Total Participation Techniques End of Course Next Steps

Now that we’ve reached the end of our course together, it’s time to do some planning for the future!

Please respond to the prompts below.

• Check out the goal(s) you set for yourself in Unit 1 in the self-reflection. Did you reach your goal(s)? Why or why not?

1. I would like to find 2-3 solid, implementation-ready strategies that I can bring to my teachers to implement immediately in their classrooms.

Absolulety! I have already used more than 3 strategies with my teachers, and almost all of them the teachers have said they want to continue to use in the future! I think the reason they were so effective is because they are easy to implement, yet general enough to use at most levels/content areas.

2. I would like to improve my own learning and skills for effectively engaging large and diverse classes.

We have some very large classes this year at some levels as well as classes with extreme behaviors, so I have been trying out some of the strategies in these classes. So far several of the strategies we have tried have been promising. I feel like I have improved in my understanding of how to use the TPT’s as well as best implementation practices.

• Write 3 goals that you would like to achieve as a result of the course. How will you apply what you’ve learned?

1. Provide a strategy resource for teachers when they want to implement TPT’s and other similar engagement strategies.
2. Produce blog posts on our Teacher Leader blog site to help share these engagement strategies with my teachers.
3. Continue to introduce engagement strategies in the coaching cycles that I work with throughout the year.

• Indicate action plans for each of the 3 goals. How will you work to achieve them? How will you keep yourself accountable?

1. I have actually already started building a resource page. I am still in the process of adding explanations and links, and I am still trying to decide on the best format, but I have promised teachers this is coming, so now I have to complete it. :)
2. I have already written one blog post introducing some simple, yet effective engagement strategies, and I have plans to do another one in a couple of months. Myself and the other instructional coaches have been signing up for different blog topics and I have already signed up, so I will need to produce!
3. After creating the resource page and doing the blog posts, I am hoping that teachers will be looking to implement more of these strategies during our cycles, so hopefully that will help ensure I reach my goal. Even if there isn’t much initial interest on the teacher’s part, I think after they see some of the strategies in action, they will be much more likely to try on their own.

This artifact was the final component of the Total Participation Techniques online elective class that I took with Instructor Joshua Bowar in the Fall of 2016 through Iowa AEA PD Online. The course was based on the book Total Participation Techniques written by William and Persida Himmele which focuses on active strategies to engage all learners in the classroom. The purpose of the artifact was to reflect on the initial goals we set for ourselves at the beginning of the course and evaluate how well we had done towards accomplishing those goals or what we still needed to work on. It was also an excellent opportunity to plan out future ways to incorporate the strategies we learned. The InTASC Standard that this artifact aligns with is Standard 3, Learning Environments, because it provided me with tools and techniques to improve the learning atmosphere of many different classes.

The class was focused on using positive social interaction and active learning strategies to help students learn better. To me, it was an extremely timely course as I have been trying to help the teachers I work with find more simple, yet pedagogically solid engagement techniques to pull students into their learning. Many of the strategies and techniques were not completely new to me, but they were presented in a manner that was easy to immediately pick up and use in the classroom, so I was able to share and implement several strategies with teachers before the course was even over. This course helped me build up my arsenal of quality tools to help teachers wanting to improve their classroom engagement.

This course has also helped me to become more proactive in providing teachers access to resources like these. It helped me to add blog posts about strategies to our instructional coach blog as well as create an online resource for teachers to visit to get ideas of strategies to try.

Students benefit immediately when teachers use strategies to cognitively engage. They are given an opportunity to be more vested and more active in their learning which is a win for them as well as the teachers.

While this was only an elective class toward my degree, it was still extremely valuable to me in my immediate practice as an instructional coach. It also helped push me in the direction of my final choice of topic for my action research project which also deals with cognitive engagement.

Instruction Assignment:

Assignment Prompt:

Students come to school with a variety of backgrounds and experiences. There can be a wide range of academic and behavioral needs in each classroom. Research shows that the single most important factor in student learning is the quality of teacher in the classroom. It is vital that teachers are knowledgeable and skilled in differentiating instruction to meet the learner at their level of need.

Please reflect on your thoughts regarding this learning and its application in your classroom or school. How does this learning apply to your classroom? Does your philosophy align with this learning? What did you find that reinforced or went against the instruction you provide in the classroom?

My Response:

My use of differentiated instruction has changed tremendously throughout my career. When I first began my teaching career, I was definitely guilty of a one-size-fits-all mentality, “teaching to the middle” as the Willis and Mann Differentiating Instruction article explains. I knew what they students should be learning at that grade level, and if they didn’t learn it the way I taught it, that was because of their lack of effort. Honestly, that was how I was taught to teach, so I didn’t know any differently. As I gained more comfort and experience, I realized that there was much more depth to designing instruction than I first thought. I gradually started to work in some differentiated instruction opportunities, but it wasn’t until I took 2 classes through my local AEA on differentiating instruction that I really transformed my instruction.

Tomlinson and Imbeau’s article about the common sticking points of differentiation talks about some of the major “Yes, buts…” for why teachers do not embrace differentiated instruction, and I am sure each teacher has their own reasons for not jumping aboard with this research-based process, but the one I hear from teachers the most is “I’m already too busy…”. There is some validity to the teacher apprehension that differentiating instruction takes a lot of time to implement universally. If we were to truly differentiate every time we should in a classroom, there is no way a teacher can keep up with the planning, grading, and other classroom responsibilities all at once. Therefore, teachers need to focus on a gradual application of differentiating instruction instead of trying to do it all at once. Start with new lessons, and build in differentiation as they go. Once they have a solid foundation of lessons, then they can go back and start adding options to older lessons. As teachers, we always feel like we don’t have enough time to do things exactly as we want to, but differentiation is something that we need to prioritize so that we can tailor the learning to as many students as possible.

I was just in a meeting with our administration today talking about how to proceed with implementing standards based grading in our high school. When discussing instruction practices that are essential to making our standards based grading successful, differentiation was one that we definitely need to emphasize. We need to constantly provide opportunities for students who excel to extend their learning as well as opportunities for students who struggle to receive more individualized opportunities to achieve the learning.

I am also currently in a class about blended/flipped learning, and that concept, when done effectively, can provide some amazing opportunities for differentiating learning for students.

Our teachers have worked very hard to find effective intervention options for our students in whole-class, tier 2, and tier 3 settings. It has become a part of their everyday teaching now, but we still have our struggles and challenges.

As a coach, I have had a crash course in not only choosing targeted interventions that we hope will help our students achieve, but also making sure that they are effective options. There are so many intervention ideas floating around out there, and while most of them have the possibility of helping students, not all are created equal. It is frustrating for teachers to put so much effort and time into targeted interventions with students only to find out that they are not being effective, so we have been keeping our own intervention effectiveness records of different interventions that we are using in hopes that we will narrow down the best choices.

Our teachers are troopers and they are really working hard to find creative ways to structure their classes to provide their students with the small group and individual work they need. It is challenging, however, with limited staffing options and large class sizes. We have also discovered pockets where we are lacking the healthy core we need. Even though we are working on bridging those gaps, in the meantime, we have some instances where we are running whole class interventions to recover some ground.

Another issue we have run into with providing interventions to all our kids that need them is the group of students that seem to need assistance in all areas, but do not qualify for special education services. We want to do what is best for these students by providing interventions on top of their regular core instruction, but we also don’t want to intervention them to death. The article that we read, The Why Behind RTI, was a great summary of RTI and made everything seem easy once you embrace the philosophy, but as with everything else, nothing is ever that simple. We keep fighting the good fight, and each quarter we get better and better at implementing MTSS.

Since transitioning to standards based grading in the elementary and middle school, we have improved a lot in our understanding of formative assessment as a 2-way communication tool for teachers and students, but we still have a ways to go. I liked some of the specific examples given in the last section of the Formative Assessment That Empowers article. As the article said, it takes teachers some time to get comfortable with the process and how to best use this tool to help our students. We have honestly not seen a lot of the student-motivating factor that was mentioned in the article yet, but hopefully that will come.

As far as a behavioral component for our students, that is one area that we know we are lacking and are actively pursuing. Currently, we have different plans in both of our elementaries, our middle school and the high school, and it seems nobody likes any of them all that well. We are exploring options to start implementing district wide gradually starting next year. Our teachers are really looking forward to this!

This artifact was one of the assignments of the EDUC-623 Teacher Leadership and Professional Learning class that I took with Instructor Terry Hurlburt in the Spring of 2017. The course asked students to reflect on their roles as change agents in their schools and education in general. Students were expected throughout the course to self-reflect and self-assess their pedagogical practices, plans, instruction, and growth with focus on strengths and improvement. This particular assignment asked students to reflect on instruction in their classrooms because it such an important factor in meeting the learner at their level of need. The InTASC Standards that this artifact aligns with are Standard 1, Learner Development, and Standard 2, learning Differences, because the focus is strongly on the teacher understanding how learners develop differently and at different rates as well as how learners all bring diverse backgrounds to the learning environment that must be recognized. This assignment was a great opportunity to reflect on my own journey with instruction, especially in my role as a coach.

I can definitely understand why this is a required class in the Master of Education program. The reflection that I did in this class was powerful not only looking at my journey as an educator, but also where I intend to go in the future. I have changed a lot since becoming a coach, but I also realize that I have a lot more to learn. I think the biggest change for me has been the ability to look at things “big picture”. Sometimes as a classroom teacher we get stuck in our own classroom and lose track of the bigger goals. This activity has made me reflect on the importance of doable differentiation, the importance of a balance of intervention and a healthy core, and providing my teachers with as much support as possible to do their best work. Hopefully, by focusing on these areas with myself and my teachers, we can build balance with our students as well.

This artifact was found while researching some of the engagement techniques in the book Total Participation Techniques written by William and Persida Himmele which focuses on active strategies to engage all learners in the classroom. The class Total Participation Techniques, which was an online elective class that I took with Instructor Joshua Bowar in the Fall of 2016 through Iowa AEA PD Online was based on the book. This artifact is one of my favorite strategies that I pulled from the class. The InTASC Standard that this artifact aligns with is Standard 3, Learning Environments, because it provided me with tools and techniques to help teachers improve the learning atmosphere and engagement in many different classes.

The purpose of this class was to encourage teachers to get ALL of their students positively engaged in the learning, and several of the strategies presented have been extremely impactful when I am working with teachers. As an instructional coach, teachers will often ask me if I have any ideas to try when trying to build engagement, so it has been absolutely rewarding to not only have an arsenal of strategies like this one, but to have them be extremely effective as well. I always know that my work with a teacher has been successful if, when I am done working with that teacher, they are still using the strategies and techniques I have tried with them. With the 2 Cents strategy, I currently have four teachers using the strategy with students at different levels and all have reported some success at increasing positive engagement with the strategy. This has been an excellent addition to Socratic circles as well as other class discussions by encouraging students to participate who otherwise choose not to. This strategy is not difficult or new, but it serves as a great reminder on my educational journey that things don’t always have to be difficult to be successful; we just have to be open to trying things and always on the lookout for ways to improve our classrooms. The best part about the success with this strategy, besides increasing student engagement, is that teachers who have a successful experience working with me in a coaching cycle are often much more willing to seek me out in the future.