Archive for the ‘
professional development for educators ’ Category
Sharon Baum spent thirty-three years in public education as a physical and health education teacher, a school counselor, an assistant principal and principal. She has worked in several districts in Oregon and taught high school in Winterhaven, California. She retired in 2010, and finished her career with the North Marion School District as the principal at North Marion Middle School from 2000-2010.
Alex Haley said that folks like to hear a story over hearing a lecture. He shares that you should start out by saying “I have a story to tell.” People like stories. I would like to tell my story.
I was a middle school administrator for 16 years. Two of those years were as an assistant principal, and the remaining 14 years as a principal. Prior to that, I had been a teacher and a counselor. I went into administration because I wanted to be a teacher of teachers, and I felt that the time I spent as a counselor helping teachers with students and observations would benefit me as an administrator. I felt I had a good foundation in observational skills and I loved to observe teachers teaching, and help out where I could in improving the delivery of curriculum. I kept abreast of all the teaching strategies through professional development activities, workshops and books, and felt I had a good handle on how to help others be the best they could be. I also loved having conversations with students about the importance of learning and finding their niche to embrace their own style of learning.
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Category:
curriculum, professional development for educators, teaching strategies |
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Tags: Alex Haley, budget cuts, drop-in visits, observation, professional development, Sharon Baum
Carol S. Witherell began her career in education teaching primary grades in the Fountain Valley Public Schools in California in the 1970s. She earned her M.A. degree in social ecology and human development from the University of California-Irvine and her Ph.D. degree in educational psychology from the University of Minnesota. She retired from the Graduate School Education Faculty of Lewis & Clark College in 2005, where she chaired the teacher education program for 8 years. Today she is an avid supporter of the arts and a volunteer with the City Club of Portland.
A Series of Four Film-Dialogue Evenings sponsored by City Club of Portland’s Agora Programs Education Committee
This series aims to activate a deeper, sustained educator-student-citizen dialogue about what a good education for the 21st century looks like. The series includes portraits of highly successful schools and classrooms, both in our region and around the world, followed by presentations by a panel of educators, students, and community leaders and dialogue between audience participants and our panelists. Portraits like these can inspire ongoing civic dialogues on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead as educators and citizens alike rethink and transform our educational system so that all students can enjoy excellence, engagement, and equity in our schools.
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Category:
professional development for educators, research, student achievement, Student Success |
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Tags: 2 million minutes, Carol Withrell, Chalkboard Project, City Club of Portland, Communities and Parents for Public Schools, COSA, Ethos Music, Film Series, Friends of the Children, I have a dream foundation, IDEA, PPS, Project-based learning, PSU, stand for children, The Finland Phenomenon, Volunteers of America
The other day I was talking to a colleague when he referenced how a teacher he supervises had been in a conundrum. Wanting to be innovative, that teacher had assigned a film project but did not have enough cameras for her students. My colleague had walked in and seen her angst, but then suggested that she ask if any students had a smartphone. Surprised that he would suggest this, she asked her class and several students raised their hands. My colleague then told her, “problem solved.”
I wish that more administrators were like my colleague. While I have been fortunate to work with schools that have been taking strides to update their technological infrastructure, my experience walking through many schools is unsettling. In an age where technological expertise is a select ticket to rapid employment and economic opportunity, our schools are rarely beacons of progress. As tech geeks like myself eagerly await the promise of the next round of iPads, schools are still hampered by draconian rules that ban smartphones and a teaching community that crawls rather than bounds toward technological integration.
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Category:
education technology, professional development for educators, Teacher Effectiveness, teaching strategies |
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Tags: education technology, iPads in the classroom, Roosevelt High School, Shawn Daley
I recently toured a nonprofit in Medford called Kids Unlimited. KU identifies traditionally disadvantaged students at an early age and provides them with extra-curricular activities, academic support and mentorship in hope that they will stay in school and earn diplomas. Of the first 18 students who entered the KU program ten years ago, 12 of them graduated from high school, and KU’s success has only grown since then. It took me two minutes with the KU founder, Tom Cole, to recognize that he is a gem of a leader – visionary, committed, charismatic, and no-nonsense. I asked him what he thinks is the key to KU’s success. He gave a one word response – relationships.
I’ve been thinking about that word a lot lately. I’ve shared this story with others. When I got to “relationships” in the story one colleague responded, “You can’t teach that.”
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Category:
professional development for educators |
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Tags: accountability, kids unlimited, mentoring, relationships, relationships in the classroom, todd jones, tom cole
I had lunch recently with an American friend working in Singapore. I explained to him how I conduct an international trade simulation with my economics students, and in the simulation, Singapore is one of the economic powerhouses. I asked him about the Singapore government, and whether it helps or hinders economic growth in that city-state.
He replied that government is one of Singapore’s strengths. How do they do it, I asked, when in much of the world government is viewed, at worst, as helplessly corrupt, and at best, inept.
It’s simple, he said. The Singapore government pulls the best and brightest from their high schools, sends them all over the world for top-notch higher education, then obligates them to serve in the government in exchange for the education, albeit with handsome salaries and benefits. The education, he explained, is to keep candidates beholden to the state, while the salaries are to keep them content and above reproach. The result, he suggested, is one of the most efficient and effective governments in the world.
Interesting model. Why not apply it to education?
Category:
career paths for teachers, professional development for educators, teacher compensation, teacher preparation |
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Tags: higher education, inspiration, international, professional development, teacher career paths, teacher preparation
Why can’t we fix the teacher evaluation system? Maybe our newest tool, the 2010 Model Core Teaching Standards from the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Committee (InTASC) will be the fix. These standards, adopted as the evaluation tool for graduates of Oregon Colleges of Education and the proposed basis for teacher evaluation in all Oregon school districts, may help. The process, though, can have both positive and negative consequences.
First, the positive. A set of “professional practice standards, setting one standard for performance that will look differently at different developmental stages of the teacher’s career” (Council of Chief State Officers, Model Core Teaching Standards, p.1) can develop a common language for K-12 educators and teacher preparation programs. Such a common language would be helpful to the many mentor teachers who so carefully guide our novice teachers through their first student teaching experiences. Right now we in the Colleges of Education have forms that reflect TSPC (Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, the licensing agency) requirements with descriptors that often do not parallel those used in the daily practice of classrooms. How much better it would be to have the new teacher, the veteran teacher, and the university supervisor speaking the same language.
The standards for judgment also could become clearer if those standards reflected “stages of development.” Instead of the student teacher equating the evaluation scale with a grade (“I want a 6 because that means an A”), the scale could reflect teachers’ growth process as an educator. Too many people assume that, because both the new and the veteran teacher have job descriptions that are exactly alike, all teachers at initial licensure will perform exactly like a more veteran teacher. While more years of service do not guarantee greater proficiency, allowing for well-described and well-understood standards of development should open doors to better evaluation and enhanced professional development. Just as state standards for curriculum have allowed for a more common understanding among teachers of what an average third grader or tenth grader should know, the application of these standards can allow better conversation about teachers’ work.
Now, the negative.
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Category:
professional development for educators, teacher performance evaluations |
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Tags: model core teaching standards, professional development, teacher effectiveness, teacher evaluations, teacher preparation
I love reform. I’m excited that as a state and nation we are looking at making changes to public education. But sometimes in moving forward, it’s good to look back.
I’ve been moved to look back at my earlier career by the publicity around Jose Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and product of the California middle school where I taught. I’ve been thinking about the Jose days (mid-90s) and the staff and organization of that school. Of course, he is only one student, but there were many new immigrant kids who did quite well there. So what were we doing there that worked?
One thing that we did have was lots of faculty communication across the grade levels. I taught an intense and rigorous program partly because it was jointly developed by all the teachers on the 5th grade team. We met every Wednesday during prep, opened our plan books and shared. As a 5th grade teacher in a 5-8th grade school, I was reminded in staff meetings and in passing about where kids needed to be in order to be successful in later grades. There was a mindset that we were preparing kids for college. It helped that we were a Silicon Valley school sitting in the shadow of Yahoo, Netscape and SGI, where innovation and hard work were cultural norms in the neighborhood.
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Category:
education reform, professional development for educators, student achievement, teaching strategies |
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Tags: collaborative culture, college readiness, education reform, inspiration, professional development, reflection, student achievement, student engagement, teacher career paths, teaching strategies
In continuing my take on Marc Tucker’s report “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants” (read a summary here), I wanted to focus this post on his suggestions for teacher education programs in the United States. (See my previous post about his opinion on charter schools and teacher pay.)
As an education professor, my interest piqued with Tucker’s focus on Schools of Education. Since joining the faculty at Concordia University last year (after ten years as a high school teacher), I have been more aware of the critical roles that teacher preparation programs play in establishing the character and skills of teachers as they enter into the profession. Thus, Tucker’s decision to devote time to their strengths and weaknesses provided an opportunity for me to examine my own practice as well as the state of all schools working to prepare educators.
Among several observations, Tucker concludes that standards for teacher preparation programs need to be higher. He explains that a low bar has led to teachers who are coming from the bottom third of college entrants, and that their mastery of content knowledge is suspect. Tucker argues that low expectations within colleges of education nationally have also led to these colleges being seen by universities as “second class citizens” on campus as well, which leads to fewer institutional supports (research grants, etc). All of these issues contribute to teachers being ill-equipped to succeed in the classroom.
Tucker has several proposals to address these issues. (more…)
Category:
career paths for teachers, professional development for educators, teacher preparation |
3 Comments »
Tags: education standards, international education systems, national curriculum, schools of education, teacher career paths, teacher preparation
It’s been a dramatic time for education in Oregon. We have seen lots of change, coming fast and furious from the Legislature, and much of it remains to be sorted out in terms of its actual impact on student achievement. But it certainly gives us hope—hope that Oregon can have a public school system among the best in the nation.
We give thanks to our state’s leaders for feeling the urgency we believe has been building all across this state for a higher quality system of K-12 schools. We give thanks to the teachers and leaders who are on the front lines of our schools every day, helping point the way to the supports children need to learn to their full capacity. We give thanks to the parents and citizens of this state who continue to send their children to public schools and have a collective will to make them strong. Together, we make up a community that has faith that every child can learn, and now, more commitment and momentum to make that goal a reality.
Our task ahead is perhaps harder than pushing these reforms through the legislative process—we must work together to implement them in a way that improves the learning experience for each child. We are delighted that among the reforms passed to do this are two of Chalkboard’s priorities to ensure we have an effective, quality teacher in every class, every school day.
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Category:
Chalkboard Project, CLASS Project, education reform, Legislative, professional development for educators, student achievement |
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Tags: Chalkboard Project, CLASS, education partnerships, education reform, Oregon schools, political priorities, student achievement, teacher career paths, teacher effectiveness
There is so much education research out there focused on the myriad details that it’s hard to keep track of it all. But the latest study that’s generating buzz—and standing out—in reform circles zooms out and examines education from a big picture, global perspective.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform by Marc S. Tucker is a report that actually stems from the last two chapters of a book that will be published in September by Harvard Education Press. The project began when Education Secretary Arne Duncan asked the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development to study the education strategies that other countries have used to outpace us.
American students are now ranked below those in almost 40 developed nations in terms of science, math and reading according to a study by the Programme for International Student Assessment, and this new report shows that the most popular tactics in the US—like smaller class sizes and charter schools—are not making the significant difference that has been hoped for.
The National Center on Education and Economy, a Washington DC think tank, picked up the work and focused on education systems in the highest performing countries—Finland, Singapore, Japan, China (Shanghai), and Canada (Ontario)—to see what we may learn from their successes.
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Category:
career paths for teachers, education reform, professional development for educators, research, Teacher Effectiveness, teacher preparation |
11 Comments »
Tags: curriculum standards, education reform, inspiration, international education systems, professional development, research, teacher career paths, teacher effectiveness, teaching strategies
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