Collaborator
Collaborator
Embedded Files
Coaches establish productive relationships with educators in order to improve instructional practice and learning outcomes.
Coaches establish productive relationships with educators in order to improve instructional practice and learning outcomes.
Impact: This experience allowed me to hone my skills as a teacher mentor and a teacher educator. This not only was able to impact the teachers that were being mentored and the students who were experiencing the new types of learning but really positively affected me. I learned how to guide teachers in their work and support them in taking risks that they may not initially feel comfortable with. It also provided me with a lot of insight into the planning process for a PD. It is a completely different process than the lesson planning I am used to because you have to assume that the teachers understand the content and have established successful patterns for teaching the content. The point of professional development is often to grow or change current practices. A lot of the work that I did with my biology team was working on relationship building so that when I asked them to step out of their comfort zone, they trusted me enough to do that work and carry it through.
Reflection: I believe that this experience of planning and carrying out professional development for the science teachers of Irvine Unified School District shows my competency in indicator 3A. This was my second time hosting a PD but previously I had been less involved in the planning of the PD. This opportunity allowed me to really focus on establishing that coaching relationship and planning intentionally for the people I was coaching. I worked tirelessly to bring my teachers activities and instructional strategies that I thought would support their students and the content that they were trying to teach.
3A. Establish trusting and respectful coaching relationships that encourage educators to explore new instructional strategies.
3A. Establish trusting and respectful coaching relationships that encourage educators to explore new instructional strategies.
Artifact Description: Over the fall semester of 2020, myself along with my Chemistry team at Tustin High School partnered with the University of California, Irvine to develop and run a semester-long professional development for in-service science teachers in the Irvine Unified School District. Our work focused on leveraging student identities and using technology to transform their curriculum to make it relevant to their student’s experiences. There were a total of 20 teachers involved in the process.
Implementation: This PD took place over the course of the fall semester of the 2020 school year. The IUSD teachers involved were cohorts from several high schools and middle schools throughout the district. For the most part, teachers were able to work with colleagues from their same school site to develop their new curriculum however some teachers chose to work in multisite groups in order to create cohesion across the different school sites. We utilized Zoom video conferencing to host our meetings. We held bi-monthly meetings where we met in both a whole group and small group setting. I mentored a team of three Biology teachers to develop a curriculum focusing on sustainability, ecosystems, and climate change. We dove into finding a contextualized phenomenon to center the student’s learning that would support the experiences of the students who are participating. I then had the teachers go through and flush out their unit storyline and generate both initial and final assessments to bookend the unit. We then looked at key lessons and discussed how we could implement the available technology to facilitate the conversation and learning taking place. At the end of the semester, we shared our completed units and assessments with the other teacher groups for feedback. The teachers were then able to implement their units in the spring semester. At the end of the spring semester, we met again in May to discuss the successes that they had in implementing their new unit.
3B. Partner with educators to identify digital learning content that is culturally relevant, developmentally appropriate and aligned to content standards.
3B. Partner with educators to identify digital learning content that is culturally relevant, developmentally appropriate and aligned to content standards.
3C. Partner with educators to evaluate the efficacy of digital learning content and tools to inform procurement decisions and adoption.
3C. Partner with educators to evaluate the efficacy of digital learning content and tools to inform procurement decisions and adoption.
Artifact Description: This artifact is a software critique that myself and three other CSUF Ed Tech cohortians completed as a part of EDEL 518B. We looked at two different types of software, ST Math, and Seterra 50 states quiz. As a team, we split up to interact more deeply with one of the pieces of software. I worked on critiquing the Seterra 50 states quiz in which the user is timed to complete a geographic quiz to recognize each of the fifty United States. The focus of the critique was to observe the functionality and usability of the program’s landing screen/introduction, learner-activated controls, as well as the general setup.
Implementation: We worked together in our partnerships as well as our larger group to critique the setup of each program. My partner and I began by playing the game ourselves several times. He had some experience with the program prior to the critique because he utilized the program in his classroom so this was my opportunity to play through and learn how to use the software. It was very intuitive and all of the items we were focusing on were easily identifiable. We were able to determine that the software was developmentally appropriate for students of all ages, including the high school-aged students that were specifically being targeted for use of the product. We were then able to collaborate with the other partners to investigate ST Math. They spent their time engaging with the program in a similar way to how I engaged with Seterra. We then concluded that ST Math was also developmentally appropriate and culturally relevant to the K-8 student suggested users.
Impact: The skills that I gained while doing this project have allowed me to more critically judge the quality of educational software. There were programs that my team and I used that I have now been able to determine were not developmentally appropriate for my students whether they were too simple, did not have equitable accessibility, or were deemed to be user-unfriendly for our age of users. This has also allowed me to go out and find new technologies that are appropriate for my students. I also have had the opportunity to work with the Technology Task Force to determine if programs are a good investment for the district. My new perspective of software critique allowed me to voice my concerns with authority.
Reflection: I believe that this experience of software critiquing has shown my proficiency in indicators 3B and 3C. I was able to partner with other educators who teach different age groups. This gave me a perspective on what kinds of software are culturally relevant and developmentally appropriate for students of all ages. We were able to scrutinize the digital learning tools. Additionally, we could determine the efficacy of the digital learning tools to promote the usage of tools that do in fact work. I was able to contribute to a district conversation about the digital tools that have been procured by our technology team.
3D. Personalize support for educators by planning and modeling the effective use of technology to improve student learning.
3D. Personalize support for educators by planning and modeling the effective use of technology to improve student learning.
Artifact Description: This is the recovered "chat" text from a Zoom meeting that I hosted in the summer of 2020 to share how to use the platform of Zoom to hold distance learning synchronous class meetings. As the Technology Task Force representative at Tustin High School, I looked into the different functions of Zoom and prepared a one-time workshop for professional development for my colleagues on campus. This was held during our summer professional development days that happen the week leading up to school starting.
Implementation: I spent the month of July reading, practicing, and learning how to best use the different functions of Zoom web conferencing. I was frequently in contact with members of our district office staff regarding the availability of a Zoom Pro account to ensure that teachers had maximum control over the functions of their class meetings. Once we procured the Zoom Pro accounts, I began to run several test meetings to become familiar with the commands and the ability to change settings. Once it was time for the summer professional development days, I had become familiar with the program and hosted a workshop on how to use Zoom. I modeled how to use the program and had my colleagues experience it from the student’s perspective. This allowed them to understand what the commands would do to the students in their meetings. It also allowed me to record a video of my screen for those teachers who were unable to make the session. At the end of the session, I hosted a “Q + A” time where teachers could ask any remaining questions and it was a highly productive session.
Impact: After giving this PD workshop, my colleagues constantly referred back to me for any and all Zoom questions. I was the go-to person for any troubleshooting. I was frequently modeling how to use Zoom features for my colleagues who would ask to sit in on my class meetings. This experience established me as a supportive technology mentor on campus. Those teachers that I was working with reported that they were able to more efficiently manage the meeting platform which allowed them to focus on student learning and not making sure that their meeting worked.
Reflection: I believe that this experience shows my competency in indicator 3D. I was able to personalize the support my staff needed by learning the web conferencing platform that we were being asked to use. This platform switched from Google Meet (spring of 2020) to Zoom (fall of 2020). I took into account the technical capabilities of the staff members that I would be working with to ensure that I had the right level of support to meet their needs. I also modeled how to use the technology in a way that supported student learning and took the teacher’s focus off of the conferencing platform itself.
Overall Standard Reflection
Overall Standard Reflection
Over the last year and a half, I have been working towards the goal of establishing productive coaching relationships to improve instructional practices by being a collaborator. I have started becoming a technology mentor on my campus. At the start of the 2020-21 school year, I hosted a professional development workshop for my colleagues on how to effectively run a synchronous class meeting through the Zoom platform. Since our school district was in a full distance learning setup at the time, this was an especially important skill for teachers to hone. I felt confident in my ability to model how to use the technology to support student learning and be able to transfer those skills to my colleagues. I continued to maintain the relationship with many of them after this PD to troubleshoot and answer questions. I believe that this shows my competency in indicator 3D. Additionally, in the fall of 2020, I began working with teachers outside of my district planning and implementing a professional development series that focused on encouraging teachers to try new instructional practices to leverage student voices. During the course of this PD, I worked with a team of biology teachers to redesign one of their units to be aligned with NGSS and integrate technology to support student learning. This experience demonstrates that I am competent in indicator 3A. Lastly, I partnered with teachers in the CSUF Ed Tech program to critique two pieces of educational technology software. This process allowed us to determine if the software was relevant, developmentally appropriate, and related to the content standards. It also gave me the opportunity to evaluate the efficacy of the software. These skills were then directly translated into conversations I was having with other members of the Technology Task Force in my district. We were able to critique the software available to us and make sure that we are only obtaining and using technology that makes sense for our students. This experience demonstrates my competency in indicators 3B and 3C. Overall, I believe I have established myself as a technology collaborator in my teaching community.
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