Thursday, September 23, 2010
Week of September 24
Domain 4 of Danielson's Framework of Professional Practice acknowledges the importance of an educator's participation in a professional community that facilitates and stimulates intellectual growth and development. Assess how your experience at faculty in-service contributed to your own growth and development as a pre-service teacher.
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It was really great to get to spend time with the teachers that I will be working with in the coming months in a low key, non student setting. Getting to know the personalities of each of the teachers and seeing how they interact with one another was very cool and I think will help ease some of my anxiety about not fitting in. I grew today in that I became more comfortable with the teachers of the department as well as my co-op.
ReplyDeleteI think I saw some positive and negatives which allowed me to develop my own opinion of in-services. The job today was to create a common assessment for students to take to make sure they are gaining the knowledge they need to be. Earlier this year the teachers were asked to do the same thing, but the assessment was to be through creative means such as projects, skits, songs, etc. Today the project was the create an assessment that can be measured by scan-tron. They were not too pleased that they had to make another assessment which they felt was not as valid of important as the last one they made. I can see their argument here, and kind of agree with them. I think I developed an opinion that the administration needs to have one plan of action and not flip flop if you will about what they want. The teachers were never told why they needed to create a new assessment, they just had to. Several of them were very unhappy, mainly because the administration was not consistent with their actions or their communications. Today really opened my eyes to how the relationship between the administration and teachers can be. I also noticed how the teachers filled out the evaluations forms, and how they can be a good resource to getting ones feelings and opinions across. Today was an overall eye opening day for me.
Todays in-service allowed me to see what is expected of teachers and how they can work together as a team. During our time the teachers worked on an a test that the whole 8th grade would be taking. It was interesting to see how each person brought their own ideas then pieced the test together. Watching this made me feel a little bit more confident in becoming a teacher.
ReplyDeleteThe inservice was really cool today. It was great to get an even deeper look into the innerworkings of the school we're at. It was also great to see the teachers relax a little bit and let us into their personal world. The 8th grade History staff at LDMS is pretty tight knit, and they all get a long well, but it was great for Seth, Bill, and I to joke around with them and hear some great stories about the staff.
ReplyDeleteWe also got to know a little bit more about their curriculum ( i.e. how learning focused education affects them). It was also great to see how teacher oriented the administration at LDMS are. They are really in-tune with the teacher's needs. This is an awesome school.
I had a great day today. First, I talked with my co-op about basal textbooks and how LDMS uses them in the classrooms. We also talked a lot about the Learning Focused Model. It was nice to hear his opinions on it. In contrast, I got to talk to other teachers about the LFM and they had other opinions, particularly the math teachers. The LFM is definitely not a one-size-fits-all package. I believe that it is extremely compatable with any Social Studies curriculum.
ReplyDeleteI had quite the opposite feeling on the relationship between the administration and the faculty than Gabe did. The 8th grade co-ops were ahead of schedule with their assesment planning. They were working on a new assesment today for the new text book they recieved for colonization. They made it look extremely easy, just time consuming. I was nice to see the great teamwork and cooperation between them. It encouraged me to have a positive outlook on In-service Days. Although these can be boring days, at least work gets accomplished, which can't be said about a lot of departments or districts. Looking forward to the PCSS Conference!
My placement during in-service was a really great experience. During the day while the students were still in school, my co-op had two free periods. He spent those two periods explaining to me the process of in-serivce at Lower Dauphlin. In addition, he spent time explaining to me the pros and cons about in-service.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I had the opportunity to particpate with the three Social Studies teachers in the 7th grade. This in-service day was a time set aside for the teachers in each department to get together and create tests -- Communitive Assessment. I was able to see how the department functions and how a test is created. My co-op allowed me to work with the department to create two tests: Pre-history to Mesopotamia & Egypt to the War Years. I enjoyed it because I took a lot from the day. For example, how to compromise with my fellow teachers in order to create the most effective test. It was also an opportunity for me to see how in-serivce works.
As Gabe already said, staying for in-service was interesting. However, I got a chance to interact with the female teachers more while they tried to structure the Geography tests to accommodate tech service level students. Their frustration brought them to silence multiple times and it was painful and awkward to witness. What was worse is it was so obvious why this wasn't going to work and where their frustration came from and why they didn't want to try and spend more time formulating those tests when they've already had to change the form of common assessment twice. There was also a large discussion of how this was the school district imposing upon the teachers because the state isn't anywhere near ready to implement large scale changes like this yet.
ReplyDeleteI found it really interesting just to listen to what they said amongst themselves because it was clear the arguments were being revisited and not brand new. Overall, it was a really good day.