Education Week - February 18, 2015 - Special Report - 5

CALENDAR OF EVENTS SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2013
ARTICLES
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Swikar Patel/Education Week
These people are your closest group in
your pln. You will read almost every blog
post they write, and you would probably
feel comfortable calling them on the phone
or inviting them out to coffee.
Finding pln buddies and mentors often
happens organically through interaction
with other pln groups. Maybe you're
lurking on a Twitter chat and discover
another educator who is sharing valuable
resources, so you follow that person
and thank them on Twitter. Perhaps you
feel compelled to comment on a discussion
thread that someone posted because it resonated
with your own challenges or journey.
Or you have an opportunity to chat
with a rock star at a book signing, and a
more personal connection is formed. These
are all opportunities to make and deepen
connections over time.
These buddies and mentors become the
foundation of any vibrant pln. They expand
your natural tunnel vision, transform
your perspective, and encourage you
when rock bottom seems near. You might
communicate with them via Twitter, blogs,
email, or Voxer. Or you could even ask
them to go out for coffee once a month.
Connection and interaction is key; the platform
is merely the medium of convenience.
ing Channel on digital literacy.
There are literally hundreds of Twitter
niche groups that hold regular chats. To add
these communities to your pln, you might
attend a few chats a month that push your
thinking and provide you with collaboration
and resources around a shared personal
interest. On Pinterest, you can do a simple
search for terms that interest you and follow
people or boards that provide you with
great ideas.
Another way to find personal niche groups
(without the frantic pace and public nature
of Twitter) is through private communities
like aScd Edge, Edmodo Teacher Groups,
the Center for Teacher Quality's Collaboratory,
or Connected Educator's Book Club.
These groups require a profile and provide
a space for educators to go deeper in discussing
topics and sharing resources.
Step Three:
Find your PLN Buddies and Mentors
It's important to have individuals in
your pln who you respect highly and who
will help you grow. Buddies and mentors
are those people who you feel connected
to beyond one shared interest; they "get"
you in some important way.
Feeling Overwhelmed? Stop!
The best part of a pln is that it is personal.
A "professional learning network"
is ultimately a personal learning network.
It's important to build your plns in a
conscious way that makes you feel comfortable.
After all, not everyone builds
their face-to-face networks the same way,
so why would our virtual networks be any
different? Perhaps it makes more sense
for you to start with individuals and work
outward to niche groups and organizations.
Or maybe you don't like having your
connections and attention divided into so
many different directions. Join one organization,
explore the niche groups, and connect
with individuals who are already part
of that community. Your attention will be
focused in one place while your pln still
has varied levels of personal interaction
and connection.
To my overwhelmed colleague who posed
the question, "What is a pln?" I replied
with this: Find the virtual places that feel
most natural to you. For me, that's social
media like Twitter and Facebook. After
you choose a platform, follow the people
and organizations that push you to expand
your thinking and move past your
comfort zone. That's creating a sustainable
pln-one that will help you grow and feel
more energized, not deplete you and create
stress.
Like moving to a new place, the hardest
part is the initial step. Stepping outside of
your house to meet the neighbors, being
willing to make a wrong turn to find your
new doctor, or joining the local book club
at the library all require risk.
But communities are essential for our
happiness and survival. If your professional
life feels stagnant and narrow,
or your learning feels stale and predictable,
perhaps it's time to step outside
the door and seek people who can
breathe new life into your professional
growth. Perhaps it's time to build a personal,
professional learning network. n
BRIANNA CROWLEY (@AkaMsCrowley)
teaches high school English and works as an
instructional-technology coach in Hershey, Pa.
She also serves as a "teacherpreneur" for the
Center for Teaching Quality.
This essay was originally published online by
Education Week Teacher.
The standards ask students to "apply and extend
previous understandings" when learning new skills-
an indirect reference to cross-grade coherence. For instance,
students are expected to use what they learned
about multiplication in 3rd grade to multiply fractions
by whole numbers in 5th grade, and then again when
dividing fractions by fractions in 6th grade.
Kent County elementary
teachers examine a
common-core math
progressions document
during a cross-grade
meeting.
"As a teacher, what it means is you really should be
familiar with the whole program, not just the part of
the program where you add on new knowledge," said Mr.
Daro.
While many math teachers have long sought to ensure
their instruction is consistent with what's taught
in other grades, the common core has made that objective
more explicit, while seeking to make the connections
more readily apparent.
The common standards for math were developed out
of a series of documents, based on research about students'
cognitive development, that detail how instruction
on a particular topic should advance over time. The
standards' writers took those "progressions documents"
and divided the skills into grade levels at which they
should be taught. The progressions documents can now
be found on Achieve the Core, a website hosted by the
New York City-based nonprofit group Student Achievement
Partners, which was founded by the lead standards
writers.
The documents are, in a word, dense. But they do offer
insight into how skills build on one another, and most
experts on the standards suggest teachers consult them.
"What I've been recommending is that people form
book clubs or study groups and read those progressions
together," said Mr. Daro. "They're not written to be read
while sipping a cup of tea. They're written to be studied,
and you don't study alone."
Cross-Grade Connections
Three to five elementary teachers could meet once a
week for a month to read a single progression, he said.
"Will that be enough for them to understand everything
in the progression? Probably not. Will that advance their
mathematical thinking? Surely it will."
The progressions documents take a lot of "unpacking,"
said Ms. Hemstetter. Even so, she tells teachers to put
them by their desks, along with the standards. "It's not
an easy read sometimes, but every time you read a portion
of that progression document, it's going to make
more sense to you," she said.
At a professional development conference held by the Maryland
education department last year, a small group of teachers
gathered at a session on fractions division. As the teachers
discussed whether students should convert improper fractions
to mixed numbers, which the common standards do not
require, high school teacher Kevin Wajek chimed in from the
back of the room. "As soon as you cross into high school, that's
the answer I want," he said in reference to improper fractions.
"Unless it's a recipe, do not use mixed numbers again." The
middle school teachers turned his way to consider the plea.
The moment exemplified the way cross-grade learning can
contribute to coherent instruction in math. Mr. Wajek, the
math department chairman at Severna Park High School,
in Maryland, said in an interview that coherence goes both
ways-high school teachers need to know the beginnings of
the learning progressions as well. "I should understand where
that conceptual understanding came from, so that I can say,
'Remember when ...' " and point to what students learned in
previous grades, he said.
Windy Hill Middle School, in the 15,900-student Calvert
County, Md., district, began organizing professional learning
communities across grade levels three years ago, when the
school first introduced the common core.
"We may discuss a topic we'll talk about in 7th grade, and
tie it into a topic in 6th grade, and where they're going with it
in 8th grade," said Dawn Caine, a math teacher at the school.
The middle school teachers have also met with 5th grade
teachers from the nearby elementary schools at times, she
said.
As of yet, though, that kind of cross-grade integration isn't
common practice in middle schools, according to Steven Leinwand,
a principal research analyst at the Washington-based
American Institutes for Research who specializes in math education.
"Most middle school teachers are meeting as [single-]
grade teams-one math, one English, one social studies, and
one science teacher," he said, calling that a major problem.
Cross-grade-level meetings have been helpful for Chris Austin,
a 4th and 5th grade math teacher at Rock Hall Elementary
in Rock Hall, Md., who attends Ms. Hemstetter's professional
learning community. Working with teachers below her
grade level has given her a firmer grasp on the progressions.
"I'm not as familiar with the 3rd grade document, so she can
remind me to take it down a notch," she said, pointing to a
colleague who teaches 3rd grade. Knowing the progressions
below her grade also allows her to fill in gaps for her students,
Ms. Austin explained.
"We didn't have progression documents before the common
core to see why does this make sense," said Ms. Hemstetter.
Now, in the professional learning communities, "we can unpack
the progression document, look at student work, and
analyze 2nd through 5th grade to see why these progressions
make sense," she said. "It's about the conversations."
This article originally appeared in Education Week's special report
"Making Sense of the Math."
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Education Week - February 18, 2015 - Special Report

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