Standard 1: Teacher Leadership

Teacher leaders assume the roles and responsibilities of collaborative leaders in schools and communities. Teachers demonstrate leadership in their classrooms, schools and professional organizations; they advocate for students and effective educational practices and policies; and they are role models for ethical leadership. Indicators are:


Professional Development Workshop: First you have to teach them how to learn ... then you can teach them your content
From RE 5730 Reading and Writing Instruction for Intermediate and Advanced Learners


Context:

This document provides an outline and plan for conducting and following up a professional development workshop on the topic of teaching strategies. It gives a theoretical perspective on why it is important to give students learning strategies.  The perspective is based on a survey of current research on the topic. As a result, the concepts and activities are all from research-based practice. The premise of the professional development is that teachers must make time in the instructional day for giving students direct instruction in learning strategies. One can almost hear teachers howling about how there isn't enough time to teach already, and now there is one more thing to teach students! But rather than time wasted, this valuable effort will pay itself back later in more productive and efficient students who know how to learn what it is that one is trying to teach them. My selling point on this workshop will be, "Teachers don't have time not to teach these strategies."


Rationale: 

As a high school teacher in a reading master's program with lots and lots of elementary school teachers, this class was "meat and potatoes" for me. I found it refreshing to be treading on familiar ground by studying the high school setting. An added benefit is that this course went right to the core of what I believe is important in the high school classroom, regardless of content area. We studied effective practice, how to really engage students and a plethora of effective strategies.

This artifact meets the requirements for this standard on two fronts. First by teaching students effective strategies for acquiring knowledge, practicing concepts and working with content area material, their learning will be directly affected. I used these strategies in my classroom and found them transformational. On the second front, I felt  this work was particularly useful because it would allow me to better teach my own students and to fully participate in my building and beyond as a member of professional learning communities (PLC). Our school system has required professional development days, and this workshop is on the list of possible offerings for the mandatory training days for the next school year. Most of the strategies I offered came from my research sources and Doug Beuhl's excellent volume, Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning, a required text by Dr. Moorman for the course. 

Many teachers complain that students won't work or don't know how to work. These strategies are the answer to that problem. The strategies offered in this professional development were selected for maximum learning payoff with the least amount of classroom time entailed. Teachers who instruct students in how to learn something are teaching them not only a valuable classroom skill, but also an essential life skill. 

I already have shared some of the learning strategies such as Hands-On Reading, repetition of content through instructional games and flow charting of step-by-step processes with colleagues in my building. I also have shared some of these ideas on a PLC Moodle from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill for Family and Consumer Science teachers across the state. That experience has taught me fully the value of a PLC. Teachers from across the state requested my documents to use in their classrooms, and I received back ideas from them that have refined and improved my own teaching practice. None of that would have been possible without the work of this class. I received more than 10 individual requests for the documents from people who read my post on the Moodle, but could not open the attached documents. They emailed me directly requesting the documents.

The following is an exerpt of an email I received requesting the support documents for the strategy.

    "Kamin Rogers [email protected]
     Feb 21
     to me
        Good Morning,

        I just read your Moodle post about using the Flow Chart LOVE IT! I was looking for         the attachment and did not see it.I was wondering if you could email it to me?"

Another request noted the writer "couldn't wait" to try the strategy with her students.

I found that this strategy had a direct positive influence on me and my students in our laboratory work. We have a large kitchen lab where our Foods students cook every week. One of my most common frustrations used to be students who wanted me to read their recipe or to tell them each step to take.  No matter how I addressed it (reading recipe to them, making them read recipe out loud to each other, making them copy recipe); it remained a problem. I would not read the recipe or tell students what to do, but that didn't stop them from asking.  I found that I was spending a lot of time telling students, "READ YOUR RECIPE!" I introduced a strategy from my professional development workshop called Hands-On Reading and adapted it by having students then flow chart their recipes. The very next lab, I found I had been transformed from my previous role as a mobile recipe consultant. I had time to monitor student work, make suggestions, demonstrate techniques and reinforce classroom concepts. In other words, I was actually teaching.

Policy Paper: No One Is Learning the Teacher’s Lesson when the Disruptive Student is on Stage: A Policy Analysis

From RE 5533 Politics of Literacy

Context:

This paper was an assignment resulting from Dr. Moorman's directly stated intention of motivating us to observe, analyze and advocate in response to the ways that education policy affected us as teachers, our students as learners, our classrooms as environments and our schools as part of the larger education community.  At the time of this course and assignment, I had a classroom of particularly difficult students who were repeating English 1 after either failure to pass the coursework or failure to pass the mandatory End of Course exam – or both. These students were a testament to the boundaries, ineffectualness, and practicalities of school, district and national educational policy as it relates to discipline and disruption. Since the policy paper topic was self-selected, I decided to focus on what was a pressing issue for me – disruptive students and how policy tries to manage their impact on their own learning, the learning of others and the teacher.

Rationale:

This artifact is directly related to the standard's component that compels a teacher to, "Set goals and establish priorities while promoting educational initiatives that positively affect student learning." When I was thinking about what topic to address for my policy paper, I remembered some teaching wisdom that I used in the policy paper. It was a cautionary note on the fact that every classroom has a leader -- but that person isn't always the teacher. It was on my mind because I had that classroom of English 1 Repeaters. Each day they wore me out. I would be physically, mentally and emotionally drained when they left my room. On particularly bad days, I wasn't exactly sure I was the leader. I felt most days like I had been trying to herd cats, and it seemed as if I was always "putting out fires."

Through teaching that class while conducting research, I believe my practice matured dramatically, and I developed a newfound respect for the usefulness of research. My research helped me to avoid blaming the student -- and to stay focused on my ultimate goal.

The classroom had 15 boys and two girls (a disastrous makeup on several fronts); was taught fourth period (when students are wired up and ready to go home); and was solely comprised of repeating students (oh joy).

I remember complaining to the vice principal who schedule the course about the two girls and the fourth period placement.
    "Bill -- fourth period repeaters, I'll have to peel them off the ceiling." His reply, "At least       they'll be awake."
    "Bill -- fifteen boys and two girls? Can you get rid of those girls?" His reply, "Looked at       that already, Ms. Hadley, there's nothing I can do."

So off we went. It wasn't easy; and it wasn't pretty. But I used that policy research to my advantage. In my research, I ran across all kinds of useful tidbits about dealing with difficult students that I turned into practice, strategies and outright experiments. Some of it didn't get into the paper, but still proved to be useful. It was in that research that I encountered the idea of purposeful failure -- the student who fails on purpose and uses a myriad of excuses to preserve self-esteem. Those excuses were listed, and I heard most of them that semester.

I confronted them directly with my knowledge of their excuses both as a whole class and in private conversations and parent conferences. I used my knowledge from research to try to avoid sending students to detention or referring them for ISS because I knew that research shows that OSS is a strong indicator for eventual drop out. I was keeping in mind these words from my policy paper when a writer noted that suspension "has been linked to a variety of negative outcomes for students, including academic failure, negative school attitudes, grade retention and an increased school dropout rate. "Instead, I relied heavily on walk-throughs from principals, private conferences, and the every day premise that they needed to be really busy, so they wouldn't have time to make trouble."

I also thought carefully about their instructional level. When I realized they couldn't identify the parts of speech, we diagrammed sentences.  I asked other teachers to help me talk with students and to let disruptive students come to their rooms instead of ISS. I used a lot of writing and learned first-hand the importance of being planned to the maximum extent.

That class made 70 percent mastery on the English 1 EOC that semester. It was a fact that my principal, department head and I all found astounding. I attribute it in part to my study in Politics of Literacy. Having researched and thought deeply about education policy in regard to disruptive students, I was very selective about how I used the disciplinary tools available to me.  I was very honest with those students -- and I didn't give up on them. I taught them every day, and eventually it paid off.