Professional Learning Councils
Cal-PASS Professional Learning Councils illustrate the Cal-PASS
Core Values in action. These regional councils, made up of teams of discipline-based faculty from elementary, middle school, high school, community college and university segments collaborate to discuss curriculum, exemplar teaching practices, instructional materials, and performance measures which are shared and reviewed in light of transition data. When faculty members work together with their intersegmental colleagues to understand the barriers to successful student transition, solutions to these barriers are proposed and implemented in the form of a more seamless curriculum and improved instructional strategies.
Currently, ongoing Professional Learning Councils meet in various locations in San Diego, San Bernardino, Sacramento, Placer-Nevada and Riverside Counties in the following disciplines:
- Language Arts
- Math
- English Language Learners (ELL)
- Career Preparation
- Science
- Counseling
Professional Learning Councils have initiated innovations in teaching at all educational levels. See the sample projects below for more details.
For more information about existing councils or to initiate a council in your area or discipline, please contact Shelly Valdez at
svaldez@calpass.org.
Cal-PASS Council Initiated Projects
Cal-PASS mini-grants support pilot innovations developed by Cal-PASS Professional Learning Councils following our core values of Collaboration, Discovery, Alignment, Innovation, Evaluation and Expansion. These projects focus on better student outcomes by using innovative methods to support student learning. Some have been completed, others are in the planning or implementation stages, and still others are currently being expanded. Cal-PASS innovations include:
English:
- Regional intersegmental rubric development to assess, more appropriately, student writing to (1) establish a better process for determining proper English course placement using a more ecologically valid measure; (2) provide intersegmental professional development opportunities among ELA teachers; and (3) explore the possible use of the rubric across disciplines.
- Creation of common vocabulary and strategies to use across segments (middle school, high school, community college and university) with both fiction and non-fiction texts to further define how critical thinking can be taught across segments. Teachers looked at differences among students in each grade level in terms of developmental and skills-based issues, continuity in the academic vocabulary used in teaching, and methods to prepare students for the next level.
- Expansion of an earlier multi-year Cal-PASS PLC innovation in which high school English faculty, working with their post-secondary colleagues, developed teaching skill sets that high school faculty identified as missing from their repertoire. This included learning to select and use expository text in their classrooms as well creating writing prompts and rubrics to accompany the readings. The process was so effective in terms of both professional development for faculty and student outcomes that it is now being expanded to include all district high schools using the CSU and community college colleagues and mentor teachers from the original high school.
- Collaboration by high school and college faculty to develop, administer and assess a quarterly writing prompt for ninth and tenth grade students in persuasive, analytical, and expository genres to improve student writing and decrease the need for remedial coursework in college. After reviewing the results, high school and college instructors will collaborate in articulation sessions to develop strategies that address identified needs in student writing. Articulation sessions focused on rubric development and scoring, data review, and strategies development will follow the administration of each prompt.
- The alignment of an articulated community college-university level English course to ensure that students had similar skill sets at the conclusion of the course and would thus be better prepared to handle the rigors of writing demanded by other college courses. Intersegmental faculty have developed a common instructional plan, with assessments, that contained the use of a common assignment targeting critical reading and research.
- Differences in writing levels were analyzed between multiple levels of community college and high school English classes using a common reading assignment and essay prompt. A common rubric was used to score and outcomes were analyzed for trends and learning gaps. .
Math:
- A year-long elective Algebra II Support Course taught at two high schools for students who scored Below Basic or Far Below Basic on the CST. Students will be pre-tested with the MDTP test in Algebra II Readiness and individualized programs will be developed for each student. Cal-PASS Algebra Deconstruction Project is being used as a guide for consistency and alignment. This project was expanded the second year by one of the high schools to 2 courses: Algebra support and Geometry support.
- A 6-week, summer geometry bridge course at a community college designed to facilitate students’ pathways through math. This course provided dual credit thus allowing students to take Intermediate Algebra in the academic year subsequent to Algebra I and more advanced math classes prior to post-secondary.
- A 20-hour summer math-for-chemistry bridge course designed to give students a review of the mathematical formulas, applications, and manipulations they must know to be successful in chemistry. This was taught at a community college and targeted otherwise successful high school and college students (GPA~> 2.5) who would be enrolling in chemistry, but who had struggled in math (GPA ~2.0). This project has been expanded by the district in which it was taught and is being considered by other districts across the state.
- A state-wide math collaboration of Professional Learning Councils in the north state, mid-state, and southern state and incorporating input from two CMC3 conferences working to articulate common strands found in the Algebra I and II deconstructed standards between the high school and community colleges to ensure that there is continuity across topics and across segments and to address the community college’s perspective.
- Algebra Readiness materials were in support of the new Algebra Readiness content framework. This regional intersegmental work developed curriculum (scope & sequence, assessments, materials, possible delivery modalities, evaluation studies, etc.) and recommended regional adoption among P-16/Cal-PASS partners.
- An intersegmental math conference designed to facilitate math articulation in a region among faculty, counselors, and administrators in all of the segments -- K-12, community college and four year schools. Workshop sessions included discussions of mathematics curriculum in the high schools and colleges, student course schedules, the new minimum math requirement for an AA degree and more.
- Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, and Pre-Calculus deconstruction projects involving in-depth looks at the California Content standards with participation from intersegmental faculty from across the state with a goals of gaining a fuller understanding of both scope and depth of the standards, the development of assessment items associated with each standard at the computational/procedural, conceptual, and application levels, and the initiation of discussions of exemplar practices regarding teaching the standards. The resulting Deconstructed Standards Documents include a breakdown of each standard into its component parts, a list of prerequisite skills as well as new skills needed to master each standard, the level of conception used in teaching the new knowledge (using Bloom’s Taxonomy), assessable results of the standard.
- The backwards mapping of Algebra from the college level through high school and into middle school. Intersegmental faculty have met to discern the elements common to college-level Algebra, deconstruct those elements into their component parts and the knowledge necessary to master those components, and will now use the Cal-PASS Algebra deconstruction projects for high school standards to map those elements down through the segments.
- A summer math bridge course for which EAP results and community college placement data will be used to identify high school students at risk of repeating Elementary or Intermediate Algebra during their first year of college. Students’ math skills will be formatively assessed prior to starting the Bridge Program so that Bridge time can be spent building skills in the area of most needed improvement.
English Language Learners:
- A year-long program for EDL IV or reclassified English Learners that included semester-long courses in College Success Strategies and Introduction to College Writing for Non-Native Speakers taught by college faculty a high school with support from high school teachers from each school who worked with the students to monitor their progress in the program and provide support for their coursework and who met with the college instructors to discuss the progress of individual students. In addition, the high school teachers shared course outlines and compared course content with the college instructors in order to provide a transition between the high school and college English courses.
- A summer bridge course for high school EL students co-taught by a community college instructor and high school teacher. This project was funded as a pilot by Cal-PASS in 2005 and has proven so successful the respective institutions have continued and grown the project.
- "College Day" to encourage students to go to college. A college awareness curriculum was also developed to be taught in high school classrooms the week before the College Day visit.
Science:
- The development of a synthesized summary packet of Cal-PASS data and intersegmental conversations, observations, and professional experiences of science faculty distributed to school counselors to assist them in providing advisement information to students as they navigate through the science pathways.
- High school biology students will be given the opportunity to become Geologists, Engineers, and Marine Biologists for a day by attending three Saturday field experiences at local university science labs. The goal is to increase student interest in the sciences early in students’ high school careers and attract more students to attend universities and choose science majors.
- High school and community college biology teachers will create Biology Action Models (BAM) physically demonstrating biological concepts for use in teaching California K-12 content standards for biology. BAMs will replace standard, static, one-dimensional pedagogical tools.
Counseling:
- Middle school students and their parents will attend a 6-hour Saturday event at the local community college designed to be a fun and informative way of familiarizing students and their parents with college-going opportunities. The themes for the day will be educational and career opportunities as well as overcoming barriers for attending college. An "Academic Treasure Hunt" will bring participants in contact with community college departments, offices, and personnel.
- Four local community college students will be trained by college counselors to be peer mentors to 11th and 12th grade students in the feeder high schools for the community college region. Peer mentors will engage in activities that promote a college- going culture in the high schools as well as host specific events and sponsor activates that will help high school students overcome barriers to college enrollment.