Teacher Development

During the course of my observations and teaching I have been to several different meetings that are to promote teacher development. Every Monday during first hour, the teacher of Core History, Core Science and Core English meet and talk about what they are doing, offer suggestions about how to improve the course, discuss their curriculum and note any students disrupting class, skipping class, or performing poorly in class. Surprisingly, this has been the most useful teacher development session that I have been to. The teachers help each other build their curriculum to help meet the needs and the diversity of the students currently enrolled in Core. If one teacher notices a certain method of doing an assignment results in better participation and higher scores (had to include that, especially because of NCLB) then that teacher states it and the other teachers try to figure out if they can do anything in a similar way. Sometimes it's hard to find something that works in English, History and Science, but just the fact that trying something new works is a great discovery if it helps the students out. They encourage and support each other when things get tough or if they want to go on field trips that they feel promote what they are doing in class. I will try to promote this at my school because it is good to know what is working and what isn't with the students.

There was an early release day for the students while the teachers went to a speaker. Unfortunately this wasn't the best use of the time. The speaker talked about his battle with physical and mental problems in his life. The goal was to promote the issue of mental disorders and diseases and awareness of them. The problem was that we got more story than information.
We may be more informed about the issue of mental illness and the effects on students because of them, but we didn't learn about what to look for in students. The speaker talked about how he felt and what it was like to have depression, MS and loss of vision over the course of his life. It was informative and told the staff how damaging these diseases are, but it lacked on how to identify and/or prevent the symptoms of mental illness. I talked to my teacher about the presentation briefly and she agreed that the speaker told an interesting story and explained clearly how damaging mental illness can be, but there was a lack of information about how to spot a student that may have a mental illness and how to approach the student, the administration and the student's family about the issue. If I have amazing ideas but lack the ability to communicate them clearly, I might as well know nothing about those ideas. That is what the presentation felt like to me. I felt that we could have spent the 2+ hours differently and either learned more about how to identify mental illness in a student and how to report it so the student receives help, or received information about a new teaching method that was showing promise. I felt like the staff was being paid to listen to a story more than being taught how to identify mental illness in students and how to report it so it is handled properly and the student receives care.

During our lunch hour we went to an empty classroom and watched some informative videos with several other teachers about how to obtain effective control of a student without being controlling. Basically the message of the video was to give the students as many choices as possible and have the result of any of the choices be acceptable to you. The supervising teacher clarified it by giving an example of getting a child prepared for bed. Ask the child if they want a glass of water before bed. If they say yes or no its fine because it still leads to the overall goal of going to bed and you can accept either answer. If they want water, you ask if they want bathroom water or kitchen water. Again, either answer is fine. If the child is small enough, ask if hey want to be carried up the stairs or if they want to walk up. Either answer is acceptable. Does the child want to be read a story? The answer doesn't matter because you don't mind reading them a story but you won't mind not reading one either. Then, if the child asks if they can still stay up, you tell them that he or she has made all the decisions lately and now its time for the parent to make the decision. This was an interesting concept, and I haven't seen an appropriate place for a choice in the classes yet, but we were told that giving the student the control as much as possible when either answer is acceptable and reasonable to you. Asking if the students want tomorrows notes on an overhead or PowerPoint slide show was an example of how this idea could be used in class. While not exactly useful so far, I could see it being used in the future.

Another development meeting during our lunch hour was about creative writing projects. We met with an English teacher that was promoting creative writing at all three public high schools in Rochester along with several other teachers from the high school that were learning about new teaching methods as well. The acronym for the creative writing style we learned was RAFT, standing for Role, Audience, Format and Topic. The role is who you are supposed to be; like a slave, a certain celebrity, a friend, etc. The audience is who you are writing for, like congress members, the president, a friend, readers of a newspaper, etc. The format is what the project could be. Possible formats are letters, a ship's log, a diary, a slogan, a commercial/campaign ad ,a top ten list, a newspaper page, etc. The topic is what you want them to write about. This creative writing template is useful because it can help students create their own project for a certain topic in class. If the teacher allows them to create their own creative writing assignment in their own style and from the perspective of their choice it gives the students a greater range of choice while still having a structure they can follow. I like the idea but our classes have not had the time for a writing assignment because finals are this upcoming week and here have been other projects that were due, so we did not want to overwhelm the students. I was allowed to keep a template and I will try this in the future, because I can see this working better than asking them to write a paper about a certain stance about an issue or a topic. If students want to they can choose a format that would closely resemble a "typical" paper, like a letter or editorial in a newspaper if they prefer the standard paper format.

So I have witnessed some beneficial and not so beneficial teacher development. It seems like when teachers interact with other teachers it helps promote development, and when the staff all listen to a speaker they more or less get paid to listen to someone talk. Sure, this was only one instance, but if the others are similar, then the development is more like a two hour break from teaching, grading, and preparation for future class lessons.