Tag: #Jim Knight

#LFTX17, High-Impact Instruction with Jim Knight

by Celaina Huckeba, posted in Conferences, Learning

Whew, only the end of day 1 and I am still processing the learning. I was with Jim Knight for High-Impact Instruction today. To help solidify my learning, I’m coming here to jot my notes and thoughts from the day and action plan moving forward.

First off–how awesome is this?? As part of the session, we were given the High-Impact Instruction book, a guide for Teachers and a spiral-bound notebook to guide our reading and learning from the session and the book.

Today, we focused on:

  1. The Impact Cycle for Coaching –what it is and how can it be used to increase engagement?
  2. Why is engagement important?
  3. How do we measure engagement?
  4. What teaching strategies increase student engagement?

What is engagement really? This topic has been discussed many times on campus in PLCs, with admin, and with other instructional coaches. Knight gives a suggestion for how to break it down.

Authentic Learning v. Strategic Compliance

But first, WHY is engagement important?

It is a pre-requisite for achievement, happiness, relationships, productivity and of course, learning!

Think about it. What percentage of students in your school are…

  • Authentically Engaged
  • Strategically Compliant
  • Not engaged

Research shows less than 55% of students in grades 5-12 are authentically engaged. How do you impact change to increase that percentage? Look at time on task by measuring it in classes. You can also look at authentic engagement by having students assess their learning. And then you can measure instructional time and non-instructional time.

What teaching strategies can you use to increase engagement? Chapters 5-9

  • Thinking Prompts
  • Effective Questions (Open v. Closed, Right/Wrong v. Opinion)
  • Stories
  • Cooperative Learning
  • Authentic Learning

Action plan:

  • Review the resources.
  • Find which ones you want to start the school year with for PLCs.
  • Focus on an intro with why engagement is important, then look at how it can be measured and discuss which measurement teachers want to focus on in their classrooms.
  • Think about, research, check PLN, etc–how can increasing student engagement help empower students?
  • Build a Google doc with Thinking Prompt ideas
  • READ!

Things to read from his session:

  • Flow (M.Csikszentmihalyi)
  • Blink or Tipping Points or both (Gladwell)
  • Engaging Students (P. Schlechty)
  • Success Factors for Students (article by Shane Lopez)
  • Power of Full Engagement (James E. Loehr and Tony Schwartz)
  • Refresh of Kagan Cooperative Learning Strategies

And now, off to bed, as Day 2 is fast approaching!

 

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In the summer swing!

by Celaina Huckeba, posted in Learning, Teaching

My last post was over a month ago, oops! Time to readjust my goals so that doesn’t happen again.

How has your summer been so far?

I’ve spent some time on campus for interviews (we still have a few openings in the department to fill), and I’ve spent a lot of time on my laptop grading AP Human Geography virtual school assignments. The past few days have been wonderful. I’ve had some lovely family downtime visiting Gma at the lake house, spending time with the kids, time with cousins, and just going with the flow. No real schedule of events. It has been great!

It has only been a week since I’ve researched, read, tweeted, or learned anything new really about instructional coaching, education, students, innovation, etc. My time learning has been consumed with AP Human Geography (which is really fun and fascinating). Now, it is time to get back into the swing of learning about coaching! Tomorrow is Day 1 of the Learning Forward Texas conference. I’m incredibly excited about it. My day tomorrow is all Jim Knight and then Thursday is all George Couros. I’ll be posting more here with my learning from both of those inspiring educators.

Research, Better Conversations, and Relationships!

by Celaina Huckeba, posted in #Immooc

Recently, I had a discussion with some educational leaders on my campus about what is effective in education. Some of those leaders had attended a day long presentation on Visible Learning. I was interested in the book and the research, but also very questioning of it all.  I think it is hard to find research for education that is irrefutable. I’m curious as to what others think on this as well. I guess I’m sort of a skeptic on buying into educational research without doing some research of my own first. Ha!

I believe that teaching is an art. It has so many characteristics, variables, options, etc (whatever word you want to use). My role as an instructional coach, I think, is to expose students and teachers to new and better ideas so they can use which ones best fit themselves as teachers and their students as learners.  There is a lot of research saying this strategy is the most effective, or this strategy is only sort of effective.  But is that research valid? Aren’t there TOO many variables to determine what is effective? All schools, teachers, students are different. So how do we determine what is the most effective?

Instead of just reading books on what’s most effective in education, I want to rely on more ways of encouraging students and teachers to question ideas and to try new things. Teachers and students should be finding out what works and experimenting. If something doesn’t work, then that’s okay. We can keep going. I do believe in research in that it can lead us down a path of growing, learning, changing, innovating.  But I don’t buy into the idea of one size fits all or one person’s research (or one person compiling research) is what’s best for all kids in all classrooms.

What I really like is this from Edventures of a Teacher Mom.  Have you read this blog? I LOVE this part of one of the posts (it’s an Acrostic):

Invest in their people (investment vs. expenditure)
Network. Get outside of the walls of their office, classroom, school.
Nurture relationships. Care for their people.
Open their heart. Share their hopes, dreams and fears. Let their people see their human side and who they really are.
Voice, choice and autonomy.
Act as a role-model, and risk-taker.
Trust their people more than they feel comfortable with.
Empathize with their people. Understand who they are, what they hope, what they fear, etc.

I think the blogs and ideas from educators around the world has so much power! I read her acrostic (and the rest of her blog postings for that matter) and found myself nodding along in agreement and being delightfully surprised in her working and how it all just makes SO MUCH SENSE in connecting innovation to learning.

Speaking of research, Jim Knight (who focuses on Instructional Coaching) talks about how CONVERSATIONS (really, better conversations) are the LIFEBLOOD of a school. That the biggest way to change a school, to make an impact is to improve the conversations that are happening.  Sheila in her post says “It’s all about the heart work.” That is so powerful. I think her thoughts, Jim Knight’s thoughts tie in perfectly with the importance of Relationships from The Innovator’s Mindset…from what George Couros and Katie Martin have been talking about. And really, what almost all of the #IMMOOC participants have blogged about.

If you think about all of the pieces of a school, of learning, of people, of innovation…isn’t it all really about conversations and relationships? Aren’t those what make us human? What make us connect, learn, and grow?  I think we all know this, it’s just nice to think about it, talk about it out loud, and blog about it.

Thanks for listening! I hope we can have a conversation, a better conversation that is about innovation, learning, growing, changing and being!

–Celaina