Powerful Teaching and Learning into Practice

Our Process

What does the PTL Group do?

Assessment

From initial assessment to training and execution, The Powerful Teaching and Learning Group is focused on helping schools and districts reach their goals for improving student achievement. In order to implement a successful plan it is necessary to first understand the nature and scope of the challenge. PTL works with schools to aggregate and analyze student data in order to assess current achievement levels. By establishing a clear starting point, the Powerful Teaching and Learning Group enables schools to more clearly see where they need to end up. This is a crucial first step in beginning the process of making meaningful progress toward the goal of raising the achievement levels of all students.

What schools typically discover when they sit down to view a scatter plot of their own students’ achievement is that they have a group of students who are being consistently left behind. This achievement gap is the focus of PTL’s work. By identifying where this gap exists and who these students are, schools and educators can begin to have the crucial discussions necessary to address the problem. How do we get this last group of students to succeed. How are our current practices failing them. What is our plan for closing the gap and raising achievement levels?

Strategy

The Powerful Teaching and Learning Group facilitates and guides these discussions to determine a clear understanding of the starting point and the end goal. With a clear goal defined, PTL assists schools in identifying a series of targets over time. By breaking the process into a succession of well-defined, measurable targets, PTL creates a manageable and practical plan for success. Strong emphasis is placed on clarity of targets; the clearer these can be the more likely they are to hit them.

When the PTL Group has conversations with educators, the focus is often around making the shift from “good to great.” Achieving this shift requires creating the motivation to try something different in order to get different results. Often there is an existing focus on programmatic or other change–schools have not made a conscious or concerted effort to address instruction. If the goal is to raise student achievement, then curriculum, teaching practices, and all other aspects of school operation need to be aligned with that goal. Schools that have a strong focus on implementing programmatic change often make the mistake of assuming that the reason their current approach isn’t working is simply because they aren’t doing enough of it or working hard enough at it. The illogical assumption is, “We tried this much of this approach and it didn’t work, let’s do even more.” Unfortunately, if something different is not done, teachers will keep getting the same results.

Execution

PTL helps schools refocus their attention onto what matters most–the teaching practices that teachers use everyday in the classroom—and then helps stakeholders at every level to execute the necessary shift with a strategic combination of development, instruction, coaching and leadership training. If the essence of the classroom experience for the student does not change, achievement will remain the same. The Powerful Teaching and Learning Group is committed to helping schools realize this critical step-change.