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chapter one

Addressing the Forgotten Question

She discovered I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading….

I knew I had annoyed Miss Caroline, so I let well enough alone and stared out the window until recess when Jem cut me from the covey of first-graders in the schoolyard, he asked how I was getting along. I told him.

“If I didn’t have to stay I’d leave. Jem, that damn lady says Atticus’s been teaching me to read and for him to stop it—”

— HARPER LEE, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

In Harper Lee’s (1960) classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, learning is intuitive and easy for the protagonist, Scout. She has a passion for reading, noting at one point in the story that she could not remember when letters first formed into words for her. Later, she says she does not love reading, comparing it to loving the act of breathing. She is saying reading is necessary to her existence. In Scout’s mind, the written word is very much a part of her being.

And yet, for the young teacher Miss Caroline, Scout’s advanced reading ability is a nuisance. Upon observing Scout’s advanced reading abilities, Miss Caroline, out of a loss for how to teach a student who already possessed the required learning, discourages the student from continuing to advance in this area of great interest. The first interactions the well-meaning Miss Caroline had with her proficient student left a dark impression on Scout. In Scout’s own words, she wanted to leave the class, and her choice of words in describing her teacher reflect the negative impact from this classroom experience. By recess on the first day of school, the proficient student with great potential, who learns quickly and easily—who should be loving school and its challenges, and delighting in the discovery of new content, the student that showed up proficient in skills that are essential to learning and student success—was disengaged and had dismissed the teacher and school.

The modern educator would look at this section of To Kill a Mockingbird and say, “I would not handle an advanced student like Scout in that way.” No educator would approve of the solution the fictional Miss Caroline comes up with to solve the puzzle that is Scout. However, it is shocking how many times well-intentioned educators similarly shut down proficient students or marginalize their learning for the sake of whole-class continuity or to focus on at-risk students in need of support. When their needs are not being met, high-performing students may feel as though they are being ignored or disrespected by classroom teachers. These impressions can severely affect the relationship between student and teacher, which can lead to severe disenfranchisement issues down the road for the student (Davis & Dupper, 2004).

Another concern when teachers do not adequately tend to proficient students is boredom. In Judy Willis’s 2014 article in Phi Delta Kappan, she summarizes boredom as “a mismatch between an individual’s intellectual arousal and the availably of external stimulation.” This mismatch can lead to almost any kind of unwanted student behavior, ranging from acting out to disengagement. To avoid these potential issues with proficient students, teachers should turn to the four critical questions of a PLC to guide them to a solution to best support the many different skill sets students bring to class.

Since the publication of DuFour and Eaker’s (1998) Professional Learning Communities at Work, the four critical questions have permeated education. At the time of this writing, there are 226 model PLC schools spread around the world across three continents (AllThingsPLC, 2019). An educator may have become acquainted with these vital questions by reading about PLCs, attending an institute, or engaging in professional learning. Even some teacher prep programs, including undergraduate programs for education majors and teaching certificate programs for postbaccalaureate students working toward becoming teachers, have begun working with preservice teachers to familiarize them with these basic educational building blocks (DuFour et al., 2016).

Answering these straightforward questions seems an easy task. But that is where the genius of DuFour et al. (2016) lies. Reaching agreement among staff on how best to answer these questions is, in reality, a complex task. Focusing on exactly what a team wants the students to learn, creating clear learning targets and success criteria by which students may judge their own success, formatively assessing those targets well, and intervening on behalf of the students who did not learn it ensures schools are doing the right work to keep many—but not all—students engaged in school and build their confidence to succeed. Research and literature on the first three critical questions is plentiful. However, question 4 students are often excluded from this work, in part because question 4 remains underrepresented in administrative and teacher resources as well as in the discussions of collaborative teams doing the work of a PLC (Weichel, McCann, & Williams, 2018). If teams do not work to respond to all four critical questions, they risk allowing students to disengage from the learning process. Over time, this can lead to decreased student achievement and an increase in negative student behaviors that inhibit learning not just for that student but, in many cases, for others in the classroom as well (Feldman, Smith, & Waxman, 2017).

To ensure teams properly address this forgotten question, this chapter explores important foundational concepts, including understanding who the proficient students are, why they are often overlooked, how extension aligns with the three big ideas of a PLC, and what educators must do to ensure collaborative work that creates meaningful extensions.

Who Are the Proficient Students?

It is important when considering which students may be proficient not to confuse question 4 students with identified gifted students. Gifted students may or may not be proficient on a given standard and may have areas of academic weakness that require interventions in order to achieve proficiency. At the same time, students who do not carry the “gifted” label can be proficient in a standard and in need of extension. So, it is important to remember question 4 students can be any students, regardless of label, who demonstrate proficiency on a given standard. Question 4 students may be students who have a lot of knowledge because of being in a literature-rich environment, or perhaps their life experiences created deep background knowledge regardless of their performance on the Cognitive Abilities Test or other giftedness or IQ assessments. Indeed, a student may be far from proficient in every standard except the one currently being discussed. If that is the case, then when a team meets to collaboratively determine which students need interventions and which need extensions on the standard in question, the student would be placed in the “already proficient; in need of extensions” group. Likewise, if identified gifted students have a gap in their learning, an automatic grouping with already proficient students may be detrimental. That is why teams must view each essential standard, for each collaborative cycle, through a very narrow lens.

Why Are Proficient Students Often Overlooked?

Teams often do not discuss question 4 students because the prevailing attitude is that these students are smart, they get it, they can play the school game, and in some cases they have been identified as gifted or labeled as gifted and talented education (GATE) or talented and gifted (TAG) students. Often, teachers see these students as able to succeed no matter what. They will achieve, no matter the classroom they are placed in and no matter how much (or little) individual attention they receive. In short, educators don’t see them as being at risk. For clarity’s sake, let’s define what I mean by the term at risk. Students at risk face factors inside or outside school that can inhibit them from learning to their potential, cause them to become unsuccessful in school, and possibly prevent them from graduating. When question 4 students are assessed as highly proficient or proficient on state tests and achieve such a label, teachers often consider these students “givens” in whole-school or classroom data discussions, and they are easily forgotten, which places them at risk.

Not just collaborative teams and schools can fall into the trap of forgetting to answer question 4. In 2018, I attended a professional development seminar that focused on helping all schools meet the needs of every student. During a fantastic weekend of professional learning, this group of highly engaged administrators was asked to create a learning continuum using placards that represented everything from formative assessments to district benchmarks to collaborative team conversations, from state standards through state assessment. Once we finished, we received more cards to place where we could provide additional support to students. The cards simply said “interventions” (corresponding to PLC critical question 3); there was no mention of extensions. When another participant in the group asked about question 4, the trainer said we must not forget that question. Her response was genuine, but the question was just not in the forefront of her mind when she made the cards.

It was a great exercise and one I have repeated during several trainings. But before we start, I tell the participants something is missing and, if they can find it, I have a coffeehouse gift card for them. As of this writing, no one has ever brought up that extensions are missing from the exercise (though surely this will change once this book is published). I tell this story simply to underline how easy it is for administrators and teachers alike to forget to answer question 4. (For guidance on how to ensure teams plan to address question 4 students, see chapter 2 [page 17].)

How Does Extension Align With the Three Big Ideas of a PLC?

To truly understand why these already proficient students cannot simply be sorted and forgotten, teachers must examine the three big ideas of a PLC.

1. A focus on learning: DuFour et al. (2016) explain, “The fundamental purpose of the school is to ensure that all students learn at high levels (grade level or higher)” (p. 11).

2. A collaborative culture and collective responsibility: DuFour et al. (2016) assert, “Educators must work collaboratively and take collective responsibility for the success of each student” (p. 11).

3. A results orientation: Successful PLCs require a results orientation. DuFour et al. (2016) maintain, “To assess their effectiveness in helping all students learn, educators in a PLC focus on results—evidence of student learning” (p. 12).

The first big idea, a focus on high levels of learning for all students, includes embracing students who may have shown up to school proficient in a concept. These students represent the “higher” in “grade level or higher” (DuFour et al., p 11). However, if educators do not push these students, they, too, will become at risk of not being successful because they have not been forced to develop the kind of perseverance required later in life (Lens & Rand, 2000).

A lack of perseverance leads to what Carol Dweck (2016) refers to as a fixed mindset—when a student believes his or her “qualities are carved in stone” (Dweck, 2016, p. 10). So, a proficient student with a fixed mindset—one who has not been challenged, pushed, or given the opportunity to rebound from failure—believes that he or she is only proficient because he or she was born that way, which makes one’s intelligence finite. If this mindset is not changed when a question 4 student is severely challenged by a concept or skill, he or she will believe this is the apex of their intelligence.

Dweck (as cited in Craig, 2014) contrasts this fixed mindset with a growth mindset “or embracing the power of yet.” According to Dweck (2016), in a growth mindset, the “hand you’re dealt is a starting point” (p. 7). A growth-minded person believes their basic qualities can grow and improve through their own work and through coaching from others, and they persevere to achieve this growth. Question 4 students, like all people, will not develop perseverance without being provided specific and well-thought-out extensions to their learning (Dweck, 2016).

James W. Stigler and James Hiebert (2004) state simply, “If we want to improve student learning, we must find a way to improve teaching” (p. 12). That includes teaching the students who are already proficient, not simply acknowledging they have a broad conceptual understanding and then allowing them to do a preferred activity or other work to simply occupy them while the teacher supports students who have not yet acquired the essential standard or skill. However, if collaborative teams do not answer question 4 effectively—or do not even ask it—this is often what happens. As the principal of an elementary school that grew to perform at a high level of student achievement, I had several conversations with individual staff members and collaborative teams at the beginning of the year about their year-long SMART (strategic and specific, measurable, attainable, results oriented, time bound) goals for student learning (Conzemius & O’Neill, 2014). Collaborative teams would often set the goals for students who were not yet reading at grade level or who were well behind in mathematics—their lowest-performing students. The teams recognized that to get minimally successful students to grade level, the students would need to pack in more than a year’s worth of growth in a year’s time. (For example, if the average third grader’s reading level could be expected to move from a 3.0 to a 4.0 during a typical year, a third grader reading at a 1.5 at the start of the year would need to grow more than the typical 1.0 during a year or they would be perpetually behind. So, teams would set goals for these students to grow from 1.5 to 2.8, or 1.3 years’ worth of growth during the year. Although this would not bring the student up to grade level completely in one year, it does begin to close the gap. And if teams throughout the PLC work cohesively over time to continue achieving similar growth, the student would be on grade level at the end of the seventh-grade year.) To accomplish these goals, the teams would discuss a series of intervention ideas.

However, these same teams expected their highest-performing students to grow a year or less over the same period. The argument team members would inevitably make for setting such low expectations for the highest-performing students was that they are already performing at a high level—so much so that the team didn’t know how much higher it could keep pushing them. As principal, I always responded, “These students have grown exponentially their entire academic career, and this is the year they will top out?”

What goes unspoken in this conversation is teachers or teams saying they will put a whole lot of effort and time into supporting the lowest-performing students (as they rightly should), but not worry too much about the students already at the top academic end of their class. Students who “already know it” become an afterthought. Yet, going back to the first big idea of a PLC, a focus on high levels of learning for all, we must ensure all includes students who are already proficient. By not advancing and discussing these students, teams do not ensure this cohort learns at high levels. In fact, these students may learn nothing at all if the standard at the center of instruction is already part of their knowledge base. Yet, when teams meet to discuss formative data, these students are often sorted into an “already proficient” pile and then summarily ignored—or, worse, given more of the same work, usually in the form of a worksheet containing content they have already mastered. Or, instead of using a worksheet, teams may place these students at a computer for self-paced work to keep them busy and allow teachers to concentrate on students who are not yet proficient on a given standard. This occurs because the focus of the school, district, or state is often to lower the number of nonproficient students, not to push those already exceeding to deeper levels of learning (Ballou & Springer, 2011).

To meet these outside expectations, even well-meaning teachers who strive to ensure all students are learning at their highest levels often feel they have little choice but to hyperfocus on students who are below grade level. This leaves little time for extensions that would keep the high-performing students engaged and active. However, the work of a grade-level collaborative team is not complete, or really has not even begun, until the team members address question 4. After all, how can students who are already proficient remain engaged and excited to come to school every day if they are routinely ignored? It does not take very long for these bright students to realize that if they are scoring in the already proficient range, they will be ignored or assigned busywork. That, in their minds, frees them for the off-task behavior they may already have a predilection for (Galbraith & Delisle, 2015) or feeds a fixed mindset that they are already smart enough and do not need to continue learning (Dweck, 2016).

This flies in the face of the second big idea of a PLC: “Educators must work collectively and take collective responsibility for the success of each student” (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 11). DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, and Karhanek (2010) explain, “One of the consistent messages student convey in surveys of their schooling experience is that their schools fail to challenge them” (p. 212). If students become unengaged with school because teachers do not push or challenge them, they will not succeed to their highest potential academically and interpersonally, so it is vital that collaborative teams accept the responsibility of the second big idea. Educators need to work as a team to find what John Hattie and Klaus Zierer (2018) refer to as the Goldilocks Principle, instruction that is “just right” in providing enough challenge to keep proficient students engaged without the work being so difficult that it leads to frustration.

Success for already proficient students ties directly into the third big idea of a PLC: a results orientation, which is largely dependent on establishing SMART goals (DuFour et al., 2016). Appropriate learning goals for question 4 students might include being able to connect concepts related to an essential standard’s learning to new information they learn while working on an extension standard, or being able to apply their learning on the extension standard to a real-life situation not addressed in class. Whatever the extension is, teams need to gather data from assessments. This will allow teachers to monitor students’ success and ensure that they are not misapplying the concepts they already understand, which happens on occasion. This intentional analysis of extension data will also allow teachers to measure the effectiveness of a given extension.

What Must We Do to Ensure Collaborative Work That Creates Meaningful Extensions?

Central to the philosophy of PLCs is working collaboratively. To ensure question 4 receives the attention it deserves and teachers create the highest-quality extensions, educators must look honestly at some current practices that subtly and not so subtly push teachers away from working as a team to build extensions for students. For example, Teacher of the Year awards and parents’ requests for their children to be assigned to specific teachers are just two ways the education business has raised a few teachers above others. Although teachers are not directly competing against each other for these honors, some teachers take tremendous pride in having the most parent requests or receiving a district award year after year. Teachers cannot collaborate if they are focused on competing with one another for these accolades. These systems are just as detrimental to question 4 students as providing more work or self-paced work, as they encourage teachers to think and operate as individuals instead of interdependent team members. Individual teachers going it alone can prevent many question 4 students from feeling challenged. Gayle Gregory, Martha Kaufeldt, and Mike Mattos (2016) remind us that “there is no way an individual teacher has all the time, all the skills, and all the knowledge necessary to meet every student’s individual needs” (p. 16). John Hattie (2009) echoes that assertion, arguing that teachers need to work collaboratively, debating and investigating best practices to help students achieve at their fullest potential.

All educators want to be appreciated for their hard work. Unfortunately, teachers in many districts have learned that for their work to be recognized, they must create flashy projects or experiences for students. Often, as witnessed in my work in schools, projects sold as extensions lack a fundamental grounding in essential standards, do not have focused learning targets, and bring a tremendous workload for the individual teacher who must complete additional tasks such as securing and organizing community volunteers, obtaining materials, securing permission paperwork, and creating props. These types of projects can consume teachers’ already limited time, further reducing their availability to address question 4 in a meaningful way. What’s more, they don’t utilize the collaborative work essential to functioning in a PLC.

Being a collaborative team that is part of a PLC means putting students’ needs first, ahead of any adult ego or need to be the teacher everyone asks for. In a truly collaborative culture, team members work together, each contributing to make these flashy lessons more substantive, establish clearer learning targets, and guarantee student learning. A team of teachers can more readily ensure that students are truly extended and supported as they deepen their learning.

Summary

Throughout this book, I return to the theme that question 4 students, if presented with poorly planned or ineffective extensions, are just as much at risk of not succeeding in school as students who are not yet proficient on a given standard. Teachers must work in effective, interdependent, collaborative teams to plan and execute effective extensions to truly answer critical question 4 of a PLC: “How will we extend the learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency?” (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 59).

Remember as you progress through the book that when I refer to question 4 students or proficient students, I am not talking about identified gifted students. While gifted students often fall into the “already proficient” grouping, they may be below proficiency in some standards. In those standards, they need the same instruction and intervention supports as every other student. Similarly, students not identified as gifted often can demonstrate proficiency at any time, and when they do, they need to be extended. Proficient students refers to students who have demonstrated proficiency on a given standard regardless of any associated label.

Collaborative Team Reflection

Teams may reflect on the following four questions to support their collaborative work around responding to critical question 4.

1. What is critical question 4 of a PLC? How might answering this question in an authentic way change your team’s collaborative meetings?

2. How often do we run out of time to answer critical question 4 effectively? What steps can we take to ensure it is addressed?

3. What practices are currently in place within our team that we need to change or end in order to create effective extensions?

4. Did we include an expectation in our SMART goal for question 4 students to grow their learning? What standards will serve as extension standards to keep these students learning and engaged?