Teacher Work Days

WOW. Summer absolutely flew by! A few things I accomplished this summer before I move on:

1. I studied for and passed my Indiana CORE Licensing exams! Glad to have that out of the way!

2. I worked with Fishers color guard for four weeks and learned A LOT about my strengths and weaknesses as an instructor. I worked alongside some of the TOP guard performers, choreographers, and instructors in the nation and I will admit it got intimidating, but at the end of the day, once I focused back on the kids instead of my own personal insecurities, I was able to be the strong instructor that I know I am.

3. I created an entire 10 week curriculum for Intro to 3D and can't wait to implement it!

The past two days have been teacher work days. Monday morning we had a full school staff meeting and Urban introduced a new teacher evaluation system called the HSE Talent Development System. Originally, teachers submitted TLO's, a system in which you take one class, submit preliminary scores on a certain test or assignment, set a measurable goal ("by the end of the semester 98% of kids will score 70% or higher on this test" for example) and then are scored on whether or not you met that goal. This was the bulk of their evaluation along with observations by administration and the department chair. Observations and the TLO's led to teachers being marked "highly effective, effective, developing, ineffective." With TDS, teachers are now asked to submit goals more related to professional development and personal growth and are not evaluated on whether or not they meet those goals, but rather, how engaged you are in your goal setting (creating goals, a plan, implementing, reflecting, etc.) And instead of being marked "highly effective", the distinctions are now "innovating, applying, beginning," etc.

Most of the teachers seem excited about this change. I think it takes the stress off of the teachers to provide hard evidence that they are effective teachers based on numbers and is more focused on growth. I also believe TLO's were easy to hack, you just found the class with the best chance of succeeding your goal, so you were kind of cheating the system because you already knew this class would do better instead of targeting students that need the extra support and attention to get to that goal (which was supposed to be the point of doing TLO's). I believe this new evaluation system reflects how the district wants us to evaluate our students which I think is genius. Why not evaluate your teachers the way you want your teachers to evaluate their students?

After the staff meeting, we spent most of the day getting my log in and email in line, parking pass, key to the bathroom, and other chores done. I continued to work on the Canvas site and add some last minute touches. Here is a little tour of my canvas page!

I had to re-asses my pacing chart after I discovered that Wednesday and Thursday are shortened days and Friday students will be leaving class for meetings with their entire class throughout the day. It was difficult to work around, but I figured it out!

Today, there was a district wide meeting in the morning. The superintendent and mayor spoke. The mayor did an AMAZING job. He really emphasized that the city and community is a partner of HSE schools because helping shape innovative minds helps fuel the economy and create the city that we love so much. He said it much better than I did, but he did sound genuine in his desire to connect the outside community with students in school. He had a task force create a new website in which companies around Fishers can submit available internships and jobs for students to access and apply for. I wish I had recorded his speech because it was so good, but Fishers is definitely the place to be! Me and the art department were in the front row!

The rest of the day I spent prepping materials for our first activity tomorrow. I didn't want to start off with the syllabus, so we will be doing a pre-assessment activity in which students have to create a sphere from a bucket of random 2D materials (straws, paper clips, tooth picks, paper, etc). They have to continuously work the whole class period, so if they make one sphere that's fine. If they make 10, that's fine too. I'm excited to see what they come up with!

I'm definitely recognizing a lot of small, logistical oversights in my planning as I beginning jumping into this process. Danielle has been great in helping me work through them!

I am looking forward to my first day teaching tomorrow!