Standard 2 - Promoting Student Growth

Standard 2 - Teacher leaders analyze learning to promote student growth.

Reflecting upon my practice prior to partaking in the Teacher Leadership program, I realized that my ability and consistency with analyzing learning was rudimentary. This is an area in which I have definitely seen growth in my practice. A quote I reflected upon in my standard three post is also quite fitting here. Sagor (2011) stated that, "even the most celebrated teachers, who are teaching the highest-achieving students, leave their classrooms frustrated, feeling that despite their best efforts, each individual student didn't progress as far as he or she might" (p. 1). This feeling of frustration is one of my motivating factors for pursuing a graduate degree. I wanted to further my ability to gauge where my students are at any given time so that I can adjust my lesson and help more students achieve more.

My pursuit of bettering my ability to analyze learning began immediately with the Accomplished Teaching class. One of my goals at that time (and one that continues to be a goal of mine) was to strengthen my ability to differentiate within my classes. Where I teach, students often come to school many years behind in their math skills, while a few come multiple grade levels above. This imbalance of mathematical skills results in classes where students are often separated by more than five grade levels of prerequisite knowledge. To combat this, I have to determine how to make the learning both accessible and challenging for each lesson. One of the activities that helped me see a different perspective was when we were paired with another teacher and had to analyze and provide feedback for a lesson plan. I was paired with a high school English teacher and was not convinced that this would be beneficial. I was wrong. Working with this teacher provided me with several ideas about how I could make the lesson more interactive and relevant to my students. The lesson I taught dealt with solving systems of equations. This is an area in Algebra that is applicable in more than one way. My collaboration helped me to see a couple different applications that I had not thought about so that my students would have more access and buy in with this content.

One area that has helped me to better analyze student learning has come from formative assessment. Ensign (2012) states that a good way to check understanding is through the use of an exit ticket which, "allows the teacher to quickly see who has mastered the day's lesson and who needs more support in the following days" (p. 160). Through my studies in this program, I have been able to increase my repertoire of formative assessments and become better at recognizing where those can be placed in a lesson. One piece of evidence came from our learning progression created in the Standards Based Assessment class. This allowed me to visualize and plan a collection of formative assessments within a unit of study.

As I progressed through this program, I further developed my ability to determine how a particular intervention effects student learning. I started this with my Applying Action Research class where we learned what to look for when researching strategies to utilize in our classrooms. This led to a strengthened ability to figure out whether an article presented a valid approach or not. My final product from this class allowed me to show the level to which my understanding of valid research has improved. This helped guide me when I planned and executed my action research project the following Winter. Going through this research project allowed me to put into practice the use of technology with formative assessment. While this was not as successful as I had hoped, it led me to a better understanding of what will be necessary the next time I utilize technology to find out where my students are at in their understanding. 

All of the things I have learned throughout this program, relating to promoting student growth, have been useful, but cannot be utilized without the ability to relate my analysis to my students. One of the most important pieces to feedback was presented to me by Chappuis, "Effective feedback directs attention to the intended learning, pointing out strengths and offering specific information to guide improvement" (2012, p. 37). This is important because if students do not understand what my formative assessments are telling students, there is not point to utilizing them. Students need to have a clear idea of where they are in their learning. Additionally, Morris and Chikwa (2016) have found that there is not marked difference between students receiving written feedback and audio feedback. This is valuable because in my daily lessons, I incorporate audio feedback constantly. Finally, research performed by Hudesman et al. (2013) states that, "The research we have reported on, when taken together with an ever growing body of other work, has demonstrated the importance of integrating formative assessment and metacognition with academic content instruction so that students can optimize their learning" (p. 12). The work we have done in this program related to formative assessment, along with the importance of reflection we have seen time and again, are both vital to strong analysis of student learning. The tools we have learned in this program are going to allow me to better evaluate students learning and adjust to help my students grow as much as possible in my classes.

Sources:
Chappuis, J. (2012). How am I doing? Educational Leadership, 70(1), 36-40.
Ensign, J. (2012). Teacher-initiated differentiation. Teaching Children Mathematics, 19(3), 158-163.
Hudesman, J., Crosby, S., Flugman, B., Isaac, S., Everson, H., & Clay, D., (2013). Using formative assessment and metacognition to improve student achievement. Journal of Developmental Education, 37(1), 2-13.
Morris, C, & Chikwa, G. (2016). Audio versus written feedback: Exploring learners ' preference and the impact of feedback format on students' academic performance. Active Learning in Higher Education, 17(2), 125-137.
Sagor, R. (2011). The action research guidebook: A four-stage process for educators and school teams. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Standard 3 - Educational Research bPortfolio Reflection

Standard 3 – Teacher leaders improve teaching and learning through the use of educational research at the classroom and school levels.

Prior to engaging in the Teacher Leadership program, I was not very involved in utilizing research in my classroom or with my colleagues. I have participated in one or two loosely structured attempts at something similar to action research, but saw little success. From the start of the program I have seen the importance of conducting research to improve my knowledge of pedagogy and become the best teacher possible. As Sagor (2011) states, "even the most celebrated teachers, who are teaching the highest-achieving students, leave their classrooms frustrated, feeling that despite their best efforts, each individual student didn't progress as far as he or she might" (p. 1). This feeling of frustration has helped guide me through this program to focus on things that are going to help increase my ability as a teacher. Reflecting on my second and sixth quarters in the program where I took classes on applying research and action research, respectively, my understanding of what is necessary to grow as a teacher has increased. 

My introduction to research and its’ application came in Applying Action Research in School Settings. During this course, we learned to dig into the research to determine the validity of the findings presented. The practice of deciphering valid research from primary sources helped me refine my overall research ability and develop a better eye for valid academic research. The final product from this class shows the level to which my comfort for critiquing research has developed. In this paper, I read, and critiqued, research regarding mindfulness practices in schools. I was able to successfully articulate the issues and inconsistencies within the research, at least that which was reported, and determine what I other information should be reported to build the credibility of this article. This helped me moving forward with both research for my classes and papers, and when determining the action research project I chose to do the following Winter.

My Action Research in School Settings class allowed me to use the information gleaned from the applying research class and helped me understand what I needed to do to perform a successful action research project and report. As I stated earlier, I have had very little practice with performing structured research in the classroom, so having a bit of a guidance was very helpful. Reflecting back to my Survey of Instructional Strategies class, I had the opportunity to perform some action research, at least to some extent, with a colleague. This experience also gave me a bit of knowledge about what to do and expect when performing my own research in my classroom. The approach taken in the instructional strategies class was based off of collaborative work, but did not take a great deal of research outside of what we did for class. The collaborative work did provide a basis for determining what issues may be addressed in a classroom setting and what approach may be taken to help rectify them (as evidenced in my collaborative inquiry project).

In undertaking my action research, I first had to understand what approach I should take. As Ravid (2011) states, "Action research is conducted by practitioner-researchers in their own settings to solve a problem by studying it, proposing solutions, implementing the solutions, and assessing the effectiveness of these solutions" (p. 4). Working from this definition, I decided to look at the literature about technology and formative assessment in a high school math classroom. I was able to find very little, so I decided to do some research of this on my own. Performing this research did not yield a great deal of positive data, but was very useful in determining what steps should occur for me moving forward (see my action research paper). Because of this, I am continuing my research in the area of technology and formative assessment so that I can better utilize what I have started.

Moving forward, I will continue utilizing what I have learned from both my project and action research in general. As Sagor states, "The greatest value of what we learn from our action research lies in the power of the new knowledge and the insights we gained for informing our future actions and consequently benefiting our students" (2011, p. 163). Moving forward is where the real value of action research lies. The changes that I will enact as a result of my research from all of my classes is going to help me to become the teacher I hope to be. Figuring out where all of this research will take me moving forward, I was struck by another quote by Sagor, "If we are to become truly reflective practitioners, the thing we must always do before commencing action is to reflect deeply on what we already know about the challenges before us and use that thinking to design thoughtful theories of action to guide our future work" (p. 163).

Further, I plan to work with my peers on developing action research that may be applicable to my school. York-Barr, Somme's, Ghere, and Montie (2006) state that, "Action research, therefore, should also be considered as a way to promote reflection and learning in small groups or teams, and schoolwide" (p. 141). As a teacher leader, I will work to help all of my colleagues conduct their own action research, possibly together, to attack one of the many difficulties we all have. As Hattie (2012) urges, "A key role of learning leaders is to construct the learning of the adults in the schools" (p. 175). To help move my school in a positive direction, I need to take on the role of a teacher of students and of adults. This is one of the most important realizations I have had as a part of this teacher leadership program.


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

Ravid, R. (2011). Practical statistics for educators. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Sagor, R. (2011). The action research guidebook: A four-stage process for educators and school teams. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
York-Barr, J., Sommers, W.A., Ghere, G.S., Montie, J. (2006). Reflective practice to improve schools: An action guide for educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.