There is quite a bit of overlap between ID&T professionals and school teachers in terms of the competencies that each profession requires. In looking at table 27.3 on page 275 in Reiser and Dempsey, the competencies listed are for the most part integral to ID&T and teaching. All of us as educators need to constantly reflect on our strategies and objectives to design the best lessons we can for our “clients”, the students. I feel that sometimes educators get to comfortable with what and how they teach a certain subject that they feel that what worked for one year is good enough. Why fix what ain’t broken? That is a dangerous thought process to have. Every year is a new year. Every group of students is a new groups with different needs and personalities. What works for one group, may not work for the next. We need to constantly be cognizant of what we teach and how we teach it. Which leads me to reflect on my weaknesses as an educator. Looking at table 27.3 under the Instructor heading, I find myself drawn to certain competencies that I need to improve on. I really have found that in teaching 6th grade social studies for 7 years that I fell into the category that I mentioned above. I was complacent and bragged about how I could go into a classroom and not have a set plan and pull it off because I knew the material so well...guess who teaches a new grade level this year, with material that I am not as familiar with? This girl. One area of weakness, especially this year is my lack of preplanning. The 8th grade curriculum is unchartered territory for me and I need to make sure that I am on top of the content and pedagogy. Along with that I need to improve my organizational skills and make sure that I am best utilizing my time in and out of the classroom. I also need to improve on the clarification and feedback I give to my students. It kind of goes hand in hand with organization for me. I need to get the work that I need to grade to students in a more timely and efficient manner. I also need to make sure that I am going over the work with students to help correct mistakes and clarify answers. This is an extremely beneficial step in teaching and one that is hit or miss for me at times. One area that I am currently working on improving is that of assessing learning and performance. I have begun to use data from tests that are objective based. Each test that I give is set up to represent the goals we are required to teach by objective. From there students are asked to master the content with an A, or a B otherwise they must retake until it is mastered. I then take the students correct answers on a test and input that data into a data tracker. I use the data to remediate or enrich my instruction as needed. It is still a work in progress, but I see the results of my teaching and it allows me to reflect on what I need to do better every time!
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Week #11: Google Sites
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Week #10 Reflection
Collaboration, process orientation and constant learning and professional development are a few common themes that I see running through these different contexts.
If there is one thing that I try and stress to my 8th graders it is the ability to work with other people, whether you like them or not. In order for systems to work in any context there needs to be collaboration among the people who make up that organization. Ideas for success are created and executed using many people, not just one. It amazes me that schools do not look more to businesses to see what type of student they should “produce”. I hate to play devils advocate but, that is just what public schools were designed to do, create good workers and good citizens. I see in the business sector that workers are more often than not in collaborative situations. Why is it then, that there is not a bigger push, yes there is a push, but a bigger push to model some of our teaching strategies after real life work situations? More collaboration needs to be built into lesson planning in the classroom on a daily basis.
In business, PK-12 and Higher education processes seem to be the focus for change rather than a more piecemeal approach to change. Looking at design systems like SUTE, they show a clear and concise way to plan for a system wide change in a business or a school district. These types of well designed systematic approaches allow for reflection and change when needed. I think that there are quite a few districts around the US that could take notes from districts like Decatur Township School District and Chugach School District. Even if a school system did not change this radically a school could. Taking it to an even smaller level, teachers could use these designs to plan effective lesson plans and units of study. I have put a lot of thought into how simple some of these designs are, they seem so common sense. Why is it then that I haven’t put a system like this into place for my lesson planning! I have seen and discarded so many lesson plan formats due to the length or that not all of the parts to the lesson plan pertain to my teaching style. I can design a simple and straight forward lesson plan format that allows me to make sure my lesson objectives are being met at a higher level of mastery.
The last theme that I noticed was the emphasis put on professional development. The continual improvement of the individuals within the businesses or schools no matter what level of learning. In order for these places to strive the people integral to its functioning successfully need to be constantly challenged and learning to make the business or school better. As teachers we are always looking to hone our craft. We need to constantly learn about our topics of study and strategies that we use in the classroom to engage our students and bring them to higher levels of learning. I feel that one way that schools could use what businesses and higher education do is to utilize online professional developments. Down here in the state of North Carolina, we do have online professional development through a website called LearnNC.org. If is run by our state department of education and does give credit to NC teachers that take online courses and pass them. The downside is that they cost money. The upside is that they are paced for the busy teacher and you can fit them into your schedule easily. I wish that my school and school district would take a hint and begin to offer PD online...
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
This concept map I created to help students review a few key concepts for an upcoming test on the American Revolution. I have guiding questions to go along with the review and will use this in class tomorrow, 11/10/2010, actually! To use this concept map, I would first ask students to tell me what they see on the map and what the main topic of the map is. I would then let them tell me what they know about each topic listed. I would then have them relate that back to how each item listed impacted the American Revolution, explain its significance. Finally, I would have them review all of the material in chronological order to give their trains of thought a systematic way to process the information.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Week #9 Reflection
As I read this chapter, I really began to connect it to the changes that have been going on in my school for the past 8 years that I have been there. I suppose I should begin with the fact that the school that I work at is considered a low performing urban school that ranks in at the fourth from the bottom of the barrel position in my very large urban district. Ever since I have worked there, we have averaged between 1100-2300 students. I have been under the regime of four different principals and too many vice principals to count. My school last year was put on the states persistently dangerous schools probation list and discipline has always been an issue. That said, I would like to go on record and say that I work with some of the most amazing teachers, who are truly dedicated to the students that we teach. Most of us love our students and want to be there everyday to make sure that we are giving them the best education possible. I teach some gifted and talented students that will go far in life once they have had to opportunity to get through high school and go to college. I feel that the school itself has gotten a bad rap from the few students that we have that are not willing to look far into their futures and see how their actions now are effecting themselves and their peers.
That said, the reading talks about two types of change, piecemeal and systematic. Up until this past year, I have seen piecemeal changes occurring in my school. A principal would come in and initiate all of these changes here and there without ever really getting results. There would be little to no staff by in and nothing was ever seen through to the end. An example of this was when one of our former principals came into the school on our first teacher workday back and announced that “We are going to only focus on the academics.” When a question was posed to her about discipline, again I teach at a school where discipline has been an ongoing issue, she replied with a smile on her face, “We are going to only focus on academics, the rest will follow.” As the year progressed she introduced us to an academic program called Leaning Focused. Teachers at first were excited to have PD that was going to help them engage students better in the classroom and produce better learners. She delivered the PD’s herself in a deadpan monotone voice that had most of us teachers looking to our cell phones with text messaging capabilities for solace. I want to go on record as saying it was one of the worst PD’s I have been to in my life. I will also go on record as saying that her approach to the “change” the school needed, turned me off so badly that I refused to teach the Learning Focused way. I have since realized that it is an effective and systematic way to teach. Her piecemeal attempt at change did nothing to change the culture of our school. The one thing that way accomplished was to enact a school uniform policy to help with issues of safety. That was not even followed through on. In September of last year we had yet another new principal grace our doorstep. Jaded by past principals and there lack of ability to lead us into change, we reverted back into our old ways and battled the same complaints from years past. After observing the staff and students for a few months, our new principal sent out an email that has turned our school upside down. He formed a team, which he nicknamed The Team, of 9 teachers, myself included, and we set about a task to transform our school. Ecological systematic change was occurring and I did not even realize that there was a systematic method to his madness, until I read Chapter 21. I began reading about the Step-Up-To-Excellence (SUTE) process and found myself nodding my head and thinking to myself, we did that and we are doing this! The Team and the administrators at my school began with completely redesigning the school based off of the research that we did at schools that were high performing and had similar characteristics to ours. Why were they succeeding and not us? We then began the process of putting together what we wanted our school be and to do. You could follow along with the SUTE process and step by step go through what we did and are doing now to make our school successful. The changes have been amazing so far and I look forward to seeing the results.