Do you share with others?

With all of the negative surrounding education these days, I am so excited to share a POSITIVE with you today! I truly feel we are lucky to be able to work in education at this time in our country’s history. Gone are the days where teachers create their own lessons and ideas, close their classroom door and only share those ideas with their students. We are now able to connect with teachers from all over the world. On a daily basis, teachers are constantly sharing ideas, creating lessons to share and blogging about successes in their classrooms. For new (ok...newer) teachers like me, this is so very helpful. I have always appreciated the work and ideas of others. So, today, I wanted to provide you a great up and coming resource I have found.

This new initiative brand new...and has only been released as of March 12^th. It is a new project created by Technology, Education and Design (TED). I have watched several of TED’s videos in my online graduate classes. They are known for making innovative and engaging videos on a variety of topics. These topics are generally created for adults. Now, they have launched a new website: TED-ED. They are asking for teachers to create and submit engaging video lessons. This idea reminds me of a mixture of ALEX and TeacherTube. Here is a video explaining their idea:

So, if teachers have a great idea for an engaging lesson, they can submit the lesson to the TED-Ed website. If TED agrees, they will send a portable recording booth to the teacher. He or she will then record their lesson and send it back to TED. The video lesson with then be sent to an animation team to enhance it. Then those videos will be post to their YouTube Channel. I watched a few and found them very cool. Here is an example of a video they have already posted:

The greatest part is that their goal is to help students become life-long learners and provide teachers with an engaging way to help their students learn. It is a great tool and even better...it is FREE! I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the downside. One, it is currently only available through a YouTube Channel. Fortunately, you can still download the videos at home and play them back at school. You can also "follow" the channel and be alerted when new videos have been added. Two, since they are so new, there are not a lot of videos to choose from. I didn’t find too many videos that applied to my lower-grade students, but I just know that this idea is going to grow into a plethora of videos that span the grades.

Click here to read more about this idea from an e-School News article published earlier this month.

State test scores verus teacher effectiveness

It seems that education reform has been a topic in the news a lot lately. Today, Dr. Bentley is unveiling his plan to improve schools and also to promote the idea of charter schools in Alabama. Not to mention, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is always on teachers’ minds and in the news. It seems that much of the news and legislation is about teacher accountability and giving our students the best education possible. On top of everything else, the upcoming Alabama Reading and Math Test (ARMT) is weighing heavily on my mind even in the middle of my spring break!

In February, eSchool News published an article called “Tests Don’t Measure Teachers”. In this article, Mr. Gillen briefly discusses the “teacher value-added” model for teacher accountability and how it affects those students that live in low-income areas. This term refers to a model used to determine teacher effectiveness. The model relies heavily on students’ standardized test scores to establish a teacher’s success in the classroom. Mr. Gillen points out that no matter how hard a teacher works, there are always going to be outside factors that need to be considered. He points out flaws in a New York Times report that says that teachers with high value-added will produce higher state test scores and those that have low value-added need to be fired. Gillen states that “low-socioeconomic status students who produced high test scores earned only $2.70 more a week than comparable students who produced average test scores.” With this, it seems that teachers who teach these lower-income students will never meet the status quo of this teacher value-added model approach. This is due to outside circumstances that are beyond the teacher’s control. Mr. Gillen suggests that teachers, leaders and policy makers pay closer attention to the needs of a student and their family versus their test scores only. He feels that by improving the community first through better housing, healthcare, nutrition, etc, our students will be more likely to produce better scores on these standardized tests.

To look at another point of view concerning the teacher value-added model, I found the article “Should Student Test Scores Be Used to Evaluate Teachers?” through eSchool News as well. The author of this article views this subject in a slightly different light. Although flawed, there are some aspects of this model worth using to help teachers better their teaching methods. This article suggests using standardized testing data as one of many tools to determine a teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom. Through a project called Measures of Effective Teaching (MET), leaders devised an assessment tool that included standardized test scores along with several other measures. Along with test data, the districts looked at supplemental assessments using higher-order thinking understanding, classroom observations, and personal teacher reflections, assessments of teacher’s pedagogical knowledge, student perceptions of the classroom environment and teacher perceptions of the working environment. Using all of these factors, 3,000 teachers’ effectiveness was evaluated.

The results show what any good teacher already knows. It takes more than success on one standardized test to prove someone is a good teacher. The study found that those classrooms that spent a lot of time preparing for the standardized test rarely showed a high value-added on state tests. It showed that positive classroom experiences where higher-order questioning and understanding was involved produced higher learning gains. By using several different sources to measure teacher effectiveness, teachers were able to get targeted feedback to improve their classroom practice.

These articles really opened my mind to how teachers are currently evaluated versus how they should be evaluated. If you’ve taught more than a year, you know there are teachers who work their hardest and those that do not even seem to care or try. Looking at test scores alone will not necessarily eliminate those low value-added teachers. There must be more. It is exciting to know that with studies like the MET project, maybe change is on the horizon when it comes to teacher evaluations. And Mr. Gillen is right in the sense that students’ economic status and home life do play a big part in their success at school. If there is no one to help with homework, encourage success and buy their supplies, they do tend to give up more easily and struggle. But working in a low-economic area, I see students and teachers working their hardest every day and being successful. Year after year, my school continually meets AYP and works hard to get every child to succeed. We do not let our economic status stand in our way and I know that our community, parents and students appreciate that. We know that our students can beat all statistics and any odds they come up against and knowing someone believes in them is what makes our students successful!

Using Twitter Professionally

Well, I must start this post out with honesty. I have always thought that Twitter was a waste of time. Who cares what you had for breakfast? Who cares that you are heading to the grocery store? I’ve never had a Twitter account and did not want one. So, needless to say, I was semi-irritated at the idea of having to create one professionally. I didn’t care to know what professionals had for breakfast either. So reluctantly, I started this Twitter list. I started with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. I chose her because I met her a couple of years ago. I was part of a 21^st Century project within the state of Alabama. She was a guest speaker at several events and even came to our school to see how we used the technology we had to promote 21^st century skills. She is well-educated, professional and I always valued her advice and opinions. So, I added her and waited on tweets. I began to see that she would send links to speaking engagements she was attending, articles she was reading and forward tweets from other people she was following. I was beginning to get a glimpse into what she was learning and how she was growing professionally. This is where my idea of Twitter began to change. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

So, I decided to go back to my delicious account and look at the weekly articles I had been bookmarking. I then added Scott McLeod, Will Richardson, and Vicki Davis. These are well-known educational professionals, and they became more resources that I could reference for information and ideas. They were tweeting about educational policy and reform. I truly believe that all teachers need to be aware of the things that affect our jobs and the children we teach.

Then I moved on to my blog. Probably only a third of my students have internet access and/or computers at home. If parents have internet access, it is through their phones and rarely do their children get to use it. Even though the majority of my students are only getting to use computers at school, I have seen how they and the quality of their work change when using technology. Although I don’t have every piece of technology I would like, it is my duty to make what I do have work best for my students. I chose to write my blog on thriving. Being at a school in a low-income area, I wanted to look at how teachers around the world are doing a lot with very little. So, I did a search for educational professionals with Twitter accounts. I was amazed at the lists that exist. I began researching Twitter profiles and explanations on these lists. I found many teachers, principals and others that were working in rural or urban areas. They are working toward the same goal I am! I was actually excited to see what these people were doing at their schools. So the rest of my Twitter list was created based on these types of people. I am now receiving valuable information and ideas. Now I am hoping rural area teachers like me can join my Twitter list to share in this valuable information I am now finding.

Here is a link to my Twitter list for those interested.