At the beginning of EDU6528-
Accomplished Teaching, I had one goal.
My goal was to become a better leader within my department and my
school. However, I did not know exactly
what that meant at the time. Throughout this
quarter, I have revised and broken down my goal into smaller more focused ways I
can improve my leadership skills as a teacher.
At this point, I have the following goals moving forward: improve my
ability to pose purposeful questions, get into the classrooms of my colleagues
once a week, and find meaningful professional development around mathematics.
For my first goal, posing purposeful
questions, I have looked at what the Danielson Framework requires, as well as
what research says about questioning in the classroom. According to the article, Student, teacher, and instructional
characteristics related to students’ gains in flexibility, there are six
levels of questioning. You can see the
six levels in the following table.
(Star, et al., 2015)
Right now,
I am asking questions that fall mostly into level two and level three. I am working on my ability to vary the levels
of questions I use within my class periods.
I am aware that, “Orchestrating an effective classroom discussion,
however, is not as simple as just asking questions. It requires a teacher to be purposeful in the
types of questions that are asked so that the key ideas are made visible and
fully explored.” (Chedister & Shumway, 2016) Although, I am aware that this
is the case, I am having a hard time carving out the time to pre-think my
questions. As I continue to reflect on
this class and what I have learned, I am going to continue pushing myself to
think about my questioning techniques and the levels of questions I am asking
students to think about and answer on a daily basis.
My second goal involves visiting my colleague’s
classrooms during my planning period. As
a department head, I think it is important to know what is happening in the
other classrooms in my department. I
want to specifically make a point to visit the classrooms of my newer teachers
more often. I was a new teacher not long
ago, and know “it as a process to assist a new teacher to become a member of a professional
community in which members participate as equals in professional dialogue aimed
at their individual and collective self-development.” (Kemmis,
Heikkinen, Fransson, Aspfors, & Edwards-Groves, 2014) I don’t feel that I received
the support necessary to really thrive my first couple years of teaching. I want to make sure my newer teachers feel
supported. Although I want to focus on
my newer teachers, I plan to take time one day a week to visit the classrooms
in my department. I want to see what the
other teachers are doing in their classrooms.
I have found watching other teachers to be a beneficial practice for my
own teaching. I am able to get ideas of
what I can do in my own classroom, give feedback to the teacher I was watching,
and check in to see what is happening in other classrooms.
My third goal is to find
professional development that will be meaningful and worthwhile for my colleagues
and myself. Through this course, I have
realized how helpful it is to have a community sounding board. A place where you can bounce ideas off of
other educators and receive feedback.
Right now, professional development is seen as something we have to do
instead of something we want to do. I want
to find ways to make professional development something people want to
participate in. “Schools and districts
should be encouraged to rigorously evaluate professional development approaches
themselves and, when possible, to report the findings publicly to build up the
knowledge base on the topic.” (Gersten, Taylor, Keys, Rolfhus, &
Newman-Gonchar, 2014) I think it is important that we look at the professional
development options that are being offered and see if they are benefiting
us. Teachers are pressed for time. If we are required to attend trainings that
we don’t feel are relevant we won’t take as much away. From this class, I have come up with a few
professional development ideas I would like to try with my department. I want to bring questioning into our
professional learning community times. If
we are working on questioning techniques and question levels as a team we are
going to be able to find new ways to get students thinking about the math. I also want to get my department into each
other’s classrooms. Above I talked about
my personal goal of visiting more classrooms, but I also want the other members
of my department visiting each other’s classrooms. Visiting classrooms will not only give the
visitor ideas to try in their own practice, it will also give another dimension
to our professional learning communities.
We will be able to transition from talking solely about curriculum to
student engagement, teacher presentation of the material, and other aspects of
our classrooms.
Artifacts
Classroom Observation Analysis: Since getting into
classrooms is a goal I have for myself and for my department, this protocol
will ensure we are not going in with an evaluative stance. It will keep conversations neutral and about
what we saw. Classroom Observation Analysis
Shifting a lesson plan: this helped me think about how to
move a lesson from traditional to student centered. This is a resource I plan to use in my PLC’s. Shifting a Lesson Plan
Resources
· Gersten,
R., Taylor, M., Keys, T. D., Rolfhus, E., & Newman-Gonchar, R. (2014,
January). Summary of research on the effectiveness of math professional
development approaches. Retrieved December 4, 2016, from
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED544681.pdf
· Kemmis,
S., Heikkinen, H. L., Fransson, G., Aspfors, J., & Edwards-Groves, C.
(2014). Mentoring of new teachers as a contested practice: Supervision, support
and collaborative self-development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 43,
154-164. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2014.07.001
· Star,
J. R., Newton, K., Pollack, C., Kokka, K., Rittle-Johnson, B., & Durkin, K.
(2015, March 6). Student, teacher, and instructional characteristics related to
students’ gains in flexibility. Contemporary Educational Psychology.
Retrieved November 27, 2016.
