The Alberta Teachers’ Association

CENTENNIAL HIGH SCHOOL, CALGARY

Making the World a Better Place

Showing Finnish principals around Calgary’s Centennial High School in March 2010 seemed, at the time, familiar and uneventful. As I’ve done before with visiting teachers and administrators, I showed them what we do well, explaining: “This is how we do this at our school; this is how it works; and this is how we organize, budget, plan, ad infinitum.” The Finns listened politely and offered observations, asked questions and took notes. Yet I was unprepared for the simplicity of the question posed by Gun Jakobsson, executive head teacher, Vaasa Teacher Training School. She asked: “Why do students need to earn credits for the relationship meetings held weekly with teachers?”

Why indeed? These meetings are not about earning credits; rather, they’re about establishing relationships, addressing managerial tasks and discussing how to be successful (as individual students and as a student body) in high school and beyond. I replied that I didn’t know why we did it this way and explained that I’d need to think about the question and research the answer.

The question of why resonated with me and staff. To answer the question, myriad perspectives would be needed. In the process of gathering different perspectives, countless questions arose that gave us reason to investigate and re-evaluate our actions, decisions and policies. Teaching and support staff, students, parents and jurisdictional staff became increasingly involved in answering the why questions that arose. We moved from seeking quick answers to how, when, where and who to deeper questions of why and why not. Dufour (2004, 7) believes that a culture of collaboration evolves when “educators who are building a professional learning community recognize that they must work together to achieve their collective purpose of learning for all.”

Why and why not—two simple, direct and profound questions we’ve used in all matters related to student learning, policies and decision making within our school. Our answers are descriptive, rather than judgmental, as we seek to understand our work to provide success for all students. Collectively, we’ve used the questions in our professional learning and development work: school-based professional learning communities (PLCs) and our daily work.

The partnerships of teachers, administrators, students, teachers’ associations and education ministries of Finland and Alberta have served as a catalyst for our PLCs and development of all staff as reflective collaborative professionals. Darling-Hammond (1998) explains: “[T]eachers learn best by studying, doing, and reflecting; by collaborating with other teachers.” The partnership has allowed us to do so with the Finns and Alberta’s teachers and administrators and, most important, within Centennial High School. As Schmoker (2004, 430) notes, PLCs are intended to create “communities of teacher researchers who engage in focused recurring cycles of instruction, assessment, and adjustment for instruction.”

As the partnership entered its second and third years, why and why not became the guides for making school successful for all students. Our teachers expanded their projects to include greater student voice and involvement in decision making—something Finnish students have much experience with—to create deeper connections with Finnish students and teachers and other Alberta teachers and students. In face-to-face meetings and training seminars, as well as through Skype and other web-based tools, students and teachers created their own PLCs based on a common purpose and a mutual sense of adventure in making school successful for all—sharing ideas, concerns, issues, suggestions and joint projects for developing student leadership skills. Fundamental to PLCs was the establishment of trust, which Fullan (2007, 143) reminds us is the crucial variable for effective collaboration, communication and overall school effectiveness.

Teachers and administrators have engaged in PLCs with the common focus of creating successful schools. Underlying the PLCs is the trust and understanding that we can learn from each other and ourselves. We’ve been able to engage in what City et al (2009) describe as professional learning and improvement. We have become more professional because

Thanks to our partnership with Finnish and Alberta high schools, we’ve opened up our practice to the ideas, experiences and perspectives of others and our students to make our school, and all schools, successful. What has changed the most for us is why we do our work and why not try to attempt something different for one salient purpose: success for all students, in particular those attending Centennial High School, to make the world a better place.

References

City, E., R. F. Elmore, S. E. Fiarman and L. Teitel. 2009. Instructional Rounds in Education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Education Press.

Darling-Hammond, L. 1998. “Teacher Learning that Supports Student Learning.” Educational Leadership 55: 6–11.

DuFour, R. 2004. “What Is a Professional Learning Community?” Educational Leadership 61, no. 8: 6–11. Also available at www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership.aspx.

Fullan, M. 2007. The New Meaning of Educational Change. 4th ed. New York: Teachers College Press.

Schmoker, M. 2004. “Tipping Point: From Feckless Reform to Substantive Instructional Improvement.” Phi Delta Kappan 85, no. 6: 424–32.

Matt Christison is principal of Calgary’s Centennial High School, “Home of the Coyotes!”