I enjoyed reading Zemelman as he was very insightful and full of fantastic ideas that will greatly improve our classrooms and schools. I really liked the fact that he lays it out quite directly. If you include these 7 things in your classroom you will be providing a very high quality learning environment for your students. I felt that was quite helpful to break it down in such a concise way. Also, I think all of us were at least vaguely familiar if not very knowledgeable of all the seven structures that he mentions. So if I am pretty familiar with those seven structures why aren't they being utilized in my classroom? I think that the answer for me lies in my reflective thoughts while I specifically read the classroom workshop section. I was thinking that I have been teaching for 6 years now and I had heard about and actually worked in some classrooms that utilized this structure. Being a primary grade teacher I think it would be so valuable to have a reading and writing workshop structure in my classroom and for the life of me I cannot get one started. To be honest I have always used the excuse that I have too many kids so it's just not possible to facilitate and do these one on one conferences and have the other 35 working quietly for 30 to 40 minutes. I think sometimes change seems very overwhelming and we build things up to be much harder than they will really be. We don't ever think in gradual steps we always think it's going to be this major change and how do I possibly have the time to set that up.
I think in the end I am right that I cannot possibly do it because we really can't do it alone! Parker Palmer (1997) tells us that we are much more successful when we work in a community. This brings me to Zemelman's Chapter 9 when he described the process that Huntzville School went through. The idea of the teacher support group was great and the fact that they were only focussing on one really big issue in the school is a great model. I think the consistent and genuine support of the principal was also vital to the success. I think often schools try to change 10 things at once and so none of the issues really get the attention they need in order to be successfully resolved. Nor does that process really allow positive change to occur and sustain itself.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Systems Thinking
I apologize that this is so late for anyone reading it. I have finally risen from the sinus infection stupor come Easter vacation I guess appropriately so.
I really enjoyed the Senge (2002) reading and would like to touch on a few things that jumped out at me. To begin, I thought that the whole idea of systems thinking and how we need to understand that there needs to be a relationship with the community outside the school walls was interesting. The idea that the relationship between to two can impact the success of the school seemed a bit scary. As soon as I read it I wondered if this idea becomes more or less of a challenge when thinking of a Catholic School. On the one hand we can be very connected through the parish to the community and any others that find connection with the Catholic faith. On the other hand, since we are Catholic, does the community as a whole not consider us really part of the community. Do we sort of seclude ourselves from everyone else.
This brings me to the second idea I connected to which was how important it was not just to change the rules but to change the methods of thinking and interacting between everyone involved in the system. (Since I feel I may need to change my thinking about the community.) I think my principal does a good job of understanding that there needs to be "buy in" from staff and families before change can really occur. This is no easy feat. What I have observed though is that you not only need to work to change the way people interact or view things but you also need to continue to encourage that change. It doesn't occur over night and needs to continue to be nurtured, and in the absence of nurturing and consitency the change begins to break down and people begin to regress back to their old habits.
Finally, I loved the quote that said,"...if you are learning in a classroom, what you understand is determined by how you understand things, who you are, and what you already know" (p.21). I think these blogs prove that point very well in that we all read the same subject matter but none of us learn exactly the same thing. So why do we still get upset at our students for not extracting the same meaning as we do from the subject matter that we teach...
I really enjoyed the Senge (2002) reading and would like to touch on a few things that jumped out at me. To begin, I thought that the whole idea of systems thinking and how we need to understand that there needs to be a relationship with the community outside the school walls was interesting. The idea that the relationship between to two can impact the success of the school seemed a bit scary. As soon as I read it I wondered if this idea becomes more or less of a challenge when thinking of a Catholic School. On the one hand we can be very connected through the parish to the community and any others that find connection with the Catholic faith. On the other hand, since we are Catholic, does the community as a whole not consider us really part of the community. Do we sort of seclude ourselves from everyone else.
This brings me to the second idea I connected to which was how important it was not just to change the rules but to change the methods of thinking and interacting between everyone involved in the system. (Since I feel I may need to change my thinking about the community.) I think my principal does a good job of understanding that there needs to be "buy in" from staff and families before change can really occur. This is no easy feat. What I have observed though is that you not only need to work to change the way people interact or view things but you also need to continue to encourage that change. It doesn't occur over night and needs to continue to be nurtured, and in the absence of nurturing and consitency the change begins to break down and people begin to regress back to their old habits.
Finally, I loved the quote that said,"...if you are learning in a classroom, what you understand is determined by how you understand things, who you are, and what you already know" (p.21). I think these blogs prove that point very well in that we all read the same subject matter but none of us learn exactly the same thing. So why do we still get upset at our students for not extracting the same meaning as we do from the subject matter that we teach...
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Where do we start and where do we go...
Over the weekend after I had properly digested the information from Chapter 5, I decided to use it as ammunition to criticize the practices of the Oakland school district where my friend works in the assessment department, designing and distributing district wide tests. The discussion proved to be quite fruitful in that I realized that my grasp on what Ozar is saying is not as solid as I thought it was. I was left with many uncertainties and questions about what "Curriculum that Works" looks like.
My first question is where do we start. Ozar begins the chapter talking about real life skills that our children need in order to be successful once they leave our school walls.(p.62) So we begin there and create our graduation outcomes. These I recognize as our school learning expectations. But what if those aren't written well. Can we go no further until those are not firmly established? I understand that Ozar is making the point that we need to be connecting more big ideas in our schools instead of using the industrial model, but that makes it seem like it is a total change in the institution. Can I work to improve curriculum in 1st grade if the 6th, 4th, and 2nd grade teachers have not created outcomes for what those graduation skills look like in their grades? If I haven't established overall 1st grade outcomes can I establish outcomes for reading or a math lesson?
Ozar tells us that National Committees should put together the broad outcomes of a specific discipline such as math which "give educators the best place to begin with local curriculum develpment..." (p.67) Who is that is designing the "local" curriculum? Is it the state, district, or each school on it's own. I am lead to believe that she thinks it is the school as she refers to other factors such as mission, philosophy, catholic identity, parental aspirations etc. being important aspects of the outcomes that are created. I myself think it should be done more on the school level, but is it possible for all schools to do this. My school has lots of resources and an energetic staff and I am not even sure how the process would go for us, so what happens to a school with low moral and very little resources.
I was trying to convince my friend that his job basically stifled the growth of the children in the Oakland Unified School District because they bombarded them with tests that were based on standards created for the entire state. He explained that the tests are meant to support the teachers so that they can understand where their students are at academically. So the idea of assessment guiding teaching I guess is a bit similar to Ozar, and the assessments are created according to outcome like standards. So this may follow Ozar's theory but I think the break down is who is designing these outcomes and these assessments. If an assessment is made for numerous students across a discrict is it a valid assessment? If it's not, is there another way to measure one school's success over another's within Ozar's theory?
Finally, Ozar discussed two planes in which the outcomes should be created from, the discipline specific plane and value-integration plane. (p.68) Is that just for graduation outcomes or do all outcomes need to follow this. In the lower grades the higher order thinking or application of knowledge isn't impossible but sometimes more difficult. Is "Students will produce the 4 related math facts when given 3 numbers in a fact family" a good outcome or does it need more "value-integration"?
My first question is where do we start. Ozar begins the chapter talking about real life skills that our children need in order to be successful once they leave our school walls.(p.62) So we begin there and create our graduation outcomes. These I recognize as our school learning expectations. But what if those aren't written well. Can we go no further until those are not firmly established? I understand that Ozar is making the point that we need to be connecting more big ideas in our schools instead of using the industrial model, but that makes it seem like it is a total change in the institution. Can I work to improve curriculum in 1st grade if the 6th, 4th, and 2nd grade teachers have not created outcomes for what those graduation skills look like in their grades? If I haven't established overall 1st grade outcomes can I establish outcomes for reading or a math lesson?
Ozar tells us that National Committees should put together the broad outcomes of a specific discipline such as math which "give educators the best place to begin with local curriculum develpment..." (p.67) Who is that is designing the "local" curriculum? Is it the state, district, or each school on it's own. I am lead to believe that she thinks it is the school as she refers to other factors such as mission, philosophy, catholic identity, parental aspirations etc. being important aspects of the outcomes that are created. I myself think it should be done more on the school level, but is it possible for all schools to do this. My school has lots of resources and an energetic staff and I am not even sure how the process would go for us, so what happens to a school with low moral and very little resources.
I was trying to convince my friend that his job basically stifled the growth of the children in the Oakland Unified School District because they bombarded them with tests that were based on standards created for the entire state. He explained that the tests are meant to support the teachers so that they can understand where their students are at academically. So the idea of assessment guiding teaching I guess is a bit similar to Ozar, and the assessments are created according to outcome like standards. So this may follow Ozar's theory but I think the break down is who is designing these outcomes and these assessments. If an assessment is made for numerous students across a discrict is it a valid assessment? If it's not, is there another way to measure one school's success over another's within Ozar's theory?
Finally, Ozar discussed two planes in which the outcomes should be created from, the discipline specific plane and value-integration plane. (p.68) Is that just for graduation outcomes or do all outcomes need to follow this. In the lower grades the higher order thinking or application of knowledge isn't impossible but sometimes more difficult. Is "Students will produce the 4 related math facts when given 3 numbers in a fact family" a good outcome or does it need more "value-integration"?
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Outcomes, Outcomes, Outcomes
Upon reading the first four chapters of Ozar's book Creating a Curriculum that Works (1994) I was taken back in time to undergrad at Boston College. I remembered that when I was studying at the School of Education, they made us write up so many lesson plans with the same format for every lesson. We had to start with the outcomes. Before we even began the procedure writing we had to think about what we would like our students to be able to do as a result of this imaginary lesson plan. I also recall being told to use those verbs from Bloom's taxonomy when I wrote my outcomes. This continued for my entire undergrad experience so even though I don't write my outcomes for every lesson I would like to think that somehow that thinking has been ingrained. While I complained and found it quite labor intensive and annoying, the significance has really not come through until reading Ozar's book. What Ozar said was so true, " Outcomes, as statements of intended student learning, do provide a clear basis for selecting reaching/learning strategies, materials, assessment tools, etc.; the stronger and more appropriate the outcomes, the more powerful and potentially effective the resulting curriculum."(p.22) Now granted I was always only writing one lesson plan (which now is a fraction of my day), I was being graded, and I was a college student with a lot more time, but my lessons that were led by the outcomes were no where near Industrial age teaching. :)
The second thing I was immediately drawn to (that I had tried to block out forever) in my memory was a few years ago when the staff of my school labored over the student learning expectations (now I realize they are graduation outcomes). We knew that when WASC visited in the coming year they would be looking for evidence of our SLEs. We needed to make sure they were written in a way that we could provide evidence for them. I went right back to them after reading and found many of them still began with "students will understand". Ozar would not have been impressed. When WASC finally came we had to create an evidence box that showed the students were working towards the SLEs. That box was the bane of my existence. Not only was it difficult to show evidence for some of our SLEs because of how they were written but having a file box of evidence only lent itself to evidence on paper. Ozar talks about how after we write the outcomes we then need to think about the assessment and it needs to be a "valid indication of achievement of the outcomes." (p.23) As educators the other night we felt that our visual representations were not complete without verbal explanation. So how do I file that in a box? Isn't there a better way?
Another interesting thought from the whole WASC process was that my principal toyed with the idea of having us color code our lesson plan books according to the SLEs we were addressing in our lessons. We all moaned and groaned about it so it didn't happen. The teachers didn't want people looking through their plan books and didn't want to have to color code all their lesson plans. Now I realize what a valuable tool that would have been in our planning had it been mandated. Sort of ironic that the teacher's fought against quality planning. :)
The second thing I was immediately drawn to (that I had tried to block out forever) in my memory was a few years ago when the staff of my school labored over the student learning expectations (now I realize they are graduation outcomes). We knew that when WASC visited in the coming year they would be looking for evidence of our SLEs. We needed to make sure they were written in a way that we could provide evidence for them. I went right back to them after reading and found many of them still began with "students will understand". Ozar would not have been impressed. When WASC finally came we had to create an evidence box that showed the students were working towards the SLEs. That box was the bane of my existence. Not only was it difficult to show evidence for some of our SLEs because of how they were written but having a file box of evidence only lent itself to evidence on paper. Ozar talks about how after we write the outcomes we then need to think about the assessment and it needs to be a "valid indication of achievement of the outcomes." (p.23) As educators the other night we felt that our visual representations were not complete without verbal explanation. So how do I file that in a box? Isn't there a better way?
Another interesting thought from the whole WASC process was that my principal toyed with the idea of having us color code our lesson plan books according to the SLEs we were addressing in our lessons. We all moaned and groaned about it so it didn't happen. The teachers didn't want people looking through their plan books and didn't want to have to color code all their lesson plans. Now I realize what a valuable tool that would have been in our planning had it been mandated. Sort of ironic that the teacher's fought against quality planning. :)
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Working to find my happy place...
Industrial Age vs. New Science Thinking
I believe that the most important aspect of teaching is the relationship that is built between the child and the teacher. Without that relationship learning cannot take place. Placing a lot of value on the relationship that should be formed means that I relate very little to the Industrial Age education. In that type of education children come down the line and we throw as much information at them as we possibly can for that brief moment hoping that maybe something will stick. This does not lend itself to forming much of a relationship with our students. I very much believe that I should be partners with the students as we explore different things. Sometimes I may guide them and sometimes they may guide me. I think that our children learn best through their experiences and socializing with each other. It is interesting though because even though I believe very strongly that children should be talking and sharing it is still something that is not in my comfort zone to watch and observe in a classroom. I think all of us have grown up in the industrial age where we sat in our rows and worked quietly in our seats. We all also greatly benefitted from that way of learning as we have now become people passionate about education. Our visual in our minds of what education actually looks like from our years of school in the industrial age is very different than what we may claim we believe. I need to work on finding my comfort zone in learning environments that look nothing like I experienced in school so that my philosophy and vision can meet the reality of my classroom.
As far as how I implement the New Science Thinking of community learning and exploration, my first graders have sort of baptized me by fire in this theory. They rarely respond to the Industrial age so I have constantly reinvent things I used to do the boring way. A good example of this was today during writing. Instead of having my first graders sit and write sentences about a picture or prompt I gave, I had them work in groups. The job of each group was to come up with a complete sentence together. In each group a child has a card with a question word on it that would be their part of the sentence. (With the exception of the "action" person) They wrote their part on the back of the card. When a group created a sentence they all stood in front of the class in order and read their sentence part by part person by person. They were really into it! They were working together solving a problem, talking about the different parts of the sentence, helping each other spell and write words, presenting it orally, and resolving conflicts. There were so many skills that were being practiced, and no matter what level they were at they could participate, so it motivated my low ones as well. At one moment though, I had three to six kids crowding around me all with questions and the class a whole was very loud when working with their groups. I was a little overwhelmed by the site of what I felt was chaos and I was close to shutting it down, but I reminded myself that it was okay and worked to embrace the chaos. After I answered the questions (after reminding them of their manners in not calling out my name a million times) and took a second glance at my students I noticed that everyone was actually engaged, learning and having fun. But now I don't have any papers to grade... :)
I believe that the most important aspect of teaching is the relationship that is built between the child and the teacher. Without that relationship learning cannot take place. Placing a lot of value on the relationship that should be formed means that I relate very little to the Industrial Age education. In that type of education children come down the line and we throw as much information at them as we possibly can for that brief moment hoping that maybe something will stick. This does not lend itself to forming much of a relationship with our students. I very much believe that I should be partners with the students as we explore different things. Sometimes I may guide them and sometimes they may guide me. I think that our children learn best through their experiences and socializing with each other. It is interesting though because even though I believe very strongly that children should be talking and sharing it is still something that is not in my comfort zone to watch and observe in a classroom. I think all of us have grown up in the industrial age where we sat in our rows and worked quietly in our seats. We all also greatly benefitted from that way of learning as we have now become people passionate about education. Our visual in our minds of what education actually looks like from our years of school in the industrial age is very different than what we may claim we believe. I need to work on finding my comfort zone in learning environments that look nothing like I experienced in school so that my philosophy and vision can meet the reality of my classroom.
As far as how I implement the New Science Thinking of community learning and exploration, my first graders have sort of baptized me by fire in this theory. They rarely respond to the Industrial age so I have constantly reinvent things I used to do the boring way. A good example of this was today during writing. Instead of having my first graders sit and write sentences about a picture or prompt I gave, I had them work in groups. The job of each group was to come up with a complete sentence together. In each group a child has a card with a question word on it that would be their part of the sentence. (With the exception of the "action" person) They wrote their part on the back of the card. When a group created a sentence they all stood in front of the class in order and read their sentence part by part person by person. They were really into it! They were working together solving a problem, talking about the different parts of the sentence, helping each other spell and write words, presenting it orally, and resolving conflicts. There were so many skills that were being practiced, and no matter what level they were at they could participate, so it motivated my low ones as well. At one moment though, I had three to six kids crowding around me all with questions and the class a whole was very loud when working with their groups. I was a little overwhelmed by the site of what I felt was chaos and I was close to shutting it down, but I reminded myself that it was okay and worked to embrace the chaos. After I answered the questions (after reminding them of their manners in not calling out my name a million times) and took a second glance at my students I noticed that everyone was actually engaged, learning and having fun. But now I don't have any papers to grade... :)
Thursday, February 12, 2009
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