside our own departments. This new 1:1 environment will be a great bridge
to expand our collaboration network and bring many of us into a newer digital age. "In
recent years, we have seen widespread use of new communication technologies that
enable collections of individuals with common interests to congregate virtually and
pursue shared interests, despite being separated by time and space" (Faraj,
Kudaravalli, & Wasko, 2015, p. 393). Creating the structure and implementation of our
initiative is the purpose and goal of our work. In this paper we will establish norms,
goals and set team tasks.
Part 1: Establishing Norms
The following is a table we used to establish the norms and protocols for our
group as we met for the first time to talk about our teacher leadership initiative on cross-
departmental collaboration through an online community. In any group setting it is
always important to establish norms as we want to remain fair, build trust, and remain
focused on the topic at hand.

3. TEACHER LEADERSHIP IN ACTION: PART 3 3
Forming Ground Rules
1. Mike’s notes on productive work within the group (Facilitator).
 Establish meeting goals and remain focused on those goals.
 Make sure to always assign tasks at the end of each meeting.
 Establish what needs to happen between meetings and what needs
to happened during meetings.
 How do we resolve conflicts and disagreements?
 How do we recognize how we get back on track if we lose focus?
2. One summary item for others lists.
 Matt – How do we evaluate our discussion against our focus or goals?
 Chris – How do we evaluate our resources and go about finding new
resources to use? Who can help us?
3. Clarifications
 Mike – Clarification on what needs to happen in meetings and between
meetings. Here I wanted to make sure we always point out what the
tasks are during meetings and after and before meetings. When not
established you get people on different pages and sometimes people
work on and complete items that should be collectively done during the
meeting. Other times people don’t come prepared and throws the whole
agenda off. Either way I wanted to make sure that tasks and goals were
very clear between everyone.

4. TEACHER LEADERSHIP IN ACTION: PART 3 4
 Matt – He wanted to make sure that we were always on topic and not
drifting off topic as we have limited physical time together. He just wants
a check and balance to use against our goals, so we can remain
focused.
4. Combine Items to make list more manageable.
 Ways to evaluate goals and focus points: We will always state the goals
and focus topics at the beginning of each meeting and when talking we
will refer to which goal for focus we previously established.
 Ways to clarify tasks done outside of meeting times: At the end of each
meeting we will collectively and clearly review all tasks and activities
that came up during the meeting so all members get the same summary
and list of tasks and who is doing which ones. This is more to help clear
communication.
 Handling disagreements. We are all very positive and have worked well
with each other in the past and have a good level of trust. We just
established that we will remain fair and honest in all our discussions and
focus on working towards a solution.
5. Ask if everyone can abide by the ground rules. All agree!
6. Ask if any of the ground rules are hard to follow. All were clear and seem
comfortable to follow.
7. Refer to the ground rules as needed during group work.

5. TEACHER LEADERSHIP IN ACTION: PART 3 5
Part 2: Goal Setting and Force Field Analysis
The below table is one that we used to brainstorm driving forces to promote our
initiative and the other are barriers that would hinder our initiative. This was a
brainstorming activity do generate topics to discuss and from here we focused on what
we could control and not control.
Goals:
 To establish a way for teachers to collaborate with other teachers in different
departments.
 To build practice and confidence in using an online community so we can
model the same activity within our classes with students.
 To share best practice methods related to our new 1:1 learning environment.
Driving Forces Restraining Forces (Barriers)
 New 1:1 environment so no
previously established habits.
 Being able to meet online at your
own convince.
 Finding new fresh relationships
within our school
 Finding similar practices and
inspirations with other teachers
outside of your department
 No previous habits to rely on could
be a bad thing as all experiences
may be new for many teachers.
 Understanding how to use
Googles software and navigate
within communities.
 Time to learn how to work within
this new community and also time
managing the new 1:1
environment.

6. TEACHER LEADERSHIP IN ACTION: PART 3 6
 Sharing resources and
streamlining the learning curve of a
new environment.
 Teachers might be negative
towards newer technologies. (set
in their established ways)
In the above list we then struck through the items that were a bit out of our
control and we then looked at what we could control to get over those barriers. First we
decided that time limitations were not something that we could really change as we can
create more free time and we are aware that many teachers are very busy as it is.
Therefore we decided to focus on make the initiative very time efficient and that once
established it may be a more efficient way to collaborate then before. Second we
realized that we have many different teachers with different perspective on technologies
and they come from different content areas. We are aware that there may be some
established bad attitudes towards technologies based on individual past experiences.
Although we cannot change their past experiences we decided to make it a goal of ours
to always remain positive and to encourage new practices. As leaders in this initiative
we realize that we may have to do a lot of physical meeting with other members in our
school to help them get over barriers in a positive way. The key is to be overly positive
even in the face of adversity and frustration. We have to be the north star of positive
intentions and actions. We also talked about working with administration to provide
proper professional development for teachers in using Google Communities so we
could have a solid base of understanding and basic expectations.

7. TEACHER LEADERSHIP IN ACTION: PART 3 7
Part 3: Team Tasks
Now that we have outlined our goals, driving forces, and barriers, we now have
to look at what actions we need to take before our next meeting in order to get our
initiative off the ground. I will create a Google Community its basic format for us to test
run at our next meeting. Matt will talk with administration to see what we can put in
place, or already have in place, in terms of professional development for Google
Communities. We already have training sessions set aside during teacher institute
times. Matt will see if we can incorporate our needed training into those sessions. Chris
will being to generate initial topics to collaborate on for the online community. We don’t
want the community to be all over the place so he will begin to generate norms we can
use for the site.
To evaluate the initiative and the effectiveness of the site we will provide a
comment area within the Community and also collect data on its usage so we can
compare its effectiveness over time. We hope that the collective nature of our initiative
will foster better teaching practices amongst its users and will also provide a learning
and training environment for teachers to use so they can build confidence so they can
model the same practice in their own classrooms. The 1:1 learning environment will be
new to all so new practices will naturally take place. This online collaboration will be a
nature bridge to similar practices with our students.
We hope this collaboration will spread to foster new connections within our
school and be a more efficient way for teachers to share resources and practices in
their own classrooms. The online nature of our Community will be a great way to share

8. TEACHER LEADERSHIP IN ACTION: PART 3 8
online resources. We can share links, materials, websites, student works, etc. with ease
and make a lot of information openly accessible to all our teachers.
By leading this online collaboration, us group members will set a newer trend at
our school of online collaboration. We will be come early experts on the topic and we
will become a good resource for other teachers and students. We will be able to teach
others which will also increase our experience in using it. Early on, all three of us in our
group wanted to be able to look back in 5 years and say that we were on the leading
edge of our technology advancements at our school. This initiative will help us lead that
way. “Digital technologies have impacted students in key areas: when and where
students learn, with whom students learn, what students learn, and how students learn”
(Holt & Burkman, 2013, p. 30). This same style of learning will be applied to us teachers
in our new 1:1 environment. As teacher leaders, we want to be able to bridge that gap in
the new age of digital learning.

9. TEACHER LEADERSHIP IN ACTION: PART 3 9
References
Faraj, S., Kudaravalli, S., & Wasko, M. (2015). Leading collaboration in online
communities. MIS Quarterly, 39(2), 393-412.
Holt, C., & Burkman, A. (2013). Leading the digital district. National Forum of
Educational Administration & Supervision Journal, 30(3), 29-49.