RSA#1 – Peer Coaching as Collaboration

One of the core concepts behind a PLC (Dufour, 2004) is the idea that teachers need to collaborate.  Dufour (2011) brings up a great point in that many other professions and jobs require employees to work together to achieve goals and that teachers shouldn’t be an exception to that.  Teachers should be doing everything they can to help their students learn, and getting ideas from other teachers seems to make sense in order to achieve this goal at challenging schools in particular. 

I was curious about how to do this beyond discussion, and looked for specific strategies on what exactly teachers can do in order to improve their instruction to increase student teaching.  Discussion and sharing is great, but sometimes merely discussing ideas isn’t enough; through experience I have learned that we learn by doing.  As I was researching, I found an article that suggested teachers need to observe and help each other out (Jewett, 2012). 

In this article, Jewett (2012) addresses the hesitancy of teachers to be coached by each other because they felt like evaluations.  In order to overcome this, Jewett expressed that as teachers resisted an expert/student approach and looked at things more as co-learners, the process went smoother.  They were able to help each other rather than one teacher pouring into another.

Quite frankly, I disagreed with this approach. While I do feel that teachers can learn from each other, a better set-up would be for a mentor-mentee approach, especially between seasoned and novice teachers.  I would rather learn from an experienced teacher I respect than someone who is in a similar place as me.  While those conversations could be beneficial, I feel I could learn quicker from a veteran.

Dufour, R. (2004). What is a “Professional Learning Community”?. Educational Leadership, 61(8). 6-11.  http://staffdev.mpls.k12.mn.us/sites/6db2e00f-8a2d-4f0b-9e70-e35b529cde55/uploads/What_is_a_PLC._DuFour_Article_2.pdf

Dufour, R. (2011). Work Together But Only if You Want To. Kappan Magazine, 92(5), 57-61. http://www.kappanmagazine.org/site/misc/Kappan92_MustReads1.pdf

Jewett, P. (2012). Adding Collaborative Peer Coaching to Our Teaching Identities. Reading Teacher, 66(2), 105-110.  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/TRTR.01089/abstract

1:1 Computer Training

Right now, I'm at this 1:1 Computer Training where we are learning to use blogs (haha) and wikis for the classroom. Eventually students are going to get netbooks to use in class. I want to maximize the use of these. Any other 1:1 users out there that can give me some help?

For fun, here is a pic of me in Germany this summer on the Deutsche Bahn.

First Post

Hello everyone! This is my first blog post about education, social studies, and other things revolving my life as "Mr. Henkels." I don't know exactly what will happen in this blog or what I expect my students to do with it, but I hope to make this a productive site for students as well as my peers in the field of education.

I guess there are some things I should make clear here. First of all, I'm going to try to make this as professional as possible and not get too personal here. I'll be honest, my job as an educator fails in comparison to the One Passion I have in my life, and I'll will post more things on that in a personal blog (if I ever decide to do that). Of course, my One Passion is the reason I teach, so its hard to separate the two.

Second, I hope this blog serves as a chance for me to connect with other educators and help develop professionally. I believe in free speech, and sharing ideas is a wonderful thing. I love to hear from people who think differently than I do (even though most of you are morons, haha jk). But we are all fallible humans who don't have it all together, so the more we can discuss the better.

So there you go, kind of uninteresting and boring, but the premise had to be laid. I look forward to communicating with you in the future!

Mr. Henkels