National School Reform Faculty

Critical Friends Groups: In Pursuit of Excellence

From Mt. Airy Times Express, Wednesday, March 17, 1999

By BARBARA A. BLOOM
Correspondent

At a time when public city school teachers are under fire, concerned teachers are quietly and persistently improving their own skills and those of their peers. One successful method is the Critical Friends Group (CFG), which brings together small groups of teachers in a school to help each other examine their own classroom practices and make changes in them. (The word 'critical' is meant to suggest an analytical frame of mind rather than a negative one.)

While training has sometimes been supported through the Annenberg Institute's National School Reform Project, participation in a CFG is strictly voluntary. In order to participate, members have to agree to attend meetings regularly for a period of two or three years and to produce a personal portfolio.

Joanne Williams, a teacher of first grade at Henry H. Houston School, is delighted with her membership in a Critical Friends Group. She likes "getting to know colleagues" who she works with daily but rarely sees because of the demands of classroom teaching.

Her CFG has been especially helpful to her in getting ideas for handling particular children. "If you really want to grow in your teaching who else would you rather go to than your colleagues?" she asks.

Williams was one of over 100 participants at the second annual Philadelphia Critical Friends Groups conference held on Tuesday, February 23, at Central East Middle School in Feltonville/Olney. Two of the 14 city schools that currently have Critical Friends Groups are in Mt. Airy, and these schools were well represented at the conference. AMY NW, which was the first in Philadelphia to have CFGs (in 1990) has two groups: Houston School, which began CFGs in 1997, has three.

Conference attendees spent their afternoon in two seminars. In the first, they examined the ideas of educator Grant Wiggins and the implications for their own setting. In the second participants chose from among a variety of workshops on teaching techniques: literature circles, Socratic seminar, teacher collaboration and student work, using rubrics, collaboration between librarian and teachers, and developing a portfolio.

Gina Kaplan, a teacher at Taylor School and a coach of a Critical Friends Group, explained how producing a portfolio, like participating in the Critical Friends Groups, encouraged her to keep on trying. Too often, she commented, a teacher might try an idea and if it didn't work jump to another idea. With Critical Friends Groups, teachers are given encouragement to continue by modifying and changing an idea until it works well for their classroom.

Critical Friends Groups offer teachers a voluntary opportunity to share and develop professional skills in a unique environment that is both structured and informal at the same time.

BARBARA A. BLOOM has taught and worked in a variety of educational settings from elementary school through college. She founded the Mt. Airy Learning Tree and served as its director from 1980 to 1990.