RIF--Reading is Fundamental

Gosh, I love to read. I read so many different things and love to discuss those readings with other like-minded and well-read individuals. This may be because of the former English teacher in me, but I also like to read other things besides just novels. I've always felt that reading new things provides great power to the reader...by taking in new knowledge from a book, you create a bigger world for yourself. And sharing that world with others creates even more powerful opportunities to learn new things. Interestingly, however, I have never belonged to a book club.

The one thing I miss about grad school is keeping up-to-date on the latest readings in regards to teaching, best practices, and educational leadership. However, I am thankful for having two great PLNs (Personal Learning Networks) that I converse with regularly to help me in this regard. My first group is an online social network of educators that I interact with daily through Twitter. With this group I share more resources than I can keep up with, literally. Thank God for bookmarking tools like Del.ic.ious, which I use to keep up on resources shared. However, the local folks in my twitterverse have also taken the next step in our network and have devoted time once a month to meet in person. We call a PD or Professional Development Party and we gather at one another's houses; this month, I get to host and I am really looking forward to it.

Another group I gather with monthly is a very intimate group of four, that's including myself, with whom I developed very close personal relationships during grad school. We always opted to work together on group assignments and met to work on other major projects or assignments even if they weren't "group work" per se just to share resources. During one of our last meetings as grad students, one friend suggested that we get together for dinner each month and to set a date right then for fear that "life would happen in between" (see earlier post "Hello, Old Friend") and that we'd run into each other in the grocery store three years later. As a result, we meet each month and bring our calendars so that we pick our next date before leaving that gathering. As with my other PLN we, too, have dinner at a designated member's house and share our personal experiences as relatively new administrators. The resounding element missing from this group, however, is that we are all behind on reading the latest and greatest in professional literature because we are immersed in our new positions. It is, therefore, our belief that we start a book study to ensure our continued professional growth. At our next gathering, we will decide on which book to read and I'm excited to have a purpose and make the time to read professional literature again.

How do you grow as a professional? How do you keep abreast of the latest and greatest best practices in regard to teaching and leading? What books have you read lately? I'd love to hear from you. Please take a moment to respond.

How TRANSPARENT are you?

Hello, friends. I know that I have started my first few blogs with mentioning my Twitter network of educators, and at the risk of sounding redundant (a writer's sure-fire no-no) I must do the same again. As a result of this social networking tool, I have been privy to Transparency in its finest form in the past few weeks. My Twitterverse consists of staff developers, administrators, teachers, and teacher coaches who are brave and willing enough to be as transparent as possible in order to elicit meaningful feedback from other educators and content experts to improve their instruction and leadership in the best interest of both teachers and the profession and their students as well. As difficult and scary as it may be to put yourself out there, I believe that the single best way to improve your instruction is through eliciting feedback from your peers. This is, of course, the guiding tenet of a Professional Learning Community, which I desperately want to facilitate in my new role as a director of curriculum and instruction. Gratefully, I am fortunate enough to have colleagues to show me the way; educators whom I can thankfully also call friends, that are willing to grow professionally and are not only brave enough to publicly share what they do in their daily practice but who also beg for and welcome feedback from others frequently rather than wait for that "official" APPR to reflect on their practice.

How transparent are you? The colleagues and friends I reference are out there, and I mean really out there, on the world wide web, doing things like posting tweets on Twitter and links on wikispaces describing their experiences and eliciting immediate responses to their practice. With a simple tool like those aforementioned they post a link and receive nearly instantaneous responses from other experienced practitioners "in the trenches" who long, just as much as they do, to improve practice and gain ideas for how to apply theory to real-world practice in ways that present the best benefits to kids.

There is much discussion in the realm of education about this notion of transparency. Some key questions surrounding this notion include: How can we KNOW that any approach or strategy we employ truly works? How can the whole sector benefit from particular instances of good practice? What are the elements or components of good and effective practice? What outcomes do good and effective practice produce? Within what contexts do these good and effective practices exist? and How do we remain objective in providing meaningful feedback to those who elicit our reactions, thoughts, and ideas about our practice without being overly critical?

I don't have the answers to these questions. However, networking with the right people who have like desires to find these answers and be reflective practitioners has provided me with opportunities to begin to find the answers. If we truly are life-long learners who are dedicated to and passionate about improving what we do for kids, may we all be brave and willing enough to be transparent and share what we do with others in the best interest of our students and teachers.

Reflection AS Fomative Assessment

In my realm of the Twitterverse, reflective practice has been a big topic of conversation in the last few days. I think we all take time to reflect on our day, our actions, our experiences in our own ways, but I wonder how many of us do this formally in writing? I know that before I began to reflect formally when I was teaching, I really only had reflected in the car to and from work or in the tub as I tried to relax and unwind. In fact, I believe that I reflected mostly when things didn’t go as I had planned or as well as I wanted them to. Very few of us, I believe, reflect on what went well and how good it felt for both us and for our students. This is sad to me because more of us should take the time to celebrate the good things and figure out ways to build on those things in our classroom practices. In the words of Collins, this is how we can move from “good to great.”

The other conversation that has been on-going in my corner of cyberspace is formative assessment. It is a hot topic in education lately and seems to be talked about a lot these days. However, a good friend did something very brave and unique in regards to formative assessment this weekend. Angela Stockman described in her blog a lesson she had designed and facilitated where she discussed the ways in which she formally assessed student understanding. The brave and unique thing about this was that she posted it and requested feedback from fellow educators that she emailed personally and in the general blogosphere. She specifically requested warm and cool feedback and her intention was twofold: to improve her classroom practice and to show other teachers whom she coaches and collaborates with that she is a partner in their classrooms, not a critic or an expert.

Let’s face it; we all get a little nervous about being formally observed in our classrooms no matter how great we are or how long we’ve been teaching, but to put a lesson out there for a gazillion eyes to see and critique is more than a bit daunting. However, the practice of eliciting responses from multiple educators on a lesson or classroom practice is the heart of a true professional learning community, whether on-line or otherwise. In doing this, my friend got a number of great ideas for improving her lesson and received a great deal of kudos for the good things she did already. This is great, but what’s better is that the feedback was nearly instantaneous; she did not have to wait a few days to schedule a post-observation conference nor was she subjected to the same canned questions that evaluators tend to ask each person they observe. She got immediate, open, and honest feedback from people who want to see her succeed. How awesome is that?

But the real question is how do we formally assess ourselves and the work we do? What kinds of formal reflective practices do we engage in to ensure that what we are doing and continue to do are good practices and are serving kids in the best possible ways? I am especially interested in how some administrators are doing this. It's a bit easier for a teacher to know that what they are doing is working because they can assess whether kids are being successful. But how do administrators know that they are not only supporting their teachers and helping them succeed but, in turn, helping kids as well? What kinds of reflective and formative assessments are administrators engaging in? What models are administrators using to formally assess their productivity and effectiveness? This blog is certainly one piece of the puzzle for me, but I need more. If you have ideas or practices that you engage in, please share.