writing with a lowercase w

Last summer, I had the absolute privilege of not only hearing Ralph Fletcher give his keynote talk at the Minnesota Reading Association's annual conference, but of sitting across from him at dinner that evening. If you aren't familiar with his work, Ralph Fletcher is an amazing writer, writing picturebooks and chapter books for young children, books for young writers, and books about teaching writing. When I was first teaching, I came across his books for teachers and found them inspiring and so practical. I use his books in my university courses now, and I was pretty geeked out to get to meet him.

At the table at dinner, we had a delightful conversation that spanned many topics - both professional and personal. At one point, we circled back to writing. We were talking about the troubling trend that has left little time in schools for writing. Writing with a lowercase w. The playful, creative, engaging writing that motivates students.Writing to learn. Writing that isn't the 4th grade animal report or the 5 paragraph essay.

His book How Writer's Work is very helpful in thinking about the conditions that nurture writing. Writing is not a prescribed process, one-size-fits-all, and this text can be really helpful in thinking about planning for writing in your classroom that support interesting, motivated writing from students. If you're thinking about revamping the writing in your classroom for next year, check it out!

Ralph Fletcher blogs regularly at The Writer's Desk and he tweets too. Keep up with his thoughts there!

Guest Blogger: Hidden Resources

Guest blogger: Mary Mandel, Instructional Coach for QComp, TERI School-based Faculty Liaison, Peer Assistance Program Coordinator

Hidden Resources

New hires in any district have an enormous amount to learn.   As a newly hired employee you will probably be presented with a staff handbook that outlines protocols and procedures. There are, however, some hidden resources that may not be identified in the handbook.  Developing  knowledge of them will help you in your new school environment.

There is a very important person that you should build a relationship with from the start - the school secretary.  This staff member is the backbone of a school and is aware of what is going on within the school on a day-to-day basis.  This makes him or her an excellent source of information for all those questions not found in the staff handbook.

Another invaluable resource that you should get to know is the school custodial staff.   These staff members spend their day on their feet working tirelessly to keep the building in working order.  They are the people you call when the faucet is leaking, the chair is broken, or when a student has a personal accident. 

Last, but not least, are the paraprofessionals that support the teachers.  “Relief” is how many teachers describe their initial reaction after learning that a paraprofessional will support them.  Having a trained paraprofessional can make an enormous difference in the efficiency of your classroom.  Such help is generally a welcome prospect for the overworked classroom teacher.

Remember your hidden resources.  Finding them will make your job easier.  Have a great year!

reflecting on the year

At this time of year, amidst grades and field day and packing up classrooms, it can be hard to find a moment to reflect on your school year. But now is the time, as you'll quickly settle into summer mode, and will forget to note the accomplishments and goals you'd like to set for next year. Some important things to consider include:

1. Describe your classroom culture. Were you happy with the relationships you had with students and students had with each other? Is there something that you'd like to improve for next year?
2. How did your classroom management plan work for you and your students? Any changes for next year? Anything you'd like to read up on this summer to prepare?
3. What were your expectations for students? Did students understand these expectations? Were they appropriate for your students?
4. What lessons and units went really well? Which fell flat?
5. Are there resources you need to be more successful next year? What are they and how might you access them?
6. What were some obstacles for you this year? How did you work through them? Are there ways to improve these for next year?
7. Are there concerns that you have for next year? Are there ways you can be proactive in planning?
8. Did you have goals you set for yourself at the start of the year? How was your progress on those?

I hope you can find a quiet moment or two in between end-of-year meetings and business to think about some of these questions to make a plan for next year. It might help focus your summer work and have you head into the 2013-2014 academic year with a solid plan.

What are some other questions you reflect on at the end of the year?

license renewal

As the year is coming to a close, your district's continuing education committee is likely holding its final meeting to review clock hours for license renewal. Licenses expire on June 30 the year of expiration. So for those of you who have licenses up in 2013 or 2014, now's the time to make sure you have everything required for renewal. For everything you need to know about license renewal, see the Licensing page on the MN Dept of Education website.

For 5-year license renewal, Minnesota requires the completion of 125 hours of professional development that have been approved through the local school district’s continuing education committee. As part of the 125 professional development hours, the Minnesota Legislature, by statute, currently requires all teachers to evidence the six areas below:

1. Positive behavior intervention strategies
2. Accommodation, modification, and adaptation of curriculum, materials, and instruction
3. Early-onset mental illness in children and adolescents
4. Reading
• (except the following licensure fields are exempt from evidencing the reading preparation renewal requirement: school counselors, school psychologists, school nurses, school social workers, audiovisual directors and coordinators, recreation personnel).
5. Technology (new requirement as of 2012)
• Licensed school personnel who do not provide direct instruction to students, including, at least, counselors, school psychologists, school nurses, and school social workers are exempt from this requirement.
6. Reflective statement (new requirement as of 2012)

For the reflective statement, this is a written statement prepared by the teacher that "demonstrates reflection on his or her professional accomplishment and includes a self-assessment of his or her professional growth using one of the following types of evidence:

• Support for student learning
• Use of best practices techniques and their applications to student learning
• Collaborative work with colleagues that includes examples of collegiality (i.e., attested-to committee work, collaborative staff development programs, professional learning community work)
• Continual professional development (i.e., job-embedded or other ongoing formal professional learning, including coursework)" (MDE)

These hours need to be verified by your school district (or, if you are not working or associated with a particular district, you can apply through the district in which you live). In most districts, there are members from each school building on the committee to help verify these hours for when it is time to renew your license. There are some exceptions to these credit hour requirements, including those who have completed National Board of Professional Standards Certification, National Certification of School Psychologists, or American Speech and Hearing Association Certification.

For most of you that are working in a school district, your district professional development plan will provide these opportunities for you. Some of you that have worked in several districts, are subs, or have taken some time off in your teaching, you might have to participate in additional professional development opportunities.  There are occasional "Save Your License Saturdays" offered with a series of workshops on the above topics for those of you in need of these credits. But for the majority of you, you will be able to meet these requirements through your district offerings.

Once you've met these requirements, you're ready to apply for your license renewal. You can do this through the MDE website, where you might have to set up your account. Then you're all set to renew your license!

Guest Blogger: Next year's class list

Who did you get for next year? 
 

Guest Blogger: Barbara B. Washington, Induction Lead/Academic Equity Specialist Faculty, Concordia University, St. Paul.

It is time again to determine a list of students that will move from one grade level to the next. Sometimes school administrators ask the classroom teacher to recommend which students in their class should remain together in a learning community and which students should be separated; and who would know best besides the classroom teacher? Is it appropriate to make face value judgments about a student’s future learning environment?

How would you choose to participate in such a process if you were asked to make recommendations regarding the students at your grade level or in your program?  Would you select out the students labeled as special education (EB/D, LD, gifted, etc.), those preforming below grade level in reading and math, having attendance concerns, or of different ethnicities, races, and so on. Or would you choose a more equitable method to utilize a random selection for the students? As a teacher beginning the initial stages of practice what shall your options be?

Dr. Belinda Williams (1996) led the Research for Better Schools Project that developed the Urban Learner Framework. The framework is an initiative supported by the U.S. Department of Education's Regional Education Laboratory and focuses on recognizing and using the special competencies (strengths) that urban children bring to the classroom. The Urban Learner Framework underscores four assumptions that present a positive characterization of learners as capable, motivated, and able to build on cultural strengths. This educational philosophy (way of thinking) reverses negative labeling of students such as lacking ability, culturally deprived, unmotivated, and at-risk.

Holding a positive asset charged attitude and belief system that is mirrored by teaching style and pedagogy makes the task of creating next year’s class list easy to discern. Dr. Williams would advise us to simply place all of the student’s names in a hat and by lottery determine the two or three classroom assignments as necessary. After completing a lottery style or random selection of students for the next grade level, if in fact the class lists still were to need modification for the purpose of equity it might go something like this:  first and last check for gender.

Guest Blogger: Classroom Management

Here at New Teacher Talk, we're trying to find new ways to get you helpful, interesting, timely ideas for your teaching. Sometimes our posts are designed to get you thinking, others have helpful tips and strategies. As a new initiative, we'll be occasionally sharing posts from guest bloggers from different TC2 teacher preparation institutions as well as local school district partners to keep things fresh and relevant. Up first is a guest blogger from Minneapolis Public Schools!

Guest Blogger: Terry Peña, Lead Induction Mentor for the Minneapolis Public Schools PAR Mentor Program.

It is hard to believe that we are into already into April with May rapidly approaching.  As you enter the last quarter of the school year it is a good reminder to reflect on behavior management strategies that have been successful for you and your students and also strategies that you might want to begin to implement.  A strategy that we will look here at is called:  Positive Narration.  

Positive Narration:

• Positive narration enables you to create positive momentum
• Positive narration enables you to repeat your directions in a positive manner
• Positive narration enables you to demonstrate positive “with-it-ness”
• Positive narration enables you to recognize student behavior without the shortcomings of praise
• Positive narration is descriptive

When you use Positive Narration you are simply making a non-judgmental description of the behavior you are observing, providing examples of success for students to follow:

• Example:  Sophia is working with her partner using her whisper voice.
• Example:  Elisha is tracking me.

Start narrating within three seconds of giving directions. When positively narrating, you will simply make a three-part statement:

• Student’s Name: Jamal
• Verb: is
• Behavior: silently writing in his journal.

Use positive narration before you correct off-task students (3 positive then redirection).

Questions to consider and share in the comments:

1. Have you tried Positive Narration before?
2. If yes, what were the benefits and hesitations?
3. If no, when would be a good time to start?
4. Why is it so important to maintain rules and procedures the last quarter of the school year?

This strategy comes from the on line course called The No Nonsense Nurturer http://elearning.transformativeteachertraining.mrooms.net/ which is currently offered to probationary Minneapolis Public School teachers as a pilot.  Your thoughts and opinions of how the strategy worked for you are greatly appreciated.

partnering with parents

With spring parent-teacher conferences coming up for many of you, I've been thinking quite a bit about parent involvement in schools. I've always been a strong supporter of working with parents and communities to support student learning.

So I was interested in a recent article in the Washington Post, "Is Parent Involvement in School Really Useful" by Alfie Kohn, that really called into question some of my assumptions about parent involvement.While I don't agree with everything in the article, any time that I have to challenge my assumptions and think critically about my beliefs is a worthy exercise.

One of the points Kohn makes is that parent involvement as a benefit to students is a statement unquestioned. Schools and educators take this for granted, that this is a positive thing for students. And that when schools talk about parent involvement, the discussion is centered on a dichotomy of parent involvement: parents are either not involved or involved too much, which leads to perhaps an unrealistic ideal of parent involvement, some sweet-spot between "no involvement" and "helicopter-parent."But, for example, Kohn writes that research has shown that parents' help with homework does not improve learning outcomes. Interesting stuff.

What's often missing from the dialogue around parent involvement, Kohn argues, are the parent and student perspectives. And an examination to what kind of parent involvement really does make a difference in student learning. He's not saying that parent involvement is bad, but that schools need to reconsider how they work with parents to keep students at the center and therefore, to best meet the needs of students. And that's what it is all about, right, and what your PLC and PD and staff meetings are all centered on - meeting the needs of students in the most effective way.

Keeping these questions in mind, there are a number of resources to help you think about parent involvement in schools. There's a May 2011 issue of Educational Leadership that is stuffed with ideas about the integrated work of schools, parents, and communities (and several of the articles are available to anyone whether or not they are a member). The National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education has many resources at their site. The Harvard Family Research Project has a number of interesting initiatives happening, and I found their newsletter to be particularly relevant for teachers. Reading Rockets has more resources at their site. There's also twitter chat happening tonight (4/17) around this topic.

How do you work to engage parents in a way that keeps the engagement centered on the needs of students? What has worked for you? What is challenging?