Learning Target, Outcomes, Assessments...Oh, DANG

Today I attended professional development that is part of our new teacher evaluation, although we don't call it that :) This is my third year working in this model, and while I definitely despise being taken out of my classroom (did I mention despise?) there is merit to the process. However, I keep thinking the process would be much more effective PRIOR to the school year. Now, if only we could find a way to pay teachers to attend at the start of the school year...

But I digress.  Today was all about assessment. I love assessment. Wait. I don't love assessment, I love creating amazing assessments. As for the mundane assessments that are part of a teacher's life? I could do without them. Except those assessments are necessary, and even though it's a pain, I really do need to know if my students can use our word wall words correctly. I also need to know if they can write complete thoughts, otherwise known as sentences. I need to know, I need to know....well, I need to know a lot.  Therein lies the struggle that I think most educators have. We have so much that we want students to know, that we don't always take the time to decide what is essential for students to know. In some cases, knowing how to act like respectful young people is most definitely at the top of the list. We can't teach in an environment that isn't conducive to learning.

Once we start to tackle that monster, then we have to begin to evaluate our own assessment of student learning. I thank God for Dr. Kitty Green who exposed all of us SMC 2004 grads to Wiggins and McTighe. If you're an educator and you don't know who they are, you need to find out quick. They are the gurus of all things important to quality instruction. I live and die by backwards design.  I know where my students need to go, how I'm going to get them there, and how to check how they're doing along the way. This is also known as formative and summative assessment.  It's also known as great teaching. I could start going on and on about essential questions and statements of enduring understanding, but that belongs in a different post. Kind of.

Back to assessment. I truly believe that beginning with the end in mind is so crucial to great teaching. Curriculum maps are a nice way to start aligning this thinking and are much less intimidating than an entire unit plan.  Yet, I fear that people hear the word curriculum map and they freak out, don't see the merit in it, or think it's just going to change anyway. Ah, but it shouldn't. The beauty of a curriculum map is that it keeps you honest.  If you have decided prior to the beginning of a unit what skills, knowledge, and targets students MUST own, then that becomes the rock of your teaching. Can you add stuff? Of course. However, the nuts and bolts remain the same. It's also how you know whether you're meeting the desired learning targets. It's a beautiful thing.

Our target should always be student learning in some way.  Yet, if we don't know what those targets are in the first place, how will we ever know if they actually got them? We have to be decisive as teachers. We have to know what students need to know, how we will help them learn the material, how we will assess whether they have learned it, and how we will reteach it if they don't. It's a challenging and sometimes daunting task. I know there are times I want to crawl under a rock and come back out in June, but alas that isn't an option. Instead, I keep thinking of ways to challenge myself as an educator, to look for areas of growth in assessing student learning, and trying not to cringe at the stack of important assessments that need to be graded.

Power of the Pen

As a teacher, it seems like there are no guarantees for the kind of day you'll have. We can plan the best lesson, but it can completely flop for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes, we fail to implement it correctly, sometimes our students are in a different country (figuratively speaking, of course), and other times it just plain fails.

I've been open about the fact that teaching structured writing is difficult for me.  I often feel torn between creative expression and the need to give a formula to students. Balance. So teaching students how to craft the perfect paragraph has been my Achilles Heel. I always botch it in some way.It's a struggle to teach something that comes so naturally to me, and this summer I had to have a come to Jesus meeting with myself. I couldn't continue to do something bad just because it wasn't easy. Feel free to insert a corny saying. I decided to scaffold every piece of the 8-sentence paragraph.  Scaffolding is a whole other blog in itself, but I can proudly say that I've owned scaffolding of the 8-sentence paragraph for the past month. It hasn't always been easy, and there were days I wondered if it was working.

I've been getting some pretty strong evidence that it is. Is it perfect? Far from it. But we're making progress, and I'm learning a lot, and that's half the battle. Writing is an essential skill to possess, and I want to make sure that my students are prepared. No excuses.

Fresh Start

Today was a much needed day off. Between last minute hirings (day before school starts), taking over as the department head, adding five new teachers to the English department, coaching cross country, advising student council, and, you know, teaching, I've been on the verge of a nervous breakdown. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration. However, it has been a challenging two weeks.

It's also been a great learning experience. 

I can honestly say that reflective practice has helped me to grow as an educator.  While I've certainly had to make adjustments to my teaching, I've been able to avoid some pitfalls based on previous experiences. Friday marked the first go with stations.  Prior to Friday, I created the groups, the group leaders, and had everything planned out in writing.  Did things go wrong? Of course. I teach 9th graders, after all.  However, contrary to the past, I didn't flip out and get overly anxious when things didn't go quite as planned. I made notes about things that could go better, about things that went better than expected, and minor tweaking that needed to take place.

The most important part of the past week and a half has been establishing procedures. I cannot emphasize it enough! You can't expect to get anything done in a classroom if students don't know what's expected of them. Posting the procedures and expectations has been critical, as has modeling what I expect students to do.

I'm happy with the start to the school year, but I know we have a lot of work to do. I'm excited about this group of students, and I have a feeling we're going to have an absolutely amazing year.

It Goes Both Ways

Hmm. So, I just read a blog about how much teachers hate in-services. The title was "If Teachers Planned In-Service Training".  Interestingly enough, somehow three or four years ago, I got roped in to designing and planning our professional development. I was on the flip side for the first time in my teaching career, and it was anything but fun.  It was intimidating. It's also one of the hardest things to plan because everything that the teacher complained about in the blog is the attitude of many teachers everywhere...including my school. Including ME when I get sent to these random meetings that I shall not name.

Planning professional development sucks. Plain and simple. Teachers often don't want to be there, they're tired of hearing stuff they've heard before, they're tired of trying something new, and it's obvious that many believe it's a waste of their time. It got to a point when I was literally trying to figure out the shortest amount of time to present something (I managed to get it down to 15 minutes), and I started to grow disheartened by the whole process. Maybe I still am.

I know that in-services can be a pain in the ass. I know that some people have no fashion sense and are fond of saying the same word over and over again. MMkayyy.

But, I also think teachers need to have some perspective. When we walk into a room already confident that what we are going to hear is a waste of our time, we probably won't hear anything worthwhile even if it's there. (Yet, we want our students in our classroom ready to learn!)

When we refuse to take part in discussion, whether it's whole group, a think-pair-share, or round table, then we lose the chance to learn from the other teachers in our building. Funny, we would be pissed off if we asked our students to do a think pair share and they blew it off. "But, my stuff is important!" (uh-huh)

Data and statistics are important. The key is figuring out which ones matter, and some do. A lot. Focus on the data that matter and move forward in a meaningful way.

I'm not a big fan of warm and fuzzy.  It is most definitely a waste of time and beyond annoying. But the concept of stepping outside of our comfort zone is not. It's a worthwhile task and frankly, I've seen too many schools implode because the faculty and staff didn't know how to speak to each other respectfully. Or how to speak. At all.

In short, what I've learned about in-services from being on the flipped side, is that we could all benefit from a little self-reflection.  Join the planning team, trust me, they would love to have you. We could also benefit from real dialogue about what SHOULD happen in professional development instead of complaining about what's wrong without taking a single moment to think about how it could actually work (now, there is a novel idea).

I can think of a million, but everyone else is already out to lunch.

Lose to Win

One of the greatest aspects of teaching is being able to collaborate with other amazing teachers. This past week I've spent time at Penn High School working with four other women in a technology workshop. It's been fun, and I have learned a lot. It's also made me sad.

It's no secret that I was heart broken when my good friend and fellow teacher Kelli decided to leave teaching to pursue a writing career. She is an amazing teacher, friend, woman, and human being. She is also hands down probably the best teacher I've ever witnessed.

I was already feeling upset about losing such a great teacher and friend when I learned that my fearless leader, my friend, and another phenomenal teacher was moving on to take a position as a principal. He is going to set OD on fire, and I am lucky to have worked with him, learned from him, joked with him, and collaborated with him. Filling his shoes? Unlucky :)

I should have known that things happen in threes. This past week I learned that another one of my friends, fellow English teachers, all-around good guy was leaving WHS in order to better serve his family. Berg is probably one of the most honest, kind, and giving people I know. He was the guy willing to do the crazy stuff like dressing up as a Caveman or Elvis to meet a "need" at school. lol. So, you can see how I would be heartbroken that he, too, has left.

I'm scared right now. I'm the department head, and I don't even have positions filled for the upcoming school year. The three people I talk to the most about curriculum and instruction are gone. I kind of feel like I'm lost at sea or am running in a trail that leads deeper into the woods with no exit (I might actually enjoy that if I was actually running).

No one gave me an instructional manual for being department head, and I already feel like I might have made a few mistakes. I don't want to give my colleagues extra work when we're already overburdened, but I also can't do things alone. I don't want to dictate, and I don't want to only ask a few people, because I know what's it's like to be the person who is asked over and over and over to do one extra thing. I want us to be a team. To work together, to have fun, and to find some satisfaction in this profession that is becoming more and more difficult.

I also hope my colleagues give me some room to make mistakes because I will. It comes with being human.

Houston, We Have a Problem

On Sunday I was working on a paper for my literacy course and stumbled upon an interesting one about preparing students to navigate the digital world.  While my friend Kelli is a digital literacy genius, I have some ways to go. I want to expose students to more digital materials, but after reading the article and teaching yesterday, I realize that there is so much we literally have to teach our students about navigating the digital world.

We were doing a simple webquest.  I usually like to make my own webquests because a lot of people misunderstand how to design them...I didn't have time to make one for "Othello" (sorry, but no way am I teaching "Romeo and Juliet" again.) but found a well-made one on zunal. Unfortunately, I made the assumption that because my students are so technologically advanced, they would be able to navigate it without much support from me. Insert me falling on my face and pulling my hair out.

"Go where?"
"I don't get it."
"What do you mean click on new tab?"
"What's a hyperlink?"
"How do I change the font size?"
"What's a URL?"
"How do I put a picture on Word?"

Oh my gracious. OK, so in all fairness, there were about four kids who were not helpless hand raisers, but the rest I was like WHAT is going on. It was a good teachable moment for me and my students.

Karchmer-Klein & Shinas (2012) state " along with technology adoption comes the critical responsibility of preparing students to use the tools effectively to support their learning". How is it possible that I used this quote in my paper, yet didn't apply it on Monday? Assumptions, dear Watson. So here are some suggestions for preparing students to navigate digital literacy:

1. If possible, model the process for students
2. Go over techie terms with students prior to using the web
3. Explicitly teach students how to navigate nonlinear texts (the internet)
4. Teach students how to determine if what they are reading on the internet is a trusted source (anyone and everyone can publish these days!)
5. Help students to understand how to use images, fonts, and layouts to achieve desired results
6. Assess students before, during, and after
7. Don't stop learning!

One of my favorite online tools: Glogster!

Summer Lovin'

Today is the halfway mark of summer school. Unfortunately, I'm not there today due to my body being ridiculous. Or maybe my body is being ridiculous because it's been pushed too much lately? Possible.

However, teaching summer school has been awesome. Did I just say that? It has, though! Granted going from 7:15-1:00 without a lunch break or anything longer than 15 minutes is intense, I'm also having a lot of fun. I wasn't sure what it would be like to try to teach three-four weeks of material in one week, but I've managed to make it work. We just WORK. We also have fun. I also plan more stuff than I ever thought I could. I've tried new things, done the tried and true, and had some pretty solid results.

Most of the students in my class are going to be juniors and seniors who for whatever reason failed 9th grade English back in the day. I'm still trying to figure out how some of them failed it because they're pretty damn smart. I'm guessing they didn't find it necessary to go to school or do work. Thankfully, the majority of them have seen the error of their ways. When I have time I'm going to type some of their poems on here. Blew me away.

We started our novel unit, and I decided to teach Sold, which is my passion. It is quickly becoming theirs. I know some of them were like what is this when we first started reading. The beginning is deep but I think the depth is sometimes lost on teenagers. Yesterday, we hit the city. We hit the Happiness House, which is anything but happy. They were hooked. One girl even finished the book!

The past week and a half has been good for me. It rekindled my passion to teach (it kind of burns out at the end of the year) and brought some self-confidence back. It also made me realize how much more difficult it is to teach 9th graders. 9th graders are something else, so it's been refreshing to teache upperclassmen.

I am also ready for summer. I need it.