Chapter 7: No Turning Back!

Abstract: This chapter is all about the essential elements of PLCs and how they have progressed over time. . Much of what PLCs are all about is team based efforts and school wide outcomes. The author in this chapter believes that PLCs are the best cheapest, most professionally rewarding way to improve schools. A major thing that PLCs are against is isolation. Isolation is when teachers basically just shut their door and get no feed back or have no interaction with their colleague. Basically this isolation let the teachers do and teach whatever they wanted, regardless of whether their methods were effective. This way, teachers were never monitored or corrected. Probably a lot of teachers liked this, because basically they could do whatever they wanted. On the other hand, some teachers who are isolated feel misguided and uneasy about what and how they are teaching. Teachers also never really got a chance to professionally develop; they just kept teaching the same old things. Collaboration, what PLc's is all about, is just the opposite of isolation. Teachers learn best from other teachers and their methods and practices, and they work best together. This is why PLCs can be very helpful. Team based structures have wide ranging implications for leadership. The best team settings for growth are settings which 1) combine autonomy and responsibility for results, and 2) provide lots of opportunities for individuals to share kills and abilities in the strive toward better results. The power of self managing teams is a lot like businesses or industry. A turning point for PLCs is the idea of a new kind of leadership. There was a shift from an instructional leader to a learning leader. This put learning at the highest regard. A leaders job is to give opportunities t teachers to work together to improve their own instruction and learning.


Reflection:
I thought this chapter was interesting because it really seemed to discuss PLCs in the form of being business like. This was interesting to me because it reminded me of what we discussed after watching the “Story of Schools” 1980-present video, where big businesses were going in and running schools. If I was a teacher and some business person, who knew nothing about education came in and started telling me how I was going to teach, I probably wouldn’t be that impressed. They even found that with the business run school, the school was improved, they all got new computers and the grounds looked great, but the learning suffered, and no gains were made. School should be about learning, and that’s why I don’t know if I like the idea of businesses taking over our schools. Wouldn’t schools be better off if teachers were making the decisions? Not some random guys coming in that want to make some money!? If a school was one big PLC than learning would be the ultimate goal. I think learning should come first, and the business run schools aren’t the best idea. I think if a PLC is run right and effectively, teachers can have an active part in changing the school climate.

Chapter 6: Turning Book Burners into Life-Long Learners

Abstract: This chapter was all about helping students become life long learners. Life long learners don't stop learning after they get out of high school. It is estimated that students only know %2 of what they need to know for the future when they graduate from high school. If that isn't motivation to continue learning after high school I don't know what is! One major goal of PLC's is to promote life long learning in every student and every faculty member. Life long learning, according to the author, is a number of things. It is a love of learning for the sake of learning, voluntary engagement in learning activities, the ability to ask and pursue ones own questions and the ability to sustain engagement over time. A culture of life long learning in a school starts with the principal. The principal needs to be a model of life long learning, and exhibit the traits of a life long learner all the time. This is with both the students and the teachers. Principals need to give the impression that learning is important, even for the important people! Another major thing principals need to do is to build a staff of life long learners principal needs to have high expectations and try to get everyone on board to help make this school a place where people are actively learning. Getting parents involved is another way a principal can make a big different in changing the culture of the school. The other thing schools need to do is encourage students to be life long learners. Learning can't be used as a punishment for students. Schools could make the criteria for life long learning part of their assessment criteria. Teachers can also promote real learning so it has a good name and isn't all about "listening to the teacher, doing the homework" etc, etc. Another way to promote life long learning is to have students pose and answer questions to problems they've thought of. This makes learning a lot more relevant and engages more students. The author also makes a plea to reduce didactic instruction. He thinks only 15% of class time should be spent on didactic instruction. The rest of the time, students should be "doing". Teachers can work together to help life long learning become the standard in their schools.

Reflect:
Like we talked about in class, I think the author kind of missed the boat on the book burning thing. I don't believe students burn books because they hate learning and are totally against it. I think they burn them maybe because they are just glad to be out of school and perhaps away from traditional, boring teachers. Like Josh said in class, it is more of a way to rebel against the system, not learning itself. One thing I found really interesting about this chapter was when the author said that these days kids that graduate from high school only know %2 of what they need to know for the future. That small number just surprised me. I was wondering how they even figured that start out anyway. I think it is something that is hard to measure.
I like that the author is using the teachers as models for life long learning. I think that if this starts with the teachers, than the students will learn from there example. Teachers who model the traits of life long learners are instilling life long learning ideas in their students without even telling them about it. I think he made a good point about the principal skipping out on the staff meetings and portraying the message that the important people don't need to learn, just the unimportant ones. I think having a PLC that promotes life long learning within its staff, will in turn promote life long learning in its students.
Another point this author made that I liked was that we can't use learning as punishment. That just gives it a bad name. A lot of students associate learning with notetaking, listening to lectures, and doing worksheets. These are definitely not true aspects of learning. I think in order to become life long learners, students need to truely know what learning is, and not associate it with bad things.

Chapter 5: Masters of Motivation

Citation: Saphier, Jonathan. (2005). Masters of Motivation. In R. DuFour, R. Eaker, & R. DuFour (Eds.). On common ground. (pp. 85-113) Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree

Abstract: This chapter was all about getting students motivated to learn. The idea of motivating students is based on an idea called "effort-based ability." This is a belief that all students can achieve high academic standards regardless of if they are far behind academically or need time to catch up. Basically, teachers should believe at all students are capable of getting A's and B's. Students need messages sent to them that they can do the work, and the teacher can relay these messages in a number of different ways, such as interactive teaching behaviors, classroom climate and the building of personal relationships, focusing on the future, etc. The crucial messages are : 1) What we're doing here is important. 2) You can do it! 3) I'm not going to give up on you, even if you give up on yourself. There are 7 things teachers can do to make these messages come across to students. They can call on students and not "Dumb down" questions. Responses to student answers are also important because they set a tone in the classroom. Teachers need to be alert if students are having difficulty. Ongoing feedback is also very important. This chapter also gave ideas of how to get the school climate to be a motivating one. Some ideas' were to have the students to go to "motivational bootcamp". This chapter contained a lot of good ideas, especially for teachers who will be teaching students who are behind. In a lot of poor communities, students are almost 4 grade levels behind. A climate that promotes learning, aspiration and motivation, can get these students to do good, solid work.

Reflection:
I thought this chapter had a lot of good information for teachers. I think it is important that teachers go into their classes with the attitude that all students can get a's and b's. While it may not happen, teachers still need to try to get them working at the highest possible level. I think its a good idea that students know that teachers won't give up on them. Probably a lot of kids who do poorly in school have given up on themselves. This could be because they had previous teachers who just simply gave up on them, or maybe because they don't have any support at home. Teachers shouldn't give up on their students either, they should try to find different ways to help make the learning relative to the student to help make them successful. I think that its a tough task to ask teachers to get all students at the highest level of achievement. I think one of the points this article makes is that it can be a school wide change, not just a teacher wide change. PLC's can help form a school climate where motivation is present all the time. I think teachers should do everything they can to reach all students, and if you can't reach certain ones, at least you tried and didn't just give up on them. I also thought a good point this chapter made was about putting the best teachers with the students that needed the most help. I think in a lot of schools, the best teachers get the honors kids and the not so great teachers get the lower level kids. Obviously, this isn't helping the lower level students. We need to do our best to get students who are far behind caught up!

Chapter 4: Assessment FOR Learning: Building a Culture of Confident Learners

Citation: Stiggens, R. (2005) Assessment FOR Learning: Building a Culture of Confident Learners. In R. Dufour, R. Eaker & R. Dufour (Eds.) On common ground. (pp. 65-83) Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree

Abstract:
This chapter is all about assessment. It was basically a refresher of what we learned in our practicum class last semester. Assessments have two primary functions: to motivate learning and to gather evidence of student achievement to inform instructional decisions. Assessments can be really good if used properly. Assessments can be a motivation trigger. Part of the importance of it is that each student knows they are being assessed to become competent in the a content area. The big thing is assessment FOR learning, not assessment of learning. There's a big difference here. Assessment for learning occurs WHILE the learning is happening, not just after the stuff is supposed to have been learned. There's some guidelines for the teachers role in assessment for learning: 1) Start by clearly understanding the standard to be mastered 2) Deconstruct it to enable classroom achievement into targets 3) Create a student friendly version of the standard and targets 4) Create high quality assessments 5) Use assessment to track students improvement over time. There are four specific conditions for assessment for learning. Teachers must be prepared and understand specific instructional decisions students make. Clear and appropriate expectations are very important. Also, assessments must be accurate and feedback has got to be timely. If assessments are done the right way, they can trigger confidence, positivity and enthusiasm.

Reflection:
I felt like a lot of this chapter was just a refresher of the stuff that we learned in practicum last semester. Obviously, the most important thing to understand about assessments is that they need to be for learning. I thought it was interesting that the chapter talked about using assessments to trigger confidence. That's a really interesting idea. I think in a lot of ways we look at assessment in a negative light. Especially with all the NCLB and high stakes testing, confidence and assessment aren't words that necessarily are used together very often. I think these standardized assessments make students and teachers a lot more nervous than they make them confident. I think that assessments can be used in a really positive way if they are done right. I also liked at the end of the chapter how it talked about the possibility that assessments may be unique to a single classroom or a single student, and aren't always "common". I think this is an idea that a lot of people don't think about when they think about assessments.