Barack Obama wants to retain teachers; professionally empowered educators is an answer No comments yet

Barack Obama wants to retain teachers; professionally empowered educators is an answer

The Obama administration has stated that retaining teachers is a goal for their education initiatives.   I would like to invite people to a discussion on this topic.  We can start here and then maybe, build our ideas into something that can be presented to the new administration.  

·         “Retain Teachers: To support our teachers, the Obama-Biden plan will expand mentoring programs that pair experienced teachers with new recruits. They will also provide incentives to give teachers paid common planning time so they can collaborate to share best practices.” See:  http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/index.php

What must schools do to define and support professional practice?

If we can better define what it means to be a teaching professional and a teacher leader, we can suggest what school administrations must do to encourage and support professional behavior.

For me, a central issue is professionalism and leadership.  Teachers need to believe that they can make a difference.  They need to feel empowered to do good work which causes students to succeed and achieve.  Those who leave, retire early, or “burn-out” are frustrated, because they feel that the tools to make a difference are unavailable or denied to them.  A professional is an empowered person who knows the protocols and procedures for proper and effective practice and has access to the consultancies and specialists that help determine the proper steps to solve a problem.  American teachers tend to be isolated and are not provided with such processes and systems that support their problem solving.  It is “sink or swim.”  

Here are some topics, which foster empowered professionalism and thereby, increases teacher retention:

·         How a professional teacher knows what to teach

·         How a professional teacher measures and describes student achievement; Data-Driven Curriculum (DdC); internal and external student measures that are clear to teachers http://www.empoweredhighschools.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=42

·         How Professional Learning Teams (PLTs or PLCs) manage protocols for program improvement and make professional decisions that increase student achievement

·         Response to Intervention (RtI); protocols for applying program interventions within a PLT  

·         RTI protocols for school-wide interventions; role of consultants and specialists

·         Social Emotional Learning (SEL); why students “do” school; SEL interventions

·         A new leadership track for the professional educator

Please send your comments, add to the list, and write your own thoughts.   Obama has started the ball rolling by saying that schools need to “give teachers paid common planning time so they can collaborate”.  This is our opening to begin an extensive discussion on teacher professionalism.  The most difficult system challenge for a school is changing the way it assigns time. Obama is giving credibility and permission to schools who wish to provide time for professional purposes.  So how will time be used? Let us frame the need!

Thanks!!  Howard McMackin

CECs RTI Blog No comments yet

CECs RTI Blog.

I emphatically recommend that you visit the CEC RTI Blog. Daryl has put together some excellent work on the implementation of RtI at the secondary level. It is especially pertinent to unified school districts. In our area, many of the high school are in separate districts from the elementary and middle schools. This makes RtI implementation easier since it we’re not faced with the expectations built on experience building elementary RtI programs. Daryl provides the evidence to give high schools the cover they need to implement quality programs — which takes time! But is worth it!!!

Charles

Data-driven Curriculum: Powerful Stuff No comments yet

When teachers are presented with the results of an external standardized test, they usually fumble to make any connection between students in their class and the test results.  The data does not present a relationship to what they do.   For me, data retreats using external testing have been enormously frustrating.  I walk away not sure if the teachers felt empowered to do anything.

In great contrast, the most rewarding days of my entire career have been days when I was allowed to witness a Professional Development Team analyze the results of an internal performance report.   This is a report that explains how well each student has progressed developmentally on each standard that was taught by their teacher.  The teachers talk easily about what happened in their class during the formative, instructional process.   Presented with this clear data, the teachers argue for program improvements and initiate plans for helping their students.  These teachers feel powerful!  This is not always because their students did well.  In fact, some of the most exciting sessions were those reports showing that too many students did badly.  Expressions of empowerment came from the knowledge that teachers had learned something that was wrong and felt they knew how to make productive changes. 

I am not opposed to external measures.  I think that until we have internal classroom data to inform us what the external data means, teachers may feel helpless and frustrated.

What is Data-driven Curriculum?

DdC has the following characteristics:

1.       The course is based on very clear curriculum standards, which make sense to teachers.

2.       Each standard is developmentally measurable in the classroom, such as development rubric or scale scores.  The mastery or the developmental expectation is stated within the developmental scale.

3.       Formative and Summative assessments are used to measure each student’s progress toward mastery or the expectation using the rubric or scale score.

4.       Reports are generated after summative assessments which clearly explain each student’s mastery or development level for each standard separately. 

5.       Teacher teams are given the time to analyze the reports and make program improvements.

6.       Program improvement needs drive staff development.

Social Emotional Learning at the Secondary Level 1 comment

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