Activate That Hive Mind: Using Think Tanks to Transform Teaching

Purpose & objective

Purpose:
The purpose of this poster session is sharing the protocols, templates and ideas that go into a Think Tank so that participants will start their own! As content area coaches and coordinators for a County Office of Education, we used Think Tanks to empower and support educators TK-12 from all content areas. We want session attendees to understand what a Think Tank is and leave with the tools they need to create one at their own site.

Objectives:
*Participants will understand the structure for a Think Tank
*Participants will understand how to use specific tools (Google Forms, Jamboard) to solicit audience engagement during Think Tank sessions
*Participants will learn how to solicit a group of educators to participate in a Think Tank
*Participants will be able to take the complete toolkit of templates and resources and start their own

Educational Challenge:
Think Tanks arose out of pandemic teaching. I was hired as a Distance Learning Teacher on Special Assignment, and was tasked with supporting administrators and educators TK-12 across our county with Distance Learning. I decided that the best approach would be to establish explicit time and space for these educators to come together to wrestle with the questions they had about Distance (and then Hybrid) teaching and learning and to share what was working for them. Each Think Tank meeting includes a portion dedicated to participants selecting prompts, and then discussing those prompts in small groups. Inevitably these prompts, which were generated by participants at the previous meeting, focused on issues that teachers were seeking to overcome. Often these discussion topics included how to support student-centered learning environments and promote contribution from marginalized voices. In the Distance Learning environment of the past year, Think Tank teachers wrestled with such questions as - Cameras on or off? How do you grade gracefully while also maintaining rigorous expectations? What tools have you found successful for activating student voice? This participant-driven practice ensures that the educational challenges that matter most to educators are the ones we address in each Think Tank meeting.

Models Employed:
The formula for the Think Tank was created by me - an educator fresh out of the classroom, who was tired of slow-paced professional development that didn’t treat me as a professional. I believe that one of the best things we can do as coaches is to establish routines and procedures for collaboration and then step out of the educators’ way. The beauty of this model is that teachers get an opportunity to leave a Think Tank session with a variety of new connections with colleagues, and a whole set of tips & tricks being used by people currently in the classroom. This also builds on techniques I have observed in successful professional development: participant choice, edcamps, demo slams, and utilizing engagement tools.

Lesson Plans, Instructional Activities & Technology Employed:
Think Tanks are fast paced, and are a mash-up of all our favorite professional learning pieces in one. Throughout the course of a typical Think Tank meeting, participants start with a bell-ringer activity of sharing a teacher story via a Google Form (to be used later in the session). Then we set the objectives for convening, and host a connector. This is followed by a mini ed-camp where participants select the topics of the day up for discussion using another Google Form. Breakout groups are mixed up between prompts for speed-dating meets professional development to maximize networking opportunities, and thoughts are recorded via Jamboard. Finally, there’s an opportunity to share A-ha’s from conversations before moving on to Demo Slams. Downtime between slams is filled with the teacher stories gathered at the beginning of the session.

The flow and progression of the interactions during a Think Tank is intentional, starting with low stakes anonymous participation via a Google Form and building up to small group discussions during the Ed-camp portion of the Think Tank. It culminates with the “open mic” style whole group sharing during the Demo Slams, reflections & questions. This explicitly models for teachers ways to use technology such as Google Forms and Jamboard to scaffold and support interactivity during lessons. Teachers can then take these ideas and put them into practice in their own classrooms.

Evidence of Success:
On feedback forms, 100% of participants rated Think Tank meetings as a 3 or 4 out of 4 as an opportunity for learning. In the words of one participant, “I get a lot out of these meetings and always leave with new tools and ideas.”
Additionally, recreating Think Tanks will be easy with the step-by-step guide and templates provided. As an instructional coach, I have already shared this template with two other coaches in my region, and they were able to recreate Think Tanks with ease at their own sites. It’s been beta-tested, tweaked, and refined.

Supporting research

1. Edutopia, Why EdCamp?, https://www.edutopia.org/blog/why-edcamp-kristen-swanson
2. Case Study, Demo Slam - Google, https://vimeo.com/44201436
3. The Teachers Have Something to Say, https://edarxiv.org/h8gac