Collaboration in the Field: Stovall Academy

The word collaboration gets tossed around quite a bit these days. Businesses emphasize cross-department collaboration, community organizations see the value in it, and district offices use it as a battle cry. But how does it translate on a school campus? For the answer, check out Stovall Academy for Environmental Studies in Aldine ISD. 

"Collaboration is part of our DNA. It's what we do—whether it's a grade level meeting or a summertime leadership meeting," explains reading skills specialist Chamelia Robinson.

The Stovall team doesn't leave this collaborative atmosphere to chance, and all of the collaborative efforts seem to be paying off. The school has been named a TEA "Recognized" campus for the last five years, and the teacher turnover rate is lower than 5 percent.

Teachers spend time in collaborative planning meetings four days per week, and administrators support this by scheduling common conference times during the school day. Robinson and Assistant Principal Kelly Eckenfels attribute Stovall's success in forming a collaborative culture to professional development in Critical Friends Group coaching provided by Houston A+ Challenge. 

Participants in the A+ workshop learn how to lead teams, facilitate feedback sessions on classroom and school-level work, and develop a culture of reflective practice. Over the course of several years, all members of Stovall's leadership team and grade-level chairs have received this key professional development. As of this fall, 22 of the school's 74 faculty and staff members have been trained -- and the entire campus benefits.

Before the training instilled a sense of empowerment at Stovall, Eckenfels says, "not a lot of people were sharing. Not as many people were volunteering, stepping up to the plate to take charge of something. A lot of people were just sitting there, waiting for somebody else to take the lead. There wasn't that sense of shared ownership, that this is our school."

In contrast, Eckenfels says, teachers now take an active role in staff development and other broad-based leadership opportunities at Stovall. "We have leaders in our building now that we never would have suspected," she says.

José Del Mar is one of those unexpected leaders. Quiet and soft-spoken, Del Mar was the first bilingual teacher on campus when he joined Stovall's faculty seven years ago. Recently named bilingual skills specialist, Del Mar uses his A+ coaching toolkit to help other teachers in his expanding department. 

"Critical Friends Group has helped me to collaborate . . . I would never have taken this role had I not gotten involved in the collaborative work of the school," Del Mar says. Sharing professional articles, facilitating consultancies, and encouraging peer observation are all part of his practice as a new teacher leader. 

A key to the successful collaboration is the supportive administration led by Principal Acquenette LeBlanc. The staff characterizes LeBlanc as very open to new ideas and willing to share leadership of the school. 

"She lets teachers take on new work and new ideas," says Eckenfels. Robinson adds: "There's definitely been a paradigm shift just because of the freedom. There's a confidence in the leadership abilities that each of us have."

New teachers are welcomed into the collaborative culture when they first join the staff. The first day back from summer break includes a Critical Friends Group overview, meaningful team-builders, and a staff presentation of the collaborative history of the school displaying scrapbooks and artifacts. The norm is that everybody belongs to a group and contributes to the group.

The reflective, collaborative atmosphere continues to reinvigorate the Stovall staff. Recently, the faculty took time to reflect on several years' worth of student data. They were looking for the "sparks" — the practices that had been in place when they saw exceptional improvements. 

Two things stood out during the schools most effective years: 1) excitement and immersion in collaborative practices when Critical Friends Groups were new to the campus, and 2) breaking down isolation by visiting and learning from other campuses such as Hicks Elementary in Alief ISD, which was known for effective reading instruction. 

The cross-district demonstration visits were a pivotal moment, Robinson explains: “You can have somebody come and talk to you about it, but actually going and seeing another school living it, doing it” inspired teachers to plan together and implement changes that best fit Stovall.

As a result of these reflections, the Stovall staff is re-committing itself to its collaborative DNA.

Article by Donna Reid