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Let Flexibility Lead To Alignment

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  In my previous school district, I was the only teacher teaching a physics course with set, district-wide learning outcomes. These same outcomes were also taught in physics classrooms at the other high school in our district. But at our school, I was one of the 2 physics teachers. The other teacher taught the AP-level physics courses. So, in many ways, I had opportunities to incorporate strategies I believed were best for learners and that I found worked best for them without being seen as out of alignment with anyone in our building. My amazing friend and one of my teaching philosophy goddesses, Katie Novak, stated the following misconception about alignment: All teachers must deliver instruction in the exact same way. True alignment, she says, is about shared goals, rigor, and outcomes. Thank you, Katie! Katie has taught me to truly believe that learner variability is the rule, not the exception. I encourage you to take 10 minutes to listen to Katie Novak explain it in the ...
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SLATE Day 1: Use the Surge, Luke

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Sunrise to sunset with a group of committed educators is fantastic. That's what my first day at the SLATE Conference was all about.  I went to several wonderful sessions, but I just need to write this out to reflect on my experience today. Keynote Today's Keynote was by Kevin Honeycutt and it was officially titled  Trends, Tactics, and Tools for 21st Century Learning. That sounds like a pretty broad title. It was an epic that Kevin carried of with true inspiration.   Kevin reminded us that we as educators cannot be secret geniuses. His call to us as educators was to share our stories. It's this kind of presentation that makes me feel think, "what stories do I have that compare to these? Am I failing my students by not removing the ceiling on their learning?"  It's the kind of speech that can inspire while making one feel extremely inadequate. But these would never really be my stories. These are the stories of my students. Have I really bee...
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Next on the Slate? Your Choice.

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I'm proud to be representing Brookfield Central High School and Elmbrook Schools today at School Leaders Advancing Technology in Education (SLATE) Conference.  This is my first year attending, so it's an honor to be able to present as well. The focus of the presentation is on student choice in assessment.  By that, I mean choice in how a student will demonstrate mastery of standards (both content and non-content specific).  The presentation focuses on the why, what, and how of allowing choice.  It is my belief that before we can have any discussion of what the choices will or should be, educators need a firm rationale for the importance of choice or why it is needed in their classroom.  The next step is to determine the what.  The "what" in our case are the standards students should be meeting.  Only then are we prepared to discuss the how.  This concrete definition of mastery is especially important if a lot of the choice in "how" will be le...
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I've Got 99 Problems But Support Ain't One

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As a response to my recent student feedback , I've begun a journey to find solutions to address issues brought up by learners.  As a part of our professional development time today, a group of colleagues agreed to give up some of their time to help me with an issue my students raised.  That issue is providing pathways to reach deeper learning within our classroom.  I have a goal of deep understanding for my students, but I don't provide a path to deeper understanding that all students can navigate. To help me explore this issue, my colleague Sabrina Hintz organized an AVID tutorial session focused around my problem.  Traditionally, this process is done in student groups to help students reach a deeper understanding of the content.  Assistant superintendent in my district Dana Monogue recommended I run my problem solving through the AVID tutorial model with some members of our science staff.  This would allow my problem to be explored through a proven met...
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Make Progress on Progress Reporting

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I've been looking to address some of the feedback students gave me about term 1 .  Specifically in this post I'll address my first steps to try and do something about the lack of connection between standards and content and goals and progress monitoring. The first step I'm taking is to revamp my student progress monitoring process.  Previously, I have had students record their progress in a unit on a single Google Doc.   I've explained the process in a previous post.   I found that process was good for some things, but the reporting of numbers didn't require true depth and the ability to revisit the student created goal.  So, I've ditched that model in favor of a document that asks students to report more in depth on each objective identify strengths, room for growth, and a plan for improvement. The idea is to fill this out several times as the unit progresses so that students can reflect on their progress towards objective mastery.  This may be do...
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News Flash: Not All Students Like Tests

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So, I've presented feedback on what students asked me to change.  Now it's time to present some feedback on what students appreciated in the first term and want to see continue.  I'm not putting this out there to make my parents proud.  They don't even know I have a blog.  The reason I'm putting it out there is to let teachers know that students are looking for more personalization in their education. I'm going to post the picture of the feedback board again so that you can see the areas students said where strengths and wanted to continue as is. The greatest strengths are in the areas of flexibility in space and pace, choice, and voice.  The other major area is technology.  Technology has allowed for students to express themselves in different assessment formats.  Our learning management system Canvas is what allows me to manage all of this voice and choice and provide the timely feedback.   I have to thank the followi...
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I Can Change

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Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill  The first term of my 2015-16 school year has come to a close.  I have assessed my students. Now it is their time for them to assess me.   My students need me to learn about physics. My feedback is intended to help them master the required skills and content.  But this is a two way street. My students are the ones who ultimately will give me the feedback that will make me a better teacher.  So, I asked my students for feedback on what the strengths of our classroom are and areas for change.  In order to guide the responses, I asked students to frame the discussion in terms of 15 elements from The Institute for Personalized Learning's Honeycomb Framework . Goals : Personalized goals to provide benchmarks and add focus, clarity and commitment to learning. Vo...
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Passion + Physics + PBL = Personalization

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As our first term of the year comes to an end, we have wrapped up  our term long project .  There will be a lot more reflection to come.  I haven't gotten very far into the grading but had to take a moment to share one of the videos (I'll be sure to share others in future posts.) When I saw this one I had to share it out because it really struck me that it did more than we had intended for the project to do. Our driving question was "How can I use physics to hack sports?"  So the intention was for students to make a connect between physics and a sport of their choice.  When given voice in the topic that they would cover, students gravitated to sports which played a major role in their lives, sports they were passionate about. The result is a product which doesn't simply tie physics to sport.  It ties physics to something the student is passionate about.  So, although the video tells us about physics and sport, it tells us just as much about...
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