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I think everybody realizes that 90% of professional developments put on by the school system are a joke (School level, county level and beyond), because they aren't structured around real stuff, they are just showing off information or tools to be used in class. As noted by the Stanford study excerpt on page 143, teacher improvement starts with an organized team that analyzes a problem based on their data, looks for strategies for improvement, tests them out and reports back, then repeats the cycle. This is all well and good, but I think the key component to this is having someone (not a useless assistant principal twice per year) see you teach and give you feedback on your teaching. Every sport or performance has coaching of some sort and teaching is very much the same way. Following the protocol described above is essentially the same thing as large-scale professional development in that it provides the avenue for teachers to improve, but places all the onus on them to make it happen. I think that most experienced teachers need coaching as much as novice teachers do (if not more). One of my best experiences was the Hollyhock fellowship, where we followed the cycle described above, but as we implemented our new strategies, we filmed ourselves and had colleagues critique us we taught, so we had "coachable moments" to learn from. In short, just like they practice medicine, we also practice teaching and this should include a tad more coaching than we currently receive, which I think is sort of the gist of this chapter.

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on it!

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pp. 140-161

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got it!

https://penzu.com/p/a5124399

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Bueno

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Let’s go

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Got it!

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-Daniel J

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Since no one else wanted this...:-)

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Leaders by title (LBT) versus Leaders by Actions (LBA) -  an LBT has the title, position, or credentials but doesn't necessarily act as a leader.  Sheninger and Murray argue that LBAs are leaders in the building who walk the walk, not just talk the talk.  This is the idea that everyone can lead in a democratic and collaborative environment.

This is a school where staff feel EMPOWERED to be leaders, to challenge themselves and lead by example.

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Learn
Empower
Adapt
Delegate
Engage
Reflect
Serve

Leaders try new things and sometimes fail (fail forward); but along the way, they stay positive, accept challenges, and share their discoveries and successes with the team and stakeholders.

MODELING is a key skill of leaders. Walk the walk.

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This section focuses on identifying challenges to organizational change and developing a roadmap for the change. This section, however, is empty of details. For example, step 4 says "How do we change culture and move past the status quo?" - there is no explanation of this and now follow up. This question is part 4 of the road map, but it is an entire field of study!

Key to this is making sure the vision is clear, and making every step of the journey (aka school improvement) authentic, meaningful, celebrated and lasting.

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One of the things that I find missing in this discussion is the word team. The authors dance all around using this word almost as if the word itself needs to be avoided. But I think that the team concept fits perfectly with the type of leadership, empowerment, and paradigm shifting that they are talking about.

Teams have captains (clearly) but a team won't get anywhere unless every member of the team is doing their job to the best of their ability working toward the goal and vision.

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The first, written by a retired superintendent, focuses on Trust, Relationship Building and Effective communication. These are central to a leader (be it by title or a Leader By Action) as they work to spread the sike about shifting the culture in a school. His central focus to effect change was that their school 30% of their graduating seniors to college but only 16.5% graduated college.

The second, written by a principal of the year, focuses on a very practical way that he shifted the paradigm in their school. They created a hashtag (#GWgreats) to share their story, and encouraged everyone to use it and post their successes. They also made this visible in the school by showing the feed on LCD screens.

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I thought this chapter was extremely interesting and it has forever changed how I view classroom design. This chapter detailed how ninety-nine percent of teaching spaces were designed either in an image of an ancient Syrian palace school 4,000 years ago or in the Greek amphitheater: rows or rings of seats meant to focus the attention of the many on the one. Most of today’s learning spaces were originally designed and built for teacher-centric learning environments coined by Alfie Kohn (1999) as the “cells and bells” model. The term cells ad bells referred to the classroom being a contained cell until the bell rang and the students moved from one cell to another.

The chapter dove into the research behind the designed learning center spaces. Considerable evidence indicates a clear relationship between the physical makeup of the environment and educational outcomes (Barrett & Zhang, 2009).

Three key design principals of Barrett and Zang (2009) identified in this chapter are:

1.      Naturalness:

2.       Individualization:

3.      Appropriate Level of
4 . Stimulation:

This chapter also looked at other studies that found that students who used standing desks, also known as stand-biased desks, showed higher rates of engagement in the classroom than did student seated in traditional desks. Standing desks are raised desks that have stools nearby, enabling students to choose whether to sit or stand during class.

What was most fascinating to me about this chapter was the description of what one of the writers referred to as the “Cemetery Effect” and how to avoid it. In the chapter the writer explained how the design of a cemetery is much like how we position desks in our classrooms. This viewpoint forced me to look at the ugly truth about the design of most of our classrooms. It also pointed out how clutter and overstimulation can impede a student’s academic progress.

Finally, this chapter gave suggestions for how to achieve the desired aesthetically pleasing design for a classroom on a budget.

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Jeanine Joyner - Leveraging Technology.docx