Urban By Design

URBAN LEARNER-TEACHING RESIDENCY REFLECTIONS
Week 4 -- Triad One

Monday 10/22/12 to Friday 10/26/12, 8:00 AM- 4:00 PM

Learners and Learning:
Diverse Learners

Area of Concentration:
Specific SEPT Element - Diverse Learners
Urban Diversity by Design

Research Target:
"Understanding by Design" in Principle and Practice

UbD and DI  (Tomlinson and McTighe)

"Teachers must place a strong emphasis on 

rigor, relevance, but most of all on developing 

relationships with children."

– Dr. Asa Hilliard,
former Director of Urban Studies at Georgia State University

Critical Dispositions Matrix

This week’s experiences highlighted five critical dispositions related to Diverse Learners:

• Teacher believes that all learners can achieve at high levels and persists in helping each learner reach his/her full potential.
  
• Teacher respects learners as individuals with differing personal and family backgrounds and various skills, abilities, perspectives, talents, and interests.
  
• Teacher makes learners feel valued and helps them learn to value each other.
  
• Teacher values planning as a collegial activity.
  
• Teacher believes that plans must always be open to adjustment and revision based on learner needs and changing circumstances.
   

Culturally Responsive Framework

Three core markers related to Culturally Responsive Teaching and learning assessment have been highlighted by this week’s experiences:

• Establishing inclusion: Creating a learning atmosphere in which learners and instructors feel respected by and connected to one another.
  
  
• Developing attitude: Creating a favorable disposition toward the learning experience through personal relevance and choice.
  
   
• Recognize that the varying experiences, abilities, language, culture, and family and community values learners bring to school with them are assets that can be used to promote their learning.

Implications for Practice

My fourth practicum week was an important and had a sense of closure to the first phase of the process. I fully participated in the classroom and led the activities. My ability to team-teach and manage the at-times awkward position was established. My presence, purpose and place have been clarified -- at least for the learners in my focus class.

Student-teaching requires the ability to manipulate multiple educational perspectives. Beyond negotiating the multi-level relationship with the CT, the practicum requires one to be student-manager, student-boss, student-grader and student-leader. Also, at any given point in the process, the 25-30 student perspectives on, and cultural comfort with, the classroom's team-teaching environment must be considered. The practicum requires political skills that are not expressly addressed in the Cooperative Teaching model or the "Suggested Timeline of Responsibilities for the Student Teaching" in the university’s handbook.

Just as there are “teaching hospitals,” there should be “teaching schools.” It would be a matter of a college urban teaching program adopting a specific school and interacting so closely with the student community that they would perceive the “student-teacher” as a normal and important part of the classroom. The enormous benefits to be gained by both the college and the participating public school simply cannot be overstated. The ability to share facilities and resources alone is reason enough to have such a program. That these relationships are not in place nearly everywhere in the country speaks volumes about our nation’s disjointed and dysfunctional educational system.

Key implications toward a practical
Framework for Excellence in Urban Classroom Leadership:

• Create coherent lesson plans that are engaging and relevant
  
  
   
• Dialogic instruction allows learners to be actively involved and own their learning
  
  
   
• The culturally competent educator seeks to use learners’ diverse knowledge to connect content concepts and skills
  

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Connecting Classroom to Community

URBAN LEARNER-TEACHING RESIDENCY REFLECTIONS
Week 3 --Triad One

Monday 10/15/12 to Friday 10/19/12, 8:00 AM- 4:00 PM

Professional Responsibility:
Collaboration, Ethics and Relationships

Area of Concentration: Collaboration
Connecting Classroom to Community

Guiding Questions:

What are the core components of a framework for effective and efficient family-teacher conferences that support diverse learners and their families? How can urban schools best connect the classroom to the multicultural community?

In what negative ways might the community’s various ethnic, linguistic and cultural social groups perceive the education system, the school environment or the family-teacher dynamic?  How has this school accounted for cultural concerns?

Critical Dispositions Matrix

This week’s experiences highlighted four critical dispositions related to the area of Collaboration, Ethics and Relationships:

• Teacher takes responsibility for student learning and uses ongoing analysis and reflection to improve planning and practice.
• Teacher is committed to deepening understanding of his/her own frames of reference (e.g., culture, gender, language, abilities, ways of knowing), the potential biases in these frames, and their impact on expectations for and relationships with learners and their families.
• Teacher sees him/herself as a learner, continuously seeking opportunities to draw upon current education policy and research as sources of analysis and reflection to improve practice.
• Teacher understands the expectations of the profession including codes of ethics, professional standards of practice, and relevant law and policy.

Culturally Responsive Framework

Four markers related to Culturally Responsive Teaching and the pedagogical domain of Collaboration, Ethics and Relationships have been highlighted by this week's experiences:

• Maintaining a respect-filled learning environment that reflects a multicultural perspective
• Instructional planning that accounts for multiple literacies and supports linguistic diversity
• Engendering competence
• Differentiated instruction and assessments

Implications for Practice

Week three of my urban school residency was exciting, energizing and empowering! Although I am still struggling to organize and prioritize my work, I am finding new ways to think about urban teacher training itself.

This culminating student-teaching educational experience – what I am calling my capstone -- presents an obstacle course of interrelated but un-collated objectives, obligations and obligatory chores. I have devised a system to integrate and consolidate assignments. Considering the TPA, UTP and state requirements, there are simply too many things to do if I am to reach my goal – to synthesize Metro State course learning and education theory research through my practicum in the “real” world, resulting in a true capstone experience featuring authentic artifacts that reflect the critical dispositions central to the art and craft of managing the culturally-rich urban classroom . . .

Key implications toward a practical
Framework for Excellence in Urban Classroom Leadership:

• Be flexible and understanding about the underlying cause of classroom misbehavior.
  
  
• Enforce rules but make the punishment fit the crime.
  
  
• Create opportunities for diverse learners to form a positive and healthy social identity.
  
  
• Construct an intentionally diverse, culturally inclusive environment where each family’s cultural community and social identity is considered.
  
  
• Call the roll and openly acknowledge each member of the learning community. Make it a time to share a thought or say one positive thing about the day. If time is at issue on a particular day simply turn the roll call into a quick game – but honor the ritual of calling the roll so that at every session, each person has been acknowledged, if only for a brief moment.
  
  
• Provide specific opportunities for positive family interaction.
   
• Share fully with families in the academic targets and goals. Allow caregivers to take responsibility for raising student achievement. 
  
  
• Institute an “early warning system” for discipline issues and provide timely feedback about behavior.
  
  
• Make school conferences a very positive and prompt meeting, and provide pathways to conference further.
  
  
• Use a well-designed, consistently updated website as a communication tool.

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Assessing Diverse Learners

URBAN LEARNER-TEACHING RESIDENCY REFLECTIONS
Week 2 -- Triad One

Monday 10/08/12 to Friday 10/12/12, 8:00 AM- 4:00 PM

Instructional Practice:

Assessment - Practices, Strategies, Efficacy

Area of Concentration:
Assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous
intellectual and social development of urban learners.

Critical Dispositions Matrix

This week’s experiences highlighted four critical dispositions related to assessment:

• Teacher is committed to providing timely and effective descriptive feedback to learners on their progress.
  
  
• Teacher is committed to using multiple types of assessment processes to support, verify, and document learning.
  
  
• Teacher is committed to making accommodations in assessments and testing conditions, especially for learners with disabilities and language learning needs.
  
  
• Teacher is committed to the ethical use of various assessments and assessment data to identify learner strengths and needs to promote learner growth.

Culturally Responsive Framework

Four markers related to Culturally Responsive Teaching and learning assessment have been highlighted by this week’s experiences:

• Curriculum content that avoids bias and reflects the contributions of all cultures
  
  
• Consistent incorporation of culturally relevant classroom materials
  
  
• Enhancing meaning
  
  
• Engendering competence

Implications for Practice

Student-teaching requires a great deal of organization in order to maximize the learning experience.

One suggestion for organizing the 12-week practicum is to designate a small number of focus students to train on as control cases. While certainly, each learner is a unique individual – it will be clarifying to study a set of three or four particular learners in greater depth, allowing for comparison and contrast of a broad range of specific information.

In an effort to organize my thinking and assess my learning, I have also devised a system using Minnesota’s SEPT as a weekly practicum focus.

The weekly focus standard becomes not only a target for specific reflection, but acts as an anchor limiting written reports to critical and connected reflection – as opposed to passive musing back on whatever happened to have popped up. The practicum experience benefits from this organizing tool because it can direct and shape the learning. The meaning of the week’s events – both as a student and a teacher – are synthesized. The various course assignments, TPA tasks and licensure requirements can be placed in the student controlled practicum schedule’s practice-to-research context of the week, as organized by state standards – resulting in associated, standards-based field artifacts.

My second practicum week was a total and complete success! I am very proud of my training and preparedness to enter the diverse urban classroom. I see urban learners who simply need an excuse to do something great. The goal to inspire excellence in urban learners is sometimes achieved by simply giving them a positive word.

Key implications toward a practical
Framework for Excellence in Urban Classroom Leadership:

• Expect excellence and reward it.
  
  
  
• Learning targets must align to a testable knowledge, skill, or reasoning ability.
  
  
  
• To be effective, feedback must be: connected to a rubric or specific learning target; communicative of success; clarifying (either confirmative or corrective); and it must be continuous.
  
  
  
• Call the roll and openly acknowledge each member of the learning community. Make it a time to share a thought or say one positive thing about the day. If time is at issue on a particular day simply turn the roll call into a quick game – but honor the ritual of calling the roll so that at every session, each person has been acknowledged, if only for a brief moment.
  
  
  
• The culturally competent educator respects families' beliefs, norms, and expectations and seeks to work collaboratively with learners and families in setting -- and meeting -- challenging goals.

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Meeting Students Where They Are

URBAN LEARNER-TEACHING RESIDENCY REFLECTIONS
Week 1 -- Triad One

Monday 10/01/12 to Friday 10/05/12, 8:00 AM- 4:00 PM

Learners and Learning:

Learning Environment

Area of Concentration: Environment

Critical Dispositions Matrix

This week’s experiences highlighted two critical dispositions related to Learning Environments:

• Teacher is committed to working with learners, colleagues, families, and communities to establish positive and supportive learning environments.
  
  
• Teacher is committed to supporting learners as they participate in decision making, engage in exploration and invention, work collaboratively and independently, and engage in purposeful learning.

Culturally Responsive Framework

Three markers related to Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Environments have been highlighted by this week’s experiences:

• A respect-filled learning environment where all teachers and subjects "reflect a multicultural perspective"
  
  
• Learning strategies that activate and celebrate cultural knowledge
  
  
• Enhancing meaning

Implications for Practice

The nature of my position as student-teacher is at times freeing, and at times, frustrating. I am not in charge of my own classroom. Learning to be an effective student-teacher requires a very specific and complex skill-set. The practicum experience would benefit from an entire course or workshop focused on student teaching, cooperative teaching and learning through teaching.

Over all, this was a fantastic week getting to know my urban learners! Yes, I see them being disrespectful. But, I also see them being disrespected. I see urban learners testing boundaries – and being tested. What I most notice about urban learners is their resilience!

Key implications toward a practical
Framework for Excellence in Urban Classroom Leadership:

• Set high standards
  
  
• Be explicit about behavior expectations and the home/ school conundrum
  
  
• Actively show respect for urban learners and for their learning
  
  
• Catch students doing something good and point it out!
  
  
• Cultural competence is a commitment to deepening understanding of one’s own cultural frames of reference, potential biases in these frames, and their impact on expectations for and relationships with diverse urban learners and their families.

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