Tribes Learning Communitieslisahanlon.weebly.com/uploads/5/4/3/1/54318127/tribes.pdfCreating a...

Tribes Learning Communities®

60 COMMERCE LANE, SUITE D

CLOVERDALE, CA 95425

707 838 1061 WWW.TRIBES.COM

About Tribes Learning Communities:

Thousands of schools throughout the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries have become Tribes Learning Communities, safe and caring environments in which kids can do well! After years of "fix-it" programs focused on reducing student violence, conflict, drug and alcohol use, absenteeism, poor achievement, etc., educators and parents now agree, creating a positive school or classroom environment is the most effective way to improve behavior and learning. The Tribes TLC® process is the way to do it.

Students achieve because they:

• feel included and appreciated by peers and teachers • are respected for their different abilities, cultures,

gender, interests and dreams • are actively involved in their own learning • have positive expectations from others that they will

succeed.

The clear purpose of the Tribes process is to assure the healthy development of every child so that each one has the knowledge, skills and resiliency to be successful in a rapidly changing world.

Contents of this Introductory Packet:

About Tribes Learning Communities Pages 5 to 9 Professional Development Pages 10 to 17 Articles Pages 18 to 49 Endorsements Pages 50 to 54

Building a Caring Community That Calls Forth the Whole Child By Jeanne Gibbs

Picture a third-grader who, when first entering Çathy Allen's classroom, brought a sense of wildness, anger and bewilderment with him; a young man who lashed out at teachers and peers alike. Picture him later as he expresses sorrow that a four-day weekend is coming up. He doesn’t want to leave the classroom – a place where he feels safe, accepted and loved by all. Notice a child, who because of environmental conditions at home, speaks only in a whisper to those around her and can only look at the ground with a cowering posture when spoken to by an adult. Now notice her smiling, laughing and eagerly sharing a favorite experience with all of her classmates as they sit together in a community circle.1

These young people were fortunate to be in a school that had become a safe and caring Learning Community dedicated to developing children in all of their social, emotional, intellectual, physical and ethical/moral wholeness. This school, like thousands of others throughout the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries accomplishes this by creating and sustaining a caring and challenging school culture - an environment that provides a sense of belonging, support, connection to others and to ideas and values that make young lives meaningful and significant. Decades ago, respected educator John Dewey urged that each public school should be a model home, a complete community. It would be a school that had a shared vision, realistic goals for children's development, and a caring way for people to be and learn together. Not only would such a school energize students but make it safe and exciting enough to learn.2 Now more than ever, almost a century later, this still needs to be our quest. Consider what typically would have happened to Mrs. Allen’s third grade students in a school that either would have dismissed, admonished or labeled the behaviors as “learning problems.” More likely than not, in time the self-confirming images of her two students would have led them on tracks of alienation and failure. Massive categorical funding has been and continues to be allocated to deficit-focused programs for special education, individual treatment and costly remedial strategies. The problem focus persists in spite of comprehensive studies and consensus among informed educators that rather than continuing to try to "fix kids", we need to fix the deficit-focused system. That means challenging schools to be strength-focused on students' development in the fullness of their interests, ways of learning, gifts and humanity. No longer do we have to guess how to create positive school systems that can transform or "turnabout" the lives of children like those we met at the beginning of this article. Two compelling bodies of well-researched studies on learning and human development show the way. They are the…

• Comprehensive neuroscience principles on how the brain best learns, and • Longitudinal studies on positive protective factors that when present in child rearing or

learning systems foster resilient strengths, well-being and success in life success.

Learning About Learning First, let's look at what can be learned about learning. It is startling to realize that scientists have learned more about the human brain during the last decade than during the entire preceding century. 3 One of the most important factors that make every child unique is that the body, mind and brain operate in a dynamic unity. This means that no longer can the body-mind-brain unity be ignored in favor of filling students' brains with concepts and information, and counting on the practice as the guaranteed path to academic achievement. Where is there to be found a single piece of authentic research that proves this is how the human brain learns best? Today it is well-recognized that cognitive information becomes meaningful and more lasting when coupled with application and experience. Moreover, the chemistry and structure of the brain changes in response to the environment, prior learning, remembered experiences, beliefs and values.4 All of which demystifies why it seems more difficult to reach and help today's 21st century youth achieve academically. The chemistry and structure of their brains have been conditioned by being raised in an instantaneous change environment filled with visual and sensory stimuli from computers, television, cell phones, electronic games, I-Pods etcetera - all of which most enjoy and are proficient in using. This may be the prime reason that we lose young learners with traditional direct instruction, listening passively to teachers, now and then answering questions and filling in worksheets - the latter which do not grows dendrites. Knowledgeable school systems and teachers are engaging students by using cooperative learning, active group inquiry and participatory projects. Perhaps more than all else going on for school reform, teachers' onsite professional development with their peers in on-going small learning communities is proving to be highly effective.5 Together they learn about learning, cognitive theory, collaborative group structures, students' developmental needs and how to create supportive classroom environments. Creating a Caring School Community The first step in creating an ideal caring learning environment in classrooms and schools is to pose the following question to the policy-makers, teachers, leaders and parents of the school community:

Are you aware that the daily culture of the school is the primary factor that supports students' development and academic learning?

Many probably would reply, "No, it's the curriculum!" And that would lead to enlightening folks with a few facts that curriculum cannot change. Children who come to school from a stressful less than supportive or caring environment carry the stress all day and everyday to school. They may be like the two third graders above or they may be disillusioned secondary kids. Traditionally they have been referred to as "kids at risk" affected by outside factors in their lives that the school cannot fix. However, the impressive longitudinal studies on environmental factors that enable humans of all ages to overcome deprivation and adverse conditions in life, give schools a clear way to establish a caring strength-focused culture that nurtures resilient strengths in all students (-and teachers too!) within the system.6 Schools committed to having all kids "at promise" rather than any "at risk" create and sustain caring community environments that activate the following three categories of well-proven positive protective factors.

Caring and supportive relationships – Caring relationships within systems convey compassion, understanding and respect. They are grounded in attentive listening and establish safety and basic trust. Positive and high expectations – High expectations communicate firm guidance, structure and challenge, and most importantly convey a belief in a young person’s innate resilience. They highlight strengths and assets as opposed to problems and deficits. Opportunities for meaningful participation – Opportunities for meaningful participation, leadership and contribution to the community may be actualized through decision making, listening and being heard, with each person being included with valued responsibilities. It is no surprise that these protective processes work. They meet our basic human needs for love and belonging; for respect, challenge and structure; for involvement, power and ultimately, meaning. They meet every child's need to be included, recognized and values by others. As predicted by longitudinal studies, students from such schools would have developed the life-long abilities of. 7

• social competence: responsiveness, cultural flexibility, empathy, caring, communication skills and a sense of humor;

• problem-solving skills: planning, help-seeking, critical and creative thinking; • autonomy: a sense of identity, self-efficacy, self-awareness, task-mastery and adaptive

distancing from negative messages and conditions; • a sense of purpose with belief in a bright future: goal directed, educational aspirations,

optimism, meaning, and spiritual connectedness. 8

The Community Building Process The question becomes, how can we bring this about for all of the students in our school? This ambitious mission can be systematically achieved as the school engages all teachers, administrators, students and families in working together as a learning community dedicated to caring and support, active participation and positive expectations for all students. The stated the stated goal is:

To assure the healthy development of every child so that each has the knowledge, skills and resiliency to be successful in a rapidly changing world. 9

The approach involves all of the groups mentioned above in long-term membership in mini-communities (groups of 4-6 members); parents in classroom groups, teachers in faculty groups and students in cooperative learning tribes. The structure provides inclusion, a sense of value and community for everyone in the groups. The communities learn and use a series of collaborative skills and help each other honor four positive agreements: attentive listening, appreciation/ no put-downs, the right to participate or to pass and mutual respect. The positive agreements (norms) assure appreciation for each person’s culture, race, gender, abilities, contributions and uniqueness. The sense of community that all age groups seem to seek today becomes a reality as people work together on meaningful goals, tasks and challenges. Strength evolves out of the special quality time that is spent to build inclusion whenever the groups come together. No one is an isolate, no one fears to talk. It is safe enough to ask questions - safe enough to learn. Every active learning academic experience (lesson) in a Tribes classroom has two objectives: the content to be learned and the social skill to be practiced. Each lesson begins with the teacher

announcing the objectives to the students and each learning experience concludes with student groups reflecting on or assessing the extent to which they achieved the objectives while working together. Comprehensive studies repeatedly have proven that cooperative group learning and the reflective practice improves student active learning.10 It is compatible with how the human brain constructs, processes and retains information for extended periods of time. If indeed we want to improve academic test scores, teachers need to learn how to transfer leadership and individual accountability to peer groups. Studies have shown that group interdependence consistently increases student achievement more than individual control methods.11 The inclusion and safety within caring groups takes peer leadership and responsibility to exciting new levels for children and youth learning and development. Educator Ron Miller reminds us that ultimately our work is not about a curriculum or a teaching method… it is about nurturing the human spirit with love. 12 The many problems of youth can be lessened and healed by transforming schools into caring communities, by including youth as leaders in solving problems and in reaching out in kindness to each other. I believe that John Dewey was right. Each public school should be a model home, a complete community actively developing future compassionate citizens capable of creating, leading and contributing to the kind of democratic communities - in which we all long to live. ________________________________________________________________________

References

1. A report from 3rd grade teacher, Cathy Allen, Bountiful, Utah 2. Dewey, J. Democracy in Education, New York: Macmillan, 1916 3. Wolfe, P. Brain Matters: Translating Research into Classroom Practice .Alexandria, VA: Association for

Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2001. 4. Pert, Candace, B. Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine. New York, NY: Simon and

Schuster, 1997. 5. Smoker, Michael. Tipping Point: From Feckless Reform to Substantive Instructional Improvement. Phi Delta

Kappan International, April 2004 6. Werner, E. and Smith R. Overcoming the Odds: High-risk Children from Birth to Adulthood. New York: Cornell

University, 1992. 7. Benard, B. Resiliency - What We Have Learned. San Francisco: WestEd, 2004 8. Benard, B. What Is It About Tribes? The Research-Based Components of the Developmental Process of Tribes

Learning Communities. Windsor, CA: CenterSource Systems, 2005 9. Gibbs, J. Tribes, A New Way of Learning and Being Together, Windsor, CA: CenterSource Systems, 2001 10.Johnson, David W., Johnson, Roger T. and Smith, Karl. Cooperative Learning and Individual Student

Achievement, in Secondary Schools and Cooperative Learning: Theories, Models and Strategies. New York, NY: Garland Publishing, 1995

11.Stevens, R. and Slavin, R. The Cooperative Elementary School: Effects on Students’ Achievement, Attitudes, and Social Relation. American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 32.

12.Miller, R. What Are Schools For? Holistic Education in American Culture. Brandon, VT: Holistic Education Press, 1990

© Gibbs, Jeanne. CenterSource Systems 2006. 800-810-1701 www.tribes.com

A Fact Sheet on Tribes TLC® There are Certified Tribes TLC® Trainers serving:

All U.S. States and Canada, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and the United Arab Emirates.

Demographics of Trainers: Certified Tribes TLC® Trainers include individuals of almost all races and ethnic groups. Over one fourth of the 1100 trainers are bilingual or multilingual. Approximately one third are administrators (Assistant Superintendents, Principals, Coordinators, State Department Officials and Program Managers). There are also Psychologists, Private Consultants, Deacons, University Instructors and, of course, public and private school classroom teachers, including National Board Certified Teachers. The Certified Tribes Trainers have degrees ranging from Bachelors to PhDs. Ages of the trainers range from age 22 to 76. There are trainers living in 42 U.S. states, as well as many other countries.

The Tribes process can be found in:

• Public Schools • Private Schools • Parochial Schools • Native American, First Nation, Aboriginal Schools

and schools serving other Indigenous populations • International Schools • University Programs • State Departments of Education • After School Programs • Recreation Programs • Family Resource Centers • Church groups • Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centers • Regional Education Centers

Tribes TLC is recognized as a Model or Promising Program by: • Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) • Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) • Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (C-SAP) Western CAPT • Find Youth Info.gov • Canada Safe and Healthy Schools Programs • Ontario College of Teachers Contemporary Programs in Teacher Education • KidsMatter - Australian Early Childhood Mental Health Initiative • KidsMatter - Australian Primary Schools Mental Health Initiative • Australian Guidance and Counseling Association • Effective Services Database, Dartington Social Research Unit, United Kingdom

Funding: Funding sources for training in the Tribes process come from Federal, State and local resources as well as Foundations. Call CenterSource for more information.

60 COMMERCE LANE STE D

CLOVERDALE, CALIFORNIA 95425

800-810-1701 WWW.TRIBES.COM

TRIBES PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT BRING YOUR SCHOOL TO LIFE WITH TRIBES TLC® PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Tribes is a community building process—a culture and active learning pedagogy best learned by experiencing it. You can make the process come alive for your district or school by scheduling training for your teachers, administration and support staff.

CenterSource Systems has a network of licensed trainers who conduct professional development training in many countries throughout the world. Schedule an overview presentation and classroom demonstration at your school where the key concepts of Tribes are explained and demonstrated through typical training strategies and our videos. Give your administration, school board and staff the information they need to consider whole school training. Schools and districts committed to the full implementation of Tribes TLC® can arrange training and support to teams and faculties through the following staff development opportunities: Building Community for Learning (Tribes “Basic” Training) The purpose of this 24-hour experiential training is to prepare teachers, administrators and support staff personnel to develop a caring school and classroom environment, and to reach and teach students through an active learning approach that promotes student development, motivation and academic achievement. Discovering Gifts in Middle School The purpose of this 24-hour experiential training is to provide a research-based approach for middle level school educators to focus their schools on the critical developmental learning needs of young adolescents. The training illuminates how to transform the cultures of middle schools into caring learning communities that support the full range of students’ growth and development as well as establishing academic excellence. Engaging All By Creating High School Learning Communities The purpose of this 24-hour experiential training is to provide the research-based concepts, experience, and strategies that are essential for engaging all by creating high school learning communities. Among the topics to be considered will be: critical indicators of the very different needs of 21st century youth, voices of students themselves, and a consensus of recommendations from the literature and studies, including the National Association of Secondary School

What Tribes can bring to a class is dynamite - what it can bring to a total staff is spectacular!

—LESLIE MCPEAK,

PRINCIPAL

MODESTO CITY SCHOOLS

Principals (NASSP). Participants will understand why and how the research-based developmental process of Tribes Learning Communities, when implemented well, can transform the culture, structures and pedagogy of the whole high school system— particularly one committed to preparing today’s students for an entirely different era—the Era of Learning. Artistry for Learning The purpose of this 24-hour experiential advanced-level training is to increase the capacity of teachers and administrators within Tribes Learning Community Schools to intensify quality implementation of the research-based developmental process of Tribes – thereby to assure that all students, no matter their diversity and ability, achieve higher social, emotional and academic learning. Collaboration: The Art Form of Leadership— Leading for Results in a Tribes Learning Community The purpose of this 14-hour experiential training is to bring together school leaders and leadership teams who have already been trained in the process of Tribes TLC® so that they can explore and complete authentic leadership tasks and gain a new exciting view of their roles in reculturing the school community. The Tribes collegial team learning experiences will create a professional learning community environment that will support and sustain increased student learning and achievement. Implementing After-School Tribes The purpose of this 12-hour experiential training is to prepare after-school educators, youth workers, and community members to develop a caring learning center environment and to reach and teach children and youth through an active learning approach that promotes human development, resiliency, and social-emotional competence. Using multiple intelligences, brain compatible learning and cooperative methods, the community learning center climate and staff awareness will begin to reflect the message of life-long learning, personal development, and social responsibility as the keys to success in the 21st Century. Multi-Year TRIBES TLC® Training CenterSource Systems can help you design a multi-year training program to meet the needs of your school by implementing several of the professional development opportunities mentioned above. When integrated into the whole school community, Tribes can effect system-wide change by creating a caring culture and cooperative learning community, which fosters student growth and achievement, strengthens staff relationships and collegiality, and effectively redesigns the learning community.

Training-of-District Trainers CenterSource Systems has designed a capacity building model for professional development so that your district or school can have your own Certified Tribes TLC® Trainers providing on-going training, coaching and support to teachers, administrators, resource personnel and parent community groups. The CenterSource Systems 40-hour Training-of-District Trainers provides in-depth skills, knowledge, experience and quality training materials to your own qualified personnel. A variety of training modules enable them to facilitate the Basic Tribes Course, support faculty groups, initiate parent community groups and conduct classroom demonstrations. Summer Institute for District Trainers The purpose of the Tribes TLC® Summer Institute is to advance the professional capacity of the Tribes Learning Community international network of trainers to lead and accelerate academic, social and emotional learning for all students in their schools and to develop the leadership capacity to sustain and intensify the implementation of Tribes through the development of professional learning communities in their schools and districts. Follow-up coaching and support at your school site is available throughout the year so that your staff can fully implement the process of Tribes and intensify its use throughout the whole school community. Tribes TLC is recognized as a Model or Promising Program by:

Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s Western CAPT Helping America’s Youth

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, CONTACT:

CenterSource Systems, LLC 60 Commerce Lane, Suite D Cloverdale, CA 95425 Phone: 800-810-1701 or 707-838-1061 FAX: 707-894-2355 Email: [email protected] Website: www.tribes.com

Reaching All by Creating Tribes Learning Communities

Join the thousands of Administrators, Teachers and Community members throughout the country who are convinced that the community building process called “TRIBES” is the secret ingredient that makes teaching easy and effective. The purpose of this 24-hour training is to prepare teachers, administrators and support staff personnel to develop a caring school and classroom environment, and to reach and teach students through an active learning approach that promotes student development, motivation and academic achievement.

The Tribes TLC® Staff Development Process: The Tribes 24-hour Basic experiential workshop prepares Pre-K–12 administrators and teachers, as well community members, to use the community building process of Tribes as the foundation for transforming the school community environment to one in which teaching methods are effective in reaching and teaching students for today’s world. Using multiple intelligences, brain compatible learning and cooperative methods, school and classroom climate and teacher awareness will begin to reflect the message of life-long learning, personal development and social responsibility as the keys to academic excellence. Educators will learn how to:

• Develop a positive learning environment in the classroom and whole school community • Teach students specific collaborative skills to work well together • Transfer responsibility to students to help each other learn academic material and to

maintain the positive Tribes agreements and environment • Use the process for problem-solving and conflict resolution • Design cooperative learning lesson plans • Initiate faculty groups for planning, co-coaching and support.

You will receive a copy of the 430 page book, Reaching All by Creating Tribes Learning Communities, by Jeanne Gibbs, a Certificate of Completion and the materials to enable you to implement Tribes in your school community and classroom. Follow-up coaching and support at your school site are available throughout the year so that your staff can fully implement the process of Tribes and intensify its use throughout the whole school community.

http://www.tribes.com/�

Discovering Gifts in Middle School: Learning in a Caring Culture Called Tribes TLC Join the thousands of administrators, teachers and community members throughout the country who are convinced that the community building process called “TRIBES TLC®” is the secret ingredient that makes teaching through cooperative learning easy and effective. The Tribes TLC® Staff Development Process: The purpose of this 24-hour experiential training is to provide a research-based approach for middle level educators to focus on the critical developmental learning needs of young adolescents. The training illuminates how to transform the cultures of middle schools into caring learning communities that support the full range of student growth and development as well as establish academic excellence.

Participants will:

• Recognize the critical importance of the middle level school to make as its focus, all aspects of the development of its young adolescent students

• Gain an understanding of four developmental tasks of young adolescents • Learn how collaborative groups of learners (students, teachers, administrators and parents) can

create and sustain a caring school culture • Recognize the comprehensive studies that underlie the caring process of Tribes Learning

Communities • Understand why and how group learning supports adolescent development • Learn how teachers can move through sequential stages towards excellence and into responsive

education and discovery learning • Design active group learning experiences that develop student-centered classrooms • Realize the need for fairness, equity and social justice in middle schools and consider ways to

reverse inequities • Learn why democratic leadership is needed in a middle school that is focused on students’

development and learning • Understand the need for and power of reflective practice throughout all groups in the school

community • Learn how authentic assessment promotes learning and student development • Realize what a responsive middle level school is – the gifts students discover and the meaningful

learning that is achieved! You will receive a copy of the 440 page book, Discovering Gifts in Middle School: Learning in a Caring Culture Called Tribes, by Jeanne Gibbs, a Certificate of Completion and the materials to enable you to implement Tribes in your school community and classroom.

Follow-up coaching and support at your school site are available throughout the year so that your staff can fully implement the process of Tribes and intensify its use throughout the whole school community.

http://www.tribes.com/�

A Special Invitation to High School Educators Engaging All by Creating

High School Learning Communities

You are invited to participate in an exciting professional development opportunity to make a recognized community learning process come alive in your high school. The interactive training is based on the newly published book, Engaging All By Creating High School Learning Communities, authored by Jeanne Gibbs and Teri Ushijima, Ed.D. The 24-hour training provides the research-based principles and strategies that are essential to prepare today's students for an entirely different era – The Era of Learning. Participants will explore the most promising strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement – that of building the capacity of school personnel – "the insiders" – to function as a collegial learning community. Participants will understand why and how this research-based developmental process can transform the culture, structures and pedagogy of the whole high school system.

As a teacher the interactive training prepares you to…

• Create a personalized motivational culture throughout all of your classes • Design active learning experiences that correspond to how today's 21st century students best can learn

and succeed • Engage all students in collaborative learning groups for inquiry, research, creative projects, presentations,

self and group assessment and evaluation • Work in collaborative teacher learning communities to engage, motivate and together help all of

your students succeed. As an administrator you will discover ways to…

• Initiate and sustain a caring and challenging culture throughout the whole school community • Build the capacity of the faculty to work together in collegial learning communities to achieve

educational excellence • Activate the sound principles and improvement practices recommended in the NASSP ground-breaking

document "Breaking Ranks II – Strategies for Leading High School Reform" (2004) • Implement effective practices that enhance rigor, relevance and relationships to transform your school

community. __________________________________________________________________________________________

Endorsements of Engaging All by Creating High School Learning Communities

I find in this tidy volume a welcome dose of uncommon good sense, in our profession of too much non-sense. What goes on in our nation's classrooms, perhaps 85% of the time, is didactic, large group teacher instruction. The most such teaching occurs in high schools... and the least learning. For we know that in six weeks most students will retain, at best, about five percent of what we tell them. A year from now....? Weak treatment indeed. If I could wave a magic wand and make one move that would reform American secondary education, my wish would be to reverse that ratio: 15% didactic talk and 85% "something else." "Yee gads," you say. "What can I possibly DO 85% of the time other than talk to the students?" When we ask that question we begin the quest for learning centered and learner centered instruction. When we ask that question, we become educators. Here you will discover what we can... and must... do in our schools that 85% of the time." Roland S. Barth, PhD Founding Director of the Principals Center Harvard University

There are so few books on personalizing high school into layers of learning communities. Engaging All is terrific – comprehensive, practical – all and all a resource with multiple payoffs for adults and youth alike. Michael Fullan, PhD Dean, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto __________________________________________________________________________________________ Engaging All by Creating High School Learning Communities is a wonderful book that responds to the true developmental requirements of all high school students. It is much needed voice to counteract the current demands for more academic pressure on kids. The Tribes format – emphasizing trust, connection, reflection, self-worth, and other essential life skills – is ideally suited to the needs of adolescents, whose brains are still dramatically changing. I recommend it highly! Thomas Armstrong, PhD, Author of The Best Schools __________________________________________________________________________________________ This book is a very valuable, stimulating, and informative guide for collaborative teams of teachers who commit to creating an engaging school culture to promote the successful learning and development of all high school students. Roger P. Weissberg, PhD President, Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) __________________________________________________________________________________________ Reading Engaging All is like having a conversation with a seasoned and caring mentor. It is filled with practical wisdom, not hypotheticals. It is structured to take the reader/implementer down the Tribes Trail of understanding, action, and accomplishment. Creating high school learning communities is entirely feasible and the time taken to read and put these exciting, sensible, and well-supported ideas into practice will be rewarded with eventual success for adolescents in school and in life. This book – a Guide, really – represents a Big Idea operationalized in ways accessible to any high school educator. It is a gift to adolescents and those who care about their social-emotional, character, and intellectual development. You will immediately find at least a dozen ideas you can put into practice in classrooms and schools, even while you work to put the small learning communities in place systematically. Maurice J. Elias, PhD Rutgers University Director, Developing Safe and Civil Schools Co-author of The Educator's Guide to Emotional Intelligence and Academic Achievement and Promoting Social and Emotional Learning __________________________________________________________________________________________ Educators must recognize that we cannot prepare students for their future by clinging to instructional practices from our past. Students are different today and the techniques for engaging today's students are different as well. The authors give educators great insight and practical advice for creating highly engaged students, an essential pre-requisite to achievement. Richard D. Jones, PhD Author of Student Engagement: Creating a Culture of Academic Achievement International Center for Leadership in Education. Tribes TLC has been recognized by –

Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL SELect Program)

Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s Western CAPT

For additional information, please call or write: CenterSource Systems, LLC 60 Commerce Lane Suite D, Cloverdale CA 95425 800-810-1701 or 707-838-1061 Email: [email protected] Website: www.tribes.com

mailto:[email protected]�

Creating Tribes Learning Communities

in After School and Youth Development Programs

Join after-school educators, youth workers, and community members throughout the country who are convinced that the community building process called “TRIBES” is the secret ingredient that transforms the after-school learning center environment to one of caring and cooperation. Resilience research demonstrates that schools, and the people within them, have the power to transform young lives. The Tribes process shows educators and youth workers exactly what they can do to provide the caring relationships, positive expectations, and opportunities for participation and contribution that promote positive youth development and successful learning. Bonnie Benard, WestEd Human Development Program

The Tribes TLC® Staff Development Process: The purpose of this 12-hour experiential training is to prepare after school educators, youth workers, and community members to develop a caring learning center environment and to reach and teach children and youth through an active learning approach that promotes human development, resiliency, and social-emotional competence. Participants will learn to use the community building process of Tribes as the foundation for transforming the after-school learning center environment to one in which group facilitation and Tribes strategies are effective in reaching and teaching children and youth. Using multiple intelligences, brain compatible learning and cooperative methods, the community learning center climate and staff awareness will begin to reflect the message of life-long learning, personal development, and social responsibility as the keys to success in the 21st Century. Educators will learn how to:

• Provide safe and educationally enriching alternatives for children and youth during non-school hours by developing a positive recreational and learning environment

• Teach children and youth specific collaborative skills so that they can play and work well together • Transfer responsibility to children and youth to help each other maintain the positive Tribes

agreements and caring environment • Use the process for problem-solving, conflict resolution, prevention, and youth development • Facilitate cooperative strategies for social, emotional and academic learning and enrichment • Encourage an understanding and appreciation for diversity of ideas, culture and values • Understand the relationship between effective Arts programs, after school environments, and the

Tribes TLC® process • Come together as a staff for planning, co-coaching and support.

You will receive a copy of the 432 page book, Reaching All by Creating Tribes Learning Communities, by Jeanne Gibbs, a participant journal, a Certificate of Completion, and the materials to enable you to implement Tribes in your after-school community learning center. Follow-up coaching and support are available so that your staff can intensify the use of the Tribes process throughout the year and at every level of the after-school program. Contact CenterSource for information on After School Funding Tribes TLC is recognized as a Model or Promising Program by –

Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning CSAP’s Western CAPT Helping America’s Youth

©2005, CenterSource Systems 1

Inside-Out Rather Than Outside-In By

Jeanne Gibbs

“The school that becomes a self-renewing enterprise will shape its own future.” 1 – Roland S. Barth

There no longer is any doubt that the most effective and powerful way to achieve and sustain substantive school improvement is by building the capacity of "inside" school personnel to work together as a professional development community.2 For several decades schools have brought in an array of "outsider" approaches – the hiring of costly educational corporations, consultants, well known speakers, strategic planning experts and people to train teachers in test-prep materials – all hopefully to bring about school reform and higher student achievement. For the most part the imposed "outside-in" approaches may initially kindle hope, but inasmuch as they are imposed, not owned and possibly not facilitated collaboratively and enthusiastically by the "inside" school community, they ultimately wither, and are added to the list of the "predictable failures of school reform."3 The good news is that innumerable respected educators, researchers and journalists now are taking a hard look at the evidence against conventional top-down outside-in reform and improvement efforts, and are examining the evidence that substantiates the on-going professional development of collegial teacher teams (learning communities) to define, tailor and assess initiatives that significantly accelerate student learning.4 Peter Senge, researcher and author of the fine books, The Fifth Discipline and Schools That Learn, states: "There is an emerging consensus across the nation that high quality professional development is essential to successful education reform. Professional development is the bridge between where educators are now and where they will need to be to meet the new challenges of guiding students in achieving higher standards of learning."5

Moreover, it is well proven that productive teams in which teachers collaboratively learn, research, design instruction, mentor each other, reflect and assess student learning achieve: 6

• higher-quality solutions to instructional problems, • increased confidence and collegiality among faculty, • increased ability to support one another's strengths and to accommodate weaknesses, • more systematic assistance to beginning teachers, and the ability to examine an

expanded pool of ideas, research on learning, constructive pedagogy and materials.

In addition to the wealth of literature on professional development and school improvement, recent surveys of high performance Tribes Learning Community (TLC®) schools clearly indicate that there are four essential practices that not only maximize the effective implementation of the research-based process of Tribes, but also teacher performance and student learning. The four practices are:

1. The principal has participated with his/her whole staff in the Tribes TLC training courses, and is committed as the educational leader of the school to leading facilitation of the system-wide implementation of the community learning process.

2. The principal has organized a small core leadership group of teachers who meet regularly with the principal (and if available the school's certified Tribes TLC district trainer) to plan, support, reflect upon, mentor and assess progress.

©2012, CenterSource Systems 2

3. All teachers belong to small on-going professional learning groups to plan active learning curriculum, to create and share helpful materials, to reflect upon using the research-based process and pedagogy, and to assess student learning and needs. Groups also study and share pertinent articles, helpful books and documents that lend support to their collegial professional development.

4. Reflective practice is used throughout the school to guide the overall student-centered strategy, to maintain the caring culture, to monitor teacher, student and parent suggestions and needs, and to authentically assess student learning.

When districts or schools recognize that building the capacity of inside personnel, ultimately, is the best bet to achieve school improvement and to accelerate student achievement – indeed, they consider ways to reallocate time and resources for on-going professional learning groups. Some districts add days to the teaching year or distribute the time of in-service days. Others extend or cut minutes of the school day to provide at least an hour a week for teachers and school leaders to work and learn in various types of small groups, and to assess implementation of principles and practices that lead to educational excellence for the school. Readers of this article and teacher learning groups may learn the full scope of the literature and research supporting the Tribes Learning Community process in the new book, What Is It About Tribes? by Bonnie Benard, Senior Program Associate of West Ed. A summary article entitled, The Research-Based Components of the Developmental Process of Tribes Learning Communities, 7 also is available. * Most important it is time to consider the nationwide long-term impact that can be made through the "inside" sound professional development of the teaching staff who best know their students, who thrive on learning together, and daily are able to make continuous improvement – well beyond top-down facilitation by "outsider experts" or organizations. The path to significant educational excellence is set forth clearly by respected superintendent, educator and writer Richard DuFour who emphasizes that…

"All we need to do is to work hard to honor and organize the creative capacities of school-based teacher teams

of authentic "learning communities." 8

The time is now. And no longer is it a mystery as to how school learning communities can do it.

_____________________________________

References* 1. Barth, Roland S. (2001) Learning By Heart. Jossey-Bass, p.xiv. 2. DuFour, Richard, and Robert Eaker. (1998) Professional Learning Communities at Work. Bloomington, IN:

National Education Service, p. xi. 3. Sarason, Seymour. (1990). The Predictable Failure of School Reform. San Francisco, CA: Jossey- Bass. 4. Smoker, Michael. Tipping Point: From Feckless Reform to Substantive Instructional Improvement. Phi Delta

Kappan International. (April 2004). 5. Senge, Peter. (2000) Schools That Learn. New York: Doubleday/Currency. 6. Smoker (2004). 7. Benard, Bonnie. (2005) What Is It About Tribes? The Research-Based Components of the Developmental

Process of Tribes TLC. Windsor, CA: CenterSource Systems. 8. DuFour, Richard. DuFour, Rebecca. Eaker, Robert. Karhanek, Gayle. (2004) Whatever It Takes - How

Professional Learning Communities Respond When Kids Don’t Learn. Bloomington, IN: National Educational service.

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*The 250 page book, What Is It About Tribes?, as well as the summary article, The Research-Based Components of the Developmental Process of Tribes Learning Communities, are available from CenterSource Systems.

CenterSource Systems

email: [email protected] 707-838-1061 Fax: 707-894-2355 www.tribes.com

The Research-Based Components of

Tribes TLC® Tribes Learning Communities

By Jeanne Gibbs

Origin and Design Stages The process, known simply as “Tribes,” and more specifically as “Tribes Learning Communities,” was developed by Jeanne Gibbs at a time when concerned educators in eighteen school districts of Contra Costa County, California, were seeking ways …

• to prevent substance use and abuse, and other behavioral problems • to demonstrate improvement in academic test scores, and • to stem the tide of teachers leaving the profession.

The time was the late 1970’s. The issues still are prevalent today. Now, however, these issues along with a complex of others are recognized as a need for whole school reform. NOTE

: The learning process of Tribes has evolved through two stages of design that have led to the current Tribes Learning Community – whole school model.

Initial Design: Substance Abuse Prevention The goal of the first design was to prevent substance use and abuse. The twofold strategy was:

• to develop inclusion, a sense of value and community for all students in every classroom, thereby to overcome the risk of isolation and acting-out behavior; and

• to have well-trained teachers use small groups to teach the content of drug education curriculum in an active learning way.

Secondary students as “Youth Educators” and parent volunteers as “Parent Educators” also were trained in the group learning process to facilitate drug education curriculum in elementary schools, intermediate and high schools. During the 1980’s more than 3000 parent volunteers were active in San Francisco Bay Area schools. For more than ten years the teacher, student and parent models were used in hundreds of schools and youth centers throughout the United States. The professional development was coordinated by the non-profit corporation, the Center for Human Development, which Jeanne Gibbs had founded and managed.

60 COMMERCE LANE SUITE D

CLOVERDALE, CA 95425-4320

707 838 1061 WWW.TRIBES.COM

Outcomes• significant decreases in student behavior problems

: Schools reported…

• increases in student self-esteem and self-responsibility • improvements in school climate.

Un-anticipated outcomes• Teachers realized that they could also teach core academic content in small

groups – thereby reaching and involving all of the students in a classroom.

:

• Individual teachers and whole schools began to request training in cooperative group learning.

Second Design: Tribes Cooperative Learning Comprehensive studies on cooperative group learning, social development and group process were synthesized for the cooperative learning model. The approach trained teachers to build long-term small membership groups (tribes) for peer support and responsibility; to teach students essential democratic group skills; and to integrate academic concepts into cooperative learning strategies. A positive culture was built and sustained in classrooms by having students learn, practice and remind each other to honor the four Tribes Agreements….

Attentive Listening Appreciation/No Put Downs The Right to Pass Mutual Respect

Training courses emphasized transferring responsibility from teacher to student groups to support each others’ learning, to problem-solve issues and manage their work together. The book Tribes, A Process for Social Development and Cooperative Learning, was published in 1987.

• significant decreases in student behavior problems (average: 75% decrease in 3 months)

Outcomes:

• increase in teacher collegiality and parent involvement • improvement in teacher-student relationships • increase in students’ liking of school and motivation (for academic learning). •

• Teachers reported they did not spend as much time managing their classrooms, and that they had more time to teach subject matter.

Un-anticipated outcomes:

• More special education students could be mainstreamed into regular classrooms. Teachers of separate special ed classrooms began to report indicators of positive social and emotional development in their students.

• Schools that had all teachers trained together and that set aside time for teacher learning and planning groups better sustained the learning process. Teacher collegiality increased.

• The Tribes Cooperative Learning approach began to be marketed teacher-to-teacher, principal-to-principal and parent-to-parent across the country.

Current Model: Tribes Learning Community Ever-growing inquiries and training requests from schools throughout the United States and Canada led to the development of CenterSource Systems, LLC. in 1995. The task of the new organization was: (1) to develop a research-based whole school model, and (2) to create a capacity-building training system – based on the long-standing philosophy and process of Tribes. Philosophy and Goal We believe that:

• The goal of education is to develop greatness in young human beings, active constructive citizens who are valuable contributors to society. To educate is to call forth all aspects of a student’s human development – intellectual, social, emotional, physical and spiritual.

• Intellectual, social and emotional learning is an interdependent growth process. It is influenced daily by the quality of the systems in a student’s life.

• Schools of excellence are student-centered. They have caring cultures, supportive structures and pedagogy that respond and support the stages of development and the diversity of students’ learning needs.

• School reform depends upon the whole system working together as a learning community – a school community committed to continual reflective practice towards improvement and educational excellence.

The philosophy and concepts above are the foundation of the dual mission and goal statement of Tribes Learning Community schools: The Mission of Tribes is to assure the healthy development of every child so that each has the knowledge, competency and resilience to be successful in today’s rapidly changing world. The Goal is to engage all teachers, administrators, students and families in working together as a learning community that is dedicated to caring and support, active participation and positive expectations for all students. The Design of the Whole School Model The design moves the four philosophy beliefs forward into a clear action plan framework for school reform. The four-fold philosophy and four-step framework is grounded in a synthesis of a wide-range of literature and research on human development, child and adolescent development, elements of ideal cultures for learning, resilience, cognitive theory, brain compatible learning, multiple intelligences, cooperative group learning, project learning/constructivism, multicultural/gender equity, democratic group process, school climate, classroom management, reflective practice, system change, professional development and authentic assessment… approximately 16 research-based components for effective pedagogy and school reform.

The Developmental Process of Tribes The purpose of the following graphic is to illustrate the research-based framework for the school renewal process. Brief discussions on the four strategies and the literature on which they are based follow.

Student Development and Learning

• Whole child • Stages of development • Resiliency

A Caring Culture

• Protective Factors • Stages of community

development • Community agreements • Multicultural and

gender equity The Community of Learners

• Small group structures • Collaborative skills • Reflective practice

Responsive Education – Student Centered Active Learning

• Group development process

• Cognitive theory • Multiple intelligences • Cooperative learning • Constructivism • Reflective practice • Authentic assessment • Technology

Student Learning and Development – Re-Focusing

“Unless reform is child centered, children and society alike are going to be hurt – are being hurt.” – James Comer

Although the goal of the majority of schools today is to have higher student achievement on standardized tests, the promise of that happening depends upon the school community as a system: (1) becoming student-centered (Comer, Meier, Darling-Hammond), and (2) learning how to reach and teach the diversity of students (Dewey, Johnson, Wheelock, Goodlad, Gay). The primary focus of the Tribes school is not computer literacy, not a reading program or preparation for year-end tests – although all may be addressed and sequenced into the school’s action plan. The focus is on the students. All policy, structures, decisions, curriculum and pedagogy depend upon the response to one question: “How and to what extent will ‘this’ support the learning and developmental needs of these students?” Even to begin to know how to respond to the on-going question, the Tribes school staff becomes an on-going collaborative “learning community.” They up-date their knowledge and perspectives on children’s development, resiliency, cognitive learning and multiple intelligences. Rather than teachers taking courses on their own, the whole staff learns together to better identify and respond effectively to the diversity of students’ cultures and needs, and to use multiple ways to accelerate the inseparable interdependent triad: academic, social and emotional learning. A Caring Culture – Re-Culturing

“It is only by reculturing a school beforehand or along with any restructuring effort that meaningful improvement can be made.” – Michael Fullan

Given that the focus of a Tribes school is student-centered, the next question becomes, “How do we create an ideal culture for learning?” Comprehensive studies (Werner, Bruner, Meier, Fullan, Gay) verify that the culture must be safe and caring. The culture in Tribes school communities is based on the three well-proven principles that foster human resilience: caring relationships, positive expectations and beliefs, and opportunities for participation and contribution (Benard). Its components are those of an ideal learning culture. Namely, it is participative, proactive, collaborative, communal and given over to constructive meaning (Bruner, Fosnot). The safe and caring culture is created and sustained by the students, teachers and the whole school community through daily use of the four previously mentioned Tribes Agreements:

Attentive Listening Appreciation/No Put Downs The Right to Pass Mutual Respect

The responsibility to honor and to monitor the agreements is transferred from the teacher to the tribes. Signs are posted throughout the school community, student groups and school meetings begin with reminders of “how we want to be while we work together.” The agreements and the step-by-step community building process of Tribes assure that

every student has inclusion (belonging to a small peer group), a sense of identity and value, and a community of supportive peers and adults. The Community of Learners – Re-Structuring

“The new model of school reform must seek to develop communities of learning grounded in communities of democratic discourse.” – Linda Darling-Hammond

The culture is activated and sustained throughout the many small learning groups in which the students, teachers, administrators, support staff and parents are involved. Many teacher teams are involved in planning active learning curriculum, decision-making, problem-solving and authentic assessment. A leadership team – composed of the principal, core teachers and the school or district’s Certified Tribes TLC on-site or district trainers – coordinate overall action planning, implementation and assessment. They too are an inquiry group, raising questions and learning together. The same inquiry group process moves throughout teacher and parent groups. Training opportunities, courses and events are identified to the leadership team. As much as possible, just as with student tribes, integration and alignment of curriculum, problem-solving and decision-making is transferred to faculty and parent groups. District resource coordinators and the Certified Tribes Trainers participate and facilitate as needed. As learning areas are identified, the core leadership team is informed. Additional courses and special training is arranged by the school or district Certified Tribes TLC trainer (See Application, Part C: Training and Implementation). The democratic community-building approach based on the caring culture fosters collegiality, school spirit and achievement. Responsive Education – Active Learning

“Rather than being powerless and dependent on the institution, learners need to be empowered to think and learn for themselves. Thus, learning needs to be conceived of as something a learner does, not something that is done to a learner.” – Catherine Fosnot

“Responsive Education” is an essential pedagogy for academic achievement and school reform. It is the synthesis of artful teaching practices. It is based on understanding the critical developmental needs of a student age and cultural group. Its sole purpose is to enable more students to acquire knowledge in a lasting and meaningful way. Crafting a caring culture and trusting small active learning communities throughout a school gives all students the opportunity to excel (Johnson). The CenterSource Systems professional development courses and training prepare teachers to be responsive to how the students of the school best can learn and grow socially, emotionally, spiritually (inner development) and intellectually… depending upon their respective stages of development, ways of learning and culture. Teachers teach core academic content through well-proven active learning strategies (cooperative learning strategies, project learning, group inquiry, research, composition projects,

debates, team performance and peer assessment.) Tribes materials provide teachers with approximately 175 group strategies (or structures). Reflection on what was learned and how it was learned is an on-going practice after every group learning experience. Cognitive research validates that this maximizes the recall of information and concepts (Caine, Johnson, Jensen). Tribes Learning Community teachers use traditional direct instruction as well as active learning. However, once they recognize and experience the positive results of cooperative learning (validated by more than 1000 studies), the majority use classroom tribes as much as possible. A set of twelve group skills are learned so that students can work well together. Separate time is not needed to teach the skills. They are demonstrated and woven into curriculum learning tasks one or two at a time as “social learning objectives” that students assess along with assessing the “content learning objective.” The responsibility to achieve both the content and social learning objectives is transferred by the teacher to the classroom tribes at the beginning of the academic task. The partnership role of students and teacher working consistently together institutionalizes the culture and “responsive education” pedagogy. The collaborative school community moves toward significant school reform and educational excellence. REFERENCES Benard, Bonnie. (1991). Fostering Resiliency in Kids: Protective Factors in Families, Schools and

Community. Portland, OR: Western Regional Center for Drug Free Schools and Communities, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.

Bruner, Jerome. (1996). The Culture of Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Caine, Geoffrey and Renate. (1991). Making Connections: Teaching And the Human Brain. Alexandria,

VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Comer, James. (1999). Child By Child: The Comer Process for Change In Education. New York, NY:

Teachers College Press. Darling-Hammond, Linda. (1993, March). Reforming the School Reform Agenda, Phi Delta Kappan. Darling-Hammond, Linda.(1997). The Right To Learn, A Blueprint for Creating Schools That Work. San

Francisco, Jossey-Bass. Dewey, John. (1956). The Child and the Curriculum and the Child and Society. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press. Fosnot, Catherine. (1996). Constructivism: A Psychological Theory of Learning, In Constructivism:

Theory, Perspectives and Practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Fullen, Michael. (2001). Leading in a Culture of Change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Fullan, Michael. (1994) Turning Systemic Thinking On Its Head, U.S. Department of Education, Gardner, Howard. (1999). Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences For the 21st Century. New York,

NY: Basic Books. Gay, Geneva. (2000). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research and Practice. New York:

Teachers College Press. Columbia University.. Goodlad, John. (1997). In Praise of Education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, Columbia

University. Jensen, Eric. (1988). Teaching With the Brain in Mind. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and

Curriculum Development. Johnson, David and Johnson, Roger. (1989). Cooperation and Competition: Theory and Research. Edina,

MN: Interaction Book Company. Johnson, David, Johnson, Roger and Smith, Karl. (1995). Cooperative Learning and Individual Student

Achievement, In Secondary Schools and Cooperative Learning: Theories, Models and Strategies. New York, NY: Garland Publishing.

Meier, D. (1995). The Power of Their Idea: Lessons for America From A Small School in Harlem. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Werner, Emily and Smith, Ruth. (1989). Vulnerable But Invincible: A Longitudinal Study of Resilient Children and Youth. New York, NY: Adams, Bannister and Cox.

Wheelock, Anne. (1998). Safe To Be Smart: Building A Culture for Standards -Based Reform in the Middle Grades. National Middle School Association.

From Discovering Gifts in Middle School: Learning in a Caring Culture Called Tribes (2001), by Jeanne Gibbs, CenterSource Systems,Cloverdale, CA, www.tribes.com, 800-810-1701.

This article is reprinted from the book, Discovering Gifts in Middle School: Learning in a Caring Culture Called Tribes (2001), by Jeanne Gibbs, CenterSource Systems, Cloverdale, CA. This chapter features an article by Bonnie Benard, an internationally-known author and researcher on the subject of the resilience of people and systems. Assuring Futures of Promise By Jeanne Gibbs

"So many kids come from neighborhoods and families with overwhelming problems.” "It's hard to know what to do…"

Yes, poverty, unemployment, lack of health care, inadequate childcare, community crime, divorce, alcoholism, drug abuse and stress surround many young teens in our classrooms. True today's world is harsh for many young people. Yet there are those who somehow live through deprivation, adversity, and stress more easily than others. Why do some children in a family do well while others raised in the same environment fail? The answer is to be found in the exciting longitudinal studies on human resiliency, which finally are being brought to the attention of schools throughout the nation. Unlike the typical problem focused-pathology approach-to identify what is wrong with kids (risk factors), resiliency research identifies the positive factors in children's lives that develop competency, wellness, success and the capacity to meet and overcome life stress. Throughout more than forty years Dr. Emily Werner studied the lives of children who were growing up in high risk conditions- such as: neglect, poverty, war, parental abuse, physical handicaps, depression, criminality and alcoholism. A percentage of the children did develop various problems, but to the amazement of the researchers, a greater number moved into adulthood as competent and healthy adults. The greater number had developed the capacity to face and overcome life difficulties. Werner describes them as "vulnerable but invincible." The Attributes of Resiliency The longitudinal studies of Emily Werner and other researchers highlight four human attributes that are evident in resilient children and adults. They have…

• Autonomy: an internal locus of control, a strong sense of independence, power, self-efficacy, self-discipline and control of impulses

• Social competence: pro-social behaviors such as responsiveness, empathy, caring, communication skills, a sense of humor

• A sense of purpose and future: healthy expectations, goal directedness, belief in a bright and compelling future, motivation, persistence, hopefulness, hardiness, a sense of anticipation and a sense of coherence

• A capacity of problem-solve: abstract and constructive thinking, a capacity to analyze and reflect on possibilities and creative solutions; flexibility

It is no coincidence that (as we realized the previous chapter) the same set of attributes are what young adolescents are striving to develop-consciously or unconsciously. They are the important "tasks of adolescence" remarkably enough identified through studies on human development. Take time out now and think of those times in your own life when you were somehow able to move through a difficult situation or period of time, when you were able to face a seemingly insurmountable difficulty and overcome it - no doubt due to you own resilient strengths.

From Discovering Gifts in Middle School: Learning in a Caring Culture Called Tribes (2001), by Jeanne Gibbs, CenterSource Systems, Cloverdale, CA, www.tribes.com, 800-810-1701.

A Perspective On Resilience2

By Bonnie Bernard Bonnie Benard, MSW, is a Senior Program Associate at the WestEd Regional Educational Laboratory, School and Community Health Research Group. Since 1982 she has provided research support and conceptual frameworks for understanding and addressing prevention and youth development issues. In addition to her writing and consultation, she provides workshops and presentations internationally on the topic of resiliency and youth development. Bonnie’s insights have long served as guiding principles for the caring culture of Tribes. Creating Resilient Systems = Engaging the Developmental Wisdom of Adolescence In an age of standards-driven educational reform and get tough on youth social policies, we must ask, where is human development? We see, once again, human development (referred to as youth development during the adolescence years), pushed aside as a “nice” but nonessential concern for education and prevention. Ironically, this is happening at a time when the best of social and behavioral science research is consistently documenting that the most effective, efficient, and joyful approach to meeting standards and preventing health-risk behaviors in young people is by creating environments in our schools that meet adolescents’ developmental needs and thereby engage their intrinsic motivation. Brain science, multiple intelligence research, motivational psychology, effective schools research, child and youth development, and long-term studies of individual resilience in the face of risk and challenge are finding that healthy development and successful learning are the product of critical developmental supports and opportunities. However, it is to resilience research--the long-term studies of positive human development in the face of environmental threat, challenge, stress, risk, and adversity—that educators and preventionists can turn to find the most powerful research-based answer to what these supports and opportunities should look like for all young people in all schools.3 They consist of three simple and common-sensical principles of effectiveness:

• caring relationships • positive expectation messages and beliefs, and • opportunities for participation and contribution.4

Whenever and wherever you find a school achieving positive academic outcomes for all children—not just the few—you will find this commonsense philosophy driving the mission of the school. Resiliency requires changing hearts and minds. Caring relationships Caring relationships are the supportive connections to others that model and support healthy development and well-being. Ultimately, they weave the fabric of a safe and resilient school. Caring relationships have been identified by these longitudinal studies of human resilience, program evaluation research, the recent National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health,5 qualitative studies, and personal stories as the most critical factor protecting healthy and successful child and youth development even in the face of multiple risks. Caring relationships are those of mutual trust in which someone is “there“ for a youth. This is demonstrated by having adults in the school who take an active interest in who the young person is, being respectful, having compassion for a youth’s life circumstances, and paying attention and actively listening to and talking with the youth. During adolescence the peer group emerges as a critical provider of this essential support.


High expectation messages High expectation messages refer to the consistent communication of direct and indirect messages that the young person can and will succeed. These messages are at the core of caring relationships and reflect the adult’s (and friend’s) belief in the youth’s innate resilience and ability to learn. The message, “You can make it; you have everything it takes to achieve your dreams; I’ll be there to support you” is a theme in resilience research and a pivotal protective factor in the family, school, and/or community environments of youth who have overcome the odds. In addition to this challenge plus support message, a high expectation approach conveys firm guidance—clear boundaries and the structure necessary for creating a sense of safety and predictability—not to enforce compliance and control but to allow for the freedom and exploration necessary to develop autonomy, identity, and self-control. A high expectation approach is also individually- based and strengths-focused. This means identifying each youth’s unique strengths, gifts, and callings and nurturing them as well as using them to work on needs or concerns. Having high expectations assumes that “one size never fits all.” Opportunities for participation and contribution Resilience research has documented the positive developmental outcomes, including reductions in health –risk behaviors and increases in academic success factors, that result when youth are given the chance to belong to a group; to have responsibilities; to be involved in relevant, engaging, and respected activities; to have a voice and choice; to make decisions, to plan; and to have ownership and leadership. Most importantly, resilience research and outcome evaluations of service learning and cooperative learning find positive academic and social outcomes when youth are given the opportunity to give back their gift—to be of service to other people, to nature, to their community and world. Providing young people with opportunities for meaningful participation is a natural outcome of schools and classrooms that convey high expectations. It is no coincidence that resilience and other social and behavioral research continually identify these three characteristics as supporting healthy and successful outcomes. It is precisely through caring relationships, high expectation messages, and opportunities for participation and contribution that we engage our students’ intrinsic motivation—their drive to meet their developmental needs for safety, love, belonging, respect, mastery, challenge, power and identity, and, ultimately, for meaning. The people and places most often identified in the resilience research as providing these 3 “protective” factors—thus meeting students’ developmental needs--were teachers and schools. In the words of Emmy Werner, “One of the wonderful things we see now in adulthood is that these children really remember one or two teachers who made the difference. They mourn some of those teachers more than they do their own family members because what went out of their lives was a person who looked beyond outward experience, their behavior, and their often times unkempt appearance, and saw the promise” 6

Resilience research has also found that schools that not only have these turnaround teachers but that have fair and equitably enforced rules, lots of and varied opportunities to succeed, and that give students a decision-making voice and opportunities to work with and be helpful to others become safe havens for students to develop cognitively, socially, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. In the words of one student, “School was my church, it was my religion. It was constant, the only thing that I could count on every day….I would not be here if it was not for school.” . In other words, they become places where students’ developmental needs are honored and placed centrally in the mission of the school. Let’s look at what these mean for schools.


Safety refers to both physical and emotional safety. For healthy development and successful learning to occur our children must feel safe in their classrooms and schools. Brain research tells us that when children do NOT feel safe, their brain stays in a vicious fight-flight circuit. In order to engage higher order thinking skills and creativity, a child must feel safe. The gut response measures often taken by politicians and some school administrations to school safety often become barriers to achieving real school safety. The hiring of more police officers and security guards; installing sophisticated weapon detection and student surveillance devices; toughening punishments for children who misbehave; and attempting to identify students at risk for becoming mass murderers often only further marginalize youth that are “different”—making them feel even more unsafe. And do remember that Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold did not feel safe in their schools? Real safety only comes through building an inclusive school community in which diversity is honored and all students are welcomed into the circle. A first step in creating a safe classroom and school is inviting students to create their own agreements/ground rules…such as occurs in schools using the process of Tribes. Love and belonging refers to basic affiliation and attachment needs—the need to be connected to people and places that ultimately gives all of our lives meaning and hope. Meeting academic standards requires starting with relationships. No quote has ever stated this more eloquently than the following words of Nel Noddings: “At a time when the traditional structures of caring have deteriorated, schools must places where teachers and students live together, talk with each other, take delight in each other’s company. My guess is that when schools focus on what really matters in life, the cognitive ends we now pursue so painfully and artificially will be achieved somewhat more naturally…It is obvious that children will work harder and do things-even odd things like adding fractions—for people they love and trust.” 7 What does this mean for your school? It means we must put relationships at the heart of what we do in our classrooms and schools. There are hundreds of ways to do this: making one-to-one connections with a student—even for a few seconds is a powerful acknowledgement; shaking hands, actively listening, being available, showing an interest, noticing something they’re doing right, and so on. In some schools, every student is assigned to an adult who checks in with him or her at least once a week. Besides student-teacher connections, we have to create inclusive classroom communities where all students feel invited in. Cooperative learning groups and peer-helping in which ALL students can be helpers—even challenged students can help younger youth—are critical strategies for building belonging. This means paying special attention to who’s not currently included and including them. Healthy development requires that students stay connected; relationships must be maintained and responsibilities honored.

Class size reduction can be an effective support for teacher-student relationship-building. It gives classroom teachers more and more opportunities to get to know and connect with their students. At the school level, it means breaking up large schools into smaller schools such as schools-within-schools, academies, and career magnets. In classrooms, it means that each student is a member in an on-going tribe. Relationships cannot happen in large anonymous groups. It is human nature to create our own small groupings because we are all seeking safety and belonging. As educators we need to create small heterogeneous groupings in which everyone has a place and diversity is honored as it is in Tribes Learning Communities. After school activities also provide a great opportunity to create small groupings with the adult serving as facilitator/mentor. These can range from support groups of all kinds to interest-based groups to community-service groups.


Respect If we want good outcomes in the traditional 3 R's: Reading, Riting, Rithmetic, we need an additional 3 R's: Relationship, Respect, and Responsibility. The need or drive to be respected—to be acknowledged and honored for who we are is a powerful motivator. Lack of respect—along with lack of caring and boredom—are usually the top three reasons school dropouts give for leaving school. May I suggest that we if we want good outcomes in the traditional 3 R's: Reading, Riting, Rithmetic, we need an additional 3 R's: Relationship, Respect, and Responsibility. Debra Meier’s turnaround school, Central Park East in Harlem, put both relationships and respect at the heart of her school’s mission. She wrote, “Maybe mutual respect is what we’re all looking for—which means feeling sure the other person acknowledges us, sees us for who we are—as their equal I value and importance. When there’s enough respect, perhaps we’re able to give up tight control over our youngsters, and give them more space to make their own decisions, including their own mistakes” 8 Once again, there are hundreds of ways school staff can show respect to students. Primarily, however, if we want students to be respectful to us, we must model it first. Attentive listening and speaking nonjudgmentally, shaking hands, using a Namaste greeting which mean, "I greet the soul within you." Once again, a small group process like Tribes is a powerful structure for promoting a respectful climate in which teasing, harassment, bullying, and other forms of violence are not tolerated. Mastery and challenge The drive for accomplishment—to be good at something—is inborn in all of us. Where we have our problems in schooling is that we have very narrowly defined what that “something” can be. We have assigned greater value to mathematical and linguistic intelligences and in terms of the physical—to sports participation than dance--than the rest of these intelligences. This is what our culture values and yes, students need to learn. However, what Howard Gardner and his disciples of multiple intelligences tell us is that we need to use the strengths--the intelligences students are especially good in—to address the areas of challenge. To have someone with the power of a teacher acknowledge your gifts is an incredible motivator that facilitates learning in the challenging areas. I would like to point out that the strengths especially found in resilience literature include competencies in all these areas—especially the inter- and intra-personal areas and creativity and outlets for the imagination. So what does this mean for schools? It means we have to create opportunities for success in each of these intelligences. We need to do activities in school in which we learn the interests, strengths, gifts, and dreams of each of our students. We need after school clubs where students can explore their interests in small groups. What about sports teams open to any student that wanted to play?. We need to value each of the gifts our young people bring. Our artists need to have their work displayed and honored as much as the athletes have their trophies displayed. I might mention that in Columbine High School the sports trophies were showcased in the front hall—the artwork down a back corridor. Sports pages in the yearbook were in color, a national debating team and other clubs in black and white. The homecoming king was a football player on probation for burglary. Challenge is a related drive to mastery but refers more to the idea of taking risks. Adolescents especially need to have opportunities to take healthy risks. Do you know risk-taking is often on lists of risk factors? It is also one of the characteristics of successful people? We now have a wonderful study of adventure learning that illustrates how this approach (also referred to as Outward Bound and outdoor experience programs) not only helps adolescents achieve all of the developmental tasks—autonomy and independence, social competency, a sense of purpose, and problem-solving. It produces positive


academic outcomes as well—even though it is a nonacademic program. 9 Why this is so powerful? Among many attributes, adventure programs create a restorative environment—especially through group process and support—in which most of adolescents developmental needs are met. Providing ropes courses and challenge courses through after school programming is one obvious approach. However, this research also makes the case for experiential learning—hands on, working in groups under adults’ supervision and facilitation, and time for reflection. Sound familiar? These are also the characteristics of the process of Tribes. Power and autonomy are the needs not only to find one’s identity but to discover oneself as an autonomous person. We’re talking here about self-efficacy—knowing you can take action and influence your environment. Youth who feel a sense of their own worth and power don’t need guns to feel powerful; they don’t need to hurt others or themselves to prove they exist and matter. How do we meet student’s need to have some power and control? We give them opportunities to participate and contribute in an ongoing way in our classrooms and schools. Once again, while approaches like cooperative learning, peer helping, and service learning meet this drive, the bottom line is having personal control—chances to make decisions about their own schooling. This means we, as teachers and administrators, don’t impose our ideas of what students need—we ask them. This is the simple strategy of asking students their opinions, their needs, their ideas—and acting on them—not tokenizing them. Having your students create the governing rules of the classroom is a key strategy. When a problem develops, we can bring the students in on it, inviting their ideas of how we—as a classroom community—can solve it. In order to develop healthy psychological autonomy, adolescents need safety and the room to grow within the structure of a caring community. Meaning Last—and certainly not least but probably the most important!—is the search for meaning that lies at the heart of every human life. Humans, including the adolescent variety, have the need to find meaning in what they do. Our genetic code makes us meaning-makers, constructors of our own knowledge. We must find purpose and relevance in what we do or we experience a disconnect—a sense of alienation from our true sense of calling. The loss of meaning is probably one of the major underlying reasons that 40% of our teens have unmet mental health needs—especially depression and stress. Government figures from 1998 show reductions in almost all teen health-risk behaviors: violence and alcohol, tobacco use, and drug abuse. However, depression, suicidality, and suicide are statistics that are not going down. Schools need to be safe places for the exploration of the critical existential questions that drive not only the adolescent search for meaning but all of our quests for a meaningful life.10

• Who am I? What is my true nature? This is the search for identity. • What do I love? What are my interests, and dreams? This is the search for meaning. • How shall I live? What values do I wish to live by? This is the search for morality. • What is my gift to the family of the earth? What are my strengths and gifts? How can I make a

difference? This is the search for purpose. These questions of purpose are not particularly comfortable for schools. In fact, purpose is primarily taught in the curriculum through goal- setting and decision- making, and career exploration—most often with strictly rational techniques. We need to include the spiritual dimension—the above questions—if we are to help students make the deepest connection of all—to see themselves as interconnected to others, to nature, and to life itself. How do schools do this? Some schools use the Council process, a circle or group process that creates a climate of safety, respect, and honor to reflect and share in community these deep yearnings.11


Others use Tribes Community Circles which accomplish the caring community culture of connectedness in a similar way. Educators can also provide experiences that honor the questions and allow students to give their gifts to the world through creative expression—theater, dance, photography, video production, art, music, storytelling, and creative writing. Research on the arts is documenting the power of creative expression to achieve the developmental tasks of adolescence—as well as positive academic outcomes. 12 Similarly, research on community service learning, in which students can connect what they learn in schools to the real world and see themselves as active contributors, also achieves the developmental tasks and promotes academic success. 13 The common denominator running through the above strategies and approaches that meet adolescent developmental needs and thus help them achieve their developmental tasks is that of small group process. Group process is the vehicle for creating a caring community—for students and for educators. In fact, Thomas Sergiovanni writes, “The need for community is universal. A sense of belonging, of continuity, of being connected to others and to ideas and values that make ourselves meaningful and significant—these needs are shared by all of us” 14

Schools will be transformed only when this community-building process is implemented for teachers as well as for students. The critical challenge for the 21st century does not lie in mastering this piece of information or that technology. It lies in creating connectedness--in building schools across the nation that tap the innate developmental wisdom that is our shared humanity, connecting us to each other and to our shared web of life.

See Me Beautiful Song by Red Grammer15

See me beautiful…

Look for the best in me It's what I really am And all I want to be,

It may take some time It may be hard to find…

See me beautiful.

See me beautiful… Each and every day,

Could you take a chance Could you find a way

To see me shining through In everything I do-

And see me…beautiful.


Notes

1. Werner, Emily and Smith, Ruth. (1989). Vulnerable But Invincible: A Longitudinal Study of Resilient Children and Youth. New York, NY: Adams, Bannister and Cox.

2. A key objective of Tribes is to bring knowledge of resiliency studies to educators and parents. The

articulate papers of our friend, Bonnie Benard, are to be credited with summarizing more than forty years of research studies. Her initial work was supported by the Western Regional Center for Drug Free Schools and Communities, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Portland, OR. It is a great honor to have Bonnie Benard write this article for this book.

3. Benard, Bonnie. (1991). Fostering Resiliency in Kids: Protective Factors In the Family, School, and

Community. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.

4. Benard. (1991).

5. Resnick, M., Bearman, P., Blum, R., Bauman, K., Harris, K., Jones, J., Tabor, J., Beuring, T., Sieving, R., Shew, M., Ireland, M., Bearinger, L., and Udry, J. Protecting Adolescents from Harm: Findings from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health, Journal of the American Medical Association, 1997, pp. 278, 823-832.

6. Werner, E. and Smith, R. (1992). Overcoming the Odds: High-Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood. New

York, NY: Cornell University Press.

7. N oddings, N. Schools Face Crisis in Caring, Education Week, December 1988, p. 32.

8. Meier. D. (1995). The Power of Their Idea: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

9. Hattie, J., Marsh, H., Neill, J., and Richards, G. Adventure Education and Outward Bound: Out-of-Class

Experiences That Make a Lasting Difference. Review of Educational Research, 1997, pp. 67, 43-87.

10. Muller, W. (1996). How, Then, Shall We Live? Four Simple Questions That Reveal the Beauty and Meaning of Our Lives. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

11. Kessler, R. (2000). The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection, Compassion, and

Character at School. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

12. Catterall, J. Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School, Americans for the Arts Monographs, 1997, v.1, no. 9.

13. Melchior, A. National Evaluation of Learn and Serve America: Interim and Final Evaluation, National

Corporation for Community Service, 1996-1998.

14. Sergiovanni, T. (1994). Building Community In Schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

15. Permission to use has been granted by Red Grammer of Red Note Records. “See Me Beautiful” is from his Teaching Peace CD or audiotape, available from CenterSource Systems. An order form is contained in the back of this book.

Professional Learning Communities By Bonnie Benard Excerpt from What Is It About Tribes? The Research-Based Components of the Developmental Process of Tribes Learning Communities, by Bonnie Benard, WestEd, published by CenterSource Systems, Cloverdale, CA, 2005.

…Creating a classroom community of learners is dependent on staff having a professional learning community.

One of the major theories underlying Tribes TLC is that of systems theory. This perspective, growing out of the fields of biology, psychology, and sociology, focuses on the inter-related nature of a living system and underlies most current thinking in social psychology [see Fritjof Capra’s The Web of Life (1996) and The Hidden Connections (2002) for wonderfully readable overviews of this perspective]. Individuals, families, schools, organizations, and communities are all social systems, made up of yet smaller subsystems. Applying this perspective to a school, schools consist not only of student groups or subsystems but of staff, parents, and other community subsystems. What has become clear is that none of these subsystems operate in isolation and that improving one necessitates improving all the others. The Tribes TLC process recognizes this systemic nature of schools, acknowledging that focusing on human development and learning for students necessitates creating parallel processes for teachers and other school staff as well as for families and the larger community. We must remember that, “Although the individual student is the focus of the learning process,… individual behavior and psychological experiences arise out of a cultural context and are based on interpersonal relations. The systems theory alerts us to the systemic nature of classroom life and turns us away from a narrow individualistic focus” (Schmuck & Schmuck, 2001), p. 33). Thus the Tribes theory of change focuses on transforming all the subsystems within a school community into learning communities. Especially critical to school transformation is the creation of professional learning communities consisting of teachers and other school staff. In fact, as we will see in this section, research has identified that having a professional learning community is sine qua non the most important factor associated with positive health and learning outcomes for students—and with increased teacher satisfaction and job retention. The literature is also clear on what constitutes a professional learning community (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995; Kruse et al., 1995; Lieberman, 1995; Lieberman & Miller, 1990; Talbert & MacLaughlin, 1994). Summarizing much of what leading school reformers like Linda Darling-Hammond, Milbrey McLaughlin, Ann Lieberman, and Judith Warren Little have advocated, Sergiovanni lists the practices of professional learning communities as doing the following (1996):

• Encourage teachers to reflect on their own practice; • Acknowledge that teachers develop at different rates, and that at any given time are

more ready to learn some things than others; • Acknowledge that teachers have different talents and interests; • Give high priority to conversation and dialogue among teachers. • Provide for collaborative learning among teachers; • Emphasize caring relationships and felt interdependencies; • Call upon teachers to respond morally to their work; • View teachers as supervisors of learning communities (1996, p. 142).

If we were to substitute “students” for “teachers” we would have a list to give teachers of just what students need to be successful learners! Both of these lists are what Tribes TLC is all about. As Lieberman (1995) writes, “People learn best through active involvement and through thinking about and becoming articulate about what they have learned. Processes, practices, and policies built on this view of learning are at the heart of a more expanded view of teacher development that encourages teachers to involve themselves as learners—in much the same way as they wish their students would (p. 592). Virtually every research-based book written on improving schools cited in this document calls for teacher professional community as essential to school change—including those by Michael Fullan, Thomas Sergiovanni, Philip Schectley, Barbara Rogoloff, Seymour Sarason, to name just a few of the scholars. Literally dozens of studies—and even more practitioner books—have been conducted and written on this topic. According to Michael Huberman (1995), “The literature on professional development has become voluminous” (p. 193). We will examine a few of the seminal long-term research endeavors that especially support the importance of teacher professional community: the work of Milbrey McLaughlin and her colleagues at Stanford University’s Center for the Context of Secondary School Teaching, of Judith Warren Little at the University of California-Berkeley, of Fred Newmann and Gary Wehlage at the University of Wisconsin’ Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools and their colleagues at the University of Minnesota, Karen Seashore Louis and Sharon Kruse, Valerie Lee and Julia Smith’s analysis of the National Educational Longitudinal Study, and Anthony Bryk and his colleagues at the Center for School Improvement and the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. Interestingly, a sidebar comment in the spirit of collaboration, is the fact that most of these researchers have worked and published collegially with each other over the years. In a seminal article on school change, McLaughlin revisited a famous Rand study of successful school change efforts (1990). Her analysis identified “teacher collegiality,” that is, teachers collaboration and connection with other teachers, as the key to sustaining school improvement. “Reforms or policies that engage the natural networks of teachers can support change efforts in a more sustained fashion…than strategies that adhere solely to a delivery structure outlined by the policy system” (1990, p. 15). In another national study, she and Julie Talbert found that teacher collegiality was the school variable associated with higher levels of student achievement (1993). McLaughlin states: “Teachers within the same school or even within the same department developed different responses to similar students depending on the character of their collegial

©2005, CenterSource Systems, www.tribes.com

environment. Which response a teacher chose was a product of his or her conception of task as framed and supported by a particular school or department community” (1990, p. 89). The data of Talbert and McLaughlin (1993) also found that, “Teachers who participate in strong professional communities within their subject area departments or other teacher networks, have higher levels of professionalism, as measured in this study, than do teachers in less collegial settings” (pp. 142-143). In other words, local communities of teachers are the vehicles for enhanced professionalism in teaching. Enhancing professionalism according to Talbert and McLaughlin (1993) is be determined locally as colleagues come to share standards for educational practice, that is, to develop shared norms, values, beliefs, and attitudes, including strong commitments to students in terms of a mission that includes trusting and caring relationships and to their profession. According to Ann Lieberman (1995), one of the scholars of teacher professional communities, “Teachers must have opportunities to discuss, think about, try out, and hone new practices” (p. 593) through structures such as problem-solving groups or decision-making teams—or teacher Tribes—in the context of a culture of “inquiry.” In essence, what teachers need in the school is exactly what we have discussed that students need in the classroom—a focus on human development and learning in a culture of caring relationships, positive expectation messages, and opportunities for participation (i.e., “inquiry”) within the structure of small learning groups. As Fullan and Hargreaves (1991/1996) claim, “Teacher development and student development are reciprocally related” (p. 82). Judith Warren Little’s influential research into teacher professional development (1993) also identified that “subject matter collaboratives” or “teacher networks” or “ongoing local study groups” offer a far more effective approach than the traditional training-and- coaching model of professional development to actually effect the many, forever-changing and complex educational reforms. She writes, “Altogether, the profoundly local character of much reform activity would seem to offer substantial opportunity to create and support alternative modes of professional development—those that enable local educators to do the hard work of reinventing schools and teaching” (p. 146). She, furthermore, identifies the following six often quoted descriptors of what constitutes effective professional development, descriptions that none other than a teacher learning group or teacher Tribe could fulfill:

• Professional development offers meaningful intellectual, social, and emotional engagement with ideas, with materials, and with colleagues both in and out of teaching.

• Professional development takes explicit account of the contexts of teaching and the experience of teachers.

• Professional development offers support for informed dissent. • Professional development places classroom practice in the larger contexts of

school practice and the educational careers of children. • Professional development prepares teachers (as well as students and their

parents) to employ the techniques and perspectives of inquiry….It acknowledges that our strength may derive less from teachers’ willingness to consume research knowledge than from their capacity to generate knowledge and to assess the knowledge claimed by others.


• The governance of professional development ensures bureaucratic restraint and a balance between the interests of individuals and the interests of institutions (pp. 138-139).

Looking at the effects of teacher collegiality on student outcomes, Michael Fullan (1999) refers to the study of school restructuring by Fred Newmann and Gary Wehlage (1995) and their colleague Karen Seashore Louis and Sharon Kruse (1995) as “providing the most explicit evidence on the relationship between professional community and student performance” (p. 31). Using measures of standardized achievement tests and more ‘authentic’ performance-based measures of learning, these researchers found that some schools did much better (using student achievement in mathematics, science and social sciences as the indicators). They identified the existence of “high professional community” as the reason for students’ better performance. Newmann and Wehlage (1995) claim professional communities work due to the following reasons:

• Teachers pursue a clear purpose for all students’ learning. • Teachers engage in collaborative activity to achieve the purpose. • Teachers take collaborative responsibility for student learning. • Schoolwide teacher professional community affected the level of classroom

authentic pedagogy, which in turn affected student performance. ª Schoolwide teacher professional community affected the level of social support

for student learning, which in turn affected student performance” (pp. 30, 32). These assumptions also apply to the underlying Tribes TLC theory of change. In an influential study supporting teacher collaboration—and one also having import in the small schools movement, Valerie Lee and Julia Smith (1994) studied the effects of restructuring on high-school students using data collected as part of the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) in 1988 and 1990. Data on 11,000 students enrolled in 820 high schools nationwide documented that students learn more in schools that are organized “communally” rather than bureaucratically. Specifically, “Increased gains in student engagement and academic performance, as well as in the degree of equity, [were] found in school with communal restructuring practices, compared to schools with traditional [bureaucratic] restructuring practices and schools with no restructuring practices” (p. 4). The “communal” model of school structure, often referred to now as “the personalized high school” approach, is essentially a developmental model like Tribes TLC in which “contact between people is more sustained and more personal and there is more agreement on organizational mission for which people share responsibility” (Lee & Smith, 1994, p. 2). “In a communally organized school, teachers work collaboratively, often in teams that are formed across subjects. Instead of being governed by top-down directives, teachers have more input into decisions affecting their work. And instead of slotting students into different educational paths, a communal school would group students of diverse talents and interests together for instruction” (Lee & Smith, 1994, p. 16). In essence, a communal school is another way of describing a Tribes school: “In a communal school the educational focus for students and teachers seems clearer to those who experience it, and the increased opportunity for sustained contact in groups


may heighten the commitment of both teachers and students to succeed. Schools with this form have more meaning for their members” (Lee & Smith, 1994, p. 2). A follow-up qualitative case study of three “restructuring” schools conducted by Jacqueline Ancess (2000) further validates the power of teacher inquiry groups. Ancess’ study, which explored the link between teacher learning, teacher instructional behavior, and student outcomes showed that when teachers engaged in an ongoing learning process, they tended to identify and carry out practices that resulted in increased graduation rates, improved college admission rates, and higher academic achievement for their students. She explains that, “In each case the teachers shared student outcomes and their practice with other faculty in school-wide forums designed for public sharing. Over a period of several years, evidence of improved student outcomes eventually persuaded the entire faculty at each school to adopt these organizational and pedagogical innovations on a school-wide basis” (2000, p. 597). She writes that in each of the schools she studied, “A constellation of nine conditions made the above changes possible: (1) incentives for teacher inquiry, (2) opportunity for teacher inquiry, (3) teacher capacity for leadership in innovation and inquiry, (4) respect for teacher authority, (5) flexible school structure, (6) responsive and supportive administration, (7) sufficient time, (8) sufficient resources, and (9) regulatory flexibility” (2000, pp. 597-598). Anthony Bryk and his colleagues from the University of Chicago Center for School Improvement and the Consortium on Chicago School Research have done several seminal studies supportive of teacher collegiality and communally organized schools (Bryk & Driscoll, 1988; Bryk, Lee, & Holland, 1993; Bryk & Schneider, 2002). As we discussed in Chapter 2, his latest study with Barbara Schneider (2002), a longitudinal study of 400 Chicago elementary schools, identified that, “Social trust among teachers, parents, and school leaders improves much of the routine work of schools and is a key resource for reform” (Bryk & Schneider, 2003, p. 1). Social or relational trust consists of respect, personal regard, competence in core responsibilities, and personal integrity. “By linking evidence on the schools’ changing academic productivity with survey results on school trust over a long period of time, we were able to document the powerful influence that such trust plays as a resource for reform” (p.2). In terms of teacher collegiality, this study found the following effects: (1) “Collective decision making with broad teacher buy-in, a crucial ingredient for reform, occurs more readily in schools with strong relational trust”; and (2) “In schools in which relational trust was improving over time, teachers increasingly characterized their colleagues as committed and loyal to the school and more eager to engage in new practices that might help students learn better”; and (3) “Relational trust is also more likely to arise in schools where at least a modicum of choice exists for both staff and students” (p. 4 & 6). In another Consortium study with teacher collegiality effects and using the same data base as Bryk et al’s, Smith, Lee, and Newman inquired into teacher instructional style, organizational structures, and achievement in Chicago elementary schools (2001). These researchers found the following connection between teacher collegiality and children’s higher achievement on standardized tests: Children scored higher on these tests when—contrary to common thought that “skill-and-drill” is more effective for test prep-- their teachers used interactive instruction; and teachers who used interactive instruction were more likely to be found in schools that supported teachers collegiality, specifically their engagement in reflective discussions about their


practice. What we basically find in these last two studies is support for the transformative power of the three protective factors that create a Tribes caring culture for teachers as well as students: caring relationships, positive expectations, and opportunities for participation. Returning to some of the research we cited earlier in this document, we also find evidence that teacher professional community is a critical component not only of the whole school reform models examined by the American Institutes of Research (1999) we discussed earlier such as Comer’s model and the Child Development Project of the Developmental Studies Center but is also found in school effectiveness research and research on high-performing schools. For example, Michael Rutter and his colleagues classic study (1979) of the power of school climate to change holistic student outcomes discussed elsewhere in this document) also sheds light on the importance of shared staff norms, especially norms around teamwork, cooperation, and shared discipline. This three-year longitudinal study in twelve urban high schools found that: (1) Students achieved more highly in schools where staff members shared expectations to plan the course of study cooperatively. In such schools, the group planning provided opportunities for teachers to encourage and support one another. (2) Students achieved more highly and had fewer behavioral problems in schools where the disciplinary rules for the pupils were set by the teachers as a group (teamwork and cooperation), in contrast to leaving individual teachers to work out the rules of discipline for themselves. (3) Students achieved better in schools where staff norms supported being open and direct with one another. In the less successful schools, faculty members expected one another to be autonomous, private, and aloof. In examining the common elements of five high-performing, high poverty middle schools, Susan Trimble (2002) found that each of them used teams of teachers and administrators to do the work of the school. “My work with the five high performing schools showed that these schools accomplished their work using a variety of types of teams. In addition to interdisciplinary teams, these other types included administrative teams, grade level teams, school improvement teams, content area teams, student support teams, and special focus teams” (2002, p. 5). She explains their success as follows:

Teams provide the structure for discussion and problem solving while working with diverse populations of students with complex situations. They also activate the creative thinking processes and group dynamics that generate multiple solutions to problems… Teams also supply emotional support that can evolve into small groups of communities for learning. In short, teams engage the participants and establish the relationships that Hargreaves and Fullan (1998) deem as “absolutely necessary for successful reform” (p. 5).

References The full document includes extensive references and is available from CenterSource Systems, Cloverdale, CA, 800-810-1701, www.tribes.com.

186 R E A C H I N G A L L B Y C R E A T I N G T R I B E S L E A R N I N G C O M M U N I T I E S

FROM APRINCIPAL’SVIEW

Carole Freehan, Ph.D. As a Tribes TLC® Trainer and former principal of Pearl Harbor Kai Elementary School in Honolulu, Hawaii, Carole trained in-service and pre-service teachers, clerical, and support staff to create a school community that supported increased stu-dent learning. She earned her doctorate in Leadership Studies and currently teaches Educational Leadership courses to doctoral stu-dents, modeling the Tribes process for future educa-tional leaders.

Transforming any school into an excellent school involves everyone working hard. It takes the commit-ment of parents, teaching staff, para-professionals, clerical, cafeteria and custodial staff to create an excep-tional learning environment for chil-dren. As educators, we need to improve and strengthen our teaching strategies while school is in session. We are under unbelievable pressure from a multitude of constituencies: parents, boards of education, com-munity, and society. The stakes are constantly being raised.

How can the transformation of a school take place? I believe it comes when everyone knows what excel-lence looks like, feels like and sounds like. It comes when we can collabo-rate to seek out the hard issues of what is important for children to learn. It happens when the re-cultur-ing of the school ensures that all the constituents’ voices are heard and included.

Historically, Pearl Harbor Kai Elementary has regularly scored in the average or slightly above average on standardized tests. As a staff we were struggling with making changes by implementing programs. We were hoping that the next program would be one to help us rise above medioc-rity and transport us to a higher level of excellence. As part of the change process, I put teachers into groups

and asked them to work together on school-wide professional issues.

While some groups functioned very well, others were less successful. I arranged and rearranged groups of teachers by interest and expertise. The end result was a scattering of many good ideas that did not lead to a coherent workable structure for school improvement. Individually the teachers were excellent teachers, but working collaboratively as a group was a very different and underdevel-oped skill.

As much as I rationalized this whole process, I knew that I was missing something—a something that could really affect change in the staff. The lightning bolt of discovery hit me when I went through my first four-day Tribes TLC® training with half of my staff. I realized that my teachers and other staff members were not a learning community or any type of community, even though many of them had worked together for over a decade! Just as a teacher has a classroom of children who come with diverse talents and gifts, I had the same situation, although my students were adults in the school. A few months after I completed the Tribes TLC® training, I was able to provide another four-day training for the rest of my staff and a two-day program for my classified staff and parent leaders in the school. Training

Transforming a School

B R I N G I N G I T A L L T O G E T H E R 187

everyone at the school was the first and the easiest step we need to take.

Tribes TLC® is not that next pro-gram; rather it is a philosophy and process that is critical to creating an environment in which everyone is both a teacher and a learner. One of my roles as the principal is to model the process for the teachers. Teachers need support when they are trying something new or different. They too need to be supported to use the caring Tribes agreements, to experi-ence strategies and take time for reflection questions that are critical to learning. We all know that experi-ence is the best teacher!

So how has the process of Tribes helped us? Well, as we continue to work to become an excellent school, we find that our efforts are not as frustrating as before. All of the teachers, paraprofessionals, classified staff, and students speak the same language. We have a common under-standing of the Community Agreements. This understanding is extending to our parents. We are traveling the journey to transform ourselves. Along the way we are cre-ating community, a community that is caring and supportive and learning. Pedagogical differences among the teaching staff are to be expected. Immersion in the process of Tribes has helped us to deal with the differ-ences and see them as opportunities

for professional growth. Now that we include everyone in a respectful and supportive environment, the teachers are more willing to take risks. I see a staff that works daily with their col-leagues. I hear student and teachers speak respectfully with each other reducing conflicts. I feel the support that radiates from students, teachers and staff to each other.

Tribes TLC® is not the panacea to a school’s problems. Just spending four days going through the training will not, by itself, change anything. We have to live the process every day. As the Principal, I know that I am responsible for carrying the torch for the school. Are we at the top level of excellence yet? Of course not! Have our standardized test scores improved? Yes, they have! As the school travels the Tribes trail together, I see the synergy of the teachers learning from each other and creating exciting opportunities for our students. There are still areas of instruction and assessment we need to define, study, align, update, and improve so that we increase stu-dent achievement. Knowing how to work and learn together, we are able to pass over any barriers that block out way towards consistent success. Now that we are a community, I find there are many hands carrying that torch now.

After ten years as a principal I finally figured that out—and I found a life again!

We often hear the question: “Whyhave schools in your district chosento use Tribes”? Our original goal wasto transform classrooms into interde-pendent, inclusive learning environ-ments that would increase success forall students. By using the Tribesprocess and common language as aframework, we would begin to alignother instructional initiatives acrossgrade levels and subjects.

Less than two years after the firstTribes 24-hour trainings, we realizedthat the impact of Tribes would bebigger, more systemic and morepowerful than predicted. As teachersand other staff began to use Tribes,vivid success stories telegraphed fromteacher to teacher and school toschool. Without a district mandateand with limited funding, Tribesgrew from two schools to implemen-tation in all elementary schools and aquarter of the middle schools.

Campus commitment was criticalto Tribes implementation. Admin-istrators and teaching staff demon-strated commitment by incorporatingtraining, resources and follow-upactivities into their campus plans. Thedistrict allocated resources forCenterSource materials and trainingfor a cadre of Certified Tribes DistrictTrainers with the goal of having twoper campus. A collaborative districtnetwork supported trainers with studygroup meetings to discuss progress ofimplementation.

Leaders’ commitment was a key toimplementation. Administrators wereurged to involve the entire commu-nity of students, parents, and staff inlearning and using the Tribes process.Principals and facilitators modeledthe use of Tribes in faculty meetings.Opportunities were created for staffto share successes, reflect on theirlearning, and plan collaboratively.

Assessments have helped toimprove support of Tribes each year.Observable evidence illustrated thatbehaviors and attitudes were chang-ing. Schools realized that many disci-pline approaches previously in usefailed to transfer responsibility to stu-dents. In a district evaluation, teach-ers who had implemented Tribesindicated that they spent less timemanaging student behavior, and stu-dents reported that they got alongbetter with others. The most excitingstories describe youngsters whochanged from “dropped out but pres-ent” to full participation. Groupbehaviors changed even at bus stopsas students became more responsiblefor their behavior.

Regular evaluations have beencritical to maintain community andadministrative support and to planfurther integration. In 1999, 55classroom teachers and their studentsresponded to an evaluation survey.Data indicated that in Tribes class-rooms mutual respect was consis-tently evidenced. Teachers indicated

184 R E A C H I N G A L L B Y C R E A T I N G T R I B E S L E A R N I N G C O M M U N I T I E S

Annette Griffith, M.Ed. Linda Reed, Ed.D.Marilyn Sumner, M.Ed.

Annette, Linda and Marilynorganized the initial SpringBranch ISD implementation ofTribes in 1994. Tribes TLC®

Trainers since 1995, theyhave most recently workedwith CenterSource andNancy Latham to developthe new training,Collaboration—The ArtForm of Leadership, which isdesigned to support leader-ship teams in Tribes LearningCommunity schools.

Transforming a District into a Caring CommunityFROM THE VIEWOF DISTRICTLEADERS

Annette has been ateacher, counselor, and dis-trict-level administrator.Currently, she is an inde-pendent consultant workingwith school districts to helpincrease the leadershipcapacity of both studentsand adults.

B R I N G I N G I T A L L T O G E T H E R 185

that they had more time for creativeteaching, and students saw newlearning as “fun.”

Various departments began toidentify ways that Tribes related totheir work. The most effective meet-ings look similar to the Tribes TLC®lesson components incorporatinginclusion, objectives, interactivestrategies, reflection and apprecia-tion. Work teams often comment onthe emerging sense of communityand positive energy.

After several years of implementa-tion, application of Tribes began toerode as the state created more man-dates, and other initiatives competedfor time. We knew that the longevityof the Tribes initiative was a result ofbuilding a strong link between Tribesand new initiatives such as charactereducation and developmental assets.To increase the integration of Tribes, afederal grant was written and awarded.Project HEART is a Partnerships inEducation grant designed to integratecharacter education with the statemandated curriculum. It provides allnew teachers with the opportunity tobe trained in Basic or Middle SchoolTribes. Teachers at four schools arepart of the research component thatinvolves additional coaching by PhyllisWells, the Character EducationFacilitator and current district leaderfor Tribes implementation. ProjectHEART is helping sustain theSBISD commitment to Tribes bybroadening our understanding of theconnection between social-emotionaland academic learning.

Spring Branch schools are still inthe midst of their Tribes journey.CenterSource has been an impor-tant partner providing leadershipand additional training. In 2004,Spring Branch had a ten-yearanniversary celebration to honorthe positive impact of Tribes!Jeanne Gibbs, Board members,administrators, staff, parents andstudents participated through sto-ries, interactive strategies and a cel-ebration community circle.Currently, Tribes school leadershipteams are taking advantage of thenew Collaboration: The Art Form ofLeadership training.

Our current superintendent, Dr.Duncan Klussmann is a staunch sup-porter of Tribes and what it hasaccomplished. “As accountability foracademic performance increases, itbecomes even more important thatwe make sure that we are addressingthe ‘whole child’ so that our studentslearn social and emotional skills aswell as the academic skills needed tobe successful. Tribes provides SpringBranch educators a process thatdevelops well-rounded, creative, crit-ical thinkers with a strong founda-tion in ethics and character.”

Our schools face daunting chal-lenges that require new ways to reachand teach all students. SBISD’s com-mitment to Tribes is weaving anamazing, stronger human fiber toimprove the way we “do school.”Please accept our invitation to join usin this journey that truly brings joyto learning and relationships.

Linda has worked as anelementary school principal,Interim Superintendent, and Assistant Superin-tendent. Currently, a private consultant, sherecently completed herDoctor of Education with a research emphasis on implementation.

Marilyn has worn manyhats, including teacher, curriculum coordinator, and district administrator.Currently, she is an independent consultantwith a focus on improvingwork, learning and leader-ship through collaboration.

Tribes TLC® – A Model and Promising Program CASEL SELect Program After an extensive program and evaluation review, Tribes was chosen by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) as one of 22 SELect Programs. CASEL summarizes the conceptual framework, well-researched criteria, and program review results in their publication, Safe and Sound: An Education Leader’s Guide to Evidence-Based Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Programs. Tribes TLC® earned recognition as a CASEL SELect Program by demonstrating the following requirements:

• provides outstanding coverage in five essential SEL areas • has well-designed evaluation demonstrating effectiveness, and • offers high-quality professional development.

Visit www.casel.org OJJDP Model Programs Guide Promising Program CenterSource is pleased to announce that Tribes TLC® has been included in the OJJDP (Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention) Model Programs Guide. OJJDP, an office of the U.S. Department of Justice, created the Model Programs Guide to assist educational practitioners and communities in “implementing evidence-based prevention and intervention programs that can make a difference in the lives of children and communities.” The Guide’s ratings are derived from four dimensions of program effectiveness –

• conceptual framework of the program • program fidelity • evaluation design • empirical evidence demonstrating the prevention or reduction of problem

behaviors, the reduction of risk factors, and the enhancement of protective factors.

Tribes is recognized as an OJJDP prevention program in the categories of –

• academic skills enhancement • afterschool and recreation • classroom curricula • conflict resolution and interpersonal skills • leadership and youth development

Visit www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org and www.dsgonline.com

60 COMMERCE LANE SUITE D

CLOVERDALE, CA 95425-4230

707 838 1061 FAX: 707 894 2355

WWW.TRIBES.COM

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CSAP’s Western CAPT Promising Practice Tribes TLC® is recognized as a promising practice by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s Western CAPT (Centers for the Application of Prevention Technologies). Promising practices are programs and strategies that have quantitative data showing positive outcomes in preventing or delaying substance abuse over a period of time. Tribes Learning Communities is listed as a comprehensive practice that addresses both risk and protective factors in the areas of family, school, individual, peer, and community. CSAP’s WesternCAPT has identified guiding principles as recommendations on how to create effective prevention programs and to gauge the program's potential effectiveness. The guiding principles can also be used to design innovative programs and strategies that are appropriate to the community's needs. Visit http://captus.samhsa.gov/western/western.cfm Helping America’s Youth Level 3 Program Tribes Learning Communities is recognized in the evidence-based Community Guide to Helping America’s Youth (HAY), an initiative of the White House. The Guide represents a collaborative effort of nine federal departments, including the Department of Education, Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of National Drug Control Policy, and National and Community Service. Tribes is recognized as a program that displays “a strong theoretical base and has been demonstrated to prevent delinquency and other child and youthful problems or reduce risk factors and enhance protective factors for them, using research methods with at least single group pre- and post-treatment measurements.” The rating is based on evaluation studies and identifies the concepts of risk and protective factors as frameworks for effective programs. Visit www.helpingamericasyouth.gov Funding Sources for Tribes Implementation

Tribes TLC® has been implemented using a variety of grant funding sources with a focus on enhancing academic achievement, professional development, mentor teaching, beginning teacher training, developing leadership, safe and drug free schools, comprehensive school reform, alcohol, tobacco and other drug abuse prevention, violence and bullying prevention, conflict resolution and mediation, character education, service learning, small learning communities, alternative education, charter schools, youth development, delinquency prevention, community development, technology in education, English language acquisition, diversity, multi-cultural education, health, wellness and physical education. Schools and districts have also received funding from foundations, corporations, and private organizations. Contact CenterSource for additional information and supporting documentation.

Evaluation of Tribes Learning Communities Evaluation of Tribes Learning Community Schools has examined the impact of the Tribes process on student behavior, academic performance, school culture, and teacher collegiality. Studies have shown that:

♦ Tribes TLC has a positive impact on classroom environment ♦ teachers report spending less time managing student behavior ♦ students are significantly less likely to be referred for disciplinary problems ♦ the Tribes process helps teachers address performance and content standards ♦ students in well-implemented classrooms score significantly higher on

standardized tests than students from comparison groups. ♦ teachers report increased staff collegiality and planning.

WestEd conducted a 2-year evaluation of the implementation and impact of the Tribes process in more than 40 schools nationwide. The evaluation combined qualitative data collected from structured interviews and student, teacher, and principal surveys with a statistical analysis of students’ standardized test scores. The standardized achievement test scores of students from “high-performing” Tribes classrooms were compared with those of two control groups (students from “low-performing” Tribes classrooms and students from non-Tribes classrooms) to determine which group showed the greatest improvement in reading and math scores over the course of one academic year.

The WestEd national evaluation found that:

• Tribes TLC is being fully implemented in participating schools, and is seen as a vehicle for facilitating continuous school improvement.

• There is evidence from teachers, students, and principals of improved student inclusion, respect for multicultural populations, sense of value among students, collaboration, and resiliency.

• Tribes TLC Schools enjoy safe and supportive classroom and school environments. • Significant and increasing student engagement is reported in Tribes TLC schools. • Most students work together collaboratively and build social collaborative skills. • Teachers, principals and Tribes trainers report declines in student referrals and suspensions. • There is evidence of better classroom management, and increased teacher collaboration and

planning. • Three quarters of teachers surveyed report that the Tribes TLC process helps them to

address state performance and content standards, and that Tribes TLC helps students master standards.

• 2nd grade reading and math scores increased significantly more in Tribes TLC schools than in comparison schools.

• 2nd grade math, 5th grade reading, and 5th grade math increased more in high-growth Tribes TLC schools than in comparison schools.

From 1996 through 1999, the School District of Beloit in Wisconsin conducted a comprehensive and award-winning evaluation of the effectiveness and impact of the Tribes process on more than 3,000 elementary and middle school students. The evaluation was presented by Dr. Derick Kiger at the 2001 American Education Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting and won the First Place Instructional Program Evaluation Award.

Tribes TLC’s impact on classroom environment and academic achievement was assessed, using qualitative information collected in teacher and student surveys and teacher focus groups and through a statistical analysis of standardized test scores. To assess the impact of program implementation on student achievement, the statistical analysis compared the test scores of students from “highly effective” Tribes classrooms with those of students from “less effective” Tribes classrooms.

The Beloit study found that

• fourth graders from Tribes classrooms where the program was well implemented scored significantly higher on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills than their counterparts from less well-implemented Tribes classrooms

• 59.7 percent of the teachers surveyed reported that they spent less time managing student behavior because of Tribes.

In 1993, Judith Holt conducted an evaluation of the impact of Tribes on discipline referrals at a middle school

in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Using an experimental research design, Holt randomly assigned 280 sixth grade students to either a treatment or an equivalent control group. Students in the treatment group were assigned to Tribes classrooms, where they received at least 4 hours of core instruction each day from a Tribes-trained teacher; students in the control group were assigned to classrooms where the Tribes process was not used. Student and teacher records, as well as records from the counseling and principal’s office, were then used to track the number of disciplinary problems that were formally reported in each group over a 1-semester period.

Holt’s evaluation of the Tribes program found that

• students based in Tribes classrooms were significantly less likely than non-Tribes students to be referred to the principal’s or a counselor’s office for disciplinary problems

• over the course of the study period, the Tribes students were formally referred for disciplinary action 41 times (27 percent of the study total), while non-Tribes students were referred a 113 times (73 percent of the study total).

• a breakdown of the different types of disciplinary referrals that occurred in both groups indicated that Tribes students were less likely to be referred for disciplinary problems of all types, including disruptive behavior, refusal to work or follow directions, and fighting.

The State of Hawaii study of 17 Elementary Schools using the process of Tribes found that

• mutual respect was the common denominator for all students and faculty.

Spring Branch ISD, Texas: In the spring of 1999, 55 classroom teachers and their students participated in a Tribes evaluation survey. Among the results found in their study were the following:

• Teachers who implemented Tribes indicated that they spent less time managing student behavior.

• Students in Tribes classes reported that they got along better with others. • Mutual respect was evidenced through behaviors in Tribes classrooms. • Teachers indicated that they had more time for creative teaching, and students saw new

learning as “fun.” • Group behaviors changed even at bus stops as students began accepting more

responsibility for their behavior.

Region VII ESC in Kilgore, Texas found that • discipline referrals were reduced in some cases over 50%.

References Brown, Laura and Ushijima, Teri. 1998. “Building School Communities: A district success story.” Windsor, California: CenterSource Systems. Brown, Laura and Ushijima, Teri. 2000. “Analysis of Tribes Assessment for 15 Central Oahu District Schools, School Year 1999-2000.”

Honolulu, Hawaii: Central Oahu School District. Cheswass, Roger. 2003. “Evaluation of the Implementation and Impact of Tribes TLC: Preliminary Evaluation Report.” San Francisco,

California: WestEd. ______. 2004. “Evaluation of School Context and Structures in Tribes TLC Schools.” San Francisco, California: WestEd. ______. 2004. “Evaluation of the Implementation and Impact of Tribes TLC: Second Year Study.” San Francisco, California: WestEd. Dworkin, Rosalind and Griffith, Annette. 1999. “An Evaluation of the Tribes Program.” Houston, Texas: Spring Branch Independent School

District. Holt, Judith. 2000. “Tribes Training and Experiences Lower the Incidence of Referral Actions for Teachers and Students.” PDK Connection.

Tulsa, Oklahoma: Phi Delta Kappa, Tulsa Chapter 1021. Kiger, Derick. 1997. “TRIBES Evaluation – Phase One.” Research Focus, Vol. 3, No. 2. Beloit, Wisconsin: Research and Accountability

Department, School District of Beloit. Kiger, Derick. 1998. “TRIBES Evaluation – Phase Two (Precursor Study).” Research Focus, Vol . 3, No. 9. Beloit, Wisconsin: Research and

Accountability Department, School District of Beloit. Kiger, Derick. 2000. “The Tribes Process: Phase III Evaluation.” Beloit, Wisconsin: Research and Accountability Department, School District of

Beloit. (This evaluation won First Place for Instructional Program Evaluation in 2001, awarded by American Educational Research Association.)

Kiger, Derick. 2000. “The Tribes TLC Process: A preliminary evaluation of classroom implementation & impact on student achievement.” Education, Vol. 120, No. 3, pp. 586-592.

Schneider, Patricia, et. al. 1999. “Reflecting on the Tribes TLC Process Review.” Kilgore, Texas: Longview Independent School District, Region VII Education Service Center.

To learn how your school can also excel as a Tribes Learning Community,

call (800) 810-1701 or email [email protected]

COLUMBUS MAGNET SCHOOL

46 CONCORD STREET S. NORWALK, CT 06854

March 31, 2008

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing this letter to highly recommend the Tribes Learning Community process for your school district. We have been using the Tribes process at Columbus Magnet School since the 2000 -2001 school year with great results.

Eight years ago the teachers approached me stating that many students were disrespectful, uncaring, not motivated and disruptive. At that time the Director of H.O.T. (Higher Order Thinking) Schools in Connecticut told me about the Tribes process. With school reform grant money and through Center Source I was able to bring in Nancy Lindhjem to provide training for the teaching staff.

Through Nancy’s knowledge about human development, skill in working with adults and approachable personality the staff jumped right in with the students using the Tribes process. Now teachers report a decrease in student behavior problems, increase in student self-esteem and greater motivation for academic learning.

As the principal I continue to use Tribes with teachers, para-professionals, students and parents at faculty meetings, student council, and parent meetings. I now observe classrooms where students are productively engaged in cooperative group learning and where teacher collegiality has increased. I have been so impressed with the results that I became a Tribes trainer so that I can train new staff members in the Tribes process as they become a part of the Columbus Community.

The Tribes process is a part of everything we do at Columbus. Through Tribes we have developed a school community committed to continual reflective practice towards improvement and educational excellence.

If you should have any further questions regarding the value of Tribes please do not hesitate to call at (203) 899-2840.

Sincerely,

Marilyn Liberatore Principal

Moanalua Middle School

1289 Mahiole St., Honolulu, HI 96819 (808) 831-7850

Why TRIBES TLC for High Schools?

A warm Hawaii aloha from a veteran principal of a Tribes school, Moanalua Middle. Seven years ago I contributed a story of our Tribes journey, Why Tribes for Middle School?, for Jeanne Gibbs new book, Discovering Gifts in Middle School. The powerful incentive to use the Tribes processes in every middle school classroom was truly focused on purposefully creating a school culture. As a former social studies teacher, I refer to culture in the broadest sense, i.e., how we live in this place. Every school has a culture, which most often is felt by simply walking the campus.

The school culture reflects shared beliefs, sense of purpose, values and practices; common language and vocabulary; how members interact and work together; and what traditions and practices are valued and celebrated. It is not dependent on the principal or a few teachers, but is woven into the fabric of school life, extending into homes and community through partnership with parents and neighborhood groups. For years, research has clearly demonstrated that classroom culture and a supportive learning environment have a direct impact on the learning process and contribute to improved student achievement.

With the pressures for all schools to improve achievement to meet the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandates, we are compelled to examine the overwhelming challenges facing American high schools. At the National Education Summit on High Schools in 2005, Bill Gates addressed educators and government leaders emphatically stating that the American high school was obsolete and has one of the highest dropout rates in the industrialized world. A model for changing American high schools was published by the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) in 1996 as Breaking Ranks: Changing an American Institution. However, not enough was done to implement the Breaking Ranks model, redesign schools, and significantly change teaching and learning practices in many American high schools. In 2004, a group of top educators, researchers, and high school principals, worked with The Education Alliance at Brown University, to provide strategies and manageable implementation tools for high school reform with Breaking Ranks II. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supported distribution, including a free copy to each high school principal across the country.

The recommendations of Breaking Ranks II focused on three key change areas within the American high school: the culture, the structures, and the instruction. The redesigned high school requires structures that support career academies, internships, entrepreneurial enterprises, apprenticeships, service learning, and mentoring. In The Best Schools (2006), Thomas Armstrong advocates for schools that are grounded on human development research. Developmentally appropriate practices in high school must include personalized smaller learning communities that honor and model democracy and equity. Personalization requires authentic relationship building; and we know that organizations do not change, people change. As high schools strive to improve the quantity and quality of interaction between students, teachers, and other members of the learning community, a clear process must be identified and utilized. TRIBES is that process to purposefully create a culture in every classroom, and personalize interactions among and between students and teachers. Tribes will support the change process, which must be personal and developmental. High Schools that venture along the Tribes trail will find that Tribes processes are an integral part of the journey to improve achievement for ALL high school students.

Caroline S. Wong, Principal Moanalua Middle School 1289 Mahiole St., Honolulu, HI 96819 (808) 831-7850

PS 156 – The Benjamin Banneker School 750 Concourse Village West

Bronx, New York 10451 718-292-5070

(fax) 718-292-5071

Marla Lopez James M. Lee Timothy H. Bohlke Assistant Principal Principal Assistant Principal

PS 156

March 18, 2008

To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing this letter in strong support of Center Source and the TRIBES Learning Community Program. I have used this program in three different schools in San Francisco, and brought it to PS 156 in the spring of 2007. As a principal struggling to bring trust and positive spirit to a troubled community, TRIBES has been a tremendous and unique resource.

We first trained a pilot group of 25 teachers during the February recess of 2007. We then built on this success by training 75 more staff members during the week before school began this year. From the very beginning the response was incredible. The training built a strong and sincere bond between teachers, paraprofessionals, out-of-classroom staff, and school aides, providing participants with a much-needed opportunity to negotiate professional boundaries, learn a common social language, and set of norms of behavior. The bonds created between teachers were then transferred to the students as teachers implemented the program with earnest and inspiration.

The students immediately noticed the change this fall when school began. Students throughout the school were speaking about the community agreements and the obvious efforts we were all making. We could not say that the school community at this point is perfect, but our data is impressive. Most importantly, our suspension rate has dropped 80%.Our suspension rate was my “bottom line,” so to speak, and this change speaks volumes. We will hopefully see more positive data when our learning environment surveys come out.

I cannot stress the amount of satisfaction I have had with this program. I hope to carry to each and every school I lead, and I consider it one of the best gifts I can bring to a community. I encourage the Department of Education of New York to take advantage of this vendor and award contract approval.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Sincerely,

James M. Lee Principal

6801 Ventana Village Road NW

Albuquerque, New Mexico 87114

(505) 890-7375 3/28/08


I am writing this letter in support of CenterSource and Tribes TLC. As an elementary school teacher and principal I have used the Tribes process for more than fifteen years. I am more than a supporter of the program and process. I am living proof that the process transforms teachers, leaders and schools. Ventana Ranch Elementary School was built with Tribes as our focus and it has carried through as our primary stabilizing factor as we have grown from an original 765 student population, to 1550 students and nearly 200 staff members. We could not have grown by 275 students and 15 new staff members per year over the course of the past 4 years and evolved into two healthy schools (soon to be three) without Tribes. It has not only kept us sane, it has kept us whole and thriving! Primarily, Tribes has provided us a way to create a complete community as John Dewey espoused nearly 80 years ago. His belief was that classrooms should be a model of the family, a complete community where students are nurtured and grow through the learning culture. I wanted to create a home and a family where staff members, students and their families would come to grow and learn as caring individuals and members of a community.

At its highest and best, Tribes has helped both teacher and student to co-create this enlightened, complete learning community where healthy interactions and meaningful relationships become the norm, and where individuals reach their full potential by participating in an environment where mutual respect, collaborative learning, and commitment to the whole, matter most. Tribes has provided the training and space for us to develop Ventana Ranch as a caring learning community, giving it meaning and purpose, and caring for our students’ minds and hearts, as well as our own, as the adult facilitators of the learning process. Tribes has been the attractor of the many fine educators who make up our community and will hopefully be the factor that sustains this caring community of learners long after I am gone. In closing I would like to share the testimony about Tribes from one of my teachers (young and new to the profession). Perhaps her words will help you with your consideration. She included this in her professional dossier for the state of New Mexico, a large project required for changing licensure levels.

I believe as a teacher that creating a strong community within the classroom is vital for a productive year. By creating a strong bond, we are setting high goals and standards for our students to become life-long learners. My classroom is full of students that truly care about each other and feel comfortable sharing things with each other. My students work as a team to help each other to succeed. These children are very good about welcoming new students into our classroom by accepting them and making them a part of our community. Another positive aspect of having a sense of community is that it extends beyond my classroom walls and out into the entire school. I believe that not only do the children feel strongly about their community they have created, but I know that all of the teachers feel a bond with each other (Dossier 2, Strand C, p. 2).

Please feel free to contact me if you are in need of further and more detailed information such as testing and discipline data, etc. I will be happy to give you as much information as you need to make the decision about Tribes. I can be contacted by phone: (505) 890-7375, extension 11123 (work) or (505) 400-3168 (cell); or via email at [email protected].

Sincerely,

Lynne McMahan, Ed.D. Principal

Thoreau Demonstration Academy

7370 E. 71st Street Tulsa, OK 74133

918-833-9700

March 25, 2008


Our school is and has been a Tribes school for the last ten years. Tribes was one of the founding

pillars upon which our community was developed. Actually, our school was created with five

different and important innovations in middle level programming. Tribes was by far the most

powerful and impactful. Our entire community was developed on the Tribes principles. The

program has been very successful in helping us create one learning community. This is especially

pertinent for us because we accept students from all parts of Tulsa, based on geography not

ability. So, our school is comprised of children from across the city who do not necessarily know

one another, have the same backgrounds, values or experiences. Tribes helps our school become

a community of learners based on the Community Agreements. During our tenure, I have seen

the school rise to a prominence that we could have only have hoped for ten years ago. We

consistently score at the top or near the top of the district academically and athletically. The

social fabric of the school is such that we become stronger because of our diversity. You can

look at the demographics on our web site. The school profile is also listed on the district web

pages. Tribes was the most important process that we were able to implement not only for

students, but for ourselves! The staff has to understand and believe in these values. They do

because of extensive and continual professional development and regular re-visiting of these

ideals. I wholeheartedly endorse the Tribes process and am grateful for what it has meant to our

children and families. Parents regularly refer to the “language” of Tribes which tells me that we

have done a good job in educating them about the benefits of this program and they appreciate

what it means to them and to their children. I am available to answer any questions or concerns

about the value that Tribes has brought to our community.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Padalino, Principal

Thoreau Demonstration Academy

7370 E. 71st Street

Tulsa, OK 74133

918-833-9700

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TRIBES TLC®, WHICH IDENTIFIES AND PROTECTS THE TRIBES PROCESS AND COPYRIGHTED

MATERIALS DEVELOPED BY JEANNE GIBBS. QUALIFIED PERSONS ARE LICENSED BY

CENTERSOURCE SYSTEMS, LLC, TO CONDUCT TRIBES TLC® TRAINING INTERNATIONALLY.

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT: CENTERSOURCE SYSTEMS, LLC

60 COMMERCE LANE, SUITE D, CLOVERDALE, CA 95425-4230, USA

800-810-1701 / 707-838-1061 FAX: 707-894-2355

EMAIL: [email protected] WEBSITE: WWW.TRIBES.COM

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