Barriers and Solutions

On October 30 2008, South Central Area NESS Liaisons met at the SCA office for their second Collaborative Learning Session of the year. One activity they participated in was a “Carousel” to collaboratively address barriers they have been facing as they work on developing induction plans at their sites. Below are the issues discussed and possible solutions suggested by their liaison colleagues. Click on the comment link if you have any to add.

How do we identify our induction team?
Use teams that are already in place (i.e. team leaders, support staff, leadership team). Besides administration, consider staff members who are already involved in the work, such as Instructional Coaches, your NESS Liaison, and department heads.

How do you get people to volunteer their time/efforts to participate on the Induction Team without pay?
Provide alternative incentives, such as comp. time, vouchers to use with catalogs (ACE), or gifts (from partners in education). Use a pool substitute to split the day among members.

What does induction self-assessment look like? Who should be involved in self-assessment?
The Induction Rubric or a Continuous Improvement Plan can be used to assess induction at your site. The entire staff or just members of the induction team can continue to monitor through CAB, Quia or at faculty or induction meetings.

How do you find the time to meet and write the Induction Plan? How elaborate/detailed does the plan have to be?
Follow the model provided by the electronic Induction Planning Tool; the questions will guide you through the entire process. Use details when developing the plan, but be open to flexibility. It is important to be specific to the school needs. Start the induction talk during faculty/grade/department meetings and continue communication via CAB. Look at models of other plans (do not start from scratch).

Is Professional Development Worth $$$$

Countless workshops, seminars, retreats, and other training opportunities are offered under the assumption that they can positively affect how a faculty teaches, which in turn will help students learn more. However, there’s evidence that short-term interventions, such as afternoon or early morning workshops, don’t have much of an effect when it comes to changing teacher behaviors. On the other hand, data suggest that well-designed, substantive training programs are worth the time and effort. Well-designed and substantive training programs by Florida professional development standards involves four steps planning, delivery, follow-up, and evaluation.

Gibbs and Coffey looked at the effects of training programs at 20 universities in eight countries. Each training program involved at minimum of 60 hours (300 hours for the longest) and spread those activities across four to 18 months. The results provide confirmation that in-depth training does make a significant impact on teaching. A faculty that participates in well-designed training programs becomes more learner-focused and their students are more likely to learn.

Planning next year’s professional development calendar will begin second semester, before you start planning take time to reflect on the professional develop offered this year to your staff. How did your site’s professional development experience influence changes in teacher behaviors to enhance student learning? What can administrators and teacher leaders do to help their faculty marry Florida Standards with appropriate teaching processes?
Source: Academic Leader, Magna Publications

Teamwork?

In the book called, “It’s Called Work for a Reason,” Larry Winget explains how Teams do not work. I have been in and heard of many experiences that random grouping of individuals with an assigned task might eventually lead to the completion of that task, yet wonder if the group is functioning as a team or just struggling to get the job done.

From Larry’s book he writes, “Instead of teams, we should create groups of superstar individuals who share a common goal. Then you allow those superstars to exploit their uniqueness in an environment where other superstars are doing the same thing. This mutual respect for the talent of others helps them achieve the common goal faster and allows them to excel as individuals, which is better for their egos. It takes care of the whole “what’s in it for me?” mentality that we all possess, because the individual doesn’t have to share the credit with people who didn’t contribute.”

“Superstars with a common goal must still work together, and happily will if there are other superstars whose talents and abilities they respect. Superstars love working with other superstars who are great at what they do. But this is not teamwork. This is a common goal being accomplished by a group of individuals who have individual tasks, and held accountable for their tasks, and are given credit for accomplishing their tasks.”

How would you describe your team experience to Larry?

Source: Winget, L. (2006). It's Called Work for a Reason!: Your Success Is Your Own Damn Fault. New York: Gotham.

Technology and PLCs

NESS Liaison Debra Stahl from Parkway Middle is a participant of a Teacher Leadership Professional Learning Community (PLC) that is learning about developing effective PLCs. Debra journals her experiences with the rest of her team via Tangler.com, an online discussion network. Her latest entry expresses her experience with sharing responsibility, collaboration, and technology.

"Ms. Badio, an Instructional Coach and our Teacher of the Year who totally is into technology and also is paperless in her math class have run the last two months of our NESS learning community. She has been showing the entire group online resources that new teachers and really all educators can use. These resources are great for the students because of the world in which we live in today. It brings the teaching to a different level when trying to get students to buy into what is taking place in the classroom. It is interesting to see how the younger new teachers pick up what she is showing so quickly, while someone like me has to take notes and write down the steps involved. We even have started our own online community through Wiki (didn't know what that was either), which is somewhat what we are doing here on Tangler. Ms. Badio shared with the group, "Wiki is a powerful tool for multiple people to edit documents, work together and coordinate projects." She posts information for the new educators and coaches and we can log on and talk with one another on the site as well. It is great!!"

Thanks to Ms. Badio and Debra Stahl

Is There a Budget for Xbox?

Kurt Squire, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of curriculum and instruction, spoke on his experiences researching simulations and games in learning environments. David Williamson Shaffer, a professor at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, told the audience about his interest in how computer-based media change the way people think and learn.
Researchers say video games have many attributes that help people learn:

1. They activate prior learning, because players must use previously learned information to move to higher levels of play.
2. Games provide immediate feedback in scoring and in visual and auditory stimulus, which allows learners to more quickly modify their learning strategies before the ineffective ones become entrenched.
3. Skill transfer from games to real life is much more likely to occur.
4. Motivation to learn new ideas or tasks is higher when games are used for most people (although some prefer to learn in traditional ways).

When students come to your class with new technologies do you think of it as an opportunity or an obstacle? How can you use technologies like I phones, I pods, or blackberries to increase your students learning opportunities?
Source: Wisconsin Technology Network

Don't Waste a Minute!

What do you do with those awkward moments that arise in every teacher’s day, those times when a lesson ends five minutes before the bell rings or a few minutes before specials? Try some mini lessons, quick activities that fill time without wasting it! The following two examples are from the website.

• Ask each student to name one thing they learned today.
• Play the alphabet game, which can be used in any subject, Name a country that begins with the letter A, Argentina, and the next student a country that begins with the letter B, Belgium, and the next student a country that begins with the letter C, and so on.

Click the source below to access the Education World website for more mini lessons.
Source: Education World

Warm Up Activities

The following website contains a library of warm-up activities for each day of the school year covering the core subject areas. For example:

Language Arts

1. Correct all capitalization errors in the following sentence.

on mother's day we went to the iowa state fair.

Answer: On Mother's Day we went to the Iowa State Fair.

Geography

1. Name the seven continents.

Answer: North America, South America, Antarctica, Australia, Asia, Europe, and South America

Click the URL below to access the website for warm-up activities.

Source: http://712educators.about.com/od/warmups/Warm_Ups_Questions_to_Begin_the_Day.htm

Continuous Improvement: PLAN, Do, Study, Act

Plan, Do, Study, and ACT (PDSA) is a structured process of continuous improvement. This article describes a planning process commonly used by Instructional Coaches. During the PLAN phase the coach together with the New Educator discuss and identify the characteristics of an effective, competent teacher. These characteristics represent the goals (Desired State) that teachers work toward to improve their practice.

The coach begins the planning process by collecting baseline data. This baseline data is use to clarify the new teacher’s Current Reality. Current Reality is written in concrete measurable terms, such as, “class started on time”, “13 questions were knowledge level and 4 were application level”, or “teacher ignored two student talking off task during warm up activity”.

After baseline data is collected the coach and the new teacher discuss the meaning and possible impact of the information. During the discussion the new teacher and coach select a Goal or area that the new teacher could improve. Once the Goal is established the Desired State can be refined or brought into focus. Then the new teacher and coach can select possible Interventions. Interventions are actions that could lead to a change in teacher behavior that will have a positive effect on student achievement. The reason I said, "could lead" is that we will not know the effect of the interventions until we measure Impact.

Tips for the Planning Process:
• Align actions towards the Desired State
• Fix process not blame
• Use data and data narrowing tools to identify Current Reality
• Build a professional relationship based on commitment, not compliance.

This article focused on the steps to Plan. There will be follow-up articles on Do, Study, and Act.
Source: Doug Miller

The Instructional Coach and More: A Instructional Coach Study Group

The mission of induction is to support and develop the entire staff in their work, helping all students achieve rigorous standards of learning. An Instructional Coach that uses his/her colleagues’ expertise plays a critical role in accelerating a New Educator’s professional growth and expanding the New Educator’s support network.

In your next Instructional Coach meeting ask your coaches some questions like:

1. What is Induction?
2. How is it different from NESS?
   
3. If a coach was focused on inducting his/her New Educator into the school's culture, how would that influence a coach's work?
   
4. How would an induction focus influence the way a coach works with the faculty?

Debrief:
What did we discuss today that will help a coach and/or new educator be more effective?

The following are some possible responses by Instructional Coach: (Only share one at a time, if the discussion slows.)

• Include all other staff members of the school community when working with a New Educator
• Expand support from individual, grade level/departmental, to site involvement and improvement
• Respect and use the expertise of other teachers and support staff, in the school community
• Include the New Educator in continuous inquiry and improvement of practice that takes place among effective teachers
• Plan collaboratively with colleagues
• Collaborate with your New Educator in developing a coherent long-term plan (beyond the first year) to improve professionally

Source: Dr. Doug Miller

Student Assignments

GLE - Grade Level Expectations

Beginning with Pygmalion in the Classroom (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968), an extensive body of research has been developed that describes how teachers' expectations can influence student performance. While it is misleading to state that teacher expectations determine a student's success, the research clearly establishes that teacher expectations do play a significant role in determining how well and how much students learn.

Research into the ways in which teachers interact with their students highlight how teachers form expectations about their students and more importantly how teachers' expectations influence the rigor of assignments they give their students. Particularly noteworthy are the findings of Douglass (1964) and Mackler (1969) on the effects that tracking has on teachers and students, "Teachers' expectations about a student's achievement can be affected by factors having little or nothing to do with the student’s ability and yet these expectations can determine the level of achievement by confining learning opportunities to those available in one's track."

Data Works, an educational software company, examined work assigned by teachers in thousands of classrooms and found that teachers from second grade through high school have reduced their academic expectations of their students. Astonishingly, the research showed that by 5th grade only 2 out of every 100 assignments given to students were at grade level. It would be nice to think that the other 98 assignments were above grade level pushing the students to expand their horizons, however, the chart above suggest otherwise.

It should be remembered that the students often internalize teachers' expectations over time. When this internalization occurs, a student's perseverance and motivation to achieve may decline until the student's ability to achieve is damaged. As a classroom teacher, “How do you determine the rigor of your assignments?”

Summary : http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/leadrshp/le0bam.htm

A Teacher’s Influence

"I have come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or deescalated and a child humanized or dehumanized."

From, HAIM GINOTT, Between Teacher and Child

Classroom Safari - Support Group Activity

The purpose of this activity is to examine how a teacher's arrange of classroom furniture influence student behavior.

Objectives:

1. Diagram the furniture arrangements in four classrooms
   
2. Discuss the effect of furniture arrangement on student behavior
   
3. Discuss the instructional strategies that work best with each room arrangement

Note: Facilitator pre-selects rooms with different furniture arrangements. Provide paper to diagram furniture arrangements.

Procedure: Take your support group on a tour of 4 classrooms at your site. In each room ask the participants to:

1. Describe the possible effect of each classroom’s furniture arrangement on student behavior.
2. Identify the instructional strategies that are most effective for that room arrangement.
3. Chart feedback, the teams should be prepared to give reasons for their responses.
4. Move to the next room and repeat the process.

Debriefing:
Ask each participant to think about how the furniture is arranged in your classroom and its possible influence on students.

1. What is one thing about your room arrangement that has a positive influence on student behavior?
2. What is one thing you would like to change about the furniture arrange in your room and how will that influence student behavior?

Source: Dr. Doug Miller