Section 4

Chapter 14

One issue I have grappled with over the years is time management within my school year. Each class period my students are required to take a twenty-question short answer quiz. While this is effective in preparing them for Unit exams and ensuring they are keeping up with the rigorous workload, it is very time consuming for me. I spend so much time grading these quizzes that I feel as though I could make better use of that time lesson planning. One solution I came up with very recently is that I have my students grade their own quiz the same day they take the quiz. I have them use different color ink then they used while taking the quiz, and I go over the entire quiz aloud as they check their answers. Not only has the greatly impacted the amount of time I have to plan lessons, it has also been very beneficial to their learning. They hear, almost immediately, the correct answers to the quiz, instead of just waiting on me to grade them and hand them back. Furthermore, I no longer rely on them to check their wrong answers to see what the correct answer is; this ensures they are learning from their mistakes and will be less likely to make the same mistake whenever it is time for their unit test.

Chapter 15

I like how the text refers to Performance Support as “band aids” that are in place in order to assist and prepare an employee for situations that might arise which can hinder his or her work performance. As I stated in the section above, deep into my teaching career I noticed an issue with time management. I think that this is not an issue that is isolated to my classroom, but is an ongoing issue for many educators. We have so many responsibilities that are required of us, whenever our main objective is to ensure a quality education for the learner. I believe a good performance support system would be that educators are taught early on about the importance of time management, and how to properly delegate the time we spend on various tasks. Throughout an educator’s career, we are required to take part in many staff development trainings. These trainings are required, in addition to the extensive training we are require to have a the beginning of our career. I cannot think of training that I have had in my 12-year career that touched on time management. Perhaps a good Performance Support method for this issue would be staff development support and training sessions specifically designed to assist teachers in managing their time and numerous responsibilities in a more efficient and effective manner.

Chapter 16

After reading chapter 16, I realized that Tactic Knowledge would probably be the most useful type of knowledge that can be used during a collaboration process. Often times, schools divide their teachers into teams according to their grade and content area. This is an effective way for teachers to share their prior knowledge, frustrations, concerns, and ideas with one another. Veteran teachers are probably most equipped in discussing time management. If I had been able to collaborate more with a veteran teacher during my early years, perhaps they could have given me some advice as to how to effectively allocate my time. In fact, the resolution I came up with, was not 100 % my idea. I remembered a former teacher, now retired, who used to have his students, grade his or her own tests. He would brag that his workload was lessoned and he truly believed that the students learned from that grading process. This teacher and I never collaborated, but if we had, perhaps he would have encouraged me to do this a long time ago. I also like the idea of Partner-supplier relationships. To me, this could mean that evaluate myself more through my students. Perhaps I could find out if they feel they learn better through grading their own quiz.

Chapter 17

 I am in informal learning advocate. Since the beginning of my career I have heard experts and read studies that consistently point out that students learn more from one another than they do their teacher. I feel that this is obvious; they can memorize a song in a few short minutes, and hey gravitate towards certain music, art, and activities that they experiment with on their own and with their friends. People learn when they are in love with whatever it is they are learning. As a teacher, this has been a struggle. Although I realize these aforementioned facts, it is still very difficult to create these types of learning environments. Furthermore, all the staff development trainings are extremely educator-centered and speak very little about informal learning. It is not an easy to task to teach this type of learning, and you have to constantly be thinking of new ideas and way to facilitate this type of “instruction”.

Last year I gave an assignment in which students were to create fictitious blogs of various enlightenment thinkers. They are very into social media and I thought this would be a good way for them to get involved in their own learning process and research. It turned out to be very enjoyable and successful for most students, and I will definitely initiate this assignment again. The thing I will do differently is managing their progress more effectively. I allowed so much freedom that it became difficult for me to ensure accountability is met. Perhaps the next time I will give better guidelines as to exactly what I want for them to research, post about, and in their commenting section, what they needed to include.

Another informal type learning that I believe to be effective is the National History Day presentations in which I require my students to become participants. National History Day is a lot like Science Fair, in that the students can basically create any type of presentation they desire, such as a documentary, essay, theatrical performance, website, etc. At first, I thought the students were going to hate the assignment, but they actually loved participating; and incoming students actually look forward to participating. They have such freedom in this presentation, get to work alone or with peers, and I am simply a coach or guide. I actually do very little if any work leading up to the day of presentation. I have had quite a few students advance to regional competitions as well as state level competitions. The first year I did this, I did not manage them as the year progressed. However, I found that the students were not as motivated and at times lacked focused, so I set some guidelines, and due dates and this seemed to me all they needed in regards to management.