End of the Year

June 2013
In millions of school around the nation, teacher are winding down the school year. They spend most of May on assessments. June is for the graduation and class picnics. I know one teacher that setup tents in her room for a summer camp. Not for us..

In virtual education we are slammed. I do not like the term self paced because that is too wide open. Flexible pacing is better. But pacing is a huge problem. Now at the end of the school year I do not have one test from my 30 kids. I have four different tests from each of my 30 kids. I have taught elementary. This is different because each of those 30 kids is turning many different tests. Hopefully it's only the last test, but often it's the last three tests. I have taught middle and high school. Then I had set of 30 kids turning in the same test. Now the tests are allover the place. 

This does not include the students who now say they have had printers problems so that's the problem. 

The end of the school year for our teachers is utter chaos. Utter chaos. 

#Colchat takeaways

It was so great to run into expected and unexpected tweeps at #COLchat2action. 

 There's an amazing type of learning that happens when you have a room full of a passionate professional that are doublingly  engaged. I say double egagned because I am listening to  and being inspired by great speakers such at @thenerdyteacher and at the same time my head is down engaged on my device in a back channel conversation. That head down device lit  face body language looks disrespectful on it's face value. But it's not. I am activity engaged in listening, inspiration and channeling that engagement into constructed my own learning. Is this learning our students would benefit from? Posssibly. Is this learning we would allow our students? Probably not. 

We say we go to these conferences on our own time own our own dime for connections. And #Colchat did not dissappoint. I ran into all the usual suspects. Geat to see them and hear what's going on in their life. 

But also I put faces to people I have talked to on Twitter. Another awkward face to face moment where I say so nice to meet you to someone I feel that I know well through twitter. 

But also I connected to new people. I spoke with new adminstrators. I learned about new groups in virtual education. 

And that's what a conference should be. 1. see those you know 2. meet those you know 3. meet new people. 

And then there was the learning. 

I learned about Voice Thread. We can have a read out with our homeschooling students. 

I missed the session on standards based grading - that will have to be home work for me. 

Someone mentioned Glide - some app. I want to figure out that is. 

I want to recommitt to bloging. Not  because I want a following but to be reflective in my parctice. 

 In Seth's session he challenged us to do some crappy writing. This is mine. I am a terrible speller and the iPad Blogger app does not have spell check - can you believe it! 

The power of words in your standards #michEd #masspchat

7/29/14

One of my summer projects is to co-author a standards document to codifed the best parctices we have been growing into and learing as we build our program.  As a Teacher Leader I will be supporting hte learning behind these standards. Here's my evolution of one standard that reflects the developement of word choice.

Teacher will learn the curriculum.

Yuck ! It  is so bossy. It's not supportive.  what about ....

Teacher understand the curriculum. 

Better makes a positive assuption but there's no why. what about .....

To best support student learning, teachers know the curriculum. 

I like that. Positive. Grounded in student learning. 

We need to be intentional with our words. Those words share reactions and convey our intentions. 

11/16/14

As we wrote further chapters, my mentor and I decided that we needed to change the tense from teachers to "the teacher" since this document would be read from the point of view of one teacher trying to understand the expectations. 

Also we are working on our team evaulation instrument. This has impacted this work. I am learning relationship with national standards ( Danielson and INacol), our standards/expeaction in Field guide, and what the looks like on the evaluation. 

I would like to be able to cross reference all of these. They should all tie together to create a clear picture of a highly effective teacher

And that brings up highly effective. Does a highly effective teacher meets or exceed expecations? That's another blog topic. 

The stages of admin #masspchat

7/29/2014 So just like dying becoming an admin has stages. This blog used to be about growing into the role of a virtual mentor teacher. Now I am beginning the transition into growing into an administrator in our program.

My new position is Lead Teacher. This is a 40% teacher position and 60% administration. What that really means - well we are still working on that. I can tell you some things I am sure of. My focus is supporting our teachers to be highly effect in the best practices of virtual teaching and I am a 12 month employee so bye bye summers off.

My journey into adminstration can best be described in the following stages.

Stage 1 I want this ! ~ This is the stage where you are searching for that admin position. You have the drive. You demonstrate the teacher leaderships. Other teachers consider you a leader. And you want to change the world. Much of your job is pre-leaderhip work. In my case I am a teacher but already doing a large part of leadership. 

Stage 2 WoHo! I got the job! This is stage where you just found out it's offical. All those extra duties you were doing are

Stage 3 Holly Crap I got the job! This is where I am now.

Stage 4 I got this. This is where I am shooting for! Not there yet. 

Save to drive button

+ShakeUpLearning shared this link with me about how to create a "save to drive" button. Here's my test of it. directions can be found here. https://developers.google.com/drive/web/savetodrive

New chapter begins

This blog was about being an online teacher and my journey as discovered what that is and how to do it better. While I will still post about my teacher experience, I am now transition into an administration role.  I have been doing the admin work for a while now. I have had two jobs. A full time teacher and admin as needed. My Director kept telling me now to over do it but the extra stuff she was asking me to do were the pieces of my job that I like the most. So I kept asking form them.

I look forward to the transition over the summer where I will have only one job worth of work. But I am concerned about becoming a leader in the same team that I was just a co-worked in. This will mean higher standards and more oversight for the team. Our Director did not have time to look at online grade books to make sure that test are done. I plan too. But I hope it brings an ease of work and greater support to the teacher too.  I think I now how to do some short cuts that make my life easier that I want to share with the teachers.

I want to me the type of leader that people like to work for . I want to expect a great deal, but be willing to help. I want to be tough but fair and respected. Much like the Director I work for.

I look forward to the mentoring from my Director. It must be so scary to get an admin position when you are not sure of that support. I am sure most people are in that situation. I am lucky. I have a job that was my goal two years ago. I am able to work from home. I am moving into a position that I love with great supports in place. ( big smile) Off to Google training "talk" to you later .......

It's tax time in virtual education! #k12online

As other teachers are having field day, end of the year picnics, and pulling down bulletin boards, as mentor teachers our knee deep in tests. In high school I taught four classes. For the end of the year exams my work load was 30 sets of four different exams. But only four tests.  As a mentor teacher I support 55 kids in all their subject each subject has a first semester and second. That's 18 sections. While most students only have the last test in the second semester left, there are students still in first semester. There are students who have not turned in any of the second semester tests yet. They say they are working in the books.

To add to the gradign load, if a student has less then 70% they need to improve their test. Which I agree with and really supports student mastery. But one student turned in all Algebra unit test for second semester between 5/20 to 5/30. Her highest grade is a 61% with most grades about 45%. She will need to improve these tests. That means I will be grading an entire semester of tests twice in the last week of school.

This makes my end of year more like tax time for an accountant then June for a traditional teacher.

Across virtual programs progress is consistently an issue. I would not say we are self pace because that implies any pace without deadlines. A more accurate term is flexible pace.  At the mid semester teachers put in temporary zeroes for any tests not in by the deadline. This did motive some student to meet the deadline. Those that did not saw their grades dive. However when they did turn in a test they were rewarded with the score they earn and an improved grade.

Progress is an issue we continue to struggle with. I look forward to discussion with our great team of teacher and seeing what solutions we come up with.

Back to grading!!