How have connections with other professionals improved your practice? Today's entry is from Guen Butler, Teacher on Special Assignment for Formative Assessment:
How has being connected improved my practice?
I have had a unique opportunity over the last year to work as a Teacher on Special Assignment. I've met hundreds of teachers in our district, and have spent time on all of our campuses. Few people get the opportunity to learn from their peers the way I have, and I absolutely treasure the opportunity.
By being connected, face-to-face, and by phone & email with the amazing teachers & administrators in this district, I have learned:
1. The location of the Xerox room on every campus.
2. The name of every principal’s secretary in the district—thanks for all of your help, ladies!
3. While we all have the same priority (the kids), we all have different priorities. And approaches. I've learned so much from talking to fellow teachers in our district about how we assess, give grades, manage a class, use technology, collaborate with others. It’s been so enriching—thank you!
4. I've learned what a Google doc is.
5. What a Google form is, and how to use it.
6. How to make a website, and WHY I should have one. Mine isn't going to win any web design awards, but it works.
7. There’s this thing called a “Snipping Tool” that lets you take pictures of what you’re looking at on your computer screen. It’s down there in the bottom left corner under that big “Windows” button.
8. We have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro. It lets you change pdfs into Word Documents, and do other cool things to pdfs. Download it on your school computer from the Install Software Portal.
9. Google Chrome is a newer Internet browser. If you click on the Chrome icon on your desktop, it goes right to the Start Page.
10. We should think twice before asking our students scores of “Google-able” questions since 75% of the Smarter Balanced Assessments require higher-level thinking.
11. In an age of information overload, it is our responsibility to teach our students how to evaluate the quality of the information they find online.
12. I've learned to make a test to give to kids online. And, I freely admit to never having given such an assessment to my own students. Thank you for letting me practice on yours.
13. I know when school starts & ends on every site, and when lunch is. I am a parking lot traffic-avoiding ninja. And so are you, if you've ever worked on more than one campus or tried to leave your own campus right when school gets out.
14. I've learned that Education Week is a great resource for teachers who want to keep up with educational policy & changes to our field.
15. You can learn things from a screencast. (I had never watched an instructional video on YouTube until last year.)
16. How to MAKE a screencast using a free online tool called screencast-o-matic.
17. That “the district” is basically a handful of people that I share an office with. And what I've learned from them would fill pages.
18. Assessment isn't something we DO TO kids. It’s not a punishment. Assessment should inform us of what our students know and don’t know. And we should do something about what they DON’T know, not just move on to the next chapter.
19. It’s OK to not know the answer. As teachers, we are used to being the “holders of knowledge.” Not knowing the answer can make us feel vulnerable. While this is a pretty long list of what I've learned recently, what I still DON’T know could fill volumes!
20. I've learned that education is going to change more in the next ten years than it has in the last 100. We’re changing what we do in the classroom and changing what we ask our students to produce. And it’s exciting. Scary, but exciting. Good thing we’re all in this together!
