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>> Bob Van Dis: We worked on implementing instructional practices from about 2003 to 2005,

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over a two year period, using Bob Marzano's Classroom Instruction that Works

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and from that time-from that '03 until now-our aggregate student achievement scores

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on the State Assessment Test went up 21 percent.

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>> Teacher: So, I am finding really good results by doing that.

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>> Van Dis: And that's the key thing.

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I mean you are doing the part of the strategy that's getting the results.

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When we implemented the professional development instructional strategies,

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we purposely did several things to try to really embed them

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into practice and not make it a one shot deal.

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First, we gave teachers ample time to learn the strategies.

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We took two years, and we implemented one strategy a month.

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Second thing we did, was we chose lead teachers-master teachers in each

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of our buildings-to do the implementation.

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Those teachers had additional training on this.

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They had volunteered.

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We paid them a stipend, and they ran the workshops and the meetings.

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And the way those workshops ran is that teachers would come

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in having practiced last month's strategy, having done a lesson.

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And so the meeting would start, everyone would get into small groups and share,

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"Here is how I implemented higher-order questioning.

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Here is how I implemented non-linguistic representations for vocabulary."

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Then the lead teachers would teach next month's strategy.

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They would provide a lesson on that.

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Folks had the book; they would read the book, and then they would talk about that.

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And then their assignment was, before we meet again in five to six weeks, find a lesson,

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implement that strategy, and be ready to share that.

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So that moved it from just the "sit and get" idea of a workshop to actually an expectation

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to try it out in your classroom and then get some feedback from peers.

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Then the third thing we did was to make sure we were embedding that into everyday practice

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so that even though we did the workshops back in '03,'04 and '05,

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here in '08 those strategies are still being used.

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One of the things was that, well,

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our principals do classroom walkthroughs, and I do classroom walkthroughs.

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We have a feedback form we provide to teachers after we have been in their class for 10

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or 15 minutes on many different aspects of good teaching,

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and those strategies are in that sheet.

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So we have the opportunity to praise a teacher when we see that strategy being used

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or to coach someone and encourage someone when we see a situation where we can say, "Hey,

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that might have been a good chance to beef up the questioning technique

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or to use non-linguistic representations."

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Also, those strategies are part of our teacher evaluation system,

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so folks know that besides all the other things that go into teacher evaluation,

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the actual use of proven research-based instructional strategies is part

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of our teacher evaluation system.

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>> Teacher: How about the color of a person's skin can tell you a lot

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about what that person is like?

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Do you agree or disagree, Brandy?

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>> Student: I disagree.

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>> Teacher: Why?

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>> Student: Because it's kind of like don't judge a book by its cover.

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>> Teacher: I like that analogy, very good.

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>> Van Dis: What most impressed us on our teachers about Marzano's strategies is

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that he was saying if you use these strategies, you will increase student achievement

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by a certain percent, and we have the data to prove that.

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And that proved to be very convincing for our teachers.

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Many times we have had teacher meetings where we are saying, "Hey, I have tried this,

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this works, hey you might want to try this.

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The kids like this.

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The kids enjoy this."

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But these instructional strategies had been tried and proven in research studies and said,

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"all things being equal, if you use these instructional strategies,

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you will get an increase in student achievement."

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So it did help shift the culture a little bit from "here's a good idea,

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you might want to try this," to, "here is a research based idea, let's all give this one a try."

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>> Teacher: And everybody is looking that way except for this group.

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Why do you think that they are looking the opposite way?

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Student: Well maybe they are missing their homeland

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that the Easterners are taking away from them.

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>> Van Dis: Several of our master teachers who provided the initial two years of workshops

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in the district have become ongoing trainers for us.

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We've sent them out to have more training than others.

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They were very interested in doing this, and those teachers have done workshops for us

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as we would implement different curriculum or do follow-ups to see.

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Stamos is one of those people who has run workshops at the elementary level for us.

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Matt Moorman is another teacher who has done that,

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and they have been very successful being in-house people who can train in those strategies.

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They also offer themselves to go into classrooms and teach particular lessons for teachers.

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So they know they can invite one of them in and say,

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"Would you teach a lesson for me that I can watch?"

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>> Teacher: Who can piggyback on to what Sam said the definition

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and what the opponents of Jackson thought.

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>> Van Dis: It's very satisfying to me-four to five years after we began the initiative-to walk

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into classrooms, walk by classrooms and see those instructional strategies still being used.

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It's often rare to see initiatives have legs, to have staying power,

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and this one in our district really has.