I can't recommend it since I haven't read it, but another of the Dufour/Eaker books is called
Getting Started: Reculturing Schools to be PLCs. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1879639890/ref=sip_pdp_dp_0
The Interdependence section on pages 182-183 touches on something that is key to this transition in schools, interpersonal skills around problem solving and conflict resolution/negotiation. It takes a lot of trust to be able to work together and challenge each other to do better/different. Trust and time are both key to teacher team work. I keep going back to the notion of sticking with a focus on measurable student learning goals not on judging the teachers "style".
This was so valuable to me when I took on a class of K-1 students in a very challenging neighborhood. Our school was ahead of the curve on teacher grade level team work. Our school literacy coach had us work as a team to pick an area of student weakness on which we would focus our group efforts. We chose a list of the "first 200 words" The goal for the Kindergartners was to learn the first 30 and for the first graders, 75 or 100, I can't recall exactly. Once we agreed on the measurable goals, we began to look at ways to achieve them with our students.
We decided that we would all have word walls in our classrooms. We would add a few words each week and focus student attention on those words. We shared games we used and invented to practice the words with our students. We agreed to assess our students monthly to see how they were progressing towards learning the words. Students who knew the first thirty began working on more, by the end of second grade they were supposed to have the first two hundred. When we met as a group, we talked about how things were going. We shared what worked and what had failed, we brainstormed different ways to approach our challenge.
The byproduct of this hyperfocus was that we grew in our ability to work as a team, and actually began to seek out ideas from each other in areas we found frustrating with our students. I did not feel threatened when another teacher's class was doing better than my kids. The kids liked it too. We got ribbons for them when they learned 30 - 75 - 100 -200 words. They were excited to play the games and even liked being assessed regularly. They liked seeing the growth on a chart we created to monitor each students words.
Since that school I have seen similar grade level team work. As Influencer puts it on p. 183. " No one person had exactly the right idea, but as one partial idea was added upon and then changed again, each person helped create a strategy that, if left to her own devices, none would have invented."
It was important that we were asked to choose our area of focus as a group, after all we knew our students best. Often I have seen principals impose their agendas on grade level teams and I don't think that is as effective as setting the expectation that:
1) Teachers will choose the measurable student learning goals, and hand them in to the principal.
2) Teachers will report in with some strategies being used
3) Teachers report how the results will be measured.
4) Teacher report the results along the groups diagnosis of what worked and what did not work and what they'll try that is different in the future.
5) The principal may even want them to hand in some reflections on the group process and how that might be improved.
