10. Teaming is more than sharing a group of students

10. Teaming is more than sharing a group of students

This we believe (NMSA, 2010).

* Organizational structures foster purposeful learning and meaningful relationships.   Organizational Structures.

          I have devoted my life to middle school philosophy, curriculum, and instruction and I must say that there are many elements of middle level curriculum that can enhance any middle school (Interdisciplinary teams, advisory, curriculum enhancement, exploratories to name a few). The best scholars agree that implementing all elements is most beneficial (Jackson & Andrews, 2010; George, 2010; McEwin and Greene, 2010). If I were to pick three of the most important elements to integrate into a school, I would recommend teaming, advisory, and interdisciplinary planning with a focus on standards.

         I choose teaming because I believe the collaborative nature and opportunities for communication provide all stakeholders with the opportunity to set goals, expectations, common procedures, parent and community involvement, IEPs and a focus on meeting the needs, all the needs of students. A team of teachers that works closely with family and community members has the opportunity to apply multiple experiences that impact student development. Students who believe they are part of a community, that they belong and are important members, have a better chance of being successful.

          I choose advisory because I believe we must advocate for young adolescents to be good community members first in our own classrooms, our schools, and eventually in the community at large. Some elementary and middle school groups have 'morning meetings.' Others participate in Paideia Seminars. And in other middle schools teachers work together to create a variety of experiences for their students that engage them in social, emotion, and intellectual development. Helping students reach their full potential must be intentional and must focus on more than a student's intellectual prowess.                             

          Finally, I choose interdisciplinary instruction that focuses on academic development. When we help students see connections, when we focus on common skills such as analyzing, or comparing, or communicating effectively, students hear and experience tools and strategies in multiple disciplines. When we integrate art and music and technology within the context of academic standards we provide our students with multiple ways to view and reinforce information. When our students have the opportunity to weave their knowledge and communicate information in multiple ways research agrees that students learn material deeper, retain it longer and enjoy it more.

         So imagine a team of teachers who meet together first to get to know the students they will be teaching. By getting to know them I mean academically, socially, physically, emotionally, as well as what they are interested in, what they want to be, how they learn best, and what motivates them. Teachers can do this by interviewing parents and students, as well as previous teachers and coaches. Teachers then work with instructional coaches to identify academic and common core standards.

         Each teacher collects a profile of their students and designs a program of study. But within the team, teachers choose themes to focus on such as 'problem solving' and 'communication.' Imagine asking students how they solve problems, what kinds of problems they face and how to manage their time, resources, and decision making when considering problems. If there are problems, what is the best way to communicate effectively? In math class students can talk about how to solve problems that relate to mathematical concepts; in science, students can look at the scientific process and in language arts students may want to consider how to write 'problem/solution' essays or analyze literature focusing on problems and solutions. Choosing themes and tools to focus on provides students with consistency and allows students multiple opportunities to practice, communicate, and develop their own information.

         The big idea of middle schools revolves around focusing on the needs of young adolescents and working collaboratively to meet their needs. It is not enough for individual teachers to be effective. When teachers work together to communicate and collaborate with one another, with students, and with their parents good things can happen. It takes time; it takes a commitment to working with one another; and it takes a willingness to look at your students individually every week.

         In Sara Powell's (2010) book, introduction to middle school, she shares the following 'benefits of teaming for teachers and students'.  I have added a few thoughts on how a team includes and supports family members.

Benefits to teachers	Benefits to students	Benefits to parents
·       Teachers get to know students well ·       Procedures and routines are consistent ·       Decisions are made collaboratively ·       Collegiality and professionalism are enhanced ·       Synergy is created by combining strengths ·       Intellectual stimulation results from collaboration ·       Instructional strategies are shared ·       Curriculum integration is easier to implement ·       Assessment is enhanced by joint evaluation ·      Classroom management is more consistent	·       Teachers get to know students well ·       Learning environment is more personalized ·       Sense of belonging is created ·       Connections among curricular areas are more evident ·       Support from teachers is comprehensive ·      More opportunities for grouping and regrouping exist.	·       Parents have a connection to the entire team of teachers ·       Parents can share strengths and interests of their student ·       Communication is comprehensive ·       Parents can help teachers focus on themes ·      More opportunities for family support for student development

Powell, (2010). p. 149

If this is something you are interested in, think about the following things:

1.    What do we each bring to teaching?

2.    How can we support and advocate for one another?

3.    How can we integrate curriculum, process skills, and develop projects that use multiple disciplines?

4.    How can we assess student development and work with the students and their parents to help them reach their full potential.

5.    Am I willing to work with a group of teachers to map out a plan for our students?

We must start by working together to advocate for one another!

7 Connecting preservice and inservice teachers as a tool for supporting both

This we believe (NMSA, 2010).

* Leaders are committed to and knowledgeable about this age group, educational research, and best practices. Committed Leaders.

I currently teach middle level education at a small university. While my role as an educator has centers around the importance of serving pre-service teachers, I am now convinced that connecting pre-service and inservice teachers could be a powerful tool for 1) giving preservice teachers insight into what is really going on in today's schools; and 2) could provide advocacy for beginning teachers.

A year ago, I wrote the following:

We must find ways to promote the connections of our middle level pre-service teachers. Social media allows us to reach out and across our nation and the world to make these connections. We are hopeful that our next generation is able to spread the passion and commitment to serving young adolescents. CMLA is one avenue to connect pre-service teachers.

We know that there are over three hundred middle-level programs housed in colleges and universities across the United States.  In addition, a 2005 study reported that approximately 17% of teachers hired each year are new to the profession (NCES, 2005). And while only about 2% of new hires are newly graduated students, those trained in middle level education have the opportunity to and should be supported as our next best hope for middle level education. Is it possible that we, at the university, should become more intentional at helping retain new teachers and helping grow our next generation of middle level leaders? A buzz-word is PLN (Professional Learning Network). Here is one idea.

I believe our role as educators, administrators, and teachers must include support and advocacy for pre-service and beginning teachers. In October, at the AMLE middle school conference, I witnessed middle level preservice teachers "on fire" for middle level education.  The energy and presence of these future educators provided insight into the future and hope of middle-level education. We, professors of middle-level education, are inspired by the work of our pre-service teachers; we are thrilled to see our students collaborating with one another; and like proud aunts and uncles, we felt the fire of hope and commitment these young leaders are bringing to schools across our country.

But it is time to move further. We must create opportunities, intentional opportunities, for our wonderful alumni and colleagues across the nation to find ways to advocate for them.

To that end, I created a blog called "Checking in/Reaching out." (One of my colleagues, John Niska, taught me an advisory activity called "checking in" where everyone has the chance to share what is going on and ends with "I have checked in." ) I invited about 20 alumni to participate in a collaborative blog. We have been blogging for the semester. At present we have twenty-four posts and 589 page views. 

The teachers range in years of experience from first year to seven years. Their topics include sharing strategies that are working, challenges they face, and whoo-hoo moments. The following is a quote from this week's post from Jeanie, who shared her focus on giving her students challenges to learn geography, 
"Woo-Hoo moment of the day: One student, who has proven to not be proficient in many areas, asked where Easter Island was. I told him that Chile owns it, so you know it's near there. He then instantly pointed just west of Chile on the map next to him and said "So somewhere around here?" My heart swelled with joy!!"

I send an email out every week, usually on Friday. Here is the email I sent in October.

CIRO!!!! Happy Friday! (: Enjoy your day!

How are you? What can you share that is working?

I have just had a presentation accepted to the European League of Middle Schools on integrating advisory in the academic classroom and for teachers. I would love to share how you build a culture of care in your classroom.

I know you are out there and doing great things!!!

I hope this finds you well and that you have had a fabulous week! Want to share anything on the blog? 

Check into the checkinginreaching.blogspot.com

How are you? What is working? What challenges are you facing? What WhooHooo can you offer up?!

If you need anything, let me know.

Sincerely to my CIROs,

Nancy

Is it working? Does it matter? 

We have been meeting once a month to share ideas in person. Jeanie is using the blog as part of her Professional Development Plan.

She and I met last week to share ideas of the importance of sharing ideas but also the importance of talking to one another, to our colleagues. We believe the sharing of ideas, strategies, and challenges, validates our efforts as teachers and reminds us that we are making a difference in their lives! And we believe that even when we are so busy, we don't have time to do 'one more thing;' we want to encourage all of our CIROs to 'do one more thing,' and share their joy of working with middle level youth!

I am thinking it might be time for us to join the #mschat group set up by AMLE!

We invite you to follow us! (:

Check into the checkinginreaching.blogspot.com

PS: Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Holidays.

2. Four quadrants of the 1:1 classrooms

Four quadrants of the 1:1 classroom

This we believe (NMSA, 2010)
Students and teachers are engaged in active, purposeful learning. Active Learning

This week, Buncombe County Schools sponsored a 'Best Steam' conference for their teachers. Sessions led by technology facilitators from around the state, classroom teachers, and administrators within the district provided inspiration and logistics for rolling out their one-to-one initiative. In this district, during the first phase of implementation, teachers and administrators will participate in 30 hours of professional development.

Since I spent the past school year in a one-to-one school, I was able to share advice and strategies from math teachers I worked with. The title of the presentation was Four Quadrants of the One-to-One Initiative. Beginning our conversation with the importance of knowing our students, one of the goals for young adolescents includes: [students] 'use digital tools to explore, communicate, and collaborate with the world and learn from the rich and varied resources available' (NMSA, 2010, p. 11). Within the context of 'this we believe,' our focus over the past two days has been to focus onlearning ways to engaged in active, purposeful learning using digital tools.

My session was at the end of the day which allowed us to debrief and consider how to take the tools and information we learned and consider how to begin to develop a school culture that embraces technology. The following is an overview of each of the quadrants. For each quadrant we looked at the topic through the lens of teacher teams and through the lens of planning for instruction.

Discussion and communication. We talked about the importance of planning strategies, logistics, structures and expectations about how to use the equipment. We talked about how to use Professional Learning Communities and Team Meetings to troubleshoot and plan ways to communicate with children and their parents. We then talked about how to engage students in discussions such as electronic entry slips, blogs, and collaborative tasks. The National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) provides eight research-based essential practices including: facilitate meaningful mathematical discourse.

Exploration. The second topic we considered is engaging in our own exploration of tools and resources and then using those tools to help students actively engage in learning. By working in academic teams, we discussed choosing activities that have been purchased by the district and working together to allow our students to work with the tools to gain a deeper understanding of content. A major point of this section includes helping teachers realize the importance of the questions they ask once students have explored websites, data, and/or tools.

Creative Problem Solving. The third topic we examined is how to create meaningful products. Our own products as teachers must reflect opportunities for students to illustrate and create personalized learning. Student products, choices, and opportunities to engage in the community, wellness, and in some cases service learning, allow students to work individually and/ collaboratively to contribute to their community.

Assessment. The final quadrant to consider is assessment. Teachers and team mates discussed ways to assess their own learning as they develop technology protocol and skills. A second consideration within the topic of assessment examined tools and strategies for assessing student learning.

Each of these topics: discussion, exploration, problem solving, and assessment are hallmarks of planning. However, teachers need to go beyond planning for their students. Using these tools, teachers can develop their own professional development. I think joining together with colleagues at this conferences inspired us to brainstorm and advocate for one another. Now it is time to be more intentional about integrating technology and researching best practices with it. I for one am going to be more intentional about modeling and teaching my students how to use technology more. Thank you Buncombe County!

9. Now the fun begins!

Now the fun begins.

This we believe. (NMSA, 2010)
*Ongoing professional development reflects best educational practices. Professional development.

I took a 'writing for teachers' class at Epworth by the Sea, in Georgia, years ago. It included a writing workshop; and every day we engaged in different writing prompts and activities. Just like in the classroom, once we had multiple brainstorming experience, we chose one to work on more deeply. We practiced fluency writing, brainstorming, rewrites, and editing strategies for our classroom. We learned by engaging in the experience. I learned to think more deeply about the tasks I gave my students, and the importance of creating products to illustrate thinking from this workshop.

It is summer. I have just finished an amazing year in the classroom/school, and I have close to 100 prompts. I wonder how many teachers reflect on their year and use the experiences to begin to plan for future years? I am thinking many do!  Had I not purposely reflected throughout the year, many experiences, insights, and ah-ha moments would be lost. I must promote this process!

Advice

1. Write every month. 'Begin with the end in mind' (Covey, 2006)is a concept! I first read this in Steven Covey's, The 7 habits of highly effective people. I have also used it in planning with Wiggins and McTigues, Backward design (1998). My 'takeaway'  is that when you first start the year, the end is all theory and hope, which is a good thing. Once you finish the year, is when you really can begin to apply the concept. Thus, my first piece of advice is to keep a reflection journey document. I recommend categories so that at the end of each month, you can reflect on what happened and set
goals for the next month.  You may want to start with the following categories: students, colleagues,
parents, administration, staff, curriculum, assessment, classroom management, lesson planning, lessons, teaming. Next, use the categories to answer: what worked, what didn't work, what they loved, challenges, successes to celebrate, what drove me mad, what made me weep. You may want to set goals for each month based on your reflections.

2. Find someone to reflect with. Over the course of this year, I drove to work with a colleague. The time we spent driving to and from work became a think tank, a reflection pool of our day, of our students and colleagues, and of our personal insights and dreams. We celebrated successes, and sometimes just listened; well, actually we were participant-listeners. I truly believe this time together made us more reflective, and gave us uninterrupted time to process our days. We both agree that we are better teachers because we had the chance to debrief, sometimes vent, and to celebrate and advocate for one another.

3.In your journey, consider the big picture. There are so many facets to teaching, and so many expectations including, but not limited to: college and career readiness, critical thinking, literacy integration, technology, ethics, standards, objectives, civic engagement, social and emotional development, leadership, exploration, lesson planning, differentiation, assessment, parent involvement, homework, projects, communication, grading, collaborative planning, interdisciplinary units, clubs, safety wellness, teaming, and mindfulness, that focusing on academic excellence, developmental responsiveness, and focusing on creating environments that are challenging, empowering, and equitable can seem a bit daunting. Fortunately, there are tools to guide you. You can use This we believe (NMSA, 2010) as an overview to give you a framework, a common language, to remind you of the big picture. 

Remember that teaching is a journey to embrace and grow. You will never be the best teacher. You will have moments to celebrate, and I encourage you to document these moments and share them with others.

So now begins the task of sifting and sorting through my own experiences. My future posts will most likely be about using the experiences of this year to provide vignettes for those I will be teaching in the fall. 

11. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee

11. Wheeeeeeeee!

This we believe (NMSA, 2010).

* The school environment is inviting, safe, inclusive, and supportive of all. School Environment

Several years ago, there was a commercial of a pig, with her arm hanging out the window of a car, her chin up, eyelashes blowing in the wind, singing, “wheeeeeeeeeee., wheeeeeeeeeee, wheeeeeeee.” The driver turns in her seat and says, “Hey, we are home. You can stop.” Today I felt like that pig. The car is stopped and yet, like the pig, I am still living the sensational joy of the “wheee, wheee, wheee, all the way home.”

Last night I shared, “I hope when I retire, I feel this way. I have lived the dream."

Many years ago, I was introduced to Margaret Mead. She was a cultural anthropologist who would live in cultures to study them. I was fascinated by the concept. In the 1980s, Paul George, one of the early middle school movers and shakers, worked closely with a middle school in Gainesville; and every year he spent two weeks teaching a unit in social studies. These two individuals, by living and writing about their experiences, inspired me to live what I believe.

The experience has been magical, challenging, inspiring, painful, worrisome, hopeful, passionate, disappointing, defeating, uplifting, and amazing.

Advice

1)   If you choose to teach, I hope you will always remember, teaching is not just a job. It involves a tremendous amount of time, energy, commitment, and advocacy for children, parents, colleagues, and administration.

2)   Learn as much as you can about young adolescents. Their world is bombarded with social media, where reality and fiction may not be easily distinguishable.

3)   Learn as much as you can about working collaboratively with others. Being a team player, in word and in action, takes on new meaning in a school.

4)   Make lessons that allow students to dig deeply into meaning and communication. Give all students (gifted and exceptional) opportunities to think critically and creatively.

5)   "Relationships matter; but relationships alone are not enough." My colleague, Nancy Mizelle shared this nugget of insight.

6)   When I was teaching at Shorter College, our middle school group had the following inscription on the back of our t-shirts, “If you can’t reach them, you can’t teach them.” Always reflect on who your students are and what they need.

I have loved this year!!! Yes, if I had it to do over again, I would do it over again. I am forever thankful for a district, a principal, a staff, who gave me a year to immerse myself in the culture of a middle school; a system of educators who believe, like I do, that going back into a classroom is a valuable experience. Thank you McDowell County Public School system!!!

6. Your Story Matters

6. Your story matters. Consider the past, the present, and the future.

This we believe (NMSA, 2010).

*A shared vision developed by all stakeholders guides every decision. Shared Vision

Over the course of this journey, I realize how difficult it is for teachers to maintain their vision. Teaching takes a lot of physical and mental energy and sometimes we forget our calling, our purpose. We spend hours planning, implementing, assessing, and communicating with children, teammates, and parents. In addition, each year, schools are engaging in new technologies, new teaming configurations, new instructional designs, new initiatives, new grants and district tasks, that are often school-wide. How is it then, we can gain new knowledge about emerging strategies and practices, while meeting the needs of our students, planning authentic lessons and units, and creating our own professional development plans? I believe our passion and hope is not lost when we have time to reflect on what we are doing, on what has been done in the past, and to use our knowledge of the present to dream more about what we will do in the future.

More than 60 years ago, Dr. William Alexander, fondly known as the father of the middle school movement, addressed educators at “the 1963 Cornell Conference, …He prepared a speech proposing a new school called the middle school. His address, The Junior High School: A Changing View… provided a comprehensive rationale and program guidelines for the establishment of developmentally responsive middle schools” (Smith & McEwin, 2011, pgs 4-5). In 1973, the National Middle School Association was formed; and in 2011 outreach expanded to serve an international body of educators who serve students ages 10-15, currently known as the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE). Our focus continues to address the need for developmentally responsive middle schools.

Our strategies, our outreach, our research, our support has expanded significantly; but our focus, the AMLE mission, has remained consistent: “The Association for Middle Level Education is dedicated to improving the educational experiences of all students ages 10-15 by providing vision, knowledge, and resources” (AMLE Mission Statement, 2014).

This spring, I have been in touch with former presidents of NMSA/AMLE asking them to share advice and inspiration. Their wisdom is heart-warming, caring, and hopeful. From their words, they share the following:

Our call, as middle-level educators, is to remain true to the history of middle-level education, which speaks to why we serve this age group differently. Our call is to tirelessly advocate for young adolescents and for those who work for and with them; and to enjoy the opportunities to collaborate with one another as we remind others of the strategies, the value, the research, and the importance of serving this age group.

Our work as middle-level advocates is extremely important. I look forward to continuing to share the passion and stories of why we do what we do, and to share what is working in middle schools around the world.

Advice

1)   Keep a journal of your experiences to reflect upon. Share your stories of success, and hope, and passion.

2)   Find teachers in your school who share a positive approach to working with young adolescents. Allow them to be your mentors.

3)   There are a lot of resources available to you regarding middle level education; use the resources from amle.org, nassp.org, and stw.org to help you develop your philosophy of serving middle level students and stakeholders associated with them.

4)   Teaching is a journey. Listen to the past, be open to the future, and remain true to serving young adolescents.