Standard 9 Reflection: Evaluate and Use Effective Curriculum Design

Standard 9 Reflection:evaluate and use effective curriculum design

Background

Before starting my masters in Teacher Leadership,  I had a basic knowledge of how to evaluate effective curriculum design since I was part of the team that recommended the adoption our social studies current curriculum from McGraw-Hill entitled Discovering our Past:  A History of the World which I used over the last two years. We recommended it for adoption by our school district after looking at three curriculums that had been vetted by OPSI.  This curriculum was chosen because it was well organized, aligned with the Common Core Standards, and covered a wide variety of ancient civilizations. The curriculum also has online resources to use for differentia- tion, but they are difficult and time consuming for teachers to use.  As a result, we have need to use additional resources to supplement this curriculum in order to meet our student’s needs.

I also had a basic knowledge of how to use effective curriculum design to create lesson plans and framework as I also helped create the initial framework and pacing guide for this curriculum which included looking at the Common Core Standards and then coming up with learning targets, success criteria as well as formative and summative assessments.  Additionally, over last few years in our school district we have been focusing on learning good instructional practices. We started off with learning how to write good learning targets. Then we moved on to including success criteria in our instructional practices. Our most recent work has been on formative assessment and differentiation. Besides having administrators look for these things in our lessons as they visit our classrooms, we submit a lesson plan at the end of the year which is scored by administrators.  Using this information administrator decide the focus of our professional learning the following year

Learning and Applied Practice

Most of my gained knowledge of how to evaluate and use effective curriculum design came from the Curriculum Design class I took this summer.  In this class we started by evaluating a curriculum  that we were familiar with and I chose to analyze our McGraw- Hill curriculum entitled Discovering our Past.  Our next step was to look at the standards for our particular content area.  While doing this work it was interesting to see that even though we have the Common Core Standards, each state still has its own standards for the different content standards.  We also have technology standards which we need to incorporate into our frameworks and pacing guides.

One of things that I am doing in my current position as Future Ready Library is taking curriculum and revising it to meet the needs of our district and more importantly our students for our STRETCH (Students Reaching Toward new Challenges) class which meets for 45 minutes Monday through Thursday.   Since I had been asked to modify a curriculum from Google that teaches students how to create Google Sheets, manipulate data on a Google Sheet, and create a Google Map as they create an interactive area guide which worked out nice (https://applieddigitalskills.withgoogle.com/c/en/curriculum .html)  so that it would meet the needs of our district,  I used this to work with as we practiced effective curriculum design.  I started by tying it to the Common Core Standards for Writing for History, Science and Technology as well as to the ISTE (International Society for Technology Education)  standards for technology.   Then I created ten learning targets based on the standards as I started writing this curriculum.

We then learned about different types of formative assessments that we can use to help us and students learn how they are meeting this learning target.  We learned through Lalor (2017) the different types of assessments-- recall, product, demonstration and process -- as well as the three purposes of assessments - diagnostic, formative and summative in chapter four.  She suggested using multiple types of assessments in order to accurately evaluate if students are able to move on as well toward the learning target.   She also suggested that we as teachers clearly identify the purpose of our assessments and share that information with our students through our learning targets and success criteria.  

Next,  I created a couple of sample lesson plans using our district’s template that included activities that would actively engage my students, learning targets, success criteria, formative assessments, and differentiation based on the information I received from the formative assessments.  Over the last few years in our district we have discussed how to change from a teacher-centered classroom to a student-centered classroom and have emphasized the use of formative assessments, so it was fairly easy for me to implement these ideas into lesson plans. I often use the gradual release of responsibility model into my lessons as I find that it provides students a clear understanding of what is expected since it is modeled by the teacher and then as a class before the students is asked to do this on their own.   It also provides many places to insert formative assessments. At the end of the Curriculum Design class I had my unit started.

Issues Encountered/Problems of Practice Addressed

One of the things we have noticed once we started using the Discovering the Past curriculum that even though it was aligned with the Common Core Standards, some of the standards were being assessed more than others and that some ancient civilizations had a limited amount of information.   Therefore we need to change some of our assessments, find supplemental materials, and create new lesson plans in order to meet these needs.

Additionally, when I was evaluating this curriculum for my Curriculum Design class I

noticed that not only do we need to meet the Common Core Standards, but also those of our state.  It amazes me with the emphasis on Common Core Standards, that all states also then have their own standards and they can be, and usually are different from state to state. We also have technology standards to be teaching as well so that our students will be successful in their current learning as well as once they leave our education system. As a librarian I also need to become familiar with the American Association of School Librarians standards (AASL)  which I didn’t even know existed until another classmate discussed them in the discussion board of my class.  I can see why teachers, students and parents get overwhelmed by the standards.

Even through my school district has worked on writing learning targets for our students for several years, while working on my learning targets for my Curriculum Design class I noticed that I had to really think through the standards I was addressing and break them down into learning targets that would answer “the following questions from a students point of view: What will I be able to do when I’ve finished the lesson? What idea, topic, or subject is important to me to learn and understand so that I can do this?
How will I show that I can do this, and how well will I have to do it?”

as Moss, Brookhart and Long (2011) suggested.  As I did this I was reminded that it is important to  take the time to think these through since you need clear learning targets that will be guiding your teaching as well as students learning.

In addition, when we were asked to create assessments for our learning targets, I found myself leaning toward product assessments since in this unit students will be producing a product.  I had to really work on creating assessments that were recall and process. I also had to really think about the difference between product and demonstration as I was writing them -- a product assessment is where students create a tangible product while demonstration assessments “require students to do something” (Lalor, pg. 68).   Some examples are small group discussions, class debates, and presentations.

Lastly, I struggled with how to differentiate once I have the data from the formative assessments so I appreciated having to learn more about this and being asked to insert it into my lesson plans.   I realized that one way that could do this is by including time limits. If students don’t complete it by a given time, they need to finish it either after school or during STRETCH on Thursdays (we give this day for students to catch up on academics and get help from teachers as needed).  The other way I can differentiate is by pairing up students to help each other as well as to have my students give each other feedback. By reading the article in Edutopia about strategies for differentiated learning I felt better about what I already do and got some new ideas that I can incorporate into my lesson plans to meet the needs of my students.

How Evaluation and Use of Effective Curriculum Design are Supported by Research

As I said earlier, in my school district we have been working on creating learning targets, success criteria and formative assessments which align with our standards.  Much of this work has been around Hattie’s research that looked at what we as teachers can do to help our students. Making our learning targets clear and visual was one of those simple changes we could make that would have a great impact, so we started working on communicating our learning targets to our students.  Then our next step was the addition of success criteria which clarify what the learning target is and how we will get there. For example, I may have a different idea of what I think “doing the dishes” are than another family member, so I need to be more specific if I want it to be done the way I expect it to be done.  Lastly, we added the use of formative assessments. These help students as well as teachers know if they have meet the learning goal and if not what do we do so we can meet the goal. All of these things need to align with our standards in order for our students to meet standards they are tested upon and if we do them, not only will we see a years growth, but most likely more than a year’s growth.

Additionally, I read an article while in my Standards-Based Assessment class by Fisher (2018) that compared learning targets, success criteria and formative assessments to the GPS on our phone or in our car. which I thought gave a nice visual of why we include
this in our lesson plans.  The learning target is like the destination while the formative assessments are the individual turns that let us know if we need to re-adjust or not to get our final point. If we do well following the individual turns then our GPS advises us of our next turn or step and if we miss a turn it will re-adjust in order to get us to the given destination.

Lastly,  in the article “Examples of Engaging Instruction to Increase Equity in Education” we are given multiple sources of research that supports these elements helping not just some, but all students in our classroom.to be academically successful in the classroom.    The first being that we need to use explicit instruction (clear learning target). Then we need to build and prime their background knowledge. We also need to provide students with equitable learning opportunities that have a high-degree of student engagement and give them time to practice the skills required of them.  Lastly, we need to provide performance feedback (formative assessments) so they know if they met the learning
target or not. And, if not, what could they do differently to meet it.

Overall Impact

Overall, I have realized how important it is to evaluate current curriculums and use effective curriculum design when creating frameworks, pacing guides and lesson plans as I am creating and/or revising curriculum to meet the needs of our students and our district in my new position.   As I develop these sessions/lessons I will be incorporating the ideas that I learned about clear learning targets and success criteria, assessments, engaging activities and differentiation. Also, in my new position as Future Ready Librarian I have the opportunity to with teachers to improve their instructional practices.   For example, next I hope to provide optional professional learning sessions to focus on the instructional practices and this class has provided me additional resources to help me do this.

References

Chaparro, E. A., Nese, R. N. T., & McIntosh, K. (2015).  Examples of engaging instruction to increase equity in education.  OSEP Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports.  www.pbls.org

Edutopia Follow. (2015, June 04). Teacher Tested Strategies for Differentiated Instruction.

Retrieved August 11,    2018, from https://www.slideshare.net/edutopia/teacher-tested- strategies-for-differentiated-instruction

Hattie, J. (2017). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. London: Routledge.

Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2018). A map for meaningful learning: Kids need a clear destination, success criteria, and frequent feedback. Educational Leadership, 75(5), 82-83.

Lalor, A. D. (2017). Ensuring high-quality curriculum: How to design, revise, or adopt curriculum aligned to student success. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Moss, C. M., Brookhart, S. B., & Long, B. A. (2011, March). Knowing your learning target. Educational Leadership, 66(6), 66-69.

Spielvogel, J. J. (2016). Discovering our past: a history of the world. Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill Education

Standard 11 Reflection: Utilize formative and summative assessment in a standards based environment

Standard 11  Reflection: Utilize formative and summative assessment in a standards based environment

Background

I came into this program with a good understanding of learning targets, success criteria,   as well as use of formative assessments and summative assessments as a result of professional development opportunities that I have participated in with my current school district.

As a district we spent several years working on learning targets and success criteria.  To make sure these are keep this in the forefront while we work on other instructional practices, ouradministrators come through our classrooms at least once a year to see if our learning targets are written on the board, if we revisited them throughout the lesson and our exit slip connects to them.  We also submit a lesson in the spring which is looked at by our teaching and learning department to see how we are doing in this area. Using these data points, they decide what our professional development will be focused on for the following year. We only get individual feedback from these submissions  if we ask for it. Even though most teachers have learning targets and success criteria written on the board and are able to submit a complete lesson plans, we still have several teachers who only do it out of compliance and not to move students forward in their learning or ownership of their learning.

Since most teachers are competent in using learning targets and success criteria we changed our focus to formative assessments the last two years in our school district.   As a teacher leader I led the 6th grade social studies teachers through our protocol a total of four times. In this protocol we first identified a standard that we would like to work on.  Our next step was to create a diagnostic formative assessment. Then we worked through the assessment in order to be able to identify possible misconceptions as well as to decide it truly did assess the standard we choose.  After, we modified the assessment as needed, we then gave it to our students. Within a couple of weeks, we came back with scored assessments to discuss what patterns and misconceptions we noticed. The final step was then to come up with some ideas to move our students toward meeting the standard.  As a district, we have also been working toward increasing the tools in our formative assessment tool belt, so we can use a variety of formative assessments in our teaching. This has happened in a variety of ways. We have been

given placemats with a list of formative assessments and brief descriptions, seen them modeled by our coaches in their presentations, and through optional book studies.

Learning and Applied Practice

While in the Standards Based Assessment class, I created a learning progression  in which I applied my learning about standard-based assessments.  To begin this learning progression we broke down the standards into learning targets that would help our students get to the standard.    Our next step was to learn about different types of formative assessments and then think about which type of formative assessment would work best to check for understanding by our students.  Wiliam is his book Embedded Formative Assessment provided a lot of examples for us to use in his chapter entitled “Eliciting Evidence of Learners’ Achievement” as well as in his list of techniques on pages 163 and 164.  I appreciated that Wiliam stressed that when you are giving formative assessments you are not only looking for the students comprehension of the material, but also checking for any misconceptions by students that need to be addressed. Your questions also need to be higher-level questions in order for you to truly know what your students know and how they are applying their knowledge.  Lastly, I was reminded that it is necessary to use a variety of assessments

to get a clear picture of your students knowledge of the material.

Throughout this project not only did we work on creating our learning progression, but we also experienced standard-based assessment strategies from the student side.

 It started by being a given a clear shared learning expectation when we were given a model of what a learning progression would look like. Then we provided evidence our

knowledge of the formative assessments by deciding what type of formative assessments could be used to meet our standard, coming up with sample rubric and plans of how we would move out students forward, and  explaining the misconceptions our students may have. Throughout the development of our learning progression we were given peer-feedback as well as feedback from our professor. By given our feedback to others we were able to see what they had done and we were then able to self-assess and modify our learning progression as necessary.

Issues Encountered/Problems of Practice Addressed

When I first completed my learning progression I originally used learning targets from our district’s framework.   After looking at it closer, getting peer feedback and feedback from my professor I realized that my final destination was to answer a prompt instead of a standard. Also some of our success criteria takes us on side-trip and doesn’t actually get us to the standard we are assessing at the end of our unit.  So I modified my success criteria building blocks as needed to in order to get students to the learning target that was based on standards.

How Teaching and Collaborative Practices ares Supported by Research

In addition to our learning progression we were asked to learn more about one of following strategies -  Sharing Learning Expectations, Elicit Evidence of Student Learning, Providing Quality Feedback and Peer and Self Assessment.  I choose to learn more about Sharing Learning Expectations for my assessment into action paper.   While I was doing my research I found several  resources, but the following two stood out and I plan on referring to them as I am designing lesson plans as well as leading optional professional development sessions   The first is from the second chapter of the book Advancing Formative Assessment in Every Classroom by Connie M. Moss and Susan M. Brookhart entitled “Leveling the Playing Field: Sharing Learning Targets and Criteria for Success”    What I liked about this chapter was that it provided several strategies to share with other teachers how to share learning targets and success criteria with others.  It also provided some example evaluation forms that could be used if you are asked to evaluate teachers in this area. The second source I found was an article entitled “ A Map for Meaningful Learning: Kids need a clear destination, success criteria, and frequent feedback” by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey.  I thought this article did a nice job of explaining why we need clear expectations and how formative assessments guide us and our students to that end point by comparing it to the GPS system we have on our phone or in our car.

Overall Impact

As a result of this class I have realized that I need to have learning targets and success

criteria that are based on standards for learning vs. being based on a prompt or activity when I am working on creating curriculum for  our STRETCH (Students Reaching for new Challenges) classes.  Those learning targets also need to be clearly communicated to students throughout the lesson/unit through the formative assessments and feedback.   Some of the ways to communicate our learning targets clearly are by modeling, providing examples, having students make a plan of how to get to the target, and questioning.     I also picked up a few more formative assessment techniques such as questioning shells (Wiliam, pg. 86) to provide evidence of students’ progress toward a given learning target as well as to identify their misconceptions.  In my new role as Future Librarian I will encourage others to use peer feedback in their classrooms and to share the video about peer conferencing.  I will also encourage others to try giving more feedback through one-on-one conferences and then have their students video tape their plan so that they know that they have heard feedback and comprehend how to move forward.   Based on study by Maria Elawar and Lyn Corno (Wiliam, pg. 107) I will also encourage others to continue to give my students feedback, but not giving them a score at that point, but wait until they have had a chance to make adjustments to their work as needed before scoring it.  Lastly, I will encourage others to provide an opportunity for their students to move up their score after they have received feedback from the teacher and their peers. I hope to present these ideas in future professional development opportunities.

As a teacher leader I hope to share my learning from this class with others and advocate instructional practices that help our students to move forward and meet the standards for learning.  Additionally, I will be looking at our frameworks more closely and making sure that our formative assessments align with the unit learning target better. Also, as we look at our grading systems, I will be able to provide evidence for it to be based on the summative assessments vs. the combination of summative and formative assessments since the purpose of formative assessments is to evaluate the our students’ progress toward the learning target.  Overall, I believe that through the readings, discussions, and assignments we have had in in my Standards Based Assessment course, I have been given a wealth of resources that helped me have a better understanding of standard-based assessments.

Earlier this year  also had the opportunity to support a long-term guest teacher with our seventh grade social studies curriculum and I created learning progressions or unit sequences as my district calls them for him and others to use.   I have also had the opportunity to work on learning progressions for ELA standards and Future Ready skills.  This has helped us to really look at what is expected of students at different grade levels instead of just looking at what we expect at the end of 8th grade or high school.

References

(2018, June 27). Retrieved August 14, 2018, from https://www.teachingchannel.org/ video/peer-conferencing

Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2018). A map for meaningful learning: Kids need a clear destination, success criteria, and frequent feedback. Educational Leadership, 75(5), 82-83.

Moss, C. M., & Brookhart, S. M. (2009). Leveling the Playing Field:  Shared Learning Targets and Criteria for Success.  Advancing Formative Assessment in Every Classroom: A Guide for Instructional Leaders. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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

Wiliam, D., & Leahy, S. (2015). Embedding formative assessment: Practical techniques for K-12
classrooms. West Palm Beach, Fl.: Learning Sciences International.

Standard 4 Reflections: Engage in Analysis of Teaching and Collaborative Practices.

Standard 4 Reflection: Engage in Analysis of Teaching and Collaborative Practices.

Background

I am lucky enough to be in a school district who has been focusing on analyzing our teaching and collaboration practices over the years that I have been with them during our professional development opportunities. Not only do we have whole school professional development where this is done, but we are also provided dedicated department time which encourages us to practice  analyzing our teaching and collaborative practices. We also have started Problem- Solving Teams (PST) this year to help us reach those students who need more academic or behavior support. During any of these meeting we have worked together to come up with common goals and use SPACE (Silence, Paraphrasing, Attention, Clarifying Questions, and Evidence) for our norms.

I have also been fortunate to have good role models in my current principal and math coach since they asked me good questions that made me think about my teaching practices  As I was taking the classes Accomplished Teacher I thought the informationabout the different types of leadership styles and the discussions of when each can be useful was interesting. I tend, like many others in
the class to easily fall into the consultant role, but I wish to become more of a coach with both my peers and students so places I need to improve on are paraphrasing and reflection on my teaching

practices.   Although, I realize the benefits of paraphrasing, such as valuing others and being on the same page, I doesn’t come natural for me. So with the help of the practice we got in our face-to-face meeting as well as the question starters am I improving. And since reflection has been brought to the forefront, I taking more time to reflect on my teaching practices and as result I believe I am helping my students to be more successful.  I am hoping with more practice both of these skills will become more natural.

Learning and Applied Practice

Accomplished Teacher

We started by looking at the instructional framework for our district and then reflecting upon on our area of strength as well as what area we wished to improve upon which led me to focus   4.2 - curriculum and Pedagogy - Curriculum: Alignment of Instructional Materials and Task from Cell 5+ Framework.   More specifically, I wanted to provide more supplemental materials that provide multiple opportunities for students to practice getting to the learning targets, provide more supplemental books that have a variety of reading levels and interests,  use the option of reading levels on the online version of our book, as well as to add artifacts to my learning target wall.

We then discussed our initial response to making observations.  From this we then looked at our experience and reflected upon about the baggage that influenced our thoughts upon observing ourselves and other teachers.  Then at our next face-to-face meeting we looked the different levels of interactions we have we colleagues daily -- consult, collaborate, coach -- as well as learning how to move toward the coaching role through paraphrasing and thinking about questions we could ask to help others solve the problem.   Using this information we again reflected and applied our learning to given situations.

We ended this part of Accomplished Teacher by looking at benefits as well as challenges of teacher leadership.  The biggest benefit that I see for having a leadership team is that it promotes collaboration and we always come up with better solutions because of the diversity of knowledge and experience.  It also helps with our school culture since it gives teachers a voice. I think the biggest challenge that we have is navigating the resistance of change. It is nice to have a built in support system with the other teacher leaders so you can predict what the resistance will be and how do we handle it.  Sometimes, it truly starts off with compliance, but eventually changes to “we do this because it works”. After awhile you can build upon the past successes. The other challenge we have is finding teachers who want to be on the leadership team. One of the ways our principal has dealt with this is by giving us department level leads.  This helps get people skills to feel empowered to eventually become a department head. It is like putting your toes into the water before you start swimming. Additional, having time to meet with your department can be a challenge. At our school there has been resistance by a few to having regular department meetings since there is a question of where it is in our contract.  To overcome this, as a 6th grade department lead I have made my meetings optional and whoever shows shows. So far we have had 3 out of 5 of us meeting. Also, some of our district directed time has been used for department meetings as the teacher leadership team has asked for it. But usually this time has come with a school wide department agenda. For example, this month we have been working on our formative assessment cycles.

Communication and Collaboration class

We began this class by reading about different distributed  leadership models and described our experience with professional learning practices in a blog post.  We also posted in the discussion board where we thought education was going.  My was entitled “Moving from an Island to a Continent” because I do see more collaboration happening out of necessity as more and more is asked of teachers and competing needs and wants collide.  

In this class we also looked at how TPEP (Teacher Principal Evaluation Program) has pushed us toward providing professional development that focus on our teaching practices and collaboration since it requiresindividual teachers to show growth in our students and our teaching practices as well as with others.  For example, with growth goals we are asked
identify an area our students need to grow that is in alignment with teaching standards. We are also asked to identify the assessments that will help determine that growth so that our information is data driven.   Additionally, we are asked to identify what tools and resources we need to support growth in our students.  As we are helping our stdents to grow we are working both as individuals and with others to show growth in our classes as well as the entire grade level.   Then at the end of the TPEP cycle we are asked to write a narrative with our reflection.   In additional to creating a growth goal for our students we also are asked to identify an area that we need to improve on whether on focus or comprehensive.  We
begin this process this by reflecting on our own teaching practices.  Once we have identified
our area of focus we needto create a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results Focused and Time period for it to be achieved) as well as to  identify what resources and supports we need.  Then at the end we need to provide a narrative about our process and results.  As with all things, some teachers will do this out of compliance and the need to do it to have a job the next year, while others will embrace it and truly grow in their profession.  Overall, I think TPEP drives our professional development to meet many of the needs of adult learning - extrinsic motivation, content driven, differentiated, narrative - but, I think if we taught the action research model and let people know what others were working on, we could have more collaboration and meaningful growth.

As I took this course, i also thought about how our district along with neighboring districts sponsors a  Powerful Learning Conference every August. For this conference teachers within those school districts are asked to not only submit ideas of what they would like to learn, but they also given the opportunity to submit proposals for presentations.  This conference is free to those in the represented districts while others pay a small fee to attend. I have been both a participant and a presenter at this conference over the last few years, and I would say that the presenters are ‘energetic risk takers whose integrity, high-efficacy, and content knowledge give them
credibility” (Teacher Leadership Skills Framework - pg. 1) with the attendees.   Since you get to pick the classes you go you can choose to attend those that meet your needs as well as you can go to as many or as few as you wish.  I only wish that we had more time to reflect and plan how we would apply the new knowledge.  By working with neighboring school districts our district is showing us how important not only collaboration is, but also supporting us in analyzing and improving our teaching practices.

The last way that our school district shows that collaboration is important for our teaching practices is  through the Center for Collaborative Support which helps teachers with their professional growth is by running book studies once each quarter.  Again this is optional. At the beginning of each quarter we are given an electronic flyer that lets us know what book studies are available for the quarter.  All work is done online. They are set up so we read one week and apply the following week and answer questions based on that learning.   Educational coaches from the various districts are in charge of the book studies.  Not only do you get to talk about what works and what doesn’t work,  you get see a wider variety of perspectives than you would if it was just ran through our school district.  Again, this is optional and not all teachers will participate, but it is a great support for those who choose to use it.

In this class we read the article “Filling a Leadership Vacuum” which talked about mistrust between staff members.  We were then asked to discuss how a climate like this could be changed. Many of my suggestions in my discussion post had to with strengthening the relationships by providing collaboration opportunities.  We also learned about ways in increase this trust such as using critical friends as part of our professional development so you could see things  from multiple viewpoints. Then we summarized one or two of the models of collaboration you have learned about so far in our third reflection for this class.   Even through throughout this class we were focusing on professional development, collaboration and analyzing our teaching practices was very much part of my final project.

Issues Encountered/Problems of Practice Addressed

It is easy for me to get into wanting to “fix” something instead of asking questions to lead another person to their answer and analysis of their teaching practices, so I really appreciated having to practice paraphrasing and question another person during our face-to-face meetings.   This is an important skill to develop as it empowers others.

Another issue is developing a culture of collaboration.  One way develop this for administrators/

school districts to provide time and expect people to collaborate others.  Another way is to create a grassroots movement where one shares ideas, concerns, etc. with others with no expectations and hopefully over time a relationship would be built and it will be reciprocated.  Part of the issue is being will to put the time into developing this culture as well as having the tools to do so with.

How Teaching and Collaborative Practices ares Supported by Research

The overall theme I saw as we went through these courses was that as an educational leader we want to help others feel valued as well as to become independent and confident in their own thinking. In our Accomplished Teacher class this began with the first articles, “The Teacher Leader:  Improving Schools by Building Social Capital Through Shared Leadership” as it discussed the need to build relationships so we can sustain the programs and practices we believe in and not get burned out. This continued in the article, “Four Stances: A Continuum of Learning-focused interaction”  as it discussed that although there is a time and place for each of the different types of leaders, we really want to get to the place where we are coach so that we are helping people find their own solutions and therefore are gaining confidence in themselves and become more self-reliant. The other article about mentoring, “The Good Mentor” also discussed how is it is important to develop good relationships and to make sure you are meeting the needs of your mentee.  In orders to do this you need to be able to know what they struggle with and help them to reflect and find solutions which leads into the article “Paraphrasing: An Essential Skill of the Educational Coach” which emphasized this when it talks about the goal of paraphrasing is to help the person you are paraphrasing “to examine and reflect on their beliefs, values, goals, and assumptions along with their feelings and ideas”.   By feeling valued and empowered, we are able to grow and get excited about our profession.

In our Communication and Collaboration course similar themes were seen as with any of the methods we had studied, I saw time, trust among staff, and buy-in as the most challenges.  But, I also saw that it would help teachers have a greater understanding of the curriculum,  analyze their teaching practices and collaboration as they are teaching, provide stronger relationships between staff, and provide better available lesson plans

Overall Impact

As I have been going through these classes, I have learned or re-learned how important it is to build relationships with both my peers and students to help them become effective leaders in the future.  In order to do this I will need to continue to work on my paraphrasing skills as well as my reflective practices. Additionally, I will look for where I can provide professional development opportunities that provide a framework to develop collaboration as well as support improvement of my teaching practices and those around me. Lastly, I will
ask for feedback from others on my teaching practices as well as video tape more of my
lessons so I can reflect upon my own eaching practices.

References

CELs 5D Teacher Evaluation Rubric. (2015, September 23). Retrieved from http://www.tpep- wa.org/the-model/ framework-and-rubrics/instructional-frameworks/uwcel-5d/

Corcoran, C. A., & Leahy, R. (2003). Growing professionally through reflective practice. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 40(1), 30-33.

Hargreaves, A. & Fullan, M. (2013). The power of professional capital: With an investment i n collaboration, teachers become nation builders.  Journal Of Staff Development, 34(3), 36-39.

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