KARCHER STAFF BLOG
Karcher 2016-2017 School Calendar
Student's of the week for
- Ethan Vogt: (Onyx)
- Ethan is a fantastic young man who is always smiling and positive to all around him. Ethan consistently shows the utmost respect to both teachers and students alike and is always willing to lend a helping hand. Thank you Ethan and keep up the great work!
- Caden Taylor: (Diamond)
- Caden consistently shows the Karcher Way. He is kind, considerate, and respectful to his classmates and teachers. Caden is a hard-working student and excels academically in class.
- Sarah Boarini: (Applied Academics)
- Sarah continues to work hard in class. She is friendly, helpful , and respectful. Great work Sarah! Way to go!
- Elizabeth Boarini: (Hive)
- Elizabeth is so compassionate and kind to her peers. Whenever any assistance is needed, Elizabeth is there to help.
- Elizabeth Leon Cruz: (KCB)
- Elizabeth has been working hard in class and putting forth her best effort during MAPS testing. She is responsible and always keeps up with her work.
- Lucas Wittkamp: (Silver)
- Silver House chooses Lucas because of the positive energy and the unique perspective that he brings to all of his classes.
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Kudos
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- Erika Fons was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK! Congrats Erika and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits.
- Jayme Pruszka will be joining our Burlington High School Business department for the 2017-2018 school year. We are very sad you will be leaving Karcher but excited for you as we know your passion is to truly teach business education at the high school level. You will do great at the high school! Please congratulate Jayme when you see her!
- Kudos to Stephanie Rummler, Brad Ferstenou, and the rest of our PBS team (along with our leadership students) for your work developing all of the KCB reward activities from now until the end of the year! Some great ideas and excitement around our KCBs. Don't forget to continue recognizing students for demonstrating "The Karcher Way" all the way to the end of the school year!
- Our new PE/Health teacher, Jon Nelson, was approved this past Monday night at the Board Meeting so... please welcome Jon Nelson to our Karcher team!!! Jon assisted Burlington High School last summer as he taught some our PE courses and will be again this summer. Jon lives in Rochester with his wife and their two children: Milania and newborn Maverick. Below is a recent picture of Jon and his son Maverick! Here is Jon's email address if you would like to reach out to him: nelson.jon10@gmail.com
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Reminders
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- Survey reminders...
- Certified staff... there are two surveys we would like your input on:
- Karcher Literacy Survey - Molly Ebbers shared the survey with you via Google Forms as we would like all of our teachers to complete the survey no later than noon tomorrow as we will be looking at the survey results at our district literacy PLC on Monday (tomorrow) night.
- The 2018-2019 BASD calendar committee shared a survey they would like input on as well in order to ensure all voices are heard prior to making the final decision on the 2018-2019 school calendar.
- Monday, May 15 - Last round of Partners 2 presentations in the library for 8th grade! The following advisory teachers, please bring your advisory to the library after you go through the announcements and take attendance:
- Mike Jones
- Stephanie Rummler
- Amanda Thate
- Alyssa Riggs
- Monday, May 15 - Staff Meeting in the library @ 2:40.
- The focus of this staff meeting will be around TSID. Grace Jorgenson is our TSID coordinator and will be sharing the forms with staff and we will answer any questions you may have. This work will be to prepare for the 2017-2018 school year.
- Monday-Tuesday, May 15-16 - We will be continuing with MAP testing this week starting with English on Monday & Tuesday with makeups taking place the rest of the week.
- Please remember to keep the noise level down in the hallways to assist with a quiet testing environment.
- Wednesday, May 16 - Literacy PLC. We will continue with literacy presentations from staff! Our last literacy presentation PLC was awesome and it will be great to hear and see the other strategies that will be shared.
- Thursday, May 17-18 - Safety Patrol Field trip to the Dells!
- Friday, May 18 - 7th grade field trip to the Milwaukee County Zoo with admission to see Body Worlds!
- Just an FYI... we do have money in our Scholastic account. If there are books you would like for iTime or literacy circles for the 2017-2018 school year please let ask Patti Tenhagen for the link to see the resources available through Scholastic!
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Pictures from the week
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Designing a Community of Shared Learning
When teachers regularly observe one another, they gain ideas for sharpening instruction—and a conduit for leadership.
Being an instructional coach is humbling. On my best days, my time is spent in perpetual reflection with teachers: sponging up emotions, unsticking thinking, affirming ideas, or supporting lessons in real time within the classroom. On other days, I'm the teacher voice at the table where decision makers introduce initiatives that have a serious impact on staff and students. I am not an administrator, which often spurs people to ask me, "When are you going to be a principal?"—as if shifting to administration is the natural next step. The implication is that leadership in schools has to be hierarchical and there is something more or better about leading from the top.
But as Simon Sinek (2014) argues, "Leadership is a choice. It is not a rank." After 17 years in the classroom, I decided to step beyond my classroom and into a role of guiding other teachers—and I realized that teachers themselves can choose leadership by sharing their own wealth to refine instruction, theirs and others'.
Of Craft Knowledge and Learning
No one told me how to do this coaching job, so I've continuously revised my approach to find what works to support all teachers. I have learned far more about instruction as an instructional coach than I ever could from a coach. After I began creating experiences for teachers within one another's classrooms, I realized that not only is studying one another's instructional practices as a community essential in becoming more effective for our students, but it also lifts teachers up as leaders.
When I first began serving as an instructional coach at Robbinsdale Armstrong High School in Plymouth, Minnesota, I set out to improve instruction one teacher at a time. There has always been an expectation for me to coach individual teachers to reflect on their practice and implement strategies that engage students, decrease behavior issues, and increase learning. And it works. In a year-end survey of Armstrong teachers, many reported that they valued how I challenged them to think more deeply about instruction. First-year teacher or veteran, everyone I worked with realized that he or she had something more to learn.
Knowing this caused me to wonder whether I could leverage the system to affect a greater number of teachers, particularly as I realized how much I was learning just by stepping in and out of many classrooms.
As a coach, I was introduced to a mosaic of communities, rituals, and levels of inquiry and engagement. I was witnessing what Barth (2001) calls craft knowledge, the "massive collection of experiences and learnings that those who live and work under the roof of the schoolhouse inevitably accrue during their careers" (p. 56). Some teachers lectured from slides; others had students debate in Philosophical Chairs. Many lined up the desks in rows; others clustered them in small groups or arranged them in a circle. In one room, Chromebooks and phones were viewed as a distraction, whereas in another, technology was an integral part of the lesson. Learning looked different in each space. The experience was eye-opening, and I wanted teachers to have it too.
Letting Teachers In on the Experience
In Jerry Seinfeld's TV show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, he drives other famous comedians around in classic cars and interviews them. In one episode, Jim Carrey tells Seinfeld, referring to joke writing, "I used to watch you at the Improv when I was starting out and I was like, this guy is a mechanic. He's an amazing mechanic." Watching this episode, I began to see parallels between joke construction and lesson plan writing, and I understood what was missing from the current coaching model: a culture of studying our practice by watching one another teach.
Part of the benefit of visiting other learning environments is watching teachers make real-time decisions in response to students. I noticed when a teacher subtly brushed a hand across her forehead, cuing a student to remove his hat. I saw how students began to problem solve as a group when the teacher stepped back and to the side. While teachers taught or facilitated, I used the time to reflect on how I could have applied what I was seeing to my own classroom—if I still had a classroom.
Other teachers needed to see what I was seeing, and we needed to learn together. I began to see the classroom as a space for professional development. This learning was richer than the kind that transpires while we sit among other adults at professional learning sessions in hotel conference rooms. It included students and was steeped in classroom culture.
At the time, Armstrong teachers collaborated in professional learning communities, but as they shared lesson plans and analyzed data, they were describing and listening to—not experiencing—the work of colleagues. The discussions stayed technical; they lacked inquiry and wonder about improving the craft. Teachers weren't seeing one another teach, and rather than blaming the schedule or the building culture that didn't support it, I had to find a way to get them into one another's classrooms, sharing their practices. So, with a nod to Seinfeld, I set up Teachers in Classrooms Getting Connected, a system to free teachers up to visit classrooms during the school day. Seinfeld had comedians in a car getting coffee—what would we be getting? Connected.
I was clear that teachers should be entering one another's spaces not to critique a colleague, but to study the learning environment that the teacher had created through established rituals, routines, and relationships. We would focus on student engagement and approach the moment as learners, not evaluators, accepting the premise that we have lots to learn from one another. I imagined that the best design would enable teachers to simply share their practice, essentially leading colleagues to improve instruction from within their rooms without any extra preparation or the need to take on any new role.
Approaching the work collectively might help avoid the teacher culture taboo that Barth (2001) describes: the code that says, "Thou shalt not distinguish thyself from the rest—nor even appear to distinguish thyself from the rest" (p. 58). With so many people participating, it would be possible to establish a new norm in which people open up their classrooms and let others in. Rather than feel the stress of teaching their peers a particular strategy or calling attention, in front of a group, to what has worked, teachers could be their best selves with their students—just like any other day—and the burden would be on visiting teachers to explore the space and notice practices that they deemed unique or excellent. If a visiting teacher later told others about the expertise or effective strategies of a teacher she observed, the act of singling that peer out would seem to fall within the parameters of the teacher code.
Marketing the experience would be important because I didn't want teachers to feel threatened. One key was not to use the word observation, which is loaded with evaluative energy. Instead, I used the word visit—like we were stopping in to join the learning community for a moment. Another key was to establish norms to frame how we would each be in the spaces. I determined that I would not join people on their visits, nor would we follow a pre/post model that put me in a position to teach people about what they had experienced.
My leadership role became that of an architect designing an opportunity for teachers to learn from one another. Block (2008) writes about leaders as social architects: "Community building requires a concept of the leader as one who creates experiences for others—experiences that in themselves are examples of our desired future" (p. 86). Teachers' "desired future" is one in which their instruction meets the needs of all students.
The continuation of this article will be in next week's blog...
