Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Quick note
I'm getting ready for the day, but I just read an article by Audrey Watters at Hack Education. Among other things, she talks about a jam session she attended with another open-ed guru. This inspires her to riff on the theme of process vs. product. I've tried very hard to focus my education on learning outcomes and specific targets--a product. It may be that, now that I'm starting (just starting, in my 7th year in the business) to know how to do learning goals well enough to do it consistently, I may spend some time reflecting on the process of learning, and maybe practice riffing a little more.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
When I find stuff I don't have time to deal with
Acceso is a bundle of digital learning materials for intermediate-level Spanish learners (2 really good semesters of college or 2 good years of high school). It's meant to replace textbooks. I'll have to evaluate this before next school year; I already have people asking me about Spanish 4. If this isn't too underneath their ability level, I might try to use it. (Found here. http://www.oercommons.org/courses/acceso.)
National Novel Writing Month starts in November. Their website is here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/en I don't know if I have a point with this, but every year, I think, "It's NaNoWriMo in November. Maybe I'll write a novel." So I'm noting it here in case I want to do somthing about it; maybe I'll judge student interest in having some sort of novel-writing support group.
National Novel Writing Month starts in November. Their website is here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/en I don't know if I have a point with this, but every year, I think, "It's NaNoWriMo in November. Maybe I'll write a novel." So I'm noting it here in case I want to do somthing about it; maybe I'll judge student interest in having some sort of novel-writing support group.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Present me is very very happy with past me
Last year, I designed a project. I turned my school into a small city, gave each of my student a map to exactly half of the city, and had them talk on their cell phones to give each other directions to points unknown.
It was HARD. I had a print copy of the school's emergency exit map, but nobody seems to have a digital copy. So I had to manually create that. I had to assign street names to the hallways and store names to all the classrooms (the easy part). I had to secure permission from the administration, the custodial staff, and all of the individual teachers whose rooms I would be turning into churches and ice cream stores and municipal government buildings. (Not a problem, everyone said. Go for it.) I had to find a system for keeping all of those papers organized as I was hanging them up. That was the hard part. Last year I was one step away at all times from dropping an armload of papers all over the place and ruining everything. But I got it all up in time for the project, and from my perspective, it went very very well.
Flash forward to this year. It took me about 45 minutes--one planning period--to set the entire project up. And this year I'm doing it with three classes.
As I was agonizing last year over how to do all of these things, I made a lot of good decisions for longevity of the project. I made all of my materials reusable. I kept them uncharacteristically well organized. I made the project's outcomes align with what I wanted the learners to know and be able to do. We're going to call this one a lesson design win.
It was HARD. I had a print copy of the school's emergency exit map, but nobody seems to have a digital copy. So I had to manually create that. I had to assign street names to the hallways and store names to all the classrooms (the easy part). I had to secure permission from the administration, the custodial staff, and all of the individual teachers whose rooms I would be turning into churches and ice cream stores and municipal government buildings. (Not a problem, everyone said. Go for it.) I had to find a system for keeping all of those papers organized as I was hanging them up. That was the hard part. Last year I was one step away at all times from dropping an armload of papers all over the place and ruining everything. But I got it all up in time for the project, and from my perspective, it went very very well.
Flash forward to this year. It took me about 45 minutes--one planning period--to set the entire project up. And this year I'm doing it with three classes.
As I was agonizing last year over how to do all of these things, I made a lot of good decisions for longevity of the project. I made all of my materials reusable. I kept them uncharacteristically well organized. I made the project's outcomes align with what I wanted the learners to know and be able to do. We're going to call this one a lesson design win.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Beginning of year reflection
I feel like I'm doing a lot of things right so far; I feel better prepared, vis a vis classroom management and curriculum layout, than I ever have before. My CHAMPS program is working out nicely, and my classroom token economy system has been shockingly successful. Our school is making a lot of structural reforms which, if we take them seriously, will make vast improvements in our student achievement. Most of my students seem pretty excited to be in class, and if I'm not quite up to 100% Spanish yet, I feel like I'm pushing in the right direction. In all, a good strong start to the school year.
Next on the self-improvement list: 1.) Improve the turnaround time on my homework. I always say I'm going to, and then I get a little better, but never quite enough. 2.) Get my Spanish III online class up and running for realz. I'm almost there; the ISD contact person who has been helping me has been doing a tremendous job. 3.) Integrate our iPads. The iPads are in and waiting, so I just have to figure out how best to use them. I have some ideas: speaking quizzes, etc.
Next on the self-improvement list: 1.) Improve the turnaround time on my homework. I always say I'm going to, and then I get a little better, but never quite enough. 2.) Get my Spanish III online class up and running for realz. I'm almost there; the ISD contact person who has been helping me has been doing a tremendous job. 3.) Integrate our iPads. The iPads are in and waiting, so I just have to figure out how best to use them. I have some ideas: speaking quizzes, etc.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Today's to-do list
Yesterday: I made a significant start on beginning-of-year organization. Today I'm going to keep doing that: Finish syllabi, take a look at some of the online contact I have available to me, clarify portfolio contents.
New tasks: Design review materials for Spanish II. I have Spanish II classes of widely disparate abilities and exposures. I'm going to try to design materials to get as many people as possible up to speed as quickly as possible--I want to start new material in two weeks. I did this fairly well last year, so I think I'm just going to juice those efforts up.
New tasks: Design review materials for Spanish II. I have Spanish II classes of widely disparate abilities and exposures. I'm going to try to design materials to get as many people as possible up to speed as quickly as possible--I want to start new material in two weeks. I did this fairly well last year, so I think I'm just going to juice those efforts up.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Today's objective
If it's August 15, I must be scrambling to get the new school year ready.
Today's objective: Review and revise beginning-of-year paperwork (syllabus, rules, procedures, etc.). Look over Wong and Wong's "First Days of School" and Sprick's "Discipline in the Secondary Classroom" as a refresher.
Draft new paperwork: Portfolio sheet and 2-year topic outline. (Notably for Spanish 1 and the middle schools.) Review portfolio assessment from Edutopia, Curtain & Dahlberg's "Languages and Children," and Shrum & Glisan's "Teacher's Handbook."
Get all paperwork possible ready to print and copy when I go in to school tomorrow.
Any time left over should be spent reviewing new "Michigan Learns Online" materials and setting up online supplies through CLEAR.
All that should only take me, mmm, 16 hours or so. I should be done in time to start tomorrow's to-do list.
Today's objective: Review and revise beginning-of-year paperwork (syllabus, rules, procedures, etc.). Look over Wong and Wong's "First Days of School" and Sprick's "Discipline in the Secondary Classroom" as a refresher.
Draft new paperwork: Portfolio sheet and 2-year topic outline. (Notably for Spanish 1 and the middle schools.) Review portfolio assessment from Edutopia, Curtain & Dahlberg's "Languages and Children," and Shrum & Glisan's "Teacher's Handbook."
Get all paperwork possible ready to print and copy when I go in to school tomorrow.
Any time left over should be spent reviewing new "Michigan Learns Online" materials and setting up online supplies through CLEAR.
All that should only take me, mmm, 16 hours or so. I should be done in time to start tomorrow's to-do list.
Monday, August 13, 2012
This year's opening salvo in teacher evaluations
The Accomplished Teacher SmartBrief e-mail I get once a day, and rarely take the time to read all the way through, pointed me to two excellent resources about teacher evaluations.
The Christian Science Monitor does a good job of running down the value and issues of teacher evaluations in today's online issue. Among the highlight quotes include Stanford's Linda Darling-Hammond: "I went from being very enthusiastic about [value-added test scores] to extremely worried," and the counter from Dan Weisberg of the New Teacher Project: "How long do you want to wait until we have a system that satisfies all the concerns?" The article touches on the complexities of adding value to standardized test scores, the power of effective feedback to teachers and the impact that it can have on students, the importance of teacher involvement in designing effective evaluation systems (including incentives), and some of the horror stories of objectively excellent teachers getting terrible reviews through flawed systems. In all, a good introduction to the topic, I thought.
Aaccording to this article, the Achievement First academies of New York seem to have the balanced approach to teacher evaluation figured out. A variety of evaluation techniques--observations by trained observers (including other instructors trained to the task), value-added test scores, and student surveys --give teachers much more valuable feedback than what the article portrays as the "traditional" teaching method--a score determined by a laundry list of practices that the observer looked for in her biennial visit to the classroom.
Included in the same e-mail was a tip towards the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards's new resource for evaluators of teachers: the Video Observation Program. The idea is to provide observers with videos of what good teaching looks like across a variety of subjects. I'm reminded of my poor principals who come into my class and listen to me speak Spanish for 45 minutes--they have few resources to determine how well I'm doing my job. (If after 6 weeks my principal can't understand me and my 7th graders can, I think that's a growth measurement. But it's tough to fit that into a rubric: "How much more content do the students know than the principal?" Doesn't really work.) They can look for general best practices: Do the students know why they're doing what they're doing? How engaged are the students? How is the instructor assessing learning in an ongoing way? But in terms of content delivery, how is one principal supposed to know the differences between good teaching in ELA, math, science, social studies, X number of world languages, phys ed, and technology? NBPTS wants to provide principals, for a nominal fee, a library of videos. This is an excellent idea; I wish it were available for free, and not just targeted at principals (and other teacher leaders). I think it would be a valuable part of a teacher's self-improvement kit, too.
The Christian Science Monitor does a good job of running down the value and issues of teacher evaluations in today's online issue. Among the highlight quotes include Stanford's Linda Darling-Hammond: "I went from being very enthusiastic about [value-added test scores] to extremely worried," and the counter from Dan Weisberg of the New Teacher Project: "How long do you want to wait until we have a system that satisfies all the concerns?" The article touches on the complexities of adding value to standardized test scores, the power of effective feedback to teachers and the impact that it can have on students, the importance of teacher involvement in designing effective evaluation systems (including incentives), and some of the horror stories of objectively excellent teachers getting terrible reviews through flawed systems. In all, a good introduction to the topic, I thought.
Aaccording to this article, the Achievement First academies of New York seem to have the balanced approach to teacher evaluation figured out. A variety of evaluation techniques--observations by trained observers (including other instructors trained to the task), value-added test scores, and student surveys --give teachers much more valuable feedback than what the article portrays as the "traditional" teaching method--a score determined by a laundry list of practices that the observer looked for in her biennial visit to the classroom.
Included in the same e-mail was a tip towards the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards's new resource for evaluators of teachers: the Video Observation Program. The idea is to provide observers with videos of what good teaching looks like across a variety of subjects. I'm reminded of my poor principals who come into my class and listen to me speak Spanish for 45 minutes--they have few resources to determine how well I'm doing my job. (If after 6 weeks my principal can't understand me and my 7th graders can, I think that's a growth measurement. But it's tough to fit that into a rubric: "How much more content do the students know than the principal?" Doesn't really work.) They can look for general best practices: Do the students know why they're doing what they're doing? How engaged are the students? How is the instructor assessing learning in an ongoing way? But in terms of content delivery, how is one principal supposed to know the differences between good teaching in ELA, math, science, social studies, X number of world languages, phys ed, and technology? NBPTS wants to provide principals, for a nominal fee, a library of videos. This is an excellent idea; I wish it were available for free, and not just targeted at principals (and other teacher leaders). I think it would be a valuable part of a teacher's self-improvement kit, too.
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