Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

One change that I made to existing processes early on in the school year was to digitize our data dialogues. Typically, data dialogues would work this way: Meet as a whole school with teams seated together at tables in the Media Center (in August, with no A/C, this is a steamy proposition). Pass out stacks and stacks of legal-sized paper with an overwhelming amount of student and group data. Teams sit at their tables, answer some guiding questions and make some inferences, then they begin to put together some action steps to address areas of need. In theory, the administrators work collaboratively with teams and receive a copy of team action steps so that all of us continue continue to revisit, modify, and tweak the steps as the year progressed.

In order to move this process into the 21st century and take advantage of the readily available tools for collaboration that are found online, I worked closely with my Leadership Team. This did not happen overnight, in fact I started planting the seeds well before I even broached the topic of moving data dialogues online. First, I began sharing meeting agendas and other documents with them via Google Docs. It was my hope that by starting slowly, they’d get comfortable using (or at least interacting with) GDocs to collaborate and share documents. I would say 75% of them immediately saw the benefits of using GDocs over the traditional method of passing documents around and hoping you were working with the most current version.

Once I was comfortable that most of my Leadership Team were on board, I worked closely with my Instructional Coach — as I usually would with or without GDocs — to craft some guiding questions for our data dialogues. I had her create a GDoc with the questions in it which were shared with team leaders. Team leaders were then responsible for sharing it with their teams and collaborating on their responses. One of the benefits to the teams was that one person was no longer required to be “the recorder” because once the document was shared, any team member was able to type directly into the document.

Through this whole process, my AP, my Instructional Coach, and I all had access to each team’s template so we could monitor their progress any time without having to mail documents back and forth. This freed teams to move from our (extremely hot in August) media center to other locations on campus where they had the resources they needed to do their work.

The Mechanics

I knew I was in for an uphill battle if I owned the process of sharing documents one at a time with each member of the staff so here’s how I set things up…

I created a folder for each team and shared that folder with the team leader, my instructional coach, my AP, and any other special service providers who generally need access to the student data. Now, anything I place in that folder is automatically shared with the team leader whose responsibility it was to invite other team members into their team folder. So instead of worrying about permissions for 50-60 staff, I only had to worry about 7 folders and team leaders.

Once team leaders had invited their team members to the team folder, everyone had access to everything in the folder. Additionally, you’ll see folders for supporting documents, agendas, minutes, and attendance. Those are used by my SAAC chair to track our monthly meetings.

Since most everyone seemed comfortable, if not completely enamored, with this new process, I decided to ask team leaders to keep their regular team meeting minutes in their team folders so that I wouldn’t get seven separate Word documents mailed to me every Monday afternoon that I’d have to open, save, and file. Now all team meeting minutes are in one place and they’re filed the instant they’re created.

Finally, I created a “Data” folder that I shared with all team leaders. Into this folder, I toss every PDF and Excel file that I receive. This avoids the necessity of emailing large data files around that clog up teachers’ email boxes. Rarely do people need to look at those emails the instant they arrive so they either sit in the inbox until they’re needed or they get filed and/or lost. Using a data folder means that everything is easily accessible and that I can avoid re-sending emails if and when data is lost.

Yes. Much of the data comes to us in PDFs. Don’t get me started.

How’s it working for you?

Knowing that this whole process was new to many teachers, it was critical that they felt supported and confident that they could take the risk and stumble. At every Leadership Team meeting, we have an agenda item that opens the floor to input and feedback about the process. During the first month or so of school, I would meet regularly with team leaders with no other agenda other than to have them get out their laptops and practice creating and sharing documents and folders.

Though it eventually tapered off, for the first few weeks I would regularly have teachers come to my office or approach me in the hall and ask for help doing this or that. I was acutely aware that the first time they didn’t feel supported the whole stack of cards I’d been building would become dangerously unstable so it was — and continues to be — very important to me that I personally worked with every teacher who was having trouble for as long as it took them to get comfortable.

I didn’t provide a “way out” or safety net. The only way to capture evidence of a team’s data dialogue and their action plans was via Google Docs. For the few who brought me paper copies, I’d say something like, “This looks great! Make sure you copy it over to your team folder on Google Docs so I can review it.”

“Don’t you just want the paper?”

“No. I’ll lose it. I’d like them all the completed documents in Google Docs so that I know everything’s in the same place and I know where to find everyone’s plans. Thanks for taking the time to do that!”

Not using Google Docs was simply not an option.