March 17, 2025

Episode 22: Collaborative Response: Insights from Kurtis Hewson on Transforming Schools Through Teamwork!

Fan Mail! Kurtis Hewson's journey from classroom teacher to international education consultant reveals a startling truth about our schools: the isolation educators experience despite being surrounded by colleagues. As co-founder of Jigsaw Learning and co-author of "Collaborative Response," Kurtis shares how this recognition shaped his mission to ensure no teacher works alone and no student lacks a team of advocates. The conversation unpacks a framework that's transforming schools across Nort...

Fan Mail!

Kurtis Hewson's journey from classroom teacher to international education consultant reveals a startling truth about our schools: the isolation educators experience despite being surrounded by colleagues. As co-founder of Jigsaw Learning and co-author of "Collaborative Response," Kurtis shares how this recognition shaped his mission to ensure no teacher works alone and no student lacks a team of advocates.

The conversation unpacks a framework that's transforming schools across North America and beyond. Kurtis explains how the traditional Professional Learning Community model, while valuable, often leaves gaps that allow students to slip through the cracks. His Collaborative Response framework addresses these gaps through three interconnected components: collaborative structures and processes, data and evidence, and continuums of support.

What makes this approach revolutionary is the four-layer collaborative structure it introduces. While most schools have case-by-case meetings for struggling students, Kurtis introduces a game-changing middle layer—the collaborative team meeting—where teachers from different departments come together not to solve individual student problems but to expand their collective teaching toolboxes. The focus shifts from "what's wrong with this student?" to "what strategies might help with this type of challenge?"

The results speak volumes. One school district reported their referrals for specialized services dropped from 25-30 to just four after implementing this framework—not because student needs diminished, but because teachers felt better equipped to handle challenges. Teachers who were counting down to retirement found renewed passion for their work. Achievement scores climbed. All because the expertise already present in the building was being effectively leveraged.

Whether you're battling teacher burnout, struggling with intervention systems that don't seem to catch everyone, or simply looking to harness the collective wisdom in your building, Kurtis offers actionable insights for educational leaders. As he powerfully states, "Stop tiering kids. Tier your supports." This mindset shift alone could transform how we approach student needs in our schools.

Get Connected with Kurtis:

Jigsaw Learning:

Access an Overview of Collaborative Response article:

Access the introductory chapter of the bestseller Collaborative Response

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01:58 - Introduction to Kurtis Hewson

03:44 - Kurtis's Educational Journey

13:10 - Isolation in Teaching & Leadership Beginnings

20:51 - The Three Components of Collaborative Response

37:39 - Collaborative Team Meeting Structure

49:12 - Implementation Advice & Success Stories

54:17 - Building a Culture of Collaboration Podcast

59:34 - Closing Thoughts & Contact Information

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Hey there, educational leaders.

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It's great to be back for another episode of the Educational Leadership Podcast.

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In today's episode, I got the privilege and the honor to sit down with Kurtis Hewson.

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Kurtis is a award-winning former administrator and teacher, as well as a teaching faculty at the post-secondary level.

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He is the co-founder of Jigsaw Learning and co-author of the text Collaborative Response three fundamental components that transform how we respond to the needs of the learners.

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He currently works with school districts and schools nationally and internationally.

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If I didn't mention, Kurtis is from Canada, where he will talk about his educational journey in Canada, but he also is reaching out and working internationally with other schools in other countries such as Australia, United States, and Canada, just to name a few of the countries that he has been working with in education and schools.

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And what's phenomenal about listening to Kurtis speak is about how he really talks about school and being collaborative and how we can all respond in education.

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No matter where we're at in the world, we can educate in a collaborative way Without further ado.

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Here is a conversation with Kurtis Hewson.

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Hey there, educational leaders.

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Today I'm excited to bring to you guys a special guest on the show today.

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His name is Kurtis Houston.

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Welcome, Kurtis, to the show.

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Thanks, jeff, really excited to have a conversation with you.

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All right, Kurtis.

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Now I always like to start.

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Why education.

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What propelled you to become an educator in the first place?

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And then, once you go through that, I'd like you to talk about your teaching career.

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And then what got you into school leadership?

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Yeah, so I have family members.

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My mother was a teacher, grandmother, other family members.

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So I often say my first practicum was putting up bulletin board materials in my mother's classroom when I was 11 years old and I really came from a spot, jeff, that I just wanted to make a difference for kids and it seemed to me that the best place to do that was through education, and it's been the driving mantra all the way through of to where I am now.

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The work I'm doing is still about how can we make a considerable impact, make a difference for kids, and so classroom teaching began.

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It's a bit of a funny story.

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I started oh, it's getting almost 30 years ago and at a time where it was difficult to find positions here in our home province of Alberta, I moved 12 hours north into northern Alberta for what was a six-month maternity leave teaching grade three.

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Six months turned into nine years and it moved into administration.

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I actually moved into administration quite early in my teaching career.

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The school division was really trying to grow their own leaders, being as far north as they were, and I was in a school with a fantastic veteran administrator who they said it'd be nice if we could have somebody that could learn from him.

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So it was actually my second year of teaching that they assigned me a small portion I think it was a 0.1.

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I think I maybe had two periods of admin duties per week, but they also helped to pay for some master's work.

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So I got into my master's really early around educational leadership and then from there moved into principalship through a few different schools and it was through that work that I began what was the work that I do now in a very organic and unassuming way.

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But from that principalship I've also had the opportunity to teach at the university level in education departments here within the province at a couple different universities and it's led me to the place now where I get to work with schools and school districts across North America.

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I've worked with schools in Iceland, australia, all over the world.

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It's been super, super exciting and, yeah, it all comes back to the do it to make a difference.

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Just want to make a difference for kids.

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Great and I think that's where a lot of educators I mean they get into this to make impact.

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Right, they want to impact, you know, other people, they have that drive, they have that, that passion for that and that's what makes education so unique, to where you get to have an impact on people because, like here in America, everybody you know is required to to go through public education or, you know, private education.

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Some sort of education, yeah, touches on everyone, yeah, and we're trying to, like, get these people in and help them learn, but, at the same time, the impact and the drive that you can make on the future of your country in your case, Canada, for us it's the US, you know and to have that impact and to be able to inspire those learners and to help them learn and grow, it makes it all worth it right.

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Jeff, that it's a cascading effect, right, like if I can have the impact on a student, a child, a teacher, that just cascades across, like you say, to impact a country, a society.

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It's exciting.

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Yeah, we have a saying here that we have societal issues that will come to our doorstep and we have to help solve them and help get people and to make them better so they can go out and help maybe solve some of those societal issues as well.

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And so that's something we kind of take seriously, because we get to see those things firsthand and how are we impacting and helping those well, and so that's something we kind of take seriously because you know we get to see those things firsthand and how are we impacted in helping those kids, and so that's what I love about education.

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No matter where you're at right, I kind of hear the same stories that you have told.

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You know, here in the US, there in Canada, and education is very similar.

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How we educate and how we help kids learn is very similar.

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And so let's talk about you know you went from teaching into school leadership.

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What were some of the biggest challenges you faced?

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Yeah.

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So I think, first off, I never understood how isolating teaching was in the classroom, and that was something I never experienced as an observer, seeing particularly my mother as a teacher.

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I got into the classroom and I did not.

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I assumed we're all together, we are around people all the time, but it was isolating in that classroom to be able to connect with colleagues.

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Sometimes there was days where it didn't feel like I got to connect with another adult in the building until the very end of the day.

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And so, as I shifted into leadership, there were two thoughts or driving aspects of it.

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The first was how can we make this more collaborative?

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How could we be learning from one another?

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And especially for me as a young administrator, I certainly did not have the solutions and I tried to adopt the Superman syndrome of if people bring me a problem, I'll try and fix it.

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But it was evident very quickly that I didn't have the skill set to be able to fix that.

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The experience and I think it helped me tremendously become a way more effective leader in time, because I learned early on don't have the answers, but set up structures to determine the answers.

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How can we bring the solutions, the people with the difficulties.

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If we could bring the challenges, if we could bring them together to work through it, that is way more powerful than trying to solve that all by myself.

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I heard somebody call it as goose leadership the idea that somebody comes into your office, squawks, dumps a load and then leaves for you to clean up.

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And again, I found out very early that wasn't going to work for me.

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So I think the challenges that I experienced early on, coming from this mindset, was how, how do we create structures, possibilities, ways that people could work that would then just become culture, that it's just natural that we are working together, and in the last school that I went in as principal, I often say it was an amazing school great teachers, great staff doing great things for kids, but isolated islands of excellence.

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Sometimes the challenge one person was having in the room.

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The solution was three doors down and we didn't know because we didn't have ways for people to interact effectively with one another.

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So we that was really the impetus that has become the work that I do now, working with schools and school jurisdictions, about setting up what we call a collaborative response, that we're responding to the needs of students, but nobody is doing this on their own.

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We have very, very intentional and strategic ways of organizing ourselves.

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To do that.

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Yeah, you really hit on a few things there that I even was thinking about.

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To my you know my experience as a teacher, where there's times where you're so classroom focused and you're just trying to get the things done in your room and trying to do the best you can, you sometimes forget, hey, you have a neighbor that you know, in my, my case, teach math.

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You have a neighbor that teaches math too.

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So, um, how you collaborate and and I kind of we here in America, we, we talk about professional learning communities a lot.

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It's kind of what we do or that's kind of the buzzword in America and you know, with your collaborative responses and everything, it really it really kind of fits some of that.

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You know.

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We, we got to collaborate with each other and how we do that, you know.

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Going from that, I mean, you kind of taught, kind of alluded to it a little bit.

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You kind of saw a problem and you started figuring out this issue or trying to find a solution to the issue.

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So what was that issue?

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And if I'm going to take a leap here and I'm going to, you know, this is kind of maybe where you started getting into finding that solution and maybe going into co-founding the Jigsaw Learning.

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Is that right on that?

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So kind of take us through that and how that all evolved and what inspired the co-founding of Jigsaw Learning and the vision behind it.

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Yeah.

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So again that last school that I mentioned as the principal of it we really started to think about how could we be working together in more effective ways and it was founded initially on professional learning communities more effective ways, and it was founded initially on professional learning communities.

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The work of Richard Dufour and Rebecca Dufour were really impactful and inspirational, but we actually found it wasn't enough.

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We were establishing strong PLC structures and we found that there were still students slipping through the cracks, not by anyone's lack of attention or passion, it was just systems that weren't strongly established.

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So we began to look and operate in some very different ways that I'd love to describe for you here in a little bit and started to connect some of the literature that was beginning and started to connect some of the literature that was beginning.

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This was mid-2000s, some of the literature that was just coming out around, response to intervention and then later on, multi-tiered systems of supports and how could that lend itself?

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And as we got going, just by people talking, we started to see not only success for students our achievement rates started to climb, and quickly and significantly but our staff satisfaction rates started to increase the teachers that were trying to ensure success for their kids, but on their own.

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And at the cusp of burnout, we saw people starting to get refreshed.

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We saw that passion coming back in and so we, just by people talking, we started to have some schools come to visit.

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I started to get requests to come out and explain and share.

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It was never work that was intended to be shared beyond our school.

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It was just how we were trying to structure and organize ourselves.

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And so, as I moved from that school and moved into um a role at a local university uh, teaching, beginning teachers in the education program the calls kept coming in of can you come out and share this?

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Come tell us how you did this.

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I started to get requests to present at conferences and that and at that point, it was myself and my later wife, lorna, who we decided there's a point where the calls coming in are starting to get more and more and we should be writing some more and talking about this and really formulating our ideas.

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And it just took on a life of its own, to the point where I think it was 2013 where we formed this organization called jigsaw learning.

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That was just the two of us branded it that way to be able to engage in this work and then it was in 2016 that I moved into it full-time I it couldn't be something off the side of the plate.

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It was now at a place where it wasn't schools reaching out, it was school districts reaching out and saying how can you help share some of this work, this collaborative and we came to call it collaborative response, because saying, well, it's kind of like PLCs with an RTI element and some other things in it wasn't a really great way to describe the framework or what we've now come to understand is really a mindset, it's a way of thinking in your school.

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So it took off and then just it was exciting to begin working with different systems and jurisdictions.

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We've had chance now to work with different ministries around.

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How could we utilize this as a driving overall way of of, uh, engaging in schools and going back to where you started, jeff.

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Usually schools that have engaged in PLC work, when they see this, they go oh, my goodness, this is our next step.

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This would take us even further than the success we're seeing in PLCs.

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I love it when a school says we're interested in this, but we're already doing PLC work, and I say, oh great, then you are incredibly well poised.

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You're not going to give up that work, but we're going to add another layer to it.

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Yeah, no, and so we are a PLC school and we're very good about setting that time apart.

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This is what we do.

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It goes per student, by target.

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You know we're trying to make sure kids are getting the interventions, because our PLC works really driven around, you know, helping kids intervening into kid's education, and we set intervention time, you know, aside every day, except for Wednesday because that's our PLC day.

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But on Monday, tuesday, thursday, friday, we have dedicated intervention time to where teachers can request students can request teachers, and we're doing this at a building of a thousand students and so, and so we have to have a particular system in place to get people to where they need to go, cause it's, it's a whole thing.

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We could, we could talk about that for days, but I love how it's collaborative response and kind of like how you've taken that and really elevated that PLC work.

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And so your book, collaborative Response, outlines three foundational components.

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Can you take us through these and why they're essential for schools?

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Absolutely.

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And, jeff, when I follow up, I'm going to share with you a overview of Collaborative Response article that, if anyone's interested can access that.

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It's available at our website, jigsawlearningca as well.

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I'm also going to share with you an introductory chapter of the book that anyone can download to explore more.

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In both of those we talk about three foundational components, the first being collaborative structures and processes, the second being data and evidence.

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Evidence and the third being continuum of supports.

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And our visual actually is three puzzle pieces where these are connected, because separately I would say they have less impact than when we start connecting all of those pieces together in a really thoughtful and aligned system.

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We often say to schools when you're in beginning your collaborative response work, buckle in, because you're, it's going to be two, three, four, five years of implementation.

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It's not that you're going to read the book and say, awesome, we're going to have this established by next month.

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It takes time as, as you're building out, we often say you're, you're establishing a culture of collaborative response and culture doesn't just shift overnight.

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So each of those three pieces, I'm going to break them down.

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The first is collaborative structures and processes, and in the little graphic it's twice as large as the other pieces, because I believe, and just like you're saying, you have to create structured and intentional collaboration within your building.

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But we talk about four layers and I've worked with schools that have 25 students and I've worked with schools that have 2,500 students and these four layers always they apply and think of them as categories.

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So I'm going to walk us through what these are as quickly as possible.

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The first layer we refer to it as collaborative planning and, again, think of these as overarching categories.

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If you're doing PLC work, boom, it fits into collaborative planning, the idea that we want teachers coming together working on things that will impact all students and that designation of you're probably not looking at individual students in those conversations.

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You're looking at overall cohorts.

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We're examining data, determining what steps we're going to take.

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Typically, in that collaborative planning layer, you're often doing it with colleagues who share a similar teaching assignment or a similar grade level.

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If you're in elementary high school, I want a math department that's working together, a science department.

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We have seen some schools, though, that also set up other structures that still fit within that category of teachers working together to benefit all students.

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Okay, I'm going to skip the second layer and I'm going to go to the third, I'll come back to the second.

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The third layer is what we call a school support team.

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So in my own school it was myself as principal, our assistant principal, our learning support teacher.

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Own school it was myself as principal, our assistant principal, our learning support teacher, and we had a family school wellness coordinator that we shared with our high school.

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In our community the four of us every Thursday morning would meet and determine who are the students needing supports beyond the classroom.

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Now, in a school your size, jeff, you might not have one team.

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That's at that level.

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You might have several.

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I worked with a large school of 2000 here, that's not too far from our home, and in their school of grade 10 to 12, there's a grade 10 team and 11 team and a 12 team and they cycle with the students.

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But essentially that layer is what are we doing for students who need support beyond the classroom?

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And in time it's students land on that agenda through referral processes and systems that are in place.

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The fourth layer we call the case consult and it's an overarching umbrella.

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All of these are categories but this one's probably the easiest to understand and it's the one that's most prevalent in schools.

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We refer to any time we're meeting about one student, it falls into that layer.

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Refer to any time we're meeting about one student.

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It falls into that layer.

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Okay, so when we have a crisis that has happened with a student and we're bringing in external supports and services to be at the table, that would fall into that layer.

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When we are planning a specialized program for a student with some more exceptional needs and the parents are at the table, that falls into that layer.

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I worked with one school, a larger high school, when they looked at these four layers and held up what they did in their school, they found out that most of the things and really good structures, but most of them fell into that case consult layer that fourth layer, and they went oh, this is why we feel exhausted, overwhelmed.

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It feels like we're playing whack-a-mole, one kid at a time.

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You're always going to have a need to come around the table, around certain students, but through this layering we ensure less and less students get there and the ones that do are the ones that need to.

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So we had these in place within our school, but there was still something missing.

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There was still something that was not quite there and even though we were a school of around 350, 350 students.

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The structures at the third and fourth layer that school support team and case consult it felt overwhelming.

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We felt like we weren't keeping up with what the needs were.

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Overwhelming.

00:21:32.546 --> 00:21:33.929
We felt like we weren't keeping up with what the needs were.

00:21:33.929 --> 00:21:35.573
And you know, sometimes a teacher would say, oh, I've done everything.

00:21:35.573 --> 00:21:39.067
And we would have to have a conversation of what do you mean by everything?

00:21:39.067 --> 00:21:43.637
Because sometimes that absolutely was the case, sometimes not so much.

00:21:43.637 --> 00:21:50.678
And so we introduce a second layer of team and this radically changed everything.

00:21:50.678 --> 00:22:00.252
In fact, we often, when introducing this to schools, will say we're going to reduce the number of meetings in your school by adding one more, and it's the second layer.

00:22:00.252 --> 00:22:02.200
We call it the collaborative team meeting.

00:22:02.200 --> 00:22:07.755
And the collaborative team meeting, jeff, it looks like you're talking about kids, but you're not.

00:22:07.755 --> 00:22:11.036
You're using it as a opportunity to examine practice.

00:22:11.036 --> 00:22:16.640
So do you mind if I take just a couple moments and describe just the basic structure of what that looks like?

00:22:17.163 --> 00:22:19.126
no, go right ahead yeah.

00:22:19.186 --> 00:22:41.451
So what we do is, let's say, in my school I, let's say in your school, you have plcs that are set up and and I've done this with many high schools where typically that's happening in departments or people that are teaching similar teaching assignments when we get into the collaborative team meeting we actually mix those people up.

00:22:41.451 --> 00:22:54.181
So I engage in collaborative planning which in your case you call PLCs with those that I'm teaching a similar assignment, your case you call PLCs, with those that I'm teaching a similar assignment.

00:22:54.181 --> 00:23:00.016
In elementaries it's often in grade level teams or, you know, multi-grade level teams, and maybe there's a one, two team, a three, four team.

00:23:00.016 --> 00:23:08.045
In the collaborative team meeting we start looking for opportunities to mix those people and the way we do it is through this particular process.

00:23:08.045 --> 00:23:18.369
So let's imagine you and I are sitting at the collaborative team meeting table and we start off by saying Jeff, who's a student you've brought to celebrate, and there's all sorts of meeting structures in place.

00:23:18.369 --> 00:23:27.977
You know the roles and norms, all of these really highly structured elements to ensure that we are maximizing our time together.

00:23:27.977 --> 00:23:33.815
But we go, jeff who's a student to celebrate, and you say well, I have this one student and this is a great celebration.

00:23:33.815 --> 00:23:38.811
I've seen we instantly turn and say, all right, what do you think you did that led to that success?

00:23:38.811 --> 00:23:49.232
And so by starting with that celebration and really getting teachers talking about their practice what is the things that they've done that has led to success, which we know.

00:23:49.232 --> 00:23:53.808
By doing that over and over again, we're creating high levels of collective efficacy.

00:23:53.808 --> 00:24:01.174
Someone in the room when Jeff says, oh, one of the things I did is I created a little locker checklist and it helps the kid get organized for class.

00:24:01.174 --> 00:24:02.846
Someone else in that room is going to go.

00:24:02.846 --> 00:24:03.548
That's brilliant.

00:24:03.548 --> 00:24:05.773
I'd love to see a copy of that.

00:24:05.773 --> 00:24:07.826
Just simple little things that start sharing.

00:24:08.468 --> 00:24:13.628
After a few minutes of that celebration, then we come and focus on a key issue.

00:24:13.628 --> 00:24:16.435
So this is what it looks like and everyone's asked to come ready.

00:24:16.435 --> 00:24:24.450
There's a pre-meeting organizer that you quickly determine and in time, we want that pre-meeting organizer connected to our data and evidence.

00:24:24.450 --> 00:24:29.205
I'll come back to that in a second and we say, jeff, who's the student you've brought?

00:24:29.205 --> 00:24:31.628
And, 20 seconds or less, what's the key issue?

00:24:31.628 --> 00:24:34.873
And you identify that I have this student.

00:24:34.873 --> 00:24:37.415
My key issue is assignment completion.

00:24:37.415 --> 00:24:48.597
They just I can't get them to complete assignments on time and we go okay, great, who else in this room has a student that is struggling with assignment completion?

00:24:48.597 --> 00:24:51.906
And inevitably other people will go, uh-huh, yep, and we make note of names.

00:24:52.428 --> 00:25:01.661
But the whole idea is we're trying to get the attention off you, jeff, as the teacher, and off one kid, and onto what is something that we share.

00:25:01.661 --> 00:25:05.476
And then we've start brainstorming and we start and, and there's more structure.

00:25:05.476 --> 00:25:12.739
I'm being quite quick or overarching with the explanation, but we just start throwing out ideas.

00:25:12.739 --> 00:25:20.112
You know, in my classroom here's one of the things I do and you go interesting in mine I do this and during this conversation there's no judging of ideas.

00:25:20.112 --> 00:25:25.211
There's no opportunity for Jeff to say, oh, I've tried, that that wouldn't work in my classroom.

00:25:25.211 --> 00:25:29.988
We just it opens up a space for innovation and sharing of practice.

00:25:30.509 --> 00:25:36.259
And then we come back and say all right, jeff, for Marcus, what's one thing that you're willing to take away?

00:25:36.259 --> 00:25:43.199
So, like we said, it's sometimes for someone that's watching this meeting from afar, it looks like you're talking about kids, but you're not.

00:25:43.199 --> 00:25:47.576
You're just using the kid to leverage a conversation about practice.

00:25:47.576 --> 00:25:58.315
And it's highly solutions focused, highly action oriented, and we found through this it makes the PLC work even stronger.

00:25:58.315 --> 00:26:09.574
It ensures that we have schools that say we have less and less students making their ways to the referral systems that we have in place because teachers' toolboxes are growing for us.

00:26:09.574 --> 00:26:19.223
So that's the collaborative structures and processes really powerful process and we often say to schools you're going to get highly intentional and thoughtful on how you create your teams.

00:26:19.223 --> 00:26:20.530
But look at these four layers.

00:26:20.530 --> 00:26:23.954
The collaborative team meeting becomes the difference maker.

00:26:24.525 --> 00:26:30.756
Yeah, it sounds like basically the schools that are out there doing the PLC work, which are a ton of them.

00:26:32.185 --> 00:26:42.525
This will be, you know, like you said earlier, it'd be maybe that next step to strengthen kind of what you do and elevate it to where you're maybe having less people fall through the cracks.

00:26:42.525 --> 00:26:48.984
And it's really interesting to hear a lot of the systematic approaches and the different ways of doing it.

00:26:48.984 --> 00:26:57.038
I really like the idea of getting people out of their departments and cross, you know, disciplining problems.

00:26:57.038 --> 00:27:00.346
We kind of do that with our school improvement team.

00:27:00.346 --> 00:27:19.559
I kind of require to have a person from each department represented on the team, so everybody that's at the table when we're trying to find solutions to an issue are having a seat at the table to where they can go back to their particular departments and bring back some different feedback and different things.

00:27:19.559 --> 00:27:24.037
And so I mean we kind of it sounds like, you know, I'm kind of thinking through the things we do.

00:27:24.037 --> 00:27:33.319
We kind of like do some of this stuff, but I mean this might be something we definitely for sure look at, maybe strengthen what we do, even better.

00:27:34.025 --> 00:27:34.105
And.

00:27:34.165 --> 00:27:39.717
Jeff, we sometimes have some schools say so, do we stop doing our PLC meetings and do these meetings instead?

00:27:39.717 --> 00:27:42.589
And we say no, no, no, you keep your PLC work.

00:27:42.589 --> 00:27:52.157
That's really powerful, but what we're going to do is every usually it's four to five weeks we're going to infuse this approach in as well.

00:27:52.157 --> 00:27:56.111
So when we first started in my school, we had grade level PLCs.

00:27:56.111 --> 00:28:09.011
We had embedded time weekly in the timetable and we'd say, all right, every fourth meeting you can expect the principal to come join the learning support teacher to come join some other, our family school liaison.

00:28:09.011 --> 00:28:16.951
We're going to create um, a conversation that looks like what I described, but we started it within our regular teams.

00:28:16.951 --> 00:28:21.288
But what we found over time is because the focus is on key issues.

00:28:22.730 --> 00:28:33.479
We were struggling before when it was well, I want to talk about bradley and the people around the table when it was in grade level teams, they'd be aware of Bradley just because of the work that they're doing.

00:28:33.964 --> 00:28:47.970
But when we started to mix teams and especially at a high school, where if I'm in a mixed team conversation and I bring up Bradley, I'm going to have four people around the table completely disengaged, because not only do I not teach Bradley.

00:28:48.009 --> 00:28:54.825
I don't even know what that kid looks like right now, but when you focus it on the key issue, now we can start mixing those teams.

00:28:54.825 --> 00:29:03.538
So it's, it just creates one more layer and, especially thinking about your high school, it becomes exciting when somebody shares.

00:29:03.538 --> 00:29:07.664
You know, one of the things I do in the gym is this and someone else says that's interesting.

00:29:07.664 --> 00:29:11.776
How could I look at that in my my english classroom for how I do this?

00:29:11.776 --> 00:29:17.142
Like it just starts opening up different possibilities and different conversations.

00:29:17.142 --> 00:29:30.826
I had one high school that's where a teacher had said I've been in the school a long time, I'm I'm friendly with all of my colleagues, but I've never had a conversation about practice with someone from that wing of the building.

00:29:30.826 --> 00:29:35.217
In fact, I don't even often go down that wing of the building because it just I don't need to.

00:29:35.217 --> 00:29:45.718
It creates multiple networks and then we know this creates huge impact on teacher well-being, teacher connectedness.

00:29:45.718 --> 00:29:47.792
No one's isolated in this work.

00:29:48.728 --> 00:30:02.731
Yeah, I really, I really love how trying to bring everybody together across the building is a powerful way to really collaborate and to help themselves get better, but also, you know they're going to help student learning in the process of that.

00:30:02.731 --> 00:30:15.493
So what advice would you give to principals, district leaders that are out there listening, that want to maybe start implementing collaborative response practices but aren't sure where to begin, like what?

00:30:15.493 --> 00:30:17.157
What advice would you give them on that?

00:30:18.288 --> 00:30:21.920
yeah, I would definitely say check out jigsawlearningca.

00:30:21.920 --> 00:30:30.567
We have a ton of resources that are available there, including a page that is specifically about introducing collaborative response in your school.

00:30:30.567 --> 00:30:50.625
It's overwhelming when you see all of the pieces come together because, on top of what I've just shared with you in time, we want that the data and evidence is informing every one of those conversations and in fact, we start color coding our data so that in the collaborative team meeting I'm not bringing students with key issues that are my most at risk students.

00:30:50.625 --> 00:30:54.914
In fact, we know they're already being attended to in one of our other layers.

00:30:54.914 --> 00:31:08.990
We actually say, if you're going to color code your data, let's say red, yellow, green, red being not yet meeting expectations, yellow being they're getting close and green being meeting expectation, and then we also have a blue of exceeding expectations.

00:31:08.990 --> 00:31:24.798
Then we're going to focus on the yellow and we had one high school that said we've determined a yellow criteria as a kid who's sitting with a 40 to 60% in their classes right now, or you might say a kid that's sitting at a C level.

00:31:24.837 --> 00:31:31.442
If we're looking at alphanumeric grading, we're not looking at our most intensive needs students.

00:31:31.442 --> 00:31:35.152
They're already there, they're already being attended in one of our other layers.

00:31:35.152 --> 00:31:45.637
What we're trying to do is those kids that are on the cusp, on the bubble, what could we do that would have impact for them in the classroom, which we know then impacts all other students.

00:31:45.637 --> 00:31:57.635
And then in time we start connecting a continuum of supports so that when we say so, what should we do, it's not always just brainstorming, it's referencing our continuums and saying have we tried this, have we tried this?

00:31:57.635 --> 00:32:09.657
And getting crystal clear on what are the non-negotiable expectations for instruction in our school that we've determined and what are the other things we could do.

00:32:09.657 --> 00:32:14.929
And these tiers of the continuum start to align to the four different layers of team.

00:32:14.929 --> 00:32:21.748
And through this we say stop tiering kids, tier your supports I love that.

00:32:21.788 --> 00:32:23.191
Stop tiering kids.

00:32:23.191 --> 00:32:25.634
Tier your supports, that's, you know.

00:32:25.634 --> 00:32:25.895
That's.

00:32:25.895 --> 00:32:36.480
That's a very great thing to think about, because I think your supports are what's going to get those kids where they need to go, instead of focusing on the individual kids all the time.

00:32:36.480 --> 00:32:42.958
What supports do we have so when the kids run through these systems, they are getting the supports they needed?

00:32:44.026 --> 00:32:50.291
Yeah, and going back to your original question of getting started, we say there's those three foundational components.

00:32:50.291 --> 00:32:52.438
In time we want them all to connect.

00:32:52.438 --> 00:32:56.836
But your starting place is probably looking at your collaborative structures and process.

00:32:56.836 --> 00:33:11.615
And we often say for schools like your school that already has some systems in place awesome, let's start introducing the collaborative team meeting in and start seeing the impact that that one structure once a month will have.

00:33:11.615 --> 00:33:15.179
And again we say to schools start small impact that that one structure once a month will have.

00:33:15.179 --> 00:33:19.884
And again we say to schools start small, start with a pilot group that can try this.

00:33:19.884 --> 00:33:31.971
The collaborative team meeting is very tightly facilitated but in time, when we can spread it out across our entire school population, it transforms the way you're talking, thinking and responding to kids.

00:33:33.535 --> 00:33:35.237
Yeah, so how do you?

00:33:35.237 --> 00:33:45.923
This is a question that came up how do you battle the mindset of oh, this is just another thing they're making me do another agenda, a checklist that I got to do.

00:33:45.923 --> 00:33:52.028
How do we have the staff buy into these different supports?

00:33:52.028 --> 00:33:58.613
Because you talked about a tightly knit, facilitated, collaborative process, but also the buy-in's got to be there too.

00:33:58.613 --> 00:34:01.661
So how do you help people with the buy-in?

00:34:02.784 --> 00:34:05.958
Yeah, and actually I I always take this from another perspective.

00:34:05.958 --> 00:34:18.134
I've learned through my leadership career that I'm not worried about buy-in, because buy-in in my mind is I'm trying to sell something and I need you to to buy it, to sell something and I need you to to buy it.

00:34:18.134 --> 00:34:22.436
I instead want to move towards.

00:34:22.436 --> 00:34:29.083
How do I get commitment, um, to what is happening and I actually I'm not worried about seeing whole school commitment initially, I know that's not possible for us.

00:34:29.083 --> 00:34:33.907
I I want to start with who are the people that I know can help to champion?

00:34:33.907 --> 00:34:36.463
How can I start planting some seeds with them?

00:34:36.463 --> 00:34:47.148
How can we start developing and trying some of these ideas within our school and then allow people to enter when they are ready?

00:34:47.148 --> 00:35:00.838
But I also believe that as a leader, I cannot force you to think or change your beliefs on anything for an individual, but I can set expectations for how we are going to engage in our school.

00:35:00.838 --> 00:35:15.496
I can say, um, we're going to have a collaborative team meeting and I expect everyone to come ready for that and there might be some P in fact, I saw it in my own eyes of staff members that came into that first meeting and if someone's listening to the audio.

00:35:15.496 --> 00:35:18.844
You're not seeing me folding my arms across my chest very closed.

00:35:18.844 --> 00:35:25.217
Who, in time, when they discovered this is not about judging or adding one more thing onto your plate.

00:35:25.217 --> 00:35:30.880
It's actually a conversation that is going to start taking some things off your plate in time it's.

00:35:30.880 --> 00:35:41.728
It's going to give you thoughts and possibilities and, man, it starts to become exciting when I share out an idea and someone else in the room goes that's gold Kurtis, that's a great idea.

00:35:42.992 --> 00:35:52.889
I've seen people transform the way they're going about supporting students by just being part of these conversations.

00:35:52.889 --> 00:36:07.344
So I would say to leaders don't worry, if not everyone's on board to start, that's okay, just start, just get going, and actually you're going to shift and move and change.

00:36:07.344 --> 00:36:14.427
I'm a big subscriber to the change philosophy of ready fire, aim, ready, you know.

00:36:14.427 --> 00:36:29.255
Plant some seeds, start with people who you know are going to be okay and help you get through some muddy parts of the process, because it's muddy, it is muddy, but then fire, just fire, get started, and then we can come and aim, we can adjust, we can change.

00:36:29.255 --> 00:36:33.387
We may realize that we're doing these meetings too frequently, not frequently enough.

00:36:33.387 --> 00:36:40.596
There's lots of navigation that we're going to have to do, but as a leader, not being afraid to fire.

00:36:40.596 --> 00:36:52.097
From our conversations, jeff, you've lived that idea of we're going to fire, we're going to learn as we go through and through that process you're going to have people come in at different entry points.

00:36:52.699 --> 00:36:54.161
No, yeah, definitely, I know.

00:36:54.161 --> 00:37:01.206
You know, when you are trying to build collaboration within your school and build that culture, it does take a lot of work.

00:37:01.206 --> 00:37:03.998
It takes people to, you know, see it.

00:37:03.998 --> 00:37:11.610
But then once you do the work and they start seeing success from the collaboration that you get, then that motivates them more.

00:37:11.610 --> 00:37:26.041
And I'll tell you, my first year here as a principal, we really focused in on the school improvement team and really they were like well, man, we've done the school improvement stuff forever, but we've never seen any fruits of our labor.

00:37:26.041 --> 00:37:29.914
Well, within my first year, we solved a.

00:37:29.914 --> 00:37:35.286
We found a solution to an issue that they said this is an issue, we got to solve it, we've solved it.

00:37:35.286 --> 00:37:40.018
Then we implemented change and we solved the effects of it the next year.

00:37:40.018 --> 00:37:42.063
And it was them saying you know what?

00:37:42.063 --> 00:37:47.425
This is the first time that we have actually did something.

00:37:47.425 --> 00:37:52.639
We said we're going to do, we followed the rule and we could see the effects of the changes.

00:37:52.639 --> 00:37:54.985
So that motivated them even for the next year.

00:37:54.985 --> 00:38:07.748
It's motivating them right now because we're right now trying to find a solution to an issue that is important to us, and these issues aren't necessarily, you know, we have to score so high on a certain test.

00:38:07.856 --> 00:38:14.340
In this, you know, content area, our issues are how do we get kids in class, how do we engage kids?

00:38:14.340 --> 00:38:19.487
How do we, you know, transition kids from the eighth grade into the ninth grade?

00:38:19.487 --> 00:38:28.927
These are some of the things we're trying to build because that's part of our culture and the welcoming piece and wanting people to feel welcomed and wanted into our school.

00:38:28.927 --> 00:38:33.840
That's really important, because I don't think you're going to have success on the other ends if you don't have that.

00:38:33.840 --> 00:38:36.423
And, of course, the way to do that is to collaborate.

00:38:36.423 --> 00:38:41.041
And so that's really neat to just to hear how this system works.

00:38:41.041 --> 00:38:50.403
And if people don't have something, this is something that they can maybe look at bringing in and helping them produce systems if they don't have anything in place.

00:38:50.403 --> 00:38:53.985
And also, how could this elevate what you already do?

00:38:55.456 --> 00:38:57.362
Of that collaborative team meeting structure I talked about.

00:38:57.362 --> 00:38:58.184
It's actually taking what you're doing.

00:38:58.184 --> 00:38:59.429
Of that collaborative team meeting structure I talked about.

00:38:59.429 --> 00:39:05.900
It's actually taking what you're doing at the macro level, at the school level, of what are some school issues and let's bring people around to help solve the CTM.

00:39:05.900 --> 00:39:14.003
Focus then on the micro, of what are some issues that you individually are seeing in your classroom and how could we help to support.

00:39:14.003 --> 00:39:23.739
But it's not putting people on the hot seat, it's through the facilitated structures being able to say, okay, this is actually a shared issue that we're seeing across some different classrooms.

00:39:23.739 --> 00:39:25.422
What do you do in your room, what do I do in mine?

00:39:25.422 --> 00:39:33.876
And it's it's taking exactly what you're doing to try and create change at your school level and bringing it down to the micro level.

00:39:33.876 --> 00:39:40.329
So I often say to schools you can't avoid the macro and the micro like, do them both.

00:39:40.329 --> 00:39:42.659
How can we put both in place?

00:39:43.443 --> 00:39:44.244
No, I really like that.

00:39:44.244 --> 00:39:53.664
I think that's kind of one piece that we maybe got to look at is how can we help teachers learn from other teachers to help practices?

00:39:53.664 --> 00:39:55.442
How do we elevate their practices?

00:39:55.442 --> 00:40:04.532
I'll be honest, my vision for next year is how can teachers help student engagement in the classroom, and so that's going to be a piece.

00:40:04.532 --> 00:40:06.958
How do teachers learn from each other?

00:40:06.958 --> 00:40:08.983
And I've thought of some things.

00:40:08.983 --> 00:40:10.708
I won't get into it on the podcast.

00:40:10.708 --> 00:40:15.373
Maybe we could talk after on some things that I've thought about to help with that.

00:40:15.373 --> 00:40:26.925
But really this collaborative response, the things that you have thought about to help with that but really this you know collaborative response, you know the things that you have in here really kind of speaks to those things, and I really would encourage people to take a look at what you do.

00:40:26.925 --> 00:40:34.280
Is there any success stories that really stand out from this work that people have implemented that you'd like to share?

00:40:35.043 --> 00:40:35.987
Yeah, absolutely.

00:40:35.987 --> 00:40:37.902
So maybe I'll start from.

00:40:37.902 --> 00:40:41.003
I'll go back to the micro and move to the macro.

00:40:41.003 --> 00:40:46.117
We've seen numerous schools that have said the culture has changed.

00:40:46.117 --> 00:40:55.661
One is I heard from a teacher who said I was looking forward to counting my days for retirement and I'm not anymore.

00:40:55.661 --> 00:41:10.519
This, it's, re reignited my passion for what it is that I'm doing, because we've understood now that the solutions to the challenges we're having aren't outside, they're inside there.

00:41:11.021 --> 00:41:16.498
We often say, like in your building, jeff, you have centuries of teaching experience in there.

00:41:16.498 --> 00:41:24.786
If you're looking for how do we improve student engagement, I'm willing to bet you have experts in your building that are phenomenal at that.

00:41:24.786 --> 00:41:29.186
How do we leverage them as effectively as we can?

00:41:29.186 --> 00:41:36.094
So those are the kind of success stories that I've heard from teachers where it feels like and it goes right back to where we started.

00:41:36.094 --> 00:41:45.295
I want to make a difference, but if I can feel like I'm making.

00:41:45.295 --> 00:41:45.918
We often say to, to to teachers.

00:41:45.918 --> 00:41:46.918
This isn't going to make your work less like.

00:41:46.918 --> 00:41:56.523
You're not going to be able to go home half hour earlier than normal, but you are going to feel like your efforts are going much further than they ever have before.

00:41:56.963 --> 00:41:59.509
At the macro level, we've been working.

00:41:59.509 --> 00:42:03.105
I'll just share one system here in our province of.

00:42:03.105 --> 00:42:23.342
Calgary is our largest city and their entire public system is about 150,000 students, 250 schools have all adopted this framework and of course it's been through phases and and trying to introduce something large scale has been really complex and exciting.

00:42:23.342 --> 00:42:57.356
But we're seeing now success stories that are coming from those schools for students and I'll share one rural school division, a division of about 2 000 students or so here in our province that implemented and in their fourth year of every school getting common language, common understanding, utilizing, of course, not the same structures, because their high school of 700, that's not going to look the same as a kindergarten to grade 12 of 100 students, but we can still use some the common framework together.

00:42:57.818 --> 00:43:08.503
Their director of of uh student services at the divisional level said uh, it was not unusual, and this was in November when she was talking, so just within the first quarter of the year.

00:43:08.503 --> 00:43:18.969
She said by this time last year we had somewhere between 25 to 30 referrals coming in for district level services beyond the school.

00:43:18.969 --> 00:43:21.481
She said this year we've had four.

00:43:21.481 --> 00:43:30.527
Four Because the schools it's not that they're all of a sudden got better students coming through the door?

00:43:30.527 --> 00:43:31.210
Not at all.

00:43:31.275 --> 00:43:34.034
They have still their same student population.

00:43:34.034 --> 00:43:41.539
It's just the schools are way more equipped to be able to address the challenges that they're seeing.

00:43:41.539 --> 00:43:48.677
It's not that we have less needs, we just feel better equipped to handle those needs.

00:43:48.677 --> 00:43:51.985
So those are some of the success stories that have been phenomenal.

00:43:51.985 --> 00:43:57.661
And of course, then we do have the quantitative data that shows student achievement results within our school.

00:43:57.661 --> 00:44:16.724
Within two years we shot up literacy achievement by 13 percent higher for students at at benchmark based on our screen, which was again you talk about seeing those wins as soon as you saw that it, man, it opened up the desire to let's do more.

00:44:17.545 --> 00:44:39.498
Yeah, when you see success, you know, and you see the solutions that you come up with provide the success from that, it does motivate you to be like, oh, let's keep doing this work, because we've seen some of that, you know, within our building and I know, you know, other people can have those successes if they have these type of processes and systems in place for them as well.

00:44:39.498 --> 00:44:51.637
And and honestly, I'd love to see more people get into not being afraid to put these types of things in the place because they get worried about it and, oh my gosh, you know, will they?

00:44:51.637 --> 00:44:53.621
Will this be effective?

00:44:53.621 --> 00:45:11.367
And so I think, when you have those success stories and you have the people that have done the work and they can say, hey, if it could work for us, it could work for you, you just got, like you said, kind of roll up your sleeve and do the work, and it's not easy work, but it's work that's worth doing If you put the time and effort in.

00:45:12.351 --> 00:45:16.922
I want to kind of talk about your building a culture of collaboration podcast.

00:45:16.922 --> 00:45:25.047
That's something that I ran, you know, kind of getting to know you guys, you know your work as well as your podcast.

00:45:25.047 --> 00:45:31.307
So what kind of led you to start that building of culture collaboration podcast.

00:45:32.315 --> 00:45:44.554
Yeah, so of course, as we've been working through, I've learned more from engaging with schools and divisions than I'm sure I've taught those schools and divisions.

00:45:44.554 --> 00:45:51.246
Just, you'll come into a school that are utilizing the structures and processes, but they've made one tiny addition or tweak and you go.

00:45:51.246 --> 00:45:52.610
That's genius.

00:45:52.610 --> 00:46:09.271
So we wanted a way to start sharing out those stories and those success, and we have another podcast called Leading Collaborative Response that is directly connected to this work of leaders coming on and sharing what they've done, what they've learned through the process.

00:46:09.271 --> 00:46:17.588
And then myself and Lorna, who co-author of the book and co-founder of Jigsaw Learning sometimes we just sit down and share.

00:46:17.588 --> 00:46:23.677
You know, here's a strategy, here's a tip, here's how you can do this.

00:46:23.677 --> 00:46:36.137
But what we were finding is sometimes and it goes exactly to what you said, jeff sometimes people would potentially lack confidence, or sometimes even, you know, I know I need to put this in place, but I don't know how to introduce it.

00:46:36.137 --> 00:46:41.228
I don't, I'm not quite sure how I would move forward.

00:46:41.228 --> 00:46:51.846
And what we found is there's some skill sets around building culture and having people work in teams that are bigger than this collaborative response work.

00:46:51.846 --> 00:46:53.384
They're they and they.

00:46:53.384 --> 00:46:55.094
They span across different industries.

00:46:55.094 --> 00:47:06.530
So we really wanted to a chance to break down what are the tenets of effective collaboration in business, in education, in healthcare and all these different factors.

00:47:06.530 --> 00:47:10.547
And that's really our purpose of the Building a Culture Collaboration podcast.

00:47:10.547 --> 00:47:21.077
Yeah, we bring in educators and educational leaders, but we've also tried to expand beyond education to just what are things that we know about building effective teams.

00:47:21.539 --> 00:47:31.344
I'm a huge believer that in this world if we're trying to do it alone, it's going to be way more difficult than collaborating.

00:47:31.344 --> 00:47:35.338
But collaborating doesn't always lead to success.

00:47:35.338 --> 00:47:41.974
We know that there's ineffective forms of collaboration where you go oh that's 45 minutes of my life I will never get back.

00:47:41.974 --> 00:47:57.844
I could have got done more on my own, but I hope everyone's had instances of true, meaningful, purposeful collaboration where you come out and go oh, my goodness, we just accomplished something that is remarkable here for us.

00:47:57.844 --> 00:48:07.768
So that's the emphasis of that podcast and I've often said that a little bit selfishly it gives us a chance to pick other people's brains to learn.

00:48:07.768 --> 00:48:22.675
I see it as a tremendous professional learning opportunity for myself, but then I also hope that it benefits others listening and either confirming things that they are already doing and putting in place or offering a new idea or a new mindset.

00:48:24.059 --> 00:48:28.833
I agree with the whole like learning from other people, and that's kind of what I do through this podcast.

00:48:28.833 --> 00:48:49.454
I'm actually, you know, having my own professional development by talking to other people in the profession and what they're doing and, honestly, I wouldn't have ran across your work of collaborative response without um re, you know, really reigniting and this uh passion for trying to help other educational leaders.

00:48:49.454 --> 00:49:11.679
And so, you know, one way we ended up connecting was me going on social media and throwing out stuff and just saying, hey, I podcast, and I think you kind of responded to one of my posts and then we got the talk in and next thing, you know, we're collaborating and working together and just telling each other stories, which you know I appreciate.

00:49:11.679 --> 00:49:16.135
You know those things cause those are things I would have never thought would happen.

00:49:16.135 --> 00:49:20.987
You know, two, three months ago I was just thinking how do I do all this stuff?

00:49:20.987 --> 00:49:35.922
I want I know why what I want to do is I kind of have an idea, but then it's really kind of blown up over the last two to three months of working with other people and learning from them what they got to offer, and then, huh, I really liked that.

00:49:35.922 --> 00:49:45.264