Reaching All Students
Tribes Learning Communities

Education cannot change in any fundamental way unless we change our basic patterns of thinking and interacting so that learning can become a way of life.1

Teachers, parents, administrators, district resource and community people are coming together throughout hundreds of school communities to learn how to revitalize their schools with a process known as "Tribes." Along with a wide range of educators they realize that improving education ultimately means:

• Making the emotional, physical and intellectual growth of each and every student the primary focus of all planning and action
• Altering the deep rooted negative patterns of interaction within the school system

Whether a classroom, school, district or other organization, collaboration is difficult unless the learning community uses:

• A community building process
• A common set of collaborative skills
• Small groups for inclusion and wide participation

Without these, the supportive components for change (caring, inclusion, individual recognition and participation) cannot happen. Peter Senge, author of The Learning Organization Made Plain, asserts that "virtually all important decisions occur in groups. The learning units of organizations are teams, groups of people who need one another to act." 2 Moreover, without a process, the use of collaborative skills and peer group structures, the overall school community will have difficulty achieving common goals on behalf of students. The whole school community needs to: (1) gain knowledge on how to reach and teach the diversity of today's students; and (2) learn how to build a positive environment that gives all students inclusion, a sense of being valued, meaningful participation and experiences of success.

Professional Development for Teachers Leads the Way
"There is an emerging consensus across the nation that high-quality professional development is essential to successful education reform. Professional development is the bridge between where educators are now and where they will need to be to meet the new challenges of guiding all students in achieving higher standards of learning." 3

Given that we want to bring about systemic change, the first step is to have the teachers within your school trained in the Tribes TLC® cooperative learning process. During the training they become members of small "learning communities" ...grade level planning groups that can continue to support each other in integrating academics into the Tribes process. Training teachers to facilitate cooperative learning is the most effective way to improve academic learning, lessen behavioral problems, and revitalize the school.

More than 1,000 studies on the benefits of cooperative learning support the use of small group methods. Reports from schools using Tribes show at least 75% reduction in behavior problems, dramatic decline in school violence, and increases in academic achievement within inner city schools. Tribes has been studied by the Research Triangle Institute under a U.S. Department of Education grant, and cited as a model program to teach students social skills (first grade-high school), and for use in special education classrooms. Tribes has been selected by the President's Initiative on Race as a Promising Practice, "an effort to advance the President's vision of a stronger, more just and united American community, offering opportunity and fairness for all Americans." Not a curriculum or another tack-on program, Tribes TLC® is a process, a step-by-step sequence of strategies to achieve specific learning goals.

The book Tribes, A New Way of Learning and Being together, (Jeanne Gibbs, CenterSource Systems LLC, 1995), and the Spanish version Tribus, una nueva forma de aprender y convivir juntos, (Jeanne Gibbs, CenterSource Systems, LLC, 1998) contain the educational research, collaborative skills, democratic process and strategies for implementation.

References:
1. Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL), Meeting the Challenges of Professional Development in Constructive Ways, Northwest Policy, Portland, OR, December 1994.
2. Senge, Peter, The Learning Organization Made Plain, Training and Development, Boston: October 1991, p.38.
3. Ibid. Reference 1, NWREL.