“The presumption of competence requires a belief that a person possesses the basic ability to do something, however imperfectly.”(Kindle loc.1562, Fisher et. al) This requires a school to a create a positive learning environment that has students, teachers, parents, and other staff collaborate and create a place where all students feel welcomed, appreciated, and respected. Our school makes sure that all of our students feel this way through the implementation of various programs and teaching methods that focus on building our students’ self esteem and confidence while challenging their intellect.
There are two programs currently in place that help support this positive learning environment: the 7 habits and Peace Builders. Both of these programs focus on making situations learning experiences as opposed to times in which a student feels like they’ve failed. Failure is definitely not option around our campus. The students are instead taught about the importance of being proactive by making good choices and beginning with the end in mind, so that their “failures” are actually learning experiences.
Another strategy that our school has created to empower our students, is think win-win. Our school tries to instill this across campus, by having events that bring forth everyone’s talents. One of these events is the international fair. This event brings the school together to celebrate the diverse cultures around the world with performances put together by all the classes. Everyone chooses a country, and they focus on learning as much as they can on their country’s culture. Then they showcase that knowledge in their classrooms and with a performance. The whole school comes together and we build strong relationships, so that the students feel empowered and ready to take on anything.
While our school creates a positive learning environment, and a place in which all of our students can learn, we still have room for growth in summative assessments.These assessment are long, detailed, and do not lend themselves to a it’s never too late to learn philosophy. I want to be able to give my students a second chance, because I’m aware that there are certain things that would impeded them from performing well on a given day. Also, the short stories, are supposed to be read in a cold read, which means that to accurately measure their fluency they are only allowed to be read once.
As future Leader I would do the following:
I would support I would focus on making sure that all of our teachers were knowledgeable on this philosophy. To make sure that my staff was purposefully using this I would take ten minutes from our staff meeting minutes to have each staff member share out how they were implementing i never too late to learn strategies. Then I would ask one of our staff members, whomever felt comfortable, to share their strategies with the rest of the staff. We would then discuss, in groups, how these positive things were helping this teacher’s students feel empowered. Then take a quick minute, or two, to find a way to incorporate one of two of these strategies in their own classroom and report back.
I would take 15 minutes every other week and sit down with a teacher who felt they needed support in implementing this philosophy. I would want my staff to feel supported, so that they can do a better job at implementing such a crucial philosophy in student achievement. We would create a simple action plan that would guide the teacher towards feeling more comfortable implementing this philosophy. We would then schedule a follow up mini-meeting to discuss their progress and set other goals, if we felt there was a need to.
By implementing these two procedures I would hope that my staff would then be the catalysts in setting up environment in which students felt that they could learn with less of the intense pressures of being graded, and not given another chance to try again, if they were not being successful.
We use our LMS as a way to collaborate and share resources amongst staff. I personally love sharing anything I do with my other colleagues. I feel that by doing this we can compare outcomes and strategies, so that we can improve the resource that brought us together and make it better, or synergize to create a win-win situation. As a result, our LMS lends itself perfectly to creating a never too late to learn environment without having to worry too much about making other teachers feel like I’m adding something else on their already full plate.
With that said, I will continue to share out my assessments and include quick instructions that incorporate a never too late to learn philosophy, so that other teachers can see how this type of assessing empowers students to want to learn the content and not penalize them if they don’t get it the first time.
Commit to 5 things you are willing to do this semester that will make your school a increase learning opportunities:
I will commit to the following things:
Fisher, Douglas; Frey, Nancy; Authors, Ian Pumpian (2012-04-27). How to Create a Culture of Achievement in Your School and Classroom (Professional Development) (Kindle Locations 1567-1568). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Kindle Edition.
There are two programs currently in place that help support this positive learning environment: the 7 habits and Peace Builders. Both of these programs focus on making situations learning experiences as opposed to times in which a student feels like they’ve failed. Failure is definitely not option around our campus. The students are instead taught about the importance of being proactive by making good choices and beginning with the end in mind, so that their “failures” are actually learning experiences.
Another strategy that our school has created to empower our students, is think win-win. Our school tries to instill this across campus, by having events that bring forth everyone’s talents. One of these events is the international fair. This event brings the school together to celebrate the diverse cultures around the world with performances put together by all the classes. Everyone chooses a country, and they focus on learning as much as they can on their country’s culture. Then they showcase that knowledge in their classrooms and with a performance. The whole school comes together and we build strong relationships, so that the students feel empowered and ready to take on anything.
While our school creates a positive learning environment, and a place in which all of our students can learn, we still have room for growth in summative assessments.These assessment are long, detailed, and do not lend themselves to a it’s never too late to learn philosophy. I want to be able to give my students a second chance, because I’m aware that there are certain things that would impeded them from performing well on a given day. Also, the short stories, are supposed to be read in a cold read, which means that to accurately measure their fluency they are only allowed to be read once.
As future Leader I would do the following:
I would support I would focus on making sure that all of our teachers were knowledgeable on this philosophy. To make sure that my staff was purposefully using this I would take ten minutes from our staff meeting minutes to have each staff member share out how they were implementing i never too late to learn strategies. Then I would ask one of our staff members, whomever felt comfortable, to share their strategies with the rest of the staff. We would then discuss, in groups, how these positive things were helping this teacher’s students feel empowered. Then take a quick minute, or two, to find a way to incorporate one of two of these strategies in their own classroom and report back.
I would take 15 minutes every other week and sit down with a teacher who felt they needed support in implementing this philosophy. I would want my staff to feel supported, so that they can do a better job at implementing such a crucial philosophy in student achievement. We would create a simple action plan that would guide the teacher towards feeling more comfortable implementing this philosophy. We would then schedule a follow up mini-meeting to discuss their progress and set other goals, if we felt there was a need to.
By implementing these two procedures I would hope that my staff would then be the catalysts in setting up environment in which students felt that they could learn with less of the intense pressures of being graded, and not given another chance to try again, if they were not being successful.
We use our LMS as a way to collaborate and share resources amongst staff. I personally love sharing anything I do with my other colleagues. I feel that by doing this we can compare outcomes and strategies, so that we can improve the resource that brought us together and make it better, or synergize to create a win-win situation. As a result, our LMS lends itself perfectly to creating a never too late to learn environment without having to worry too much about making other teachers feel like I’m adding something else on their already full plate.
With that said, I will continue to share out my assessments and include quick instructions that incorporate a never too late to learn philosophy, so that other teachers can see how this type of assessing empowers students to want to learn the content and not penalize them if they don’t get it the first time.
Commit to 5 things you are willing to do this semester that will make your school a increase learning opportunities:
I will commit to the following things:
- I will continue to share my assessments via our LMS and include strategies that incorporate a never too late to learn philosophy.
- I will celebrate mistakes made in class and/our school and showcase the learning that came from our “mistake”
- I will have students post on a Padlet something that they feel they would like to get a second chance on, so that I can support them with that.
- I will continue to allow students to have multiple tries on our weekly assessments but now have them tell me what score they feel that they can obtain.
- I will empower my students to use proactive language at the end of each assessment that will remind them that an assessment is not the end of their learning, but the beginning of more knowledge to come.
Fisher, Douglas; Frey, Nancy; Authors, Ian Pumpian (2012-04-27). How to Create a Culture of Achievement in Your School and Classroom (Professional Development) (Kindle Locations 1567-1568). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Kindle Edition.