Academic Year 2016-2017 Goals Reflection

It is amazing to think that I am at the end of my eighth year as a classroom teacher and as I reflect on this academic year, knowing that my role is going to be changing in the future. When I started thinking about my goals at the start of this academic year, I would never have been able to imagine that this is where I would be.

Over this school year, I started to work with Bill Fishell on a group 3 application looking at family engagement in student learning. The focus of our work was to try and come up with resources for families around the shifts in education and in our school at Peoples Academy Middle Level around proficiency-based learning and Act 77. Our hope was to develop some classroom resources and routines for engaging families in sharing student work and encouraging conversations about learning at home.

This year we really focused on developing our action plan, and gathering resources, although we never were able to really put our plan into action. We did have a great meeting with Karen discussing the needs of our community and the parents and families that we are serving and it is my hope that next year part of my work is going to be around parent involvement and communicating shifts in learning with parents. I still feel this is an area that is going to need work on next year, thinking about we communicate with parents and the purpose of those communications, for example, if we are using progress reports, how can we make this more meaningful, for example having students show an example of work and answer questions with parents or have students during progress report time write a letter to parents about what they are learning about and their goal progress. I do feel that this is hard work to accomplish by one member due to the time needed for students and all teachers having the same communication expectations.

Final Goals Reflection Academic Year 2015-2016

Domain 3:  Instruction Component 3d: Using Assessment in Instruction

Over the course of this year I set a goal for myself to develop learning scales to use with students and have them use the scales to reflect and receive feedback on their work through their blogs. At first - the learning scales were very challenging to write and was really hard to conceptualize how to use them with students. I am however, feeling more comfortable with the use of scales in my practice. Here are examples of learning scales that I used over the course of this year while collaborating with Jordy.

Personal Narratives:

Citizenship

Citizenship & Conflict

Explain and defend their own point of view on issues that affect themselves and society; use information gained from reputable sources.
	Proficient with Distinction	Proficient	Basic Proficient	Making Progress	Getting Started
Identifying Issues	I can independently find issues that have a large affect on me and society that I could act on and make real change.	I can independently identify issues that have an affect on me and society.	I can identify issues with teacher support that affects me and society.	I can pick an issue that affects me.	I can pick an issue.
Identify Sources	I can identify different types of reputable media sources on my own. (print, video, audio, social media, etc.)	I can identify more than one of the same media sources on my own. (all print sources, all video sources, etc.)	I can identify at least one reputable source on my own.	I can identify a reputable source from a variety of sources that my teacher gives me.	I can identify a reputable source that my teacher gives me.
Explain and Defend a Point of View	I can defend my opinion against opposing opinions on the issue.	I can explain my opinion in a clear way.	I can formulate an opinion on the main issue(s).	I can evaluate a source and identify the main issue(s) in it.	I can evaluate a source and identify the issues in it.

Immigration Learning Scale

		Levels of Proficiency
Graduation Domain	Learning Target (performance indicator)	Proficient with Distinction	Proficient (matches learning target)	Basic Proficiency	Making Progress	Getting Started “NOT YET” Language
Global Citizenship (Historical Patterns)	Describe how life in the United States and/or the world has both changed and stayed the same over time; explain why these changes have occurred.	I can identify how life in the United States and/or the world has changed and stayed the same over time and make predictions about the future based on historical patterns.	I can describe how life in the United States and/or the world has both changed and stayed the same over time; explain why these changes have occurred.	I can describe how life in the United States and/or the world  has changed and stayed the same over time.	I can describe how life in the United States and/or the world was in the past and how it is now.	I can describe what life is like in the United States and/or the world today.
Global Citizenship (Citizenship & Conflict)	Explain and defend their own point of view on issues that affect themselves and society; use information gained from reputable sources		I can explain and defend my own point of view on issues that affect me and society I can use information gained from reputable sources	I can explain my own point of view on issues that affect me and society I can  locate information in a reputable source	I can identify issues that affect me and society I can identify a reputable source	I can identify some issues in the world today I can identify sources of information

This is evidence of several of the scales that I used over the course of the year. Some things I still want to work on if trying to figure out how many proficiencies I should be having students work on over the course of the year and also trying to figure out what to do when a student reaches mastery before the rest of the class - or is struggling to meet mastery - what do I do? I also want to work on how I am reporting proficiencies and having students keep track of this work. I am hoping to continue this learning with schoology next year. 

I also have questions about which documents to use when it comes to what proficiency - for example I feel like the district level PBGR document has changed over the course of the year so I am not sure if I am using the most current language. 

Specific goal: 4d. Participating in Professional Community 4e. Growing and Developing Professionally

One of the other things that I have been working on this year is my collaboration with teachers around the state on PLPs. I have been working on a side project called PLP pathways with Don Taylor. We have completed monthly webinars which are available here. I have also been contributing to the professional blog and completed my final blog post of the year about the TIIE portfolio redesign day here.

I also contributed resources to their professional site and presented about PLP topics at two conferences this year. I have to say that as a teacher I have found this work to have a huge impact on my practice. It has been amazing to work alongside teachers from other schools to share in the challenges and successes of implementing PLPs. It is also fascinating to me the different approaches and philosophies to PLPs around the state. I am going to continue my work next year with PLP pathways and will also be attending MGI this year to continue working on how to use PLPs to help with student engagement. I feel that this really pushes me to think about my own practice and gives me to opportunity to collaborate with other educators outside of our school. 

After the work that the 7th grade team did this year with negotiated curriculum I am excited to see where this takes us for next year. I feel like this is a great framework to use with students for the PLPs. Through their personal passions, I feel like students are able to conceptualize goal setting and reflection because it is more tangible. I also want to work with students using the MRGs in a very clear and intentional way. I feel like this was missing this year and it lead to a lack of depth in student goal setting and reflection. I am also looking forward to working with students on our PLP instruction next year. 

March Reflection Update

PLP Pathways and Professional Community

Over the past few months I have continued my work focusing on my professional learning opportunities by staying connected with PLP Pathways. It is always so energizing to get together with other like minded teachers through out the state and talk about what is happening in our own classroom, as well as to problem solve collaboratively. Just this week I talked with Don Taylor about the link between PLPs and PBGRs.

I have continued to have a monthly hangout with a group of teachers on a variety of topics surrounding the implementation of PLPs. I wrote a blog article about the collaboration between 7th grade and 5th grade students here at PAML as a model to keep students engaged in their PLP. I was able to gather some data through a google form that has helped to remind me of the importance of multi-age opportunities.

Another opportunity that I had over the past few month was partnering with students at the Beyond Bullying Conference. At this conference I was able to work with students to design a presentation to give to both students from other schools and teachers from around the area on Digital Citizenship. It was a amazing way for me to develop professionally partnering with students in this way. I will continue to look for opportunities to develop professionally while partnering with students. One thing I want to look into more would be the Up for Learning organization and the work that they are doing around the state.

Learning Scales

For the learning scale development Jordy and I have really been grounding all of the work this year around the learning scales. We have our I Can statements clearly displayed, talk about them constantly in the classroom and think a lot about how we are breaking down the I Can statement into something that the students fully understand. We have been playing with the language of the scales and have been getting feedback from students about their reflections on their growth.

One great thing that happened with learning scales was the professional development time at Stowe this winter being able to share out with colleges. It was very striking as we were sharing how PAML is really progressing at a fast rate on our learning scales and that we are pretty aligned with our thinking and philosophies about how they are to be used in the classroom. I think that this provides a nice opportunity for learning from others. I am really looking forward to this work at Curriculum Camp this summer.

2/04/16

I have been very busy over the past few weeks. Here is what I have worked on Please press play to hear the MP3 reflection:



Record audio or upload mp3 >>


Here is some of the evidence of what I have worked on:

http://plppathways.blogspot.com/2016/01/using-labels-in-blogger-to-support.html

Webinars:

https://sites.google.com/site/plppathways/webinar

Tarrant Blog Post:

Rights and Responsibility Scale

Reading Key Ideas Scales

MGI Presentation

PLP Webinars and Learning Scales!

PLP Professional Development

Over the past few weeks I have been working on my professional development opportunities and have had several exciting things happen. The first is a blog post that I wrote for the PLP Pathways site. It was about the Flyin Ryan Hawks Foundation partnership that I started for my team this year where students created their core values videos to launch our PLP work this year. The blog post can be found here: 

http://plppathways.blogspot.com/

Use the link to see the full blog post. 

I was also asked by Penny Bishop and James Nagle of the Middle Grades Collaborative to work with them on viewing a new platform for Vermont middle schools to use to host PLPsites and allow a scope and sequence for teachers to use when implementing PLPs. This is a new project that they are undertaking working with a software producer to create. I am excited to get into this and think about what this will look like at all types of middle schools, including my experience teaching a very rural, impoverished community before coming to PAML. It is always my goal when reaching out to schools to try and help teachers who can be so isolated at these types of school to get the resources that they need. 

Additionally I have been asked by a teacher from South Burlington to give a presentation at PAML for the PLP committee at their school about what we have done here as a school to implement PLPs. I am hoping that this meeting can take place, as it is always important to share out what we have learned and to hear what other schools are doing. 

We also have a very exciting chance for our students to present at the Beyond Bullying conference in March sponsored by VAMLE. Our students have been asked to develop a workshop for other students about digital citizenship. I think this is a great leadership opportunity for our students! 

Learning Scales and Student Reflection

Since last month I have been thinking about how to get students to use the learning scales to track evidence of learning. I have created two learning scales that the students are using. One for our unit on immigration where students are showing evidence of a graduation standards over the course of the unit. Students are using the scale and reflecting several times through out the unit: before, in the process and after. Here is the learning scale: 

We had also been noticing that students have not been meeting the expectation for writing reading summaries on their weekly book blogs so we have created a learning scale for this and are going to have students look at it this Friday before writing their blog post about their reading. Here is that learning scale:

PLP Webinar #2

PLP Blog Post

Last week I also wrote a blog post for PLP Pathways about our work with the Flyin' Ryan Hawks Foundation. Here is the piece I wrote it is going to go live this week. I also have a webinar on Thursday 11/19 at 3:30.

When looking at the Personal Learning Framework one of the key components to the Identity section is having students think about who they are and their core values. Ultimately, this can be a foundation to help students design goals.

For the past few years I have been trying to help my students think about their identity and develop a sense of self. However, I was finding that I always had a group of students who really struggled reflecting on themselves and communicating their values. Being an avid-skier, I had heard about something called the Flyin’ Ryan Hawks Foundation and felt it may fit this need in my classroom.

The Flyin Ryan Hawks Decision Program

Ryan Hawks was a well known freeskier out of Mad River Valley who went on to compete in the Freeride World Tour. Ryan passed away from injuries sustained at a Freeride World Tour event in Kirkwood, California. Shortly after Ryan’s passing, his family found a document on his computer where a few years before, Ryan had crafted his own core values.  The Flyin’ Ryan Hawks Foundation was established “with the idea of EXPOSING people to Ryan’s core principles, INSPIRING them to explore and compose their own set of core values, and ACTING on the core principles they have composed.”

Implementation at Peoples Academy Middle Level

Being personally inspired by the Flyin’ Ryan Hawks Foundation, I started to hear more and more about the Decisions Program the Foundation had started. This program brings Ryan’s Core Values into schools and organizations as a way for students to write their own core values.  I knew this would be a great fit for my students, especially those who had a hard time engaging in self reflective work.  I reached out to South Burlington High School teacher, John Painter, who had a Rowland Fellowship last year where part of his fellowship was to work with area school to implement the Decisions Program. After my meeting with Painter, I knew that the FRHF Decisions Program would be a great way to kick-off this year’s PLP roll out in September and I could not be more thrilled with how the project took off.

In the start of year year we introduced our students to the FRHF and Ryan’s core values through video on the Foundation's website. Students were instantly inspired by Ryan’s story. It is so important to give our students real life examples of things we ask them to do. Ryan not only thought about his core values, but also set goals and achieved many of them. This was a powerful way to engage our students to think critically about their own core values, which can be a very difficult exercise for 12 and 13 year olds.

Next, we had our students reflect on how others saw themselves. How would their family describe them? How would their friends describe the student? Finally, how would they want to be described?

This started our conversation with students about their core values; the qualities and characteristics they want to be have in their life that will guide them. As teachers, we also were crafting our own core values list and sharing them with the students. We asked students to come up with a minimum of four core values, but many went above and beyond those expectations.

Finally, we had students go into iMovie on their iPads and turn their core values into a movie that would become a part of their PLP. The iMovies included images and music of their choice as a way to highlight their personal core values.

Students were so engaged in this project, many of them worked on their videos at home and shared them with their parents and friends while they were still in the creation stage. Having students craft their core values in this way gave us great insight into what drives our students and who they hope to become. We used these core values to then launch into the PLP, looking at how their core values will guide them in their life and think about what goals can set to help stay on the right track.

Parents Reactions to Students Core Values iMovies

One of the most rewarding aspects of this project was the reaction parents had while viewing their students’ core values iMovies. We had students start their student led conference this year by showing their video which was placed on the About Me section of their PLP. You could see the joy on the parents’ faces while watching the videos. Many parents asked to watch the videos multiple times and asked thoughtful questions to their children about both the process and the values the students selected. We asked parents for feedback after the student led conference, and it was overwhelming how many parents commented on how nice it was to see their students’ core values iMovie.

For more information about bringing the Flyin’ Ryan Decisions Program to your school or classroom please contact John Painter at jpainter@sbschools.net.

Maura Kelly is a 7th grade humanities teacher at Peoples Academy Middle Level in Morrisville, Vermont. She has a passion for working with young adolescents and believes in the power of a strong middle level program in developing students to be ready to face challenges in our world today. When Maura is not teaching you can find her out skiing and biking around the state of Vermont.