Tuesday July 3, 2007

So today was the last day and I have to say that my small group was awesome. You can see them in the above picture. They were truly awesome and they are awesome people.

The top row from left is: me, Josh, Melindah (sp?), Stephanie, Ryan, John Aleksak
The bottom row from left is: Daniel, Carol, Tom, Denise, Don, Julia, Brian

They were from upstate New York, the Bronx, San Diego, New Orleans, and San Francisco, in no particular order. Just to protect their privacy, their last names and schools have not been listed.

Also, on the last day we had a session with Ted and Nancy Sizer, who are very prominent leaders in progressive education. So I learned from them also. There's a picture above of me asking them questions.

So here are things that I will take away from the seminar:

-I need to set up individual learning plans for many of my students who may take a longer road to college.
-Help instill the belief that each student should have their own individual tracking
-Respect each student's journey
-Understand that the achievement vs. equity balance isn't necessarily a battle but something we need to balance as a school
-We need a more precise description of PBL.
-Assess the effect of PBL.
-I need to be a part of team leadership and help the leadership team more proactively
-I need to see what the gap between my vision and practice is and work on the gap.
-I need to work on strategies that will help me reach lower-skilled students.
-I need to help install protocols that are valuable for our school.

Monday July 2, 2007

Okay, so the last two days of our scheduled sessions had mostly to do with our problem statements. And they told us to think about our problem statements through the course of the seminar. The thing is, most of the time I felt like I was absorbing the various insights of experts that came to speak to us about educational reform. But after a little thought the problem statement I came to the table with was:

1) What strategies (as a teacher) do I use to reach lower-level students?

2) How do you (as a teacher) help install protocols to pass on the school's vision?

The areas that directly affected my own teaching were the following:
-Leadership Skills
-Graduation Portfolio
-Internships
-Graduation

As one of the few teachers at this seminar, this problem statement did not relate to most of the people, as they were superintendents, principals, vice-principals, or other administrative people.

So I felt that I couldn't relate my problem statement most of the others at the seminar, but at the same time, the other people's problem statements gave me much insight to what it was like to be on the administrative side of schools and they were vastly different. As I heard more and more people, I felt that the one common thing was that the educational institutions we all worked in isolated people into the "admin-side" or "teaching-side".

We didn't come to solutions on how to make people see each others' sides, but it is something that needs to be discussed within education. Also, I feel that teachers need to be more aware of what happens in a principal's day-to-day routine and vice-versa.

I can go into all the various things that teachers and administration people need to see about each other, but it would be a long list and I being a little lazy about it. But it's something that needs to happen so that teachers understand how much not doing grades on time affect a principal's week. At the same time, the principal may need to understand that a teacher will not be absolutely engaged in a professional development day when he or she had to deal with a student who was either a disciplinary problem or a student who is having academic issues.

Sunday July 1, 2007

Today's session had one of the most powerful effects on myself as a person versus an educator. The session started off with Bob Kegan who concentrated the session on transforming our thinking so that we were more open to change. The picture you see above is the metaphor he made about learning. He said that there's a type of learning that is to only inform your mind, but there's the other type that makes learning transformative. So the idea of his session was not to fill our minds with more information, but to expand our minds so that there was the "possibility of the growth of capacity".

The session that we took part in is too long to explain here, but it was an interactive, brainstorm session about our problems as professionals and what to do to help combat our problems. He asked questions like, "what would happen if you actually tried to change your outlook? Would it be as bad as you thought? Or would be better? Or worse? Etc."

At the end of the session, he told a great Russian folk tale that I have to let everyone else know:

There was an old wood chopper going out to chop wood on a chilly, snowy morning. As he goes through the forest looking for the perfect tree to chop, he finds a bird who is cold and freezing. His conscience getting the best of him, he feels the need to pick up the bird and put it inside his coat. So as he keeps trudging along the forest, he finds a tree to chop, but realizes that he would have to put the bird back into the snow in order to chop the tree. So he has a dilemma. Again, his conscience gets the best of him and he now starts looking for a warm place to put the bird. As he looks into the horizon, he sees a herd of cows under the rising sun. So he walks towards the cows and finds a big, warm, steaming piece of cow pie. So he places the bird in it and goes off to chop wood. The bird is so thrilled, that it begins to sing. As the bird sings, a wolf comes by and eats it.

That was the end of the folk tale, but there are three morals to learn:

1) When you are knee-deep in "stuff," it doesn't mean the stuff is your enemy.

2) Someone who plucks you out of the "stuff" isn't necessarily your friend.

3) If you're knee-deep in stuff, don't sing so loudly.

I'll leave it at that.

Saturday June 30, 2007

Today's session started off with Richard Elmore once again and I went into it thinking I wouldn't get a lot out of it, but he connected to much more today with a graph he made which stipulates that as a school garners more technical knowledge more cultural change will occur within the school. I took a picture of it above with Apple's Photobooth, so it is a mirror image of what I had on paper.

Ronald Ferguson was the next seesion and he asked "how do we reach lower-performing students without having philosophical changes?" This is something that did connect to me deeply as it is something that I've had to go through as a teacher in order to be a better teacher for my students. One example is not being so caught up in getting through every little bit of content standard and starting with the student instead. If I can't get a kid to even see that I care, why the hell would he or she listen to me about anything? Is it really more important to force them to learn some boring facts versus getting to know the student as a person?

Ferguson brought up some values that were most important according to his research within a classroom. They were the following: trust, cooperation, embracing a mastery of goals, diligent work, and achieving satisfaction.

Lastly, Ferguson said, that students will not care what we as educators know until: the student knows the teacher cares, and the student knows the teacher's motives.

Some little nuggets to draw changes from.

Friday June 29, 2007

Today we started off wit Liz City who advocated for us educators to use data in order to discern how to improve education in our schools. I spoke to another participant during this session about how her school used data to seek our specific students to be enrolled within a special program where the students who were previously unsuccessful, moved towards getting credit towards graduation. The model they set up was to have two teachers, where one was a content area teacher and the other was a special education teacher.

What the participant cited was that this model forced teachers to differentiate their instruction and meet these higher needs students at their level. She stated that the program was effective in their purpose and that they used the data they had within schools (i.e. attendance, test scores, etc.) to choose students who would benefit from this program.

Other outcomes were that teachers had to sit down with IEPs and really understand what each student's needs were. This got me thinking about how my school could try to create a program such as this in order to better serve our students with speical needs.

After having a conversation this particular participant, Liz City outlined some tips on how to use data to improve schools. The few things that struck me where that if educators have seen successes in the use of data, there shouldn't necessarily be a search for other methods to use data for the sake of using data. Also, she stated that it's important to use protocals when using data about specific teachers. This got me thinking about how my school along with the other Envision Schools use protocals in order to better instruction and it made me feel that my school and my organization were on the right track.

After this session, we had a very lengthy session with Richard Elmore, who I feel like I did not learn too much from. He cited excellent research, but throughout his session, we were never able to delve into discussion about any of the problems within schools cited by volunteering participants. When someone had a question or mentioned a problem, I feel that Richard just cited his own experience and prevented possible fruitful discussions about those specific school dilemmas mentioned (also, there were way too many anectdotes).

The final session by Jim Nehring was one where I learned a great deal. The "conspirators" he mentioned I felt were things that all people in education could relate to. The great thing that he did wasn't just creating this term, but he used historical evidence to back his claims in a very concrete and efficient manner. He spoke of six tendancies that education has held through the course of two centuries in America. The ones that really stood out for me were that within education existed a "fear factor" where people within education would implement or react based on fears. Also, he cited that education through the course of history favored groups to the detriment of other, non-favored groups. I really enjoyed how efficiently and effectively he cited these problems which at first glance, educators don't discuss at length, but once these issues are pointed out, are discussed at length about. These tendancies are important to recognize and deal with so that all of us educators could enact a systemic change within an extremely flawed system.

Thursday June 28, 2007

Today we started off with a question asking, "what is the role of high school?" in our society? The answers I came up with was that it needs to be a safe place, it needs to prepare students for their next step, be it college or another endeavor, and lastly, high school should be a stepping stone for kids into another part of their life where more responsibility will be harnessed by them.

From there, we were asked to think of teaching and the purpose of school in the way a person would think about the purpose of a business. So in that line of thinking, Kay, the director of Harvard's Graduate School of Education asked us to think about three questions:
-What is your business (as an educator)?
-Who is your customer?
-What does your customer value?

During the second part of today's session, Tom Payzant asked us to think about the question of, "what should a high school diploma certify?" His answer was that it should deem that a student is ready for "post-secondary education without remediation." In order to supplement his example, he added that in the 1940s, a person could have an 8th grade education and go work at the docks in Quincy and buy a home and provide enough for the family so that he could provide his children with a better life and opportunities. But nowadays, that wasn't the case. There is no job that doesn't require a high school diploma, in which someone would be able to buy a house and provide a better life for his familly.

All of these items got me thinking about what are we doing as educators to help students make a transition to work or higher education? What programs are we implementing for high-risk students?

Problem Statement?

When I signed up for the "Redesigning America's Schools" at Harvard, through Fund for Teachers, I had no idea all of the reflective thinking that would go into preparing for it. When the seminar people asked me to send them my problem statement, I was perplexed at what my problem was at school. I first thought it would just be about me going to the seminar and passively learning about what other "experts" have to say. But coming up with the problem required some conversation with one of the directors at my school about what my challenges were at school.

This required some thought into what I needed as a teacher to sustain myself as a professional. This was a tough problem for me because I had to assess myself. I had a difficult time doing this because I feel like part of teaching a school year has so much to do with following through and just making it to the end. But as I discussed more with my director, I felt that the biggest thing to pop up for me was sustainability. How do I sustain myself as a teacher. I didn't feel that sustainability was an appropriate problem to pose at the seminar, but it kept popping up in my head. How do I sustain myself as a teacher? If we as a school want to maintain a specific standard in our school, how do we sustain a level of consistent assessment?

The "how do I sustain..." kept popping up in my head. Especially, because next year will be my official 5 year mark as a teacher and statistics show that half the teachers quit by the 5 year mark. This is something I hope to answer by the end of the seminar in order to find out how teachers who've taught longer than I have do it.