Last Wednesday I presented for the first time to
the full faculty at my school. I was a bit nervous, but my public
speaking skills are typically a strong suit, and I practiced at home with my
PowerPoint and also in front of the Curriculum & Instruction committee on
Monday, so I was fairly confident that I would present in a dynamic and
friendly fashion. My presentation to the C&I resulted in some
feedback about refocusing and restructuring my presentation and planned
learning activities to communicate the idea of developing a new type of course
guide - aka course syllabus.
I had developed this idea of creating "Learner
Centered Course Guides" to replace traditional course syllabi. These
course guides are developed using best practices and research to support
involving students in what they are learning, why they are learning it and to
what end a course guide can be beneficial as a tool for instruction. They
are formatted using a basic "Understanding By Design" template with a
few added bells and whistles to meet Catholic Identity standards and to
document assessment strategies and learning experiences designed for that
course that students will participate in, all focused on clear and measureable
student learning outcomes.
Trust me when I say, this is nothing new - at least
in the public school arena...conversations about learning outcomes, essential
questions, what students will be able to do and know are all daily jargon among
teaching professionals, but in this particular teaching & learning environment,
everyone is at a different learning curve with their knowledge base about these
things, so introducing this course guide concept required building some
background, and establishing and answering the "why"&
"how" of the process.
Through initial planning I was supported by fellow
administrators and about four one hour meetings were going to be used to
gradually introduce and cover the topics of "What is a Learning Centered
Course Guide and why is it important and useful?"; "What are
Essential Questions and how are they developed?"; "What are
Measureable Student Learning Outcomes and how can we create them?" and
ultimately -"How does this LCCG become a useful tool to the students
throughout the entire course?" In my desire to establish some exemplars of
this type of course guide I created a course titled -"Designing a Learning
Centered Course Guide" and wrote a course guide, complete with goals,
essential questions, student learning outcomes, Catholic Identity standards,
what teachers would know and ultimately be able to do as a result of taking
this class. I developed a grid with outcomes, assessments and learning
experiences. I developed a teaching and learning plan outlining the
course of the four days and the learning experiences I would provide so people
would become comfortable and feel supported with moving towards this type of
course guide. I also provided a rubric for a course guide AND a second
exemplar for a mock course.
IN SHORT - I invested a lot of time and effort into this project!
I was excited to introduce it and even though I knew it looked like
designing this course guide would be a lot of work, I was eager to get a
project going of my own that was truly curriculum centered. Afterall,
I've been on the job for over two months and I felt like it was time to get
this show on the road! I was hired to move CIA forward and focus on
student engagement and learner centered culture so this was the first piece to
assembling the big puzzle.
After my presentation, which was plagued with technology trouble, as the
Apple TV was lost numerous times, thus my PowerPoint through my Ipad did go as
smoothly as I had hoped; I felt that, for the most part, the presentation had
been successful. I received feedback
from my C&I committee members that I had done a good job at incorporating
their feedback – but somehow I still felt a little uncomfortable that I had
“lectured” for an hour, and did not have a chance to incorporate any of my
hands-on activities that I had wanted to introduce. I had been advised on Monday to eliminate
those for the sake of time and to focus on the “buy-in” and the rationale for
the idea. I did indeed hear negative
feedback, albeit through roundabout means, regarding the fact that I was contradicting myself with a
focus on student-centered learning, but yet presented with an instructional
style - first lesson – GO WITH YOUR GUT!
Do what you know is best for good instructional techniques and don’t let anyone
tell you otherwise...first point of epic fail.
I was also excited because I was trying to incorporate the use of the
“backchannel” by using Twitter and Socrative for feedback on
–going dialogue in the presentation. I wanted to use Today's Meet, but due to lack of access points I was worried not everyone would be able to log in. I was trying to incorporate something I had learned at my own conference the day before and was so positive and inspired to use. As
it turns out, while some people were excited about incorporating Twitter into
the PD, others were angst ridden and didn’t understand what I was attempting to
do – “Why are we using technology for the sake of using technology?”– were the mumbles
behind my back that I later grew aware of – second point of epic fail. I was enthusiastic coming off my own conference that I assumed everyone would be excited too. I attempted something too new, too soon. So, lesson learned – time to introduce the concept of communicating through the “backchannel” slowly and then give it a try.
In the end, I know that when presenting to 100 people, there will always
be 20 whom you can’t please, whom you may offend with your new fangled ideas, who
will be unkind behind your back (Catholic school or not, gossip will still
abound) and who will find fault with every line of every email or PowerPoint
presentation. What bolsters my spirit, is that for every 20 of those people
there are 80 who are enthusiastic, self-reflective, encouraging with open
dialogue and craving discussion about curriculum and instructional ideas that
are student-centered and forward thinking.
Funny thing is – if people had just ceased speaking in hyperbole, it would have
been revealed that there was a folder on google drive with almost the exact
same type of course guide that had been sent out in template form by my
predecessor, that a majority (not a minority, as I had been led to believe) of
teachers had already completed last summer!
Since both templates are based on sound research of what illustrates
good teaching and learning practices, it is no wonder they are extremely
similar. Not one to get in a power struggle over which template is better
(which of course is mine, lol), I let it be known that those teachers who did
indeed complete the other template had no work to do, and those who did not
must make it a goal. We can work with
the current format and gradually add pieces to it that are missing from my
planned template, and so we make some progress with a good idea and hopefully
reduce angst and stress over more work to do at a busy time of year.
You can’t please all of the people all of the time, change is a slow
process and you must go with your gut about what constitutes good teaching and
learning. If it works with students in a
classroom, then it will work with teachers at PD! Find every opportunity for good modeling.
