Final Survey

I just want some information about the process of blogging--since this is our first experiment with it. You can post your responses or place them in my mailbox--whichever you are most comfortable with.

1) We have used book clubs in the past at NHS for professional development. How would you compare and rate this one? Did you prefer the blog or would you rather meet face to face?

2) Would you be willing to participate in a blog again?

3) What topics would you like to see addressed in book clubs?

4) Would you be willing to lead a blog book study?

Ch. 9 Leadership in the PLC

I guess I'll start with Chapter 9, too. I think an important topic was when the author talked about the "learning-centered principal." We are often too focused on the teaching aspect and maybe we overlook the learning, not just for the students but for us as teachers as well. This principal realized the value of learning and told the teachers to focus on the most essential standards. I do think thats a good idea in practice but when our students are tested on the standards, it's hard to overlook a "non-essential" standard. We are having EOC testing now and if you teach an EOC, how can you overlook a standard and then be criticized if your students don't perform well on the EOC? As it stated in the book, it would be great if we could create our own EOC but that's not the case for us so until that happens, I don't see any teacher being able to teach "only the essential standards" because they are all essential since they are all on the EOC.
As for learning, we as teachers can also learn from each other. In the first part of the book, we all read about how we teach with closed doors and don't welcome others into the classroom. But, if we do observe and we do have the PLCs and we do utilize common planning, we all can learn. We want our students to learn... so just as we model SSR, we can model learning.

Ch. 8 PLC

Hey Dianne. I'm thinking you are wanting us to take the initiative and start our own posts now? : ) I know I have no idea if this is going to post or not but I figured I'd go ahead and say a few things about Chapter 8. So, here goes......I do agree that the Professional Learning Communities are more effective than traditional staff developments. For one, there are less people in the PLCs and I think it makes for a better atmosphere. I know in our faculty meetings and staff developments there are usually bigger crowds and usually the same people are the ones that are more vocal. The smaller groups will allow for more in-depth discussions and it allows for everyone to have a say without creating a LONG meeting. Each PLC can have a common goal. The smaller groups also allow for the individual teachers to share their experiences, and we can have follow up and reflection meetings which will be valuable, too. The PLCs seem to encourage more discussion and I believe the PLC can be effective if a common goal is set and everyone in the group is on board for the same purpose.

Chapter 7: Literacy Education

There's a myth in public schools that just because some of us chose English as a major, we must know all about how to teach reading and writing and therefore it should be left up to us. But Schmoker paints a very realistic picture of the college background of English majors--there are classes on Romanticism and Modernism, British lit and American lit, and even AIDS in literature. There are some great classes, but none of them prepare us for how to deal with the student that has made it to the 11th grade and still can't write (or simply won't write) a complete sentence. There's usually one reading class for education majors--Reading in the Content Area--but its not necessarily taught by someone trained in literacy itself. As an English major, I had one class in writing for secondary students, so I can't imagine non-ELA majors had much more. We come to public schools unprepared for what we are going to face, and if Schmoker is hitting the nail on the head, we avoid the situation as much as possible. We don't assign writing to our students. But when you have 150 of them, who has time to assign and grade all that writing?

Instead of examining all the things that are getting in our way of assigning writing to students, let's look closely at what we are doing write and what we might be able to do in the future. This year, sophomores were trained in the HSAP rubric and then graded their own writing in preparation for the test. (I guess we'll see in the fall how successful the experiment was.) What else can we do to move our literacy focus over to incorporate writing? It has to become a community effort, this teaching of reading and writing, if we are to ever see results, so what can we do as a community?

More on Chapter 6

I apologize for my tardiness and glad to see the conversation has continued without me. I've totally let my writing go the last few weeks and I need to get back on track with everything.

I'm very interested in the section on writing in chapter 6. I've studied writing a good bit this year and I'm intrigued on what it would take to get us to move towards more writing in the classroom. How many of us have writing on major tests? (I actually only have writing in the English classes--very little multiple choice questions.) And why don't we have more writing on major tests? Students can finagle mastery when its "multiple guess", as my father calls it. They can even cover holes in their knowledge with oral answers. But they can't get around it in writing. If you truly want to see if your students get it, have them write it out.

So what can we do to incorporate more writing into our classes? Sizer stated that "writing is the litmus paper of thought...the very center of schooling."

Chapter 6 also talks about talk. How often do students bat around ideas just like adults do? How can we set up this scenario in our classrooms?

Chapter 7 is coming soon...I promise not to fall too far behind! And blue sheets will be coming around the 19th.