Differentiation to the Rescue!

Three recent tweets caused me to ponder in some new ways:

1. "Heading into another week of learning and teaching w/ @mssackstein & @WHSRowe on my mind." #influence by Mark Kuniya @MKuniya
2. "It would feel wrong if I didn't transfer along what I learned to our Students." by Mark Kuniya
3. "When we stop learning, we become irrelevant to our students." by Jasper Fox @jsprfox 

Differentiation - I've had the good pleasure of having more than one Google Hangout (GHO) with Mark and Jasper at different times. Both consistently cause me to reflect on my practice as an educator and open my mind to new learning opportunities for me and our students. I'm learning that with differentiated planning, instruction, practice, feedback and assessment, we can better meet the needs of our students with varying degrees of understanding. Both men have impressed on me our need to daily differentiate since we are aiming to teach individuals, not classes. When I realized that we have twenty or so students engaged in the learning with different background knowledge, different needs, different interests and varying levels of proficiency, we cannot expect one lesson to accommodate all students. Mark and I recently discussed the word "checkpoint" as another way of assessing student proficiency without using the often dreaded words "quiz" or "test" that can carry a negative connotation. I've started using "checkpoints" or "proficiency tickets" to formally assess our students. Our frequent "checkpoints" or "proficiency tickets" enable me to quickly provide timely feedback to students and guide me in adapting the lesson for our next class. Students appear more confident in their ability to demonstrate proficiency with some of their fear, anxiety or pressure minimized. Our students also know that reassessments are part of our learning process in our Standards-Based environment. Our students now know what Extra Practice they need before or after an assessment to improve their skills and the application and they're requesting it without my need to offer it. 

#GoodCallsHome - Our recently started nationwide movement of calling parents to share the great learning that's happening in our classrooms is having a huge impact on parents, students and teachers alike! I'd like to thank our co-founder Scott Capro, @ScottCapro, who has been very supportive and encouraging as we've worked on this undertaking. To date, there have been nearly fifty educators across the nation that have committed to weekly calls to the parents of our students to build relationships, encourage the parents for all their child is doing and to reinforce the need for parental support in the learning process. We are honored that so many teachers continue to make weekly #GoodCallsHome and write a generic post on our Google community page about the reaction or the feedback. This has fueled many of us to attain greater depths of learning in our students and in ourselves! 

Calling All Parents!

Being involved in #GoodCallsHome has transformed the communication within our learning environment, with their parents and is acting as a catalyst for learning that I had not anticipated. I'm experiencing more meaningful conversations with our students and with their parents because I care enough to call home to recognize our engaged learning, their willingness to struggle through challenges and our desire to raise the bar in education through relationship building, timely feedback and relevant learning activities. 

As of the date of this post, nearly 40 educators have "yielded to the calling" and are making two or more positive calls home to parents weekly as a way of keeping parents updated, leveraging their support for our students and simply recognizing the great learning and sharing happening in our classrooms! More and more educators are seeing the many benefits of taking the time to unite parents, students and teachers in conversation around our learning.

Every parent I have enjoyed speaking with has expressed appreciation for the call and for the engaged learning we're experiencing in our first month of this new school year. Our students are responding with a greater commitment to their education and have started asking, "Have you call my parents yet?". Every time I get off the phone after one of these uplifting #GoodCallsHome, I have a renewed appreciation for being a dedicated educator. I also appreciate the support that every parent is providing to our students on the home-front.

As one of the members of our Professional Learning Network (PLN) recently stated, "#GoodCallsHome is having a trans-formative impact on learning!". Thanks to Eric Turner (@_EricTurner) for this recognition and the reminder of how important it is for parents and teachers to be in regular communication for our students!

To fill out our #GoodCallsHome survey and ignite the learning, click here!