By Carlene Murphy

As I work with schools in many states, schools in rural communities, schools in big cities, elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, I hear one thing over and over: no time.

No time for teachers to routinely learn together.

No time for teachers to reflect on their teaching practices together.

No time to share expertise.

No time for teachers to test ideas together.

No time to provide support to each other as they implement new initiatives.

No time for groups of teachers to monitor the effects of an innovation on their students.

No time.

No time.

When I talk with faculties about a structure that I call "Whole Faculty Study Groups," the first barrier that confronts us is the issue of time.

The Whole Faculty Study Group (WFSG) structure includes all of a school's certified faculty study groups that have four to six members. These individuals join together to increase their capacity through new learnings to meet the needs of their students. Small schools may have as few as two study groups, and large schools may have as many as twenty.

These study groups may be homogeneous or heterogeneous. Odd as it may seem, by far, most of the study groups are formed cross-grade and cross-department. The study groups generally stay together for at least a school year with rotating leadership.

In schools where I work, study groups are part of the schoolwide design and a regular, legitimate part of the school day, meeting about an hour a week. A number of these schools have had the WFSG structure in place for four years, often redesigning the structure at the end of each year.

But, frequently, I hear that study groups are unworkable because schools can't find that single hour each week.

So, how do faculties find that one hour?

Each faculty confronts that question. First, the whole faculty reaches a consensus that students will benefit from having all administrators, teachers, counselors, and other certified personnel in small groups focusing on curriculum and instruction. If a faculty agrees that schools are learning organizations for the adults in the building as well as for children, then finding the time is one question that can be answered.

After working with more than 50 schools in eight states during the past five years, I know that faculties have found ways to find the time. What follows is a collection of how some of those schools have found the time to make professional development a continuous feature of the workplace.

• At Sarah Cobb Elementary School in Americus, Georgia, students are released one day a week at 1:30 p.m. instead of the regular 3:30 p.m. dismissal time. The school had exceeded the minimum number of instructional minutes required by the state, and it was not necessary to add minutes to the other four school days.

This elementary school is one of four schools in a rural district and the only one with early dismissal on Wednesdays. Schools that don't exceed the minimum instructional minutes would have to add minutes four days a week if they wanted to release students early one day a week.

Before getting a waiver from the Georgia Board of Education for early release, the Sarah Cobb Elementary School faculty designed a plan to use teaching assistants to release teachers for their study group meetings. The key points of that plan were:

-- A team of five teaching assistants released five teachers the first hour of school so teachers could meet as a study group.

-- For the last hour of school, the teaching assistants covered five other classrooms.

-- Each day, two study groups meet. By Friday afternoon, all 10 study groups have met.

-- Each week, the groups rotate the time of day they met. The groups that met the first hour one week would meet the last hour the next week.

Activating this plan the first week of school and continuing it until the waiver was approved in January indicated to the community and the Georgia Board of Education that the faculty was serious about its intent to create a new approach to professional development. When teachers from the school went to Atlanta to present its request for a waiver to the State Board, it was the first Georgia school to make such a request.

• Schools in the process of finalizing plans for some form of shortened day once a week have considered using teams of parents and/or business partners to release teachers for their study group meeting hour.

• Classes begin 30 minutes late on Wednesdays at Holtville High School in Holtville, California. But, on Wednesdays, teachers arrive 30 minutes earlier than on the other four days. This gives teachers one hour for collaborative planning in their study groups.

• The principal at Wheeless Road Elementary School in Augusta, Georgia, created a study group for teachers whose students attend art, music, physical education, and other special areas at the same time.

• Several schools have used a temporary approach to finding time for study groups. While the faculties are investigating other approaches, teachers are paired. Teachers from two study groups take each other's classes for the first or the last 30 minutes of a day. Since teachers arrive at least 30 minutes before students arrive and stay 30 minutes after students leave, an hour block is created.

Under that plan, Teachers A, B, C, and D are one study group. Teacher E, F, G, and H are one study group. Teacher A combines Teacher E's class with her class; Teacher B does the same with Teacher F; Teacher C does the same with Teacher G; and Teacher D does the same with Teacher H. This allows Teachers E, F, G, and H to meet for one hour once a week.

On another day, Teachers E, F, G, and H combine classes for Teachers A, B, C, and D to meet. In the combined classes, students have individual study, reading, and journal writing time; students work one-on-one with each other; clubs meet; and other types of student-planned activities are initiated.

• The principal at Addison Elementary School in Marietta, Georgia, found a way to enable as many as six study groups to meet in a single day. The principal hired five substitutes who spend one day every other week at the school. On that day, this team of substitutes releases five teachers at 9 a.m. to meet as a study group. The subs release five other teachers at 10 a.m. to meet as a study group, five more at 11 a.m., and so on until the school day ends.

Because the school has 10 study groups, the team returns the next day for a half-day to enable the other four study groups to meet. During the weeks in which substitutes don't provide the released time, the study groups meet for an hour after school.

• Murdock Elementary and two other Marietta, Georgia, schools follow Addison's format for finding time. To supplement that approach, Murdock and Addison arrange assemblies and other types of schoolwide events so teachers in the same study groups are not supervising students at the same time. When a group is not supervising students, the study group meets.

• At Deepwood Elementary School in Round Rock, Texas, the principal limits faculty meetings to one Wednesday a month. Study groups meet on the other three Wednesdays of the month. All teachers in the district are asked to reserve every Wednesday for faculty meetings.

• At Elder Middle School in Sandersville, Georgia, teachers have a daily 90-minute planning period. Once a week, the first 60 minutes of a planning period is labeled "study group" time. In that hour, teachers on a team are actively engaged in a study using the study group format.

• Texas' Round Rock Independent School District permitted teachers at three schools using the study group design for professional development to earn compensatory time for after-school study groups. The teachers' weekly one-hour meetings provided as much time as they would have received in two full days of staff development time. That meant teachers did not have to report to school on two days designed as staff development days on the school calendar.

• A group of teachers at Round Rock (Texas) High School is now figuring out how its 230 teachers can use the study group design as its professional development model. The school of over 3,000 students is going to address how a large school finds quality time for teachers to assume more individual responsibility for their own learning. Under its present professional development delivery system, which consists primarily of bringing all the faculty together at specified times, teachers do not have the opportunity to collaborate, or even know, teachers in departments other than their own.

Fifteen teachers and two administrators are currently examining the daily schedule and the school year calendar to find the time for heterogeneous study groups to meet at least every other week for about an hour. The new professional development schedule will be in place for the 1997-98 school year.-

• In Boyle County schools in Kentucky, students are dismissed two hours early every Wednesday in September, October, March, and April. For November, December, January, February, and May, each school submits a plan to the district office showing how it will enable teachers to continue their study groups.

• All of Woodford County's six schools are dismissed two hours early on one Wednesday a month. On another Wednesday of the month, teachers in these Kentucky schools meet in study groups after school in lieu of a faculty meeting.

At the end of the first year of early release, the district had not received any complaints from the community. Early dismissal for high school students participating in athletics and other extra curricular activities brought unique challenges. However, providing time for teachers to learn modeled the school's vision of students as lifelong learners.

• At Sweetwater High School in National City, California, a large faculty of 120 teachers found one hour a week for heterogeneous study groups. After analyzing the number of instructional minutes in a regular school day, they determined that the school was "banking" time in terms of instructional minutes. In order to have time in the school day for 20 study groups to meet, they took the accumulated five minutes and combined them with the time from a staff development day to create 26 days when classes could begin 45 minutes later.

Once a week, study groups meet from 7:30 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. On that day, classes begin at 8:20 a.m., and all periods are shortened. On the other four days, classes begin at 7:30 a.m. Students know that on "Study Group Day," the bell schedule is not the same as on the other four days.

• Teachers at Mission Bay High School in San Diego, California, chose to select for themselves when their study groups would meet each week. The groups meet at different times and on different days. Several of the 17 study groups meet early in the morning, others at lunch time or during planning periods, others after school, and one met in the evening. Teachers accounted for their professional development time and, on designated staff development days, teachers were not expected to attend meetings.

• The Jackson Elementary School faculty in Greeley, Colorado, redesigned the modified day that had been in place before initiating Whole Faculty Study Groups. Monday was the modified day and was formed by having the school day start five minutes early and end five minutes later on Tuesday through Friday, making the student's day 8:40 a.m. to 3:25 p.m. four days a week. On Monday, students leave at 1:45 p.m. and teachers leave at 4:25 p.m.

Before study groups, teachers spent the block of time doing individual teacher preparation, meeting in committees, and participating in faculty meetings. Now one hour of that block of time is for study group meetings, beginning the second week of school through the first week in April. This leaves the last few weeks of school for teachers to attend to record-keeping tasks.

• At Brushy Creek Elementary School in Round Rock, Texas, the principal makes allowances for the time teachers spend after school in their study groups. If teachers are expected to stay 45 minutes after students are dismissed and a group of teachers in a study group stays an hour and half beyond dismissal time, those teachers will be allowed to leave earlier than the 45 minutes on the other days of the week.

A version of this idea would be for schools where teachers, by contract, are expected to stay 45 minutes after the students are dismissed, the 45 minutes be shortened to 30 minutes on four days, carving out an hour for all study groups at the end of one day a week.

• Ray High School in Corpus Christi, Texas, initiated block scheduling the same year study groups were being considered as a viable option for earning professional development credits. The teachers who formed study groups met one day a week during the extended lunch period.

• Winnona Park Elementary in Decatur, Georgia, benefits from a team of 19 college students that spend every Thursday at the school. The young men and women are participating in Eco Watch, an environmental leadership program of the Atlanta Outward Bound Center. The college students do classroom and schoolwide environmental activities with the elementary students. This frees teachers to meet in study groups on Thursdays. The college students keep a record of the hours they spend at the school and, at the end of the school year, the hours are converted into dollars for college tuitions.

• A number of the elementary schools in California's San Diego Unified School District have one day a week that is modified so students are dismissed two hours earlier than on the other four days. Generally, this time is for individual teacher preparation time, faculty meetings, and district meetings.

When five elementary schools elected to initiate the Whole Faculty Study Group process, those schools reconfigured the modified day time. Four of the faculties decided to use one hour of the two-hour block for study groups. The faculty at the Fulton Health, Science, and Fitness Magnet School decided study groups would meet every other week for 90 minutes. On study group days after the study group meetings, the whole staff meets together for 30 minutes to report on each group's progress.

• Several schools are currently exploring how to release teachers from their teaching duties for an hour and a half each week. The students would remain at the schools, being dismissed at their regular times. Professionals from area universities, health care facilities, communitiy agencies, businesses, and city/county governmental agencies are considering how volunteers can provide instruction during this hour and a half in many subject areas. Students could be grouped differently than in their regular classes, forming larger and smaler classes across grade levels. PTAs are also considering budgeting funds for this purpose where funds are needed.

All of these strategies for finding time for teachers to collaborate require that the time allocated is spent in serious and purposeful work to increase teachers' knowledge and skills.

Because the public often perceives time for teacher learning during the work day as robbing students, strategies need to be in place to inform the internal and external publics how students directly benefit from the time allocated to teacher development. The communication with parents and the general public must be continuous. Frequent examples of how students benefit will encourage the community to continue to support the notion that student development is directly linked to teacher development.

I strongly urge teachers to tell their students what they do and what they learn in study groups. The day after a study group meets is a great learning opportunity for students. Teachers often say, "Today, we are going to do something that I learned in my study group yesterday." Students go home and tell their parents. Parents see the connection, and the idea of how students benefit when more time is allocated for teacher learning is no longer an abstract concept.

One outcome of the Whole Faculty Study Group structure is realizing that professional development includes various models that interact with each other to make a more dynamic whole. At the beginning of the study group process, faculties generally have seen study groups as separate from professional development days. They saw study groups and professional development days as separate from specific whole-faculty training events at the school. And they were likely to see all of the before mentioned as separate from attending conferences and doing independent activities.

By the end of the first year, faculties were more able to see and to develop professional development plans that had various staff development strategies or models feeding each other. In these schools, what teachers did in study groups to become more skillful in the classroom enabled them to see more clearly the need for a more integrated and holistic approach to professional development. When this concept becomes a reality, time becomes less of a problem. Teachers see, as a unified effort, the different time frames as one large time block for continuous learning.

The schools listed here, and many other schools, have made heroic efforts to find time for professional development to routinely occur in the school day. Heroic efforts to find the time for study groups to meet takes energy away from the learning process. To achieve success for all students, districts and states must shoulder the responsibility of making professional development for teachers a seamless part of the daily worklife of school personnel.

Setting aside days in the school calendar as staff development days does not lighten the load or eliminate the pressure that teachers feel to further develop and fine tune what they teach and how they teach. This is an every day task and it takes time.

LaBonte, K., Leighty, C., Mills, S., & True, M. (1995). Whole faculty study groups: Building the capacity of change through interagency collaboration. Journal of Staff Development, 16(3), 45-47.

Murphy, C. (1991, Oct.). Changing organizational culture through administrative study groups. The Developer. (Newsletter of the National Staff Development Council)

Murphy, C. (1992). Study groups foster school-wide learning. Educational Leadership, 50(3), 71-74.

Murphy, C. (1995). Whole faculty study groups: Doing the seemingly undoable. Journal of Staff Development, 16(3), 37-44.

Study groups in practice. (1995). Journal of Staff Development, 16(3), 49-53.