Collaborator

The best way to build trust with colleagues has always been rapport. From the very onset of hiring, I would love to send out an email to tell people a little bit about myself. When school starts, I would ideally like to give a speech of similar content at a staff meeting to add a face to a name and make myself approachable. Throughout the year, making myself seen as much as possible when I don’t have to be in an office and making sure to go to all staff events to cement my face as a familiar one.

A large focus of my ideal ITC role will be one which incorporates computer science. A common thread for Virginia standards is the allowance for students to gather and communicate information in a variety of modes. In line with Bloom’s taxonomy, by incorporating digital exercises ranging from HyperDocs to interactive tools, teachers can better engage students to learn. Aside from allowing for differentiation, these methods also familiarize students with technology and make them more literate for creating their own content within the classroom and later in life. In order to make these exercises common practice, I would love to hold professional development to help as many teachers engage with the possibilities as possible and branch into one-on-one collaboration to help walk through any teachers that need another set of eyes.

In order to determine the efficacy of the tools I implement, I will make sure to always allow for student feedback. For example, the final step (before any extension activities) in a HyperDoc can be an exit ticket through a platform such as Microsoft Forms. In that exit ticket, students would reflect on the exercise to demonstrate comprehension of the material, which would prove efficacy, and also give an opportunity for students to reflect upon what worked for them and what didn’t. When working with veteran teachers, this qualitative data can be compared with similar non-digital activities they have done in the past and the quantitative data of diagnostic exams and test scores from past years. In other cases, there can also be games incorporated where in order to traverse, students must answer a question correctly. By properly incentivizing students for answering questions correctly and discouraging guessing, these applications can also help provide data on what subject material needs reviewing or how students succeeded in low-stakes, formative assessment.

The first step in any case is to have a talk with a teacher and see what they are doing within their classroom. Some teachers may not want to include too much technology in their classroom, so it is important to gauge what might be applicable to them. For the teachers who actively want to collaborate or are a bit hesitant, it is first important for me to educate myself on their standards and the subject material. A benefit I have is that I have formal education not only in English, but in Spanish, computer science, technology education, history, mathematics, biology, and physics. For anything outside of my collegiate education, aside from my own efforts to educate myself, the collaborating teacher can be a wealth of knowledge in what their goals are. From there, we can utilize any material they may be looking to adapt from the past to ensure we are not merely utilizing technology as a sideshow, but as a way to enhance student learning. If we are working without any past resources, we will start by establishing standards they would like to cover, brainstorming based on technology either one (or both) of us may be familiar with, and then work to scaffold the lesson to evaluate what benefits the different methods provide. The last step is important because it will help provide confidence for the collaborating educator in their decision and give the greatest chance that the best method of instruction will win instead of one the one which is most familiar.