One Word plan

The "one word" that I chose to focus on was "dedication" particularly with regard to my family.  I'm pretty busy with school and school and also school that I wanted to make sure that I was making time to dedicate myself to enjoying the time I have available with my family. This was made possible a few weeks ago when my son got and ear infection, my daughter got pink eye, my wife got the flu, and everyone had fevers.  Except me.  For a period of a week I was a one-man crew that was blowing noses, making soups, administering medicines, and disinfecting everything.  It was a wild ride and I'm very glad that everyone is better.

The Spirit of Leadership

Concepts: Spirituality, Leadership

Enduring Understanding: It takes more than knowledge to be a teacher leader.

What does it mean to have a teacher's heart?  What is "teaching with heart?  What is spiritual teaching?

Read the article posted below: "The Spirit of Leadership".

Create a blog post in which you answer the following questions about your response to this article and connect it to your work with The Spiritual Dimension of Leadership by Houston and Sokolow.

• What are your initial thoughts about the idea that spirituality is the missing piece in the puzzle?
• My initial thought was that the author would be referring to spirituality in a religious sense.  Being a teacher in a non-parochial school, my initial reaction was to say to myself, "This article will have little bearing on my own experiences."  However, it was soon clear that the author was referring to "spiritual" development in terms of personal growth and team building, two ideas that I can get behind.

• Most teachers would want to avoid the pitfall of moving from compassion to callousness. One way to do this is to remember why you became a teacher in the first place. Briefly describe why you entered the teaching profession and mention any mentor who inspired or guided you.
• The person that I would say had the strongest influence on moving me into the career that I am is my dad.  My dad was an 8th grade science teacher for 37 years. I grew up knowing what the tasks of a teacher entailed.  I helped grade. I helped to set up labs over the weekend. In addition, my high school calculus teacher was a great influence on me because he showed me that you can be both a serious profession and kind of crazy, as long as you can pull it off.  I'm not sure if I'm pulling it off as well as he did, but I'm sure trying.

• The article concludes with the notion that the 21st Century is "the best time in history to be an educator".  Do you agree or disagree with this statement?  Why?
• With regard to the opportunities that are available for students, I would say that today is a fantastic time to be a teacher.  Access to technology has made learning occur in ways that it never did before.  Students can learn outside of the classroom. They can accomplish tasks in class in different ways than they were ever able to before.  On other side of the coin, the increase in technology has also lead to an increase in things that can cause distractions, both in and out of school.  Checking text messages in class is detrimental to learning.  Rampant cyber-bullying can be detrimental to personal growth.

• In what ways does your own notion of "spirituality" (not necessarily religious in nature) inform and affect your actions as a teacher in your own classroom and as a teacher leader among your peers?  On which of the 8 SDL principles do you rely most heavily?
• Of the 8 principles that were discussed, I would say that I rely most heavily on the idea of gratitude.  Being appreciate of those that have helped us to succeed is extremely important to me. Recently, my faith in humanity was restored when I had to unexpectedly sub for another math teacher's class when the substitute didn't show up.  I wasn't too excited to lose my prep period, but the sub wasn't there and somebody had to teach those kids, so, I begrudgingly took the class to my room.  Luckily, it was a lesson with which I was extremely familiar with and the teacher had some items ready for the sub to use.  What took my by surprise was that at the end of the lesson, when the class was leaving for lunch, I had several students thank me for teaching them that day.  As a high school teacher I don't regularly get students saying, "Thanks for teaching me some math today," but that's exactly what happened.  I was tremendous. 

January Research Journal

Now that I have had a chance to take a closer look at my data, I've noticed a couple of items that stand out pretty clearly:

• Students, in general, liked the way that the standards-based grading system worked.  They liked being able to reassess any of the learning targets they wanted to in order to show proficiency.
• Students, in general, didn't like that they were not able to see what their grade was at any particular time as they could in their other classes.  This wasn't feasible for me to do because their total grade was an amalgamation of several different factors that wasn't easy to calculate on a regular basis.  Next time I will look at having a set date where students would be able to get a snapshot of what their current grade is.
• Students final grades are, in general, higher in this class than they would be in a traditional math class.  I'm torn as to whether this is "good" or "bad".  If all grades are better, than students are clearly succeeding more, which is good, but is the letter grade that I have assigned to a particular score appropriate?  I'm still not totally sure.

Final Stage 2

Here is a link to my final stage 2.

Bullying

My school does not have an anti-bullying program specifically.  There are some loose ideas that go around out there (there has been a "design an anti-bullying t-shirt" program and other minor things,) but there is not over-arching program to speak off.  There is a paragraph, or two, in the student handbook that describes, in generalities, that bullying is not allowed, discouraged, etc.  If bullying does arise, it is the responsibility of the teacher or staff member that sees any sort of bullying occur to report the incident to the office.  What the office might do from there is dependent upon the incident that occurred and the severity of the offense. 

In order to try to prevent bullying in my room, and hopefully then in the building as a whole, I demonstrate through my words and actions that each student is deserving of respect and should not be subject to any sort of emotional distress, of any degree.  I show them that they are in a climate in which they can feel safe and know that the belong.  I try to make myself as visible as possible in the hall ways and during lunch time when things such as bullying can occur. 

Dots and Have Nots Part Deux

Unfortunately my student, previously identified as "Voltron" has left our building for the alternative learning center in our district.  So, it was pretty tough to complete the second portion of this blog entry.  However, I am happy to think in terms of hypotheticals, so I have answered the questions below in a hypothetical sense.  If "Voltron" was still in the building and I was still having interactions with him or her on a regular basis, here's what I think would probably be happening.

• What actions are you taking?
• At this point I have upped the ante, so to speak, and started putting more pressure on "Voltron". As previously mentioned "Voltron" is not a strong math student and is one that is prone to doing little during any time possible.  Now that "Voltron" and I are on a more friendly level, it is easier for me to be more forceful when it comes to getting "Voltron" to do the work. 
• What impact are you having?
• It's going great because I'm such a great teacher/person/individual in this great hypothetical world that I've created for myself!
• What questions are being generated?
• If this world is hypothetical, what's even real any more?  Am I real?  Does "Voltron" even exist?  Are we all "Voltron"?

Vision/Missions/Values

The group I have selected to go through this process with my math department which is also my PLC.

• Vision:  Create unified approach to our curriculum.
• Mission:  Work together in a profession manner.
• Values:  Cooperation, communication, understanding that it won't happen right away, respect for others' ideas.

Which parts of the process were easy?  Difficult?  How did your embrace these parts? 
     We do not always teach the same way, but for the most part we have similar beliefs about what is important to teach our students.  We are also all on the same page in the sense that we do not have to do everything exactly the same, but that the broach strokes should be the same for all of us. 

What did you learn about yourself during this process?
     I can be both the person that thinks outside of the box and the person that is very set in his ways. 

What did you learn about others?
     There are some members that came up with ideas that I never would have thought of myself.

What were missed opportunities?
     Due to the constant scheduling and requirements that our administration puts on our PLC time we don't have as much time as would like (or need) to complete what we would like.

How would you amend (change) the process in the future?
     With more time I know that we can get closer and closer to our goals!