What ongoing professional development is important for sustaining professional growth?
There is definitely no one correct answer to this question. To sustain professional growth, teachers and staff members must be willing to embrace, and districts must be willing to provide, many different professional development opportunities. Both formal and informal professional development opportunites, in and out of the school, should be used to improve the skills of the teachers.
Examples of these development opportunites include: inservice training days, continuing education classes, workshops, visits to other schools, regular collaboration within departments, joint lesson planning, peer coaching, and common planning times.
As far as what should be taught or discussed, it is important to offer opportunities in three different areas. First, content knowledge. Teachers should continuously be working at better understanding the subjects that they teach. Second, instructional strategies. Here is where I can fit my growing knowledge in the area of technology and use what I am learning in this cohort to develop new strategies to teach my students. Lastly, professional development needs to include providing teachers with knowledge about how our students learn and how to help them succeed in the classroom. Specifically with focus on EEN students, those with ADHD, our at-risk population, ELL, gifted and talented, can't forget about our EEN students on the PDD scale (they have their own special needs), students who have dealt with a death of a parent, those with substance abuse issues....wow, this list could go on and on - so I will stop. :)
Regardless of the type of professional development, it is clear that continuous learning by the teaching staff is critical to achieving our main goal of improving student learning.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
CEDU 521 - Week 4
This module has helped me think about self-directed learners and the role of differentiation in the following ways...
As a special education teacher, I am used to providing differentiation in my teaching style and assignments. Understanding that students learn differently is critical to ensuring that they benefit from my instruction. Prior to this course, I did not seek out opportunities for self-directed and project based learning within the classes that I taught this year. It seemed to me that any type of project that required self-direction resulted in both my students and myself becoming frustrated and unproductive. As a result, I tended to rely on direct instruction because it seemed to work best with such a variety of ability levels. Now I understand that self-directed learning isn't unobtainable for my students, but I must provide clear procedures, checklists, feedback, and rubrics along the way. By providing this additional support my students will benefit by learning critical thinking skills. In addition, as they become more comfortable with the process they will be able to help each other along the way and become less reliant on me. I am excited to take another shot at using self-directed learning with my students next year!
As a special education teacher, I am used to providing differentiation in my teaching style and assignments. Understanding that students learn differently is critical to ensuring that they benefit from my instruction. Prior to this course, I did not seek out opportunities for self-directed and project based learning within the classes that I taught this year. It seemed to me that any type of project that required self-direction resulted in both my students and myself becoming frustrated and unproductive. As a result, I tended to rely on direct instruction because it seemed to work best with such a variety of ability levels. Now I understand that self-directed learning isn't unobtainable for my students, but I must provide clear procedures, checklists, feedback, and rubrics along the way. By providing this additional support my students will benefit by learning critical thinking skills. In addition, as they become more comfortable with the process they will be able to help each other along the way and become less reliant on me. I am excited to take another shot at using self-directed learning with my students next year!
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
CEDU 521 - Week 3
This module has helped me think about student centered assessment in the following ways:
1) I need to strive to create better, more effective assessments and use a bigger variety.
2) It reminded me that assessment is more than just tests and quizzes. Graphic organizers and checklists, which I currently use, are good assessment tools as well.
3) I really liked the assessment timeline visual and I think it is an efficient and effective way to plan the assessements for a unit.
4) An assessment strategy that I have never used before, but should have, is for my students to identify what specifically was hard for them during the unit. By doing that, we can then work together to determine how to overcome those difficulties in future projects.
5) Another assessment area that I rarely use, due to some past bad experiences, is peer feedback. However, after reading this module I have determined that there are many benefits to this assessment tool and instead of shying away from it, I should embrace the opportunity it provides for me as a "teachable moment". My students need to learn the skills of giving and receiving criticism so that they are prepared for constructive feedback/communicating with others in the real world on their jobs and in their relationships.
Just a note: I found this module to be very worthwhile.
1) I need to strive to create better, more effective assessments and use a bigger variety.
2) It reminded me that assessment is more than just tests and quizzes. Graphic organizers and checklists, which I currently use, are good assessment tools as well.
3) I really liked the assessment timeline visual and I think it is an efficient and effective way to plan the assessements for a unit.
4) An assessment strategy that I have never used before, but should have, is for my students to identify what specifically was hard for them during the unit. By doing that, we can then work together to determine how to overcome those difficulties in future projects.
5) Another assessment area that I rarely use, due to some past bad experiences, is peer feedback. However, after reading this module I have determined that there are many benefits to this assessment tool and instead of shying away from it, I should embrace the opportunity it provides for me as a "teachable moment". My students need to learn the skills of giving and receiving criticism so that they are prepared for constructive feedback/communicating with others in the real world on their jobs and in their relationships.
Just a note: I found this module to be very worthwhile.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
CEDU 521 - Week 2
Digital Divide issues that you may have in your classroom setting and possible solutions.
As copied from Wikipedia: "The term digital divide refers to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. It includes the imbalances in physical access to technology as well as the imbalances in resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen. In other words, it is the unequal access by some members of society to information and communication technology, and the unequal acquisition of related skills. The term is closely related to the knowledge divide as the lack of technology cause lack of useful information and knowledge. The digital divide may be classified based on gender, income, and race groups, and by locations.[1] The term global digital divide refers to differences in technology access between countries or the whole world." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide
There are a few issues regarding Digital Divide that I have in my classroom. The first, as mentioned by others, is computer access at our school. In addition to finding the computer labs booked when I would like to reserve them during the school day, it is frustrating that students do not have access to the library past 3:15 each day. The good news for me is that with the stimulus money being offered to special education departments, our request for an EEN specific mobile lab may be able to be granted this year....my fingers are crossed. Additionally, I am fortunate that I share a "suite" with four other special education teachers and between our two rooms we have four student computers available. As a result, I can schedule evening study sessions with my students who are needing assistance on projects and/or time to catch up on the assigned readings in Kurzweil for their mainstream classes. The other huge Digital Divide issue I deal with is an imbalance in skills. My students are often in "Basic" classes in their core curriculum areas where the focus is on how to improve their reading comprehension, reading fluency, and basic writing skills....technology skills definitely take a back seat. As a result, when they have to do projects for elective classes they are at a loss, fall behind, and become very frustrated....and often times a behavior issue for the regular education teacher. My solution: This summer find the curriculum and create a semester long Basic Technology course for students in my department! How soon can I make this happen?....wish me luck! :)
As copied from Wikipedia: "The term digital divide refers to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. It includes the imbalances in physical access to technology as well as the imbalances in resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen. In other words, it is the unequal access by some members of society to information and communication technology, and the unequal acquisition of related skills. The term is closely related to the knowledge divide as the lack of technology cause lack of useful information and knowledge. The digital divide may be classified based on gender, income, and race groups, and by locations.[1] The term global digital divide refers to differences in technology access between countries or the whole world." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide
There are a few issues regarding Digital Divide that I have in my classroom. The first, as mentioned by others, is computer access at our school. In addition to finding the computer labs booked when I would like to reserve them during the school day, it is frustrating that students do not have access to the library past 3:15 each day. The good news for me is that with the stimulus money being offered to special education departments, our request for an EEN specific mobile lab may be able to be granted this year....my fingers are crossed. Additionally, I am fortunate that I share a "suite" with four other special education teachers and between our two rooms we have four student computers available. As a result, I can schedule evening study sessions with my students who are needing assistance on projects and/or time to catch up on the assigned readings in Kurzweil for their mainstream classes. The other huge Digital Divide issue I deal with is an imbalance in skills. My students are often in "Basic" classes in their core curriculum areas where the focus is on how to improve their reading comprehension, reading fluency, and basic writing skills....technology skills definitely take a back seat. As a result, when they have to do projects for elective classes they are at a loss, fall behind, and become very frustrated....and often times a behavior issue for the regular education teacher. My solution: This summer find the curriculum and create a semester long Basic Technology course for students in my department! How soon can I make this happen?....wish me luck! :)
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