Teach, Teach!

From an email to Sarah:

I just wanted to note some ideas I just had for additional tech workshops I might develop in the future. Why am I writing you? Because I feel that I need to tell someone while these ideas are still fresh and exciting to me, and hopefully emailing them to you will create some sort of obligation on my part to actually develop the workshop and pay volunteers with help from a payroll check template software.

When I presented my sample workshop this spring, I tried to integrate the use of Furl and Bloglines, which we all felt was too much for one workshop. What I just realized this morning, is that I could design an additional workshop that shows how to have students use Furl, Bloglines, and their own student blog as tools for developing the traditional research paper or the more hip research project, check out here.

Bloglines allows students to search others’ feeds and have a constant influx of new information fed into their own customized feeds. It also allows them to share their feeds with others (great if you’re having students research in teams). Furl allows students to save bookmarks as well as to archive webpages, and to make comments/notes on the bookmarks/archived pages. Again, it also allows them to share their collection of bookmarks with others, which is great for a collaboration. Lastly, by helping students to create their own blogs, which could double as e-portfolios, students could use the blog to post and organize their research notes, to share those with other students, and to post drafts of the eventual writing product. Other students could comment on those posts, offering critique, suggestions, support, or asking questions.

All of these technologies offer collaboration as a key component, which I think is a critical piece of research that traditional research methods have neglected.

What do you think?

Let’s see how it all works together!

Explore some classroom/educator blogs at my school:

Auld’s Classroom Blog
Tippens’ Class Website
Patterson’s Class Website
Understanding Poverty Bookstudy
ILT Online

Check out my Bloglines account.

Check out my Furl folders.

My last post posed the question, “What is success when it comes to professional development?” Today, I experienced true success in a way I never anticipated.

Our school improvement plan focuses on the use of writing to increase and improve students’ acquisition of content knowledge. Many teachers feel that writing is a waste of their students’ time, that having students write in their classes cannot possibly help, and might even hinder, their mastery of the content. One such teacher was, in a friendly way, voicing that opinion to me today. I listened, knowing she meant no harm, but inside two arguments were raging.

On the one hand, I wanted to blast at how truly limited her view of writing was. The other part of me insisted that I had to let it go, that there was no point in trying to win this battle and I would only alienate a colleague who had been friendly and supportive so far.

Some other, previously unknown entity within me found a third option.

Somehow, I managed to calmly express my views (which are supported by much research) that writing can indeed increase student learning, that writing is itself an act that creates learning and that forces students to think and figure out exactly what they have, and equally important, what they haven’t learned. I mentioned the many forms that writing can take in the classroom, that it needn’t, indeed shouldn’t, always be a formal expository essay. I gave examples of other types of writing that might be helpful in a non-Language Arts classroom. And then I stopped, saying, “But of course, you might disagree.”

My colleague’s expression was difficult to read, her mouth fallen open just a bit, her eyes wide.

“I’ve never had it explained to me in that way.” Pause. “What you just said makes so much sense…I’ve never really thought of using writing the way you just described. Wow.”

And then my mouth fell open. Touchdown.

Last week I “hosted” my first Early Release Day. In our district, we have 5 days a year when students are released 2 hours early so that schools may provide their staff with locally focused staff development. I am in charge of these sessions at my school (in theory, anyway). So here’s what I did:

• spruced up our meeting space with tableclothes in school colors
• loaded up each table with candy, cookies and chips
• provided sodas
• had hard copies of the presentation as well as all other necessary items to document their implementation of our SIP
• chopped the session in half–teachers had thirty minutes between dismissal time and the session start, and then the session lasted only 1 hour

According to all reports, teachers were pleased with the session. Many were kind enough to say so to my principal, and a few to me, personally. But here’s my question:

How do we define success in professional development? Is teacher satisfaction the measure? Having been a teacher for 18 years, I am pretty clear on what teachers want: speed, clarity and relevance (and yummy treats never hurt). However, isn’t the real measure based on what happens when these teachers return to the classroom? If they enjoy the session but choose not to implement the strategies, have I really succeeded?

Probably the most difficult aspect of my new job is that I am a department unto myself. There is only 1 person with my role in my entire school. Fortunately, one of my administrators was the last to hold my position and she has been a source of great support. But I have to say, she gave me some not so great advice this week.

Being in charge of professional learning is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s what interests me most about my job and the aspect that influenced me to make the switch. On the other hand, it’s the most difficult part, primarily because much of the faculty does not want to be “professionally developed.” And these people also happen to be the most vocal of the group, which basically means my sessions are often dominated by the “kids” who come in every day saying, “I hate this class. It’s so stupid.”

I had one such meeting this week and it was brutal. It began with a peppering of questions from one teacher that felt like machine gun fire, followed by another who unfavorably compared me to my predecessor and topped off by a third who characterized the implementation of our school improvement plan as “meaningless and trivial.” (By the way, does anyone else find it concerning that a teacher would think that developing and posting learning goals in the form of essential questions is meaningless and trivial?) Through it all, the chair of the department sat silently nodding her head in agreement with all that was being said.

So my predecessor, the new admin, recommended that I talk to my principal about the meeting. She felt that the teachers were very unprofessional and that he should know about it. In spite of “Danger, Will Robinson” pounding through my head, I followed her advice.

B. I. G. M. I. S. T. A. K. E.

What’s worse than being attacked by a group of teachers all at once? Having those same teachers come to your office one by one to defend (and reiterate) their previous attack under the guise of an apology.

So I’m keeping my big mouth shut in the future. And donning a bullet-proof vest for all training sessions.