The most successful Folio schools create a multi-year teaching and learning agenda that aligns tightly to their school’s vision and brand. They consistently choose to put professional growth front-and-center, and do not waver in that commitment.
Through internal research with hundreds of our member schools and work with subject matter experts, Folio has identified the necessary building blocks to make professional growth a strategic priority in your school.
Schools that effectively put these building blocks into place can shift their school culture from a teaching culture to a learning culture.
1. Time and Schedule
The school develops an annual growth process that includes scheduled coaching, reflection, and honest feedback.
To make professional growth a strategic priority and elevate teachers and teaching, school schedules must include this work. Feedback, collaboration, and reflection cannot be pushed into evenings, vacations, and weekends.
Look for:
- A weekly schedule that includes dedicated time for observation of experienced teachers, peer collaboration, and coaching conversations.
- A professional development calendar designed to support each phase of the school's growth process (i.e. goal-setting, end of year reflection, etc.)
Schools that are serious about flourishing with a focus on professional growth need to work to develop a schedule that builds this work into the school day.
It is essential that teachers have time to reflect, supervisors and peers have time to observe, and time is set aside for conversations focused on growth, goals, and professional development. It is best practice to build a cycle for professional development into the school year that naturally aligns with the calendar and the operations of the school.
Time can be set aside at the beginning of the year for goal setting and at the end of the year for reflecting, yet time also needs to be preserved throughout the school year to maintain a focus on professional growth.
Once the foundational building block of time is established, the focus can shift to designing the routines and processes that support the behaviors of individuals within a strong growth culture.
2. Systems for Feedback
The school fosters a genuine culture of learning, growth, and collaboration, with structures and systems in place that reward collaboration.
Schools that are ready to elevate teachers and teaching are schools that demonstrate through policy, structure, and action a focus on learning, growth, and collaboration.
Look for:
- Feedback that is given, received, and shared regularly and at all levels.
- Socialized norms in place for the regular sharing of difficult feedback.
- Risk-taking being modeled, encouraged, and rewarded at all levels.
Strong collaborative cultures do not spontaneously appear, nor do they run on “autopilot” on those rare occasions when an organization successfully builds such a culture.
Leaders must create scaffolds to systematize and reward the behaviors and routines of effective collaboration. It is necessary to take a strategic and design-oriented view towards cultivating trust, inclusion, psychological safety, vulnerability, growth-orientation, risk-taking, the embrace of creative tension, and graceful giving and receiving of feedback.
This focus is turned toward all of the individuals in the building, not just the students. These schools visibly support teachers in taking risks to improve their practice. Challenging feedback is an essential part of growth, and a successful Folio school incorporates difficult conversations into its feedback cycle. Individuals throughout the school acknowledge and celebrate a school culture that embraces learning, as opposed to teaching alone.
3. Active Engagement of School Leadership
The entire leadership team actively participates in the school's professional growth process.
Look for:
- School leaders (including the Head of School) model goal setting and reflective practice.
- Feedback, conversation, and coaching are considered essential skills that are practiced regularly.
The most successful schools are those that model and support this work from the Head of School outward to the full faculty and staff.
Schools that intentionally create learning cultures commit to putting professional growth front-and-center and making goal-setting and reflection a part of each individual’s practice.
4. Clear Philosophy of Instruction
The expected behaviors of excellent teachers are communicated clearly.
Look for:
- A philosophy of instruction grounded in shared language around what excellent teaching looks like at your school.
- School-wide professional development that is based on the philosophy of instruction and focuses on pedagogy, not curriculum.
This document is a broadly shared understanding, within the context of a school, that highlights how students learn, what and how they are taught, and what outcomes are desired as a result. To focus on both learning and outcomes is to put the focus on both the practice of pedagogy in the classroom and the design of an assessment to show how students have learned.
More focused than a philosophy of education, a philosophy of instruction provides a means for an institution to define excellent teaching practice.
A guiding philosophy of instruction creates a foundation for school-wide professional development opportunities focused on pedagogy and conversations around the practices that both lead to and support quality teaching. This is in contrast to schools where professional development is often focused solely on curriculum or individually chosen events. A school’s focus in creating a philosophy of instruction can shape professional growth discussions around teaching practices.
5. Defined Processes for Growth and Evaluation
The school has different processes for professional growth and evaluation.
The school should have a document that outlines its basic expectations for teachers and a structure in place to support teachers in achieving these expectations.
Look for:
- A handbook that outlines the basic standards of professionalism and teaching practice.
- An evaluation process led by school administration and/or human resources.
A school’s use of Folio is focused on growth and support; Folio is not a tool for corrective action when a teacher is failing to meet basic standards of professionalism or practice.
The school needs to define systems and protocols for separate interventions, depending on the goal of the interaction. When the conversation turns toward corrective action, that discussion needs to involve both administration and the school’s human resource professionals.
Folio is a Single System to Support Change
Folio exists as a connector for all strategic initiatives and priorities in the school to turn strategy into practice.
Schools that are most successful with Folio use it as a tool to generate traction and transformation around all strategic initiatives.
When faculty and staff set goals aligned to the school’s strategic direction, it allows the observations, conversations, and reflections that occur to align teacher practice with the school’s strategic vision and move this vision forward.
Changing teacher practice through professional growth transforms school cultures. Folio is a central tool in this change, not a parallel process divorced from the school’s strategic vision.
These building blocks can provide an opportunity for self-assessment: which building block do you want to lean into next year? As schools decide where they want to turn their focus and attention, Folio is here to support you.
