National Board Renewal

In a time when teacher worth is connected to a few classroom observations and student test scores, I decided to pursue renewing my National Board Certification to connect myself with my choices and my students. I, like the thousands of other NBCTs, did not do this to prove that I am better than anyone else. I underwent the process to become better at who I am as a lifelong educator. This means I willingly put my practice under a microscope for other science teachers to evaluate. I defended why my choices in professional development for pedagogy and educational technology made a lasting impact on student achievement. This is exactly the type of reflection I love and crave as a professional.

I just submitted my renewal portfolio which represented 10 years of my growth as an educator. What learning did I accomplish and why was it important to my students? These are the types of questions we should be asking ourselves all of the time. Will this help my classroom? Will my students benefit from a better teacher as a result of my participating in this workshop or is there something more meaningful? As professionals, we owe it to ourselves, our students, and our profession to be reflective in our choices and thoughtful about our own learning endeavors.

After having gone through the NB process for a year 10 years ago with an extended PLC and now for renewal, I see an even greater need for teachers to connect with their colleagues daily and to share their practice. When we share ideas and discuss how our students are performing, we force ourselves to step outside of our comfort zones and become more critically reflective. When I have the opportunity to share ideas about education with other passionate educators, I can feel the fire energizing my brain. Going through National Board, you realize that extreme importance of a professional learning community and not just a common planning team. When we force ourselves to open our doors and invite others in, we can learn from feedback and improve our craft. My hope is that more teachers will seek NB Certification to promote and improve the profession and to become more reflective about their own practices.

Curious about National Board? Visit http://www.nbpts.org/ or http://www.nbpts.org/national-board-candidates

Assessing the Digital Native Student

Assessing the Digital Native Student

It's Thursday and it's time to talk digital learning! The following blog post comes from Rebecca McLelland-Crawley, one of the Project 24 Team of Experts and the K-12 Science Supervisor at West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District in New Jersey. 

When we think about assessments, it is really easy to pull up an image of multiple choice questions and Ticonderoga pencils en masse. However, my stance on assessment is quite different. Most of the tests created by others and scored with a machine did not capture the strengths of my students. As a matter of fact, I doubt that most tests of this nature can really identify what we truly want our students to do in a global society of the 21st Century. So, how do we as educators design assessments that are capable of capturing their essence? Do not let the era of high-stakes testing make you lose sight of the individual students sitting in your classroom.  

As educators we need to think systematically about our students. Data provides us with an opportunity to help our students become more successful in our classes. In professional learning community (PLC) meetings, we can discuss whether students are able to apply the knowledge they are acquiring and what interventions need to occur. We are also able to brainstorm ways to differentiate for the students who need remediation and for those who need more of a challenge. None of these conversations can occur effectively within a PLC without an initial conversation about data and assessment focused on two fundamental questions:

1. What do we want our students to learn and do?

2. How do we know they do not already know it and can do it?

Before designing any assessment, I find it critical to ask myself and others question #1. Like many other teachers, I wanted my students to think critically, creatively apply their content knowledge, and demonstrate their skills as effective problem-solvers and communicators. I am focused on presenting students with as many authentic problems as they can handle.

Once I shifted my classroom mindset to project-based learning and authentic assessments, I saw the greatest growth in my students with regard to retention and engagement. Looking at things from a practical standpoint, there are simple changes teachers can make when designing assessments. For example, rather than relying on a test about facts related to evolution, the students could be assigned to research something like the fastest case of human evolution and have the students create a social media campaign to educate others. The teachers can include all of the required content as part of the campaign, but in this example, deeper learning competencies are infused as well.

A great resource for designing scoring rubrics on these competencies is the Association of American Colleges and Universities Value Rubrics site. You can download the existing rubrics and work with your PLC to determine what areas a task will assess. A “techie” way to integrate these into your classes is to create a Google Form and have the students self- and peer-assess. Teachers can also add their scores and provide instant feedback for the students.

I'll admit that I am a data junkie. I like to know where my students stand before I begin a unit and I like to check in often to know if misconceptions are being dispelled and if they are really progressing in their knowledge acquisition and application. I encourage the science teachers in my school district to use the AAA Science Assessment website to create quick surveys on student misconceptions. Teachers can use the website question bank to design quick pre-tests on highly researched student misconceptions. This helps identify strengths and weaknesses in order to differentiate the activities of our classrooms. It is also paramount to everything we do as educators because if we do not address their misconceptions in a concerted manner, they will harbor these ideas throughout their lifetime. 

We are in a time of substantial change for educators. Districts administrators need to be aware of the stress that many educators are experiencing and provide them with the opportunity to meet and discuss the data of their students so they can remain focused on students. When we reframe the conversation about data to focus on the progress of the students, teachers will rise to the challenge of creating meaningful assessments to fully represent their students.

(image source: cover art, AACU Peer Review.) 

Rebecca McLelland-Crawley has been a science educator for 15 years and is a member of the Project 24 Team of Experts. She is currently the Science Supervisor for the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District. Previously, Rebecca taught Biology, Marine Science, and Advanced Placement Environmental Science for the Perth Amboy School District. Field trips, authentic investigations, and technology play key roles in her instructional strategies. Through a service learning project, her students adopted a local pond and restored the habitat with a $700,000 Green Acres Grant. Her students also taught environmental stewardship to elementary students through Skype, podcasts, and face-to-face mentoring. Rebecca is past president of the Biology Teachers Association of New Jersey and has presented at numerous conferences on topics such as professional learning communities, the flipped classroom, bioscience career awareness, and the New Jersey science curriculums. In 2005, Rebecca was recognized as Teacher of the Year for Perth Amboy High School and named the New Jersey Phi Delta Kappa/Wal-Mart Teacher of the Year. You can follow her on Twitter at @WWPscience.   

Published 5.9.13  http://www.all4ed.org/blog/assessing_digital_native_student

Creating an authentic learning experience through digital technology

Rebecca McLelland-Crawley: Creating an authentic learning experience through digital technology

The following guest blog post comes from Rebecca McLelland-Crawley of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She is the K-12 Science Supervisor at West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District.
Ms.McLelland-Crawley is one in a group of experts who will be blogging for High School Soup every Thursday as part of the Alliance for Excellent Education's Project 24 series. Learn more about Project 24 and how your school district can get involved and connected with the resources needed to plan for progress in a digital transformation here.

Consider my request.
Close your eyes and follow a hypothetical middle school or high school student for her entire school day. How many minutes is she sitting down? How often is she in a group discussing a misconception versus simply hearing her responses are incorrect? Was she allowed to connect to the Internet to research why her response was incorrect? How many times was she told that she can be a digital detective, a blogger, or a software engineer?
I envision a different kind of classroom with very different pedagogical ideas. I dream of a classroom where children are empowered to succeed leveraging technology in a way that maximizes the learning experience for all stakeholders in the community.
I was a biological science teacher for 15 years and was able to design a classroom that supported my vision for students using technology to become producers of knowledge and not mere consumers. It was not simply motivated by my selfish desire to have a paperless classroom but by a dream for a classroom that allowed my students the choice of how they wanted to teach others about what they were learning.
My greatest purpose in the classroom was to provide the proper scaffolding for my students to communicate the understandings we co-created. My urban students composed musical podcasts, blogs, tweets, and video lab reports. They had a global audience, and they met each challenge with increased success as the year progressed.
One of my greatest compliments from a student came in the form of a tweet: "In marine bio on YouTube, Twitter, and making a podcast about watersheds. #winning". Now in a supervisory position, I find ways to provide learning opportunities to support my staff as they look for ways to transform their classrooms as well.
I want kids to be engaged and use the tools they have right in their pockets to do so. I want school districts to encourage and provide sustained learning opportunities for teachers so they understand that the digital natives – students - in their classrooms learn differently now.
Instead of traditional professional development offerings, I see consortia of school districts hosting frequent "unconferences,” like edcamps and padcamps, where teachers and even students as co-presenters can learn from each other on how to leverage technology to reach all of their students.
Schools should be the place where teachers encourage students to take out their phones and take a picture of something they are doing in class and share it with their peers. Why can't a student use their own device to record a video of their lab as it happens so they can go home to make sense of it all?
As a parent, I know how excited I would be for my own children if they sparked up dinner conversation on the tools they used in school to create educational products. What if schools partnered with local businesses and corporations for mentoring opportunities and technology support? How strong could a community become if everyone was on board with the same vision?
I envision a time when teachers and administrators embrace technology and teach students what it means to leave a responsible digital footprint. Is there a better example of collaboration than students researching a topic with their peers in another country on a group project?
Learning knows no boundaries and schools should seek out opportunities for authentic global awareness leveraging technology. I imagine a day when students in different parts of the world co-author a digital textbook for their class and co-create educational videos at the same time in different locations. My ideal classroom encourages video conferences as a way of communicating across the sea.
There are so many doors that can be opened when we recognize the value of authentic learning experiences. For example, students at all grade levels can study a component of their watershed and produce information on how to better care for their environment. Virtual partnerships can easily be established with other schools in different watersheds and the students can exchange data and discuss their observations. The students can catalog native and invasive plants in their community and create QR codes to inform the public. High school students can teleconference with university professors about their findings and create videos to share on the school website about the scientific research they are conducting. Students can "flip" their own classrooms right along with their teachers by finding and making educational videos to share their knowledge.
As instructional tools change, educational leaders need to find creative ways to engage students. Learning should be active. After all, it is not a spectator sport!
Rebecca McLelland-Crawley is a member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She is the K-12 Science Supervisor at West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District. Ms.McLelland-Crawley is one in a group of experts who will be blogging for High School Soup every Thursday as part of the Alliance for Excellent Education's Project 24 series. Learn more about Project 24 and how your school district can get involved and connected with the resources needed to plan for progress in a digital transformation here.

Published 2.7.13

http://www.all4ed.org/blog/rebecca_mclelland_crawley_creating_authentic_learning_experience_through_digital_technolog