This is my tenth year of teaching and each year I try to push myself into becoming better at supporting students and adjusting to their needs. The first few years were spent just figuring things out, what procedures I needed, what concepts did many students struggle with, etc. Several years into teaching our district partnered with LMU and shifted the way we teach math; this process was intense and supported me into transforming my teaching and my classroom. I got to a point where I felt like I was reaching the top of my learning curve (even though I know there is always room for improvement). Last year I transfered districts and was an academic specialist at New Tech, this began an entirely new set of challenges for me. Due to cuts I found myself back in the classroom this year. This year I have felt like I am back to ground zero. I have struggled in figuring out what the ideal PBL classroom looks like. Not knowing where I am headed has made me spin my wheels a bit throughout the year and even question if teaching is something I want to continue doing. I love building relationships with the students, I have wondered if teaching is the avenue in which I want to continue making a difference.
When I began this semester I was overwhelmed by being a single mom, keeping my head above water in my classroom, and many other responsibilities that I take on, but I have been wanting to get my Masters for a while and I was interested in the Innovative Learning program. When it comes to technology I consider myself to be open and somewhat capable, by know means would I consider myself good at technology. Most of the time I would feel overwhelmed by the amount of technology there is; I had no idea what was a good use of time and what would make a positive impact on my students. I was also struggling with how to implement PBL in my math classroom. Throughout the semester I have really enjoyed the 701 class. I have been inspired by a lot of the readings and conversations. As far as technology, this course has given me some specific guidance into what technologies to look at and also helped me to realize that I do not need to be an expert in all things technology. So many of my students are able to navigate new technology much more effectively than I can. As the teacher I can allow them to utilize different technologies that support their learning, ever if I have not mastered using the tool. The ideas of creativity, motivation, and the brain have inspired me to make continue to strengthen my classroom. I love that I can be inspired and then given some specific examples as to how/what to try in my classroom. I have also really enjoyed having a group of people to collaborate with along this journey. Many times I end the 701 class wanted to start fresh and implement what we have been focusing on. I am looking forward to exploring more about the flipped classroom and CBL along with being introduced to new technologies and new ideas.
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I enjoyed reading about both the flipped classroom and Challenge Based Learning. I have struggled with my homework design throughout my years of teaching; it does not make sense for all students to do the same practice homework each night because the students are almost always at very different levels. Differentiation is important not only in the classroom but also for homework. Using the flipped model, homework becomes meaningful and accessible by all students if also allows class time to become more meaningful and a better use of time. The traditional lecture in a classroom tends to not be very engaging for a majority of students, this model allows students to view the lecture or acquire the facts at their own pace and then use classroom time to collaborate and receive support as they practice. I would love to learn about different ways in which teachers have students interact with their homework (the flip/lecture). I think it is important for them to have the opportunity to ask questions, collaborate, and receive feedback about what they do outside of class. I think this model could definitely increase motivation. I feel like one reason students disengage is because the work is either to easy or too challenging, the flipped model allows students to personalize the speed of how they acquire the information and then practice at their own level in the classroom. As I move forward this year, I plan to try lessons using this model. After implementing this it may influence my future research.
The Challenge Based Learning was exciting to read about considering where New Tech High is headed. This model aligns very closely with project based learning and could provide some great examples as we move toward a completely integrated approach. The reading reminded me of what we just did in our pilot week. I have already shared some of the CBL information with my leadership team and hope that it will provide us support moving forward. The project that I participated in for the 9th grade team was looking at food security; we partnered with several organizations in the community, determined their needs and had students create a way to address these needs. After reflecting on pilot week and reading about CBL, there are some things I would do to strengthen our project. Next staff meeting we will be getting staff input to see if we will move forward in our "projects not classes" model and if it will be implemented for 9th grade, 9th and 10th grade, or all school. Looking at the guide and examples of CBL can support our staff as we make changes to our school structure. I am excited about moving forward with this model; however my one concern is incorporating all of the necessary content into the curriculum. I am hoping that looking at examples of CBL will help me figure out how to design projects/challenges at NTHS that allow students to learn the necessary content. Thinking about this idea of content and 21st century skills, I have started to wonder, what content is necessary? I think that learning to be creative and adaptable is incredibly important and that learning how to think critically and be a problem solver is irreplaceable. As I teach math, I want students to be able to take the basic skills and concepts and apply them to new problems and new situations. So I ask myself, what content is necessary when we have the easy access to information? I have always enjoyed reading and listening to Daniel Pink. I find it very interesting that offering rewards blocks creativity. I wonder how grades play into this idea of "carrots and sticks", by giving students grades, are we blocking their ability to be creative because their focus is on the grade rather than the process. We need to be creating opportunities for students to develop intrinsic motivation through autonomy, mastery, and purpose. There were several things that stuck out to me that appeared in at least two of the videos and/or articles. The first is the importance of being free to make mistakes. It is so important that our students feel free to try something different and to realize that making mistakes is the best way to learn. The second thing that stood out was the idea of collaboration. It was pointed out that the best way to become creative is to be around creative people and also that the biggest determination of success was the ability to form and work well in study groups. I think it is important not only to have students work in groups but to scaffold the skills it takes to work with others.
These ideas align very well with project-based learning and the idea of 21st century skills. We need to consider the fact that the world is rapidly changing and we need to prepare students to fit into what the world will be like years from now. Mobley's six insights are as follows:
“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must we want for all children in the community. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy” - John Dewey
As a parent I can really connect with this quote. All of the students that come into our schools and our classrooms deserve an education that we would want for our own child. My daughter is currently in first grade and I wonder what the educational system will have in store for her. As Darling-Hammond stated in the last paragraph, "As a country, we can and must enter a new era." Darling-Hammond states that we need the implementation of the following policies: The first is Meaningful learning goals. One of the main ideas I got from this was about assessment practices. Teachers so often teach to the test, when the policy in place is place that sets the standards low, we are not allowing our students to become critical thinkers or encouraging them to push themselves to a high level of achievement. As I think about this concept, I make connection to the brain science about creativity. When we assess a student, what is it that we are looking for? Are we looking for one correct answer or are we looking for the ability to come up with many possible solutions or make connections to things they already know, do we want them to analyze and think about a problem or to be able to follow procedure? When standardized tests change, naturally teaching changes with it. I feel like we have adjusted our testing, with that I wonder if we have given our teachers enough support to understand the shifts that they need to make in the classroom. This leads to the next area of reform. Intelligent, reciprocal accountability system includes Standards of Practice, Standards for Schools, and Standards for the System. If we change what we want our student outcomes to be, we need to support them in reaching these standards. I think this is one of the main reasons so many people hate common core; students are asked to perform differently and many teachers do not know how to get them there. Not only do teachers need to be provided the education in this transition, they also need the time to collaborate and the support of the school structure. For me, I have ideas and things that I want to incorporate into my classroom but I feel limited by time, and there is not enough support for students that need extra support emotionally, behaviorally, and/or academically. I believe that this is one of the places that money could have a huge impact. We, as a system are so short in manpower that so many people are stretched thin and can't maximize the great intentions and knowledge that they have. Equitable and adequate resources needs to be in place to allow students to excel. One of these resources is quality teachers. The system we have in place makes is so hard to fire teachers who are clearly not doing their job well. I think we need to provide support in becoming a skilled teacher and then make sure that they are held accountable. As I teach a class for future educators I go into many different classrooms throughout our district. It is so surprising to me that there is such a huge difference from one school to another. I know that it is even more extreme if you look outside of the district. This takes me back to the quote by John Dewey, my address should not dictate the type or quality of my child's education. I think this ties in with the fourth area of policy implementation, strong professional standards and supports. One of the quotes for Darling-Hammond stuck with me, "The best systems create high-quality professional learning opportunities, including time for teachers to work and learn together during the school day". As we are facing more cuts going into the next few years, one of the things that may be gone is our Professional Learning Communities. This makes me feel like we are definitely going in the wrong direction. We know through research that collaboration strengthens a school and we as teachers need to model what we want students to do. The systems need to be in place for that to happen. The last area, schools organized for student and teacher learning is something that I am excited to think about. I am so lucky to be in a school that has an innovative leader, he is driving us as a staff to rethink what school can look like. It brings up so many questions as we dive into the future of what education looks like at our site. Overall I agree with Darling-Hammond that we need to enter a new era. Education needs to adapt to the needs of our students. As I entered the classroom ten years ago I was eager to meet my students and looking forward to the challenges I had ahead of me. I was going to be teaching CPM geometry, which I had never been trained in, and High School Math, a course for juniors and seniors that had not passed the CAHSEE; a course with no curriculum, just a list of standards that needed to be covered. I had a blurry vision of what I wanted my classroom to look like. I wanted to the students to be engaged in the content and each working on things that made sense for where there were with their math skills and their life interests. I wanted to build relationships with students and pass on my love of learning math. I had the basics of my vision with no idea or support on how to get there. As the first few years went by I continued to reflect and adjust my practice; however, I was still not getting my classroom much closer to my vision. After my fourth year of teaching our district decided to partner with LMU and change the way we taught math. I saw this as my opportunity to push my practice to the next level. I became a part of a program that had a continuous cycle of learning, support, data analysis, and collaboration. As I was reading the ACOT, it reminded me a lot of the program that I participated in. Myself along with one other math teacher at my site would engage in a very targeted professional development each month, this was followed by an observation by our mentor from LMU who would script the lesson and record active engagement numbers. Following the observation we would debrief/plan and then in a PLC we would analyze student data. I engaged in this process for four years. After the first two year I started taking courses at LMU and became a math teacher leader for my site, where I supported teachers at my site in this same process and eventually did a lot of district work. Being involved in this transformed the way I taught. Although I did not have access to much in the way of technology, my classroom became more collaborative, student centered, differentiated and reflective. I captured my work in my classroom, supporting teachers at my site and work at the district in this poster. Being part of this program and reading about the changes that teachers reported after taking part in the ACOT, I connected this to the book "The Flat World and Education" where Darling-Hammond sites so much data on the influence of teacher quality on student achievement. It seems very clear that as teachers go into teaching very few of them are truly prepared for the job, if they do not get very specific support or seak professional growth of some sort, they will not be as effective in supporting students reach the desired outcomes. Starting two years ago I embarked on a new challenge in my teaching career. I moved back home to Napa, where I got a job as an Academic Specialist at New Technology High School, a project based school. I was not very familiar with PBL and although I had supported math teachers, I was now in a position to support teachers in all content areas. This is a school where access to technology and the way of teaching is very different. I think the fact that students and teachers have access to technology at a different level has helped me move into the adaptation and appropriation stages. I am excited to continue learning and pushing myself to get to the innovation stage. I am still working on having a balance between context and content and what that looks like. I feel that it is important that we teach the content in a way that supports students in becoming critical thinkers, collaborators, communicators and allows them to be creative. With this I want students to be able to look at a problem that they have never seen before and use the 4 C's and prior knowledge to come up with a solution. I still struggle with shifting mindsets away from the procedures of math to the creativity with math; I would love to find more technology and strategies that would support this shift of mindset. Overall, I am excited to be a part of an innovative step that is going to take place at New Tech High. I plan to continue pushing myself both in the classroom with students and in my collaborations with colleagues. Case Study #2 I loved watching the talks by both Adora Svitak and Dalton Sherman. I think it is so important to keep our students at the center of everything we do. We need to remember to set high expectations for our kids and support them in getting to where ever it is they want to go; we need to believe in them and they need to see that and feel it.
I decided to watch Sir Ken Robinson: “Bring On the Learning Revolution!”, I enjoyed what he had to say and the analogies that he made. The main idea that reform is not enough, we don't need evolution, we need a revolution. He stated that everyone should develop their own system with external support and individualized curriculum. I think this idea is so wonderful no matter what level you are looking at. Within our classrooms we need to each have our own systems that supports the individuals in the room. The things that work for one group of people may or may not work for another, there needs to be common elements and a great deal of personalization. The idea that we need to move from being linear to organic resonated with me. If we look at the history of math education we can see how linear it was; you do step one, two, three and then you get the one correct answer. As we move towards teaching math in an organic way we need to design opportunities for students to be innovate, to explore the world and find their passions as it connects to math. We must support and value the idea that there is often more than one way of doing something, including solving math problems. We must develop experiences and supports that feed their spirits and inspire a love of learning and a comfort in making mistakes. "We can get where we must go only by changing the system itself", states The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 2007. Our current educational system was created for life in a different era. The world that we live in is changing at a rapid pace, from the way that we acquire and use information to the skills we need to be successful in today's workforce and so much more. So, why is it that our educational system has not evolved to support the world as it is today? We have an abundance of quantitative and qualitative data to show that change is necessary now.
As a math lover I always enjoy looking at data. The first chapter of "The Flat World and Education" by Linda Darling-Hammond presents an immense amount of data pointing out the flaws in our school systems; looking at all of the statistics saddened me. Three major issues stood out to me, the unequal allocation of resources, inadequate preparation and support for teachers and a lack of high quality curriculum. We constantly try to put bandaids to help with all of these issues when in fact what is needed is a complete change in the system. I am the mother of an amazing six year old girl. I watch my daughter as she navigates life and I am constantly amazed by her curiosity, persistence and joy as she encounters new experiences and new information. One of the reasons I became a teacher is because I love to learn and I want to inspire that in others and help reignite those qualities that we all had as a child. I am excited to be a part of a school that is looking to challenge what education can look like. As we go into a pilot week that models some of the changes we want to incorporate, I think about how it will address so many issues that plague our schools. Together as a team, teachers will design a project where students must collaborate, create, analyze and think critically about a problem. It will be interesting to see if this design will change students engagement and motivation along with strengthening their skills while they are learning content as it exists in the world around them. "The United States must shift course if it is to survive and prosper as a World nation in the 21st century". The gap between the United States and other countries is getting wider. I hope we as a country can look at the facts, be inspired by our children and use successful school models to create a system that educates children for the world of tomorrow. |
Kendra ParsonsAs a high school math teacher, I am passionate about bringing a joy of learning and of math to my students. Archives
April 2018
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