How do you pocket information.
First, you read, research, and learn with intent. Preferably that intent is guided by a question. For example as I read Darling-Hammond and Cook-Harvey's report this morning, my overarching question was How can I improve as an educator?
Then as you read, you begin to breakdown your inquiry question with discrete pockets--areas where you'll embed the reading for later analysis, more questioning, and eventually as a way to make positive change.
As I read the research, the pockets for information I created included the following:
- How can I plan and prepare better learning experiences?
- How can I help to build and contribute to a better, more cohesive teaching/learning team?
- How can we develop our naturalist study grant with a whole child lens and effort?
- How can I guide and work with teaching assistants, student teachers, and other teammates more effectively?
- What can I do to be a better overall teacher?
- How can we more effectively develop the learning/teaching environment?
As I read, I reflected with these questions in mind and sorted the information accordingly. Now I'll sort again by creating initial check-lists to use as I embed the worthy research into my practice:
School Climate: How can we more effectively develop the learning/teaching environment?
- Use a serious attitude and effort with regard to establishing rules/norms with colleagues and students.
- Make sure that colleagues and students have a sense of physical safety--use questioning and observation to determine this, and when safety is compromised take it seriously and act with colleagues to better the situation. Contribute to this sense of safety in ways that matter?
- Through give-and-take questioning, observation, listening, support learning in sensitive, people-centered ways that includes encouragement and responsible risk taking, constructive feedback, opportunity for revision, independent thinking, dialogue, thinking, academic challenge and individual attention.
- Continue to read about and employ effective and explicit social emotional learning and practice amongst peers and students including effective listening, conflict resolution, self reflection, emotional regulation, empathy, personal responsibility, and ethical decision making.
- Mutual respect for differences, norms for tolerance.
- Supportive and caring adult relationships for students w/high expectations, listening, knowing students as individuals and personal concern for student problems.
- Student-to-student support with good friendships, opportunities for socialization, and help for one another.
- Understand, follow, and contribute to school norms.
- Physically appealing and supportive school environment.
- Positive digital citizenship and safety from harm, verbal abuse, teasing, gossip and exclusion online.
- Leadership: Administration that creates and communicates a clear vision and is accessible and supportive to school staff and staff development.
- Positive professional relationships that support effective collaborative learning and working.
- Question driven
- Goal setting
- Relating to individual/collective interests, passions, needs, experiences
- Effective, constructive feedback, timely and helpful
- Culturally responsive
- Includes choice
- Focus on the value of work, practice, effort
- Discuss competence, mastery, self-efficacy the ability to succeed continuously and embed that mantra into individual and collective study.
- Meaningful
- Challenging
- Active learning
- Social learning
- Tap into and create intrinsic motivation
- Range of instructional strategies, tools, and technologies
- Clear expectations
- Opportunity for revision
- Model effective effort, instructions. Provide exemplars.
- Use ongoing diagnostic assessments.
- Well equipped learning environment
- Rich, robust learning experiences
- Apt challenge
- Personalized and collective goals, focus
- Respect for diversity
- Well-scaffolded
- Opportunity to develop metacognitive skills
- extended learning opportunities
- multi-tiered system of support
Successful Learning Team: How can I help to build and contribute to a better, more cohesive teaching/learning team?
- Effective collaboration centered on student/staff needs, interests, experiences, goals
- Create group norms, practices, routines to deepen sense and result of teamwork
- Talk about safety, establish a safe environment
- Learn about each other in many ways
- Discuss safe and satisfying student-student, teacher-student, teacher-teacher relationships
- Create classroom management with one another not for one another
- Create a class constitution, class roles
- Share responsibility in running the classroom
- Discuss varying cultures, celebrate and share diversity
- Emphasize that everyone belongs there--a sense of belonging for all
- Identity Safety
- Pay attention to existing school norms, rules.
- High support, low threat
- Embed cultural competency
- Good nourishment, activity, play
- Self assessment, peer assessment
Inquiry Based Science: How can we develop our naturalist study grant with a whole child lens and effort?
- Identify main questions
- Relate questions to student experiences, interests, needs
- Actively connect our learning to the broader school and town community
- Create norms for environmental study and stewardship
- Active learning
Explicit Social-Emotional Learning?
- Focus on friendship
- Focus on managing conflict
- Focus on caring for others, contribution
- Focus on character
- Self regulation, acknowledge and manage differing situations
- Reflect on social emotional learning, make goals, and action plans.
- Integrate into academic program
Successful Mentoring: How can I guide and work with teaching assistants, student teachers, and other teammates more effectively? Effective Teaching and Learning: What can I do to be a better overall teacher?
- Relationship-first mindset
- All of the above
