Standard 1 - Modeling Ethical and Moral Behavior

Teacher leaders model ethical and moral behavior.

As a teacher, we are tasked with helping to model responsible and ethical adult behavior. This is not something that some teachers enter the profession thinking about. That we are role models, at least to some extent, can be a daunting realization and something for which not all teachers are prepared. We have seen time and again the importance of being leaders rather than followers in education. This leadership also requires that we be examples for other teachers, not just our students.

There are many difficulties inherent in being a teacher. The environment of public schools has changed so much over the past several decades that the classroom is a place where there are many possible dangers and pitfalls that teachers must manage. As Pace (2015) stated, “the complex dynamics of teaching are shaped both by longstanding tensions inherent in classroom teaching process and the current political, social, and policy environment” (emphasis in original, p. 114). Through several of our classes, we saw examples of teachers and administrators being examples of ethical and moral behavior. We further saw this through our professors and peers as we navigated through this program.

One of the culminating projects regarding our personal ethic as teachers comes from our Moral Issues in Education class. The moral education framework we created in this class required me to really reflect on what drew me to teaching and why I remain in the classroom. This inward look resulted in my own personal realization. I know that many see teaching as a calling of sorts and believe that they have some higher purpose in being a teacher. Some would claim they have a mission to be a light to the world and that their place is in education, working with children and young adults during their most impressionable years. While I would agree that being a teacher means that we are responsible for playing a large part in a young one’s life, but I do not really believe that education is a calling, at least for me.

For me, teaching is a job, plain and simple. As I stated in my moral education framework, there are many different professions I can see myself pursuing, but there is one thing that keeps me returning to teaching. I want to affect change is my students’ lives. This change may be connected to mathematics, but also may have no relation to my content area at all. I realize this is probably not too different than what people mean when they say they have a calling to teaching, but I feel like it is different in some way. A quote from Wirzba (2016) that really struck me is, “I think it is possible to show up in a human life and not really live it at all. I mean, you can have a good life ‘on paper’, but then discover that what looks good on the page has hardly been lived from the heart and with a sense of significance of what is going on” (p. 18). For some reason, this stuck with me as something to keep in mind as a teacher. Being a teacher ‘on paper’ is something that is considered admirable by many, but if it is not something that you feel passionate about, it is going to be all for naught. You will not have the impact that most, if not all, teachers want to have.

One of the greatest ways in which I believe I can influence my students is through building relationships. I truly believe that building a strong relationship with my students will allow me to have an impact that goes far beyond the classroom. Cummins (2001, p. 1) is quoted as saying, “Human relationships are the heart of schooling. The interactions that take place between students and teachers and among students are more central to student success than any method of teaching literacy, or science, or math. When powerful relationships are established between teachers and students, these relationships frequently can transcend the economic and social disadvantages that afflict communities and schools alike in inner city and rural areas” (as cited in Shepard et al., 2012, p. 49).

Creating an environment where my students feel empowered to share their work, ask questions, to take risks, and to discuss with me the difficulties they are having is my ultimate goal. Being a trusted adult that students can turn to when they are having tough times is where I believe I can create the greatest effect and change on my students lives. In the paper I linked above, I have detailed my belief that the greatest impact teachers can have on their students is through relationships. This belief is where my moral and ethical system is rooted as an educator. There are many ways that we teachers can impact our students. Some are positive and some are negative. Some are solely content-based and some are more relationally-based. I hope that I can be, and will continually work toward being, a positive and trusted adult to whom students may turn when they are having difficulty with content or with their lives. I hope that my impact on students will be felt long after they have left my charge. And, I hope that I can live and teach as a person who does not just look good ‘on paper’, but as one who has made an impact on the lives of both my students and peers and that when I look back on my career it is one that will not have been practiced in vain.

Pace, J.L., (2015). The charged classroom: Predicaments and possibilities for democratic teaching. New York: Rutledge.

Shepard, J., Salina, C., Girtz, S., Cox, J., Davenport, N., & Hillard, T. L. (2012). Student success: Stories that inform high school change. Reclaiming Children And Youth, 21(2), 48-53.

Wirzba, N. (2016). Way of love. New York: HarperCollins.

Standard 8 - Present Professional Practice to Colleagues

Teacher leaders will present professional practice for the review of colleagues.

As I reflect on my time in the Teacher Leadership program, I am reminded of where I began and where I have ended up. Prior to this program, I was not at all comfortable presenting information to my peers, especially things related to educational practice. I felt as though I did not have enough knowledge and experience to deserve the attention of my peers. As I have progressed through this program, I have grown in my confidence and knowledge and am now able to present information to peers and not feel out of my element.

Through classes like Accomplished Teaching and Survey of Instructional Strategies, we constantly and consistently researched various teaching practices that would work well in various classroom settings. In Accomplished Teaching, we looked at various teaching strategies that culminated in our Synthesizing Elements of Accomplished Teaching final paper. My focus at that time, as has been throughout this program, is figuring out how to differentiate well. Looking at differentiation as a means to open access to my content, math, has been a goal I have pursued for a while now. This goal is also something that most, if not all, teachers in my building are working toward as well. This is a pursuit I can help lead with the tools I have learned in this program.

Some of the differentiation tools I was introduced to through the Survey of Instructional Strategies class. The differentiation skills we learned dealt with what Hattie (2012) dubs, “Multiple Ways of Knowing” (emphasis in original, p. 113). There are many points of information in this particular section of the text, but the one that I find myself drawn to time and again is, “Materials presented in verbal, visual, and multimedia form provide richer representations than can a single medium” (p. 113). Utilizing multiple representations is something that I have worked on with my instructional coaches. During this program, I had the opportunity to work on implementing a Nonlinguistic Lesson Plan where student utilize a visual representation of functions that outline what they are and how to figure it out.

Another element dealing with differentiation we looked at deals with cooperative learning. Dean, Hubbell, Pitler, and Stone (2012) state, “cooperative learning provides opportunities for students to interact in ways that enhance and deepen their learning” (p. 37). In creating a lesson for cooperative learning, I had to work with fellow math teachers to utilize their knowledge of groupings. This shift to group learning was not easy for me and is not something I have done regularly. The utilization of nonlinguistic and cooperative learning are things that I could bring back to my school and help to engage teachers in shifting their focus and practice. This shift actually started in my work with my fellow math teacher on the collaborative inquiry project. We worked on helping our students to increase their confidence and persistence. Through the differentiation strategies mentioned above, we were able to begin helping students elevate their understanding and confidence.

In relation to helping others to improve their practice, I also had several opportunities to present information to our peers in class. Sharing our practice and things to look out for was beneficial for both the individuals presenting and those observing. This practice of presenting to our classmates was great practice for presenting to people at my school. It also helped drive home the difference in teaching students versus teaching adults. I have not had a ton of experience with teaching adults, so all the practice I have had through various presentations has been great for understanding that for adult teachers, learning occurs best when they can work collaboratively. When we worked together with people from different content specialties or different age levels, we were provided a view into the professional duties and practices of those we do not often see. As Zepeda (2013) states, “learning communities must be ready to confront the fragmented way in which schools are organized (e.g., departments, grade levels, and specialty groups such as gifted and talented), and they must be committed to working alongside each other as a collective to provide support” (p. 84). We must all work toward improving our schools. To do this, my role as a teacher leader must be to bring teachers together to tackle an issue within our school and to help others raise their level of practice together. It is always easier to work on a difficult situation or fix a long-standing issue with the help and support of our peers.

Dean, C., Hubbell, E., Pitler, H., Stone, B. (2012). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for incrasing student achievement. Colorado: McREL.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. New York: Routledge.

Zepeda, S.J. (2013). Professional development: What works. New York, NY: Routledge.

Standard 12 - Teaching with Technology

Standard 12 - Teacher leaders will evaluate and use technology for teaching and learning.

Traditionally, the mathematics classroom has been a space where teachers lecture and students take notes followed with some practice. This is especially true of the higher-level classes such as AP Statistics and AP Calculus. In my quest to increase engagement and rigor, I decided to work to finding ideas of how I can use technology to help my students' understanding and problem solving. I am not interested in introducing technology for the sake of using technology. As, Merzenich states that, "simply adding computers to conventional teaching strategies is an unsophisticated approach that, it is not surprising, adds very little to students' experiences in the classroom" (as cited in Robin, 2008, p. 221).

Beginning the program, I decided to find out how to create genuine opportunities for learning and investigation math. Whether that means using programs such as ST Math or Think Through Math, both are adaptive to students' needs. Or, utilizing free technology such as GeoGebra or Desmos to help students gain a different perspective. An article by M. Hohenwarter, L. Hohenwarter, Kreis, and Lavicza, suggested the use of GeoGebra in an upper level class such as calculus. This was not an obvious connection, but Hohenwarter et al., found that this tool may be used to "help students to better understand their algebraic manipulations of functions, to visualize characteristics of certain types of functions, and to improve their skills of sketching graphs of functions and their derivatives" (2008, p. 4). Students can certainly learn about upper level math the "traditional" way via lecture and practice, but may reach greater depths of understanding working with the reasons why certain properties and theorems work (effectively learning the why, not just the how).

Additionally, my school district has added adaptive learning tools to interact with math in different ways. One, ST Math, looks at math in a non-equation way showing pictures and game-like activities to teach the basics associated with Algebra, Geometry, and all pre-high school level classes. The other, Think Through Math, looks at math in a more traditional way utilizing various feedback including live tutors and immediate feedback. I have had the opportunity to utilize both with various classes over the past several years and have found my use of them with my classes to be less than successful. So, I decided to research how I can best utilize either with my classes if I should choose to do so.

An idea formed from reading an article by Arroyo, Woolf, Burelson, Muldner, Rai, and Tai is to use journaling as a supplement to regular program use.  I believe that journaling is one way in which students can record their affective traits and thoughts about what and how they are learning the material. An additional supplement to the software could be regular information gathering around via formative quizzes. One possible avenue for creating quizzes that could help streamline the process for information gathering is a resource like Quizlet. I could use Quizlet or a similar technology to have students reply to questions based around what they learned, how they learned it, what information they required help on, and how they felt throughout the process of using the program.

Throughout the Teaching with Technology class, I wanted to discover what it means to be a technologically innovative math educator. Research by Sherman (2014), I read outlined two vital aspects of technology use that are necessary to deepen students' mathematical knowledge. The first category used in the article is the use of technology as an amplifier. The article states that the amplifier use, "supports a shift in the focus of students’ mathematical activity and thinking from drawing and measuring to looking for patterns and making and testing conjectures” (2014, p. 223). I am currently using at least one amplifier in my classes, the graphing calculator. This resource has allowed my students, while working with transformations, to get past worrying about making a table, and remembering rules to make a graph and allows them to get to the inner workings of transformations. The second category used is the reorganizer. The reorganizer "has the power to affect or shift the focus of students’ mathematical thinking or activity" (2014, p. 223). In reflecting on my practice, I realize that I do several things associated with either the amplifier or the reorganizer, but very few of them rely on technology right now. To move toward being an innovative educator, I will need to work on incorporating technology tools as a means of moving toward deeper learning.

Additional research by Starkey, offered some other interesting points of reference in determining the efficacy of technology including collaboration and connection to prior learning. These areas are very important in being learners with technology as they allow students to process the information gathered or learned. When students are collaborating, they can process new learning together which gives students the potential for multiple points of entry. These multiple points of entry are vital to putting their learning into their own words and style of understanding. Similarly, connecting their learning to other areas of knowledge, especially to previous knowledge, allows students to deepen their understanding and connect different issues. Both these aspects can help to strengthen any new learning and better student’s problem solving abilities, both of which elevate their ability in math.

We further learned about the legal ramifications of technology use in the classroom and what to look out for as teachers. There are many laws surrounding the expectation of privacy for students in public school systems, especially regarding the use of technology. Unfortunately, these rights to privacy are not always easy to enforce or ensure with the prevalence of technology use in today's school environment. Research by the Center for Educational Privacy and Law at the University of San Diego (CEPAL), revealed one of the most interesting concerns for privacy that schools face is called householding. "Householding allows data collection to occur across devices regardless of whether or not they are owned by a district or owned privately by a student" (CEPAL, 2015, p. 6). This rather sneaky method for data collection is strong enough to pinpoint usage across devices at any time, so students are not immune to data collection whether working on school work at school or home. The many laws that protect student autonomy are not much of a deterrent to this sort of activity. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), and Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), are limited in what they have jurisdiction over and the depth to which online information is protected. For example, FERPA does not have any consideration for third party application operators, the PPRA has made considerations for protection, but does not include any currently, and COPRA only protects children up to the age of 13, so is very limited once children are out of the primary grades (CEPAL, 2015, p. 10). Furthermore, the only real protection that seems to be available to parents is opting out of the use of technology devices provided by schools and districts. This brings up other, very real implications concerning the equity of technology availability, especially at high poverty schools where many, if not most, families do not have reliable access to the requisite technology. A product from this portion of the class is an infographic we created that would allow us to share some of the concerns that may affect students online.

Lastly, we created a webquest that allows students to do research about a topic relevant to the content of our classes. For my webquest, students are asked to research about the history of math. The students are researching and then creating an argument to show that the mathematician chosen is the best mathematician in history. This project allows students to look at a different aspect of math and get into the lives of mathematicians (which, believe it or not, are often quite intriguing). Being able to figure out how to incorporate technology into our classes in a genuine way to deepen understanding or appreciation for our subjects is a great way that will help us connect with our students throughout content areas.

Arroyo, I., Woolf, B.P., Burelson, W., Muldner, K, Rai, D., Tai, M. (2014). A multimedia adaptive tutoring system for mathematics that addresses cognition, metacognition and affect. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 24, 387-426.

Gunn, T. & Hollingsworth, M. (2013). The implementation and assessment of a shared 21st century learning vision: a district-based approach. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, Vol. 45 (Issue 3), p201-228.

Johnson, D. (Sept. 2013). Good technology choices: a team effort. Educational Leadership, Vol. 71 (Issue 1), 80-82.

Sherman, M. (2014). The role of technology in supporting students’ mathematical thinking: Extending the metaphors of amplifier and reorganizer. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 14(3), 220-246.

Center for Education Policy and Law (2015). Legal Implications of Using Digital Technology in Public Schools: Effects on Privacy. San Diego, CA: University of San Diego.

Hohenwarter, M., Hohenwarter, J., Kreis, Y., & Lavicza, Z. (2008). Teaching and learning calculus with free dynamic mathematics software GeoGebra. Proceedings from TSG 16: Research and development in the teaching and learning of calculus. ICME 11, Monterey, Mexico.

Robin, B. (2008). Digital storytelling: a powerful technology tool for the 21st century classroom. Theory into Practice, 47, 220-228.

Starkey, L. (2011). Evaluating Learning in the 21st Century: A Digital Age Learning Matrix. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 20(1), 19-39.