Tag: PQP


Apr
2021

A Year of Letting Go

categories: Reflections, Teaching and Learning Coordinator

If you followed any educators on social media over the last year, you would have seen MANY posts advising teachers to “let go” during this crazy COVID year. Let go of trying to teach online exactly the way you would in person; let go of standardized testing; let go of the pressure you put on yourself, be ok with being ok…

I’ve been slightly embarrassed to admit publicly that these memes didn’t always resonate with me. Switching to a hybrid/hyflex/concurrent model wasn’t easy…but it excited me! COVID scares the $%@& out of me, but for some reason, it didn’t debilitate me at work. I didn’t want to stop working, I didn’t want to stop creating, I didn’t want to stop exploring and learning and improving what I was doing and sharing with my colleagues. Was there something wrong with me? If so many people were expressing these emotions online and many of my colleagues were sharing similar emotions in school, clearly I must be the one who was missing something. 

This was quite uncomfortable for me for a while. I kept finding myself teetering between conflicting emotions. I wanted to be sympathetic and supportive of those who were responding differently than me, but there were times when I also felt frustrated. This is our job! Actually, this is our profession. Being a teacher isn’t a clock-in/clock-out type of job. We are professionals, and we have students who are looking to us to support, guide and teach* them.

* I’d like to specify that teaching students during a pandemic doesn’t necessarily mean checking off all the curricular outcomes. As a teacher in a private school, we have somewhat of the luxury of focusing in on what we think is the most important right now, and adapting what and how we teach to help students work through their own emotions. Being honest and transparent with your students is OK!

On one hand, I feel like we’ve passed the point of responding to COVID as an emergency, and need to pivot towards a new normal. But on the other, the pandemic is not yet under control, and as we begin to wind down on our school year, COVID is ramping up in Ontario! As schools in the US start to re-open for in-person learning, our school has just switched to distance learning again, along with all schools in Ontario.

During one of our Educational Leadership Team meetings, my Head of School, Jon Mitzmacher, raised the discussion of trauma reactions, outlining that there are typically two opposite reactions to trauma — dissociative, passive and withdrawn on one end, and vigilant, hyper-aroused and hyper-resilient on the other. He also shared an excerpt from an episode with Brené Brown where she discusses a similar concept, that when faced with anxiety, people either over- or underfunction.

Well that explains it! When faced with the anxiety and stress of COVID, I’ve mostly responded by being an overfunctioner. As I continued to reflect, I realized that in my own way, I too have been choosing (slash been forced) to “let go” of certain things all year long. Both professionally and personally, there have been things that have been beyond my control, and I have been trying hard to practice the mindset that everything happens for a reason, and to trust the journey.

One of the hardest things I had to let go of this year was the teaching portion of my portfolio. For personal reasons, I was not able to consistently teach in person in the classroom, and needed to work from home for extended periods of time, multiple times throughout the year. At first, I was able to teach virtually while a supply teacher supervised and supported the students in the classroom. This was an invaluable experience, as it helped me empathise with my students who were learning from home on a full-time basis. I understood what it felt like to be sitting online waiting for the rest of the class to join the Meet. I understood the frustration of something being shown on the screen in the classroom that wasn’t shared online. I understood the challenge of not always hearing the questions or discussions being had by the students in the room. When I returned to school, I was able to pay attention to these things to better accommodate the students who were at home. Additionally, I was able to share this experience with my colleagues so they could better support their students as well. Beginning in February though, it was no longer feasible for me to continue teaching from home, and it became increasingly challenging for the students to adjust and adapt to different supply teachers. For the first time in 15 years, I made the difficult decision to take a leave from teaching. I have always thought about what is best for my students, and under these circumstances, this was the best choice for them and for me. In the meantime, I’ve been able to continue working part-time from home (let’s be real, when is a part-time job actually a part-time job in education?), focusing on my role as Teaching and Learning Coordinator

One challenge I’ve had as the Teaching and Learning Coordinator, even pre-COVID, was getting my colleagues to work with me more regularly. Jon and I have had many conversations about this…Should it be mandatory for teachers to meet with me? Should I reach out to them? Should they reach out to me? With all the experience Jon has had with this in all the schools he’s worked in, he shared that no matter the official setup, the challenge seems to remain the same. I expected that with the changes our teachers were facing with the introduction of hyflex learning, I would be busy meeting, brainstorming and collaborating with teachers. In reality, the stress levels have been so high, that often another meeting is seen as an added stressor, not as a welcomed support.

So what did I do? I tried my best to let go of the notion that meetings were the best way for me to support my colleagues, and used my PGP as Network Weaver to collect, connect, and create resources for teachers that they could access and use in their own time. More recently, I have created two resources specifically for teachers at my school to help them easily access the tips and tools I have shared. Each week, I send out a “Weekly Roundup” within our faculty bulletin, sharing links to things or people I have discovered that I feel would be interesting or beneficial to the teachers. As the weeks went on and the collection of resources grew, teachers started asking me to remind them about a resource I shared, and suggested I create a landing spot for everything. From this feedback, the two resources were born. 

The first is a Digital Resource Directory, housed on our Faculty Info Hub (a private site just for teachers, otherwise I would link to it here) where teachers can easily see all the different tech tools and apps that are being used in the school. I was inspired by Becky Lim, who created a similar resource for teachers in her district. All the apps are organized into different categories, are linked to their website, and have a brief explanation of what the tool can be used for when you hover over it (watch the video below for a sample). Teachers themselves are always discovering new tools, therefore, we also added a section at the bottom where teachers can suggest an app that should be included, or request a tutorial that should be made. 

I then took all my Weekly Roundups and added another page to our Faculty Info Hub, where teachers could easily find all my posts in one spot. 

Slowly but surely, teachers have been reaching out to make meetings with me for support. I have let go of the notion that I need to meet with ALL teachers in order to be successful. I am highly enjoying the time I spend with those I do meet with. Some teachers ask for meetings. Others ask for help finding resources.

I always get excited when a teacher asks a question, and I’m able to send them a link to one of our tutorials that are housed on the Info Hub.  

This year more than ever, each time I meet with one of my colleagues, I get that excited feeling you get after attending an amazing conference session…that feeling of excitement and invigoration, itching to get into the classroom to try something new to see how it goes. We have so much to gain by sharing with others. It’s my hope that the more I work with some teachers, through the grapevine, others will start to hear and be inspired to reach out as well. 


Jan
2021

Network Weaver

categories: Reflections, Teaching and Learning Coordinator

Network Weaver….no it does not involve yarn and needles, nor is it something you’d read about in a dystopian novel. It is, however, the focus of my professional growth plan (PGP) for this year. Every year at OJCS, each teacher chooses an area of growth to work towards. You can read about mine from years past here.

My definition of a network weaver is someone who helps others build their Professional Learning Network (PLN). The job of a network weaver is to constantly be building their own PLN, and making connections between like-minded individuals who can help each other. These connections come in many different shapes and sizes. At our school, we talk about teachers climbing the blogging ladder, but today I’m going to focus on the PLN ladder.

The idea of a PLN is not new. In one article I read on Edutopia, written back in 2013 by Tom Whitby, he talks about how he learned of the concept 6 or 7 years prior. Whitby defines a PLN as, “a tool that uses social media and technology to collect, communicate, collaborate and create with connected colleagues anywhere at any time.” When I think about the PLN ladder I see it like this:

My goal for this year is to become a stronger network weaver for the faculty at OJCS. In order to achieve this goal, I first have to continue building my own PLN and figure out what I want to share, with who, and how.

Building my PLN

Twitter is my main platform for connecting with other educators. One change I have made this year is that I am trying to actually connect with the people I follow. If I see a post I like, rather than simply retweeting or liking it, I try to think about how I can amplify and add value. Occasionally I will comment on the post to thank the author for sharing, and make connections to my own experiences or how I intend to use it.

If I find a post I think will be useful for others, I’ll mention them in the comment to help them become part of the conversation, and perhaps introduce them to an educator with whom they can collaborate.

I recently started following an educator in Australia, Lesleigh Altmann, and she sent me a private message thanking me for the follow. I thought this was such a simple, yet powerful strategy to making connections. In that moment, I didn’t feel like just another nameless follower, but someone she was recognizing and open to collaborating with.

I also want to build my PLN beyond Twitter and speak with people in other schools and organizations who play a networking role. Gerry De Fazio, who I met through our school’s work with NoTosh, and who now works as Director of Learning, Strategy & Innovation at Montcrest School in Toronto, continues to be a valued colleague and mentor. She and I meet bi-weekly to share ideas, experiences, resources and thoughts. While I look forward to each of these sessions immensely, speaking with other educators, or even other professionals outside of the education world, continues to be an area I’d like to develop in the coming months.

What to Share, With Who and How?

Due to COVID-19, a main focus of my position as Teaching and Learning Coordinator at OJCS has been around Hyflex Learning. Our teachers have had the challenging job of teaching students in class and online concurrently. In support of the added workload and planning this type of teaching requires, our administrators have kindly given over all staff meetings and professional development days to individual and team meetings. While this is amazing from a “prep” perspective, it poses a challenge for coaching and sharing useful strategies that would otherwise be addressed during these staff gatherings. In response, I’ve begun creating interactive resources that teachers can use at their leisure. Here is the first one I created to help teachers plan for a Hyflex Learning environment. Many of the tips and strategies I suggested were designed to build routines that could continue to be used whether we were teaching in person on not  (** I say as we begin our second week of remote teaching**)

In addition to this, each week as part of our Faculty Bulletin, I share “Melissa’s Weekly Roundup” – a list of useful tools, blog posts, articles, videos, resources, books, podcasts or educators I have come across that I think will be useful to our teachers.

One challenge for me has been that I rarely receive feedback from my peers as to whether these resources are helpful or not. I know a few teachers have implemented choice boards into their practice, and others are using stations to find time to meet one-on-one or in small groups with their students, but I am not certain how widely adopted it is. I recognize that bandwidth is limited this year. It’s my hope that one post, one week, one time, will prove useful to one teacher, and that teacher will become my network weaver, sharing the value with their colleagues. I also intend on following up with teachers to see how the work they did before the lockdown impacted their transition into remote learning, post winter break.

Up to this point, I’ve talked a lot about all the valuable resources I’ve found by looking outside my own school. But the truth is, our fellow teachers in our own building hold just as much experience, knowledge and resources! As our North Stars says, “Each person is responsible for the other,” “We learn better together,” and “We are always on inspiring (Jewish) journeys.” Often, those journeys intersect. Every teacher at OJCS is working on a PGP of their own, yet we are not always aware of what those PGPs are. To help build connections amongst our own faculty, I have created a Trello board outlining all the PGPs this year, and grouping similar projects together.

I have slowly started inviting faculty members to join this board so that they can see for themselves who is working on what, and start reaching out to their colleagues for support, feedback and guidance. Not everyone has joined yet, and some who I have invited have been hesitant to share. Like everything, it is a process and they are slowly moving up their own rung of the PLN ladder.

Baby steps are better than no steps!

 


Sep
2020

A Foot in Both Worlds

categories: Reflections, Teaching and Learning Coordinator

During pre-planning week this year I led a session with the faculty at my school titled, A Foot in Both Worlds. The goal of the session was to help teachers begin to understand the new reality we would be facing at our school.

From what I have been reading online, there is a mix of what school boards and schools are doing depending on where you live and which board you are a part of. Some schools are only offering online programs, some schools are only offering in person programs, some schools have adopted a hybrid model (some days in school, some days online) and some, like my school, are offering a blended version, or HyFlex option, where teachers are expected to teach students both in school and online, at the same time.

This isn’t an easy task. And the first week of school proved just how challenging it would be.

First, let me share some of the new policies put in place to help make our school as safe as possible:

  • All students K-8 must wear masks at all times inside the school building (we’ve implemented this for the first two weeks as students come back from summer holiday. After that period (as of right now), it will be mandatory for grades 4-8 and optional for k -3) All teachers must wear masks at all times.
  • Students’ entry and exit from the building is staggered to eliminate cohorts mixing with others they never see throughout the day and limit contact. They must maintain physical distance while they line up and sanitize their hands when entering the building.
  • Students will be eating with their classmates in their classroom.
  • Recesses are staggered, with only 2 or 3 cohorts outside at the same time.
  • Students in grades 4-8 will have outdoor education (rain/snow or shine) and students in K-3 have an extended recess time added into their schedule to make up for the lack of P.E.
  • Art is taught asynchronously by the art teacher, with students working in their classrooms supervised by their teacher
  • There is no Music class this year.

As you can see from this list, many precautions have been put in place to help our students and faculty stay as safe as possible. However, it does add extra supervisory duties to the schedule that were not previously there. Our administrators worked exceptionally hard to work out this impossible jigsaw puzzle and have taken on over 20 duties themselves, but it was impossible not to increase the number of duties each teacher needed to take on.

In order to facilitate HyFlex learning, teachers share their calendars at the start of each week on our class blogs. These schedules are very similar to what we had been using in the spring when our building was closed and we were learning from home.

What did I learn in week 1?

  • For the most part, my student who is learning from home full time was engaged in the class and participating well. He is an extremely self-motivated learner though. I had two students home sick halfway through the week. One was well enough to continue learning online, but had more difficulty following along and staying on task.
  • I like that parents and students can see quickly at the top of the schedule which documents they need to print for the week. However the schedule itself felt busy and hard to follow. In week 2 we will be trying to keep the schedule less cluttered and each teacher will link to a more detailed plan. Here’s the one I have created, inspired by my colleague Faye Mellenthin. 
  • We are trying to include as many asynchronous/student-paced lessons into our synchronous teaching periods. The hope is that this will reduce the amount of planning we need to do as teachers for both students at home and in school. It will also free up more time to meet individually with students, something we weren’t able to do as much of in the first week, especially for students learning from home.
  • Something else I’d like to do but did not manage to implement in the first week is class jobs. Last year I read Who Owns the Learning by Alan November, and blogged about it here. Inspired by his Digital Learning Farm a session with Sharon Reichstein, some of the jobs I’d like to implement that will help build community are:
    • Recess buddy (plays online with those who are at home)
    • Morning Activity leader
    • Chat monitor
    • Researcher
    • Documenter

In the past, students would move from one classroom to another for their various classes with different teachers. This year, students stay put in their classrooms and the teachers are the ones who move in and out. Another idea I had that I would like to try once I run it by my colleagues, is to have a set iPad in each classroom. There would be one Google Meet link that students would stay in for the whole day, and teachers would have the student there on the iPad when they came into the room, rather than having different links for different teachers. From the feedback from our teachers, especially those who move around a lot (our French teachers can teach up to 5 different classes) it’s not easy to pack up one room, run to the next, set up your supplies, and login to the Meet. It’s not impossible obviously, but my goal is to come up with ideas, protocols, and templates to make life as easy as possible for teachers. When you consider all the “newness” our teachers have had to take on this year, including extra duties, the more we can do to support them, the better.

Here’s to week number 2!


May
2020

Self-Evaluation Narrative – Spring 2020

categories: Documenting Learning, Reflections, Teaching and Learning Coordinator

It’s that time of year again. Time to reflect on my year, the professional growth goals (PGP) I set for myself, and set new ones for the future. Reading last year’s reflection, I’m happy to see that I have accomplished many of my goals. As a self proclaimed life-long learner, it makes sense that some of those goals continue to be ones I have for myself this year too.

The ones I achieved?

Blogging with my students; blogging myself; create engaging opportunities for students to continue on their own documenting journeys.

The ones I still have?

Create authentic learning experiences in math (and I’ll add in all subject matter) that naturally reach students where they are and allow for growth at many levels.

It has been a year full of rollercoasters. With the two hats I wear, I feel it would be appropriate to reflect on each one separately. I’ll begin with grade 5 teacher. 

Last year was a challenging one for me, but definitely one of growth. Although my PGP last year focused on Personalized Learning, I still don’t feel it is something I have completely mastered. I try my best to honour student interests, provide choice, differentiate, and introduce students to tools and techniques that work for them as individuals. Grade 5 is an interesting year in terms of maturity and development. Last year, I introduced an activity, “Be the Quote” based off of  Miss 5th’s Keep The Quote. Every week, I posted a new quote and as a group, we would orally share what it meant and what it reminded us of.  With the group of students I had last year, I wanted a space where we could discuss feelings and behaviours openly. I adapted that activity this year to become a writing task each week, recognizing that some students had things to share they may not feel comfortable discussing out loud. What I love about this activity is that it exposes students to varying feelings that may be different than their own and allows them to begin thinking of examples beyond the classroom walls. It helps begin to anchor how their actions impact others, and the control they have over the outcomes in their life. 

The class novel we begin the school year with, Wonder by R.J. Palacio, contributes to this lesson as well. Students are encouraged to make connections with their own challenges in school, and ways they have felt different or insecure, to become more compassionate and inclusive classmates. There are many real-world initiatives and ways to contribute more to society that can be linked to this unit, and something I would like to focus on more next year. 

With every task I give, students are always aware of the assessment expectations, through outlines and rubrics. One new addition this year, based on a podcast from EB Academics, is that even before we begin reading a book or a task with multiple steps, I let students know what the very final project will be. That way, they can begin planning and collecting evidence and examples to make the final writing process easier. One student, who struggles specifically with written output, has shown tremendous improvement with getting his ideas out on paper after I made this very simple switch. 

I am proud of the commitment I make to bettering myself, and learning from others to offer my students the best education I can. It is through my own research for my class that I am also able to help my colleagues, and share those discoveries with them as well. Which brings me to my second hat – Teaching and Learning Coordinator. 

As I’ve written about before, last summer I completed my Principal’s Qualification course (although I have yet to submit my final project…but more about that soon). Early in my career, a seed was planted in my head by a former principal that I would do well in leadership. Ever since then, different administrators have echoed that sentiment, and I have continued to do things to try to further my path down that road. I have held more formal positions of leadership, but have also at times acted as an informal mentor to my colleagues. At this moment, when I think about my most ideal position, it would be exactly what I am doing right now…teaching and working with teachers to better their own practices. 

However, I don’t feel that the coordinator portion of my current position is as developed as I’d like it to be. I sometimes find it a challenging place to sit, where teachers aren’t “required” to meet with me, yet my job depends on it. I would never want anyone to feel forced to work with me. The opposite actually. I would hope that after spending time collaborating and brainstorming, teachers would see the value of the partnership and seek it out more often. And some have. But others, even when offered, do not always accept. There is no way that I would be the educator I am today without the support, guidance, collaboration and thought-partnering with my mentors and coaches. 

One part of my PGP this year was to live through the prototype protocol, in order to then support other teachers going through the process themselves. It’s amazing how my mindset has shifted, appreciating the feedback portion of the protocol more than I ever thought I would. I am so much more motivated to build and complete my blogging course for teachers, knowing that I am creating something they had a say in, something they believe will be beneficial to them, and something they will therefore, hopefully, use often. 

I mentioned earlier that I have not completed my Principal’s Course final project. Why? I had chosen to focus on documenting learning, specifically the value of blogging for teachers, administrators and students. I wanted to choose something that I was living and breathing in school, and something that would not end once my final project had been submitted. But that’s part of the problem! My documenting hasn’t stopped! I keep learning more, creating more, prototyping more, and adding more that I want to share as part of my final submission. I guess this is a good problem to have 🙂 Leading workshops for teachers and parents has been an added experience that will undoubtedly help me if/when my role continues to evolve further into leadership. Last night was the most recent of these sessions, where I helped our grade 3 parent cohort understand the school’s philosophy and expectation for our BYOD program. 

Over the last number of weeks I have been working closely with Gerry de Fazio, who has acted as a consultant for our school through NoTosh since February 2018. She has been a thought partner for me, a coach, and sometimes(often) that little nudge I needed to continue moving forward with my PGP. As her time with us comes to a close, I will transition into taking over that “nudging” role for our teachers. Through our time together, I have learned even more about playing a coaching/mentoring role. It’s about asking the right questions at the right time, NOT being the expert. It’s about listening. It’s about supporting. It’s about finding barriers and attempting to lift them…kind of like what it’s like being a teacher 🙂

I am somewhat nervous about taking on this new responsibility. But when I think back to what I said just a few paragraphs ago, that I want to work with more and more teachers, perhaps this additional clarification about what my role and responsibilities entail, my collaboration and coaching with teachers will organically increase. 

In a future with so many unknowns due to COVID-19, I am hopeful that amongst the tragedies will also be positive steps forward, particularly in education. With the personalization, flexibility, and the need to narrow in on specific skills during remote learning, I am eager to see how we will “go forward” to school and build these practices into our everyday instruction. 


May
2020

Prototype Protocol – Planning

categories: Blogging, Documenting Learning

Over the last few weeks, I have moved into the planning phase of the prototype protocol, and have begun developing the actual website where my blogging course will live. I met with our IT Director, and discussed the various platforms that would make sense. We ultimately landed on using an existing private faculty blog that teachers currently have access to, yet rarely use. He has been in discussion with our head of school to see how we can increase traffic to this blog, and adding this component may help!

So off I went to begin building the site. I created the shell, started adding in placeholders for information and was about to begin populating when….WAIT….I NEED TO GET FEEDBACK! When I mentioned this to one of my mentors, Gerry De Fazio, who has been guiding me through the prototype protocol, she said that this is exactly what we hope all teachers will come to experience. When the protocol becomes second nature, and when we recognize the value in each step rather than seeing it as a hurdle we need to overcome, we will have found success.

I’ve decided to try something new as a means of documenting my process. I’ve created two video reflections to document my initial version and then will update with videos as I meet with more teachers.

Reflection #1: First prototype

Reflection #2 – first rounds of feedback


Apr
2020

Coronavirus Virtual Time Capsule – Documenting History

categories: Blogging, Documenting Learning

Cross-post from my Class Blog.

There has been a lot of talk about how we are living through history these days. The things we document about our experiences learning and working from home will be read and analyzed by students and historians hundreds of years from now. Just as we learn about events and lives of people in the past, their journals, pictures and accounts help us better understand what life was like.

Many students have already taken the opportunity to write journals of their own, but last week we talked about the things we thought would be important to document and how.

Here’s a quick video of the collaborative brainstorm we did on Jamboards:

And our final image of all the suggestions:

Fortunately, we launched our student blogs this year, with this exact (well, almost exact) purpose in mind. We wanted to give students a platform where they could keep track of their thoughts, learning and experiences at this point in time. It will always live there, as a resource for them, and others, to look back at and learn from.

Taking all the suggestions from the students, and also being inspired by this post by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano, I created the following image for students to use as inspiration for documenting their experiences. I hope this will bring some fun and smiles into what we know is a less than ideal time.


Apr
2020

One Week, Two Weeks, Three Weeks, Forever Weeks?

categories: Blogging, Documenting Learning

My last post was on March 2, 2020…ten days before my school closed its doors due to COVID-19; eleven days before we had our first virtual staff planning session over Zoom and Google Hangouts; 16 days before we began the soft launch of our emergency remote learning program; 21 days before we launched Phase 1 of our emergency remote learning program; and 7 weeks before we will launch Phase 2 of our emergency remote learning program on April 20th.

Now that we’ve lived it, we know that it would have been impossible to explain or imagine what life would be like a mere 7 weeks in the future. Which is in and of itself the point of this post. The majority of my posts on this blog have focused on documenting learning, and supporting teacher and student blogging at my school. I am not the most avid blogger, and sometimes fall out of the groove. But as I am faced with the challenges of adapting my curriculum, thinking about the “what” and “how” of teaching, and deciding what important skills I want my students to learn and capture during this time, I am challenging myself to capture this moment as well. As I have read all throughout the news and on Twitter, we are living history right now. When this started, we prepared to be closed for a week or two, then 4, and now…? Will I remember all the details of what life was like to be able to tell my children? When my students talk to their grandchildren about living through this pandemic,  will they remember the various phases they went through and adjustments made to their learning? Will it be important? Just as I couldn’t imagine what life would be like today back on March 2, it is impossible to know what information will be of value or what will be remembered. All I can do is document it here, and if nothing else, have something I can look back on proudly when this is all over.

Pride is the overwhelming feeling I’ve had in the last number of weeks. I am proud of how quickly my school responded to the emergency by closing its doors to protect our community. I am proud of how eagerly (albeit with anxiety and some frustration) my colleagues and I launched a full distance learning program. I am proud of how open, transparent and flexible the administration was to making changes and adjustments to that program, based on feedback from parents, students and teachers. I am proud of how calmly and responsibly my students jumped into this new learning environment to collaborate with their teachers and peers. And I have to believe that we were all able to do this because of the work we’ve done over the last three years. If we had not worked with NoTosh to figure out what we believed to be true about teaching and learning at OJCS, we would not have been able to continue that teaching and learning as seamlessly once the building itself was closed. If we had not worked with Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano around Now Literacies and documenting learning, we (and our students) would not have been able to so adeptly respond and function within a virtual learning environment. I am SO proud of all the work we have done.

Here’s a quick timeline of the last 7 weeks:

*It’s important to note that this past year we had a soft launch of our BYOD program for students in grades 4 – 8. When we launched our distance learning program, many students already had their own devices. The majority of our families are fortunate enough to have homes with multiple devices and strong internet connections. Through every phase, teachers and administrators have been in contact with families and have been extremely supportive and flexible in expectations. We have always come at this with the understanding that financial and health conditions will continue to change for families, and no student will be penalized for missing a meeting, or being unable to submit work. Communication is always made in these circumstances to make alternate arrangements.

March 12 – last day of in-school learning
March 13 – faculty meetings to plan and prepare over Zoom
March 16 – 17 – PD faculty planning days
March 18 – 20 – Soft Launch. Students checked into Google Meet at 8:45 and followed a schedule set by grade groupings, with each team of teachers making their own changes as they saw fit. Feedback: A LOT of screen time; families with multiple children found it challenging to have kids on different break schedules, younger students needed too much parent support and lost focus quickly. Teachers, parents, and students were exhausted. 
March 23 – April 3 – Phase 1 – Return to regular schedule where all breaks are streamlined across the school. Teachers are “available” during all regular teaching blocks, but have a range of online vs non-digital activities, synchronous vs asynchronous teaching. We read, cooked, sang, created, connected, prayed, and celebrated – all online!  Feedback: primary teachers are starting to find their groove and understand what their students can and cannot do within a specific time frame. Morning lessons are much more productive. Middle School schedule needs to be shifted to have longer blocks, but fewer classes in a day. Shorten the learning day with optional work periods and teacher office hours in the afternoon. 
April 6 – 20 – Passover Break
April 20 – ? – Phase 2 – A new Middle School schedule was created and will be tested. Lower School teachers will continue to make changes as needed and have been encouraged to “lighten the load” in the afternoon by scheduling more flexible, independent work periods for students to be more self-directed (for example, Genius Hour, building challenges, Phys Ed. Art, etc.) and are also encouraged to adjust as needed. Feedback: TBD

What do I hope to achieve with my students over the coming weeks?

  • I hope to inspire them to learn about things they are interested in learning about.
  • I hope to continue giving them opportunities to interact and collaborate with their peers.
  • I hope to create an engaging, inclusive, supportive online learning environment that they look forward to joining each day.
  • I hope to support them in developing the skills they will need to navigate this online world, which will undoubtedly support them in the future as well.
  • I hope to continue supporting them in documenting this unprecedented moment in time.

As we head back to school after our Passover break, we will begin to discuss common end-of-year events, like Sports Day, end of year trips, report cards and graduation. Just as we have worked through things as a team, we will continue to do with these events as well. We will continue to look to our colleagues around the world who are experiencing this with us. We will continue to make history.


Mar
2020

You’ll Never Know if You Don’t Ask

categories: Blogging, Documenting Learning

My initial goal for my PGP was to create a set of learning modules around blogging to help teachers who are new to OJCS understand what we do, how we do it, and why we do it.

After collecting data and challenging my assumptions as a part of the prototype protocol, this remains one of my goals, but three new things have emerged that I never would have thought of had I not asked.

  1. Create a “Blogging Agreement” between staff and administrators, so that we are all on the same page in terms of what we should be blogging about, how often, and if there are any educational hot topics that are “off the table” so to speak. How can we blog according to the OJCS way? Let’s set the floor but no ceiling.
  2. Create some type of database of hot topics, articles, blog posts, etc that could help provoke teachers’ thinking in case they need some type of inspiration for their blogs.
  3. Teachers who are already teaching at the school still have blogging skills they’d like to improve upon. Just because someone has been here since the launch of blogging at OJCS, doesn’t mean they feel completely comfortable with all aspects of Edublogs. Therefore, my learning modules should be both deliverable through coaching sessions, but can also be more “self-serve” where teachers can pick and choose the topic they’d like to learn more about and work their way through it independently.

Before I jump into each of these projects, I still want to work slowly and get feedback to ensure I don’t put all my efforts into something that really won’t be beneficial. Where do I start, then?

First, I’ll need to meet with my Head of School to discuss the Blogging Agreement and confirm what his “Floor” wishes are. I’ll also need to see if he has strong feelings about topics that may go against The OJCS Way.

Next, I will use Trello (a somewhat new tool for me) to make an outline of each learning module to make sure I’ve included enough in each section, and have included all the various skills teachers would want to learn. I will share this with my colleagues and ask for feedback again to make sure I haven’t missed anything or made any assumptions that need to be corrected. I will refer to courses I have completed myself, such as the JumpStart Basics unit from Cult of Pedagogy, and Ampeduca from Silvia Tolisano, as references for ways to organize learning modules for adults.

Finally, I’ll continue to brainstorm ways to house the “Hot Topics” menu for teachers to choose from. One idea I already have is to use our Faculty Info Hub blog that already exists. Teachers would then have the ability to post their own articles and help provoke the thinking of their peers. If a Kindergarten Hebrew teacher reads an article on French Immersion in middle school, for example, they may post that article and see if any our our French faculty have thoughts or opinions on the matter, which they can then in turn post to their blog.

I feel really excited about the work that is to come. I’m glad I didn’t just jump in right from the get-go, as these new discoveries make me realize that I would have missed such an amazing opportunity to give our staff what THEY need, what I THINK they need.


Feb
2020

Prototype Protocol – Challenging Assumptions Through Data

categories: Blogging, Documenting Learning, Reflections

In my last post, I named some assumptions I had about blogging, and then challenged those assumptions by collecting data in various ways. Based on that experience, it was by far the easiest to ask people to fill out a survey in order to get high participation and feedback. Only two people participated in a padlet, two people added sticky notes in my classroom, and based on my own schedule and the schedule of my colleagues, I never had a chance to do any in-person interviews. The majority of the people I sent the Google Forms survey to filled it out, and spent time answering the questions honestly.

My next step was to take all that information, organize it in some way, and analyze it to help me make decisions about next steps. I started by looking at all the various platforms where I collected data, and writing each point on its own sticky note.

After that, I placed all the sticky notes, in no particular order, on a wall in my classroom. This felt like a good spot to model for other teachers how they could follow the protocol in their own classrooms. This was also based on the work we did with NoTosh, as I attempted to build a project nest in my own room.

Finally, I asked teachers for their help again, and invited them in to organize the data in any way they felt made sense.

 

If someone had spent some time with the data before them, they didn’t need to feel confined to the “categorization” that had already been made. The sticky notes were used purposefully, as a way to show how flexible the data was.

What did I learn from the responses?

  • Many see blogging as a great tool for communicating with parents, as a platform to share what they are doing in their classroom with a global audience, and a place to document, learn and grow from where they are now.
  • Most teachers feel completely comfortable with blog posts related to what they are doing in class and for sharing homework. It is posts about educational hot-topics and personal philosophies that teachers are more reluctant to write about.
  • One common frustration with blogging is that teachers feel parents are not interacting with the blogs in the ways they would like (no commenting, never read it, don’t follow)
  • Although teachers see the value in blogging, they want it to be self-motivated and not something that is “required”. They believe that blogging is personal, and it is not necessarily the right tool for everyone. When it is “top down,” the quality of the post is jeopardized, and it is harder to be meaningful.
  • Although teachers feel they know the basics, many still feel like they have a lot to learn and would have appreciated more training at the beginning.

So where do we go from here?

It is interesting to think more about the “top down” comments. Especially as I am working on Principals Qualifications, I understand that there are goals and visions that principals and school leaders make that they need to share with the rest of their stakeholders. I understand that there will always be critics and people who do not necessarily share the same visions or values. It is important to continue working with those teachers to find some common ground.

I wonder…

How long does writing a blog post take someone who is anti-blogging? Could their reluctance be due to a lack of skill?

Although it would still be mandated by admin, would deadlines by which certain types of posts needed to be posted be helpful in actually diving in and getting it done?

Could writing something out of your comfort zone actually help in changing your opinion about blogging? Would it be helpful to have a list of possible blogging topics to choose from to help the juices flow?

I think a few more conversations with people about this would be helpful. But it is clear to me that a more streamlined training program could definitely be helpful for staff who are new to blogging. Creating a set number of lessons, focused on specific skills, with specific tasks attached to them, could be helpful in overcoming some of the barriers that currently exist for our staff around blogging. If these lessons are clearly defined, while new teachers would have to go through each sessions, more experienced teachers could also choose specific lessons to attend to help develop their skill and continue climbing their own blogging ladder.

Now the real work begins!!


Dec
2019

Prototype Protocol – We built it, but nobody came…

categories: Blogging

Last year, my colleague and I worked on creating a prototype protocol for the staff in our school to follow when prototyping something new. This was based on the work some of our staff had done with NoTosh.

At first we created a flowchart, in hopes that teachers would be able to make their way through and see what their next steps were. Unfortunately, it was not very user friendly. We then created a Prezi, hoping that the more interactive interface would be more appealing and useful, and would be more accessible for teachers. Again, no one used it. Following the protocol we created, we went back to the drawing board, and created a Google Slides presentation, streamlining the information, adding clickable links to flow through the protocol, and added guiding questions and examples as support. And what do you think happened? No one used it 🙁

So here I am now, taking the next steps by trying the protocol myself. I met with Gerry De Fazio, who is coaching me throughout this journey.

My first step was to name some assumptions about blogging at OJCS.

  • Blogging is a requirement in our school
  • Teachers are blogging regularly in three different ways: communication, homework, thoughts on education
  • Everyone loves blogging
  • People aren’t comfortable with blogging and that’s why they aren’t blogging

Now I needed to interview people to challenge those assumptions. Remembering that there were 2 goals for this project (my own PGP to create a blogging course for teachers, and to model the prototype protocol for staff) I wanted to model the “gathering data” step in a few different ways. I created a Google Form, a Padlet board, a post-it collection board in my class, and I will also be interviewing face-to-face.

I assume that for those teachers who I asked to participate online or by filling out post-its in my classroom, not all will participate. And that’s ok. I hope to see which option would be best to suggest to faculty.

Here’s some data I’ve collected so far:

I will continue to interview next week and update with more results and my analysis.