As an Academic Specialist my daily audience are all of the students at my site. Much of my day is spent analyzing data for our teachers, planning PLCs, and constantly looking ahead at testing windows, which impacts every one of our students! Are the tools we are using benefiting our students? Is the data helping guide our instruction? Is technology being used effectively? Are our PBL projects meeting the standards? These are just a sampling of the questions we try to answer as a staff. Why? Our ultimate goal is keep the students involved and wanting to learn. As teachers we have worked together to build a Project Planning Toolkit with our resources in one folder. These tools help remind us that our students are our daily audience and their learning is the priority.
I find myself looking at my Project Planner through different eyes. I am reaching all the different learning types in my classroom? Am I capturing their attention and keeping it throughout the project, or is it just another assignment they can't wait to be done with? Are we looking at a driving question, and our students responsible for answering it? Is their imagination allowed to shine? I think all of these questions will help me with building a resource that can be effectively used.
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"Embrace the mess." This is just one quote that resonated with me after watching this weeks videos. We need students to understand that learning is not always an easy clear path, and sometimes we will need to scratch one idea and try another. As educators, we learn new ideas every year through trail and error. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's how we take that experience and move forward that makes the difference for our students. Students need to know that mistakes are a normal and healthy process to learning, and what better way for them to see that than through our mistakes. Learning from mistakes will help students be resilient and less afraid to try new things. Through this process we can allow our students to "spark" their imaginations. The more we allow our students to work through this process, we allow them to see the bigger picture, and give them the drive to make a difference in this world. We need to step away from learning being about having a wrong or right answer, and move in the direction of allowing the students to see the "why" in learning.
I can also relate the phrase "Embrace the mess" to the journey I decided to take when I joined the masters program. Ask me a year ago, I would say, "Absolutely not, I don't have time for that!" But, then again, the same thing can be said about me moving out of the classroom and into my current position. For almost 20 years, I joked with students and said you can find me here until I retire. I had no idea what to expect taking on the role of Academic Specialist. Innovative learning has been a big part of this new adventure and when I read about the idea of getting my masters in the same thing... Well, here I am, in the middle of that journey. As I work with my intervention students, I find myself being more innovative and creative with that journey. I had to make a lot of decisions the first year in this position. Not all of them were successful! I find myself learning from those mistakes and changing it up this year. I find my teaching practice to be more student driven, even more so, this last month. The readings and videos have shown me that we need to take more risks in the classroom and integrate tools that will change the future for our students. Just like the changing world around us, we as teachers, need to keep learning and moving forward. The Flat World and Education Chapter 9:
Linda Darling Hammond states that in order for our nation to be equitable and high achieving, our schools need five key elements: 1. Meaningful learning goals are required for both content and skills in order for students to succeed. She also states that curriculum and assessment need to be closer to teachers and part of the ongoing process in order to have improvement. 2. Intelligent, reciprocal accountability systems are needed in order to ensure continually improving curriculum, teaching and school capacity. A state accountability system would help with a level of good practice that would lead to progress. This would also help schools invest in interventions needed at their school. 3. Equitable and adequate resources would require states to be equitable in their funding by allowing adjustments. Also, in order to reach this level of equity, the amount of well-prepared teachers needs to available in all communities. 4. Strong professional standards and supports are required for all educators! Schools should include fully funded professional development, mentoring, high-quality preparation, throughout teacher's careers. Teachers should be given the opportunities needed to constantly improve. 5. Schools organized for student and teacher learning creates a learning environment with a coherent curriculum that lead to ongoing inquiry in the classroom. We need classrooms that focus on collaboration and teacher networking. One of the best ways educators can learn, is through the learning network of other educators. The Flat World And Education has made may realize one important key idea, as educators, it is our responsibility to learn and grow in this ever changing world of education! Listening to Mishra made me think about how my classroom technology has changed over the last two decades. When I first started teaching my class and I went to the computer lab once or twice a week. However, my first classroom was walking distance from Cupertino, home of Apple! Mishra says, "We live in a world of hyper links" and "Technology links us all together" all because of the shift of communication through technology. I watched my tiny school with one computer lab, change before my eyes, and suddenly we were a 1:1 school! Why? Because we have to change as technology changes. We have to constantly ask ourselves, "How does technology change the way I teach and my students learn?" Today, I use technology with every aspect of my teaching. Our new common core Language Arts adoption has be learning a new tool everyday that my students are so excited to use. I have just this week activated my Google Classroom and it sounded like Christmas morning when I let them explore what I had added to our Google classroom in Room 6.
Mishra continues to explain how change with technology is "Wicked." Wicked in the sense that it never lets us rest, it's constantly changing and how teachers can help solve this problem. I found myself constantly walking down this path of changing technology. How many times have we had students show us how to use a technology tool of some sort? It has become a full time job for us educators to keep with technology world! I need to learn how to keep up with changes, consistently investigating what to try next, and how to use it in the classroom. As teachers we are responsible for getting our students ready for their next adventure. As an Academic Specialist I spend much of my day working with students that require an intervention of some sort. As a child, I struggled greatly in school. I was told on many occasions that school would always be a struggle for me, that I would never be a good reader... Which leads me to the start of my Driving Question. After reading The Power of Questions I am still torn between two ideas, Can we as educators dig deeper into Growth mindset and change the way students feel about their learning abilities or What strategies can I use the classroom to motivate my struggling readers to be more excited about reading? My plan is to use new inquiry based activities and strategies throughout my daily interactions with strategic and intensive students. How can I get them excited about reading new grade level material, even though they struggle with comprehension? I also plan to incorporate new technology tools for students to use throughout the day that can help them with reading. I seem to have more questions than ideas at this point. Hopefully, as I dig deeper into my research, I will be able to narrow down my driving question. I have found the following articles on this subject of growth mind set in the classroom: https://teachingcommons.stanford.edu/teaching-talk/%E2%80%9Cgrowth-mindset%E2%80%9D-interventions http://news.stanford.edu/2015/04/27/growth-mindset-study-042715/ https://www.edsurge.com/news/2014-10-24-4-ways-to-encourage-a-growth-mindset-in-the-classroom https://blogs.brown.edu/itg/2015/06/encouraging-growth-mindset/ https://www.lexialearning.com/resources/white-papers/cultivating-growth-mindset-educational-technology After my 1:1, I think I have narrowd it down! My new driving question... How can we keep struggling readers engaged? https://www.pearson.com/corporate/news/blogs/research/2014/05/how-technology-can-boost-student-engagement.html https://www.pearson.com/content/dam/one-dot-com/one-dot-com/global/dev-stuff/pdf/Blogs/Research/DigitalAge_EngagementScience_042914.pdf https://www.edutopia.org/blog/golden-rules-for-engaging-students-nicolas-pino-james http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/107034/chapters/Student-Motivation,-Engagement,-and-Achievement.aspx NTN, PBL, and AVID, are all daily acronyms used in my classroom. The New Tech Network (NTN) is a cohort of Napa teachers that meet education to discuss the use of monthly in the classrooms. Project Based Learning (PBL) can be found throughout Napa in K-12 classrooms. Advancement Via Individual technology (AVID) is a program that students can partake in on middle and high school campuses and select elementary campuses throughout Napa.
What is one thing they all have in common? Technology! I truly believe in order for our students of today, to be successful tomorrow, we must allow access to the tools of the future. Students can create and take ownership of their learning through the use technology. As a teacher, I can play the role of facilitator, and transform the classroom into an environment of student led learning. I can guide students daily to question the world around them and guide them to solve their own problems. I can also help students follow their dreams by allowing them the technology to explore and expand their thinking. In order to fully prepare my classroom/school for the future, we as a society need to take a look at what the educational systems are doing around the world in order to get the kind of high level academic success that their students are achieving. In essence, the United States continues to fall farther and farther behind in the education race. In order to keep up with this race, as a teacher I need to continue to learn about the learning tools that the students need to be equipped with in order to ensure equity of learning to all in the classroom. My driving question.. Where do I begin? My driving question probably began 30+ years ago as I struggled greatly in school. I arrived at a new school as a 7th grader and had a first grade reading level and struggled writing one paragraph. I was told I would always struggle...
As I begin my 19th year of teaching and my second year as an Academic Specialist, I spend my day working with students you need interventions in reading and writing. Some of these students arrive in my classroom angry and constantly grumble that the lessons are too hard. How do we change the mind set of students that think they cannot learn? How can I change their fixed mindset to that of a growth mindset? After reviewing the IRB, I would need to know the educational backgrounds/history of students that I am working with. This would help give me the necessary information to be able to set goals for them to realistically reach in an intervention class. I would also need to know the socio-economic background to find out if they are lacking the necessary means to a full education. After break out sessions: What group will I focus on? What will be my control group? What Pretest and Post test will I use to measure growth? |
AuthorHeather Feinberg is an Academic Specialist for grades K-5 at Yountville Elementary. Archives
July 2018
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