Director’s Message

Happy New Year!

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, A New Year's Resolution is a commitment that an individual makes to a project or a habit, often a lifestyle change that is generally interpreted as advantageous. The name comes from the fact that these commitments normally go into effect on New Year's Day and remain until fulfilled. More socio-centric examples include resolutions to donate to the poor more often, to become more assertive, or to become more economically or environmentally responsible. The new year resolution is one example of the rolling forecast-method of planning. According to this method, plans are established at regular short or medium-term time intervals, when only a rough long-term plan exists.

My resolution for this year is simple, to learn something new each day to expand my own growth and development as an educator. What is yours?

Linda S. Whitehead
Director, Teacher Development/HRD

Six Steps to Induction: Step 4- Expand the lines of ownership and leadership

With your Induction Team in place, a self-assessment completed, and the first draft of the Induction Plan written, it is time to begin to transition ownership of induction at your site to the stakeholders who will be involved and impacted. The work of supporting and developing teachers must move from being the responsibility of the team to that of the school. Decisions regarding how to achieve this step will be the responsibility of the Induction Team. The questions below are designed to facilitate this process.

• How will we share the plan with the staff?
• Where are our largest gaps between current reality and desired state?
• In order to reduce the gaps, whose voluntary support is needed, what barriers can we foresee, and how might the barriers be limited or eliminated?
• Who knows about, understands, and is committed to the implementation of the Induction Plan?
• What systemic changes are likely to be needed to support the implementation of the Induction Plan
• What new skills and knowledge will be required to implement the Induction Plan and to what extent are these available within the existing staff?

Source: Randall Deich and Joy Rabin, NESS Program Facilitators

Staff Development: Spray and Pray or Continuous Improvement

Recently I was introduced to the “Spray and Pray” method of professional development. Corrina’s article (below) from Teacher Magazine describes an alternative method that includes action research. Her use of the phrase, “cycle of improvement” leads me believe that she understands that professional development is continuous and not just an event.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All
By Corrina Knight

Have you ever tried on a “one size fits all” garment and thought to yourself, “Who does this fit? “ Have you ever noticed the same problem with staff-development strategy? How would professional development look if it were custom-tailored?

In my school, teachers work on learning teams within subject areas to set their own professional direction. We tailor our learning experiences to students’ needs and our professional interests. This has heightened our interest and commitment to growth.

When selecting an area of study, my team bases its decisions on ensuring student success. First, we identify the obstacles that keep us from meeting that goal. Those obstacles then become our list of professional development topics. From there, we narrow by consensus, interest, need, data, and experience.

Once we have a focus, we devise a cycle of improvement that includes:
1. Research and reading: What are others in our field doing?
2. Brainstorming: What can we do with our new knowledge?
3. Conducting a trial: How well does this work in our classrooms?
4. Evaluating: Have we been successful?
5. Tweaking: What would make this better?
6. Assimilating: How do we make this part of our routine?
7. Sharing findings: Whom can we tell about this?

For schools to break out of the “one size fits all” professional development model, teachers need three essentials: flexibility, freedom, and trust. Our team is given the flexibility to work productively, unencumbered by rigid external guidelines. Most importantly, we’re trusted to make the best instructional decisions for our kids.

Source: Randall Deich, NESS Program Facilitator

Induction, where are we?

Share this question with your administration and Leadership Team

In my school...
o most faculty members have never heard of Induction
o we are beginning to talk about Induction, but no plan currently exists
o an Induction Plan exists, but it was written and is owned by only 1 or 2 people
o we have an Induction Team working on the plan
o the plan has been written by the team and shared with the entire staff
o the entire staff is committed to the plan and there is a process in place for monitoring and refining it

As a Liaison how am I sharing the induction process that supports the growth of my school and not just my new educators?

How am I preparing my Instructional Coaches to be more effective mentoring their New Educator?

What am I doing to model the induction process by preparing my own replacement?

Source: Randall Deich and Joy Rabin, NESS Program Facilitators

New Teacher Induction: Margate Elementary Style

At Margate Elementary, we have developed a routine for making sure we support our New Educators right from the start. A soon as I know about how many new teachers we will have, I head out shopping with funds provided by Ms. Schmidt, our principal. First stop is the ACE store for class supplies, and then to Scholastic for their classroom libraries.

As soon as a teacher is hired, Mrs. Schmidt calls me (usually in the summer) and gives me the name and phone number. That day I call the new teacher to welcome him/her and provide the name of a contact person at the school. I also tell them that I will be assigning a coach soon. I get together with them and issue their professional reading for the summer. We know that once school starts, they will have limited time to read professionally.

Mrs. Schmidt and I choose appropriate coaches and then the coaches and new educators get together for lunch, planning, and getting to know each other. They come in to the school together to look at the new educators’ rooms.

Mrs. Schmidt helps the new teachers by scheduling custodial cleaning so that the new teachers’ rooms are done first. That way they can get into their rooms earlier in the summer to help prevent unnecessary stress. New teachers and coaches work together to set up their rooms. The goal is to have them ready before the planning days. The coach’s next duty is to inspect the new educator’s room and list what that teacher still needs. The coach and new educator submit the order together.

The very first day of pre-planning, there is an introductory faculty meeting and a special breakfast. At this time, we have a formal Induction Ceremony for our new teachers. It includes an “exchange of vows” between veterans and new staff members and ends with everyone singing the school song.

There is a lot more to this ceremony and to our yearlong plus plan. Please visit the Induction CAB conference for all of the details. Go to CAB> Instructional Resources> INDUCTION(HRD)> NESS Liaison> Orientation.

SOURCE: Jeanne Krause, Margate Elementary

KASAB- SKILL

Skill is the ability to do something well. There are several areas in which coaches must have expertise or at best their support for New Educators will be haphazard or erratic. NESS Instructional Coaches have identified the following skills as essential to be an effective coach.

• Build a relationship based on trust.
• Collect data using formal and informal observation instruments.
• Synthesize data from a variety of sources such as observations, lesson plans, grade books, etc. to develop a complete picture of a teacher’s current practice.
• Provide feedback as a critical friend.
• Listen actively to the new educator, clarifying any needs and acting appropriately.
• Communicate the protocols, procedures, belief systems, and expectations of the organization.
• Use Action Research or the Continuous Improvement Process to support the growth of a new educator.
• Model high yield lessons and expected teacher behaviors.

Source: Dr. Doug Miller, NESS Program Facilitator

Expanding Lines of Ownership: Direct and Indirect Coaching

In the Clinical Educator Training, direct and indirect coaching skills are like an ax and pruning shears: both are helpful, but you need to use the right tool at the right time. Trying to chop down a tree with a pruning shears or shaping a hedge with an ax is not very effective.

Direct coaching may be necessary, especially at the beginning of the school year, because of time constraints. The preplanning days are not the time to use the discovery method. Take a few minutes to explain why you will be so direct in the beginning, but after that just tell the new educator what they need to know and be able to do on the first day of school and possibly what they should do the first three weeks of school. Use clear definitive statements, make your points with conviction, and explain why your ideas should be adopted.

Indirect coaching takes more time, but it expands the new teacher’s lines of ownership. Indirect coaching should begin as soon as the new teacher’s classroom begins to show signs of a safe and orderly environment. Once these signs are present, the coach can begin to use indirect coaching. Indirect coaching methods include observations, asking questions, presenting possibilities, and most importantly getting the new educator involved in the discussion and decision-making process.

Direct and indirect coaching are both important and necessary strategies in coaching a New Educator. Sometimes you only get results by telling a new educator exactly what needs to be done. This means being firm and clear, but never rude or offensive. On the other hand indirect coaching is necessary in helping the New Educator examine their own practice and take the steps necessary to grow professionally.

Source: Dr. Doug Miller, NESS Program Facilitator

Checklist for productive parent teacher conference

The secret to productive parent-teacher conferences, experts say, is changing your thinking from reporting on a child to drawing out from the parents a better sense of who that child is. Taking a walk in the parents’ shoes is a first step, according to the Harvard Education Letter. Here are some questions to start the conversation:

1. What aspects of your child’s schoolwork make you proud?
2. In what ways is your child working up to his or her potential?
3. What things at school make your child happy or upset?

However well teachers handle conferences, the 10-minute model is still too much like speed dating, education researchers say arguing that the whole structure needs to change from a high-pressure, “super-brief” meeting to a more collaborative arrangement in which nothing comes as a surprise and the focus is on the future.

Source: Adapted from “Meeting of the Minds” by Laura Pappano, Harvard Education Letter, July/August 2007.

Student-Created Ground Rules

When students actively participate in establishing ground rules, they are more likely to follow the rules. Also, when students have greater ownership of the rules, they are more likely to enforce them among their peers. This can lead to a more productive learning environment with fewer student disruptions.

The goal of a continuous improvement classroom is to empower students to take responsibility and ownership for their own learning. One way to begin the process of expanding students’ lines of ownership is to help students create the ground rules for the classroom in which they learn.

The teacher’s role is to facilitate as students create the classroom ground rules. The teacher should emphasize the importance of listening to each other in an environment of respect and acceptance. These ground rules become the standard for expected student behavior while in the classroom.

The teacher can use quality tools such as brainstorming, to quickly develop a comprehensive list of expected behaviors and the affinity diagram, to reduce the list to 3 to 5 effective ground rules necessary to accomplish the classroom mission.

Source: Dr. Doug Miller, NESS Program Facilitator

Projects or Long Assignment

Last Tuesday I visited a math class. As I observed the teacher, I noticed an assignment written on the board that the students were to solve approximately 75 math problems by Friday. That breaks down to 25 problems each night. I shared with the teacher that the assignment might be counterproductive for two reasons.

First, as Harry Wong said, “The longer the assignment, the more students will fail to do it.” The second is that, in a math class in particular, it’s not the number of problems you practice that is important, it’s the number you practice correctly. A good measure for homework is to give 3 to 4 problems for each objective covered that day and 2 to 4 review problems to maintain skills learned earlier in the year.

The point is regardless of the subject area it is important to divide long assignments into several steps based on the learning objectives and not just giving the students work from the textbook because it’s there.

One way to divide long assignments is give each student a copy of the assignment timeline or better yet let the students help develop the timeline. Keep the students informed of due dates for each step. After the dates are determined tell the students how many daily points each step is worth and add that to the timeline. For this part of the grading, the students either receive all of the points or none of the points.

When a step is due, go from student to student during class, check their work, and record the points in your gradebook. If a step is not finished, the student receives a zero and then you conference with him/her about it. This system helps students plan and keep track of their own progress.

The final product usually cannot be graded in class, because time is needed to carefully read the assignment and give it a score.

The Worst Analogies Ever Written in High School Essays

Teaching analogies is a high yield strategy but the best intentions don’t always get the expected result. The following analogies were extracted from essays written by high school students.

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life were a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man."

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.