Se Hace Camino Al Andar

I haven’t read a single one of these. How will I ever catch up?!

100 Notable Books of the Year – 2007 – New York Times

I feel that I should probably write more about NCTE but I’m not feeling very inspired. I only went to three workshops because I was volunteering Saturday and Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon, I skipped out on workshops to get some sleep and pay attention to my cats.

In any case, I could not be more relieved that Thanksgiving break is finally here. I’m looking forward to some home time, and spending time with my husband, who I’ve hardly seen these past few weeks between his work hours and my going to sleep early (0h, so tired!). As it is, I’m up early (than usual, anyway), so I can get to school early and finish grading a stack of unit tests that I want to return before the kids leave for the weekend.

I’ll try to be back to my normal self soon. In the meantime, my cousin and his wife are in Guatemala and he posted some cool video today. Check it out:  JacquelineandCraig.blogspot.com

It’s never too early to mark your calendars for the New York City Writing Project’s 10th Annual Teacher-to-Teacher Conference. This year, the conference will be held on Saturday, March 29th at Lehman College in the Bronx. The scheduled keynote speaker is Linda Christensen, author of Reading, Writing and Rising Up: Teaching about Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word.

I haven’t read the book but I love the title, so it’s going on my to-read list. Anyway, mark your calendars and hope to see you there. Stay tuned for more information. If you are interested in presenting, e-mail Joe Bellacero, at jbellacero AT aol.com

Sounds neat. I’ll try to make to it, if I’m feeling up to it! (And yes, you saw this same post on Ms. Frizzle’s blog).

EduCamp NYC is a gathering born from the desire by teachers, researchers, and technology specialists in K-12 education to share and learn in an open and powerfully-networked environment. All workshops are scheduled the day they happen, and are lead by conference attendees. Attendees are strongly encouraged to give a demo, run a session, lead a discussion, or help with one, or otherwise volunteer / contribute in some way to support the event. The people present at the event will select the workshops they want to attend. Pre-event planning will take place using the barcamp wiki. The event will be run using Open Space Technology. Conference notes and post-conference teamwork will take place using the curriculum collaboration tool, www.openplanner.org. RSVP at www.educampnyc.org

Event Details:

* When: Saturday, December 1st, 10AM – 4PM, followed by happy hour

* Where: Teachers College, 120th between Broadway and Amsterdam, Rm. 285 Grace Dodge Hall

* Cost: Free, including breakfast and lunch

With Networking and learning opportunities for all!

Veteran teachers:

o Show-off your repertoire.

o Learn new tricks.

o Forge a collaborative curriculum project.

o Feel out new job opportunities with school leaders.

New teachers:

o Connect with mentors in your subject area.

o Find a school that fits.

School leaders:

o Experience a teacher-led model for professional development.

o Build early relationships with new teacher candidates.

Education researchers:

o Present and explore educational theories with practitioners.

o Recruit a subject group.

Education Technology Specialists:

o Powow with others doing cutting-edge work in the Web 2.0 instructional realm.

THE RULES OF EDUCAMP

When you come, be prepared to share with educampers.
When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world

My friend Sandy invited me to the Teachers Network Awards Ceremony. She said it would be a great networking event, and just fun in general. I’m there!

For more information about the Teachers Network: The Teachers Network

Henry and I bought a car last week, from our neighbors. It’s a friendly, not-new car and good enough for getting around… definitely function over form here. Today, we went upstate with two friends of mine for some apple picking and a spontaneous stop at a winery. Check out the pictures!

On Friday, I took my AP English class (slightly more than half of them, anyway) to Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, NY. My friend Deborah has an exhibit there, so she invited me to bring my kids up, for a tour with her. It was brisk, and rained a little towards the end of the day but I think the kids liked being outside. They were running around the sculptures and taking in the views of the mountain with its changing leaves. They had a great time with Deborah, and after checking out her exhibit, saw Louise Bourgeois’ sculptures in the museum itself. We also took a tram ride around the center. I wish I could bring them back again in the Spring, when the weather is warm, so they can see the sculptures in a different light, a different season. I took a bunch of pictures, printed out copies for the kids and made a poster collage of the photos to give to my school.

In other news, have you heard of Josh Swiller? My sister heard him speak on NPR, about his deafness, his cochlear implant and a book he just published, a memoir titled Unheard. I ordered the book last week, and finished reading it in two days. It was compelling, and my first time reading a description of deafness that so matches my own experience. I’ve never been able to articulate it but Josh does a great job of it.

Anyway, check out this mini-documentary about Josh and his brother, Sam.

In New York City, teachers are regularly observed and evaluated, more often as new teachers, not as often later on. This process involves a pre-observation meeting with the assistant principal, the actual observation, then a post-observation in which the teacher and the assistant principal discuss the observation, and establish goals for the next observation. The assistant principal writes up the evaluation and assigns either an S, for satisfactory or a U for Unsatisfactory (I think there is also an MS, for minimally satisfactory).

Last year, an alternative to this process was introduced. It is called Component A, and basically, a teacher who participates establishes goals for herself, meets with the AP about these goals, then provides a follow-up reflection on whether these goals were met. Of course, I jumped on this chance!

I based this year’s goals for my performance review on a conversation I had with my assistant principal last week about my Scholarship Improvement Plan (S.I.P), which is an outline of strategies I’ll employ to raise my students’ grades.

Here goes:

Professional Goals

1. Organization and management of paperwork
I’ve come to realize that classroom management and paper management are closely connected. This might be obvious to some, but you know… I’m slow like that. Anyway, being on top of paperwork and grades gives students the impression that our work is serious and meaningful; it counts for something! Also, frequent updates on their performance will keep students on their toes, and compel them to take responsibility (one would hope).
How do I accomplish this goal?
–> Improve turn-around time for grading papers. My qualitative goal is two days for exams, one day for quizzes and one week for essays.
–> Weekly grade updates. I think this can be as simple as showing students my gradebook.

2. Incorporating Differentiated Learning Strategies
Based on the Election Day professional development with Marilyn Palefsky, and other materials I have on the topic, my goal is to more actively bring in differentiated learning tasks or activities. Based on a recommendation from Tim Fredrick, I bought a copy of “Differentiated Instruction in the English Classroom: Content, Process, Product, and Assessment.
How do I accomplish this goal?
–> Develop cooperative learning activities and use at least once a week in each class, building up the frequency as the year goes on.
–> Develop a task-based lesson and implement once a week at first, then increase to three times a week or more.
–> Create/develop learning stations to be used in alternative assessment.

Scholarship Goals

1. Intensive Regents Preparation
I’ve come to the painful realization that my students need a lot more than just a light review of the ELA regents task, despite being in 11th grade. They are so behind, it’s ridiculous. I’m still determined, though, to balance Regents prep with regular American Literature content.
How do I accomplish this goal?
–> Focus on one task at a time, and develop units around the tasks.
–> Give a practice Regents exam once a month.
–> Teach specific multiple choice strategies, based on Kaplan test prep strategies.

2. Helping students stay on task
I’ve developed a bad habit of frontal teaching, mostly as a defense mechanism. I feel safer at the front of the room, being able to observe everything, especially since I can’t hear everything when I walk around, my back to the students. The result is that it’s easy for students to get off-task without my watchful eye!
How do I accomplish this goal?
–> Circulate around the room more. For the sake of qualitative goal-setting, let’s say that less than ten minutes of the period should be spent at the front of the room.
–> Post specific, detailed instructions for each class activity (as opposed to only verbal).

3. More parent outreach
This is always my biggest issue. I don’t make phone calls, for obvious reasons. I know that regular communication with parents can have a huge impact on classroom management, though, so it’s a worthwhile goal that will make my life easier in the long run.
How do I accomplish this goal?
–> Send letters home weekly regarding negative behavior and concerns (lateness, etc).
–> Write a class letter for parents with content updates, test reminders and “shout-outs”.
–> Request e-mail addresses from parents that have one.

So that’s it for now. As usual, constructive feedback is welcome!

We’ve segued into talking about differentiated instruction. It’s an old conversation… for me, anyway. We talk a lot about differentiated instruction, but I never get to see it in action. I would love to do an intervisitation to a classroom that is a model of differentiated instruction, but in a setting that is similar to mine.

Ah, here is the catch to that last activity we did, with the phrase sort. Everyone had the same phrases but were given different tasks. M and I were just told to group the phrases. Our tablemates were give topics and told to sort the phrases accordingly. Where M and I sorted the phrases into student-centered vs. teacher-centered, our tablemates were given the topics “traditional classroom” vs “differentiated classroom.”

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And the afternoon session begins! The topic now is Eduware, test-generation software. I’m a little skeptical. In the past, test-generation software I’ve seen has been too rigid and inflexible.

Our training today is lead by Nick Norman, our resident UFT center staffer (have I told you how awesome it is that we have a UFT teacher center in our school?!). He had us begin by doing what’s called a “walk around survey.” Basically, it’s a grid with spaces for your response, then more spaces for others’ responses. So, in this case, we surveyed ourselves on our experiences with creating exams, thinking about experiences, issues and suggestions.

Here’s the Smartboard (and Jon, our recorder)!

Some of the experiences/issues/suggestions that are coming up:

1. Department-wide exams are not always workable
2. Exams should be based on content
3. Allow us to be individual while following a dept.-wide format
4. thematic units per grade level–in short, we need a curriculum if we are going to have dept.-wide exams… (aka “same-pagedness”)

So, the eduware software contains a catalogue of questions. For the ELA section, there are old Regents exams (and I mean old! The first question we saw was from 1980!) But I do appreciate this catalogue. And I was surprised to find that in the ’60s, the ELA Regents had questions about spelling, grammar and vocabulary. The whole Task 1, Task 2, Task 3, Task 4 thing is apparently new. We ran into a little networking snafu so our exploration of the software has been cut short. I’m eager to get a copy for my own laptop, though, because I am amenable to trying it out.