Survey Questions Collection

Notes:

don't overdo them... ask as few questions as possible.

think about what you're looking for... how you'll present the data... are you looking for "45% of you think..." or are you looking for qualitative ideas? 

How would you rate your experience with remote learning (much worse than expected -> much better than expected)

Please explain your answer for the previous question.

Zoom Classes - Cameras: I know many people like to have video off, but it makes it very difficult to know if you are understanding me, participating, etc. It also makes it a bit harder to put a face with a name if I never see you. How would you feel about me asking people to keep video on whenever possible?

With Remote 2.0, we have some synchronous (all together) and asynchronous (you working on your own, like when you're reading) class time. How do you feel about the balance so far?

How are you doing right now OUTSIDE of academics?

Is there anything I can do to make remote learning better for E2H? 

Keeping students engaged in remote learning

 Here’s what English teachers in the department are saying about how they’re adapting to increase student engagement in low stakes ways:

1. The majority of teachers talked about using Zoom breakout rooms (especially with cameras on) for pairs and small groups.  One teacher added that accountability is key: “Randomly assign kids to break out rooms. Have them talk and then call them back. Then, randomly call on kids to hold them accountable.”
2. Having an informal but written product in the breakout room to share screen with the rest of the class in whole group. Collaborations in Canvas make this quick and easy for them, too. (KW)
3. I used Poll Everything yesterday with an assignment that usually a four corners of the room assignment. So after seeing where everyone stood using the poll, I then had people take turns unmuting themselves to further explain their poll opinion. (MB)
4. My kids are in semi-permanent learning groups. I pull each learning group, each day for small group work while the rest work asynchronously. It's not innovative, but it has been successful. (GC)
5. I did Write-Pair-Share through Zoom which worked really well for a Fahrenheit introduction discussion. Kids had 3 minutes to write on a topic, and then I put them in breakout rooms to discuss for 5 minutes, and when we came back to the main zoom room, kids took turns sharing out what their groups discussed. Yesterday, kids had 5 minutes in breakout rooms to find a "most important passage" from the first pages of Fahrenheit. When the kids came back together, I could still see the names of students in each breakout room, so we just went through each group sharing their passages and explaining why they chose them. To review the first few pages of Fahrenheit, I told each student they had to state 1 thing they knew for sure happened, so we just went in reverse ABC order through the "zoom" room. On a day that students had to do a webquest on 3 different articles to prepare for reading, I jigsawed the activity by breaking up the class into 3 breakout rooms for those kids in the same group to read 1 article and make notes on it to share out with the rest of the class. Breakout rooms have been my saving grace to help me teach the way I usually run my classroom. I just have to keep reminding them that if something happens that I need to know about, I am available through email, but I talked myself out of fearing this function when I remembered that kids can always find ways in class in front of us to be nasty or mean to others, so it's a risk I guess I am willing to take to keep class engaging and kids producing. (JS)
6. Canvas Groups — collaboration and conference in groups (Birthday Girl)
7. Asking questions that require use of polls, the chat box, thumbs up, etc to show that they are actually listening and there instead of pretending like they are. (KT, LO)
8. Have students collaborate on a Google Doc. We did an activity last week where students were all working on the same document in groups. (CB)

 

 

Some nice phrasing in email/online

 Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you Monday. — David

Thanks, everyone, for your continued flexibility and perseverance! I'm constantly impressed by you all!

Followership

 I shared this article (FOLLOWERSHIP: THE OTHER SIDE OF LEADERSHIP by John McCallum) with a group of teachers in the department.  

Here's the heart of it:

Followership may take the backseat to leadership but it matters:  it matters a lot!  Quite simply, where followership is a failure, not much gets done and/or what does get done is not what was supposed to get done.  Followership problems manifest themselves in a poor work ethic, bad morale, distraction from goals, unsatisfied customers, lost opportunities, high costs, product quality issues and weak competitiveness.  At the extreme, weak leadership and weak followership are two sides of the same coin and the consequence is always the same:  organizational confusion and poor performance.

Good followers have a number of qualities. 

First, judgement.  Followers must take direction but they have an underlying obligation to the enterprise to do so only when the direction is ethical and proper.  The key is having the judgement to know the difference between a directive that your leader gives on how to proceed that you do not agree with and a directive that is truly wrong.

No one disputes that good judgement is critical to being a good leader.  It is just as important in the follower.  Show enough good judgement as a follower and you usually end up getting a shot at being the leader.  Something of an aside but there is a line that I have always liked about judgement:  “Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement.”

Second, work ethic.  Good followers are good workers.  They are diligent, motivated, committed, pay attention to detail and make the effort.  Leaders have a responsibility to create an environment that permits these qualities but regardless, it is the responsibility of the follower to be a good worker.  There is no such thing as a bad worker who is a good follower.

Third, competence.  The follower cannot follow properly unless competent at the task that is directed by the leader.  It is the obligation of the leader to assure that followers are competent.  Sometimes things go wrong because the follower is not competent at the task at hand.  When this happens, leaders should blame themselves, not the follower.  A sign of poor leadership is blaming followers for not having skills they do not have.

Fourth, honesty.  The follower owes the leader an honest and forthright assessment of what the leader is trying to achieve and how.  This is especially the case when the follower feels the leader’s agenda is seriously flawed.  Respect and politeness are important but that said, it is not acceptable for followers to sit on their hands while an inept leader drives the proverbial bus over the cliff.  Good leaders are grateful for constructive feedback from their team.  Bad leaders do not welcome feedback and here followers have to tread carefully.  If the situation is serious enough, consideration should be given to going above the leader in question for guidance.

Fifth, courage.  Followers need to be honest with those who lead them.  They also need the courage to be honest.  It takes real courage to confront a leader about concerns with the leader’s agenda or worse, the leader himself or herself.  It is not for naught that Churchill called courage “The foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend”.  From time to time, it takes real courage to be a good follower.

Sixth, discretion.  A favorite saying in World War II was “Loose lips sink ships.”  Sports teams are fond of the expression “What you hear here, let it stay here.”  Followers owe their enterprises and their leaders discretion.  Talking about work matters inappropriately is at best unhelpful and more likely harmful.  Discretion just means keeping your mouth shut.  It should be easy but many find it next to impossible.  Bluntly, you cannot be a good follower and be indiscreet.  Everybody who works at an enterprise has a duty of care; indiscretion is not care, it is careless.

Seventh, loyalty.  Good followers respect their obligation to be loyal to their enterprise.  Loyalty to the enterprise and its goals is particularly important when there are problems, interpersonal or otherwise, with a particular leader.  Followers who are not loyal are inevitably a source of difficulty.  They create problems between team members; they compromise the achievement of goals; they waste everybody’s time; they are a menace.  Loyalty is not a synonym for lapdog.  Rather, its essence is a strong allegiance and commitment to what the organization is trying to do.  Followers should remember that their obligation is to the enterprise, not a given leader at a given point in time.

Eighth, ego management.  Good followers have their egos under control.  They are team players in the fullest sense of the concept.  They have good interpersonal skills.  Success for good followers relates to performance and goal achievement not personal recognition and self promotion.  Sounds too good to be true and often it is.  It is difficult but the best organizations tie advancement and reward to performance and goal achievement as hard as that may be to do.

Followership will always be in the shadow of leadership.  But there are no leaders without followers and on-going success with weak followers will usually prove elusive.  It is true that an organization is only as good as its leaders.  It is also only as good as its followers.  Who would not benefit from giving some thought to how they could be a better follower?  Such thought may actually hasten your trip to the leadership position you actually want.

Clarity in a list of "principles"

 I really like the "design principles" from Achievement First about remote learning because of the way they're written.  The "we need a simple..." pattern makes it really easy to understand.

• We need to lead with our “care for the whole person” value and keep our community together. We need to have enough touchpoints and direct contacts to make sure we have a pulse on our kids and each other. 

• We create a shared “container.” Having a consistent instructional approach and schedule will enable efficiencies (family communication, tech issues, and curriculum design) and collaboration.

 • We need a simple, clear plan that we can execute well. None of us has ever done this before. The more complexity we add, the harder it will be to do it well.

 • We need continuity and consistency. We—our scholars, teachers, and families—need consistent routines for remote learning and remote community that will become a source of stability and comfort. 

• We are designing for “most.” There will be no effective plan that works for every single student, parent, and teacher. We will need flexibility and extra support for the students, families, and staff who need it.

"Instructional Shifts to Support Deeper Learning" - McTighe and Silver - notes

 One big idea that highlights "the big skills" in education (and LA classrooms):

Focus less on didactic instruction and more on active meaning making by students. Students should be “earning” understanding of critical content by actively, independently processing new material using these higher-order skills.

-    Conceptualizing abstract ideas;

-    Note-taking and summarizing;

-    Comparing;

-    Reading beyond the literal meaning;

-    Predicting and hypothesizing;

-    Visualizing, graphic representation;

-    Empathizing and perspective-taking.

“Instructional Shifts to Support Deep Learning” by Jay McTighe and Harvey Silver in Educational Leadership, September 2020 (Vol. 78, #1); 

Fordham Institute's report on lessons learned during remote learning

Here's the PDF.

Some notes:

 KIPP DC created this new Maslowe's hierarchy:

Staying in touch with students and families wasn’t just about providing social and emotional support; it was also essential to keeping kids learning. The charter networks are data-driven organizations, and they doubled down on this during the crisis to learn what was and wasn’t working, employing clear goals and metrics to monitor, with dashboards that helped educators decide what to keep or change. The networks leveraged their previous investments in becoming learning organizations that could quickly build pilots, try them, gather data, learn from them, and pivot, akin to the “lean startup” innovation methodology (a method for increasing the success rate of innovative products and services through rapid prototyping and quick feedback loops).38 This use of data happened at the network school and classroom levels, with educators systematically improving lessons via trials, observation, coaching, feedback, and iterations.

A strong finding from the interviews was the central importance of regularly reaching out to students and families, including providing social and emotional support and development. This came up in nearly every interview. Most networks had an advisor or counselor system (operating before and during the pandemic), allowing them to check in on student and family needs, provide emotional support, and gather feedback on how remote learning was going among their pupils. One striking observation was how thoughtfully and systematically the networks reached out individually to students and parents, which seemed a rare practice in other schools (or an aspiration deemed to be operationally impractical).

Encourage teachers and staff to maintain a growth and innovation mindset as educators move up the steep learning curve of figuring out how to teach with these new tools.

Focus on fundamentals (for example, reading as a gateway to learning other subjects).

Ensure lessons include many opportunities for active learning, with students engaging directly with the material, instructor, and their peers

Make creative use of teaching teams, with smart use of specialization and collaboration.

Assess students effectively so educators can monitor progress and diagnose where students are and what they need.

I really like the "design principles" on pp. 21-22.  The best is the one from "Achievement First" because of the way they're written.  The "we need a simple..." makes it really easy to understand.

• We need to lead with our “care for the whole person” value and keep our community together. We need to have enough touchpoints and direct contacts to make sure we have a pulse on our kids and each other. 

• We create a shared “container.” Having a consistent instructional approach and schedule will enable efficiencies (family communication, tech issues, and curriculum design) and collaboration.

 • We need a simple, clear plan that we can execute well. None of us has ever done this before. The more complexity we add, the harder it will be to do it well.

 • We need continuity and consistency. We—our scholars, teachers, and families—need consistent routines for remote learning and remote community that will become a source of stability and comfort. 

• We are designing for “most.” There will be no effective plan that works for every single student, parent, and teacher. We will need flexibility and extra support for the students, families, and staff who need it.