If you are a teacher, I’m sure it’s not difficult for you to think of a time you found yourself complaining about professional development or found yourself listening to a colleague complain about PD. How is it that the people that always pushing others to be the best learners they can be are the same people that loathe their own learning process? It simply should not be this way. Teachers should be wholeheartedly embracing and modeling the process of being a life-long learner. I’m tired of giving and listening to complaints, I’m ready for a change. I have a vision in which teachers are passionate about learning again, a vision in which a collective groan is not heard when professional learning opportunities are mentioned. View the video below to gain more insight into my vision for professional learning.
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Most instructional design theories can lend themselves to the development of online learning environments to a certain extent. The way in which these instructional design theories are applied is what makes the difference. The Introduction to AVID: Summer course would be a cross between a behaviorist learning theory and a constructivist learning theory. Four out of the six modules lean more toward the behaviorist side and the remaining 2 modules lean more toward the constructivist side. Typically the AVID curriculum lends itself more toward the constructivist side of spectrum, but the content of this course primarily focuses on helping the students get ready for the AVID elective. If the students can go into the AVID elective already knowing how to fill out certain forms, take certain notes, and follow certain strategies, then the time in class can be dedicated toward collaborating with peers, working on authentic projects, and developing the skills necessary to be college, career, and world ready. This 100% online bridge course will help make better use of the time spent in the AVID elective course, which in the future could be transitioned into a hybrid course.
Designing the Introduction to AVID online course has definitely been a great learning experience. There are so many factors that I simply had not considered before. Through the process of developing this course, I could not help but think of how other electives could be improved by redesigning them into online courses. Unfortunately electives that are not athletics or fine arts can sometimes be thought of as a “dumping ground” for students that are not involved in those activities. I want to change this perspective by helping boost the quality of the elective classes. Transitioning to online courses would allow elective teachers to facilitate learning activities with a small group, while the rest of the class works on the online component. Two elective classes in particular that come to mind are Teen Leadership and Health.
Last week I worked on uploading all of the materials onto the LMS (Schoology) and creating a detailed outline of the first half of the course. This week I have been working on finalizing the details of the first half of the course and developing a detailed outline of the second half of the course, which you can read below.
Last week I worked on identifying the course goals and brainstorming through potential material to include in the online course for Introduction to AVID. This week I have been working on uploading all of the materials onto the LMS (Schoology) and creating a detailed outline of the first half of the course, which you can read below.
Introduction:
The nationwide course description for the AVID elective class reads: "Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) is an academic elective course that prepares students for college readiness and success, and it is scheduled during the regular school day as a year-long course. Each week, students receive instruction utilizing a rigorous college preparatory curriculum provided by AVID Center, tutor-facilitated study groups, motivational activities and academic success skills. In AVID, students participate in activities that incorporate strategies focused on writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization and reading to support their academic growth.” (avid.org) In my district, students can join the AVID elective as early as 7th grade and can continue to be in the AVID elective every year until 12th grade. There are certain fundamental components of AVID that are used with fidelity in every elective class, no matter the grade level. Not all students are able to join in 7th grade, therefore have many gaps to fill when they join in 8th grade. The Introduction to AVID course will serve as a prerequisite in order to help ease the transition into this class. According to Mertler, action research is conducted by teachers over topics of their choice that will help them make sense of what is going on in their classroom and in turn improve what is going on in their classroom (2011). As I read through the first few chapters of Action research: Improving schools and empowering educators, I kept thinking to myself, "This is me! I can actually do this!" As teachers, the different stages and steps are not foreign to us, we go through them all of the time. The vast majority of teachers do not follow lesson plans from their first year of teaching exactly as they were written. Why? We are always looking for ways to improve. It happens so often that we do not always make note of it. If a lesson bombs first period, we aren't going to do it the exact same way the following periods, and we surely aren't going to do it the exact same way the following years. We gather data, analyze data, develop action plans, reflect, research what other people in our content area are doing, etc. Action research simply provides a formal and systematic way of doing what we already do. So why is it necessary? It can be helpful because teachers deal with a lot of whirlwind and this will allow us to maintain our focus. My action research will focus on the impact of student e-portfolios on student engagement and academic performance for 8th grade students in the AVID elective. As we repeat reflect on our findings, and repeat the procedures, the goal would be to include more students every time.
This action research plan is specifically focused on students in the 8th grade elective as they will serve as the pilot group. After going through this process with this small group and reflecting on the results, we will plan together as an AVID Site Team for the upcoming year. The goal is to expand a bit more each year starting with one elective, expanding to an entire department, expanding more to campus wide, and eventually district wide. The proposed procedures and timelines could be altered to better meet the needs of our students. We will let our findings determine in which direction we go next.
Student e-portfolios have been recognized as beneficial tools toward creating more meaningful learning experiences. I am interested in learning more about the impact student e-portfolios have proven to have over the course of time at several locations in order to better prepare to implement the student e-portfolio innovation plan at my own campus. The impact will primarily focus on student engagement and academic performance. Read the literature review below to become familiar with a few projects and studies that have explored the impact of student e-portfolios.
Action research involves teachers, campus administrators, and school counselors seeking a deeper understanding of how their school works and how their students learn. According to Mertler, action research "is not the simple implementation of predetermined answers to educational questions; it explores, discovers, and works to find creative solutions to educational problems" (2017, p. 18). Action research can be very powerful because teachers are researching things that directly affect their students. Teachers can take their findings and immediately apply it to their teaching practices. Below you will find the action research plan I developed in order to pursue the implementation of student e-portfolios.
Change is something that does not happen overnight and cannot be done in isolation. Many factors affect whether or not change is successfully implemented, however I would like to argue that leadership is the keystone. If the leader does not truly believe in the initiative, how do we expect the rest of the organization to believe in it and work toward it? If the leader is not there to motivate and encourage members, how do we expect the initiative to move forward? If the leader is not there to redirect members when they are falling off the pathway, how soon will the initiative be abandoned? Leading organizational change is a complex feat because it can be very counter-intuitive to what our human feelings and emotions drive us to do.
It is not enough to have an innovative idea, it is not enough to draft a plan, it is also not enough to rally people into joining the movement. In order to piece everything together and give the innovation plan a chance of being a success, someone must step up to lead the organizational change. This can be a rather daunting idea and it may seem like a huge burden to take on, however the 4DX model provides a way for the implementation of an innovation plan to be more of a true group collaboration process. Using 4DX will help set up the road for success. Before we explore how 4DX will help drive our student e-portfolio initiative, we will take a look at the 5 stages of change and the 4 disciplines of execution.
My student e-portfolio innovation plan is not one that can be properly executed by just one person. So many factors attribute to the make or break of this initiative, therefore it is safe to say that rather than focusing on changing one thing, the focus should be on leading organizational change. How do you go about doing that? Simply commanding people to make a change is very unlikely to give you the desired results. A better approach is to use the power of influence, one method in particular is the Influencer Model as outlined by Patterson and Grenny. (2013) The Influencer Model starts by identifying measurable results, then finding the vital behaviors that will make those results achievable. The next step is using the six sources of influence which are as follows: personal motivation, personal ability, social motivation, social ability, structural motivation, and structural ability.
If you walk into a school and survey the students, many students will describe school as boring; they lack to see the importance in going to school and will either merely comply to meet the requirements, cheat their way to graduation, or drop out. Is this what we want for our children? Is this what we want for our society? Do we want our society to be made up of members with regrets and unfulfilled goals because they lacked to see value in the education they were being provided with? Personally, I would love to see a world with an abundance of doctors, engineers, scientists, meteorologists, architects, lawyers, educators, and pharmacists that pursued a higher education in their respective field because they discovered a passion for that subject and continue to educate themselves in order to feed that passion.
Prior to starting the course EDLD 5313 Creating Significant Learning Environments, I believed that the learning environment referred solely to the physical aspects of my classroom. Now I know that it extends far beyond that. The post Creating Significant Learning Environments, contains my thoughts on the importance of CSLE, how we need to allow students time to explore/discover on their own in order for them to take ownership of their learning, which will lead to more meaningful learning experiences, and the importance of seeing the big picture.
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