It has been a whirlwind of a year with Touro. I feel like my objectives for the program have changed and shifted dramatically. When I started back in January and considered topics for my research and driving questions, I had a strong focus on assessment. I wanted to develop or prove or change something about student assessment so I could convince other teachers to change their practice. I was coming at it from a lens of being a teacher leader or teacher trainer. The program was, for me, a career based move. Getting a master’s degree would open doors and the work I did in Touro would be the first steps in moving forward. I never wanted to leave the classroom, but I definitely wanted to create something that would go beyond my classroom.
I still have the goal of working past my own classroom. I still want my work to impact other teachers and the way they design their learning environments. I am still a strong believer in growth mindsets and student agency as some of the strongest tools we have to work with as educators. However, doing the action research and beginning to build my capstone has changed my perspective some. While researching Dweck and Gallagher and Boaler in deeper detail, I found a passion for trying new things in my own classroom again. My school and district are pretty far ahead of the rest of the state in terms of 21st Century Learning and PBL, so sometimes I feel like it is easy to forget all the other cool resources and research going on in the world and just focus on improving the magic at your own site. So, while my capstone has not actually changed in terms of scope or topic, I am approaching it through a more experiential method. I am pushing my own classroom even more as I think about how I want to develop this broad toolkit for teachers. All that to say, my driving question is now: How might we create a culture of agency in math classrooms by empowering students to take charge of their learning via diverse digital resources? Assessment no longer appears in the text of my driving question, even though it is still a crucial part of the process. I have shifted language to “culture of agency” to better fit with my site and district language. I specifically integrated technology into the language, at first just because Touro and NapaLearns have a tech focus, but now because I believe it is the best way to impact the most students in the most learning environments. Overall, the experience with Touro has shaped the way I viewed my goals and my plans for meeting them, even though the content of the goals has stayed the same. So, to put it in words, my goals are to build a product that is useful to fellow educators and to convince them of the merit of agency and a growth mindset; to experiment in and improve the culture of my own classroom; to share what I have learned through my PLCs at my own school site. I am thankful to have an awesome cohort around me that is always ready with feedback, encouragement, edification, and insight. My cohort has diverse experiences and expertise that lead to valuable meetings together. We have teachers who have taught abroad in different cultures and systems, teachers on the cutting edge of technology in the classroom, coaches, and teachers who have survived multiple educational frameworks as students, professionals or both. Most importantly, it is a cohort of great people who can make a 2 hour night class feel fun. They are some of the best support a student could ask for in their feedback, their humor, and their willingness to let you know you aren’t alone when Weebly got the best of you or that research paper is still a work in progress. Ultimately, I look forward to finishing my project with these peers and seeing the wonderful products they develop themselves.
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I was going to begin this blog by comparing my level of artistic ability to an animal, but then I researched the kind of art animals are capable of producing and realized they are better than me. Either way, my students will gladly tell you that drawing and graphics are not my strong suit. So, the idea of designing a logo was a little daunting at first. I began my journey by looking at a lot of logos. I went through previous cohorts pages and and looked over the infographics on color and logos we had looked at previously. This gave me some ideas to start with.
The first big idea I had was that I did not like logos that were too on the nose. A lot of logos from previous cohorts were very literal. A toolbox, computers, school supplies. I do not feel like that approach is a good fit for my product. I played around with the idea of using a brain or some kind of sapling-type image but both felt overdone already. I latched onto logos like Khan Academy’s. Khan has a logo that represents what they are about, growing, but it is not actually related to what they do, computer based learning. So, I decided I wanted a more abstract logo or a concrete logo that represented the values of my project, rather than what the project literally was. I settled on a tagline of “Agency is power.” The whole purpose of my capstone is to change mindsets and develop life long learning skills. I frequently remind my students that, if the world was fair, they would only get two and a half minutes of my attention in class everyday. They NEED to be able to have some agency in their work. I need to teach them to seek out resources that are effective for them. I need to teach them that whether a teacher is there or not, they are the ones who own the learning. If I can do that successfully, I have empowered students to succeed in all classes, all subjects. I have many adult friends who struggle in math and are not proud of it. I always tell them it probably is not their fault. One bad year with a teacher or one year upset by family or personal situations can have long lasting ripple effects in math education. One of our cohort members says they struggled in math earlier but are working to re-learn it as an adult, through Khan Academy. There is power for students in the realization that they have agency in their learning. So, I decided a lightning bolt or electricity type of graphic could be effective and if I did not like that, I would want some kind of abstract symbol like Sprint or Chase. Their logos take advantage of principles of shape and color but do not actually seem connected to their business. Next, I found a free logo making website, because the internet truly is the great equalizer. I input my preferences for text, style, colors, and tagline. The website generated around 2000 sample icons and I spent some time going through it. This lead me to thinking about color matching a bit more. Before I went looking, I had very little opinion on colors I wanted, but after seeing different types of colors paired with my product name and tagline, certain preferences became clear. Greens reminded me too much of existing things like Khan Academy. Red seemed too harsh. Most of the logos I instinctively liked were composed of blues. Most shockingly, I really enjoyed orange as an accent ro secondary color. It just made sense with my tag line to have a color like orange, or at least an energetic accent. So, after much deliberation, I narrowed it down to two options, one with a blue and orange scheme with a lightning bolt and another with a blue contrast and abstract graphic. I’m still trying to decide which I want to use before I purchase rights to it, but the process ahs been much more exciting and enjoyable than I thought! My school site does not seem to have a mission statement specific to technology. However, I do know that technology and 21st Century Skills are part of the set of district goals that teachers are evaluated on, so our school does have a vision for implementing technology. Our vision statement specifically says,
“Inspiring and preparing students today for the possibilities of tomorrow by instilling the 4 "C"s (Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration & Creativity) in a respectful, safe, collaborative community by utilizing clear expectations and focusing on strengthening relationships.” I think the most technologically inclined section of the statement is “preparing students today for the possibilities of tomorrow.” In fact, I kind of like this open ended statement because of how much technology changes. The idea of technology and the way it is used today could be vastly different than the future. The last ten years alone have been dramatic in terms of digital citizenship, social media, educational technologies, and how students learn. A technology goal from the early 2000s might be nonsensical today. Similarly, today’s ideas of what a school should do for technology might be vastly inadequate in 2025. So, even though we do not explicitly discuss tech in our mission statement, I believe it is implied. In relation to my capstone, I feel very supported by my site’s mission statement. The heart of my capstone is for student’s to have meaningful choices to take charge of their own learning. Growth mindset is, at its core, about creating lifelong learners. I also feel like a growth mindset works perfectly with and is enhanced by the 4 C’s mentioned in our vision statement. In terms of my personal practice, the answer is the same. My capstone has grown from my personal practice. The idea of agency in a math classroom and student choice for how to engage in learning the content is something I have been striving for the last few years. Any time I have spoken with my administration about putting students in the driver's seat, making sure they know what they are learning, I have gotten nothing but support. In terms of improving how I support this vision statement for the future, I think it is all about integrating all 6 of the C’s. So much research on the workforce talks about how important collaboration are creativity are. As social media slowly grows to be our primary funnel for information and news, critical thinking and citizenship become even more crucial for young people in the digital age. My capstone is largely focused on changing individuals, either by inspiring teachers to change their practice or by instilling agency in individual students. A next step could be to develop ways to establish agency through collaboration. How can we use our peers a sa resource for learning and improvement? That’s a whole new driving question and does not quite fit in with my current aims towards technology and digital resources, but I am still young in my teaching career. There is time to integrate all this pieces. |
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October 2017
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