Monday, October 14, 2013
Principles 2 and 3: Teaching & Learning Leadership, Curriculum Leadership
Principle 2 is based upon the premise that a highly effective education leader is skilled at supporting the growth of every teacher (p.22). What experiences have you had in engaging teacher teams in the collaborative development and implementation of instructional strategies needed to support every learner? Have you been able to facilitate teacher growth in their content knowledge or implementation of best practices? What works, and what’s challenging? As you read this section, was there a particular Stage 2 or 3 Indicator strategy that resonated with you … why did that have meaning for you?
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On page 26 it state states that "when teachers engage regularly in authentic joint work, focused on explicit, common learning goals, their collaboration pays off in the form of high-quality solutions to instructional problems, increased teacher confidence, and remarkable gains in student achievement." The building that I work in has implemented a peer observation process that has been very successful. We have been assigned to teams of 3 or 4 teachers from different grade levels. The team members take turns teaching a lesson that the others observe. We have a pre-observation meeting to discuss the lesson. The teacher that is teaching may or may not ask us to look for specifics during the lesson. Similarly, the others in the group may have asked to observe certain elements of teaching. Immediately after the observation we have a conference to share thoughts and ask questions. Many of the discussions are focused on formative assessment practices which has been a significant focus for our staff over the last 2 years. This has been a very powerful process for all of the teachers. It has forced us to be self-reflective and collaborative about our work. Much of the reading in this section speaks to the benefits of collaboration and this process that has been put into place in my building is evidence to support this argument.
ReplyDeleteMarilyn Curtis and Jen Robitaille worked collaboratively on the response.
ReplyDeleteWe both worked beyond our classroom and school by being teacher leaders at the Western Maine Educational Collaborative's Math Academy held during the summer. The intent of this academy was to work with many school district math teachers to foster instruction around best practices and the use of effective teaching strategies. Part of the academy also involved planning how teachers would go back to their own districts and use and share their learning with colleagues. We also had several follow-up sessions to check in where teachers were in the implementation and sharing with colleagues, providing the continual professional development to improve their mathematical teaching and leading. This academy was built around both Principle 2 and 3, specifically to "ensure relevant and meaningful mathematics [are] in every lesson". We focused on the Mathematical Practices and misconceptions and really worked at getting to know students and the programs they were using. We then were able to follow up with the teachers and their school districts to answer questions and clarify any ideas around mathematics teaching. This leadership has helped me to push forward to work outside classroom teaching to work with many other teachers and districts as a math leader. This work has led Marilyn to begin working as an adjunct educator with an outreach graduate class at UMF.
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ReplyDeleteWe've been working here in RSU 38 on teacher collaboration around science. It's been fun, and challenging.
ReplyDeleteSuccess: we're talking about how kids learn science, we're building relationships, and we're having fun. Teachers are stating that they feel more confident about content knowledge
Challenges: we're tired, stressed for time and energy, and we're not all skilled at the same level. (For example, I am not great at writing procedures for younger learners...)
The indicator that resonates with me... Page 36, "Ensure coherent and consistent implementations of the local curriculum by all teachers." We're working together to get to this goal. With a history of independent sending schools, the "new" RSU structure means that all kids are supposed to be seeing the same curriculum at relatively the same time in their education. At the elementary school, we're struggling to make this happen. But, we'll get there!
Reply to Nancy, since the link won't work... Erk! Nancy, I'm so excited to hear that the peer observation model is working for your team. We've just started it and have found lots of resistance. What did you do to get around the resistance of institutional inertia?
ReplyDeleteHave a good one,
Jean