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?

tech talk - iPads

I came across some great resources for considering iPads in education.

For those of you ELA teachers out there, you might be interested in the twitter chat focused on iPads and English coming up on Monday, Apr 1 from 7-8 EST. Cassie Scharber, assistant professor of Learning Technologies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction as well as a Co-Director of the Learning Technologies Media Lab at the University of Minnesota, will host "The iPad invasion into English Education" at #engchat to focus on iPads and other technologies used in ELA instruction.

Speaking of iPads, I came across this article about iPads in Social Studies classrooms. The article shares a case study of a teacher's integration of iPads into instruction in Social Studies, and discusses some of the ways this technology can enhance instruction.

The point, too, is that iPads alone won't improve instruction, that it is what you do with them using effective instructional practices that transforms teaching and learning. Educators know this, of course, but the point is also stressed in the article "Students first, not stuff" in the latest Ed Leadership issue. Also in that issue is an article by Larry Ferlazzo with lists of great online resources for teachers. Another great resource is the wiki at Teach With Your iPad.

Do you have iPads at your school to use? What apps and resources have you found useful for teaching?

MN education fair - Apr 15

Those of you who are graduates of MN colleges and universities are invited to the MN Education Job Fair on Monday, April 15th at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Only MN college and university students and alumni are able to attend this event, and in order to attend, you must register through your institution's career services office.

On this page, you'll find a list of all institutions' career services center contact information to be sure you get registered for this important event.

Once you're registered, it's time to prepare for the event. The site has some helpful tips for preparation. You should make sure to have an updated resume and, if possible, you should complete application for your priority districts ahead of time. Develop a "plan of attack" - know the layout of the convention center and where the districts are that you want to visit. And plan a 30-second introduction to share about you and your skills. Practice this with anyone who will listen!

You can review some of the resume and interview tips that I've written about previously here.

Good luck!

standards-based assessment

Standards-Based Grading is a trend in education gaining more and more traction in schools. Many schools and districts are moving toward this system of grading, which references student achievement to specific standards within each subject area. This system utilizes backwards design to create assessment opportunities and then plan instruction to build student learning towards mastery of the standards. Below are some resources to get you started thinking about standards-based assessment if your PLC, school, or district is considering movig toward this practice.

Many schools in their initial work with standards-based grading draw upon the work of Robert Marzano, in particular his book Formative Assessment & Standards-Based Grading.

Teacher Mike Dappolone published an article "Launching Standards-Based Grading in a Points-Based World" in an issue of Educational Leadership. In the article, he discussed moving to standards-based assessment and, along with his own classroom grading reform, sought to make this change within his school. Also in Ed Leadership, there is a summary of a chapter from the book Becoming a Better Teacher by Giselle O. Martin-Kniep: Ch 3 - Standards-Based Curriculum and Assessment Design.

Teacher bloggers are a great place to get some "insider" knowledge about how standards-based assessment works. The blogger at "What it's Like on the Inside" has a couple of great posts on standards-based assessments here and here. Physics teacher Kelly O'Shea has posts about SBA here. Teacher Shawn Cornally has a great post about the thinking necessary for shifts to standards-based assessment here.

What are your go-to resources for learning about standards-based assessments?