EL 652

The first thing I notice about my thinking compared to the start of this class is that I am much more critical with how I approach situations with colleagues. This could means instances where I initiate conversations or weekly meetings that are held by my administration. I am constantly applying different concepts we've discussed to these situations to understand how they can be improved. I am also looking for more help from my colleagues in trying to develop systemic solutions to issues many of us see and have issue with. Something I am now consistently trying to change are my own patterns of behavior and making everything I do purposeful. I have asked my administration for more duties and opportunities surrounding helping other in the school, including support staff, feel more comfortable and included. For instance, many of our office and custodial staff are unwilling to redirect student behaviors largely because they are uncomfortable dealing with them. I am working on so...

One thing I will be including in my instructional plan is an opportunity for participants to discuss and vent their frustrations regarding student behaviors. This can often be the largest pitfall to any meaningful discussion or solution finding, teachers spending the entire time “venting” about the problems and feeling helpless about the solutions to these issues. I’ve been a part of sessions where this is all that happens and I’ve been a part of instructional practices where teachers are discouraged from discussing problems and have to focus only on solutions. Both of these have issues, the latter I discussed but the former can also create discontent within the staff because they may feel their voices aren’t being heard or their frustrations are not being validated by the instructional staff. Something I will be keeping in my instructional plan based on my observations are plenty of opportunities for discourse and discussion between participants. One-to-one, smal...

My organization has about 280 students from 18-year-old seniors down to our two-year-old program. We rely heavily on a rubric grading system and an overall educational philosophy called Mastery Learning. In it, students can only receive an “A” or a “B” for showing mastery of a particular skill or concept. If a student has not been able to master the concept they will receive a “P” which means they are progressing towards mastery, and if they stop making that progress they receive a “D” for deficient. Due to this, students in a single course may find themselves in various places. So, part of my instructional design is developed around the idea that students have the ability and resources to be self-sufficient learners. If a student wishes to proceed, or is capable of proceeding, faster than others I need to ensure that they have the support to do so. I am also always ready to reteach concepts for students that need a little more time. In my training I plan to p...

a.      Interestingly enough we just had a child protection professional development last week that touched on the role that cultural diversity can play in the way families discipline their children. I think a similar conversation would need to be held during my professional development into Responses to Intervention. Within a single school so many different cultures and cultural practices, values, and beliefs can be found that it would be irresponsible not to address them. b.      To honor these different cultures and values one of the first things to have us as a group understand is the core value that we are all following as teachers. That is, to help our students become as successful as possible. If we can all align ourselves to having this as our core belief that I think it will make the work we do and accomplish a lot better and easier to address. For example, if we were trying to help a young girl in science but through ...