I am passionate about levelling the playing field, closing the achievement gap and promoting equity. In my classroom I strive to be culturally sensitive and teach my students to be productive and collaborative. I am always looking for ways to deliver content in a child friendly way that inspires and engages and allows me to give feedback as quickly as possible. I try to create community in the classroom and our school while connecting students to their home life and the community at large. As part of our AVID program, my students presented a reader’s theater rehearsal to Ryan Gregory District 2 Representative. Providing the students with a wider audience made the students much more conscious of their performance and increased the rigor.
While reading “The Power of Questions” by Falk & Blumenreich, I started to see my classroom as a space to do research. I had often reflected on how I could use research based best practices and resources yet I had never thought that I could create a Research Project that could add to the Education Research Databases. As I read about the Inquiry model, I began to wonder if I could design a research project that used crowdsourcing where it could be used to run parallel studies in multiple classrooms. I was thinking about the Meta-Analyses studies that John Hattie had written about.
Oftentimes I feel very isolated in my classroom and am very grateful to network with other educators. That is why I look for what other teachers are doing on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Internet, Podcasts, books and magazines. I have always seen technology as a tool to quicken the pace of learning, to allow for differentiation and timely feedback. It is important to me to be the best teacher I can be as quickly as I can.
This time of Distance Learning has allowed me the space and time to dive deeper into technology tools that I had only begun to explore. I had set up my first Zoom session for our virtual field trips with California state parks -PORTS program. We managed to have three virtual field trips using Zoom on the Promethean Board before the shutdown and two virtual field trips over zoom from home after the shutdown.
As I have begun to feel more comfortable with this new medium, I have been wondering if we could bring the zoom and recording model to all our meetings? I think it would require some planning. As with every meeting, agendas would need to be developed. The benefits would include meetings that were not limited by space. Participants would not have to factor in parking or driving time. The meeting could be designed to be interactive. Instead of participants waiting while one person captured the thoughts of participants on chart paper, everyone could have almost instantaneous input. The organizer (host) could also sort and analyze data in real time. Examples of meetings that could benefit from this format include:
This new way of interacting could provide more transparency and accountability. The last item on my list is Inquiry Based Research designed to capture data from not only my classroom but across my grade level. My driving question might be: Could district wide grade level PLC ultimately benefit the students and help teachers grow their practice? Would this help with my passion to level the playing field, close the achievement gap and promote equity?
While reading “The Power of Questions” by Falk & Blumenreich, I started to see my classroom as a space to do research. I had often reflected on how I could use research based best practices and resources yet I had never thought that I could create a Research Project that could add to the Education Research Databases. As I read about the Inquiry model, I began to wonder if I could design a research project that used crowdsourcing where it could be used to run parallel studies in multiple classrooms. I was thinking about the Meta-Analyses studies that John Hattie had written about.
Oftentimes I feel very isolated in my classroom and am very grateful to network with other educators. That is why I look for what other teachers are doing on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Internet, Podcasts, books and magazines. I have always seen technology as a tool to quicken the pace of learning, to allow for differentiation and timely feedback. It is important to me to be the best teacher I can be as quickly as I can.
This time of Distance Learning has allowed me the space and time to dive deeper into technology tools that I had only begun to explore. I had set up my first Zoom session for our virtual field trips with California state parks -PORTS program. We managed to have three virtual field trips using Zoom on the Promethean Board before the shutdown and two virtual field trips over zoom from home after the shutdown.
As I have begun to feel more comfortable with this new medium, I have been wondering if we could bring the zoom and recording model to all our meetings? I think it would require some planning. As with every meeting, agendas would need to be developed. The benefits would include meetings that were not limited by space. Participants would not have to factor in parking or driving time. The meeting could be designed to be interactive. Instead of participants waiting while one person captured the thoughts of participants on chart paper, everyone could have almost instantaneous input. The organizer (host) could also sort and analyze data in real time. Examples of meetings that could benefit from this format include:
- School Board Meetings - which could use the yes/no feature to take informal tallies.
- NVEA meetings- which could share information and present interest-based problem solving while staying in touch with the concerns of all members in real time.
- Professional Development could be held district wide, not limited by space. This could help build a more cohesive district wide community.
- PTO/Family Resource Center
- Organize the planning of fundraisers
- Unite and Promote the district to the community at large
- Save material costs with volume discounts
- District wide grade level PLC’s
- Promote alignment and calibration across the district
- Shared Resources
- Promote networking
- Inquiry Based Research
This new way of interacting could provide more transparency and accountability. The last item on my list is Inquiry Based Research designed to capture data from not only my classroom but across my grade level. My driving question might be: Could district wide grade level PLC ultimately benefit the students and help teachers grow their practice? Would this help with my passion to level the playing field, close the achievement gap and promote equity?