Good Teaching

I was doing a little research on effective ways to support educators. On his website, Marzano wrote "...not too many years ago, when they were looking for the highest performing systems/districts in the world, and they looked at the top ten. And, unfortunately, I believe, there were none of the top ten from the United States. But of the top ten, every single one had a focus on good teaching. They were designed to help teachers get better".

So my question to you is....
What is "good" teaching?
and
What experiences or support teacher growth and development?

Differentiated Instruction

1. What does differentiated instruction mean to you?


2. How have you successfully used differentiated instruction in your classroom?


3. What roadblocks might you have experienced with implementing differentiation?

Lately....

I've been spending my "free" (professional development) time dipping into numerous volumes of information - from differentiation to socratic seminars and homework/grading philosophies. Posts will be forth coming on most of those topics but most recently, I've been digging into information and background of courses like Baking and Pastry. Why? Well, our department noticed an overlap in what we were teaching students so we combined two courses into one so we could offer a new, college-articulated course called Baking and Pastry.

This has been a journey, like most things not simple, that ended in a fruitful bounty! I began by researching other schools in the state that had similar courses, concentrating on districts most closely situated to Shakopee. I created a survey for our current Foods 1 and 2 students, asking how many would actually take a course like that and if so, what course they would replace in their current schedule. before we went ahead, we needed to identify if this was even something students would take. Being an elective, our course offerings and their interest and relevance to the students (and to college credit opportunities) are critical to our survival. After surveying our students, we found that most said they would take it instead of a study hall! This was good news as we didn't want to necessarily pull from other courses.

I created this beautiful packet for presentation on what the course would entail and our research findings. At the time, it didn't move forward - for various reasons. This year, the department head suggested we try again and we were met with SUCCESS!

This is incredibly exciting and something I really like to learn about! I'm hoping I can find grant money (Perkins) to allow me to take the actual college course this summer and learn all the great techniques to being a successful wizard in the baking and pastry kitchen. Until then, I'm identifying other districts who offer this course and pulling resources that may become very helpful for curriculum writing. I'm reading textbooks and very detailed cooking books to pull key information.

Obviously, the content is very exciting but I truly do believe that curriculum writing is a HUGE passion of mine. To start with a vision and articulate all the various details on how to precisely get to that vision is fun to me and I'm so eager to get started. I've even started my bank of essential questions.............

Until the next time!

End of Semester 1

I am finding it hard to believe that semester 1 is over after today. Over the years that I have worked for Shakopee, this year has gone by the quickest. I can think back to last year at this time and remember how excited I was that my classes would be changing with different groups of students. This year I am slightly sad, as I really enjoyed the groups of students I had for all of my classes.

One thing I am looking forward to for 2nd semester is the credit recovery class that I am picking up. I will be working with a lot of our struggling students who failed 1st semester algebra. I know they are going to be a harder group to work with, but the feeling of accomplishment when they do pass and earn their credit will pay off.

What is everyone looking forward to for the 2nd half of the school year? Can you believe its already here?

What Teachers Make

I wanted to share a poem with all of you that my mom had sent me this week showing her apprecation for all that we do. Enjoy!!!!

http://www.taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=13

How do you feel about mandatory online classes?

Just saw this article......very interesting.

• What might be some benefits on requiring students to take at least one online class before graduating high school?




• What might be some negative implications of this mandatory requirement?