Sunday Salon: What I Read Online October 27-November 15

Instead holding my Sunday Salon weekly, I've opted for bi-weekly, and I'll continue to share only a sampling of what I've been reading since there's no possible way to share absolutely everything, nor would most people want to know absolutely everything. I'll share the links I believe you, my readers, will find most interesting.

Empowerment

A thoughtful Edutopia blog post by Vicki Davis titled Social Entrepreneurship: 7 Ways to Empower Student Change Makers

In this white paper, read about teachers around the United States who are empowered to start and cooperatively run their own schools because they believe all students deserve equitable opportunities to learn and succeed.

The Teachers for Teachers blog had an excellent post titled Are We Creating Schools of Engagement or Schools of Compliance. Be sure to check it out. It gets me all fired up when I think about the all too often reality in most American public schools.

With the announcement of our city's school superintendent resignation came this brilliant op-ed by Kentucky students proclaiming the need for their voices to be heard in the search for a replacement.

The child who created this Rube Goldberg machine is empowered to learn through failure. Love this video, and I think you will, too.

Parenting Considerations

I really appreciated Harvard, Schmarvard: Why Getting Your Kids Into College Should be the Least of Your Concerns, and I agree whole heartedly with the importance of encouraging my children to be creative, independent, problem solvers who are passionate about what they decide to do in their lives and who enjoy their own company.

If you read my blog regularly, you know my thoughts about meaningless homework. In this blog post, I appreciated a fellow parent who decided it was more important for her son to play with toy engines and interact with others than to scribble responses on a piece of paper. What do you think?

Global Learning

Though you can only read a teaser at this link, I strongly encourage you to order a copy of Cake & Whiskey Magazine (or pick one up at a bookstore--limited distribution, but I hear they are now available at Barnes and Noble). The article, Conflict Kitchen, is about a business in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that promotes discussion of global issues of conflict the United States has with various countries, and they apparently serve up some amazing food from whatever the country being discussed happens to be at a given time.

With all the talk about project based learning and its benefits, there's some raw honesty in these posts about students from Kentucky who are building a partnership in Nicaragua, and you absolutely must read about what they are doing. Read the principal's post here, and a post by an honest student here.


Educational Resources

Since joining Achieve's EQuIP Peer Review Panel a while back, I have continued to be impressed by the quality resources and tools submitted and shared on their website. Recently they reached the goal of 50 Exemplar CCSS aligned lessons. The rubrics for evaluating lessons are useful by individual teachers or larger groups working to ensure quality materials are utilized in schools.

Kentucky teacher, Brad Clark, shared his thoughts on What a Common Core Classroom Really Looks Like. I share this article under resources because it's especially useful for anyone battling the CCSS debate.

Read about critical technology integration lessons being learned because of a mishap in California, here.

Miscellaneous Fun

We have less than a month until Cheryl Strayed's book Wild appears on film, and I've been eagerly awaiting. Watching the teaser on this website made me long to see it even more--only to have my hopes dashed when I learned the film release isn't set for any place near Lexington anytime in December. Keeping my fingers crossed that it will eventually make its way to our lovely Kentucky Theatre downtown.

I used to teach Arts and Humanities and would have loved this project I learned about at the GAFE Summit last weekend, but now I can use it for my own fun and continued learning. You won't want to miss it.

My appreciation for old time jazz brought me to this New York Times article about a man who won a Thelonious Monk competition.

Pairing traveling with teaching? What could be better? I follow this blog regularly, and enjoyed an article about short term volunteer opportunities abroad.

I've read Into the Wild a handful of times, so when I saw Outside's article about Carine McCandless's new book, I was curious to learn more. Needless to say after reading the article, I now have another book on my list of books to read.

Experience English teacher/tech geek fun when you read Adam Watson's blog post titled Star Wars, Shakespeare, and Rebels.

My sons always have me on the lookout for information about Minecraft in education. There's a great example in this article of a teacher from Louisville, Kentucky using the game well in his school.

Hope you enjoyed reading about what I've been reading.  Please take some time to comment below to let me know which articles you liked most.

EQUIP: Educators Evaluating Quality Instructional Products

The Opportunity
 Since leaving the high school classroom a few years ago,  I have worked in jobs where I have been facilitating workgroups and convening people for the creation of collaborative products and/or processes, so when I learned of an opportunity to be part of a workgroup myself, I decided to apply. A few months ago, Achieve's EQuIP initiative placed a national call for reviewers to serve on a panel that would review Common Core aligned lessons and units.  I decided to apply and am certainly glad I spent the time and brain power to do so.  The application process required me to use EQuIP's rubrics to review CCSS lessons and units and provide feedback to the unit developers.  I submitted my review and feedback which was then double-blind scored for effectiveness and accuracy according to previously established norms.  A few weeks later, I received an invitation to sit on the Educators Evaluating Quality Instructional Products Peer Review Panel.

Last week I left the snow and frigid temperatures of Lexington, Kentucky and flew to Washington National Airport where it was actually just slightly warmer than it was when I left Lexington.  I headed to the Westin Arlington Gateway and an evening reception where I met some of the educators from across the country with whom I would work for the next two days.  I met classroom teachers as well as other people like me who support teachers (my day job) and teach teachers (my adjunct gig).

The Process   

Our meeting objectives

• Norm the use of the EQuIP Rubrics and Quality Review Process 
• Deepen the ability of peer reviewers to write constructive and criterion-based feedback
• Calibrate overall ratings among peer reviewers in each content area grade-band cohort
• Review CCSS aligned instructional materials

We began working toward these objectives early on the first full day, and we engaged in rich and meaningful conversations about the Common Core and constructive feedback.  For those of us familiar with providing this type of feedback to students, the feedback Achieve was seeking for us to provide on the unit reviews made complete sense.  After these conversations, we reviewed a common unit and used the EQuIP rubrics and feedback forms to evaluate the unit and practice providing constructive feedback. 

Prior to attending the meeting we each used the tools and rubrics to evaluate a unit.  When we came together, we then calibrated ourselves with our table groups and the whole group to ensure norming as well as deep understanding of the rubric. This led to robust conversations about how we understand the rubrics.  We practiced again on two additional units; each time the conversations after our individual evaluations were essential to the overall process.

The Achieve team formatively assessed our progress and adjusted the meeting goals as the two days progressed.  By the time we left at the end of the second day, I felt extremely confident in the forthcoming work.  We will work individually to evaluate and provide feedback on units that are sent to us in the coming months, and then we will conference call with a small group to discuss our evaluations and work toward a collective feedback form.  Therefore, anyone receiving feedback on units will know their work has been reviewed using a highly calibrated model by multiple individuals collectively.

The Tools

We used the EQuIP rubrics and learned about training materials available if we wish to use them in our own states, districts, and schools.  The rubrics and the feedback forms are organized around four dimensions.

I.     Alignment to the Depth of the CCSS
II.    Key Shifts in the CCSS
III.   Instructional Supports
IV.   Assessment

 

The Takeaways

The tools, processes and experiences will be useful to me in my day job leading the Common Assignment Study for Kentucky as well as in my work with future English teachers from our local university.  I see us using these tools to engage in discussion and to make professional judgments about the products we create.

Two intense days of conversation were a good reminder of how teachers I support might feel when they are working collaboratively with other educators from across the country.  We certainly all have Core standards in common as well as an understanding of Key Instructional Shifts that came with the CCSS, but we also all have our own professional judgment and expertise.  I was pleased to hear our Achieve facilitators say "This is not scientific; it requires professional judgment."  I appreciate this statement because I feel it honors teachers as professionals, especially when teachers are the ones developing units or lessons.