Standard 8 Reflection

Seattle Pacific University’s Standards for Teacher Leadership Standard 8 states that teacher leaders “present professional practice for the review of colleagues.”  This standards summarized the entire experience of our teacher leadership program.  We have been given opportunities to reflect on our teaching through recording various teaching strategies and seek feedback from colleagues, practice coaching techniques, and also get feedback from various research, papers, and presentations around a specific educational topic.  

At the beginning of the course, you can read about my initial reflection here.  This is where I engaged in self-reflection to identify the areas of focus I had for this program in regards to my district’s instructional framework, Danielson.  Since this course, I have had many opportunities to expand my knowledge in my self-selected area, Domain 3, along with all Danielson domains.  Survey of Instructional Strategies is the course that I got the most practice with this in, as well as got the most feedback from colleagues.  Below are links to teaching videos that reflect various teaching strategies within Domain 3. 

Linked here is my Standard 10 reflection, which highlights instructional videos, lesson plans, and coaching documents for specific instructional strategies.  All of these strategies are research based and come from Marzano’s work (Marzano, et. al, 2005). 

Even since the instructional strategies course, my skills in this area have grown due to continued reflection resources, continued access to educational research, and exposure to various leadership opportunities.  I have been able to use what I’ve gained from this course and apply it to mentorship opportunities within my building, taking specifically what I’ve worked on within Domain 3 and using that to guide newer teachers.  I look forward to continuing to develop these skills as similar opportunities arise.  One new opportunity that working on leadership skills has brought is presenting a professional development session around differentiation in math at our district-wide August PD.  I re-read my initial reflection that discussed my difficulties around differentiating without doubling the workload, and then read the course description of of the math differentiation PD, offering solutions and a brainstorming workshop to what seems like the same struggles I had two years prior.  It wasn’t until doing this that I realized just how far I had come in my learning, primarily thanks to this program. 

Another important resource that I’ve been able to take with me whenever challenges arise or I realize I need to reflect on my current practice regarding something specific is Hattie’s “Mindframes for Visible Learning” (Hattie, 2012).  Below is a picture that I have posted on my computer as a reminder to myself, which has proven valuable in many situations.  Through these 8 mindframes, I have been able to ask important questions at team meetings that have helped start to shift our thinking with some practices such as devoting specific time to review student work each meeting (#1 and #3).  I have also re-considered how I used assessment in my classroom, shifting around formative assessment to make sure it is only ever used to inform my instruction or give students a space for goal setting.  When considering the last one, “use, share, and teach language of learning”, it makes me think of the need our building had for use of common language in literacy.  Since our SIP was focused around literacy and many of our students receive interventions from specialists, I heard many complaints that our building needed to use common language in literacy instruction so that the specialists didn’t have to adapt to each classroom.  A “common language committee” stemmed from this, where a subgroup of teachers could work on our “language of learning” and collaborate in order to come up with best practice for students.

Overall, the 12 Standards for Teacher Leadership and the Teacher Leadership classes themselves have helped me grow immensely both in my pedagogy and with my leadership skills.  I think the biggest takeaway from this experiences is the importance of reflection as an educator.  While there will never be a program or experience that can fully prepare you for what is ahead in our ever-changing world of education, the sharpening of teaching and coaching strategies, knowledge of where to find important resources, and the formation of a reflective professional learning community have set the stage for a successful future.  Using what I have learned from these 12 standards, I plan on practicing continuous reflection on myself to continue to improve my teaching and leadership skills while remaining in the classroom.  I would love to then transfer some of that work over to a different teacher leadership position where I could reach more teachers and students. 

Resources:

Hattie, John. Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning.(2012). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Marzano, Robert J., Pickering, Debra J. & Pollock, Jane E. (2005). Classroom Instruction that Works, Research-based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.