To borrow the heading from Eric Sheninger’s blog, this blog provides my views on effective educational leadership, effective communication with students, effective grading practices, and effective methods of establishing a student-centered learning culture.  It also provides my personal goals for 2014.

2013 most certainly represents the year in which I began a total transformation, professionally.  I joined Twitter and started to immediately connect to educators whose thinking was, at the time, far ahead of mine.  I’ve since become involved in a few educational chats, when I get the time.  I basically choose my chats by the topics that interest me.  I also don’t chat every night or even every week, though I try to at least browse the archives of something each week.  I’m at the point that is in stark contrast to how many educators may feel about Twitter chats: “I don’t have time or interest in sitting around the computer reading people’s opinions.”  I actually feel that I can’t afford to miss the conversations that are taking place on Twitter and if I go a week or two without any connecting, I feel like I’ve missed out on learning opportunities that will improve my practice.  I feel like someone is having a conversation about a solution that I’m seeking about my classroom.

I’ve wrote that Twitter isn’t the cure-all for educators.  It’s really not.  There are many means of connecting, it just seems to be the one that suits me the most.  I really don’t have time to invest in another avenue at this point, so I stick to Twitter because I’m seeing results.  It’s actually the first place I look to when trying to find something like project-based activities for graphing equations.  Google is actually second!

In 2013, I also started an Evernote portfolio.  Like many who start Evernote, I can now say that I need to invest some more energy into organizing the resources I’ve stored there.  I do have them organized by tags, which is helpful when looking for something later, but I have read about others who are way more organized than I am.  Evernote has proven to be one of those must-haves for me and I can’t imagine going without it and the Chrome extension, Evernote Web Clipper.

I started this blog in 2013.  It originally began as a means to communicate to parents and students.  That was my original thought.  My interest in learning eventually took over and as I read blog posts from educators I was communicating with via Twitter, I realized that I could do the same thing.  There was nothing preventing me from putting my thoughts on cyberspace and sharing them with others.  I remember the first time I asked Eric Sheninger and Tom Murray to share one of my blog posts.  That post ended up in India, South America, British Columbia, Australia, and many parts of the US.  I started to receive some really encouraging feedback and it was all because I wrote down some thoughts.  Thoughts that were a direct result of the learning that occurred through reading tweets, blog posts, and conversations on Twitter.

This blog has definitely lead to me becoming much more reflective than I ever dreamed of becoming.  This mode of being reflective is more about occasionally sitting down and thinking about growth and change that has occurred recently.  I actually think it’s always a part of me now.  I constantly reflect on things I used to do in my classroom, even in real-time as common situations present themselves in my classroom.  Those that have acquired this sort of reflection know what I’m talking about.  Maybe it just comes with experience.  I actually feel bad when I see students from 2-3 years ago because I can’t imagine how terrible I was at that time.  I recall completely irrelevant conversations I had in class, impractical grading practices I had back then, and even the classroom management strategies I was using then.  I recall how I was superglued to the curriculum map, despite what students and data were trying to tell me.  

2013 has definitely brought me closer to my students.  I have developed more meaningful and purposeful relationships with them.  We’re having better conversations in class.  I can ask even more of my students now than I ever could think of asking 2-3 years ago.  I’ve learned a lot about developing and fostering those relationships with all students, especially the ones who need it the most.  I’m using way more data and feedback from the students.  Before, I never would have even thought about asking the students.  Now, when I come to a fork in the road, I ask them and they direct me where to go.  They’re very honest too.  I’m thankful that my students can be honest with me because they know I’ll be honest with them.  I’ve received such great feedback from students, parents, and colleagues by providing my students with a voice in my classroom.   I’ve stopped being afraid of social media and began to leverage it’s power to enhance the relationships I’ve built with my students.

Grading has definitely changed for me in 2013.  I’ve started a journey towards standards-based grading.  This journey started by participating in #sbgchat and reading blog posts from SBGers like Garnet Hillman.  I quickly realized how antiquated and almost meaningless my current grading practices were.  I decided to change and it’s not been easy and it’s not completed.

Along with updating my grading practices, I’ve also given a lot of thought towards the purpose of homework in my class.  I’ve read Sal Khan’s book The One World School House and that alone began a tremendous shift in my thinking.  But he ignited a passion in me to determine the effectiveness of homework, feedback vs grades, the flipped concept, blended learning, and using data to drive your instruction.  All of these concepts have appeared in my classroom in some capacity during 2013.

In the next post, I’ll look ahead to some goals I have for 2014.