Can you give me a call?

We have summer teacher homework in our professional development committee!  We were asked to read a summary from the Marshall Memo of a great article from the American Educator.  The authors compiled a list of "high-leverage practices" that teachers should master.  Our assignment is to pick one of those practices and be prepared to discuss how we would speak about it with a new teacher.

I will pick #8, Calling a parent in a difficult situation.

That seems to be one thing that raises hairs on teachers' necks.  No matter how confident we become in our classrooms and how well we feel like we are working with our students, when it comes to talking to parents we get anxious.  There are a couple of specific things that I would encourage a new teacher to do to support them in this.

First, make happy phone calls (or emails) to parents.  There are few things nicer for a parent then hearing from a teacher about something specific and GOOD that their child did in class.  And the reciprocating good vibes are wonderful too!  Then, if there is ever a problem with that student, you have established a relationship from which you can more easily solve problems.

Even if you haven't gotten to do that, and you have to call parents about something a negative situation (grades, behavior, etc. . .), things can still go well.  First, get back up.  Speak to some of the other people involved with this student; at our school this is the deans. They may have information about something going on at home that will help you support the student better and also prepare you to speak with the family. If it is a curricular issue, then speak with your department head first-- they may have strategies too, and can clear up any policy issues before bringing them up with parents.  

Also, consider setting a time limit: "I have ten minutes now, but then I have to get to class." This helps structure the conversation and allow for an end point if the conversation doesn't feel productive. You can always call back or follow up with email.

Remember that parents deepest concern (no matter what they say) is that teachers know their children and are helping them to reach their potential.  Emphasize this with the parents-- if they see you more as allies than adversaries, it is more likely that you will have productive outcomes.


(Photo Courtesy of Bre Pittis)

Bricks and Mortar?

After the third full day of work shopping here with my fellow GOA teachers, I feel like I have learned so much from my new group of colleagues and friends.  One of the great gifts of this time is the time itself.  We have been invited to work on our courses.  We have set up shop in one of the beautiful conference rooms here at Islandwood and we have short little instructional workshops, then work time, then show and tells, with fun and amazing meals sprinkled in between it all.  A typical work session is a few hours long and at any given moment there are some folks chatting about an idea, bouncing layout or structure questions off each other, and others with their headphones on, working away.  And then when folks share what they have been working on, in the show and tell sessions-- wow!  So much thought and effort is going into these classes-- I'm thrilled for all of the students that get to take them this fall.  

 

I've also been wondering today about the feasibility of recreating this experience we are having-- an intensive teacher workshop-- in an online environment.  It could be done; the work would likely happen, but I wonder if I would learn as much.  I'm thinking about the dinner conversations, the walks in the woods, the fun post-dinner chatter and sharing pictures of our lives outside of this work.  I guess that can happen on-line too, but I am so grateful to have met these folks face to face.  

Research about Supporting Professional Development in Schools

This year the main focus of my internship was looking at the professional development practice at an independent school in New York City. Working in partnership with some of my cohort mates and also my research professors, I developed a metric for assessing faculty attitudes about PD practices and their behaviors based on the Theory of Planned Behavior developed by Icek Ajzen.

The thinking is that if you can assess people in these three areas--attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control-- then you can look at their intention and predict behavior. More importantly, you can clearly see where you need to apply interventions in order to foster the desired behavior.

After administering the questionnaire to the faculty (n=72), and getting support from my professors in looking at the data, there are some meaningful conclusions. As my amazing professor wrote in her summary of my data analysis:

People who like/think PD is important and those who have peers or administration encouraging them and those who have high intentions, end up investing themselves into PD-related activities more.

It is both heartening and a little bit annoying to look at these results. The fantastic thing is that my metric worked at telling us something meaningful about the faculty population. The other side of me can't let go of the fact that the conclusion is so obvious (to me anyway). I guess that is what good research does (not that I put myself in that category)-- it gives real and concrete data to support people's hunches about what works well in schools. And that is all I could have hoped to do!

My next step will be making some suggestions for interventions at this school given the fact that these factors are significant in shaping behavior. Finally, I will work to refine the tool so that it can be used at other schools.

Environment (Physical and Intellectual) Informing Culture

For our leadership class this week we read a selection from Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. The selection that we read had to do with circumstance and environment impacting behavior. Gladwell used the story of the renovation of the New York City Subway system as an example. Basically, when it is clean and free of graffiti, and people aren't skipping fairs, crime goes down. Gladwell points to research that suggests that despite our sense that personality, or even an individual's lived life experiences-- how they were raised-- is central in determining how people act, that environment and circumstance trumps all. He goes so far as to write:

"A child is better off in a good neighborhood and a troubled family than he or she is in a troubled neighborhood with a good family." p. 167-168

As a parent, this is both terrifying and a little heartening. It is a notion that I have heard before from proponents of boarding schools. Surround your kids with amazing people in a great environment, and the children will thrive. It makes sense that if important values are truly lived in the community, they will impact the behavior of people. This reminds me of seeing a headmaster stop and pick up gum wrappers walking across campus. What an important message that type of behavior sends to members of the community, particularly the students.

I am wondering how can this insight be applied to the intellectual environment in a school. We also read a selection from Shaping School Culture by Deal and Peterson. They offered an examination of the power of ritual, ceremony and symbolism in school culture. They explored the notion of "living logos"-- leaders who represent values or meaning by their actions in their work. "The symbolism of intellectual engagement" manifests itself as leaders who read and engage with the research in their field, philosophy, or education in general, and then share their thinking. Doesn't this serve a similar function to painting subway trains and picking up trash on campus? If school leaders foster an environment of continual learning by modeling that themselves, they create a what Gladwell might call a "circumstance" of intellectual engagement. It seems plausible that then this would have a positive impact on student learning.

(Photo Credit: Me! With my groovy new machine. Columbia Campus, a clean, nice place to learn.)

Choosing not to integrate technology into your classroom

Is that really an option anymore? At a school with massive support for technology (in every way including professional development) some teachers still choose to sit this conversation out. They feel that it is their choice and that the "tech stuff" will happen in other classrooms.

In 2000 the US Department of Education stated in its National Educational Technology Plan, "Most teachers have been prepared for a model of teaching dramatically out of step with what is needed to prepare the nation's students for the challenges they will face in the future"(p.5) (Solomon et. al). That makes sense, but does it have to be everywhere, in every class, a every turn? Can a school survive, even thrive with a few holdouts? And can the negative feelings of those few about technology be detrimental to school-wide initiatives and other teachers work?