Tag: self-reflection

Checking-in in the New Year

Skyview Atlanta
The second-best picture I took in Atlanta. Again, there’s a metaphor here. I’m sure of it.

At the beginning of the school year I set goals for myself as a teacher. Right now I’m asking my students to check in on their progress toward their goals in their digital portfolios and the teachers I coach to reevaluate the goals they set at the beginning of the year, so I’m checking in on my progress as well. I also have finally set a coaching goal for myself after attending Pete Hall’s Building Teachers’ Capacity for Success workshop through ASCD.

Improve my behavior management for my “challenging” class

This is hard to admit, but I haven’t done a great job following through with this one. I’ve done many of the things that I said I was going to do, but in the more short term. The problem is, I know exactly (or at least partially) why things I’m trying aren’t working. I’ve been so focused on finding strategies to manage behavior and making those strategies work, that I’m not focused enough on planning engaging lessons to meet my students’ needs. I’m not walking into class with no plan, but I’ve been so focused on anticipating behaviors and what strategies I would use to manage these behaviors, that the content and concepts in the lessons I’ve been planning have been, well, less than stellar. So when my strategies work, the activities I have planned aren’t enough to hold the students’ attention and keep them on that good track. It hurts to admit that I dropped the ball here, but it happens and I can fix it. For the remainder of the year I want to keep implementing the strategies that are working, but refocus my efforts on lesson planning so that my students can be successful.

Better integrate the technology I have available to me into my lessons, including finding more ways to leverage “regular” technology as assistive technology for my students.

Here I’ve done much better. I’ve implemented digital portfolios for my students and I’ve been slowly refining them so they become spring-boards for student self-reflection and learning. Yesterday a student exclaimed as he had realized that our work with SRSD and Close Reading had been just as much about improving his ability to manage and regulate his attention as they had been about his reading and writing skills after going through a variety of digital and paper artifacts showing his work. I also am now able to very easily share student work with a parent who has moved back to Denmark ahead of the rest of the family.

I’ve also curated a number of resources for students on my Schoology pages for my learning support classes, including videos and interactive games (usually created by others), as well as graphic organizers (usually created by me). What’s even better is that some students are seeking out and using these resources. I think my next step here is to add more content that I’ve created (or that my students have created) to these resource pages, using podcasting, screen capture, and other methods.

Finally, the coaching goal: Go into classrooms regularly (1-2 times per week) for either very quick (30-45 seconds) or brief (5-15 minute) visits and follow up on these visits with teachers.

Or actually doing what Pete Hall calls “Rounds” and “Walk Throughs”. This goal sounds simple, but it involves a lot: coordinating schedules, figuring out “look-fors”, etc. But the biggest reason I haven’t done this is that I haven’t felt comfortable. I wasn’t given a clear description of what I would be doing as a coach at the beginning of the year, nor was it explained to teachers, so I spent most of the first semester in meetings with teachers, talking and building relationships. Now that I feel like I have a job description (even if it’s self-created with the help of a workshop and a book) and have built up fairly good relationships with many teachers, it will, I hope, be easier. The short workshop I led on Tuesday afternoon about checking in and reevaluating goals from the beginning of the year will also provide context for my visits.

How are the goals you set for your own teaching at the beginning of the year going? 

Instructional Coach Training: #BTCFS

Atlanta Metro Station
One of the best photos I took in Atlanta. Not sure what it has to do with my post. There’s a metaphor there somewhere. I’m sure of it. CC-BY-NC

At the beginning of the school year I wrote a post about my students’ goal setting as well as my own. When I wrote that post, I only talked about my goals for myself as a teacher, but didn’t discuss the goals I set for myself as an instructional coach. That’s really because at the beginning of the year I wasn’t sure what the standard was for instructional coaches. Where was I going? I really wasn’t sure. I didn’t have a job description to help focus me, and while I have been a literacy coach before, it was in a completely different school environment where that was my only role. In my initial meeting this year with my principal, she suggested that I look around for professional development opportunities about becoming a better instructional coach. Excited to learn more, I immediately started researching and came up with the Building Teachers’ Capacity for Success workshop with Pete Hall through ASCD. I knew that the title sounded extremely familiar, and that’s because I picked up the book at ASCD last year after my principal had first suggested that being an instructional coach might become part of my job.

Reading the book was eye opening, but the workshop with Pete was 1000 times better than reading the book. If you ever get the chance to see him present, I highly recommend it. He’s passionate, energetic, and friendly (he also has good advice about running routes in Atlanta and possibly in the other cities where he presents. Warning though: he did try to convince me to run the stairs in the Georgia Tech stadium. Not happening). I’m still processing everything that I learned over the two days, but I think I have a “Top 5” list of things I learned, all of which led me to the coaching goal I set for myself at the end of the workshop. For things that others learned , check out #BTCFS on Twitter.

5. Find the “Green Stars”

You know the teacher down the hall? The one who seems to have taught the same lesson for the last 20 years? Or the one who seems to have no control of her class? Even when we’re trying to be supportive, sometimes working with these teachers can be frustrating. But there’s good there. And as coaches and administrators we need to see that good and remind ourselves of it. Then we need to use that good–that green star–to spark change and growth. This helps us to have a growth mindset with our teachers just like we have with our students.

4. Self-reflection is the key to teacher growth

If you’ve been reading this blog for any period of time you know I’m a fan of self-reflection. For me, for my students, for educators in general. And I think on some level I understood the idea that in order to develop as educators we need to reflect on our teaching. I was also on board with the idea that teachers need to be taught how to self-reflect. What was new was the idea that we can put the ability of teachers to self-reflect on a continuum, and that where they are in terms of their ability to self-reflect determines how we interact with them and the role we take on as coaches, mentors, and administrators. For example, I would take on a totally different role with a teacher who is able to easily reflect on their instructional practice to improve it (a teacher in the Refinement Stage) than I would a teacher who isn’t really able to see the connection between what they’re doing and student outcomes (a teacher in the Unaware Stage). I’m also wondering how I can use the Continuum of Self-Reflection with my grad students and with their practicum supervisors to help support them in their development toward becoming more self-reflective educators.

3. Building teachers’ capacity is the key to student growth and success

Teachers matter. They matter a lot. There’s tons of research on this. Too often, however, we try to get teachers to improve their practice by using carrots and sticks, rather than actually guiding and supporting them in improving their practice. In order to ensure student success we really need to support our teachers in their professional learning and growth based on where they are on that Continuum of Self-Reflection. And to do that…

2. Instructional coaches and administrators need to work together to support teacher growth
Instructional Coach & Admin work together to support a teacher
A visual representation of how the administrator and the coach work together to support a teacher in the Refinement Stage. CC-BY-NC

Administrators and coaches really need to be partners in helping to teachers to improve their faculty’s level of self-reflection and their skill as educators. If administrators and coaches are on the same page with how they work with teachers and are clear about their individual roles and transparent with the staff about those roles, they can be really effective in fostering professional growth in an environment that is supportive rather than punitive. Again, I’m wondering if I can stretch this model to apply to working with my grad students. Maybe with me as the instructor in the role of the administrator with my practicum supervisors in the role of coach.

1. And not but

Of everything I’ve learned, this may be the smallest thing that makes the biggest deal. While there were a number of “ah-ha” moments during the two day workshop, this one was the biggest. And it’s such a tiny change to make when I interact with teachers (and with students and parents). As educators, we like to use the “start with a compliment” format. Then comes the “but”. However, the word “but” can make people defensive and angry. “But” can make the compliment feel like lip service. “And”, though. “And” says, “You really are doing these things right. Here’s how you can grow.”

I’m really excited to start implementing this framework, and I hope I can get others on board as well. Next week I’ll share my goal for myself as a coach and how I plan to achieve it.

What are your strategies for coaching teachers? How do you foster self-reflection with faculty?

Getting Started with Digital Portfolios

Front page of one of our digital portfolios
The front page of one student’s digital portfolio.

This year I’m piloting digital portfolios with my M2 (grade 6) class. I noticed last year that there wasn’t a lot of communication between the Learning Support program and parents. There aren’t really grades, and there’s the occasional email, but more often than not, no work goes home. Most of the work that parents do see are the results scaffolding and specialized graphic organizers, and other supplements and complements to classroom instruction. Last year, in my first year in the position, with the help of my principal we added more transparency by creating learning plans for students that contained goals for the skills that would be addressed during the school year (I know, for those of you in public schools this is SOP, but it something that seems to be slowly becoming a part of international schools). I thought this was great, but I wanted to do more. Then I got connected to Matt Renwick through Twitter and his blog, and started reading his book Digital Student Portfolios. I decided to create digital portfolios that were primarily designed to show growth, but that could be used to showcase certain pieces of work or activities that students were particularly proud of. I wanted to use digital portfolios as an opportunity to create a dialogue with students and parents about growth, and to continue to build a culture of self-reflection for learning in my classroom.

The first challenge I faced was finding the right platform to use to create the digital portfolios. My school has a pretty strict “no use of 13 and over programs and apps by students under 13” policy, so Evernote, the platform Matt discusses in his book, was out. The school’s Tech Integrator and I discussed  Google Sites, Blogger (both part of our school’s Google Apps for Education subscription) or Weebly. I ended up dismissing Blogger because I wouldn’t be able to house several blogs on the same page, and I knew that teaching students how to effectively use tags would take a while. After making two sample portfolios, one in Weebly and one in Google Sites, I decided that Weebly would work best for my purposes and be easiest for the students to use.  So far, I would recommend this as a platform.

Benefits

  • Weebly is really easy to use. It’s uses a drag and drop system to add pictures, buttons, URLs, and HTML code. I even taught my students how to embed Google Docs in their Weebly blogs (something I had thought would be easier with Google Sites).
  • Not having the easy-embed function from Google Sites led to a mini-lesson on HTML, which the students seemed to enjoy.
  • The school’s educator account provides some measure of privacy and security for students. Their sites are password protected.
  • If students forget passwords, etc they are all managed by our Instructional Technology department.
  • It’s easy for students to personalize and make their own.
  • It’s easy to share with parents and for them to navigate.
  • Creating individual blogs for each goal allows us easily see progress on individual goals, and the most recent activity (that, I hope, represents the students’ current progress toward the goal) is at the top of the page.
  • The blog format allows me, their classroom teachers, their parents, and, if they choose, their peers, to comment on the work that they share and ask questions about it.

Drawbacks

  • Weebly is extremely customizable, which is a good thing. I want students to take ownership of their portfolios I had to get through a few classes of students playing around with the design of their website, which was OK, but often what they thought of as a “good design” made their message difficult to understand. I think the next time I do this, I need to spend a bit more time on the front end integrating instruction on how design can influence the audience’s ability to understand our message, maybe using specific websites (possibly even my own) as examples.
  • Although there is a way for the student and I to be co-owners of a Weebly site, the Tech Integrator and I haven’t been able to make it work yet. This is something that would have been much easier with Google Sites or with Blogger, but I think the ease of use more than makes up for this.
  • The one blog per goal set up makes it more difficult to use tags to see connections between assignments and activities that match up to multiple goals.
  • Next year, I need to do a better job reviewing the difference between personal online communication and professional online communication (particularly editing one’s work before posting it online–see the spelling error above).

Overall, I have been completely blown away by all the things that I could do with a digital portfolio that I wouldn’t have been able to do with a traditional portfolio. I had just assumed that a digital portfolio would be a substitution for a physical portfolio or it would be an augmentation, adding some functional improvement, but not significantly different from the physical version. I am, however, starting to see that digital portfolios are really modifications of traditional portfolios, allowing my students, their parents, and me to do things that weren’t possible with the original paper format. I’m excited to continue our work and I’ll keep you updated as I keep working with the students on building their portfolios.

Have you used digital portfolios? What have been your successes? Learning experiences?

Pausing to Reflect: Self-Reflection on Teaching Self-Reflection

Image by David Whelan via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0
Image by David Whelan via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0

Self-reflection is an important part of growth and learning. I’m trying to ask my students to do more of it this year. I’m asking my M2 (grade 6) students to create digital portfolios (more on them soon..check out Matt Renwick’s book though!) where they track their progress toward goals they’ve set for themselves, as well as the goals that I’ve created for them for the learning plans or IEPs. Within the SRSD writing framework I’m asking students to evaluate their own work, reflect on their progress, and set new goals for themselves. Many of them enjoy these activities, but I have had several students who were resistant. The most interesting response that I got was that it was “tacky” to do self-reflections. I still haven’t figured out what she actually meant. But given that resistance I thought I should practice what I preach and figure out what went wrong.

Clearly something was making this student uncomfortable, even if she was having difficulty articulating it. Did she mean that the task–write a note to your parents that I would share with them at parent-teacher conferences telling them how you thing you’re doing meeting your goals–felt inauthentic and maybe a little weird? I suppose I can’t actually argue with her there. It might not have been able to come up with something a little more authentic. Is “tacky” for this kid like Holden Caufield’s “phony”? Had she just been asked to do the same exercise in all of her other classes and it was just enough? I realized that in addition to all of those possibilities, I hadn’t ever actually made reflection something real–something that I engage in both at work and in my day-to-day life. I didn’t let her know about all the ways reflection happens in the real life of an adult. And, yes, none of them involve a letter to my mom…

  • When I’m teaching I ask myself whether lessons went well and why or why not, including how I interacted with students, and I do some self-reflection in writing on this blog;
  • When I improvise a recipe I reflect on cooking techniques and ingredient choices and I make notes for what I’ll do if I try it again;
  • When I bake bread I take a bite of the finished  loaf and reflect on my technique and the choices I made about rising time and liquid-to-flour ratios;
  • When I finish I run I ask myself if I’m tired and whether I could have pushed myself to run faster or farther;
  • When I finish knitting a sweater I look at how it fits and make notes about how I might change things the next time I knit a sweater so that it will fit even better.

As much as I am philosophically all for letting kids know why what I’m asking them to do is important to their lives–not just their lives as students, but their lives as human beings–sometimes I don’t do a great job of remembering to tell them that these are things that I’m not just telling them that people do, but that I do. And because I’ve learned that this helps me to be successful, I think it’s important to teach my students. Maybe I need to look into ways to making my self-reflection practices more transparent to my students, the same way I talk about what I’m reading or ways that I used math that day.

How do you make skills that seem like “school” things, but are a actually a part of your everyday life as an adult, feel relevant to your students? How do you make self-reflection activities authentic?