PD Practice – Page 4 – My Récit writings from 2014-2020

Some thoughts on change and the reform

tracyrosen on October 27, 2016

This was originally going to be a post talking about change and the reform (or the renewal, or whatever you want to call it) yet I don’t want to just add another drop to the bucket of words that is already overflowing about the reform like reform vs renewal, group work vs individual work, learning situations vs learning activities, text books, reinvestment tasks, student-centered, program centered, manifestations of learning, lecture vs experiential learning, learner vs student, grammar vs. whole language … because, in reality, there is no this vs that. Read More

Offer of Service 2016-17 – How can I help you?

tracyrosen on September 8, 2016

We are at the beginning of an exciting year with all of the anticipation that new beginnings bring us!

I need your help in discovering teacher stories to document and make videos about as well as to collaborate on the creation of new PD Mosaic tiles to use throughout the province!
Read More

Summer Infoletter: Thanking you all

tracyrosen on June 29, 2016

I love my job.

Everyday is different as I work with the Adult Education community across the province in our joint quest to get better at what we do. I learn so much every single day from all of you.

As we enter the summer season, I want to thank all of the teachers, students, support staff, consultants, and administrators who welcome me into their school boards, centres, and classrooms – who share their work and ideas with me everyday.

Without all of you and your tenacious collaboration, my job would be near to impossible.

A specific highlight for me this year was how I am seeing the use of technology become more integrated in practices across the province. Technology use is becoming less of an event and is starting to be used much more naturally, when it is needed and when it makes sense. This is something I think about a lot and it is exhilarating to see it come to life! Here is a video I created last summer that talks about this very thing.

And finally, here are the fruits of your collaboration! These are some of the most recent resources I have put together with and because of you. I am looking forward to continuing our work in August!

Teacher Stories YouTube Channel
This is where all of the teacher story videos live. Some of them are also included in different PD Mosaic tiles but if you just want to be inspired by teachers in Adult Education from across the province, take a look here. http://bit.ly/TeacherStoryVideos

PD Mosaic
Here are three PD Mosaic resources that I put together in the past month or so. They were created in collaboration with a lot of different people, so be sure to scroll down to the bottom of each tile to see who contributed. While you are there, take some time to look through the rest of the site. You never know, you may see something that inspires you or even someone you know!

An Intro to Evaluation FOR Learning – including ideas for why and how to get started from teachers http://bit.ly/EvalForLearning

Learning in Stations – including one teacher’s story about how she got started using stations with her adult learners and her plans for the future http://bit.ly/PDMosaicStations

Triangulation – creating a clearer picture of student learning through formative assessment http://bit.ly/TriangPDM

(And a special thanks to Susie for inspiring this post 🙂 )
Tracy

Learning at a Distance (or up close!): thoughts inspired by #REFAD2016

tracyrosen on May 26, 2016

I am in Ottawa at the annual conference on distance education offered by REFAD. One of the opening comments was that distance education is just one of the tools we have to reach our learners and to help frame their learning. I like that the conference started off in this vein. It flows well with my own beliefs in tools – that they are just tools in service of our real work: student learning.

The task then is how best to design learning situations that take place at a distance (or up close!) to reach the needs of our learners in ways that make sense.

The answer seems to lie in relationship and intention.

These are the same themes Avi and I explored with online tutors in adult education a few weeks ago.

CORAL (Complementary Online Resources for Adult Learners) is an online tutoring service offered to adult learners from LEARN Quebec. CORAL’s Barbara and Cheryl asked us to accompany their tutors in some professional development on tutoring at a distance.

At REFAD, presenters from CEGEP á Distance (CAD) told us their story of online tutoring. They talked about the centrality of feedback for success and for fighting dropout rates and absenteeism in distance learning.

What I found especially interesting is that their tutors are all CEGEP teachers, which is a similar situation as our CORAL tutors who are all teachers within Quebec’s English sector Adult Ed system. What the CAD is doing, is providing their tutors with explicit professional development in how to provide effective, intentional feedback as the backbone of their practice.

Roselyne Boyer from Université de Laval spoke about the biggest task in online learning being to manage the human element within all of the technology and in face of the distance. That is, in fact, her vision, as shown in this image from her presentation.

It is really from this point that Avi and I framed our Professional Development with the tutors at CORAL. Our main message was that no matter where we are teaching, the student-teacher relationship frames the work.

Rather than focusing on the technology behind online learning, if we focus on student learning we can then find the tools that make the most sense for everyone within that context.

To return to what I wrote earlier – while the teacher student relationship frames the work, there is also that other human factor that is often missing from the context of the work: the social context.

P., a high school student from Ontario took both online and face to face courses at his school and he shared his experiences with us at REFAD2016. While he did well in his online courses, he preferred his face to face courses because of his friends in the room. I have a feeling that a perfect online course (if that can possibly exist…) will exist somewhere in between the online and the face to face.

So. Flexibility, differentiation, and a recognition of the human element (it is sacred) need to be key factors of learning at a distance. Not very different from learning in presence, is it?

**Featured image: Don’t waste your time or money on ROT! Wellcome Library, London, on Flickr. Shared via CC. BY. ND. NC

My AQIFGA 2016

tracyrosen on April 27, 2016

Throwing John by Chuck Burgess on Flickr CC BY NC ND

The great thing about AQIFGA is that it holds an annual conference that focuses on Adult Education in Quebec.

Every single speaker and workshop highlighted an aspect of adult education …and that is really rare to find! We are usually left grappling with transferring ideas for youth sector to the adult education context. This is not a horrible thing but it is nice to have a place where this doesn’t have to happen.

In total I participated in four workshops – two as presenter and two as participant – and I was super happy to see a growing number of English sector teachers from across Quebec at AQIFGA this year!

Here is a summary of those four workshops:

Can One Teaching Strategy Respond to Many Needs? Yes!
Presenters – Daniel Afriyie, EMSB Math and Science teacher and Tracy Rosen, CSSMI Provincial RECIT for Adult Ed

but really, Daniel was the star of the show here. I jumped in once in a while to go into detail about why I love and respect different parts of his process. Earlier in the year I put together a couple of videos about how he uses his interactive white board to record his lessons and share them with his students. This workshop was an opportunity to go deeper into the idea – he talked about the why as well as the how…and he modeled the process by recording the workshop using the interactive white board in the room where we presented. He also talked about where he wants to go with the concept from here.

I loved that, though he presented about how he teaches math, the participants actively talked about how they could use this technique for teaching other subjects. It is such a meaningful way to use technology to improve learning and the teacher/student relationship. Thanks, Daniel – great job!

Here is the presentation from that workshop, if you are interested.
http://bit.ly/1strategyAQIFGA

But I’m Not a Math Person, so I’ll Never Get It.
Presenters – Ines Renner and Jordan Venne, LBPSB Math and Science teachers

In this workshop Ines and Jordan challenged assumptions about Math and demonstrated how our own attitudes towards the subject can affect our students’ attitudes. They focused on developing a positive, growth oriented mindset in Math and how that is what ultimately affects student self-confidence, progress, and learning. I was so impressed by their presentation that I want to work with them to create resources to share with all of you…stay tuned!

Promoting Oral Interaction in the Adult Literacy Classroom
Presenters – Yusimy Dominguez Travieso, Maria Cristina Toro, and Farideh Raygan, RSB Language teachers

The workshop focused on different strategies to teach second (and third…and fourth…) languages to diverse groups of learners. The strategies were a mix of technology, role-playing, and game based strategies and the consensus was that whatever we do with our learners it needs to be relevant to their realities. I really appreciated the conversation around culturally relevant teaching – how it is not enough to just teach a language but we need to be aware of who our learners are as well as what is happening in the community around us and integrate that awareness into our classrooms in order to make learning stick.

“Culturally relevant pedagogy has theoretical roots in the notion that learning is a socially mediated process and related to students’ cultural experiences. Culture is an important survival strategy that is passed down from one generation to another through the processes of enculturalization and socialization, a type of roadmap that guides and shapes behavior. If new information is not relevant to those frameworks of culture and cognition, people will never remember it. If the information is relevant, they will never forget it. “ http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-36-fall-2009/feature/relevant-beyond-basics

The ideas they presented fit in so nicely with the CCBE as well as the DBE program philosophies!

Have You Thought About Stations in Adult Education?
Presenters – Avi Spector, RSB Regional RECIT for Adult Education and Tracy Rosen, CSSMI Provincial RECIT for Adult Ed

We offered participants a chance to learn about using stations in their classrooms by experiencing stations. We blah-blah-blahed for about 15 minutes before jumping right in to the experience. We offered three main stations – a teacher station, a video station, and a reading station – plus an extension station for anyone who finished a station activity early (ha! With 15 minute rotations between stations there was not much time to extend the learning during the workshop 🙂 ). The two of us sat at the teacher station in order to model how it might work in a classroom where there isn’t the luxury of an extra body to make sure all is going smoothly at the other stations. In order to ensure that things DID go smoothly, we left printed instructions at each station.

I had a GREAT time at my own workshop! The beauty of cycling students through stations is the quality time that each group gets to spend with the teacher. Both Avi and I reflected that we had a richer experience as presenters because we had the opportunity to sit and connect with each of our participants in a small group setting as opposed to talking at a big group, which is what so often happens at conferences and in our classrooms.

Another reason I love using stations is that it helps to facilitate the concept of flipped learning i.e. using video to present material. The fact that we did this at one of our stations allowed us to flip within the classroom – freeing up teacher time to address questions, gauge understanding, clarify misconceptions, etc…

Here are the resources from our workshop:
Workshop Slide Show – http://bit.ly/stationsfga – Some of this was presented in the initial intro and a lot was addressed at the Teacher Station as well.

YouTube Playlist: Emilie on Stations – http://bit.ly/videostation – These were the videos we asked participants to watch at the Video Station. They were accompanied with a reflective journal activity (described in the Workshop Slide Show above).

Reading Station – participants could choose to read one or both of the following articles and then interview a partner about them (described in the Workshop Slide Show above).
Create Small Learning Communities with the Station Rotation Model by Catlin Tucker
Les Centres d’Apprentissage by Patricia Munante

So that was my AQIFGA 2016. Did you attend AQIFGA this year? What were your highlights?

***The image at the top of the blog post is Throwing John by Chuck Burgess on Flickr CC BY NC ND

A note on turnkey teacher resources…

tracyrosen on March 24, 2016

Lately I have been involved in conversations about teaching and learning in many venues – from program implementation across the province to changing teacher practice in the classroom.

A similar thread weaves itself through all of these conversations – the (expressed) need for ‘clé en main’ resources for teachers.

Do you know why it is so hard to find ‘clé en main’ (turnkey) resources for the courses that we teach? Because they don’t exist. Nowhere else in the world is there another course exactly like the one you are teaching… Right. Now.

teacher + students + content = course

The content may stay the same for a period of time but the rest of the equation is made up of variables. And when just one of those variables shifts…the course is ultimately changed.

As written in this article (by I do not know who, an author who goes by the nickname Love Teach):

Nothing about teaching is one-size fits all

It is a lovely alchemic mixture distilled through …yeah, you were wondering when I’d mention it… relationship.

Our new programs in adult education (which are extensions of the competency-based reform in the youth sector) place the focus on student-centered and community-based learning – both of which are hinged on relationship.

We know that our students and communities change all the time.

Yet, a lot of time and energy is spent on either trying to create turnkey, one size fits all resources or in seeking them out.

One of my recent conversations was with Emilie, a history teacher at Nova Career Centre who was talking about why she organizes her classroom into learning stations.

Another was with Daniel, a math and science teacher at St Laurent Adult Centre who talked about how he records and shares his content with his students as well as how he wants to move towards learning stations in his classroom.

And yet another was with a group of four teachers: Natasha and Jonathan from Place Cartier Adult Centre, and Lethisha and Troy from Pearson Adult and Career Centre who got together to talk about formative assessment.

Again, there was a common thread in these conversations … but it was of a different shade, a different count. Each of these teachers said, when trying something new in the classroom, it was important to start small, to experiment, and to find out what works best for you and your students.

This thread seems much stronger to me than the one about creating turnkey resources.

(One definition of turnkey is jailer…)

(Keys generally only work for one lock and we usually use them to keep others out.)

(image: Key to… by pi di on flickr, licensed CC BY SA 2.0)

What does your Provincial RECIT in Adult Education do?

tracyrosen on February 17, 2016

This little slide show is organized around the mandate for the Provincial Services of the RECIT in Quebec. It shows my vision as well as some examples of the work I do in different areas of Adult Education (you can click on the links to see examples).

Please contact me if you have any questions about how I can serve you in your classroom, centre, or school board.

~ Tracy Rosen

Talking about … Or doing

tracyrosen on February 8, 2016

I’m at #lceeq2016 and let me underline the fact that I am super stoked to be here. I’ve been looking forward to these 2 days for weeks.

Yesterday I read about Russel Quaglia and thought – oh yeah, he’s all about student voice and teacher voice. Squeeee!

And now I’m here and I worry that once again we’re at a conference that talks about the importance of something.

The speakers are all ‘experts’. Shouldn’t the speakers be teachers and students?

It seems to me that listening to teachers and students would be the easiest way to highlight their voices…no?

To be continued after the day…let’s see how this unfolds.

Have you looked at PD Mosaic lately?

tracyrosen on January 17, 2016

Some of you already know PD Mosaic as a website where you can find articles and resources for the professional development of teachers and other educators.

Click on the image to go the website.

Recent developments and next steps
This year, I am focusing on sharing teacher stories and adding those to the resources on the site. I consider PD Mosaic in constant development because we are always honing our craft – always looking for ways to connect our students to their learning, to manage our classrooms, to make things more interesting, to make things better. A big part of my job is listening to you – teachers, consultants, directors, support staff – and making sure that the resources you need and want are available. Last year, a number of people said that it would be great to see concrete resources that relate directly to Adult Ed in Quebec. So now, I am working on a series of video capsules showcasing teachers in Quebec’s Adult Education community doing some pretty great things with technology. Here are the PD Mosaic tiles that include the stories we have so far – click on the images to go to the tiles on PD Mosaic.

In the works are tiles on Formative Assessment, Stations, and Digital Citizenship – all with an Adult Education focus and concrete examples from centres in Quebec.

If you have ideas for specific tiles or resources to add to existing tiles – please contact me. I would love to talk with you about them!

Some useful features
Anybody can use the site as a guest but when you register to the site, you can access a few other features that you may find useful.

Useful feature 1 – language switcher
PD Mosaic was initially developed in English but it now houses tiles in both French and English. You can also access it in English as PD Mosaic or in French as Pedago Mosaique. If you are not logged in, you can switch languages at the top of each page but if you are logged in you can select your preferred language in your account settings. At all times, you can access both French and English resources.

Useful feature 2 – organizing
The resources are organized in tiles and, once you register, you can group tiles together in two ways – as ‘Want it‘, for the things you want to learn more about, or ‘Got it‘, for those things you already know a lot about. Each of these groupings then, become your own Professional Development Mosaic.

Why is this useful? If you are interested in creating a portfolio of your professional learning, for personal use or to share with others, this can be a great way to organize where you are and where you want to go in your PD.

Useful feature 3 – Note taking
As you work through the tiles that interest you, you will notice a new area on the right side of your screen for note taking. If you have not yet made a note on that tile, it will look like this Click on the image to see it larger.

If you do have a note it will look like this, Click on the image to see it larger.

You can also see and edit all of the notes you have created in one central area, like this Click on the image to see it larger.

Why is this useful? It’s a great way to remember your learning, your aha moments, your ‘ugh, this will never work’ thoughts over time and keep everything in the same place to reflect on at different times in the school year or over many years.

Useful feature 4 – Survey
Some of you may remember a tool that the RECIT created called My ICT Ease. Basically it was a questionnaire to guide a reflection on where you were in terms of using technology for teaching and learning. That tool is no longer available and some people have asked for something similar. So we developed a new questionnaire to guide a reflection on your teaching practice in general and then how technology fits into that practice. Like My ICT Ease, the survey can be answered multiple times and you can compare earlier results to your latest results. Click on the image to see it larger.

Why is this useful? If you fill out the survey, PD Mosaic can then suggest relevant resources based on the answers you provided. It can also fit nicely into the idea of keeping a professional portfolio as it includes visual representations of your answers at specific periods in time. Click on the image to see it larger.

***You may not be interested in filling out the survey. No problem! It is not at all mandatory.***

And there you go – some of PD Mosaic’s recent developments and useful features that you might not have known about!

Shifting the shift – moving away from interesting conversations

tracyrosen on January 15, 2016

Then…
Back in my early days of blogging…somewhere before and around 2007… there was a lot of talk about shifting priorities in education as a result of technology. Just for fun, I looked through my old blog archives and found these articles from that time:

Learning the way they’re living … where I write about the teacher’s evolving role as a connection maker, connecting students to their learning with technology.

and

Why technology in schools? And how do I lead something that is constantly changing? 😉…where I write about how technology can not be separated from the rest of life.

Also at around that time, I remember the hype around Shift Happens. They are a series of videos that were first published in 2007, based on a presentation created for a staff meeting in 2006, called Did You Know? Basically, the videos show us statistics about how and how often technology is used and the underlying message is that we are preparing learners for jobs that do not yet exist.

Now…

Recently I was at a Google Leadership Symposium where the facilitators were sending the exact same message – that we are preparing our learners for jobs that do not yet exist and that technology needs to play an integral role in that preparation.

10 years later and we are still preaching the same message with as much fervor.

So I ask myself – what has (or hasn’t happened) in the past ten years to replace the skip on the broken record?

Is it time to shift the shift?

A 2015 study by CEFRIO (a centre that facilitates organizational research and innovation around technology) came to the conclusion that Quebec teachers are, at best, in the infancy stage of technology use. Early adopters? That number is at less than 15% of teachers.
CEFRIO (2015) Usages du numérique dans les écoles québécoises (Use of technology in Quebec schools)

So. Preaching hasn’t worked. Scare tactic or shock videos like Shift Happens, haven’t worked as much as we might have liked them to. Targeted training by a network of consultants in technology hasn’t worked as much as we might have liked it to.

I remember a poster in the classroom of a colleague many years ago – it went something like

If you have explained it to me the same way a million times and I still don’t get it…who is the slow learner?

It was in response to well-meaning teachers or tutors who sometimes just re-explain things, only louder and slower, in the hopes that their charges will ‘get’ whatever it is they don’t understand.

So what do we do? Do we continue to offer technology training, only louder?

Yesterday I had a conversation with a colleague about how, too often, the important conversations about our students and the roles technology play in their learning are happening between the people who already agree with the outcomes.

My conclusion? Those are interesting conversations but they are not the important conversations.

EdCamps and Twitter chats – PD that happens on Saturdays, in the evenings, on our own time – are fabulous for inspiration and motivation because when we get together with like-minded people we become a mutual cheering society and that can be motivating in the We. Are. Awesome! kind of way. But again – the conversations are happening with those who already believe in the outcomes. They are interesting but not important in a change the culture kind of way.

Important conversations need to include many voices. Not only the ones that echo each other.

I think we have moved past the point where EdCamps need to remain voluntary and on our own time to be valid. What if we move the edcamp philosophy into our places of work? What if we ~~allow~~ expect educators to have conversations about what is important to them as a part of their in-service PED days? It is something we are experimenting with in Quebec’s Adult Education community.

Simple, truthful conversation where we each have a chance to speak, we each feel heard, and we each listen well. Conversation is the natural way we humans think together. We may have forgotten this, or no longer have time for each other, but it is how good thinking grows into actions that create real change.

~ quote from Margaret Wheatley

Conversations about what matters to us are necessary to the human existence. Necessary! How human to have these conversations in the places where we congregate to help people learn how to participate in society and create a better future for us all.

These conversations may be difficult ones. They may get messy. But, facilitated in a caring, open, and practical way they may likely become the important ones.

I think they will form the basis for the shift.