Reflection on Teacher Leadership Standard 9: Curriculum

Curriculum Design was one of my favorite classes in the Seattle Pacific teacher leadership program, particularly because most of the assignments were specifically focused on the curriculum of my AP English Language & Composition course. I took the class over the summer, so the work I did was immediately applicable to the upcoming school year. Each step in the process helped me improve and unify a curriculum that I had compiled from multiple sources over the years.

Two assignments in particular helped me analyze and improve my curriculum. The first was the curriculum assessment types assignment. Through this task I chose eight assessments in a single unit and analyzed the assessment type and purpose, the standard being assessed, and the degree of alignment. While half of my assessments were considered strong, three were considered moderate and one weak. The weak assessment, a brainstormed list of memories being used to develop a personal memoir, was eventually modified to better reflect the standard.

The second assignment was the final curriculum analysis. I analyzed different aspects of my AP English curriculum, including organizational centers, standards alignment, assessment, instruction, and curricular resources. My overall analysis focused on organizing centers, which Lalor (2017) identifies as a “central idea upon which a unit of study is built” (p. 10). I had some of the pieces, but I had done little to put them together into a coherent piece. Before school began, I spent time doing that work, creating a document I shared with my students and parents and which outlined my plan for the school year. My plan outlined in the curriculum analysis is incomplete; I still need to perform more curriculum assessment analysis on my various units, and better alignment with the College Board standards for the course is necessary. I also need to renew my emphasis on improving instruction. I had identified this as a critical weakness of my curriculum, and had focused on the need for a lesson-analysis chart (Lalor, 2017, p. 132) that would allow students to “understand the learning intentions behind the activities they undertake in the classroom” (Wiliam, 2011, p. 55).

References

Lalor, A.D.M. (2017). Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum: How to Design, Revise, or Adopt Curriculum Aligned to Student Success. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded Formative Assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Teaching with Technology - reflecting on my triggering question (Module 4)

You’ve found a great website, full of great material on a topic you love to teach your students. Here’s a great opportunity for you to send your students out onto the internet to do some research, because you know they’re going to love this website as much as you do. I mean, it’s got so much good stuff! You book the computer lab, whip out a lesson plan and a set of instructions, and set them to work. At some point, however, the problems show up. They get done too early and start to explore the other areas of the internet you’d rather they not. In the process of doing that fabulous PowerPoint presentation, they pull images off the web with stock photo embedded across the front. What you thought was great information is insufficient, so they go out and get their own research, which leaves much to be desired. That interactive commenting you expected them to do? They’re copying and pasting memes and calling each other every name in the book. What you thought would be a great lesson devolved into a typical internet experience, and now you never want them to use a computer again.

“Like a village, the K-12 professional community must develop common ground that advocates the use of technology in the classroom while preparing the student to make sound choices both for themselves and for others in the digital world” (Hollandsworth, Dowdy, and Donovan, 2011). Sound choices, indeed, and when my students reach me in the 10th and 11th grades and haven’t been instructed in how to make these choices, it makes my job that much tougher. As with everyone before me, I have a packed curriculum and little time to add units on digital citizenship. Still, what I want my students to do requires them to know and use these skills, and rather than wait on others to do the job, it falls upon me to prepare them for digital tasks. Hence my triggering question for Module 4: How can I develop and implement responsible and appropriate guidelines for my students' online class activities, including research, collaboration, and writing?

Hollandsworth, Dowdy, and Donovan state that the opportunities to be proactive in teaching digital practices include “effective digital citizenship curriculum, peer mentor programs, effective role models, educational faculty/staff awareness, enhanced awareness of the risks, and most importantly - a proactive versus reactive approach” (2011). Within my sphere of influence on that list is being an effective role model and faculty awareness, as well as a proactive approach. As an effective role model, for example, I’m doing more to cite my sources when I put together online presentations. No longer do I take a picture from a Google search and paste it into my PowerPoint; now I look at the usage rights of that picture and make sure I have permission to use it in my presentation. I cite my source, and I have established procedures (or will soon) for my students to do likewise. This course has raised my awareness of these issues, to the point that as I developed a blogging assignment for my students, I researched guidelines for having students make comments so they would be able to do so within set parameters, rather than randomly and according to whatever non-school-appropriate social guidelines they have developed for themselves.

My awareness, however, is not enough. Lindsay and Davis write, “Digital citizenship is … about transforming yourself into a professional who can effectively research technology trends, monitor the uses of technology in your school or district, avoid the fear factor that can easily paralyze you, and empower student-centered learning to create vibrant, exciting learning projects” (2010). In other words, I have to stay on top of things. As new technologies emerge, it’s up to me to understand them and understand how my students interact with them. The guidelines I develop this year may change as the technology my students use changes, and if I cannot adapt to those changes, then my students will fall behind ability to safely manage their new digital frontier.

Lindsay and Davis also point out that “testing the waters of digital citizenship can be turbulent” (2010). I’ve embarked on my student blogging experiment as just that - an experiment. I was upfront with the students about how I wasn’t sure how this would work, but we went ahead with it anyway. I’m learning as we go, adapting to the problems they’re encountering and presenting, and making changes to fill the students’ needs. I’ve already learned, for example, that my students write a lot and that I need to factor in the time necessary to provide feedback. My adaptation there is to have students form groups and provide the feedback within the group themselves. This way they’re responsible for the improvement of their fellow writers, but they also get valuable feedback for their own writing. We’ll see how they do with this part of the assignment, and whether it works or not, I’ll continue to adapt the lesson to make it work better.

The common thread in my research is the need to be proactive. Ribble and Miller write, “Educational leaders have a responsibility as protectors of students, and as such can become part of the problem, if they do not take proactive steps to begin finding solutions to cyberbullying and other technological issues” (2013). Whatever guidelines I develop, I cannot wait until they are needed. I have to develop them now, and I have to be willing to adapt them to the needs of my students. I shouldn’t wait until next year, but I should start implementing them immediately so that I’ll have a head start on what I use for next year. It won’t be easy, but my students will benefit tremendously and be that much more prepared when they leave high school for the real world.

References:

Hollandsworth, R., Dowdy, L., & Donovan, J. (2011). Digital citizenship in K-12: it takes a village. TechTrends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning, 55:4, 37-47. doi: 10.1007/s11528-011-0510-z

Lindsay, J., & Davis, V. (2010). Navigate the digital rapids. Learning & Leading with Technology, 37:6, 12-15. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=EJ886385

Ribble, M., & Miller, T. N. (2013). Educational leadership in an online world: connecting students to technology responsibly, safely, and ethically. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 17:1, 137-145. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=EJ1011379

Teaching with Technology - Reflecting on my triggering question (Module 3)

In my exploration of ISTE Standard 3 these past two weeks I’ve discovered much about how I use technology and how I can better use technology to help my students. Standard 3 asks teachers to “exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society” (ISTE, 2008). I’ve always been excited about using technology in my classroom, from being one of the first at my school in California to use a document camera, to being one of the first at that school to use Remind101, a text messaging application that later dropped the “101” from their name. The fun of getting to use these tools helped me integrate them into my classroom, even if somewhat awkwardly at times.

One of the biggest challenges I have with technology, however, is matching the desire to use all of the technology with the need to have focus in how I use technology. My triggering question for Module 3 was How can I best share knowledge of educational technologies, such as Google Apps and blogs, with my students? Upon reflection, I want to add “colleagues, administrators, and parents” to the end of that question. My research initially took me to an article titled “Supporting 21st Century Learning Through Google Apps,” by Roger Nevin, a teacher librarian in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Nevin writes about some of the benefits of using Google Apps, including the ability to access information wherever you have internet access and collaboration features (Nevin, 2009). Nevin’s article provides a framework for supporting the use of Google Apps in the classroom, and I realize that the best way to share the information is to implement it in my classroom. Previous research had already sold me on Google Apps, and I’ve started to move in that direction, although I’m a long way from full implementation with my students.

By luck, I discovered another article through reddit, an online collection of links to images and information, often of dubious reputation. While browsing the ELATeachers subreddit I came across a blog post titled “Streamlining the Student-Blogging Process.” Shay writes about how he uses Kidblog to have students post their work, and how he requires them to revise their writing until they have A work before they can post it (Shay, 2016). The timeliness was uncanny as I have already planned to have my students set up blogs this week using Blogger, Google’s blogging tool that we already use for the SPU TLP program. Shay’s blog led me to Kidblog, and the privacy tools available through that program are more in line with what my district will likely require. Namely, the ability to control access to the blogs and to set up individual classes will help me manage students’ online behavior, a potential problem with high schoolers that could derail the entire project if it gets out of control. Shay’s comments helped raise my awareness of issues I hadn’t even thought of. Whether he intended to or not, he was modeling Standard 3 by sharing his knowledge with his colleagues.

The Vialogue for this module also helped tremendously. Before the video was even finished I was already using Diigo, an online resource management tool. This may be the first tool I use to share information with my colleagues, although my colleagues’ familiarity with Google Docs may work out better. Either way, I know I have tools at my disposal, and it’s up to me to start using them.

I’m excited about using all of the tools. And I’m losing my anxiety about it not working. I told my students last week that the blogging would be an experiment. If it works, great; if not, we’ll make it work better next time.

Works cited

ISTE Standards: Teachers. (2008). International Society for Technology in Education. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-T_PDF.pdf

Nevin, R. (2009). Supporting 21st century learning through Google apps. Teacher Librarian, 37, no. 2, 35-38. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.spu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=eric&AN=EJ869558&site=ehost-live

Shay, J. (2016, November 4). Streamlining the student-blogging process [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://mr-shay.blogspot.com/2016/11/streamlining-student-blogging-process.html

Wicks, D. (2016). EDTC 6433 Fall 2016 Module 3 hangout recording [Vialogue; video recording]. Retrieved from https://vialogues.com/vialogues/play/32833/?ak=e9e0fd1e8991d29280fb95c548c32345

Teaching with Technology - Reflecting on my triggering question (Module 2)

How can I effectively use technology such as computers, tablets, and even cell phones as a formative and summative assessment tool to evaluate students’ ELA skills, including comprehension of reading texts and specific writing abilities?

Getting feedback from and to my students has always been a challenge as an English teacher. When I teach students to write, I have to have them write, and assessing writing takes time. When I can work with a student one-on-one I can immediately see a student’s strengths and challenges, and I can provide feedback to that student that they can use to improve their writing. I have 136 students, however, and I can't give them all individual attention. For the last module I saw the effectiveness of using online collaboration tools as a means of giving students feedback. For this module I looked into the use of blogs and their potential for formative assessment. I believe this ties directly into ISTE Standard 2, which is Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessment.

Formative assessment during the process of writing a paper is limited as I run around the room, going from student asking question to student sitting there looking at her paper. The final paper takes me up to three weeks to grade, so any feedback is outdated and ineffective. A blog, however, would allow students to publish their work online and give me the opportunity to provide them some feedback that they could use to revise their work. Stover, Yearta, and Harris (2016) identify assessing reading comprehension as one of three major benefits of this kind of online interaction. In their case study, their teacher used a rubric with the class that guided her feedback to the students (p. 378). A focused rubric would allow me to concentrate my feedback on one particular skill, rather than grading holistically and overwhelming the student with information.

Another benefit the authors found was the teacher’s ability to differentiate instruction (p. 379). The teacher was able to provide “unique responses to scaffold and guide instruction within blog posts” (p. 379). The advantage here seems obvious. Any individual feedback is tailored to the student. Even with a focused rubric, I can give a student direction on his writing that ties to the skills I'm teaching.

I’m not the only one who can give feedback on a blog. Students now write papers for an audience of one - me. With a blog, their audience can grow. I can assign students to read classmates’ blogs and provide feedback based on the rubric. The idea of having an audience is an advantage noted in Matt Richtel’s New York Times article (2012). Richtel cites research that shows students “feel more impassioned by the new literacy. They love writing for an audience, engaging with it” (Richtel, 2012). As teachers, our job is to engage our students, and if they're engaged with blogging, then why not do it?

My students live in the digital age, and I believe the appropriate use of blogs in their English class would help keep them engaged and see the value of their writing. At the same time, I have the ability to better my use of assessment and shape it to their needs, helping them develop into stronger and more effective writers.

References

Richtel, M. (2012, Jan. 20). Blogs vs. term papers. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com

Stover, K., Yearta, L., & Harris, C. (2016). Formative assessment in the digital age: blogging with third graders. The Reading Teacher. 69:4, 377-381. doi:10.1002/trtr.1420

Teaching With Technology - Reflection on my triggering question (Module 1)

How can I use Google Docs to provide more timely feedback to my students?

I fell in love with Google Docs last year when I collaborated with a colleague for the AP English Language course we both taught. I sensed early on the possibilities of using online collaboration in teaching, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around the specifics, so this made sense as a triggering question. The question of providing feedback on writing has always vexed me, in part because of the difficulty of reading a full paper for a full class (or multiple classes) of students in a short enough amount of time to make a difference. For example, our school gives English teachers three weeks to finish grading essays and return grades to students. Any feedback is meaningless after that time; why do I even bother writing comments? Yet I need those full three weeks when 120 students turn in two- to three-page papers.

My ultimate goal for using Google Docs is to facilitate student learning, a critical component of ISTE Standard 1. I also feel that when students are given an opportunity to use old tools (word processing) in new ways (online and collaborative) that it will inspire creativity, which is the other key component of Standard 1. My research took me to an article by Denton (2012) in which he outlined several strategies discovered through his research for integrating cloud computing into the classroom. All of these strategies relied on the principles of constructivism and cooperative learning. The idea behind constructivism is that students learn based on their experiences, while cooperative learning involves interaction with other learners (Denton, 2012).

Two of Denton’s strategies that stood out for me were on student-constructed presentations and assisted writing. The idea behind student-constructed presentations is that multiple students would edit the same presentation through Google Slides, with each student being assigned a specific slide (p. 37). Students would receive guidance for content, then demonstrate their understanding of the subject matter by completing the assignment. My students recently completed an assignment that would have been perfect for this model. I had students create posters for the classroom on different rhetorical strategies writers use, with each poster containing the strategy, a definition, its function, and an example. This would have been ideal for Google Slides, as it would have allowed students access to the entire product as it was being produced, and give them a final product they could access outside of the classroom as a study guide. As it is, the posters look nice on my wall, but students can’t take them home.

On assisted writing, Denton (2012) encourages the use of Google Docs, which allows for collaboration necessary for cooperative learning. Students could share documents with other students and the instructor, eliminating the need to exchange papers and allowing all to see changes made over time (p. 38). If I had students use this model, then the feedback I gave them could be used immediately, not three weeks later. I would be grading formative drafts, not summative assignments, and my students would have a strong reason to read my comments, as they could be used in preparing a final draft for submission. My summative grading would then concentrate on the final changes, not the entire content of the paper.

This latter use, assisted writing, makes the most sense for my classroom, but it does raise a few questions, namely in the execution. Not all of my students have Google accounts; can I require them to get one? What about the few students who don’t have internet access at home? I can encourage them to use computers at school, but is that an equitable solution? My colleagues have already written about the need for training in digital citizenship; what will this entail for my students? How much instruction will I need to provide to establish the framework for this to be effective? I know the initial process won’t be easy, but how can I sustain this model once I begin? These questions don’t discourage me at all; rather, I’m excited about the prospect of using technology in this new way. Whatever challenges I face in implementing this model, I can see how effective it will be for both me and my students.

References

Denton, D.W. (2012). Enhancing instruction through constructivism, cooperative learning, and cloud computing. Tech Trends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning, 56(4), 34-41. doi:10.1007/s11528-012-0585-1

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.