Designing Effective Curriculum- Standard 9

Designing Effective Curriculum

Standard 9: 

Evaluate and use effective curriculum design.

Standard Aligned Courses:

EDU6524- Curriculum Design

Reflection:

Curriculum design taught me the true importance of unit planning.  In my undergraduate teaching program, we planned units, but it was never clear why we should plan that far in advance.  It seemed that I would plan out a unit and then I would have to change the entire unit once students started working through it.  What this course made me realize was, I was planning out my units incorrectly.  I was not taking into consideration remediation and extension while planning it, I was not planning out the meaningful activities ahead of time, and I was not laying out the I do, You do, We do for each lesson.  Since I was not doing these things, when the time came in a lesson where I should be implementing one of them, I had to make a snap decision of what I should do.  Not all of these decisions ended up being in the best interest of my students. I now know that, "instructional planning begins with focused attention on creating a productive environment for learning" (Dean & Marzano, 2013, p.153).

While both of the assigned texts for this class, Visible Learning for Teachers, by John Hattie and The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units, by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe were incredibly helpful texts, the text that gave me the most new information was the Wiggins and McTighe book.  Wiggins and McTighe said, “the most successful teaching begins, therefore, with clarity about desired learning outcomes and about the evidence that will show that learning has occurred” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011, p. 7).  This statement makes complete sense to me.  It is something that should be thought about by all teachers.  However, I do not believe that all teachers know to think this way.  Another aspect of the Understanding by Design book that stood out to me was where they said, “Essential questions are ongoing and guiding queries by which we make clear to the students that true learning is about digging deeper; it is active, not passive” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011, p. 15).  So often students and teachers think learning should just happen.  If I do this, then this will happen.  This is not the case with education.  If you are truly trying to educate students then it needs to be an active and engaging space.  Another piece of the Wiggins & McTighe book that has stayed with me is the six facets of understanding.  On page 93 they explain that the six facets of understanding are when students:

●      Can explain

●      Can interpret

●      Can apply and adjust

●      Have perspective

●      Show empathy

●      Have self-knowledge

As a teacher it is important to know and understand all six of these.  When students can show these things that is when we know that they have mastered the understanding of whatever they are trying to learn.

Designing the Unit Plan helped me understand the importance of mapping out a unit before teaching it. Before this class, I was the teacher Wiliam's was talking about when he said, " In many classrooms, the process of eliciting such evidence is done mainly on the fly -- teachers almost always plan the instructional activities in which they will engage their students, but they rarely plan in detail how they are going to find out where the students are in their learning" (Wiliam, 2011, p.71). Having thought through the unit, I was more confident in my ability to teach the content well since I had already thought of ways to help students who do not understand the content on my initial teaching of it.  This year, teaching this unit, my students were more successful than any other group I have taught. The unit plan forced me to think about aspects of my teaching that I too often neglect.  Hattie says, "there are four critical parts in planning that we need to consider up front: the levels of performance of the students at the start (prior achievement), the desired levels at the end of a series of lessons (or term, or year) (targeted learning), and the rate of progress from the start to the end of the series of lessons (progression). The fourth component is teacher collaboration and critique in planning" (Hattie, 2012, p. 41). This project made me think through the pre-assessments I give my students. Pre-assessments has been a frequently overlooked thing in many of the trainings, classes, and professional development. Having to truly think about the ways I could pre-assess my students to be able to know what knowledge they already have was one my goals for this coming school year because of this course.  While I did a better job of creating pre-assessments, my ability to pre-assess students to gain actual knowledge still needs to be refined. The other part of this unit plan that I incorporated into my goals for the year was to think about the differentiation steps before I taught the lesson.  In the past, I have come up with something on the spot.  If I had the differentiation activities ready for each lesson it would be significantly easier for both the students and myself.

Another aspect of this class that has shaped the way I look at a curriculum was the Curriculum Analysis we completed as a part of this class.  I looked at the calculus book my school uses.  During the summer, I was able to attend AP training.  At this training I was presented to with many different curriculum options.  The particular book my district uses for AP calculus is a college calculus book.  It is not geared towards the AP test or high school students at all.  This training and the curriculum analysis made me realize how much better our AP calculus curriculum could be.  While I believe there is no perfect curriculum, the curriculum analysis showed me where the current curriculum we are using was lacking.  This book is only about practicing the specific skills while the AP test asks students to apply their learning to specific situations.  "Too often students begin each new task as if it were being approached for the very first time" (Costa & Kallick, 2010).  From this analysis, I was able to add supplements this year in the spots where it was lacking.  I looked at how to take a textbook with limited readability and present it in a way that students would be able to understand.  Throughout this course, my knowledge of curriculum design and how to present material to students in a cohesive and coherent way were challenged.  From this course,  I was able to push my thinking throughout the school year when thinking about how to help students be the most successful they could be.

Sources:

- Costa, A. L., & Kallick, B. (2010). DESCRIBING 16 HABITS OF MIND. Retrieved April 29, 2018, from http://www.ccsnh.edu/sites/default/files/content/documents/CCSNH MLC HABITS OF MIND COSTA-KALLICK DESCRIPTION 1-8-10.pdf
- Dean, C. B., & Marzano, R. J. (2013). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
- Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. London: Routledge.
- Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2011). The understanding by design guide to creating high-quality units. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
- Wiliam, D. (2013). Embedded formative assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Formative and Summative Assessments- Standard 11

Formative and Summative Assessments

Standard 11:

Utilize formative and summative assessment in standards-based environments.

Standard Aligned Courses:

EDU6613- Standards Based Assessment
EDU6524- Curriculum Design

Reflection:

EDU6613:

When I began the course Standards Based Assessment, I thought it was going to be about standards based grading.  I thought it was going to be a review of what I already knew to be positive for students.  What I did not expect was to get to think deeply about a unit and see how the standards I think I am teaching actually align with the formative assessments I am planning.  I also did not think I would get to think through all of the formative assessments for a unit.  During this quarter, I created a Learning Progression of a Calculus unit.  I was able to think through the progression of the standards for limits and continuity, put them in order, and decide on the formative assessments that go with each learning target.  I also created a Formative Assessment Rubric.  This rubric covered one learning target and its formative assessment and broke it down into the different levels of achievement and possible differentiation techniques depending on student level.  While thinking through the formative assessment rubric, I also created a document of Student Misconceptions.  This document forced to me to think about possible student misconceptions before they happen.  While I know this is what is best for students, in my time crunched teacher life, I do not take enough time to think about misconceptions before they happen.  In the future I would like to create a student misconception list for each unit I teach.  I think this would be helpful for new teachers coming into a subject but also for daily use.  This work spoke to Standard 11: Utilize formative and summative assessment in a standards based environment.  Like I said at the beginning, coming into this class, I thought this standard was talking about only standards based grading.  Through the activities that are linked above, I have learned why it is necessary to assign standards to everything we do.

The other large piece of this class was our Assessment into Action Project.  For this project, I chose to focus on providing effective feedback to my students.  In the first five years of my teaching I did not focus on the type of feedback I was providing for my students.  I thought the way I had received feedback growing up would be sufficient.  I would write notes throughout the assessment and provide a score at the top of the work at the end.  Through this class and our book Embedded Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliam, I learned that, "the effect of giving both scores and comments was the same as the effect of giving scores alone" (Wiliam, 2011, p. 109).  All the work I was putting in to give students "effective" feedback was not helpful.  In my Assessment into Action Project I looked specifically on how to give students feedback that did not include a score.  This aligns with Wiliam when he says, "The quality of the work of the students who had been given comments had improved substantially compared to their work in the first period, but those given grades and praise had made no more progress than those given absolutely no feedback on their work" (Wiliam, 2011, p. 110).  This class reading drove my research for my project.

Based off of my Assessment into Action Project, I have a few new goals for the school year.  First being to give less scores and more task-involving feedback, second being to modify my rubrics to give students more useful feedback, and thirdly to help students learn how to give each other effective feedback.  When thinking about my first goal, giving less scores, I will be using Embedded Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliam, The Conscientious Consumer: reconsidering the role of assessment feedback in student learning by Richard Higgins, Peter Hartley, and Alan Skelton and Response To Assessment Feedback: The Effects Of Grades, Praise, And Source Of Information by Anastasiya A. Lipnevich and Jeffrey K. Smith.  As I come into this school, my three goals will be at the front of my mind.  To help meet my first goal, I need to continually remind myself that, “[f]ormative feedback comments can only be effective if students read and make use of them” (Higgins, Hartley, & Skelton, 2002). I will be focusing on how to provide feedback that students will actually use. I will also be working on the quality of my feedback because, “[a]mong those students who believed they received their detailed feedback from the instructor, those who were given a grade showed substantially lower scores than those who were not” (Lipnevich & Smith, 2008). As I process my second goal, modifying rubrics, I will be looking to Your Rubric Is a Hot Mess; Here's How to Fix It by Jennifer Gonzalez. She talked about modifying rubrics to being a single-point rubric. The standard you are assessing is the middle column, then the left column is what students need to work on, and the right column is what students are already doing well. When Gonzales was talking about the way she modified her rubrics, I felt that it was a simple shift I could make to help students grow.

“Instead of detailing all the different ways an assignment deviates from the target, the single-point rubric simply describes the target, using a single column of traits. It’s what you’d find at level 3 on a 4-point scale, the “proficient” column, except now it’s all by itself. On either side of that column, there’s space for the teacher to write feedback about the specific things this student did that either fell short of the target (the left side) or surpassed it (the right)” (Gonzalez, 2014).

Before I was creating the rubrics Gonzales is talking about.  For my second goal, I am going to work on modifying my rubrics to follow this template.  Finally as I think about my third goal that came out of this class, peer feedback, I will be using Descriptive Feedback and Some Strategies by Pat Sachse-Brown and Joanne Aldridge.  This resource provided simple ways to help students give each other feedback on their work.  The strategy I am going to try this year is, “Select two highlighters: one colour to highlight “what is working” (green) and one colour to highlight “what needs improving” (pink) and highlight each student’s work in relation to the criteria” (Sachse-Brown & Aldridge, 2004).

EDU6524:
This course taught me the true importance of unit planning.  In my undergraduate teaching program, we planned units, but it was never clear why we should plan that far in advance.  It seemed that I would plan out a unit and then I would have to change the entire unit once students started working through it.  What this course made me realize was, I was planning out my units incorrectly.  I was not taking into consideration remediation and extension while planning it, I was not planning out the meaningful activities ahead of time, and I was not laying out the I do, You do, We do for each lesson.  Since I was not doing these things, when the time came in a lesson where I should be implementing one of them, I had to make a snap decision of what I should do.  Not all of these decisions ended up being in the best interest of my students.

While both of the assigned texts for this class, Visible Learning for Teachers, by John Hattie and The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units, by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe were incredibly helpful texts, the text that gave me the most new information was the Wiggins and McTighe book.  Wiggins and McTighe said, “the most successful teaching begins, therefore, with clarity about desired learning outcomes and about the evidence that will show that learning has occurred” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011, p. 7).  This statement makes complete sense.  It is something that should be thought about by all teachers.  However, I do not believe that all teachers know to think this way.  Another aspect of the Understanding by Design book that stood out to me was where they said, “Essential questions are ongoing and guiding queries by which we make clear to the students that true learning is about digging deeper; it is active, not passive” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011, p. 15).  So often students and teachers think learning should just happen.  If I do this, then this will happen.  This is not the case with education.  If you are truly trying to educate students then it needs to be an active and engaging space.  Another piece of the Wiggins & McTighe book that has stayed with me is the six facets of understanding.  On page 93 they explain that the six facets of understanding are when students:

●      Can explain

●      Can interpret

●      Can apply and adjust

●      Have perspective

●      Show empathy

●      Have self-knowledge

As a teacher it is important to know and understand all six of these.  When students can show these things that is when we know that they have mastered the understanding of whatever they are trying to learn.

Designing the Unit Plan helped me understand the importance of mapping out a unit before teaching it. Having thought through the unit, I was more confident in my ability to teach the content well since I had already thought of ways to help students who do not understand the content on my initial teaching of it.  The unit plan also forced me to think about aspects of my teaching that I too often neglect.  This project made me think through the pre-assessments I give my students. Pre-assessments has been a frequently overlooked thing in many of my trainings, classes, and professional development. Having to truly think about the ways I could pre-assess my students to be able to know what knowledge they already have was one my goals for this coming school year because of this course.  While I did a better job of creating pre-assessments, my ability to pre-assess students to gain actual knowledge still needs to be refined. The other part of this unit plan that I am incorporated into my goals for the year was to think about the differentiation steps before I taught the lesson.  In the past, I have come up with something on the spot.  If I had the differentiation activities ready for each lesson it would be significantly easier for both the students and myself.

References

- Gonzalez, J. 2014. Your Rubric Is a Hot Mess; Here's How to Fix It. Retrieved August 06, 2017, from http://www.brilliant-insane.com/2014/10/single-point-rubric.html
- Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. London: Routledge.

- Higgins, R., Hartley, P., & Skelton, A. (2002). The Conscientious Consumer: Reconsidering the role of assessment feedback in student learning. Studies in Higher Education,27(1), 53-64. doi:10.1080/03075070120099368

- Lipnevich, A. A., & Smith, J. K. (2008). Response To Assessment Feedback: The Effects Of Grades, Praise, And Source Of Information. ETS Research Report Series,2008(1), I-57. doi:10.1002/j.2333-8504.2008.tb02116.x

- Sachse-Brown, P., & Aldridge, J. (2004). Descriptive Feedback and Some Strategies. Retrieved August 6, 2017, from http://standardstoolkit.k12.hi.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/CCR.Protocol_1.Descriptive_Feedback_Strategies.pdf

- Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2011). The understanding by design guide to creating high-quality units. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Utilizing Instructional Frameworks- Standard 7

Utilizing Instructional Frameworks

Standard 7:
Teacher leaders utilize instructional frameworks for teaching (TPEP) to improve teaching.

Standard Aligned Courses:
EDAD6580: Leadership in Education
EDAD6589: Engaging Communities

Reflection:

Before taking Leadership in Education and Engaging Communities, I did not fully understand the different responsibilities a principal had.  From my perspective, principals are in charge of disciplining students and making sure they complete their teacher evaluations on time.  I did not understand that it was their job to make sure the community was involved and engaged with what is happening on a day to day basis within the school.  I also did not realize the time and effort that principals put into creating a vision for the school and making sure it aligns with the district vision.  My "knowledge and understanding of the context in which schools operate and of the challenges facing school leaders" (Blair, 2016, p. 73) was minimal.  During the classes, Leadership in Education, and Engaging Communities, I learned about the behind the scenes work a principal does.  What teachers see on a day to day basis is the discipline side of being a principal.  They do not see all of the work they do to make sure the community is connected to the school, to make sure everything within the school is running smoothly, and how they manage situations that could otherwise spiral out of control.  Through these classes I learned what it takes to create a plan for community engagement as well as a visionary leadership analysis.

EDAD6580:
In my Leadership in Education class, we talked about the different types of leadership styles.  We spent a significant amount of time on organizational behavior because according to Owens & Valesky, "effective educational leaders must have a clear grasp of the essentials of organizational behavior in deciding how to engage in the practice of leadership" (Owens & Valesky, 2015, p.1). We took many leadership and personality tests to determine what our leadership styles are.  I found out that I am a behind the scenes director.  I like to be in control but don't want to be in the spotlight.  I am comfortable delegating tasks to people and making sure they get completed correctly but I am always going to delegate speaking in front of a group of people.  I found this interesting since I am a teacher and I speak in front of students every day.  I realized that the type of speaking I delegate involves my peers.  After this class, I pushed myself to sign up to lead activities when we are doing building training, or when an idea needed to be presented to the entire department.  

Each week we learned about a different type of leadership style and a different pair of people taught a mini-lesson on it.  I worked with two other teacher leaders to teach Chapter 9: Leadership from Organizational Behavior in Education, by Owens and Valesky.  In this presentation, we practiced strategies we wish were implemented in the professional development provided by our schools.  This aligns with the Principal's Criterion 1: Creating a Culture (AWSP, 2013).  When professional development is run well, the staff are fully engaged and are "Engage[ing] in essential learning conversations for ongoing improvement" (AWSP, 2013).  When staff are engaging in essential learning conversations, the school and students benefit.  According to Zepeda (2013), "leaders build authentic relationships with teachers, students, staff, and other stakeholders, and effective leaders work to promote an environment that supports:
1.) Interaction and participation. People have many opportunities and reasons to come together in deliberation, association, and action.
2.) Interdependence. These associations and actions both promote and depend on mutual needs and commitments.
3.) Shared interests and beliefs. People share perspectives, values, understandings, and commitment to common purposes.
4.) Concern for individual and minority views. Individual differences are embraced through critical reflection and mechanisms for dissent and lead to growth through the new perspectives they foster. 
5.) Meaningful relationships.  Interactions reflect a commitment to caring, sustaining relationships"(Zepeda, 2016, pp. 278-279).
This class taught me that as a principal your goal should be to build relationships with every one who is impacted by your school.  That includes the community and parents.

Another aspect of this class was the visionary leadership analysis (VLA) also aligned with Criterion 1.  According to AWSP and Criterion 1, when creating a culture a principal "Develops and sustains focus on a shared mission and clear vision for improvement of learning and teaching" (AWSP, 2013). Through the creation of my VLA, I learned a significant amount about the vision of my school and the vision of my district that I was not aware of before.  The vision of the school is currently in flux as we are gaining traction with the International Baccalaureate [IB] program we now have.  We are going to have our third IB graduating class this June (2018) and that has shifted the vision of Renton High School since I first started teaching there six years ago.  In order to create my VLA, I looked at a long list of sources to help solidify the information.  I used the OSPI Report Card and Assessment, graduation requirements, the SIP from my school, the district vision of instruction, leadership meeting notes, our student handbook, and current attendance records.

EDAD6589:

This class focused on how to engage the community your school is located in with the school and students.  Through this class, I realized the lack of community involvement we currently have at my school.  One of the catalysts to understanding the lack of engagement my school experiences with our community was the goals we wrote for the class.  I had to determine goals, what activities would help achieve that goal and what evidence would look like.  As a teacher and not an administrator, I should be on the other end of many of these things but am not.  When I talked to my principal about the different ideas I had for each criterion, I met an unexpected amount of resistance.  I was told the community did not want to be involved in the school.  Through this class I learned there is a difference between being involved and being engaged.  We don't have involvement or engagement at this point.

Goals for EDAD 6589 Engaging Communities                                                                 

Principal Criteria/Indicator (Relate to Teacher Criteria)	Goal	Planned Activities	Evidence
Principal Criterion 7.1 Communicates with community to promote learning Teacher Criterion 7 Communicating with families (CEL 5 Model) 7.1 Professional Collaboration & Communication: Parents and guardians 7.2 Professional Collaboration & Communication: Communication within the school community about student progress	Communicate with teachers, students, families, and the community effectively to promote an inclusive learning environment.	·       Weekly email to staff to start the week. ·       Classroom visits to be visible in the school and to get to know students within their classes. ·       Visibility during passing time and lunch to see students outside of the classroom. ·       Available meeting times for parents, students, teachers, and community members to come in and be a part of the school. ·       Dinner/lunch with the principal for parents, students, teachers, and community members to come and learn what is happening in the school.	·       Emails ·       Phone call logs ·       Planned evening events ·       Meeting notes ·       Feedback from parents, students, teachers, and community members.
Principal Criterion 7.2 Partners with families and school community Teacher Criterion 7 Communicating with families	Create opportunities for parents and community members to be a part of the classroom and school culture.	·       Career days where community members and family members are invited in to talk about their careers specific to class content. ·       Teacher websites updated with easy access for parents to curriculum and teacher contact, i.e. lesson videos, lesson plans, homework, extra resources. ·       Content nights/afternoons to learn about classrooms.	·       List of family members and community members who have volunteered to speak about their careers. ·       Teacher websites. ·       Feedback from families, students and community members.

The other major focus of this class was to create a Community Engagement Product.  To create this product, I had to interview my principal.  Sitting down and talking with her about the currently level of community engagement was interesting.  She kept using the word involved instead of engaged.  Although she was saying involved instead of engaged she was correct.  Our community is "involved" but not engaged.  They receive information but not invited in to share their ideas.  They are told what is happening but not asked if they think that is what should be happening.  The community my school is in, has not been very receptive to the efforts my principal has put forth.  There is a stigma about my school and the students that attend it.  We need to remember that getting parents engaged takes time.  Parents are more likely to show up if they are personally invited by someone they have a relationship with.  "Investment in parent engagement, then, should be about creating the relationships that provide a foundation for long-term and sustainable change in schools, not a quick fix to any school’s problems" (Warren, Hong, Rubin, Uy, 2009, p.2248).  This product showed me how hard it can be to bring parents and community members into a school, but it also made me realize how important it is to never stop trying to get them engaged in what we are doing as educators. 

Sources:

• AWSP. (2013). AWSP leadership framework criteria and resources. Retrieved fromhttp://www.awsp.org/resources/FrameworkCriteria
• Blair, E. (2016). Teacher leadership: The "new" foundations of teacher education: A reader revised edition. New York: Peter Lang.
• Owens, R. G., & Valesky, T. C. (2015). Organizational behavior in education: Leadership and school reform. Harlow, Essex: Pearson.
• Warren, M. R., Hong, S., Rubin, C. L., & Uy, P. S. (2009). Beyond the Bake Sale: A CommunityBased Relational Approach to Parent Engagement in Schools. Teachers College Record,111(9), 2209-2254. Retrieved April 15, 2018, from http://www.lsna.net/uploads/lsna/documents/beyond_the_bake_sale.pdf
• Zepeda, S. J. (2012). Professional development: What works. Eye on Education.

Collaboration & Analysis- Standard 4

Collaboration & Analysis

Standard 4:
Teacher leaders engage in analysis of teaching and collaborative practices.

Standard Aligned Courses:
EDU6528: Accomplished Teaching
EDU6526: Instructional Strategies
EDU6600: Communication & Collaboration

Reflection:

The three classes aligned with standard 4 have made a large impact on my teaching since joining this program.  This school year alone, I have led more than one professional development opportunity for either my PLC or the entire Renton High School staff.  These three classes have taught me how to provide training for staff that is interesting and a worthwhile use of their time.  Below you will see my reflections and learning from each class.

EDU6528:

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 class, I revised and broke down my goal into smaller more focused goals that could improve my leadership skills as a teacher.  I had the following goals moving forward in the school year: 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 looked at what the Danielson Framework requires, as well as what research said 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)

At the time, I was asking questions that fell mostly into level two and level three.  I am still 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, carving out the time to pre-think questions can be difficult within the schedule of a teacher.  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.  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

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.  

EDU6526:
In EDU6526, every two weeks, I was expected to video a specific instructional strategy in my classroom.  Based off of the reading for the week, I would incorporate a teaching strategy and then upload the video for my classmates to watch.  I would then receive feedback on my teaching from my classmates.  This was incredibly helpful for me.  The school I work at has a high turnover rate making it hard for my Assistant Principal to visit my classroom and provide feedback on a regular basis.  A large percentage of our staff is on the comprehensive evaluation system taking up a lot of the focus of our Admin team.  Being able to video myself teaching not only gave me something to watch and improve on, it also gave others a window into my classroom from afar.  I have included one of the videos I uploaded to receive feedback on. This video focused on cooperative learning in the classroom.  With creating videos to receive feedback from my classmates, the idea for my department professional development began to form.

With the growth I was experiencing from receiving regular feedback on my teaching, I wanted to come up with a way to help teachers in my department grow as well.  For my professional development I focused on our Professional Learning Communities [PLC] and how we can provide feedback to each other around our teaching.  I decided to design my professional development around the idea of drop-in observations.  (PLC PowerPoint)  This project was particularly meaningful to me because I was able to implement the idea of PLC drop-in observations starting in the fall.  I provided three different templates for my department to look at, and three different goal ideas for PLC's.  The idea behind my professional development is for teachers to come up with goals in their PLC's and then get into each others classrooms and watch each other teach with their specific PLC goal in mind.

EDU6600:
At the beginning of EDU6600 Communication & Collaboration I was unsure there was a way to provide a professional development that was not incredibly boring.  As an adult learner I have had a number of poor experiences with professional development where they are teaching you about a specific teaching strategy that seems as if it would be effective for students but explaining it in a very traditional sit and get fashion.  I was confused because most professional development opportunities I attended were presented in a "do as I say not as I do" way.  I came into this class with the challenge of providing professional development to my colleagues this school year.  With that challenge we decided as a group we needed to go away from the "do as I say not as I do" way professional development had been presented to use thus far.

After doing the reading for this class I felt far more confident in my ability to provide a professional development that was going to be worthwhile for my colleagues.  There were a few parts of this class in particular that made a difference when I was planning my professional development session.  The first was when we talked about adult learning and how that differed from student learning.  In that reading I was not surprised by what I read but I was surprised that professional development presenters were not following the simple steps Zepeda lays out.  On page 67 she says the learning should promote:

• fluency and flexibile transfer to immediate and long-term situations;
• value and worth in the application of knowledge;
• transfer of skills;
• the power of ideas in the work to be accomplished;
• practical applications;
• clear priorities;
• multiple opportunities for continuous feedback;
• opportunities for reflection, self-assessment, and opportunities to appy and reapply prior knowledge to new situations; and,
• personalization for the learner (Zepeda, 2012, p. 67).

According to Hattie, "teachers, schools, and systems need to be consistently aware, and have dependable evidence of the effects that all are having on their students -- and from this evidence make the decisions about how they teach and what they teach" (Hattie, 2012, pp. 169-170). Along with four other colleagues we put on a professional development around culturally responsive teaching strategies. The strategy I focused on was effective student feedback. After the (RHS Professional Development PowerPoint) professional development we put on, the feedback was there was not enough time.  Staff felt that it was valuable and applicable information and they would have liked to have been able to spend more time in each session.  Our focus was around, "How can we create school environments where each student is known and treated as an individual" (Blair, 2016, p. 200)? You can read more about the results and set up in my Communication & Collaboration Final Paper.

Sources:

• Blair, E. (2016). Teacher leadership: the "new" foundations of teacher education: a reader. New York: Peter Lang.
• Chedister, M., & Shumway, J. (2016, Spring). The Role of Questioning to Develop Conceptual Understanding. Volume 68(Issue 2), 21-24. Retrieved November 27, 2016, from http://www.wismath.org/resources/Documents/WMT_Spring_2016-Complete-LR.pdf#page=24
• 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
• Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: maximizing impact on learning. London: Routledge.
• 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.
• Zepeda, S. J. (2012). Professional development: what works. New York: Routledge.