Policies, Politics, and Paving the Way for 21st Century Learners

Teacher Councils: Tools for Change

“In order for policies to actually affect classroom practice, you need teachers to develop strategies, try out resources, collaborate, and share their successes. This was done and led by teachers. That’s why the councils were so powerful.” (Christensen and Karp )

Summer Camp for Teachers: Alternative Staff Development

"Instead, the Institute is led by Portland teachers, with the goal of developing a collaborative, ongoing staff development process that relies on local teacher-experts to lead future workshops and in-service. Too often, teachers are subjected to staff development that involves outside experts lecturing…" (Christensen and Karp pg297)

Race, Testing, and the Miner’s Canary

“Unfortunately, our society takes the view that we don’t need to worry about the losers; we just feel sorry for them. We pathologize the canary, as if the canary’s distress is caused by the canary.” (Christensen and Karp pg225)

These three quotes really jumped out at me because of my position at a PLC (Professional Learning Community). Our collaborative teams of teachers meet weekly to talk about new resources, develop strategies, and share our successes and our not-so-successful attempts. Our staff also welcomes ‘expert’ teachers to give PD on topics they are highly trained in. Another thing we do, is we analyze data. By doing so, we can see what areas a student or group of students may struggle in. Also, in doing this we know if a teacher teaches a certain topic in a way that reaches more students. If that is the case, that teacher is given time to go in and observe a lesson and then collaborate on what they saw.

Mr Ivan Ellis

Cannock Chase Heritage Trail

I love the mining example, growing up in a town where mining is/was a major part of history and commerce. Oftentimes with all the talk about testing we forget that society needs critical thinkers and questioners. With more and more people getting their NEWS from posts of Facebook® and tweets on Twitter® we need to be sure we are educating people to think critically about information (or “information”) they are presented with. 

21st Century Learners-

I found an interesting video that I have posted on a prior blog post here: http://nellgardner.blogspot.ca/2013/12/what-60-schools-can-tell-us-about.html

Each week during my collaborative team meeting, we fill out a Google(R) form stating our goals and achievements for the meeting. One of the requirements is to share a lesson you used the past week incorporates 21^st century learning. This gives us time to see what other teachers in our content area are doing to meet this need. We share ideas, websites, and resources and often, all together, come up with an amazing lesson to meet the Essential Learning Outcome. 

Teach for America (TFA)-
As a person who spent over 10 years training as an Educator, I have complex feelings about Teach for America. The rate of persons who enter the field and leave are:

• By their fifth year, 14.8% continue to teach in the same low-income schools to which they were originally assigned.

• More than half (56.4%) leave their initial placements in low-income schools after two years.

This revolving-door effect (Ingersoll, 2004) leaves the very schools that most need stability and continuity perpetually searching for new teachers to replace those who leave. When teachers leave their schools after only a few years, those schools incur substantial costs. Most importantly, students are likely to suffer. Novices typically fill vacancies. As a result, students are taught by a stream of first-year teachers who are, on average, less effective than their more experienced counterparts (Donaldson & Johnson). By requiring only a two-year commitment from corps members who have received only five weeks of formal preparation, TFA undermines efforts to stabilize and improve staffing in the very schools most overwhelmed by teacher turnover and most in need of consistency in the classroom.

Is the best way to reach our high-poverty schools with persons from elite universities? In my experience, the person who is a life-long learner becomes the better teacher. The person who in constantly evaluating themselves and their practices. The person who attempts new and innovative ideas, assesses the data and then decides if the lesson was successful or not. 

The fundamentals of poverty are profound. We can't 'fix' our schools until we have propped up all the other social forms of support. Healthcare is a major issue in education reform. Our students need access to healthcare, family services and support and only then will they be more likely to have success in school.

References:

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/ProdDetails.asp?ID=0942961293

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/10/04/kappan_donaldson.html

Christensen, Linda, and Stan Karp. ReThinking Our Classrooms. Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools, 2003. Print.

What 60 Schools Can Tell Us About Teaching 21st Century Skills: Grant Li...

This video is all about the odyssey of author and educational consultant Grant Lichtman, who had a unique idea. His notion was to hop in his Prius and set of across the nation to find out how schools are bringing 21st century skills through to their students. 21 states, over 60 schools, and more than 500 educator interviews later, this is what he discovered

• Preparing our students for their future, not our past
• Change is uncomfortable

What are you doing to incorporate 21st century learners in your classroom?

Lichtman states that he would visit a school and they would be struggling with a question. He would visit another school down the road and find they had solved that question but had another question. Do you feel that if educators and administrators had more time to collaborate we might not spend so much time re-inventing the wheel? 

What formative assessments are you using to drive your teaching? 

Solutions for Reading Comprehension

Solutions for Reading Comprehension for Striving Readers


http://prezi.com/fhcqqeaasjhp/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Developing Content Area Literacy

Developing Literacy in Content Area Classrooms Presentation by Nell Gardner

http://prezi.com/wqtq4lu2jxzr/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Assessment Module 2

What is Bias?

Bias is an inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair. Influence and experience can affect a person’s bias. As a parent, I can attest to it only takes a single event to occur for a person to develop a strong opinion. If a person or persons are taught to believe something is fact when it is actually opinion, that they have no experience in, they tend to have a false sense of reality.

Picture Mechanics.com

How do stereotypes affect students?

 Research has given us a better understanding of who is most vulnerable to stereotype threat.  The data has shown that stereotype threat can harm the academic performance of any individual for whom the situation invokes a stereotype-based expectation of poor performance.

How can we change?

Encouraging individuals to think of themselves in ways that reduce the salience of a threatened identity can also attenuate stereotype threat effects. Doing so involves emphasizing the importance of effort and motivation in performance and de-emphasizing inherent "talent" or "genius." A general means for protecting the self from perceived threats and the consequences of failure is to allow people to affirm their self-worth. This can be done by encouraging people to think about their characteristics, skills, values, or roles that they value or view as important.  Constructive feedback appears most effective when it communicates high standards for performance but also assurances that the student is capable of meeting those high standards. 

In situations involving teaching and mentoring, the nature of the feedback provided regarding performance has been shown to affect perceived bias, student motivation, and domain identification. Providing role models is another effective way to reduce stereotypes/bias.

Ideas attributed to http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org

Why is considering bias important to improve literacy teaching and learning?

Effective literacy instruction builds upon the cultural and linguistic backgrounds, ways of making meaning, and prior knowledge that all children bring to the classroom. Such instruction also acknowledges the important role of culture in language and literacy learning. Understanding and respecting the array of different cultures and languages represented in their classrooms helps educators adopt strategies for teaching literacy that will encourage and support student achievement.

Ideas attributed to http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/content/cntareas/reading/li400.htm

Media literacy skills can help:

• Understand how media messages create meaning

• Identify who created a particular media message

• Recognize what the media maker wants us to believe or do

• Name the "tools of persuasion" used

• Recognize bias, spin, misinformation and lies

• Discover the part of the story that's not being told

• Evaluate media messages based on our own experiences, beliefs and values

• Create and distribute our own media messages

• Become advocates for change in our media system

Media literacy education helps to develop critical thinking and active participation in our media culture. The goal is to give youth greater freedom by empowering them to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media.

Ways to improve

Our school’s mission statement states we expect all students to perform at high levels of academic performance. By including the “all” we are not letting any one student or group of students off the hook.

Currently, our school has created a school/parent partnership initiative. We will model and encourage two-way communication between school personnel and parents or caregivers. Health service providers, social program coordinators and educators with vast experience will present ideas, advice, and take questions.

As a Literacy Committee Member, I have chosen to research books from various multicultural backgrounds, as well as books that promote non-gender bias material. With the money allotted for new home reading and classroom library books, I would like to build a literacy environment rich in diverse ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Media literacy education helps to develop critical thinking and active participation in our media culture. The goal is to give youth greater freedom by empowering them to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media. I would like to go over our Essential Learning Outcomes (ELO) to ensure we are including this important skill in our ELO’s in our Language Arts, Social and Science classrooms. 

Assessment Module 1

To teach is not only to present them with the information so that they may learn. To teach is to instill in them a passion for greater knowledge. My Principal began our “Meet the Teacher Night” with this address to parents. “When we were growing up, they told us knowledge is power. But that is no longer true. If you have Google®, you have knowledge. What our school focuses on is critical thinking, taking that knowledge and applying it so we can be 21^st century learners in compete in a global economy.”

Critical Teaching is searching for that higher order thinking. To ask questions of material presented to us. Critical Teaching is inquiry based teaching. I found an interesting article relating to the Common Core Standards and critical teaching. The article states, “Just as students are finding themselves challenged by higher expectations, as teachers, we are being challenged to learn new teaching strategies and to prepare new resources for our students” (Augustus & Fox 2013).

Here is the article if you are so inclined: http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20131008/OPINION07/310080086/Making-Common-Core-common-standard?nclick_check=1

At my current school, we are a Professional Learning Community. We recognize that we are not just preparing students to excel in High School, we are empowering participants of a Global Community, to become 21^st Century Learners. What that means essentially, is that teachers teach in their ‘area of expertise’ (content area) beginning in grade 1. The other teachers who teach in your content area and grade level are your collaboration partners whom you meet with weekly to answer our four questions* for the upcoming Essential Learning Outcomes (ELO). Because of this process, I feel we have ample opportunity to teach critically and are currently striving to do exactly that. Our thinking is that critical teaching aims to create levels of academic performance that is significantly greater than those just motivated by test scores. Our school uses formative and summative assessments and there is accountability on everyone’s part. Because we aren't so focused on teaching towards the test, but promoting the learning of ALL children in our school, we are seeing great results.

*What do we want students to learn?

*What do we do when students don’t know it?

*What do we do when students do?

*How do we know students know it?

An article explaining PLC's and how the focus shifts from the individual to the group (Sackney &
Mitchell, 2001). Teacher isolation is lessened as educators share collective knowledge, methods and  successes to foster the growth of a successful learning community can be found
here http://education.alberta.ca/apps/aisi/literature/pdfs/FINAL_Professional_Learning_Communities.pdf

“Teachers can create classrooms that are places of hope, where students and teachers gain glimpses of the kind of society we could live in, and where students learn the academic and critical skills needed to make it a reality.” (Christensen & Karp, 2003) Schools.

The effort to rethink our classrooms must be both visionary and practical (Christensen & Karp, 2003). They need to be visionary because we need to go far beyond the prepackaged formulas and agendas that are imposed on schools. And, practical, because the work of reshaping educational practice requires effort from teachers, students, parents and communities.

My parents encouraged me to be an activist at a very young age. At the age of 11 I was knocking on doors for signatures for a petition to turn an unused area of land into a neighborhood park. After obtaining the signatures with a group of other parents and their children, I was asked to present our signatures and our pitch to the local government. I presented, along with some adults, and a few months later I reaped my reward when we broke ground on what is now called Giant’s Foot Park. In an effort to expose my students to experience something like I did, I have created a mini-unit lesson I plan to complete this month. Our ELO for Language Arts this month involves letter writing. My team has many different activities in which the students write letters, but I have decided to come up with something that may inspire activism. The stage will be set with my Principal will send us a video message saying he’s cancelling recess forever. My students will have to agree as a class that they don’t want this to happen, collect signatures and write him a letter explaining why they’d like to continue to have recess. It’s a small step, but my part-time status only allow for so much.

The recent government shutdown in the United States is a perfect time to create an explicit discussion and to provoke students to develop their democratic capacities: to question, to challenge, to make real decisions and to solve problems collectively. The Leadership Teacher and I were discussing his teaching of critical teaching and the shutdown. We came up with an idea use a quote from President Obama as a discussion point and going from there. “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I, therefore, intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt.” President Barack Obama.

My current school is considered to be in a higher socio-economic status area. Our students are from all over the world, many highly educated families coming because of good job opportunities. Because of the diversity in our school, we send out a questionnaire on each child at the beginning of the year. This gives us a snapshot into the families of our students. Throughout the year, different questions go home as ‘talking points’ for the family. The answers the students come back with give us opportunities to share, discuss and learn about ourselves and each other.

Christensen, L., & Karp, S. (2003). Rethinking our classrooms. In Rethinking School Reform Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools.