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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October 2017
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