In March of 2015 (your first year teaching), all of the 11th graders in
your school will be taking the Common Core Exam online. Student performance on this test will
determine:
- whether or not your district will move closer to being taken over by
the state.
- whether you will be deemed ineffective, provisional, or professional
(two consecutive ineffective ratings is grounds for termination).
- the public perception of your school, which will impact enrollment,
which will impact budget ($7000-ish per student), which will impact your
livelihood.
School profile:
1200 students
60% have access to computers at home (90% of those share the computer),
70% have smartphones
3 computer labs with 2001 model Dells
Three LCD projectors to be used on a check-out basis only
No technology budget
No mandatory typing class
40% of teaching staff will be retiring within 5 years and thus are
resistant to what they view as the latest “fad” (Common Core and Smarter
Balanced)
In a nutshell, what would our action plan be to prepare for this assessment? I gathered with my fellow future English teachers and we began brainstorming. One of the ideas I (we) liked the most was the concept of a "digital classroom discussion" day. In our minds it would take place in one of the school's computer labs, where the teacher would set up a chat room where students would then silently type their responses to teacher or student prompts. Thus instead of having a typical verbal discussion everything would be typed and printed for the students to read and contribute to. Sounds kinda cool right? But there are a few kinks that need to be worked out: where will the chat take place online? Google Docs? Would each student be only recognizable to the teacher? What if several students are hogging the "conversation" with their typing? Would this really help the students understand and comprehend the day's lesson? When thinking back to the presented dilemma we were thinking this would be helpful to develop the typing skills that would be necessary for the written portions of this new online assessment. In addition, it plays into the idea of teaching with technology that we've been discussing throughout the semester.
One thing I've really liked about this class so far was the opportunity to collaborate with my English teacher colleagues. I thought it was great to bounce ideas off of one another or to just giggle in the corner of the room since we can select and read morbid stories in a class and somehow call it a lesson. Especially when it comes to implementing technology in the classroom, collaboration is pretty crucial to figuring out what might work and what doesn't in order to facilitate student learning. I'm excited to see what else this class has in store for us come fall!!
