Subject: School Model - Teacher Training

Posted by Tim Joy on 1/22/2014
In Reply To:School Model Under Construction Posted by Martin Schaffernicht on 1/21/2014

Message:

Greetings all and thank you for the comments and suggestions. You've given me material to keep my evenings and weekends busy for a long time!

Martin wrote about pedagogical differences and varying degrees of teacher buy-in, so I will start there.

Let me start with a word about my building strategy. This is the fourth major iteration of the model, beginning by identifying two stocks: student learning and instructional team capacity. Though I realized curriculum was to come, I intentionally left it out so as to build the person relation first: how do teachers respond (or ought to respond) to the students they teach? The human element struck me as the trickiest. As the model grew to its current state, the model elements that called out for increased specificity were many.

Both of Martin's suggestions, I believe, would come in the pedagogical skill strand that would need expanding. An additional stock there would allow one to account to variance in teacher buy-in. The whole instructional staff would be split between Resistant Staff and Adaptive Staff; changes occurring there depending on many factors, not the least of which would be results in student learning. One assumes a time arc here, say, five years minimum, especially as we're asking teachers to change methods. There would also need to be elements that account for observation, admin feedback to teachers, teacher feedback to teachers, etc. In short, I agree with Martin that delays - in various places throughout the model - need to be somewhere addressed in this model. There is an inherent richness begging to be pursued there.

I am, of course, wondering a lot about how explicit to make each of these and how much resides in the deep assumptions of each connection or each strand: curriculum, teacher training, student learning. It may be that what may be needed is a core model that then is adaptable to specific concerns within a school.

Tim Joy
Portland

Follow Ups:

School Model - Teacher Training - Martin Schaffernicht 1/24/2014 
School Model - Teacher Training - Barun K. Pani 1/24/2014
School Model - Teacher Training - Tim Joy 2/1/2014
School Model - Teacher Training - Bob Gorman 1/24/2014
School Model - Teacher Training - Ed Johnson 1/27/2014