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.
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It is important for us to be able to focus our teaching on the most important standards, but I think we still have to cover all of the standards. The EOC does cover a broad range of the standards for each of its subjects, so it seems difficult to know what to spend more practice on and what to spend less on. The PLC would come in handy here so that the more experienced teachers can use their knowledge and past achievement scores to help newer teachers (and themselves) know which standards are the most important for our students to learn.
Also, all of our observations should actually be followed-up by an actual meeting, not just a sheet that says good job or work harder. A more involved teacher community and administrative community, each taking responsibility for the education of our students, working together can only create positive achivements in our school.
I think that the author may not be in a state where the standards for a course are as clearly outlined as they are in SC. This is one area that I feel our state has done a great job. I think the importance here is assessment and areas of weakness. We need to identify which standards students are strong in and which areas we are a poor performing school and spend some tiem concentrating on those standars. Often we as educators spend time on standards that students already know how to do and waste their time and ours. We also often don't differentiate and teach all standards to all students in a blanket format. We need to be assessing and forming small groups to work on the areas that students are weakest in. Some schools even have small groups that are not fixed groups, but have to do with areas of weakness for specific students and share these groups between teachers who teach the same subject. For example: one group of students is weak on long division while another group is weakest on measurement and strong on long division. Why would we then spend a great deal of time on long division with those that are strong. We could team teach and I would take the long division students for a few weeks and you could take the measurement.
With this system, you are contantly evaluating learner outcomes, short term assessments and assessments such as MAP to redefine your groups throughout the semester.
I totally agree witht he author that we need to simplify what we are looking for and re-examine the evaluation process. We often spend too much time on unimportant stuff. The important stuff is purposeful authentic lessons which focus on reading, writing, communicating, calculating, reasoning, and critical thinking.
I loved his ideas for how we should evaluate. I also loved the crucial assurances on page 135. We have got to make time for teachers and principals to meet as teams during the contractual day. My biggest frustration as a principal was the amount of stuff (You really can't imagine until you walk a mile in those shoes) and the amount of time you were called out of your building for stuff. It is the same frustration that teachers feel. I believe the author is correct, we have got to learn to minimalize, and focus on what is really important in schools to master standards and create success for students as learners.
I believe that having a principal who focuses on learning and on providing opportunities for teachers to participate in PLCs and open discussions about standards, pacing, and curriculum is essential for a school. I agree with everyone else that we can't really ignore standards or place less emphasis on ones we feel may not be tested unless we are absolutely certain that skipping a standard would not put a student at risk of not doing well on EOC. However, in courses that don't require EOCs, I think some standards can be addressed more extensively than others. I think teachers have to look at the make-up of a class to determine what is the most important material to present.
Michael talked about being learning examples. I think this is also key in education. I know that SSR runs more smoothly when I am reading during the time students are to be reading. I enjoy sharing what I'm reading with the students as well as hearing what they have found of interest. I have also noticed that when I'm doing this blog - either typing my responses or reading prior to commenting - some students are interested in what and why I'm doing this. What an opportunity to show them that it is important to continue to learn long after those formal years of education.
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