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The Risks and Rewards of Using Bended Learning to Reach More Students

written by Elizabeth Annette Bartlett on August 9, 2018

This column first appeared on EducationNC on August 9, 2018.

If, as a teacher who sees success with one class of students, I could reach twice as many students per class, why shouldn’t I try? That’s the question I asked myself in trying to solve a dilemma my middle school science students faced. In the end, it wasn’t quite that simple — but the lessons we learned will continue to benefit students.

In the 2015–16 school year, Cabarrus County Schools introduced earth and environmental science to advanced middle school students, bringing it down from ninth grade to eighth grade. As a teacher at Harris Road Middle School, I quickly saw that this meant students would have to learn two years of science in one year. Although the curricula were meant to overlap, in reality, they overlapped very little.

As the year progressed, I discovered that students simply did not have time to do hands-on labs while also incorporating the global problem-based learning that we are required to provide — something meant to increase students’ knowledge of the world. I found it unacceptable to teach science without hands-on labs.

Having seen a math teacher use blended learning to reach more students, I was intrigued by the prospect that this could solve the lab time shortage problem.

In math, students were with the teacher on day one, with an assistant monitoring their online learning on day two, back with the teacher on day three, and so on. This allowed the teacher to cover two full sections in one class period.

So I approached my principal with an idea: Use the blended-learning teacher-reach model so that I could teach a group of seventh-grade advanced science in the same class period as my eighth-grade earth and environmental students. Then, I could bring some of the eighth-grade content into seventh grade, lightening the load for the next year. For example, I could add the weather content to the already-scheduled nine weeks on weather in seventh grade, and bring the eighth-grade molecular biology unit in, as the seventh-grade curriculum already incorporated a cells unit, human body unit, and genetics unit.

By adding the time with an assistant, students could now learn some material online, with materials I created, freeing my time with them for more labs.

My principal thought long and hard about it, but in the end, he gave his go-ahead for the following school year. With my additional classes — two each of advanced seventh-grade science and earth and environmental science — I had a total of 250 students.

I spent the summer creating the content for both courses, using planning time paid for by my district. Focusing on pace and standards, I put all the material into Canvas, an online learning management system that would give students access to the content any time, anywhere.

In the beginning, I kept wondering “what have I done to myself?” as I would go home exhausted at night, still needing to prepare for the next day. Since I developed the digital content, I really didn’t expect a lot of prep through the school year. However, a teacher must adjust for each year’s students, and my district did not incorporate extra planning time for blended-learning teachers that year.

I soon discovered my seventh-graders were not ready for independent digital content. Lacking the maturity at first to be successful, they needed to be direct-taught and to slowly incorporate the independent, online learning. For the first half of the year, students found it hard to make the switch between my teaching and their work with the assistant — if we said the same thing in different ways, students believed we were telling them two totally different things. They needed the maturity and many critical thinking activities to grasp this and be able, by the end of the year, to work well using the blended-learning model.

The payoff came the next year, when those students moved up to the eighth-grade earth and environmental science class. They retained much of what they learned in seventh grade, and they had the maturity to start working on day one in the blended model. That showed in student learning growth scores — students in seventh grade met growth expectations, while in eighth grade, they exceeded expected growth for both the eighth-grade information and the earth and environmental instruction. I believe the difference was their maturity level, and the ability of the older students to be ready to work more at their own pace.

I especially saw that maturity change during lab time — in seventh grade, students felt labs were play time instead of a learning opportunity. Throughout the year, I was able to witness changes in their attitudes during labs and in their self-motivation to complete work online.

Unfortunately, after a lot of discussion and debate, the school administration decided to end the blended model for the advanced seventh-graders, instead having all students take the same regular science class. I agreed with the decision; seventh grade for most students is all about change, and another advanced class was adding a lot of stress to most students’ already-packed schedule.

But we’ll take the lessons we learned further into eighth grade, where I will be extending my reach to six blended earth and environmental classes — exposing many students to the increasingly needed experience of online learning. And I will continue to extend my reach by acting as a mentor to our new seventh-grade science teacher, using the insights gained in my years with both grades.

Elizabeth Annette Bartlett is a blended-learning science teacher at Harris Road Middle School in Concord, N.C., where she was the school’s teacher of the year in 2017. She was named the outstanding earth science teacher for North Carolina in 2017, and went on to be named the eight-state Southeastern region winner.

Finding Inspiration Again Through Teacher Leadership

written by Candace Butler on March 5, 2018

This column first appeared on EducationNC on February 23, 2018.

As a young child I was always taught the famous proverb: If you love your job, you will never work a day in your life. I discovered my passion in education—my love for learning and teaching. So I have truly never “worked” since I was 21 years old. As I matured, though, I realized that we all need continued inspiration to keep pushing toward the goal of creating successful students.

After 11 years of teaching, I began to feel complacent. I knew the lessons. I knew the students. I knew the building. I knew the staff. My passion was dwindling. I needed to reach out and change lives in a different way.

[Read more…]

When Teachers Leave Midyear, Instructional Teacher-Leadership Keeps Classes Strong

written by Molly Whelan on February 13, 2018

This column first appeared on EducationNC on February 7, 2018.

I recently sat down to talk with my principal about why the multi-classroom leader role has proved so crucial when midyear turnover leaves a teaching team short, or with a long-term substitute.

My journey in education began in 2009 when I joined Teach for America and was placed in Charlotte as a seventh-grade math teacher. In 2011, I left teaching to go to graduate school in Boston for social work, but soon realized how much I missed teaching—so by February 2012, I was back at my old school. The next year, I joined Ranson IB Middle School as a math teacher, just as Project L.I.F.T (Leadership & Investment For Transformation) began. This new learning community of traditionally low-performing schools within Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools aimed to recruit and retain excellent teachers, increase access to technology, and increase in-school and out-of-school opportunities with the help of donor funding.

Now under the leadership of Principal Erica Jordan-Thomas, Ranson is in its fourth year as an Opportunity Culture school, and I am a multi-classroom leader (MCL) for a three-teacher team. We MCLs wear many hats every day—we coach our team teachers using the Real-Time Teacher Coaching method from CT3 that involves live coaching through walkie-talkies, analyze assessment data, pull small groups, and plan lessons. At this high-needs school, we’re successful in large part because of the support and professional development we MCLs get from Ms. Jordan-Thomas in our weekly meetings as the instructional leadership team.

At Ranson, Opportunity Culture has helped us retain more teachers and filled most or all openings before the school year. However, as in all schools, sometimes the school must hire long-term substitutes when a teacher leaves midyear or takes extended leave. Here’s an edited and condensed version of our talk. For more, see the video of our conversation.

[Read more…]

Beyoncé and Teacher Pay: TEDx Talk Tells All!

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on December 7, 2017

What does Beyoncé have to do with great teachers? Ranson IB Middle School Principal Erica Jordan-Thomas wants you to know:

“There are Beyoncé educators in every single school building dropping number 1 albums year after year in the form of mind-blowing results with their kids.”

But, Jordan-Thomas says in her just-posted Fall 2017 TEDx talk, those Beyoncé educators are being held back by the traditional one-teacher, one-classroom setup in most schools. And there just aren’t enough Beyoncé educators to fill every U.S. classroom.

[Read more…]

Days in the Life: Video, Vignette Show the Work of a Successful Multi-Classroom Leader

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on November 30, 2017

When Opportunity Culture multi-classroom leaders describe their jobs—providing intensive, on-the-job coaching, support for planning, and data analysis leadership to a team of teachers while continuing to teach students, too—they hear the same question: How do you fit all that in?

See the answer in a new video and vignette from Public Impact: Days in the Life: The Work of a Successful Multi-Classroom Leader. These publications are useful for principals in Opportunity Culture schools, current multi-classroom leaders (MCLs), other instructional teacher-leaders, and anyone applying to become an MCL.

[Read more…]

Opportunity Culture Voices: How My West Texas School Elevated Struggling Young Readers (and Their Teachers)

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on June 21, 2017

For years, my school, Washington Elementary in Big Spring, Texas, struggled to meet all our students’ literacy needs. We group students in tiers, as in the “Response to Intervention” model, but each year we were still left with extremely large groups in Tier II and Tier III — struggling students and chronically struggling students. Each year, we tried to reinvent the wheel to increase our student success, but to no avail — until last year.

Most of Washington’s students come from low socioeconomic status households. Several have grandparents or someone other than parents raising them, several come to school hungry and dirty, many have parents who work multiple jobs and cannot help with homework, and quite a few have at least one parent in prison. When small children are forced to deal with situations like these, school often takes a back seat. Nevertheless, my coworkers and I must make sure they receive a quality education.

[Read more…]

How to Lead and Achieve Instructional Excellence

written by Sharon Kebschull Barrett on June 6, 2017

Opportunity Culture schools nationally achieve far more schoolwide high growth than comparable schools, on average. How have teachers who reach more students than is typical—directly or by leading teams—gotten that high growth? They pursue instructional excellence fast and well.

In new, free online help from Public Impact, we share the critical elements of great teaching and great team leadership. Free of jargon so any school, anywhere can use them, and backed up by experts and research, the elements also link to the work of leading experts and more resources.

[Read more…]

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