Rural schools seeking
Midland Community Schools is highlighted in this Iowa Public Radio segment on rural school challenges. Leasha Henriksen of the UNI TQP Team is included promoting our project to potential field experience students as well as Brian Rodenberg, Superintendent, and Kelli Kelck, Midland teacher.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
Bugs
Bugs . . . bugs are on my mind.
Partly because today we had a praying mantis on the window of our fifth floor office in the Schindler Education Center on UNI's campus. As a biology teacher and naturalist I was instantly enamored.
The other reason is that something has been bugging me. The type of thing that has not necessarily been definable but just out there troubling me. Yesterday Leasha Henriksen and I were able to have a great discussion about the future of education in and the opportunities for change in Iowa. We were able to articulate two great questions that sprung for our talk. Amazingly today we read an article by Steve Denning http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/09/01/the-single-best-idea-for-reforming-k-12-education/ that touched on many of the points we had covered! (Thank you, Steve Denning, for helping me articulate some of my frustration.)
At issue is the "factory model of management" that has become the norm in our schools. This system is not necessarily healthy, effective or efficient. It can also be disheartening to the people within it. Denning suggests that one way to make the system more effective is by inspiring lifelong learning in our schools. Seems simple enough. Why do we need to block the way for this to happen with things like evaluation systems and tighter controls that inhibit creativity? As Denning puts it, lets stop our focus on things and shift our focus to people.
Partly because today we had a praying mantis on the window of our fifth floor office in the Schindler Education Center on UNI's campus. As a biology teacher and naturalist I was instantly enamored.
The other reason is that something has been bugging me. The type of thing that has not necessarily been definable but just out there troubling me. Yesterday Leasha Henriksen and I were able to have a great discussion about the future of education in and the opportunities for change in Iowa. We were able to articulate two great questions that sprung for our talk. Amazingly today we read an article by Steve Denning http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/09/01/the-single-best-idea-for-reforming-k-12-education/ that touched on many of the points we had covered! (Thank you, Steve Denning, for helping me articulate some of my frustration.)
At issue is the "factory model of management" that has become the norm in our schools. This system is not necessarily healthy, effective or efficient. It can also be disheartening to the people within it. Denning suggests that one way to make the system more effective is by inspiring lifelong learning in our schools. Seems simple enough. Why do we need to block the way for this to happen with things like evaluation systems and tighter controls that inhibit creativity? As Denning puts it, lets stop our focus on things and shift our focus to people.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Roll With It
On Tuesday I went to Marshalltown to meet with 19 student teachers that have been selected to serve as an experimental group from UNI for the teacher performance assessment from TPAC (Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium). My theme for the night was "Roll With It". This is the first opportunity for UNI to use this evaluation document and I ended up referring to it as TWS on steroids. TWS (Teacher Work Sample) is the expected end product of all other current UNI student teachers. The "steroids" is a reference to two distinct differences that the TPA offers from the TWS: inclusion of academic language and documentation of performance through video.
I began the evening with small groups given a challenge. They were a task force created to determine what aspects would be seen in a classroom where effective teaching was witnessed. We then compared their lists to the key components of the TWS and the TPA. We noted all the similarities.
Then I emphasized the experimental nature of their opportunity to participate. Although I did this with a Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson, I did so in jest. This cartoon shows the experiment of early transportation where two people were tied by rope to a stone wheel on the top of the hill. We are going to "roll with it" although not blindly and not on top of a stone wheel rolling without concern for the passengers.
We ended the evening by viewing the subject specific handbooks and rubrics and answering questions. Keep these young pioneers in mind as they endeavor into the world of teaching entering in with the current national context of assessing performance with enhanced technology tools.
I took the opportunity to present to create my "first ever" Prezi. Although rough around the edges, I enjoyed the opportunity to create and play while bringing my thoughts together. http://prezi.com/gwk9vzvy8vek/teacher-performance-assessment/
I began the evening with small groups given a challenge. They were a task force created to determine what aspects would be seen in a classroom where effective teaching was witnessed. We then compared their lists to the key components of the TWS and the TPA. We noted all the similarities.
Then I emphasized the experimental nature of their opportunity to participate. Although I did this with a Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson, I did so in jest. This cartoon shows the experiment of early transportation where two people were tied by rope to a stone wheel on the top of the hill. We are going to "roll with it" although not blindly and not on top of a stone wheel rolling without concern for the passengers.
We ended the evening by viewing the subject specific handbooks and rubrics and answering questions. Keep these young pioneers in mind as they endeavor into the world of teaching entering in with the current national context of assessing performance with enhanced technology tools.
I took the opportunity to present to create my "first ever" Prezi. Although rough around the edges, I enjoyed the opportunity to create and play while bringing my thoughts together. http://prezi.com/gwk9vzvy8vek/teacher-performance-assessment/
Teacher or Teaching?
Our office has been having a discussion . . . should we be determining teacher (the noun) effectiveness or teaching (the verb) effectiveness? Weigh in . . .
Looking at Glass
Last week the Iowa TQP Team met with Jason Glass. It was my first time meeting our new Chief Learner, or Director, of the Iowa Department of Education. I had heard much and often read his tweets and occasionally read his blog so I had a sense of what I might expect. In my typical idealistic ways I decided to go in with an open mind and just listen to what his ideas were about teacher effectiveness and the direction of the grant. After all, how political could it be?
Everyone in the room agreed that Iowa needs a unified system of standards and evaluation from pre-service through career for educators. How we go about deriving these is where the division is apparent.
Currently there are disconnected pieces around the state. Higher education is tied to the InTASC standards. As an employee in PK-12 and AEA for much of the past 25 years, I had never heard of InTASC before last October when I began at UNI. Likewise, not all higher education folks have much working knowledge of the Iowa Teaching Standards, in part based on the Charlotte Danielson framework, by which all teachers in Iowa are evaluated. Each system offers highlights. Crosswalks between them show many similarities. Iowa has also joined on as a state in the Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium which is testing our subject based teacher performance assessments. Each of these also offer merit in the discussion. So where are we going? At this point it isn't clear, but (politically) we are expected to arrive there in 2013.
Our UNI TQP Team met yesterday to consider our direction and our hope to communicate what we understand about the goals of our current situation with the Iowa TQP grant. Here are the key points we would like to have known through our Looking Glass:
Everyone in the room agreed that Iowa needs a unified system of standards and evaluation from pre-service through career for educators. How we go about deriving these is where the division is apparent.
Currently there are disconnected pieces around the state. Higher education is tied to the InTASC standards. As an employee in PK-12 and AEA for much of the past 25 years, I had never heard of InTASC before last October when I began at UNI. Likewise, not all higher education folks have much working knowledge of the Iowa Teaching Standards, in part based on the Charlotte Danielson framework, by which all teachers in Iowa are evaluated. Each system offers highlights. Crosswalks between them show many similarities. Iowa has also joined on as a state in the Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium which is testing our subject based teacher performance assessments. Each of these also offer merit in the discussion. So where are we going? At this point it isn't clear, but (politically) we are expected to arrive there in 2013.
Our UNI TQP Team met yesterday to consider our direction and our hope to communicate what we understand about the goals of our current situation with the Iowa TQP grant. Here are the key points we would like to have known through our Looking Glass:
- The outcome of Goals 2 & 3 of the ITQP grant is the creation of a unified system of standards and evaluation for pre-service through career teachers.
- The use of the Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium’s teacher performance assessment handbook and rubrics, which are based on the InTASC standards, places us in the context of the national conversation around effective teaching.
- The UNI portion of the ITQP grant mandates collaboration with rural LEAs to build capacity for a full-scale implementation of the new standards and evaluation system.
It is high time I get back to my blog . . . so much has been happening that I just haven't taken the time to get back to this. Now I will pick up where I left off last~the interview process.
We were able to interview five quality candidates for the position of Field Placement Coordinator. Each person could easily have filled the position with their varied strengths. Three rose to the top and then began the process of calling references. Here is where the difference was made. One person overwhelmingly surfaced to the top. We were able to hire this person and she began August 15. The characteristics that I sought in this new employee:
- comfort with ambiguity
- ability to be flexible
- demonstrated skills with working with a variety of people and infrastructures
- collaborative demeanor
- experience with supervising, mentoring, or coaching
have all been displayed in her first few weeks. Welcome Leasha Henriksen to the UNI TQP Team!
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