Leading Teachers through PD

As a part of our High School's Distributed Leadership (DL) Team, I have been given the opportunity to lead in new capacities for the past four years.  I have been trained for three years on the ways of developing teacher skills and school climate.  The team and I use the time allocated for our DL team to help bring Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to life and advocate for using best practices while creating Professional Development (PD) for our staff.

One such day was last January when I lead our Department Meeting time and showcased using QR Codes for staff to get students working and engaged in their classrooms.  I modeled one use, by having staff get into groups of 4 and walk around our building scanning QR Codes about the process of using QR Codes in the classroom, while they went around with a group recording sheet.  (One person in each group at least had a QR Code Reader.) 

One teacher friend used QR Codes at the end of the
year, using the codes to tag a video for students
to listen and write in Spanish. 

It became a huge success and everyone involved said the time used was greatly appreciated and the activity very appropriate for their practices.  I revamped the whole project for a recent graduate course paper that I had to make a QR Code activity.  I used PowerPoint to give my posters some extra character and even attached all of the QR Code Sites I used in each slide. I then began thinking about what else I could teach them would be the best use of their time, but as we all know one does not professionally develop teachers.

QR Code Activity: 

QR Codes PowerPoint Slides

QR Code Blank Group Form

QR Code Group Form with Links

During a second PD, I led, involved looking at Google Sites to create a classroom website.  During this planned instruction I gave 10 minutes in demonstrating how to make a Google Site in Google Drive, then showcased my ever-changing work in progress Geometry Website.  Teachers were then placed in their departments to play with the Google Site creator and discuss possible uses for a site, what they would want to display or share with students and the world, etc.  Attached is my Google Site PD form that was shared out to all staff to work on and share ideas.   I designed the Google Doc to be informative, editable, and shareable for the information decided upon by each department. 

One of my takeaways from DL Trainings. 

Through leading teachers with Professional Development, I have become more secure in my knowledge of education and knowing what is good for both students and teachers in my building.  I hope to continue on this trend, leading and teaching all new skills that are easily adaptable for any classroom.

Please use and adapt any of the activities I have made for your school too! 

Student Rapport

William Penn Senior High School, College Street Entrance

After thinking about the start of my eleventh year of teaching, of all the places I could have ended up with my career I never imagined this small town country boy would ever be successful in an urban education setting.  While I feel I will never have the perfect test scores, the high achieving grades from my students or become teacher of the year, I hope my students would all agree with me that I am successful in educating them.  In education the term prior knowledge is a buzz word that is applied to pre-assessment.  With every student I teach I not only look for prior knowledge but utilized the background of my students in reaching their needs.  I like getting to know each of my students and helping them learn the content of Geometry as well as thinking and planning for their present and future.

Wearing Black to support minority students in the community!
 - A student led initiative. 

Through taking online courses and experimenting with different content, I have started to prepare them for the real world with advancing their background in technology by incorporating more mathematics learning involving computer programs.  Growing up in this technologically advanced world we have seen the emergence in fractals from their usefulness in computer generated images (CGI), from film to video games, it is every where around us.  Fractal Geometry is not a term heard in every single school curriculum, it is in every computer animated image, but I have incorporated it with Logarithms to help my students prepare for diverse fields of study and pre-calculus.  As well, it allows  the chance to be artistic and creative in a sometimes otherwise thought of mundane classroom.  Through GeoGebra I have been able to bring precision and problem-solving skills to life in my classroom.  Utilizing Google Docs I have built in collaboration and peer editing projects.  With online research I have been able to bring ratios into social justice.  It is my hope that students come out of my classroom with a little bit more of an understanding of how critical thinking with mathematics can apply to their lives.

Video Game Club 

Fractal Geometry - Students creating 3-D Sierpinski Triangles
and Menger Sponges before the holidays.

Using indirect measurement to calculate heights in Penn Park!

On top of teaching relevant topics, I always want my students to know I am a person just like them and will join in with their antics at times.  I strive to make them understand that I see them as human beings and care about not only their education but their well being, because honestly not everyone of them has that at home.  In our district students come hungry, are homeless, struggle daily and all in all do not open up to many.  I want my classroom to be a safe and inviting place.  Students know my passions and I proudly display my dorky habits of comic books, video games, and love of math, learning, and my family.  I coordinate with my co-worker and friend, Nick Naugle to run a Video Game Club where students can stay after school, organize tournaments or just play games, we have also gone to the local arcade to enhance their experience in gaming.  I participated in a student led protest to the treatment of minority students by others in the county.  During my 3rd period last year we created a Mannequin Challenge Video, which got twelve thousand hits on Facebook! (We went viral!)  And yes I know, this does not relate to education, but sometimes you just have to have fun because at the end of the day these young adults are still kids, and they deserve these little moments.

 

Viral Video on Facebook! Just having fun with the kids...

Students playing in Penn Park after their project is done.
Teenagers like the playground just as much as kids!

As I reflect through this post it is not my intention to brag about my accomplishments in my classroom, but to recount my past years in growing as an educator, to help others understand teaching is not always about the content.  Sometimes you need to bring life into the content and make the student's education a part of their human experience.  All too many times I hear stories about educators who try to bend the will of their students to the demands of the curriculum and their own strict procedures.  I am not like most teachers.  Through years of trial and error, I have found that if I want students to learn I need to meet them where they are, and teach them what they need to know in order to be successful in their post-secondary decisions, be it college, technical school, career or military.

Students working on GeoGebra and also using
Maps/Ratios to figure out social justice problems.

Although not every interaction is positive, I have always enjoyed getting to know each student, even those that are a bit of a handful.  I enjoy working with every student, creating meaning in our days together and observing their unique character qualities as they mature.  I teach about 125-150 students in a school year, and if I feel like I can reach at least one, I have had a successful year.

Journaling in Geometry

While sitting through a Professional Development two years ago, I found myself excited to learn and ready to get back into the classroom.  Our presenter was enthusiastic, knowledgeable and fun and I really started to get into the ideology of writing in a mathematics classroom and how I wanted to implement that as a new procedure in my classroom.  I had always had students do a Problem of the Day that they recorded the problem and solved it on a sheet that would be turned in at the end of the week as part of a small formative grade, but after listening to our speaker I decided I would try journaling instead.  Since I have taught in an urban setting for all of my career my colleagues and I asked how to get students to build their writing skills.  Following the different ideologies from Collin's Writing and how to Build Stamina for Writing we discussed the three following types of writing that are useful in developing understanding and writing in a mathematics classroom:

1.  Descriptive Writing: the first step is to just get students to write their thoughts on paper; ask for a specific idea or concept that students should already know.  A way to differentiate would be to give a list of 5 specific questions or topics and have students pick at least 3 to write about, and students who can or need to be pushed can write about all 5.

Ex. Describe the classifications of triangles.
a. Give a description of each classification of triangles by their side lengths.
b. Give a description of each classification of triangles by their angle measures.

2.  Procedural Writing: The second type is to expand and have students write about procedures, such as How to make a PB & J?  Students should summarize a process, explain how to do correctly solve a problem.  It is a good way to start having students process steps in mathematics and give more information.

Ex. Explain the process in drawing a right scalene triangle.

3. Conceptual Writing: The third is then to convey understanding  check for clarity, correct vocabulary usage, correct mathematical concept usage.

Ex. a. What are the differences  between the given triangles?  Explain how you found those differences.

b. Can a scalene triangle also be a right triangle?



Using these three types of writing in a sequential order, students become more comfortable after doing multiple descriptive writing responses, and you can expand on their writing by making more procedural writing prompts, or conceptual writing prompts later in the school year.  Finding prompts (Journal Prompt Search) is always easy as well, Googling Math Writing Prompts yields many results with various forms and formats.

While using this process I have found a systematic way to have students complete the journal each day before class.  Every Monday Wednesday and Friday students write on their Geometry Journal Page.  I also found these Stamina Building Phrases to be useful.  Since we write on certain days of the week, the other two days in order to help with understanding and fluency in mathematics I have also implemented Number Talks, which helps me build not only students writing but also their oral fluency in mathematics.   Students in my classroom are writing and discussing to build on their understanding, they are writing to learn mathematics, not learning to write.  With these formative tools I feel I have improved my classroom understanding.

Reading and grading all of these journals seems like a tedious, time consuming event, but if done right no teacher has to read all of the journal responses.  The instructor during our professional development explained that in order to validate writing, students need to have their writing read, so to make sure everyone has their responses and opinions read, students in my classroom trade journals with a partner and then do a partner response.  Usually the response is for students to read their partner's writing and give one piece of advice or to state whether or not they agree with their partners writing.  Having the partner response and original response be a combined grade on the page holds everyone accountable.  I usually assign 2 points for each individual response and then 1 point for each partner response on the page.  Then I only have to glance at each section on the page to grade the journal page, making grading easy.