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Jill Bergeron

The Marshall Memo Admin - Issues - 0 views

  • professionals often make decisions that deviate significantly from those of their peers, from their own prior decisions, and from rules that they themselves claim to follow… Where there is judgment, there is noise – and usually more of it than you think.”
  • In a school, if a principal consistently gives harsher punishments to boys than girls for the same infractions, that is bias, but if she often gives harsher punishments to students just before lunchtime, that’s noise.]
  • A noise audit works best when respected team members create a scenario that is realistic, the people involved buy into the process, and everyone is willing to accept unpleasant results and act on them.
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  • The challenge, say the authors, is designing classroom observations that provide valid data on what’s happening day to day in classrooms, make meaningful distinctions among teachers, provide teachers with useful feedback, and support helpful, high-quality professional development.
  • To accomplish these important goals, several challenges need to be addressed: -   Quality assurance of supervisors’ observation and coaching skills; -   Achieving a reasonable degree of inter-rater reliability among supervisors; -   A rubric with research-based criteria for classroom instruction; -   The conceptual difficulty of capturing complex classroom dynamics in a rating instrument; -   Getting an accurate sampling of each teacher’s work; -   Giving fair evaluations to teachers working with different types of students
  • Addressing the tendency of principals to “go easy” on some teachers to keep the peace and/or avoid the hard work of following up on critical evaluations (are outside observers and/or multiple observers necessary to get truly objective data on teachers?).
  • I would suggest two more questions: First, are classroom visits announced or unannounced? If researchers don’t gather data on this, they are missing an important variable in the reliability of teacher assessment – teachers are likely to put on an especially good lesson when they know they’re being observed. Second, are teacher-evaluation rubrics used to score individual classroom visits, which is conceptually very difficult, or as end-of-year summations of multiple classroom visits with feedback conversations through the year?
  • Tomlinson and other proponents suggest that teachers differentiate by content (what is taught), process (how it’s taught), and product (how students are asked to demonstrate their learning).
  • students learn better, they said, when the work is at the right level of difficulty, personally relevant, and appropriately engaging.
  • trying to assess a teacher’s work asking, Is it differentiated? runs the risk of missing the forest for the trees. Better, says Marshall, to ask two broader questions (tip of the hat to Rick DuFour): -   What are students supposed to be learning? -   Are all students mastering it?
  • Good lesson plans build in multiple entry points, using the principles of Universal Design for Learning to make learning accessible to as many students as possible, and have clear goals; thoughtful task analysis; chunked learning; teaching methods appropriate to the content; links to students’ interests and experiences; checks for understanding; and accommodations for students with special needs.
  • a major factor in student success is a set of in-the-moment moves that effective teachers have always used, among them effective classroom management; knowing students well; being culturally sensitive; making the subject matter exciting; making it relevant; making it clear; taking advantage of visuals and props; involving students and getting them involved with each other; having a sense of humor; and nimbly using teachable moments.” But equally important is checking for understanding – dry-erase boards, clickers, probing questions, looking over students’ shoulders – and using students’ responses to continuously fine-tune teaching.
  • Timely follow-up with these students is crucial – pullout, small-group after-school help, tutoring, Saturday school, and other venues to help them catch up.
  • Among the most important life skills that students should take away from their K-12 years,” says Marshall, “is the ability to self-assess, know their strengths and weaknesses, deal with difficulty and failure, and build a growth mindset. Student self-efficacy and independence should be prime considerations in planning, lesson execution, and follow-up so that students move through the grades becoming increasingly motivated, confident, and autonomous learners prepared to succeed in the wider world.”
  • cold-calling actually increases students’ voluntary participation. “Cold-calling encourages students to prepare more and to participate more frequently,” said one researcher. “The more they prepare, and the more frequently they participate, the more comfortable they become when participating.”
  • If we don’t encourage students to come out of their shells for fear of putting them on the spot, we may be doing them a disservice… You’re curious about their views and their understanding of the issues being discussed. What they think is important – both to their own learning and to that of their peers.”
  • Drawing on two decades of data from the National Center for Educational Statistics, the authors found that between 1998 and 2010, the reading readiness gap closed by 16 percent and the math gap by 10 percent. The black-white and the Hispanic-white gaps also narrowed by about 15 percent.
  • the gaps closed because of rapid progress by low-income children, not declines in the readiness of high-income children, and the gains persisted at least through fourth grade.
  • What brought about the early reading and math gains? The authors believe several factors contributed: • The availability of high-quality, publicly funded preschool programs – the percent of U.S. 4-year-olds enrolled in state-funded preschools has increased from 14 to 29 percent from 2000. • The fact that more families are investing in books and other reading matter for children, as well as Internet access and computer games focused on reading and math skills. • More parents are spending quality time with children, taking them to local libraries, and engaging in learning activities at home.
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    "In This Issue: 1. "Noise" in decision-making 2. Are classroom observations accurate measures of teachers' work? 3. A different way of thinking about differentiation 4. A professor changes his mind about cold-calling 5. Close reading of challenging texts in middle school 6. Good news about the rich-poor gap in kindergarten entry skills 7. On-the-spot assessment tools 8. Short items: The Kappan poll"
Jill Bergeron

6 ways to bolster STEM education for the future | eSchool News - 0 views

  • Recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, for example, show that 43 percent of white students and 61 percent of Asian students score at the proficient level in eighth-grade math, compared to 19 percent of Hispanic students and 13 percent of black students. Eighth-grade students with disabilities and students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch scored nearly 30 points below their peers in science and mathematics; English learners scored nearly 40 and 50 points below their peers in these two subjects.
    • Jill Bergeron
       
      These stats point to a real disparity among diverse groups of students.
Jill Bergeron

When Minority Students Attend Elite Private Schools - The Atlantic - 1 views

  • According to Myra McGovern, senior director of public information for the National Association of Independent Schools, more independent schools are becoming invested in how diverse environments should feel, rather than only concentrating on what they should look like. Likewise, more parents of color are discovering alternatives to public school that seem stable in the face of rapidly transforming neighborhoods and school systems.
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    "Many parents of color send their children to exclusive, predominantly white schools in an attempt to give their kids a "ticket to upward mobility." But these well-resourced institutions can fall short at nurturing minority students emotionally and intellectually."
Jill Bergeron

Beyond Borders - National Geographic Society - 0 views

  • The overall theme of this teacher-tested unit is using maps to understand borders and their impacts in Europe. The materials will help your middle school students to use maps to think about how borders intersect physical and human geographical features, and how those intersections can lead to cooperation and/or conflict.
Jill Bergeron

Cities drive the maker movement | TechCrunch - 0 views

  • The maker movement is encouraging entrepreneurs to share ideas, and the city is the central place where it lives, breathes, and succeeds.
  • Makers draw production back into the cities where consumption occurs, which can have profound economic and social benefits.
  • The untapped skills and knowledge unleashed in a makerspace now have the potential to become part of the creative economy of the city as a whole.
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  • Public investment in the maker movement is critical. City governments help ensure that not only does this effort continue and grow, but that there is a focus on jumpstarting the local economy through increased entrepreneurialism and building local businesses. 
  • The maker movement cannot exist without a physical space where people can design and prototype creations. Cities can help meet this need by donating unused buildings or funding infrastructure projects that house collaborative makerspaces.
  • Cities play a key role in moving the maker movement forward. One of the critical outcomes of this investment and support are the numerous companies and partnerships that have been formed as a result of unleashing the creativity of makers.
  • Nationally, 26 percent of cities currently have makerspaces and 13 percent have hosted a Maker Faire.
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    This article offers several ways that cities can help build the maker movement. It also explains how cities benefit from this movement, particularly the economy.
Jill Bergeron

Student-Centered Learning: March 2016 | Matt Renwick - 0 views

  • Kraft and his team found four attributes identified in schools that experienced consistently high achievement: School safety and order Leadership and professional development High academic expectations Teacher relationships and collaboration
  • Specific professional learning offerings for teachers include one-to-one instructional coaching and school leadership opportunities. Teacher retention and higher test scores have been the result of these efforts.
  • Educators can start reimagining instruction by asking ourselves what learning we experienced in our school careers that truly mattered in our lives. This reflection can lead to finding topics and themes from our current curriculum and assessing how well they fit within this mindset of lifeworthy learning. Four tenets of big understandings – opportunity, insight, action, and ethics – can serve as gatekeepers in this process.
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  • Perkins closes this piece of identifying three national agendas (achievement, information, expertise) that may have had too much importance placed upon them.
  • Play-based learning should allow for the students to explore their passions and interests without an outcome necessarily in mind. “Play is not something you do to a child. If you have an agenda, if you are requiring them to do it, if you have to make it ‘fun’ to get them to comply, if they are not free to stop at any time, then it is not play.”
  • Play is self-chosen, enjoyable, inherently valuable, and unstructured.
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    This is my title I created for this post. Mr. Renwick sums up several books and posts related to the idea of creating conditions for student-centered learning.
Gayle Cole

Define Your Road | Roadtrip Nation - 0 views

  •  
    Like What Color is Your Parachute
Jill Bergeron

4 Big EdTech Trends Spotted At BETT 2014 - Edudemic - 0 views

  • To name a few, the national curriculum now includes coding, schools should now be teaching character, or ‘grit’ alongside subjects,
  • social learning - the use of peer review through social-media like sites where students can learn from and help each other through peer-review.
  • Find, Filter, Apply – Students no longer need to know everything, just how to find it, how to filter to get the most relevant info, and to apply it.
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  • Sonic Pi teaches coding through music. Students basically build a synthesiser, thus accidentally learn concepts such as logic, sequencing, iteration and conditionals while doing something creative and imaginative.
  • when they found other people commenting on the blogs, they were even more engaged.
  • These social learning activities do not just aid learning through student motivation, they can also help to build the social skills or ‘grit’ that UK schools are now compelled to teach. When interacting online students learn that it is important to emphasise positives, celebrate success, to be constructive and also learn how to take criticism thus they learn conscientiousness, teamwork and resilience.
Gayle Cole

Psychologist Offers Insight on Bullying and How to Prevent It - 0 views

  • October is National Bullying Prevention Month, an annual campaign launched in 2006 by the Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights to raise awareness of and prevent bullying. Bullying is aggressive, repeated and intentional behavior designed to show an imbalance of power.
  • In elementary school, children who bully others often have difficulty regulating their emotions and do so in reaction to peer rejection or peer exclusion.
  • To prevent youth bullying, prevention efforts must teach children and adolescents individual emotion regulation skills, how to foster peer acceptance and ways to counter any detrimental effects of exposure to violence in their homes and communities. We must recognize that schools play a critical role in reducing these behaviors.
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  • Research published in the September issue of APA’s School Psychology Quarterly found that bullying and peer victimization can be reduced through programs and approaches that focus on improving school climate.  
  • “A student is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more students.” More recent definitions emphasize observable or non-observable aggressive behaviors, the repetitive nature of these behaviors, and the imbalance of power between the individual or group perpetrator and the victim.
  • An imbalance of power exists when the perpetrator or group of perpetrators has more physical, social or intellectual power than the victim.
  • Educators and scholars should also comply with clear and accepted distinctions of “bullying,” “aggression” and “harassment.”
  • Only when we create safe spaces for youth who engage in these behaviors to learn more prosocial ways of managing conflicts among peers and at the same time create school environments that are not tolerant of mean and cruel behavior will we witness reductions in bullying. This problem is bigger than an individual child or adolescent who engages in bullying.
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