Teacher Leadership in and through ECET2KY

By: Scott Diamond

A few weeks ago, I traveled to Louisville to attend my second statewide ECET2 convening. The commute was longer, but much safer than it was last year – highways and traffic congestion beat snowdrifts and whiteout conditions any time!

I am a second-career teacher and new to teacher leadership. Last year’s statewide ECET2 convening was my first introduction to teacher leadership – so this visit was an anniversary of sorts for me.

You might be wondering what impressed me most about the convening. Many things, in fact, were impressive. The keynote speakers were inspirational, making the visit well worthwhile, even without all the other wonderful experiences. The camaraderie at meals reconnected me to the many teacher leaders who have held me up and supported me as a leader, and which reminded me of why I love teachers and am driven to teach. The content provided by the breakout sessions was incredibly useful. And lastly the advice offered by new friends in the colleague circles was supportive and sagely.

Yes, all of these experiences impressed me at the ECET2 convening. However, there is something that I have not yet mentioned that continues to impress me, which was what originally drove me to join the teacher-leader movement after last year’s ECET2 convening in Kentucky, and what fills me with hope for our future as teachers and leaders. That is seeing the Fund for Transforming Education enable MeMe Ratliff and her fellow organizers to model teacher leadership through the convening itself. The organizers of the ECET2 convening utilized new and veteran teacher leaders to lead and facilitate breakout sessions, and to create and conduct colleague circles.

The content about teacher leadership at the ECET2 Kentucky convening was great, but the examples of teacher leadership portrayed through the ECET2 convening were greater.

This is a guest post written by Dr. Scott Diamond, who currently serves as science teacher and Dean of the College of Inquiry for the Learning Center at Linlee, Fayette County Public School’s alternative program for students at risk of dropping out. K-12 education is his second career; prior to becoming a teacher seven years ago; Scott was a biomedical research faculty member at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and then at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. 

Interested in writing a guest blog post? Contact Amanda Riley.

The Fund's Golden Circle

By Barbara Bellissimo, Executive Director

In November, the entire Fund team got together for our semi-annual planning retreat. In preparation for our day together, we all read Simon Sinek’s Start with Why. If you haven’t watched Simon’s TED talk, you should. The basic premise is to start with why you do your work--instead of how you do your work--when you are trying to craft your mission.

Simon has a structure for this--the Golden Circle. Begin with your why, then move out to your how and what. In our retreat, we spent a lot of time with a lot of sticky notes, wrestling with our Why.

We started with “Improve social & physical well-being and academic outcomes for all Kentucky students”. An OK Why, but boring and not really what gets us up in the morning. So we kept asking, “Why?” Why do we improve social & physical well-being? Why do we improve academic outcomes? Why? Why? Why?!?!? Then it dawned on us.

Our Why lay in the second half of the phrase, not the first.

We don’t get up in the morning because we want to improve well-being outcomes. We get up in the morning because all Kentucky students deserve improved well-being and outcomes. You could practically see the light shining into all of our brains. We spent a little more time wordsmithing, and finally crafted our Why:

Every child deserves.

We firmly believe that every child deserves social & physical well-being and improved academic outcomes. We believe that every child deserves access to a world-class public education. We are driven in our work to serve every child in Kentucky--those that have strong advocates and those that do not. With that as the center of our work, we then crafted the following goal for 2015:

Engage at least one teacher from every district, one administrator from every region and one community partner from every region to disrupt their portion of the system to improve the social, emotional & physical well-being and academic outcomes for all KY students.

And then we created our own Golden Circle:

Now that you know more about our Why, we hope you’ll join our work by following us on Twitter, liking us on Facebook, or attending our upcoming Innovate:Education summit.

Kentucky Connected Educator Month Day 1

Donnie Piercey

Simmons Elementary
Woodford County

In what way(s) are you a connected educator?

Connected Educator Month is a celebration of teachers who figured out how the Internet can be their friend in the classroom.  The word “educator” jumps out at me, though.  All of us are teachers of students first-being connected just makes our lessons all the more awesome.  So, how am I connected? 

I tweet (@MrPiercey) to get and share ideas with other educators around the world (who I know are a whole lot more creative than I am!). I started the #KyEdChat hashtag for that reason. There are wonderful teachers here in Kentucky who understand the importance of being connected; solid educators who love sharing many of the creative things they are doing with their students. Check out all these Kentucky teachers on Twitter.

Three years ago, I created a classroom blog for my students and parents. My site is a collection of websites, resources, and videos that I use for instruction throughout the school year. If we play a game in class on our Chromebooks, I'll put a link to it on my blog, so my students can go home and play it. If we watch a great Youtube video in class, I'll embed it on my website so my students will watch it over and over again while they are at home. Why should the walls of my classroom be the place where learning stops?

Lastly, this past May I was given the opportunity to attend the Google Teacher Academy down in Sydney, Australia. Being a Google Certified Teacher is a great honor and (okay, I'll admit it) a whole lot of fun, too. It's given me the opportunity to meet some very prominent teachers; some at conference, and others through communities on Google+. The best part for me though: the 160 students who come into my classroom each day get to experience the Googley goodness, too! If you've never played around with the free Google Apps for Education, you're missing out. Sure, I'm a connected educator, but I'm connected to my students first.  

How does being connected impact your practice?

This year, Woodford County Schools is letting me pilot a 1:1 Chromebook classroom with my 4th and 5th grade students at Simmons Elementary. They’re very powerful tools that I believe can change the way teachers teach here in Kentucky.  My students each have their own Google Account which gives them access to all of the free Google Apps for Education. My big, long-term goal is to use my Chromebooks to run a virtual, paperless classroom.  I know this is a wild idea for an elementary classroom, but I’m all about dreaming big.  Here’s one way that I’m using my Chromebooks to make that dream happen:
Every day, my students take a “Flashback” using Google Forms.  Here’s a sample one from a few weeks back (click if you’d like to take it yourself).   All of their information is instantly recorded onto a spreadsheet, and this is where the really-cool-and-nerdy-teacher-stuff starts.  I learned from fellow Google Certified Teacher Jay Atwood (@jayatwood on Twitter, you should follow him!) about a quick little script called “Flubaroo”. Flubaroo grades my students’ work within a matter of seconds; it even emails my students their results!  Check out this video below to see how it works:

  Boom!  Instant Feedback.

Because he's a Google Certified Teacher and he's always looking to teach people new tools and content to improve their learning, Donnie asked Fund staff member, Renee Boss, to join him for a Google Hangout on Air.  In the video below you will find the answer to the last two questions Renee asked Donnie.  How does being connected impact you as an educator?  What advice or resources would you recommend to colleagues interested in becoming connected?

(Note:  In his teacher as facilitator way, Donnie kept the camera on Renee for the first two minutes of the video chat, so be sure to watch the whole thing to see Donnie and to hear his thoughtful responses to the final two questions.)

Are You Ready for Connected Educator Month?

By:  Renee Boss

We are only ten days away from the launch of Connected Educator Month (#ce13). At The Fund, we have decided to participate, and we would like to encourage you to participate as well.

Not sure what being a connected educator means?  Basically, you are a connected educator when you are learning and connecting to other educators across school, district, state, and country lines.  By connecting beyond your own location you learn and develop your own professional learning community (#PLN).

Over the next few weeks we will finalize our plans about how we will participate and promote Connected Educator Month, but we'll let you in on a few of our ideas thus far.

During October's #ce13


We will highlight Kentucky teachers who are engaged, connected, continuously learning, giving, and receiving from others within our state and beyond our state.  We also hope to showcase collaboration globally because we know Kentucky educators connect with educators across the world.  While one social media platform over another is not necessarily best, we will be using Twitter, Facebook, our blog, Linkedin and perhaps some other online collaboration tools as well.   The point is to be involved!

Our staff members will continue with twitter chats launched by Kentucky teacher Donnie Piercy and encourage educators and community members to join those chats, too.  All of us together have the potential to impact education in positive and meaningful ways.  Join us Thursdays 8 pm #KyEdChat.

We will emphasize digital citizenship week October 21-25 by providing suggestions and ideas for teachers to try in their classrooms with students.

We welcome your ideas, feedback and participation in ways that makes sense to you.

Connected Educator Resources:

The Cruciality of Connected Educators
http://connectedlearning.tv/karen-cator-cruciality-connected-educator-month

The Connected Educator Month Starter Kit
http://connectededucators.org/cem/cem-getting-started/

District Toolkit for Connected Educators
http://plpnetwork.com/2013/09/13/connected-educator-month-district-toolkit-released/

National Association of Elementary School Principals
http://www.naesp.org/communicator-september-2013/sign-now-connected-educator-month-resources

National Writing Project
http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/4195

Teacher Engagement Project

 By:  Karen Handlos

Kentucky has consistently been a leader, from being the first state to adopt the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to establishing systems through the state’s Leadership Networks that engage accomplished teachers to help their colleagues understand the standards and to design and implement instruction aligned to the standards. In order for CCSS implementation to be realized in Kentucky schools, teachers must develop instructional tools and assessment strategies to deliver the new types of knowledge and skills represented by these standards.  These efforts must be coordinated to ensure that CCSS implementation is rigorous and teacher-led.

The Fund for Transforming Education in Kentucky (The Fund) Teacher Engagement Project will work with national and local partners to develop and engage teachers as leaders in implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)/Kentucky Core Academic Standards (KCAS) and the new Professional Growth and Effectiveness System (PGES). The Fund will partner with the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) as well as other national and state partners to coordinate all aspects of teacher engagement work across the state. In doing so, The Fund will work to establish teacher networks and forums so innovative teachers can more easily “connect” with other teachers around the state and share promising new ideas for improving student outcomes. 

As part of The Fund’s Teacher Engagement Project, The Fund will work to oversee development of a Teacher Leadership Network—a cohort of deeply knowledgeable teacher leaders on key issues of practice and policy (e.g., the Professional Growth and Effectiveness System (PGES), the Literacy/Mathematics Design Collaborative (LDC/MDC) frameworks, Common Core State Standards implementation)—who will work to serve as leaders by:

·       (1) continuing a Teachers as Leaders Conference (TALK Conference) to engage and place teachers in the lead on sharing best practices and engaging in professional learning (by, for, and about teachers);

·       (2) establishing and supporting a Teacher Leadership Network (TLN), building on advocacy efforts through partnerships to develop a network of teachers to lead teacher voice efforts

The work of The Fund is consistent with Kentucky’s goals in the service of college and career readiness for students.

1. Teachers leading teachers
2. Teachers connecting around content
3. Using technology-enabled as well as face-to-face interaction
4. Connecting new and existing networks
5. Developing corporate support for teacher communities and practice improvement

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog about transforming education in the state of Kentucky. As our description suggests, we do hope this blog will be a place where we can share the work of educators across the state as a way to inspire and a way to learn from one another.  We also hope the blog will be a place for supporters and partners of The Fund for Transforming Education in Kentucky to learn more about what we are doing and how we are doing it.

 You can expect to see blog posts on regular basis coming from Fund staff members with guest posts from teachers involved in the various projects.

To get us started, project leaders for The Fund share thoughts about the first two major initiatives.  The Teacher Engagement Project is being led by Karen Handlos, and The Common Assignment Study is being led by Renee Boss.