National School Reform Faculty

Microlabs
Date: February 6-8, 2007
Listserv: Coaches
References: Microlabs, BayCES’ reflective tool

Tuesday, February 6, 2007 1:25 PM
Looking for a list of Microlab questions - suggestions?

I'm using the protocol with a fairly new group of CFGers to break the ice, get conversation moving - but the questions do not need to be geared to any particular topic.

Many thanks,
Maureen, Washington DC

Tuesday, February 6, 2007 3:54 PM
Hi Maureen,
Here’s three that have worked well in coaches seminars in Indiana:

1) Why did you decide to become a teacher (or an educator)? What drew you into this profession?
2) Why do you stay? What keeps you coming back, year after year?
3) What matters to you in your work? What is at the heart of what you do? What is the one thing you won’t compromise?

We got them from some folks in Georgia (thanks Frances and Betty!).

Hope this is useful,
Ross, IN

Tuesday, February 6, 2007 3:59 PM
Hi Maureen,
As I have thought about Micro Lab questions, I’ve generally thought about them in relationship to each other and to the work that follow the Micro Lab. So, what series of 2-3 questions might you craft that move from ice breaker to something more probing or coaching-like that would get them thinking about and into the space of the following work?
Scott, CO

Tuesday, February 6, 2007 5:20 PM
Hi,
I agree with Scott. I think the questions should be connected to your purpose for the overall work and to each other. I generally look at the questions as defining, personalizing and extending. I have used the questions Ross shared with new groups and they have been very successful in getting folks to reflect and share their personal philosophies and goals/passions.

What’s the focus of the group you are convening? Do they have an area of joint work etc.?
Debbie, PA

Tuesday, February 6, 2007 8:10 PM
When I craft Microlabs questions, like Scott and Deb I try to make them create a transition from one focus of our work to the next, deepening the conversation as a result. So in your case I might ask something like:

1) Why did you decide to become an educator and why do you stay?
2) What are you currently working on in your practice as an educator? How are you trying to improve?
3) What do you hope to gain from working with colleagues in this way?

I'm assuming you're trying to create a CFG environment to support collaboration and risk-taking. If that's the case, it might make sense to progressively up the ante with your Microlabs questions.

Let us know what you decided to do and how it goes!
Edorah, VT

Tuesday, February 6, 2007 9:37 PM
Greetings colleagues...I have found Microlabs to be a powerful tool in generating conversation about race and social justice. Last summer I facilitated a group of Indianapolis Public Schools Administrators in their annual professional development day. The topic was interrupting inequities in IPS. I used the following prompts for the Microlab:

1. What were your relationships like as a young person with people of different cultures?
2. What was helpful to you in forming relationships across racial lines?
3. What assumptions, values, and practices of people and institutions of the dominant culture serve to disadvantage faculty members and students from the non-dominant culture?

I expected much more discomfort than occurred and it lead into a rich conversation of the administrators role in “doing no harm”. The striking thing about the experience was that we had never met before as a group and they bonded around the notion of “taking up” interrupting inequities and injustices whenever they encounter them in their practice.

I am beginning to think that I often play it too safe in crafting prompts for groups based on my assumptions (fear) around how they might react. I find myself asking, “In what ways am I collaborating with people and systems that avoid the essential courageous conversations that are necessary to bring about the interruption of systemic oppression?”

I am not suggesting these prompts as an icebreaker for a new CFG, but I am thinking that we could be more courageous about what we ask our colleagues to think about.
Peace
Daniel, IN

Wednesday, February 7, 2007 6:25 AM
In the Microlab conversation Daniel Baron wrote:

"I am beginning to think that I often play it too safe in crafting prompts for groups based on my assumptions (fear) around how they might react. I find myself asking, “In what ways am I collaborating with people and systems that avoid the essential courageous conversations that are necessary to bring about the interruption of systemic oppression?”

Daniel’s reflection led me to think about a tool I’m using to explore ways I’ve been playing it safe too. At Winter Meeting Victor Cary shared a tool from BayCES that prompted my thinking along these lines. The template asked you to reflect upon times when you have been passive, what caused you to be this way, and ways you can overcome this tendency as you work to prepare yourself to coach/facilitate, particularly around issues of equity.

Using this tool for my own reflection moved me to think of times when I focus on obstacles vs. opportunities. I’m thinking here of conversations and reflections I make that blame the monolithic“ powers that be” both large and small for orchestrating systemic inequities as opposed to consistently focusing on what I can do to make changes within my own locus of control thereby squaring with the ways I contribute to the status quo.

Looking to the other side of the template, which asks you to consider the ways you have been active, how this was encouraged and how you can be sure to stay this way reinforced my need to make my practice public and build alliances with colleagues who will challenge my backsliding/passivity with their questions and through their own example. Working with colleagues who will look with me for evidence of changes in practice with students when I try to talk about vs. act upon the problems is the best way I know to remain actively in the risk zone that we talk about as the site where change occurs.

Thanks for your candid reflection, Daniel. I will write Victor and ask if we can post BayCES’ reflective tool on our website.
Debbie, PA

Wednesday, February 7, 2007 8:00 AM
I have a tentative "yeah, but...." to ask about the Microlab. What I love about using this protocol is the introductory nature of it. Yes, it can be used to deepen all sorts of conversations--absolutely, but I have seen its power bring a room together. Rather than a tedious, canned icebreaker, the responses to questions can begin the process of building relationships. I find it inspiring to ask educators to speak of the person who influenced them the most, one change they would like to see in their school, what they are proudest of in their work, a teacher who turned them on/off to a subject or an idea, a question that they have not been able to resolve in their work. With little or no introductions to protocol-based discourse, the result is a positive spirit or energy among participants.

I nodded at Daniel's thought that he often plays it too safe in crafting prompts - yup, that's me, but the Microlab offers me a chance to get everyone in the pool. I haven't asked them to go off the high dive - just to get into the pool. And yet, as I read the thoughtful comments on this topic, I wondered again at my instincts. I begin in safety and move toward deeper risk, while the respondents seem to be saying that their work begins on the rim of risk right from the start. I have a lot to learn about this and am eager to learn from your responses.
Peggy, NH

Wednesday, February 7, 2007 9:08 AM
There is a continuum. To use Peggy's metaphor sticking your toe in the pool or diving off the deep end. I am in this work because of the students I hold in my heart and mind and the students who continue to inform me. The students I interact with need adults who are willing to dive into the pool from the highest diving platform. Because of the kids I do not have the luxury or privilege of 'playing it safe." We used the following Microlab questions this week in San Diego. RoLesia Holman and I crafted these questions.

1) Given who you are, why are you involved with or starting a small high school?
2) What will you offer o what are you offering each student in your small high school that is not a replication of the large traditional high school?
3) Given who you are what does your leadership look like and sound like in order for each student and each adult to be successful in your small high school?
Camilla, CT

Wednesday, February 7, 2007 10:10 AM
Hi Everyone,

What I’m wrestling with now is the extent to which my explicit concerns about the safety and readiness of others, whom I am facilitating, is really my cover for my own implicit fear about being able to lead a group. In other words, if all the participants are in the water by virtue of their roles in schools and their attendance at a seminar, then I have to ask myself why I’m asking questions about their willingness to get wet.

I always have the luxury of exercising lots of control as a facilitator. I can use that control to comfortably support the safe status quo, the replication that Camilla & RoLesia’s questions name, or I can trouble the risky waters where our students are forced to live their lives. Not pushing myself to take the risks is now striking me as disrespectful of both my colleagues and the children I profess to support.

I have some deadlines to meet today so I need to stop writing now, but I will be mulling over these thoughts throughout the day as I commit to their use as a filter through which my agendas and prompts will now be passed. I will begin looking for the ways my choice of activities and prompts create and hold spaces for dissonance and changes in practice. I will work on being both more intentional and more transparent in my facilitation and my Theory of Action in terms of my actions, expectations and the responses/evidence I will collect. Hmm…
Debbie, PA

Wednesday, February 7, 2007 10:56 AM
I use micro labs in three ways....

....in a CFG coaches seminar, to introduce people to each other and to the use of protocols (what was it like to talk in this way? How might out conversations have been different had we not used this structure? When might you use this protocol? When wouldn't you?).

The questions below can serve as prompts for this purpose - they are designed for the first morning of a five day experience, when people are testing out their participation in a new group - a group in which they will be asked early (and often) to bring authentic work and questions for feedback.

- Why did you decide to become an educator? What drew you to this profession?
- Why do you stay? What keeps you coming back, year after year?
- In terms of your practice, what is the one thing you won’t compromise?
- What will you go to the wall for?
- Describe a time when you were part of a learning community. What made it so? What were its characteristics?
- What do you believe about the relationship between teacher collaboration and student achievement? What led you to these beliefs?
- How do these beliefs play out in your practice? What, if anything, would need to change for you to have a closer match between what you believe and what you do?
- Who is the one teacher — inside or outside of your formal schooling — who stands out as having made a difference in your life? If you could write to him or her right now, what is the one thing you would like to tell him/her? OR
- Think about your career as an educator. Describe one student from whom you learned something significant about your work as an educator. What did you learn? How did you learn it?
- Why did you decide to work in education? What were your early aspirations?
- In terms of your practice, what do you want your legacy to be?
- What were your hopes and aspirations as you began your work as an educator?
- When you tell friends and family members “what you do”—what do you say to them?
- When you think about your work, what one aspect/element of it would you give up last? What’s at the heart of what you do?
- In terms of your practice, what are your hopes for this year?
- Come next June, what would you want your students to say about their learning this year under your stewardship?
- If there were only one thing for you to learn this year — and you knew that one thing could make a difference for your students — what would it be?
- As you think about the upcoming school year, what are you looking forward to? What excites you?
- What‘s one thing of significance – related to your work or teaching – that you learned last year? How did you do that learning? What made the learning significant?
- When you think about your practice, what one element of it won’t you give up? What’s at the heart of what you do? What do you stand for?

I also use Microlabs to introduce some new practice, like peer observation. In Jane Vella's lingo, Microlabs can serve as an "anchor" activity - helping people connect new learning that is coming up to what they already know and to their own experiences.

Example:
If you could be a fly on the wall in someone else’s classroom, what would you want to observe?

What’s one thing you wish people could see you or your students doing in your classroom?

If you knew that a colleague would come into your classroom — and that his or her being there would make a difference for you and your students — whom would you ask in, what would they do while they were there, and what would you want the conversation to look like afterwards?

Finally, I use Microlabs in specific situations with specific groups around specific objectives. In these cases, the questions are designed to jump start a longer exploration of an important issue - or to put some closure on an experience and to help people think about what they will take away and do. These questions depend on the group and the learning - and I frame them each time with the group in mind. As I frame the questions, I expect that the questions (and especially the last two) will prompt reflection, cause dissonance, and create opportunities for the participants to make commitments and/or beliefs public.

In all of these cases, Microlab questions (in my opinion) should follow seamlessly - one from the other - and should demand more from the speaker and the listeners as they move from question to question - in terms of going public, revealing beliefs, and grappling with important issues.

If the content of what is said in the micro lab is going to serve as a basis for a group conversation, then that needs to be clear from the beginning - the guidelines don't necessarily read that way.

I am thinking about the conversation about "playing it safe," and about the relationship between the facilitator and learners. Who is playing it safe? Who gets to decide? If we are asking the people with whom we are working to take risks, then how do we structure our work so we take the same level of risk?

And, if in our design and facilitation, we jumpstart courageous conversations, then we need to be ready to facilitate those conversations in productive ways. Two winter meeting attendees from Brookline told me about being in winter meeting groups where the group members took risks in the conversation - and the facilitators (1) didn't know how to handle it, (2) got confused about their role in (and responsibility to) the group, and (3) in not handling it well, stopped the learning for the participants.
So, lots to think about - thanks for the conversation.
Gene, MA

Wednesday, February 7, 2007 11:53 AM
Gene wrote:

Two winter meeting attendees from Brookline told me about being in winter meeting groups where the group members took risk in the conversation-and the facilitators (1) didn't know how to handle it, (2) got confused about their role in (and responsibility to) the group, and (3) in not handling it well, stopped the learning for the participants.

I agree with Gene's critique of what happened during a part of the Intro to CFEE at the Winter Meeting. This was one of the tougher moments when we took a risk and went in what felt like an unsafe direction for some. There were different experiences. Where there was strong and clear facilitation, the difficult space resulted in learning for both the facilitator and the participants.

Being in what we refer to, as Discourse II is full of landmines. We as an organization need to build some will, skill, muscle and courage to have a cadre of skilled national facilitators who can go there with folks from different experiences in America and hold the space for what feels uncomfortable and risky. I would like to see some Discourse II language written into the criteria for being a National Facilitator. In my humble opinion, most conscious people of color live in Discourse II and some say we live in Discourse III. How do we learn to build bridges across the divide of language, will, skill and courage so that we can build alliances that enable us to interrupt inequities in our institutions designed by and meeting the needs of a majority of the dominant culture? Peace and Love
Camilla, CT

Wednesday, February 7, 2007 7:35 PM
Wow, lots of great conversation and potential Microlab questions! I'm cutting and pasting them all into a document to save as future prompts based on the situation. What I like most about all of the responses people are putting forth is hearing about the many varied purposes for using the same protocol.

I appreciate Gene's prompt to think about my own risk level when doing this work and yet also being intentional about what I'm setting up. Too often I think I can get in a rut with using the same activities that I've become comfortable with. Putting myself in the risk zone while I'm providing the same for participants/colleagues is a delicate balance. Like the situation Gene describes at Winter Meeting I find that sometimes I'm successful with this and sometimes I'm not. When I'm not, the learning for both myself and my peers is usually found in debriefing the experience so we can together determine what went wrong and why.

Unfortunately at Winter Meeting, time and logistical constraints kept us from doing this in the way we would have liked. But our facilitator team has been unpacking it and learning from the experience. I'm lucky to be part of a team/network of facilitators who has committed to keeping each other in the risk zone and deepening our practice around this work. I appreciate these online conversations that push my thinking deeper.
Kim, OR

Thursday, February 8, 2007 10:40 AM
Gene, I am in charge of the newsletter for the Fairfield U. (CT) chapter of Phi Delta Kappa. May I use these questions as part of an article for our next edition? Thanks for your thinking, always!
Karley, CT