Individualized Professional Development

A school district in Madison County, Virginia recently published information about an initiative to create meaningful professional development themselves and make it available to teachers at anytime. This allows administrators and teachers more flexibility in creating individualized professional development plans as well as reduces the amount of teacher absences for training. The school district assessed needed professional development, prioritized the needs, and then worked collaboratively to develop training that included videos, readings, and practice followed by assessments. This may be a path that many school districts should take to reduce cost, missed class time, and most importantly better meet the development needs of individual teachers.

Read the article:
https://www.districtadministration.com/article/individualized-professional-development-provides-flexibility-and-freedom

References:
Individualized K12 professional development provides flexibility and freedom. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2017, from https://www.districtadministration.com/article/individualized-professional-development-provides-flexibility-and-freedom

Is School Choice a Good Thing?

As I was reading AACS's legislative update today, it mentioned something that has concerned me for a while but seems to be something that many in favor of school choice ignore. This concern is that anytime financial support from the government comes into your school, there are always unwanted regulations and policies that come along with it. South Carolina approved a scholarship option for exceptional children several years ago, and in spite of the fact that the program is very unobtrusive, it still requires more than many private schools would like. While Christian schools should certainly have accountability (to God, sponsoring ministries, parents, and even the students), it could be quite problematic to be held accountable for programs and policies that do not reflect biblical standards. I believe that school choice programs could impact admissions policies, hiring policies, curriculum decisions, and many other important areas that make our programs distinct and successful. While it would be great to have the financial support that would come from such a program and to be able to more easily serve a larger number of students, we must be careful of what is allowed and keep in mind that these programs often start off with minimum threat but change over time to be quite detrimental. We also should reflect on the idea it will be difficult to return to the state at which we operate now after accepting such a program. While we would all like more educational options and support parents having more options, we need to be very careful of what we are willing to accept in order for this to happen.

Read the article:
http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=b1d060273aff701bff8eab400&id=74ccf36750&e=eb8e0e008e

References:
NEW! The Washington flyer. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2017, from http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=b1d060273aff701bff8eab400&id=74ccf36750&e=eb8e0e008e

Computer Science in All Grades

Douglas County Schools in Georgia will be adding computer science classes for all grade levels and adding additional computer science topics to existing math and science curriculum in the next couple of years. The goal of the addition is to make sure that students are prepared for technology based careers in the future and to turn them into technology producers as well as consumers. Most of today's youth have a significant amount of technology knowledge (as consumers) when they begin school today. It seems to be a natural progression to add objectives related to educating them concerning the basis for the technology they use and that they can be developers of meaningful technology. My only concern is that in focusing on computer science, especially by adding more to math and science in addition to adding the course, other core subjects will suffer due to lack of resources. As educators, we need to ask how ourselves to what extent does technology need to be taught in order to prepare students for the future and how can we effectively teach it.

Read the article:
http://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/douglas-county-become-georgia-first-computer-science-school-system/3NGJT63K0WvVbj2eDCp3aI/

References:
Robinson, W. (2017, March 29). Douglas County to become Georgia’s first computer science school system. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Retrieved March 30, 2017, from https://www.districtadministration.com/news/setting-precedent-georgia-district-offer-computer-science-all-grades

Are Libraries and Librarians Important?

Sam Weller recently had a commentary in the Chicago Tribune concerning the necessity of librarians and libraries in schools. He pointed to school districts in Kansas and Chicago that had experienced large decreases in the number of librarians in their schools. The districts' administrators apparently saw this as a means to cut budgets. In doing so, the schools were left without faculty trained to help students with effective research and to lead them to literature that may inspire them for the future. I think that there are definitely benefits to having a school library and librarian, but as an administrator, I also understand that cutting librarian positions and library budgets may seem like an effective way to save. It is much more difficult to justify cutting full-time classroom teachers. Hopefully, the creative administrator can find a way to cut budgets without cutting such positions. Also, are there ways to use technology to make a difference in this area?

Read the article:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-school-librarians-cuts-dystopia-perspec-0330-jm-20170329-story.html

References:
Weller, S. (2017, March 29). Without school librarians, we're on a dystopian path. Retrieved March 30, 2017, from http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-school-librarians-cuts-dystopia-perspec-0330-jm-20170329-story.html

Teachers Visiting Student Homes?

There is no doubt that the engagement of parents and the relationship between parents and the school (teachers, principals, etc.) has an impact on student achievement. June Kronholz addresses teachers visiting the homes of their students as a means of improving relationships and learning more about the student to use in making classroom connections in "Teacher Home Visits." The article discusses several examples of home visits and the circumstances of each situation including the family and the teachers. In the examples, the teachers were paid extra for the home visits and some districts were cited as budgeting for such programs. I think that this could be beneficial for some students and teachers as a means to improve relationships and the teacher's connection to the student. However, I am not sure how comfortable teachers would be going into the homes of students or how comfortable parents would feel about having a teacher in their home. While I understand the writer's point about most parent-teacher interactions being very formal, I think that meeting at a public but informal location may be a safer approach.While this may not provide the teacher with as much knowledge about the student as possible, it would provide a safer and perhaps more comfortable opportunity to work together. 

View the full article:
http://educationnext.org/teacher-homevisits-school-family-partnerships/

References:
Teacher home visits: School-family partnerships foster student success. (2017, January 18). Retrieved March 30, 2017, from http://educationnext.org/teacher-homevisits-school-family-partnerships/

 

Using Technology to Share Teacher Lessons

We often have students who need material explained multiple times or parents who would like to know what our lesson consisted of in order to better help their child. Also, we may have students who need a more individualized plan. One way to make this possible in the classroom is by using technology to record and share your lesson. Educreations appears to be an easy to use program for teachers to record their voice and iPad interaction in teaching a lesson. This allows teachers the opportunity to share their lessons or even record lessons prior to class for use in grouping or individualizing the lesson.

Website for Educreations: https://www.educreations.com/

References:
Educreations. (n.d.). Teach anything to anyone from anywhere. Retrieved March 29, 2017, from https://www.educreations.com/

Legends of Learning Game-based Learning Platform

Legends of Learning has launched a new website that allows teachers to create playlists of standards-aligned games for students. Currently, the playlists can be created for life science, earth science, and physical science. However, the website indicates that there are plans to add other subject areas. The company worked with teachers to develop an interesting and effective tool for classroom use. It offers the creation of playlists in a style similar to online movie streaming services and allows teacher monitoring. The games vary in length from very short time frames of just several minutes to up to 30 minutes. I look forward to using this website and watching as it progresses and adds new content.

The website is legendsoflearning.com.

See article about Legends of Learning:
https://www.districtadministration.com/news/content-platform-engages-students-playlists-classroom

References:
Content platform engages students with playlists in the classroom. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2017, from https://www.districtadministration.com/news/content-platform-engages-students-playlists-classroom