O & A Final Course Reflection

In my first year as an administrator, I am sure I will make many mistakes. I can only hope to embrace them as learning experiences to help me to become a stronger leader. JHU (and this course specifically) has provided me with much of the information I will need to start off as strong as possible. When arriving to the new school, it will be important (and prudent) to assess the school, its areas of needs and its strengths. By using the data provided from previous years, surveys and other means of collection, I will be able to understand where the school is heading. Knowing that, I will be able to guide them to that goal and if necessary, help them find a new goal. Again, I am sure to make some waves, but I feel confident and ready to handle the role as a leader of the school to take the students to the 21st century.

In this day and age, technology is leading most movements making communication instant and necessary to inform the community. JHU has provided me with many examples and applications that will help me keep the information up to date and public for the masses such as blogs, wikis, webinars, and many other web 2.0 applications. Also, I will do my best to include the staff in quality decision making to help promote ownership. Teachers who are part of the solution and whose input is taken into consideration will be more positive with the change by collaborating with peers to help improve student performance. The final part is to include the parents and the rest of the community. With open meetings, fliers, TV ads, and many mailings/emails, we will be able to provide them with the chance to share their thoughts and concerns. This will also bring ownership of the decision making to the families for a stronger community with the school.

In my AAP, I have provided many ways for others to share the role of leadership. We are asking teachers to help lead PLCs at grade level and area meetings. Also, students are asked to help implement the technology at the school by providing peer tech support for the intervention plan. The parents also get a chance to be leaders by providing the school with information on how to use science in their lives with examples. Also, parents will have a chance to help their students at home with the technology needed to implement the plan. The whole community needs to work together to make the plan happen. Each part of that community will require leaders and followers to make it successful. The plan that I have submitted will provide that leadership for the school to help make it more successful for the students and their goals.

Organization and Administration of Schools

So far this course is extremely different from the other courses. The main bulk of our work is as a team. The Action Plan with the team is a great way to learn how a real team would work in a school. My team and I are lucky to have such a cohesive group that works together well and effectively. I couldn't imagine this with a dysfunctional group, but it could just be that our personalities won't allow this to happen. As we work together each week, we have created our own process that is very effective and similar to how I would run any meeting needing consensus. We begin each week with a group discussion synchronously and then move to chatting, emailing and posting on the website during the week. The principal and the vice-principal work together closely and come to an agreement about the group discussion before the end of the week. Once that is done, it is shared with the rest of the group in order to make sure that all agree and are ready to implement the decisions. I am very proud of how things are working and definitely have a much better idea of how to run my future administration. There is also a smaller group project to run a discussion during a 2 week stretch. I like the idea, but think that it is something that not many are focusing on during the course. If people were required to comment, it might help, but it can be very confusing at times with all of the little things going on. For the individual assignment, I know that I am not a great writer and that is one of the things that I worry about the most as an administrator. I know how to get things done, motivate people and be effective, but writing is not my forte. With that said, Sue is doing a great job with timely and helpful feedback to help me improve my overall action plan (and writing skills).

I am pleased with the course, but the lack of structure at the beginning threw me and my group for a whirl. I can definitely see all of the benefits and what we are learning. I would like to suggest that the topics for the weekly discussion could be more interactive with a little more emphasis on them in the grade. Things are going well and the course is definitely going to leave us with plenty of real world experience to apply in our future positions.

New Definitons of Curriculum?

How has your definition of curriculum been shaped by the course readings and discussions? How and why has your definition of curriculum changed?



I apologize for the bell and talking in the hallway during the recording :)

Ken

Instructional Technology

As a school administrator and instructional leader, I would expect many of the new web 2.0 technologies to be integrated into the curriculum process and the curriculum itself. Schools should begin to share their curriculum online in settings such as Wikis and Dynamic shared websites, like Google sites. The curriculum constantly needs to be reviewed by many people and having it on the computer of the administrator doesn't facilitate the process. If the documents are online, teachers will be able to more readily access it and add ideas such as was to integrate technology in certain areas of the curriculum. The tested part of the curriculum could have shared results from various teachers about which strategies worked and why. The internet is a wonderful way to share information to many people in a variety of formats. The curriculum is such an important document of any school that it necessitates everyone needing access to it making it a perfect match with the new web 2.0 technologies.

There are loads of Web 2.0 application out there, many of which, can be used readily in the classroom to enhance instruction. Google and its applications is an exhausting list which grows every week. Some of its more popular uses are its email application for communication, the sites to create websites that can also act like wikis, blogger for blogging, Google calendar to share events with the community and Google docs for creating and sharing dynamic spreadsheets, word documents, presentations and other files. For math students, there is ALEKS, which helps students learn interactively at their own pace on the internet. RazKids is a wonderful sight for helping students read at their level and also record their own reading voice. The site even has an assessment where the students earn coins to buy things. There are many others tools too, so keep searching!

Here is a link to a nice article about Web 2.0 apps.

The Purpose of Schools

The purpose of schools is to open up the doors for children. Help them become life learners and show them what is out there to be learned. All students learn in different ways and at different rates, but the school needs to accommodate for them through variety and differentiation. There are a core set of subjects that all students need to learn (math, reading and writing) so that they can explore and enjoy other subjects that are taught by the school that they may wish to learn on their own. Preparing students to learn on their own and be excited about it, should be the ultimate goal for any school.

In my own school teaching math, I am well aware that much of the high school math curriculum will not be used by the majority of my students in their career lives. Keeping that in mind, I try to be excited about my subject and show the students the joy of learning just to learn. It is important to enjoy what you are doing and demonstrate it. Also, as good educators, we need to be role models for the child by helping them to be responsible and respectful. As I had said earlier in the ELC, when my students ask me “Why are we learning this?” I have the usual response about how the math applies to life and such, but more importantly, I let them know that if I didn’t teach or show it to them, they would never know if they wanted to learn more. To summarize, we need to teach children how to learn, not what to learn.

Post-Observation Thoughts......

The post observation conference was held in the classroom of the teacher, during one of her and mine free periods. There was a small table in the back of the room that we used during the hour long follow-up. We sat next to each other rather than across from the table creating a more collegial environment and open for discussion and sharing. One thing that I noticed was how I would use a cup of coffee to help me divide up the conversation. During the first part of the post observation, I summarized the observation with the teacher listening. Through her visual clues, I knew if we agreed on an observed behavior or item and when we did not agree or clarification was needed. Since the beginning was a summary, I ended up doing most of the talking. A few times, I would ask some questions to clarify what I had seen. The observation sheet has a space for writing questions which helped a lot in the post –observation. I had many questions that guided the conversation towards academics, rules, physical space and other ideas. As I asked a question, I would sit back
(take a sip of coffee) and visually let the teacher know that it was her time to talk and analyze the situation. The whole observation process was smooth and we were both pleased with the results. I have done observations in the past and new the process to help the teachers best I could. We both were able to learn from this experience while helping student learning. The teacher was given some great ideas to use for the same lesson next year, but also ideas that can be implemented immediately in the classroom to improve the atmosphere. I do feel that the meeting was a bit long and felt bad taking away from the teacher’s planning period, but it was a great form of individual professional development. Another issues that I was worried about was the grade level (4th) having never taught it before, I was worried that the teacher would not value my input. In the future, I would like to email the summary to the teacher, along with some of the questions that I had jotted down before the post observation. This might help the teacher to have more thoughtful answers, reduce the stress, and shorten the time of the meeting. Overall, it was a great experience and felt awesome to be able to share knowledge with a co-worker through observation.

Classroom Arrangements

Room arrangements can give a quick glimpse of what might be going on in the classroom. If you see individual desks all facing the front, you may infer that teaching is mostly teacher-centered with direct interaction with individual students. If you were to see a large circle, the class might be set up for student-centered learning with the teacher acting as a leader or facilitator. A bunch of desk here and there might mean that centers are used with students being able to interact with their peers and their teacher. Whatever the case, it does give us something to work with without being too intrusive in the teacher’s classroom atmosphere.

During my “walk-around”, I was able to quickly assess and tally the rooms throughout the entire school. I noticed that in most Elementary classrooms, there were horseshoe arrangements for entire class activities. Some rooms also included carpets with seating charts labeled with tape. In addition to the horseshoe, there were centers set up around the room and places for individual work. Each room had a clear traffic flow and it was obvious that differentiation goes on in the classroom through each day. Students and teachers take turns at being the centers of learning while the teacher has a clear unobstructed view of the classroom for behavior and work issues. Lastly, the classroom set up was very efficient and allowed for supervision to take place without interruption of the classroom activities. Again, since the school is small in size, but large in structure, the rooms lend themselves to being able to have such a variety of seating arrangements in one classroom. In other schools, this ideal situation would not be possible.

In Middle School and High School, classrooms were mostly made up of tables put together in either a horseshoe arrangement or clusters. This setting lends itself for group work, teacher lead discussions and lectures on the board. A few select classrooms, were able to have small group and individual work areas, but the restriction was mostly due to furniture and space. It is quite obvious that the majority of time in the upper grades is spent with lectures and then small group work. Two main goals of High school are to prepare the students to be collaborators and ready for university work. Therefore, the classroom set ups make sense.

In each classroom (with the exception of 1 out of 23), there was only one computer and it was for the teacher's use. This computer would then dictate where the teacher’s desk was located since the outlet and Ethernet cable are limited in reach. Most teachers throughout the school would have their desks in the front of the room, but not near the door. Some of those teachers did express interest in having the desk in the back to help monitor student activity, but the computer location restricted such luxuries. I find it very concerning that students do not have more access to computers in the classroom. In fairness, there are computer labs which may be reserved, more computers in the library, and wireless internet for laptops which many students bring. Technology is part of many of the teachers instructional tools, but without constant access, it can sometimes be hindered throughout the lessons.

In conclusion, it is awesome to be aware of how much insight a small quick observation can provide you. As supervisors, we will need to be able to make more detailed observations to help staff development. But classroom setup is a great window into the classroom environment of the teacher and student learning.