Welcome during Recruitment

Yesterday Leasha, Lynne and I went as representatives of the TQP Team to Turkey Valley Schools. We were promoting the TQP project and "recruiting" or "courting" the faculty to consider joining as one of our ten partner districts.

When we entered the building we found this sign welcoming us and directing us to where the meeting was being held. This impressed me so much that I got out my iPad and snapped a photo.

TQP Team Retreat

Our TQP Team met recently to look at our goals in light of the changes on the horizon at our state level. We chose to revise our goals with actionable terms in essence allowing us to proceed with our work in a more guided way.

Here are the goals of the UNI TQP project:

• systematize a culture of effective teaching through continuous professional growth
• integrate the qualities of effecting teaching into pre-service programs
• utilize reciprocal networds to support effective teaching (the relationship piece)

The discussion was rich, the food was good and the setting peaceful as we got ourselves off campus and out of the hectic routine where we could work undisturbed by phone, email and the casual visitor. Although our work necessitates having phone, email and visitors, the moments when we can remove ourselves from these distractions and reflect on the meaning of our tasks are to be treasured.

Here is anticipating the next one!

Keys for Successful Project Leadership

Today I read a blog by Mike Figliuolo of ThoughtLeaders. I really liked how he suggested that project management is really not the matter at hand, rather project leadership. It made me wonder if I had been giving the leadership demanded for the TQP project. Sometimes it is good to touch base on progress.
He shared four key ideas for successful project management.

• Define Success
• leaders set the direction and set the bar as well as determine the metrics for success
• Procure Resources
• listen to what the team needs
• negotiate to get everything they need to be successful
• Dress like a Fire Fighter
• leaders manage change
• leaders advocate
• leaders fight fires should to shoulder with team members
• Sing Their Praises
• be there when team members are successful and make sure people know about it
• team members see their hard work is recognized, valued and rewarded

From these four points I can see that I have growth to attain in my leadership of the UNI TQP project. My strengths are not goal setting and measuring success but I will work to change this. The other three areas I feel I do quite well. Fortunately, as a grant project we have many of the resources necessary already. Listening and advocating come naturally to me as does encouraging and celebrating successes.

A new development created by team members is that of a recruitment video. This piece was created to get the message out about student perspective about our experiences of Level 3 students including reflective conversations with cooperating teachers & immersive field experience that may include community home stays. If you have 5 minutes, please take a look at the video. You will learn quite a bit about our approach this Fall 2011 semester.   TQP Promo Video

Happy Holidays, 2011

Greeting card made with Smilebox

End of November

Where has November gone?

For those of you that follow me on Facebook you know that 11!11!11! had significance to me . . . the day came and proved to be spectacular! I had the day off and I was able to share with many friends and family members as well as was able to make new friends.

Some highlights from this month (some professional, some personal~how does one separate this anyway?)

• celebrated my eldest child's birthday 11/1/11
• attended Tripoli High School's Musical and assisted with the dinner theater, November 4&5
• attended my children's school conferences with many of their teachers (they are in 9th & 10th grade)
• attended the National Association for Interpretation national conference for one day in St. Paul~preparing for my adjunct course next semester (Intro to Natural History Interpretation) and connecting with friends
• on my return from St. Paul, 8 miles from home, deer meets Prius ($3800 damage; in shop November 11-28)
• 11!11!11! celebration
• Tripoli state VB Champions!! (attended November 10 & 12)
• Welcome baby shower to TQP family member Nora Mourlam (born 10/4/11)
• attended Benchmark training for the Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium (TPAC) in San Antonio~met new friends and thought deeply about what good teaching of science looks like
• attended movie "Breaking Dawn" with my daughters (not that good)
• watched my daughter, Megan, play her first JV BB game, November 22 (victory)
• my son, Austin, 15 get pneumonia and so in the hospital with him November 23-27~most unusual Thanksgiving ever
• completed my philosophy of educational leadership for my course (check my prezi: http://prezi.com/oo-xuyth6uzx/model-the-way-encourage-the-heart/
• attended first Tripoli varsity games at CAL, November 29 (victory)
• approval of the TQP IRB for UNI student clinical experiences! November 30

Life is a special occasion . . . celebrate!

Motherly Instincts and Education

 "In the final analysis, civilization itself will be measured by the way in which children live and by what chances they have in the world."  
                                                     Mary Heaton Vorse


This quote was used in a presentation by Dr. Marilyn Cochran-Smith while attending the TPAC Implementation Conference in San Diego. This thought has been turning around in my mind over the past several days and I caught myself mulling over it again today as I contemplated my "mothers" day. On this day nineteen years ago I became a mother . . . perhaps the most uniquely profound identifying experience I have had in my lifetime. The lens of a mother is like no other. The perspective of balancing holding on and letting go with the knowledge that providing the roots that will allow wings to grow is a huge measure of parenting success and one that allows me to fall back and regain focus when needed. The fierce fury of a mother moose or bear protecting their young alongside the nurturing notions that prods the progeny on to greatness is an image that I cling to and moves me on to fulfill my vision of leaving a message on Earth that "I was here".

As proud as I am of the three blessings that I am raising and sharing life's journey, I also find my mind turning to those that I have been fortunate to have taught in school. Last night while trick-or-treating, two siblings that have since begun raising their families, came by my house. The spark in their eyes upon recognition and the warm embrace and fond memories certainly filled my heart just as the recent time when driving through a local fast food window and greeted by a former student who exclaimed, "you were the best I ever knew!" allows my smile to shine stronger. The stories may go on and on until I stop to contemplate: what about those I didn't reach? What could I have done differently? 


So how might the entire profession of educators go about making certain that EACH child has extraordinary chances for success? This should be toward what we endeavor rather than belittling ourselves into the politics of which standards and which and how many test scores will matter. We need to move beyond the assembly line production thought to the individual creative process that is uniquely human for EACH child that exists. This will not necessarily be more work if we open our hearts and minds to view this as a labor of love. . . the type of love that mothers know best.





 

Happy Halloween

TQP Super Heroes!

Happy Halloween to each of you~

Here in our office we are celebrating both Halloween and our first successful Field Test with the TQP grant.

In the past few weeks 35 UNI Level 3 students were placed with 28 educators in our five rural partner districts: CAL, HLV, Midland, Springville, and West Fork. Nineteen of these students also stayed in the community with a staff or community member to further experience the life in a rural community.

Some of the highlights of this initial field test include:

•  district administrators praising the merits of the program
• UNI students participating in evening school activities with students
• elementary students wanting their new teachers to return
• home stay hosting families indicating that UNI students were well-mannered and gracious
• news reporters wanting to do stories about the new experience in the rural area
• married UNI students giving up family life for a week to truly experience the rural area as opposed to their life in Waterloo

There is much more information to gather from this field test but thanks to our Super Heroes we have the first round completed and ready for study to improve for the spring.

Leasha Henriksen: Field Placement Coordinator (recruited UNI students, matched them with cooperating teachers and coordinated home stay visits)
Leanne Lewis: coordinated all the travel arrangements, created the copies of consent forms, and in charge of storing and managing all financial and technical grant information
Daniel Mourlam: Technology Specialist (researched the appropriate equipment to record the lessons of our students, purchased the equipment, inventoried it and created manuals for the use of the recording and uploading tools)
Stacey Snyder: that's me . . . I surround myself with capable people and get out of their way! We actually work together well to get all pieces of the system to be in place to be able to gather data to inform the education profession.

Initiatives

This week the Governor's Office ushered out two initiatives.

The first, on Monday, October 3, consisted of a new plan for education transformation. You can read more about it here; or if you are on Twitter, check out the hashtag #IAedfuture for intriguing dialogue among educational leaders. This initiative seems so complex and so debatable on the merits of the plan.

The second came today, Friday, October 7. This was the Start Somewhere Walk initiative to make Iowa the Healthiest State. This initiative seems so simple and embraceable in its roots. Start somewhere and begin to get healthy. What a great message for our young learners.

Can the same be said for the blueprint? Is it a true original? Is the state of Iowa education as bleak as the measures used to describe it? Is the "solution" too prescriptive? Are we being allowed to grow through innovation, creativity and collaboration?

Let me know your thoughts~

In the meantime, here is a picture of some of our UNI TQP members after the walk today.

Have a glorious weekend!

One Year In The Life of TQP

It has been a year since I began my new position at UNI. As I reflect on what brought me here and the hopes of where we might take this program I am both bolstered and bewildered.

This takes some explanation. The opportunity to bring pK-12 and IHE to the same table is what brought me here in the first place. Some might say that would be "pie in the sky" thinking but what can I say? I am an optimistic idealist. So to that end, I can say we have made progress toward that. We have created partnerships between UNI faculty and staff and five rural, Iowa districts (CAL, HLV, Midland, Springville and West Fork). Having the chance to collaborate and talk about what each needs from one another may be a beginning of transforming teacher preparation at UNI.

I am also bewildered at the same prospect. Although our scale is small, if we get it right, there are implications for all Iowa districts and teacher prep programs. This is one aspect of the bewilderment. The other aspect is that of the newly-released (October 3) blueprint for educational transformation "One Unshakable Vision". Where is the opportunity to innovate? To create new connections without the evaluative ties of previous programs. Where is the student-centeredness that our youth so deserve? Much has been tweeted, chatted, and dialogued over the past few days and I feel the sense that more of us are not willing to sit and let it just happen to us.

Truly, the bolstering is stronger than the bewilderment. Here is a list of the UNI TQP Accomplishments in our first year:

• Hiring of staff (Program Manager, Project Coordinator, Technology Specialist, and Field Placement Coordinator)
• Completion of a research document outlining suggestions for transformative change
• Securing of 5 rural districts to serve with us as partners
• Recruitment of 12 UNI Faculty to have their Level 3 Methods students placed in the 5 partner districts
• Familiarization with the TPAC teacher performance assessment handbooks and development of a pre- student teaching document to use in the Fall 2011 Field Test
• Determination of how the video component of the field experience will be captured and uploaded
• Placement of 35 UNI Level 3 students in our 5 partner districts (ready for the field test to run October 17-November 4)

It has been an interesting year full of new people with which to interact, collaborate and grow. There have been moments when dealing with the ambiguity of the situation was nearly overwhelming. And yet now having come through those moments to see the opportunity to learn and create is truly powerful. Here is to year two!

Rural schools seeking

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.

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.

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/

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:

•       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!

Applicant Pool

The Teacher Quality Partnership Team is seeking to hire a Field Placement Coordinator. I have often wondered what it would be like to have the opportunity to screen, interview and hire someone . . . and now I am living that moment.

For the past two days I have been reviewing materials from twenty-seven applicants. Reading letters and resumes has given me a new perspective on communicating and promoting one's self. When you rely only on the written word to allow others to get to know you, every word counts. Each word and how it connects to others is critical. Whether the word is spelled accurately or used in the proper context also leaves an impression. This reinforces the value and importance of proof reading your materials before submission.

Today I was able to make some phone calls to check some details for clarification. This made the people almost materialize off the paper. It made me excited to be able to make decisions about which ones to interview and be able to meet in person.

This is an exciting time . . . one that has caused me to pause and reflect. The reflection is on things that have gone well and the challenges of working for a grant project as well as what type of person will work well with the current team. What skills are the ones that we most need? Currently I see those as

• 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

Three Key Women and Their Affect on Teacher Effectiveness

Yesterday was the first day of the Mentoring and Induction Institute at the Park Place Conference Center in Cedar Falls. It was an amazing day and one highlighted for me by three women and their perspective on teacher effectiveness.

Linda Darling Hammond began the conference through a live web-based presentation. She was able to make this environment work and to personalize her message to our event within a national lens. She offered these ten points as to what effective teachers do:
1) offer authentic learning experiences
2) provide intellectually ambitious tasks
3) use of a variety of strategies
4) assess learning to adapt and change and inform instruction
5) create scaffolding supports and sequences
6) provide standards and models on high quality work and offer feedback and opportunities for self analysis
7) develop collaborative classrooms
8) build links to families and communities
9) know students well
10) use each other as collaborative partners (teaching is a team sport!)

Then I was able to interact briefly at two times with Mildred Middleton, a generous educator of nearly 98 years (her birthday is 7/4)! She became UNI emeritus status through teaching as an adjunct and still passionately engages in education today.

Her message is given through a golden key (a treasure to keep forever) . . . it is a teacher's job to know when to "lock" and "unlock" the mind. Wow! Her thoughts brought tears to my eyes as the emotions of seeing both my grandmothers in her . . .  Later in the day she sat at the grand piano and played as many of us gathered to sing along.

Sarah Brown Wessling closed the night with her thoughts and perspectives of Teaching Spaces. She is the 2010 National Teacher of the Year and she has had a variety of opportunities to travel and reflect about teaching around the country and the world. Some points from her amazing sharing:

• We must meet learners where they are
• Our learners are worth being listened to
• We need to be the lead learner in our classroom
• In Iowa we GROW teachers (like corn)
• Intellectual Risk Taking as a teacher disposition
• We must nurture what we love
• Give permission to fail 
• We are architects, and architects are philosophers first
• Her secret is about deliberateness
• An extra set of eyes can open our world
• Make the implicit explicit through parallel experiences
• Stacking means filling compartments, layering creates beauty
• Humility is at the center of great teaching
• Voice is earned. Be present!
• We all have a lens . . . use it to help learners grow~

Thank you, ladies, my soul resonates with your thoughts and actions. You are true role models and leaders in our profession.

Universal Design for Learning

Today's session for the faculty redesign summit was Universal Design for Learning. Phyllis Anderson, a member of the CAST Faculty for UDL, served as our consultant.

Some new learning for me:

• this is a new way of thinking
• a conceptual framework to understand an approach to educating for all
• this approach originated in architecture 
• the principles offer the perspective that the curriculum is disabled, not people
• UDL offers the ultimate learning context for all to learn

There certainly is a plethora of resources available to use.

We spent several hours perusing what would the resources would offer.

Faculty Redesign Summit

Wow!

Day two of the summit is now completed. It has been good~very good!

Agenda June 1
     Introduction, Welcome
     Change and Design
     Teaching 2030
     Teacher Effectiveness
     Iowa Core: Content, Constructs, Characteristics

Agenda June 2
     Teacher Performance Assessment (TWS & TPA)
     Rural Education Realities with representatives from our partner districts
     Distribution of iPads

We have a wonderful group of twelve faculty that have been very open to the new ideas and actively participating in our discussions.

Some highlights include:

• Welcome and Introduction included four quotes and about change and growth. Each was to individually pick the one that resonated with them the most and physically go to that location. In small groups share the meaning behind it and then share out to the large group. Analogous to ooblek and stretch. Point brought back to design and Pink's book "A Whole New Mind". Designers are change agents. Change is both utilitarian and significant . . . with the ultimate goal of changing the world.
• Sharing of the pride for and passion about the partner districts. Each of our five partner districts (West Fork, Midland, Springville, CAL, HLV) gave a presentation about what they would like us to know about them. Phenomenal! From foundations being started to assist the school so that the tax base would not increase, to the donors that make certain that students are able to travel to Hancher Auditorium for cultural events and Washington DC, to the power of 1:1 initiatives for motivation for learning, to the stories of first generation high school graduates, we are fortunate to have the opportunity to partner with these people.
• The modeling of blended learning through the use of Blackboard Learn to house some of our course. Dan and I learned about it the week before and it is gratifying to be able to put it to such relevant use.
• The arrival of the iPads! These will be tools for the work in the districts. I received one too!

Tomorrow the highlight is UDL, Monday will be blended learning and using technology tools, and Tuesday will be Response to Intervention.

After all the dreaming and hoping and planning, it is good to see some of the pieces falling into place.

TQP Updates

As I said in my earlier post today, I have not been as faithful to this blog as I had hoped to be. Today I would like to share some updates on our work . . .

• Research Team: The research team has "completed" their phase of the journey. It is now up to the Collaborative Team to take the information gleaned from the research and determine a definition of teacher effectiveness that can be measured and used to gauge the success of the pilot.
• Faculty Recruitment: We have a strong team of 12 UNI methods instructors that are ready to embrace the process of change in redesigning their course to reflect the challenge of creating the environment to prepare candidates for effective teaching in rural districts.
• The TQP Team has been busy preparing for the instruction and workshop leadership for what we are calling the Faculty Redesign Summit. This summit will occur June 1-7 on the UNI Campus
• The UNI TQP Assessment Team has met several times to address the determination of baseline data needed to assess the progress toward the goals of the grant and the pilot
• Dan and I have begun training through both Quality Matters and Education Technology Online Learning to prepare and facilitate online courses. Dan has been instrumental in getting our first course (a blended learning format) up for next week's summit. I have been pleased that the learning I received on Monday has now been put to use as I was able to upload files to the learning modules for our use. (My own celebration!)