EDU 6600 Initial Reflection

In my teaching career professional learning has rarely been organized around a common theme applicable to all teachers in my building. I have taught at two different schools and I have seen two different models, neither of which has been particularly effective, of delivering professional learning. I have experienced an overabundance of professional learning with no common theme, and I have experienced too little professional learning.

At my first school in southern California, the district was compelled by outside forces to provide a wide variety of professional learning, but I never saw an organized effort to make it effective. An agreement with the teachers union required the district to offer paid professional development days before and after school, and these often served as fillers, such as teaching vocabulary, learning a new behavior protocol, or checking for understanding. As the school year progressed, these skills were emphasized less and less, generally in favor of professional learning being forced from the county and the state in response to low student performance. At the same time, professional learning communities were required to assess students, analyze data, make adjustments, and prepare instruction - all with little extra time to do so, and often with demands to incorporate the latest training into our practice. Teachers attended professional learning for the money and had little incentive to change their practice.

At my current school, professional development for the most part has been left to the teachers’ discretion. The district has begun an effort to provide leaders of professional learning communities with training, and some departments have improved their practice as a result, but this has been sporadic among all departments and sections.

Presently, the professional learning communities I am involved with do not have research-based components that would facilitate the development of a plan for incorporating social justice learning in our school, as determined by Hirsh and Hord (2010). An advantage we do have is that questions of social justice are being raised schoolwide, and many teachers are starting to seek knowledge in how to address these questions. Staff and administration have demonstrated a sincere effort to learn more about our students and their particular needs. Most of this work at present happens outside of our professional learning communities, although a recent discussion in my Advanced Placement professional learning community focused on strategies to increase involvement in the AP program by traditionally underserved students. The discussion is in its early stages, but for now, with a group that has no common curriculum, social justice issues are what we do share and what we can address.

Standards-based Assessment: Final Reflection

Teacher Leadership Program Standard No. 11: Utilize formative and summative assessment in a standards-based environment

Background

In my previous work with professional learning communities, I have experienced the stress of formative assessment. The formal PLC model advocated by Rick DuFour includes a component on how teachers will know whether or not their students have learned. When I worked in California, my school district required that formative assessments, the “how,” must include measurable data that could be shared in our teams. The prominent form of this assessment came in multiple choice tests, and during the early years of my career, this is how I viewed formative assessment: it was another test to give students. All of my professional development on formative assessments focused on this attribute, and rarely did I view formative assessment as anything other than a multiple choice quiz.

The “how” component is critical, but the heavy emphasis on multiple choice blinded me to the potential and benefit of formative assessment. Upon starting a new teaching assignment in Washington state, I worked with colleagues and a school district that viewed formative assessment differently. It did not need to be formal, but it still needed to answer how I would know if the students had learned. Colleagues shared tools such as exit slips and questioning, many things that I had done for years but had never viewed as formative assessments. Entering my Standards-Based Assessment class, I had a small collection of tools and a general idea of what they were good for.

Learning and applied practice

Dylan Wiliam’s (2011) book Embedded Formative Assessment has been helpful in the process of learning about the role formative assessments play in my classroom. Wiliam’s definition of formative assessment emphasizes that it happens during learning, and this has had a tremendous impact on my thinking. Stopping instruction to give a test was counterproductive, especially if the results of that test were not analyzed until a later date. By the time my team had gone over the results, the class had moved on to another unit. We knew that was a problem at the time, but we plowed ahead anyway, following a school district mandate. Wiliam’s practical techniques open up the toolbox and allow the assessments to occur naturally and at appropriate times to allow the teacher to influence student learning.

Through the process of writing the assessment into action paper I discovered even more resources. The idea of writing workshops has me excited, as my students can choose the type of feedback and assessment they want through that process. I learned about Kaizena, an app that allows students to record questions and attach them to their papers and allows the teacher to record feedback. These are two of the elements I will incorporate into my practice this year.

Issues encountered

For my present teaching assignment, one dilemma for me will be the lack of a colleague to work directly with. I will be the only AP English Language teacher, so any discussion of how my students are meeting the learning expectations will have to be in the context of vertical or cross-curricular alignment. Fortunately, I have options in this area. By identifying the specific skills students are lacking, I can take those skills to other English teachers and solicit their input. Across the board, English-language arts skills generally are the same at the secondary level, so strategies that work in one class will transfer to another class with different content.

Supported by research

Wiliam’s (2011) book will be critical to my future practice. I appreciate his practical approach to formative assessment and his classroom applications are simply explained and varied in their use for elementary and secondary environments.

Shelby Scoffield’s (2016) article on Edutopia about writing workshops has strongly influenced my approach to giving feedback. This has been a bone of contention for me for years, the ingrained idea that I have to write comments on every paper, but the knowledge that students do not read them. Scoffield’s ideas about organizing writing workshops will help me provide my students feedback they can actually use.

Finally, the ideas about peer feedback I learned from Gielen, Tops, Dochy, Onghena, and Smeets (2010) will help me develop peer review sessions. Their findings showed that students improved when they were given writing prompts to use for peer feedback, such as “I paid attention to,” and “I found it difficult to” (p. 152). I can incorporate these sentence frames into feedback forms that allow me to clearly see how my students are doing.

Overall impact

I didn’t think formative assessment was an area of need for me, but after this course I appreciate the opportunity to grow in this area. I enter the school year with a lot of ideas that I can incorporate into my practice immediately.

References

Gielen, S., Tops, L., Dochy, F., Onghena, P., Smeets, S. (2010). A comparative study of peer and teacher feedback and of various peer feedback forms in a secondary school writing curriculum. British Educational Research Journal, 36:1, 143-162. doi: 10.1080/01411920902894070.

Scoffield, S. (2016). Creating a writers’ workshop in a secondary classroom. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org.

Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded formative assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Accomplished Teaching: Initial Reflection

I want to become a better teacher, but focusing on one particular area of growth has always been challenging for me. I collaborate well, but I often struggle at unit planning. I use technological tools in my classroom, but I don’t interact with my students through those tools. I involve myself in school activities, from announcing football games to serving as a PLC leader, but I don’t communicate with parents often enough. Somewhere in those strengths and weaknesses are opportunities for me to grow in my profession.

In California I worked with a program called BTSA - Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment. The system works like ProTeach, as the means for new teachers to clear their credential. Much of my work was as a mentor teacher; I worked with new teachers, observing them teach and facilitating their own reflection about their teaching practices. It was the best professional development I’d had, the ability to see other teachers teach and to talk to them about the craft, all while getting paid. When I left California and got a job in Washington, I intended to continue that work, if only as an informal process. Little discussions with colleagues, PLC meetings, talks at the lunch table all contribute to my collaborative reflection. Individually, I can do more, however. Like all teachers, I look back at the day’s lesson and wonder what went wrong, but the process has generally been informal and sporadic.

One way to do this would be to take advantage the Marzano TPEP framework my district uses for its evaluations. Coming from California I didn’t pay much attention to the evaluation system. I’ve always seen it as a hoop to jump through, and I’ve been able to get proficient ratings without putting too much effort into the process. Having looked in more detail at the framework I can see the advantage of using the rubrics to evaluate my own teaching. Within my grasp is the ability to move from proficient to distinguished in several areas, and a regular system of reviewing the framework will help me achieve that growth.

I’ve always considered myself a dynamic teacher, an effective classroom manager, and a strong presenter of information. I have a great relationship with my students, one built on mutual respect and treating each other as adults with a purpose. I feel I can motivate them to work hard, but I’d like to be more efficient about doing that. My planning skills suffer because I often fail to look at the big picture of what I’m teaching. This year as I’m developing new units for my AP English Language course I’m learning more about establishing objectives and assessments before moving backward to the nitty gritty of each day’s lesson. This is my challenge - seeing the big picture - and that’s the area I would like to grow in the most.

Professional

My name is Pat Perkins and I'm an English teacher in my 14th year teaching in public high schools in California and Washington state. I've taught regular English to sophomores through seniors and both Advanced Placement English Literature and English Language classes.