Westminster Holds Third Annual Teaching Symposium

Westminster faculty members and teachers from area independent schools spent part of their day Oct. 18 collaborating with their colleagues at the third annual Westminster Teaching Symposium titled “Collaboration and Feedback: Using Protocols to Create Learning Communities.”
 

“The Westminster Teaching Symposium is about sharing and learning from each other,” said Headmaster Bill Philip in welcoming everyone to the event. “Teachers are often perceived as fountains of all knowledge. In my mind, teachers often remain good students. They keep learning throughout their careers, so that is why days like this are so important.”
 

Co-director of the Westminster Teaching Initiative Mark de Kanter ’91 discussed how the use of protocols during the morning would allow for some sharing and gathering of feedback in a productive way. “This is a day about collaborating,” he said. “Teacher reflection is essential for teacher development.”
 

Co-director of the Westminster Teaching Initiative Nancy Urner-Berry ’81 then introduced guest speaker and facilitator Gene Thompson-Grove, a founding member of Educators for Social Responsibility, the National School Reform Faculty and more recently the School Reform Initiative. Thompson-Grove has also served as a clinical professor in the Education Department at Brown University, a professional development associate for Coalition of Essential Schools and a senior associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. She is the author of several protocols for creating and sustaining professional earning communities and studying student work collaboratively.
 

“I am going to facilitate your conversation with each other,” said Thompson-Grove, who then talked about the use of protocols and had everyone participate in some microlab protocols. “The purpose is for people to listen and be heard,” she said. “Protocols are just agreements about how we structure our conversation. They create time and space for reflection and build collaborative skills and habits.”
 

Each of the participants came to the symposium prepared to make two short presentations to colleagues, one about a “best practice” from their work within the last year and the other about a current challenge or issue related to their teaching. After the introductory portion of the symposium concluded, everyone broke into assigned groups of three to four people and participated in two protocols Gene-Thompson had developed.
 

In the “Success Analysis Protocol,” the groups focused on “best practices,” as defined as a process that proved to be highly effective in achieving the intended outcome. Colleagues helped each other analyze the practice, what made it so successful and what were the implications of its success for future practice.
 

The second protocol titled “What? So What? Now What?” allowed each participant to focus on a current challenge. They described the challenge and why it was important to them, and then received feedback from their colleagues.
 

The morning concluded with a brief wrap-up session. “I see the value in protocols, particularly when people treat the conversation differently,” said Westminster math teacher Peter Ulrich, one of the participants. Nancy Urner-Berry then thanked everyone for participating, saying “I love talking with colleagues.”