5389
Effective Professional
Leadership

As I begin to implement my ideas generated and refined throughout my time in the EDLD program, I find that my ideas about education, professional learning, and even my own personal learning ideologies and beliefs have changed significantly. I have challenged myself in many ways and came through each challenge more empowered and stronger than I ever thought possible. As I move into implementation of my innovative education strategy, I have reflected on my own professional learning experiences. I began to focus on the professional learning sessions I really enjoyed and compared them to those that I did not enjoy. Of course, enjoyability is not the only factor I have to examine, I also reflected on those that proved to be useful or transformative to my daily routines and methods. I am sharing all my insight on that topic as well as sharing my plans for professional learning as I roll out my digital rotational blended learning units in my classroom, within my science team, and on my campus.

Should we innovate?

Rotational blended learning sounds like such a complicated initiative to uptake, especially with the increased demands on our time this school year as many districts face significant budget cuts, but this is not complicated (unless you choose to make it so) and it will end up saving you so much time and effort in the long run. I completely understand the hesitancy to embrace a change that may be pretty significant to your classroom routines and your teaching style, because quite frankly, I never planned to fall into the craze and hype surrounding blended learning. After the whole COVID fiasco I agree that digital learning leaves much to be desired within STEM education, but I also see the merit in using technology to enhance learning within the classroom. I see technology for what it is; a great tool that should be used to create authentic learning experiences, while keeping the interpersonal connection and loving guidance of an educator central to the learning experience of students.

My passion for blended learning stems from my search to find a way to free up some of my time in not only the lesson planning process (making thousands of copies a month), but also in the actual moments of teaching. I wasted so much time battling students that were bored or disengaged from the school system to just put in a little effort to reach the potential I saw, but they were too scared to reach for it due to fear of failure. I was so tired of giving my all and trying to make everyone happy that I was facing serious burn out - one single activity will never be able to make all 160 students I teach every Monday-Friday happy, but differentiating lessons can. I knew I wanted to personalize learning, I have seen how making personal connections with students could win over even the most apathetic students to at least try a little for me. The struggle is how can you feasibly differentiate the learning experience for 160 thirteen year old students? I found that giving students choice in their learning actually goes a long way.

In fact, I had been using the illusion of choice to get my reluctant students engaged since early September during my first year teaching. For some reason lessons went better when students thought they had gotten a choice in what they were doing and my day was easier. When I talk about the illusion of choice, I mean that I would have two or three activities that students could choose from to complete. The content was the same and they had virtually no control in actuality, but since they could pick the activity that appealed the most to their learning style and interests they were more willing to complete the work. Getting students on my side to work with me and not against me was the most significant piece of my teaching style and classroom management strategies. The way I looked at it, if the kids like you and feel safe and respected, they will do their work and try for you.

As I researched ways to give students the real power of choice and ownership in their learning I found a lot of research that supported project-based learning. Students that participated in solving a real-world problem or some other authentic learning experience were more successful at being able to apply their knowledge, they were significantly more successful at retaining information over time. Project-based learning was a great start, but I wanted to give my students more control over the entirety of the learning process, so I pressed on. I found that since COVID many studies have found that rotational blended learning has shown to increase student engagement and performance. As I looked into rotational blended learning I realized that I was already implementing a lot of the foundational strategies in my classroom. In fact, rotational blended learning would just make my use of technology for things like practice, reteaches, or data gathering more intentional with my traditional face-to-face strategies that I enjoyed. Instead of a disjointed feel between my traditional lesson elements and those tech based elements, I would be able to focus on creating lessons in which both types of learning built on and enhanced each other.

I played around with the project-based and rotational blended learning for months, before I had a lightbulb moment and thought "why don't i just combine them?". Thus my rotational blended learning units, actually took flight in my passions. Now, every unit starts with identifying the major theme or goal for the unit and I design a project based on something authentic that the students can base their learning around. Instead of completing what feels like random busy work, students know they are working toward a project or solution. Their efforts matter because everything they are learning in my class is used to build a repertoire of knowledge that they need to complete the project at the end of the unit.

As a result, I have seen increased engagement across the board. Students don't want to close out the tab with the lesson activities to watch YouTube, game highlights, or play games because they are genuinely interested in what they are learning. They see the real-world applications and begin making their own connections. When the work they are doing at every step of the lesson is engaging and feels personal to them and their daily lives, they are passionate about their learning. I have been able to step back from explicitly teaching everything and have been able to facilitate learning instead. I am now able to answer students questions that go far beyond the low-level Bloom's questions and thinking. We are now almost always speaking at the highest levels of Bloom's. We are comparing topics, gathering and analyzing data, researching independently, and what I find to be the best part of my day - students are now questioning the validity of information they see on TikTok and other social media platforms. We have gotten into some very good class discussions this way and I know that these discussions will create lasting impressions on my students. Moving students through lessons that are built with technology integrated to personalize learning and give students choice in their learning and traditional lesson activities such as labs, class discussions, debates, and even scavenger hunt and stations activities has brought the joy back to learning and teaching. It has been so successful that parents are commenting on the changes they have seen in their child and I have full support from so many parents that I can't imagine ever going back to the way I used to do things.

The need to change professional learning

As teachers, we are all here because we want to give our students the best opportunities we can. I have not met very many teachers that wouldn't be willing to give the shirts off of their backs to help another in need. I firmly believe that teachers are the hearts and soul of the communities they are in. If teachers in general are so giving and hardworking, why are we not supporting each other in truly meaningful ways?

Ever since my second year of teaching, I have noticed that professional learning often feels cookie-cutter or too vague to be implemented in my classroom in a meaningful way. Blanket statements are made and many times we are taught of strategies that work brilliantly in a Utopian perfect world set of circumstances that doesn't even match the demographics and needs of the students within our school and our classes. There are so many times that I am taught about a cool strategy, but the implementation ideas are either entirely too vague or they don't feel authentic to my students. There are other presentations that I love and I think "wow, this would be so good to use in my class", but I am rushed off to another meeting and I never get any guidance on actually putting it into practice in my room. By the time I get to planning implementation of the new strategy the excitement I had is gone and all I am left with is uncertainty on how I am going to make this work in my classroom with my content in a way that feels natural not only to me, but also to my students.

We are all tired of the constant build-up of new strategies and hyped up miracle cures for all our classroom woes, without any time actually dedicated to doing it. I am sick of just talking the talk, without ever walking the walk. Teachers quickly become apathetic to professional learning sessions. All of this needs to change and I definitely plan to change the way we learn from each other. No more sit and take the information sessions, we are going to be revolutionizing the way we learn by building up communities and learning committees that allow for more personalized support for teachers based on their strengths and weaknesses.

Innovation in Professional Learning

I know what you are thinking, "oh great another professional learning session that has nothing to do with what I need to sit through". I promise that we need to not only change for our students, we also need to change the way we learn from each other.

Consequences of Status Quo

01.

Apathy of Educators and Students

02.

Teacher Burn Out

03.

Losing sight of the reason for PD

04.

Implementation Vagueness

05.

No Real Support

Teachers that are not supported in meaningful ways will grow stagnant in their own learning. Stagnant teachers are not going to relate well to their students, which will increase apathy in staff and students alike.

As apathy continues, and PD sessions continue to ignore the pressing issues and the actual needs of teachers, burn out is going to increase. We need help. We need ideas to connect with post-COVID kids and we just aren't getting that. It is hard to sit through sessions that ignore your needs while you have a mountain of things that needs to get done back at your room.

At this point in my career, I have to admit I have lost faith in professional learning. I use it as time to clean up my email, write down my to-do list, make a presentation for a lesson, or so on. PD feels like a box for administrators to check off, not something that is useful or exciting.

Another common problem with our current PD is that it is often so vague on implementation that things start getting lost in the noise of things competing for our attention. I love when a tool looks like it is going to make my life easier in some way, but when I am not given really clear ideas on how I can actually use the tool in my science class. Not only would we have to look into the tool or strategy more, but we would also have to design something to implement it in our classes. It's put on a back burner and then honestly forgotten. Drowning men don't think clearly enough to get themselves out of a rip-tide, and neither can a drowning teacher devise a brand-new approach on their own.

My personal pet-peeve (one that I share with a majority of educators) is when a new strategy or tool is presented, we are given no time or support to actually implement it in our classes. We are thrown a lot of information in a session and then with a very basic understanding we are supposed to just "go do it" in our classes. Facing down a class of thirty middle school aged children is not for the faint of heart, and now you want me to throw something out there that is most likely going to have issues I won't know how to solve, yeah no thank you. It will just go in my notebook of pipe dream strategies I'll use if I ever get the time.

Professional Learning Committees

To begin we are going to gather as an entire staff to learn about the basics of our innovation. We are going to build excitement for our rotational blended learning units within our classrooms. I want to create the type of excitement that lasts, so I want uplifting music (work appropriate party music) playing as staff members come in and I want there to be light refreshments. The reason I want to do this is because I want to change the feelings attached to "professional learning/development" as soon as we begin. If we kick off the initiative as a party, it signifies that we are actually going to change the way we have been doing things. At the kick-off party teachers will be lightly introduced to what a rotational blended learning unit will include, mostly just clearly defining what we mean when we talk about these units and giving a uniform definition of what we will be doing before we truly dig into the meat of the professional learning we will be doing. After we give a foundational level of knowledge and pitch the need to innovate the way we teach our lessons within our classes, we will be given our teams or learning community assignments for the next steps of our professional learning.

The energy and excitement of the main meeting will be immediately followed up on during our regularly scheduled PLC (professional learning committee) meeting. In this meeting the innovation leader will show teachers the tech tools that can be used to enhance learning most naturally. The tech tools that English teachers are shown will be different than the tech tools a science teacher will find helpful, so the technology tools portion should be very targeted for the content. When educators are equipped with great tools, given clear implementation ideas in their content area, and ample time to explore both the teacher and the student side of the technology they are introduced to, so that everyone is empowered and comfortable to implement the strategies in their classes.

After some technology has been introduced into classes (about two to four weeks to implement the tools), the innovation leader will introduce how to design a unit focused on integrating digital learning with traditional face-to-face learning strategies. In this meeting it would be most helpful to take the ideas and plans the teacher is wanting to use for her classes and enter it in a 3-column table. This process naturally leads to an intentional blending of technology tools and traditional activities while the innovation leader can give ideas on what technology tools can be implemented within the lessons.

Six weeks later, the innovation leader will then workshop with the learning committee to build a unit with the teachers that seamlessly blends the technology tools in one place, so that every teacher in that grade level, content specific team, will be able to implement the blended learning unit efficiently. This will allow the teams to not only develop a great blended learning unit, but each teacher will be empowered to create their own learning units and over time it will become very personalized to the teacher and the needs of the students we are teaching.

Throughout the entire process teachers will be able to reach out to members on the innovation team that can meet to answer questions, trouble shoot issues, and even provide support or co-teach if needed throughout the implementation process. Support will be constant, ongoing, and personalized for every teacher on campus. As more teachers get the hang of it the support will only grow and collaboration on these units will not only be amongst content specific teams, but it will bleed over into a campus wide collaboration. Ideas will continually flow and push this initiative forward. Formal meetings will still take place throughout the year as needed, but they will become less frequent as each team builds more confidence in the rotational blended learning strategies.

Professional Learning Resources

Phase 1: Implementation Party

This slide show will be used to give everyone a clear understanding of what we are working to create. It is going to be very short and brief, so that excitement and team building can be the main focus. That way teachers can enter into their learning committees with a clear goal in mind and their only job will be to explore and find what works best for them and their students as they are given new tools and strategies.

5389 Kick Off Party Slides pic

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Tech Tools Padlet

Phase 2: Technology Tools

At this stage teachers have a clear understanding of their goal, but they may be lacking in the skills or confidence (possibly both) to implement any kind of technology tools in their classroom. Maybe they are enthusiastic about technology, but they have no idea where to begin. This stage of professional learning is all about getting used to technology tools and trying out different things until a healthy stash of tools are built up in the teachers' arsenal. At this stage all teachers should be encouraged to just experiment. Support and modeling should be offered within the very first meeting and content-specific tech tools will have a full demo.

Phase 3: Planning with a 3-Column Table

During this stage of planning an innovation leader will work with the grade level, content-specific team during their regularly scheduled planning time to create a 3-column table for the next unit or chunk of time the team is planning for. At this meeting the ideas of the teachers will be plugged into the 3-column table by the innovation leader. This means that no extra work was put on the teacher, but they can see their ideas blend seamlessly with technology tools that were suggested (or already planned) with everything else that is going to be done during the lessons. At this stage teachers will see how easy it is to intentionally blend digital and traditional learning experiences for the best learning environment possible.

Click for 3-Column Example

Phase 4: Blended Learning Unit Building

After teachers get used to using a 3-column table to plan lessons and lesson activities, an innovation leader will take the ideas proposed in the 3-column table and create a cohesive unit through Google Classroom that can then be used by the entire team. By showing the team how to build one unit, teachers will be able to divide up the work of the unit and conquer. No one had to reinvent the wheel and digital lesson content will all be housed in one place to make it simpler for students, teachers, and administrators alike.