Supportive Teams

I always think back to what if I didn't have the professional support system that is in place for me as an educator. I believe that although I am internally motivated to succeed in my profession, it is my team around me who continue to help me grow as a professional. My collaborative team helps guide me tio draw my own conclusions out of my practice, make decisions, and support both myself and my students when needed. I am thankful for this system, as if I didn't have it I believe my job would be different. There has been plenty of PLC talk as of late, and I see this post as a continuation of this concept. My team, in its' own way, is a PLC. - James

Parent Volunteers

I have an elementary age classroom.  This year, about a dozen parents have expressed an interest in volunteering.  I think it is very valuable for parents to be involved in our classroom for so many reasons and I want to involve as many parents as possible.  Scheduling can be a challenge.  One parent comes in weekly, so it is easy to plan a routine for her.  Other than assisting with the occasional field trip, how have you used parent volunteers who are able to come occasionally but are unable to commit to a regular schedule?

First Observation

Today I had my first observation for the school year.  Since I am at a new school this year, it was also my first observation with a new administrator.  I always get a little nervous before observations, but I think the lesson went well today.  The activities flowed together well and we met the learning objectives for the lesson.  I feel as if my students have a firm grasp of the skill we were working on.  It was helpful to reflect on the observation this afternoon using the high leverage elements from the evaluation standards--I found myself actually writing more than the 1 or 2 paragraphs recommended on the observation handout.  I'll know more after my post-observation conference on Tuesday, but for now, I'm optimistic!

What about you guys?  Do you get nervous before observations?  Any advice for dealing with jitters?  Is it helpful for you to reflect after your observation?

Enabling?

As first quarter winds down here at SWJH, I find myself trying to keep a balance between helping kids to improve their grades and reinforcing irresponsible behavior. As junior high students, I think it is important for kids to take the initiative to ask questions about missing assignments or extra help on their own. I also know, from experience, that most kids don't. It is really hard for me to see students earning grades below--or sometimes even far below--their potential. I have grades posted and updated in each week in the classroom, I have contacted parents multiple times about low grades, I remind students of my availability during and outside of the school day, I emailed missing assignments to study hall teachers, I have registered kids for SWAT...but still there are missing assignments. I'm not sure where to go from here. I so badly want my students to succeed, but when is "chasing them down" too much? Where is the line between helping and enabling...and am I on the wrong side of it?

Technical Reading Strategies

In the FACS classroom, technical reading is super important.  Whether it is from reading a recipe to reading directions to sew a garment together, technical reading is all over our curriculum.  Last year, I was able to work with our literacy coordinator to come up with some great ideas for the foods classroom and 8th grade sewing.  This year, I'm reaching out to all of you for ideas for my 9th graders.  They all had sewing last year and they are STRUGGLING to reading simple directions.  I'm finding much of it is that they come to ask me how to do it before reading instructions and don't like my answer when I tell them to first read their directions.  Are kids being spoonfed too much nowdays or is it lazy or is it that they lack the skills to read their directions first before asking for help?  Anyone have thoughts on this and suggestions to combat this?  My kids now know when they start to come up to ask me and I look at them, they turn around and go read their directions first...I feel like this is something I need to teach to them though.  Suggestions?

Graphic Organizers

I co-teach in 7th grade language arts class, and it seems that there is a real push away from the class doing work on the same text--and towards students doing assignments from a chosen book. We did an assignment this week that turned out to be less effective than we thought it would be. We were having students doing a summary of a fiction text using a somebody-wanted-but-so graphic organizer that I created. After they filled in the main points from the text, they put these points together into sentences for one summary paragraph. This worked really well when we modelled from one text, then we had the pods work from one text. However, we had the next step be working with partners on a chosen picture book--so every pair had a different book. This did not work so well because some picture books did not lend themselves so well to writing a summary using the somebody-wanted-but-so strategy. We will use the same text for all students for the next independent assessment for practice. that way, we can go over summaries as a group and learn together. There was no opportunity to really come together as a whole group with students using a chosen text. Choice is important I think for just right books and independent reading. However, so much is lost when they all have different texts for targeted assessments. ANY THOUGHTS??

Rigor throughout grade levels

Eric's post inspired me to write about the topic of our VT meeting this week: rigor in reading 6-12. We will be looking at how much each grade level expects students to read and what the rigor of those texts are. I like that at VT we will be doing more vertical alignment because often it is overlooked as we try to accomplish our many PLC goals. Making sure our students are challenged appropriately and increasingly at each grade level is one of the most important ways I can think of spending our VT time. Having taught four different grade levels in the district, it is so interesting to see how our students who go from reading 20 + books a year in 6th grade struggle to read 4 books in 10th grade. It will be interesting to see what each grade does to promote reading. Hopefully we will be able to better shape our curriculum based on our discussion on Wednesday.

My question is, do other VTs talk about these topics? Do you assure alignment with any sort of tools other than the standards? Do you have questions about what other grades are teaching? Do you feel the thinking and quantity of work is well scaffolded between grades in your discipline?