I have managed to avoid talking about my job search the duration of this class, but I figured what better time to discuss the issue than my last blog. So here is the gist.
In short...it has been pretty nonexistent. Why? I cannot seem to figure out how to balance being a mother and being a teacher. During student teaching, I really struggled with being away from my daughter (now 19 months old) and having her in the arms of daycare or a nanny so many hours of the day. With her being so young, I felt that I was missing valuable time that I would never get back. And I absolutely hated experiencing second-hand all of the firsts that happen during this age. I think I cried 90 percent of the days I had to leave her while I was student teaching (I think I cried the other 10 percent because I was so stressed and sleep deprived). I know a lot of people, if not the majority of people now-a-days, use childcare in order to continue their career, or out of need to support their family, but I want to be the one that raises my child and to be the one that experiences all of the special moments.
Another added layer of complexity, my husband has been traveling 4 or 5 days a week for the past 10 months (the last 4 months of which included me student teaching, us selling our condo in Chicago, living and commuting from Wisconsin for 5 weeks, and then buying and moving into a new house in the suburbs). At the moment, it is uncertain whether my husband will have to continue to travel for work. With him being gone so much, I have struggled to handle all of the house and parenting workload on my own, let alone the school workload, and I cannot find the justification to look for a job. Not only is my husband away from my daughter often, how can I be gone all of the time too?
But how do I abandon my career until my daughter starts going to school (or longer since we hope to have another child)? If I do not do anything pertaining to teaching for several years, how will I ever be a competitive candidate for a teaching position?
I have found myself in a position where I think it is best for me and my family if I search for a local, part-time tutoring position, whether it be through a school or private institution, in order to at least keep my skills and resume current. So here my search begins! Hopefully I can find something to fit the bill.
If anyone has any advice or words of wisdom on being a parent and educator, I would love to hear it. And I hope everyone else is finding what they have been searching for. Best of luck with your own job search!
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Emerging Technology in the Classroom
It cannot be denied that we live in a society driven by technology, with new technologies emerging everyday. The current trend is that "technology continues to profoundly affect the way we work, collaborate, communicate, and succeed. Information technologies impact how people work, play, learn, socialize, and collaborate" (2010 Horizon Report: K12 Edition). This reality needs to be addressed and brought into our classrooms and included in the general curriculum. This statement brings me to a critical problem that currently exists in education: students are changing rapidly, "but educational practice and the materials that support it are changing only slowly" (2010 Horizon Report: K12 Edition). In response to this problem, The New Media Consortium has been supporting an ongoing research effort to "identif[y] and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within education around the globe" (2010 Horizon Report: K12 Edition). The annual report released by The New Media Consortium is a great resource that summarizes the current trends, critical challenges and emerging technologies surrounding education. I found this report to be an excellent resource not only for information about issue of technology in education, but also for new ideas to bring into the classroom.
One technology in the report that really resonated with me was the collaborative environments, “online spaces where the focus is on making it easy to collaborate and work in groups, no matter where the participants may be” (2010 Horizon Report: K12 Edition). As stated in the 2010 Horizon report, “The value placed on collaboration in the workplace is high, and professionals of all kinds are expected to work across geographic and cultural boundaries more and more frequently.” We need to be supporting the development of students' ability to collaborate using technology, as well as face-to-face. In addition, collaboration with students and individuals from other schools or countries expose learners to different perspectives they might not otherwise be exposed to in the classroom.
One technology in the report that really resonated with me was the collaborative environments, “online spaces where the focus is on making it easy to collaborate and work in groups, no matter where the participants may be” (2010 Horizon Report: K12 Edition). As stated in the 2010 Horizon report, “The value placed on collaboration in the workplace is high, and professionals of all kinds are expected to work across geographic and cultural boundaries more and more frequently.” We need to be supporting the development of students' ability to collaborate using technology, as well as face-to-face. In addition, collaboration with students and individuals from other schools or countries expose learners to different perspectives they might not otherwise be exposed to in the classroom.
During my student teaching experience, I used a few of the technologies mentioned in the Horizon Report, including VoiceThreads and Google Docs. However, my use of them was limited to the students using the applications to create group presentations. After reading the Horizon Report, I would like to try using one of these collaborative environment technologies to have students from my school collaborate with students at other schools in the district, state, country, or world to complete a community/global service initiative or research project pertaining to one of the content threads of the science curriculum. I believe such a project would help students build communication skills, collaborative skills, critical thinking skills, as well as expose them to other perspectives and help them release the synergy of collaborative work on a large-scale.
Technology is an area that we cannot ignore as educators and I plan to continue reading the Horizon Reports as one means to personally stay abreast of this issue and learn about new applications to bring into the classroom.
Improving Teacher Effectiveness: Professional Learning Communities
While reflecting and writing my professional development plan, I had an interesting article land in my email from NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) pertaining to the matter called “STEM Teachers in Professional Learning Communities: From Good Teachers to Great Teaching” released by The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) (http://www.nctaf.org/documents/NCTAFreportSTEMTeachersinPLCsFromGoodTeacherstoGreatTeaching.pdf). The report summarizes a two-year National Science Foundation (NSF) funded study called STEM Teachers in Professional Learning Communities: A Knowledge Synthesis (“Knowledge Synthesis”). This teacher effectiveness and professional development study, which analyzed nearly two hundred research articles and reports, concluded that professional learning communities (PLCs) (collaborative learning teams of educators) have significant positive impacts on teacher practice. More specifically, the study found that:
- Participating in learning teams can successfully engage teachers in discussions about the subjects that they teach.
- Teachers participating in PLCs better understood the content and felt more prepared to teach the content.
- Teachers participating in PLCs improved their practice by using more research-based methods, “paying more attention to students’ reasoning and understanding, and using more diverse modes of engaging students in problem solving.”
As far as the effects of PLCs on student achievement, the verdict is still out. NCTAF reported that the research in this area is just emerging. However, existing studies show positive effects. In any case, this research indicates that PLCs have significant impacts on professional development and a more wide-spread use of PLCs could help improve education and make our country more competitive on a global scale.
There were a few quotes from the article that spoke so strongly about the necessity for collaboration between educators that I must share them here.
We now have compelling evidence that when teachers team up with their colleagues they are able to create a culture of success in schools, leading to teaching improvements and student learning gains. The clear policy and practice implication is that great teaching is a team sport. Performance appraisal, compensation, and incentive systems that focus on individual teacher efforts at the expense of collaborative professional capacity building could seriously undermine our ability to prepare today’s students for 21 st century college and career success. Every school needs good teachers—but a school does not become a great place to learn until those teachers have the leadership and support to create a learning culture that is more powerful than even the best of them can sustain on their own.
To meet the needs of today’s learners, the tradition of artisan teaching in solo‐practice classrooms will have to give way to a school culture in which teachers continuously develop their content knowledge and pedagogical skills through collaborative practice that is embedded in the daily fabric of their work. Teacher collaboration supports student learning, and the good news is that teachers who work in strong learning communities are more satisfied with their careers and are more likely to remain in teaching long enough to become accomplished educators.
This article particularly caught my attention because it was one of my professional development goals to form a collaborative relationship with one or more teachers for peer evaluation and a spring board for ideas. This article supports the need for me to fulfill this goal and aspires me to reach another goal, to develop and implement PLCs in the school(s) where I teach.
In reflecting on this study, it also struck me as ironic that there is currently a big push for collaborative learning in the classroom, yet teachers are not doing the same. The synergy of collaborative educators is not being realized. Improving teaching quality is the single most important investment we can make to prepare today’s students for college and career success and research has shown that PLCs improve teacher effectiveness. We need to work together to ensure that every child is prepared for life.
Check out the article!
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Engagement and Motivation in Reading (and all other learning tasks)
We all know that high quality learning requires engagement and motivation, but generating this, in my opinion, is one of our most difficult tasks. And for the majority of students, the levels of engagement and motivation are so dependent on our teaching style and methods that we cannot take this duty lightly. The research discussed in "Contexts for Engagement and Motivation in Reading" written by John Guthrie (http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/index.html) speaks to this point.
Research discussed in this article suggests that teaching style and methods have great consequences on student motivation and engagement. Teacher-centered styles foster situational, extrinsic motivation, instead of long-term, intrinsic motivation. In contrast, student-centered, learning-goal oriented styles increase self-efficacy; when understanding content, using strategies effectively, and linking new and prior knowledge to construct meaning are emphasized, students are more likely to be engaged.
So what specifically can we do to develop engaged and intrinsically motivated students? We can give students autonomy by allowing students to make choices about learning materials and tasks. We can provide real-world interactions by using concrete examples and/or hands-on activities to enhance text-based learning and improve achievement.We can provide interesting materials for instruction which will engage students and make them more motivated to learn. We can provide explicit reading and learning instruction to develop skills necessary for independent learning. We can provide opportunities for collaborative learning, enabling students to communicate ideas, to be exposed to multiple perspectives, and to construct meaning. And finally, possibly the most important thing we can do is be involved and engaged teachers who care about our students and take the time to get to know their interests and individual learning styles.The below figure from the article summarizes (with more detail) the instructional context engagement model of reading devolopment.
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Online version: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/index.html
Kamil, M.L., Mosenthal, P.B., Pearson, P.D., & Barr R. (Eds.). (2000). Handbook of reading research: Volume III (pp. 403-422). New York: Erlbaum.
Research discussed in this article suggests that teaching style and methods have great consequences on student motivation and engagement. Teacher-centered styles foster situational, extrinsic motivation, instead of long-term, intrinsic motivation. In contrast, student-centered, learning-goal oriented styles increase self-efficacy; when understanding content, using strategies effectively, and linking new and prior knowledge to construct meaning are emphasized, students are more likely to be engaged.
So what specifically can we do to develop engaged and intrinsically motivated students? We can give students autonomy by allowing students to make choices about learning materials and tasks. We can provide real-world interactions by using concrete examples and/or hands-on activities to enhance text-based learning and improve achievement.We can provide interesting materials for instruction which will engage students and make them more motivated to learn. We can provide explicit reading and learning instruction to develop skills necessary for independent learning. We can provide opportunities for collaborative learning, enabling students to communicate ideas, to be exposed to multiple perspectives, and to construct meaning. And finally, possibly the most important thing we can do is be involved and engaged teachers who care about our students and take the time to get to know their interests and individual learning styles.The below figure from the article summarizes (with more detail) the instructional context engagement model of reading devolopment.
Although this article was specifically addressing reading engagment and motivation, I believe these techniques are generalizable to all learning activities and this article has provided me with a framework to foster engaged and motivated students.
Kamil, M.L., Mosenthal, P.B., Pearson, P.D., & Barr R. (Eds.). (2000). Handbook of reading research: Volume III (pp. 403-422). New York: Erlbaum.
Cooperative Learning
Collaboration is essential in so many careers, especially in science, and I believe that it is our obligation as teachers to help students build the cooperative skills necessary to be successful both inside and outside the classroom. Therefore, I believe that cooperative learning should be a major component to the science (and all other content areas) curriculum.
During my student teaching experience, I tried to incorporate cooperative learning as often as possible. Although students were always excited for the opportunity to work in groups, the outcome was not always want I intended. Despite trying a variety of ways of forming groups (heterogenous, mastery, mixed level, random, and student choice), a variety of group sizes (from 2-4), and using a variety of different learning tasks, I found it difficult to get all of the students to "buy into" the goal of cooperative tasks and invest in the group. I often observed that all of the students completed the work, but they hadn't worked together to do so; students were not actually "collaborating." I finished student teaching without being able to resolve this issue and without a method to implement to try to fix the problem.
Monday night's discussion on cooperative learning finally provided me with some tools to try moving forward.. Of particular interest and help was the material presented by Johnson, Johnson, and Holubec on types of interdependence and basic elements of cooperative teams. In looking over and discussing this material, I noticed that I had defecits in two major areas during my student teaching experience: creating interdepence and providing explicit instruction in cooperative skills. Students were always aware of the individual need to complete the taskand that they needed to work in groups because of limited resources ort time, but in reflecting back, I don't think I ever created true interdepence (I feel totally disappointed in myself that I never realized this! I think I was worried about so many other things that I just didn't notice). There were a few times where I feel I created a little interdependence, but not enough. For example, students were assigned to complete a group fetal pig dissection lab as the cullumating activity to the human physiology unit. Prior to starting the lab, I passed out a dissection questionaire to find out which students really wanted to be hands-on with the dissection and which wanted to be observers. I then organized groups based on the questionaire responses and skill level. Before beginning the first day of dissection, students were told to choose a lead dissector, assistant dissector and readers/recorders. For each student to successfully complete the lab, each student had to perform a role. However, in walking around, I noticed that there were some groups were only one person was dissecting and one person was reading/recording and the other two group members were off task. I think I was close to creating interdepence in this case but I could have further developed it by enforcing each persons role before they could begin.
The other area that I feel I did not address was cooperative skills. I think group work would have been significantly improved if I took 5 minutes before cooperative activities to discuss cooperative skills or to do a looks like, sounds like T-chart that our professor has spoken about. However, I felt that too much was packed into everyday, that I barely had time to get the students through the activities, let alone taken 5 more minutes to discuss this (another topic for another day). However, I believe having this discussion occassionally would significantly improve the students work efficiency and quality.
After Monday night's discussion, I am really excited to get into the field and try out some of these new cooperative learning techiniques!
During my student teaching experience, I tried to incorporate cooperative learning as often as possible. Although students were always excited for the opportunity to work in groups, the outcome was not always want I intended. Despite trying a variety of ways of forming groups (heterogenous, mastery, mixed level, random, and student choice), a variety of group sizes (from 2-4), and using a variety of different learning tasks, I found it difficult to get all of the students to "buy into" the goal of cooperative tasks and invest in the group. I often observed that all of the students completed the work, but they hadn't worked together to do so; students were not actually "collaborating." I finished student teaching without being able to resolve this issue and without a method to implement to try to fix the problem.
Monday night's discussion on cooperative learning finally provided me with some tools to try moving forward.. Of particular interest and help was the material presented by Johnson, Johnson, and Holubec on types of interdependence and basic elements of cooperative teams. In looking over and discussing this material, I noticed that I had defecits in two major areas during my student teaching experience: creating interdepence and providing explicit instruction in cooperative skills. Students were always aware of the individual need to complete the taskand that they needed to work in groups because of limited resources ort time, but in reflecting back, I don't think I ever created true interdepence (I feel totally disappointed in myself that I never realized this! I think I was worried about so many other things that I just didn't notice). There were a few times where I feel I created a little interdependence, but not enough. For example, students were assigned to complete a group fetal pig dissection lab as the cullumating activity to the human physiology unit. Prior to starting the lab, I passed out a dissection questionaire to find out which students really wanted to be hands-on with the dissection and which wanted to be observers. I then organized groups based on the questionaire responses and skill level. Before beginning the first day of dissection, students were told to choose a lead dissector, assistant dissector and readers/recorders. For each student to successfully complete the lab, each student had to perform a role. However, in walking around, I noticed that there were some groups were only one person was dissecting and one person was reading/recording and the other two group members were off task. I think I was close to creating interdepence in this case but I could have further developed it by enforcing each persons role before they could begin.
The other area that I feel I did not address was cooperative skills. I think group work would have been significantly improved if I took 5 minutes before cooperative activities to discuss cooperative skills or to do a looks like, sounds like T-chart that our professor has spoken about. However, I felt that too much was packed into everyday, that I barely had time to get the students through the activities, let alone taken 5 more minutes to discuss this (another topic for another day). However, I believe having this discussion occassionally would significantly improve the students work efficiency and quality.
After Monday night's discussion, I am really excited to get into the field and try out some of these new cooperative learning techiniques!
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Motivation
Motivation is a vital component to high performance and completion of any task, and one could argue that it is especially essential in education for both teachers and students.In order for quality teaching and learning to occur, motivation must be fostered. So how to create and/or maintain motivation is a major question. This is a question that I have personally struggling to answer, particularly during my short student teaching experience and that I continue to research as I enter the the teaching profession. Needless to say, I was especially intrigued by the RSAnimate on Dan Pink's "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" our professor posted on D2L (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc).
First off, this was the first RSAnimate I have ever seen. It is amazing! I was so fascinated and captivated by the animation and it really increased my enjoyment while listening to the author. Also, it helped me comprehend what was being said because I was hearing and seeing it. I definitely want to explore what other animates are out there.
That being said, the content of Dan Pink's work is intriguing and believe has strong implications on the teaching profession. He talks about research that has been done to test the relationship between motivation (work output) and monetary reward. Surprisingly, it has been found that increased reward actually decreases motivation. In the animate, he doesn't really explore possible reasons for the results (maybe he does in the book), but the results are fascinating none-the-less.
Why would it be that people become less motivated with higher rewards? I contemplated this question for awhile after watching the animate and haven't come up with anything concrete. But my thought was that when people are so dependent on their work performance to make the money the need/deserve for their work, stress begins to crush motivation. Anger toward the employer builds, employees reach a stage where they hate (or dislike) going into work everyday, job satisfaction diminishes, and creativity and work quality suffer.. How could someone stay motivated given all of that? I don't know if this truly explains the results of the research or if there is research out there that explores this question, but that was my thought. Any insight???
Reasons for the results aside, what are the implications on the profession? Dan Pink suggests that if you pay people enough base salary to take the money issue off the table, then 3 factors contribute to increased motivation and job satisfaction: autonomy (the desire to be self directed and direct our own lives), mastery (the urge to get better at things), and purpose. (You should really watch the animate the listen to all of the interesting things that he says about these factors.) What does this mean? I believe that if we are to expect education in our country to improve, which it definitely needs to do, than teachers need to be paid more. I'm not one to be tied to any profession because of the money, but I believe that if we want to get good teachers in the system and get teachers to be motivated to improve methods and devote energy improving education, that salary needs to be increased so that issue (and major stressor) is taken off the table. In addition, more autonomy, in some cases, needs to be given to teachers to try new things and do their own research. I'm not saying the research has to be done individually, but as a department, school or district. Something needs to be done to improve education and I believe Dan Pink is on to something.
After watching the animate, I also felt that these same principles could be applied to the classroom. Why not increase autonomy and purpose in the activities that we give students in order to increase their motivation? Research has shown this, but why aren't all teachers doing it?!
Education is ready for a revolution (and I believe one has begun) and I believe motivation needs to be at the center. This issue has been a passion of mine and I was glad to be shown Dan Pink's work by our professor. I plan to read the book and encourage all of you to at least watch the animate!
Until next time.....
First off, this was the first RSAnimate I have ever seen. It is amazing! I was so fascinated and captivated by the animation and it really increased my enjoyment while listening to the author. Also, it helped me comprehend what was being said because I was hearing and seeing it. I definitely want to explore what other animates are out there.
That being said, the content of Dan Pink's work is intriguing and believe has strong implications on the teaching profession. He talks about research that has been done to test the relationship between motivation (work output) and monetary reward. Surprisingly, it has been found that increased reward actually decreases motivation. In the animate, he doesn't really explore possible reasons for the results (maybe he does in the book), but the results are fascinating none-the-less.
Why would it be that people become less motivated with higher rewards? I contemplated this question for awhile after watching the animate and haven't come up with anything concrete. But my thought was that when people are so dependent on their work performance to make the money the need/deserve for their work, stress begins to crush motivation. Anger toward the employer builds, employees reach a stage where they hate (or dislike) going into work everyday, job satisfaction diminishes, and creativity and work quality suffer.. How could someone stay motivated given all of that? I don't know if this truly explains the results of the research or if there is research out there that explores this question, but that was my thought. Any insight???
Reasons for the results aside, what are the implications on the profession? Dan Pink suggests that if you pay people enough base salary to take the money issue off the table, then 3 factors contribute to increased motivation and job satisfaction: autonomy (the desire to be self directed and direct our own lives), mastery (the urge to get better at things), and purpose. (You should really watch the animate the listen to all of the interesting things that he says about these factors.) What does this mean? I believe that if we are to expect education in our country to improve, which it definitely needs to do, than teachers need to be paid more. I'm not one to be tied to any profession because of the money, but I believe that if we want to get good teachers in the system and get teachers to be motivated to improve methods and devote energy improving education, that salary needs to be increased so that issue (and major stressor) is taken off the table. In addition, more autonomy, in some cases, needs to be given to teachers to try new things and do their own research. I'm not saying the research has to be done individually, but as a department, school or district. Something needs to be done to improve education and I believe Dan Pink is on to something.
After watching the animate, I also felt that these same principles could be applied to the classroom. Why not increase autonomy and purpose in the activities that we give students in order to increase their motivation? Research has shown this, but why aren't all teachers doing it?!
Education is ready for a revolution (and I believe one has begun) and I believe motivation needs to be at the center. This issue has been a passion of mine and I was glad to be shown Dan Pink's work by our professor. I plan to read the book and encourage all of you to at least watch the animate!
Until next time.....
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