Considering my own journey, my why, and where my head and heart meet, I am a lifelong learner. For as long as I can remember, I have loved learning and actively sought after and found opportunities to push out of my comfort zone so I could learn and grow. This mindset has gifted me with such tremendous experiences that I know I will continue to add to the Living Museum of Me, Math, and More. Starting my career in education, not much has changed in regards to my admiration for learning. Even my blog's title, "I Learned Something New Today!" speaks for itself. Because of this intrinsic desire to learn and grow, I model for students what it looks like to be a lifelong learner, but why stop there? When I submitted my first letter of intent for department lead, I expressed the desire for the role to "allow me to continue the passion I feel to serve and support others to be the best versions of themselves for students and colleagues. I can balance what is best for teachers and their students with administrative responsibilities and I have the capacity to appropriately push people out of their comfort zone in a way that causes them to reflect and adjust their practice for the better." Every two years, the position opens up, so when submitting my second letter of intent, I clearly stated that "for me, a more critical piece (of the department lead position) is the impact on teacher growth, especially in the coming years with adapting instruction and practices based on the rapidly evolving technology." I have always sought to provide others opportunities to blossom, so they can create significant learning environments for their students too. Before creating a presentation, I considered who my audience would be. Initially, I thought about including the entire administrative team at my school. I also thought about presenting to the Director of Advanced Academics and GT Services, the Secondary Math Curriculum Coordinator, and the Superintendent (who was, at the time, the principal who hired me). While these people are important, it made more sense to start at the core of what I do, which is serve students and serve the other math teachers in my department. The two people who also include this in their work are the Dean of Instruction and our Instructional Coach. I also have worked with them closely to support teachers in other ways in my department lead role, so that culture of improvement and collaboration is solid. With this focus, I knew how to move forward. When creating these resources, I really wanted to let pictures capture my small audience and give them stories they can directly relate to. They know and have worked with Mikayla and Monica personally (you will see these two women in the presentation), so capturing their hearts with people we mutually love and respect made sense. After that, getting into the research I did was necessary. Our Dean of Instruction is data-driven; she loves looking at statistics, comparing our progress with the progress of other campuses in our district, area, state, and nation. She has a heart of gold, but her analytical mindset is hooked with objective information. On the other hand, our Instructional Coach, who also is such a vital support to our work, is hooked through the opportunity to serve others and help them grow. She has witnessed current teacher struggles with providing impactful instruction, especially with a decline in student efficacy, so including how her role can offer her another structure where she can coach teachers to bring strategies into the classroom and really serve them to reach their full potential also needed to be included. This meant reading through a number of articles and reports that compared our current state of professional development with the potential of effective professional learning. Anything that captured my attention and/or would capture my audience, I recorded in a notes document. From there, as I considered the progression of my presentation, I included information from these resources if it followed the narrative I was seeking. Below is a picture of my screen where I have my notes I am going through and the slides I created with the script underneath. The PowerPoint document Effective Professional Learning for Teachers - Pilot is the presentation I would give to my Dean of Instruction and Instructional Coach. The PDF document Effective Professional Learning for Teachers - Pilot NOTES underneath the presentation contains my script that I would practice and use when presenting. The embedded document below contains both the slides and the associated script. My plan is to go through the presentation live with my Dean of Instruction and Instructional Coach, using the script with what to say during each slide while using a clicker to advance the slides on a projection screen. This script allows me to give context to the slides, rather than put it all the text on each slide and just read it to them. I followed strategies included in Garr Reynold's Presentation Zen and Nancy Duarte's Resonate, which highlight the story-telling aspects of presentation through engaging the audience early and setting a clear vision for change (Duarte Inc., n.d.; Reynolds, 2014). If I had chosen any other audience, my presentation would be drastically different. With the relationships I have built over the years with my Dean of Instruction and Instructional Coach, I believe that after this presentation, they will be inspired and respond with "let's get started now". I am excited to see where this journey takes us as we collaborate together to bring teachers effective professional learning. References Duarte Inc. (n.d.). Resonate®. Duarte. https://www.duarte.com/resources/books/resonate/
Goodwin, B. (2015). Research Says/Does Teacher Collaboration Promote Teacher Growth? Educational Leadership, 73(4), 82–83. Retrieved from http://www.ascd. org/publications/educational-leadership/dec15/vol73/num04/Does-Teacher- Collaboration-Promote-Teacher-Growth%C2%A2.aspx Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the Teachers Effective Professional Development in an Era of High Stakes Accountability. Center for Public Education. Retrieved from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/system/files/ 2013-176_ProfessionalDevelopment.pdf Hill, Heather. (2015). Review of The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth about Our Quest for Teacher Development. Harvard Graduate School of Education. Retrieved from http://www.greatlakescenter.org/docs/Think_Twice/TT-Hill-TNTP.pdf Joyce, B. & Showers, B. (2002). Student achievement through staff development. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Kane, T. J. & Staiger, D. O. (2012). Gathering feedback for teaching: Combining high-quality observations with student surveys and achievement gains. Seattle, WA: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Pope, C., Beal, C., Long, S., & McCammon, L. (2011). They teach us how to teach them: Teacher preparation for the 21st century. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 11(4), 324-349. Retrieved from http://www.cite journal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/v11i4languagearts1.pdf Reynolds, G. (2014). Presentation Zen. Presentation Zen. https://www.presentationzen.com/ TNTP. (2015). The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth About Our Quest for Teacher Development. Retrieved from http://tntp.org/publications/view /evaluation-and-development/the-mirage-confronting-the-truth-about-our-quest-for-teacher-development Toikkanen, T. (2016, June 30). Learning Despite School. Retrieved August 1, 2016, from https://medium.com/lifelearn/learning-despite-school-d0879be9464f#.f6roydrfs Wei, R. C., Darling-Hammond, L., Andree, A., Richardson, N., & Orphanos, S. (2009). Professional Learning in the Learning Profession: A Status Report on Teacher Development in the U.S. and Abroad. Technical Report. National Staff Development Council. Retrieved from https://learningforward.org/report/status- professional-learning-2/phase-professional-learning-learning-profession/
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When being VOCAL, choice is the hardest for me and it's rooted in my mindset towards teaching math.
Fundamentally, I acknowledge and recognize that there are multiple correct mathematical ways to approach and solve problems. Encouraging this in the classroom is so impactful for student growth. What makes this challenging is when students choose something I am not as familiar with. The first concept that comes to mind is factoring polynomials. Does anybody remember how they learned to factor? I learned the "guess and check" method or "trial and error" and it relied on understanding and recognizing patterns in numerical factors. When teaching factoring came up for the first time, my gut wanted to go with the way I was taught and what made sense to me. Fortunately, my mentor teacher showed me the "ac method" or "splitting the middle term" so I went with that to provide procedural steps... it was fortunate until students asked about the square method, the XBOX method, the fishing method, geez Louise there are so many methods and I had NO CLUE what they were talking about. I felt inadequate to support them in understanding why they got an answer wrong with a method I could not follow. At our district professional development today, we learned about this "new" concept called "accelerated learning" and "just-in-time interventions"... haven't we always tried to do this? With my content colleagues, we looked at a progression of area models and how they can be utilized from elementary math to precalculus. With experience, I have found articulating to students that their perspective and my perspective might be different but both are equally valid because we just have different backgrounds and experiences that have brought us to this place. We attempt to explain to each other the different methods of factoring, and then develop our voice through the process. When we can teach others the perspective that we see and they incorporate into their repertoire or we include their voice in our mental tool box, we build connections. We also build a sense of self-worth when we can collaborate and communicate our ideas to others that they adopt into their knowledge bases. There is meaning in multiple perspectives, because those multiple perspectives belong to individuals who are valuable and their life and experience matters. Giving students choice in how to articulate their perspective.
References
Mashup Math. (2017, March 29). Area Model Multiplication Explained! https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=MVZRD4Fa1OY
With some downtime between summer graduate school classes and the week of professional development before school starts, naturally, I spend time... doing more reading and professional development, all while watching Netflix Korean romantic comedies. Part of my reading includes required readings for my fall semester classes (basically the Not Read YET on my School Shelf), trying to finally read through The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, and a bunch of articles and resources for the online GT trainings I am completing. One of the trainings included the Eight Great Gripes of Gifted Students and I felt seen not only as a student, but as a person. An assignment including creating an "infographic" about something we learned, so I used the concerns in the image below. Side note, did you know that Word and PowerPoint have great infographic templates? Being overwhelmed by choices on color schemes, fonts, and all other things that go with creating these things is common for me, but the templates provide relief. When going through any trainings, it is important to consider that while they are usually designed to target a specific student sub-population, the information and strategies we learn about can apply to any student, regardless of the label. Does a student have to be labeled GT to feel different and wish people would accept them as they are? Are students feeling overwhelmed by not only the number of things they can do, but also all of the things they are expected to do? Have you had a student in a "regular" class get teased for being smart? Another side note... we should get away from calling classes regular classes and start calling them level, but that will be for another post that I will eventually link back here. These gripes have come from explicitly surveying students with the GT label, but I wonder how many students would identify with most, if not all, of these. The techniques suggested to address these concerns should apply to everyone. In fact, I am not considering everyone as just GT students or students in general, but our colleagues and administration as well. Which concern do you identify the most with? Are there any concerns that you have learned how to manage? |
My husband lovingly teases me when I reflect on my day with him and say "I learned something new today!" because he would be surprised if I didn't learn something new.
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