Bo Adams 11-12 Annual Goals and Self-Assessment

8/6/2019 Bo Adams 11-12 Annual Goals and Self-Assessment

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Westminster Faculty Annual Goals and Self-Assessment

Revision March 2010 Page 1

WESTMINSTER FACULTYANNUAL GOALS & SELF-ASSESSMENT

NAME: Bo Adams

YEAR: 2011-12

Self-assessment Objectives:

To encourage reflection and goal setting. To facilitate dialogue and communication. To support faculty and professional development. To provide a framework for positive, constructive, and systematic feedback.Directions: Use this goals and self-assessment document to guide, direct, and record your reflections and planning about

your work as an educator. Complete both pages. Past feedback and ongoing reflection should help you set your goal.

As Professionals, at Westminster We Strive to Be

Community Members

Related Competencies

Collaboration with colleagues: Team player, ability to enhance and to contribute to the faculty as a whole; involved in the

spirit and energy of collective effort.

Contributions outside of the classroom: Professional commitment, responsibility; advising, coaching, sponsoring,

supervising; ability to contribute beyond primary assignment; etc.

Illustrate or write to complete one or more of the following:

1. Describe one or more ways in which you collaborated with colleagues last year and how you plan to collaborate this year.2. How do you contribute to the community beyond your classroom?

I believe that I keep collaboration as my watchword. Different from communication and coordination, I seecollaboration as genuinely co-laboring with others, on a regular and consistent basis, to combine efforts and

strengths into corporate, collectively-made solutions the kind that reveal that WE are smarter than MEthekind that masks any ability to identify the individual contributions to the whole because of the work of the team

More often than not, I probably fall short of that vision, but I do try to stay determinedly focused on reachingthat collaborative state of being.

I collaborate with a number of teams and groups. On this day that I am drafting this reflection, three or four

collaborations in particular stand out for me: 1) Jill Gough and I co-facilitate the course Synergy 8, as well asthe JH PLC efforts; 2) I co-labor with a team of eleven PLC facilitators who led the formalized PLCs in grades

6-12 during the 2010-11 AY, and I co-labor regularly with the 42 JH faculty who were formally participating inthe JH PLCs in 2010-11; 3) I collaborate with educators around the country (and beyond) through such tools as

Twitter and blogging applications one example being my work with the Connected Principals group; 4) Icollaborated with various strategic-design teams at Unboundary as I served my sabbatical in spring of 2011.

Even this summary and organization feels artificial, though, as I re-read my own writing. All four of these

examples blend together as I bring ideas from Twitter into my work with the PLC facilitators, and as I bring mywork at Unboundary to bear on the environment that Jill and I try to create in Synergy to simulate a real-worldworking environment. Therefore, I view these examples of collaboration and those that I have not included

here as a web that is anchored, connected, resilient, and sticky (from B. Harrison post athttp://www.connectedprincipals.com/archives/4047 Waiting forSpiderman) and a structure that weathers

well in a windstorm, catches a great deal of sustenance, etc. Additionally, the collaborations that stand out to meall come not from my work on logistical, managing school teams, which are also critically important, but

from my work on teams that are directly influencing, practicing, and implementing instructional approacheswith adult and child learners. These instructional-leader collaborations feed my soul, and they are the best


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means by which I can positively affect student learning at Westminster. These are the types of collaboration I

plan to remain focused on in 2011-12 those that demand instructional leader and lead learner time. Whatsmore, I mean to spend more time with the entire faculty in the Junior High, as we undertake implementing the

vision statementLearning for Life, integrating the 1:1 technology platform, and further developing the FacultyAssessment and Annual Review (FAAR) process.

A few bulleted details of this years collaboration plans:

First, I will participate in the JH PLCs. With my fellow JH teachers, I will work arm-in-arm with the JHmath-science PLC, the JH English PLC, the JH history PLC, and the JH Spanish/French PLT. On average, Iwill attend at least one meeting per week of each PLC/PLT. Also, I will try diligently to spend time in

everyones classesmultiple times (this means 100% of the JH faculty).

Second, I will continue my work with the facilitators of the JH PLCs. During weekly meetings, usually onThursday mornings before school, our facilitator team works together to collectively establish the learning

paths of our various PLCs and PLTs. During the June 2011 CFT Summer Institute, we drafted plans for the11-12 AY, and we will be working to accomplish our collaborative goals for adult and student learning.

Third, I will continue my daily/regular routine of personal learning via the PLCs and PLTs, stack reading,Twitter, blogging, and work with Unboundary, TED-ED and TEDxAtlanta.

[Some of the offsite professional learning offerings that appeal to me this year are 1) NAIS, 2) EduCon, 3)Learning Forward, and 4) ISTE. These opportunities bring possibilities for collaboration as well. Moreover,

Jill Gough and I will continue to present and facilitate at various conferences and institutes. Our firstengagement of the year is the keynote at MCTM (Mississippi Council of Teachers of Mathematics) in mid

September, and we are working with Bob Ryshke and the Center for Teaching to facilitate various sessionson PBL and PLCs.]

NOTE: Collaborating with the senior admin team, the Academic Leadership Team, the principals group, and the

Junior High Guidance Committee, as well as with various other standing and ad hoc committees representscrucial collaboration for me, too. However, as this is a GOALS document and reflection, I am setting my goals

toward staying focused on the instructional leadership collaboration with faculty. I believe this best plays to mystrengths, passions, and bright spots, too.

Master Teachers


Classroom teaching effectiveness: Knowledge of subject, as well as human development and learning, tone, energy,

organization, pedagogy, use of technology, student engagement, skill development, instructional planning, assessment, etc.

Responsive to all students: Understanding various learning styles, levels of maturity, issues of diversity, gender, and

students strengths and challenges; adapting instruction for individual needs; utilizing multiple instructional strategies;

communication with students, parents, colleagues, and administrators; etc.

Relationships with students: Approachable, open, engaging, respected, and respectful; understands and relates to students

as individuals; good classroom motivation and management skills; etc.

Write a reflection: Look at the related competencies in this section. Select one or more that you believe you need to work on and

describe what steps you will take to strengthen your competency as a master teacher. This may be related to your goal(s) for the year.

Pedagogy; Assessment; Understanding Various Learning Styles; Communication with Students, Parents,

Colleagues, and Administrators!

[At the core of the reflection that follows is my 2010-11 response to this prompt. I have made revisions and

additions, but I will continue to focus my professional learning in these areas, as they are long-term projects thatdo not fit nicely and neatly into the constructs of a single school year.]

Because of my interest in and developing work with PLCs, I have become well-versed in the four key questions


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of a PLC: 1) What should be learned?, 2) How will we know if they are learning?, 3) What will we do if they

already know it?, and 4) What will we do if they arent learning? But it is not enough to know these questions; Ineed to live these questions for myself and for those that I serve as lead learner. After eighteen years as a

professional educator, I have realized that I have been much too focused on teaching, and I have not beenfocused nearly enough on the far more important goal of learning! Sven Nater wrote a book about legendary

UCLA Coach John Wooden entitled, You Havent Taught Until They Have Learned. I have grown to believefully in this philosophy and practice, so I am concentrating on the master-teacher traits relating to pedagogy,

assessment, learningstyles, and communication. I think the four key questions apply to any age learner, and I

believe the nucleus of my goals work will remain centered in assessment how will I know when students (andteachers, and I) have learned? Consequently, I am devoting a great deal of continuing attention to the topic ofassessment, which I increasingly see as the center of it all.

In 2011-12, I will continue to read all that I can consume about 21st

century teaching and learning because a

major component of this movement involves a richer understanding and use of assessment. Much of the writingand research in this area is devoted to balanced assessment. Balanced assessment integrates formative and

summative assessment, and it utilizes techniques to examine learning targets across the spectrum of knowledge,skills, reasoning, products, and dispositions. Balanced assessment also requires us to make instructional

decisions based on the responses we gather from the four key questions. Assessment and learning shoulddetermine differentiated, instructional paths, not isolated teacher planning that I have typically done in the

summer for efficiency. Instruction needs to be more responsive to assessment assessment is a cyclicalbeginning, not something to do at the end of instruction to merely record a grade.

Balanced assessment is also a major component of our newly revised vision statement,Learning for Life.Additionally, project-based learning and integrated studies exist as related, major components of the vision

statement, and I want to focus a great deal of attention on these three areas areas that relate intimately withpedagogy, assessment, learning styles, and communication. These focus areas for me come together

tremendously in my work with Synergy 8 my primary laboratory for pedagogy, assessment, PBL, andintegrated studies.

In Synergy 8, a new course that co-teacher Jill Gough and I created and piloted in 2010-11, students

experienced myriad assessments for learning, but they did not receive a traditional grade averaged as apercentage score. During the first iteration of the course, we built a substantial assessment framework, but we

have a lot of work to do still. Therefore, Jill and I will continue developing a balanced assessment plan forSynergy 8, and we will continue employing methods advocated by Tom Guskey, Bob Marzano, Rick Stiggins,

and other gurus of educational assessment. Primarily, we are developing four-point rubrics with very specificdescriptors of proficiency targets, and we are utilizing these rubrics to guide students in assessing their growth

and progress relative to the four categories of twelve essential learnings in the course. In order to achieve bestpractices in this assessment plan, Jill and I will need to continue to research and study rubric creation and use.

Furthermore, we will need support from the various PLCs in the JH as we engage in assessment practices thatreach across the disciplines (Synergy 8 is an interdisciplinary course). Additionally, Jill and I plan to use a much

more formalized blogging plan for providing a primary communication scheme for students to reflect and

project about their learning. At the same time, I hope not to overly define the parameters of learning in Synergyso that the student learners can exercise their creativity in ways that too much teacher-generated structure mayhinder. I will be striving for the sweet spot of instruction that Kelly Gallagher describes inReadicide.

So, a quick bullet list of possible action steps:

Continue to use personal learning plan and PLCs/PLTs for growth and development in my ownunderstanding of pedagogy, assessment, learning styles, and communication.

Continue to develop the assessment and instruction framework of Synergy, in part as a practicum for thevision work in PBL, integrated studies, and balanced assessment.


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Work with JH faculty to implement the vision statement in meaningful ways through determined,incremental, progressing stepswhile integrating the 1:1 program.

Lifelong Learners


Collaboration with colleagues and students: Collaborates with students and colleagues to further knowledge and

understanding.

Staying current in field: Demonstrates a willingness to take risks and an openness to engage new ideas; stays current with

evolving teaching strategies and methodologies; models reflective practices; seeks opportunities to grow, etc.

Respond to one or more of the following prompts:

1. How do you stay current with evolving teaching strategies and methodologies, model reflective practices, and seekopportunities to grow in your content area and/or grade level teaching?

2. Describe an experience that demonstrates your willingness to take risks and an openness to engage new ideas.3. After reading a book or an article, or after attending a conference/workshop or participating in a collaborative experience,

describe how you incorporated or plan to incorporate the learning into your teaching. Please list the resource.

1. [repeated from 10-11 reflectionstill applies strongly] To stay current with evolving teaching strategies and

methodologies, I attempt to build a learning weba personal learning network. This web, or network, has manyinterwoven strands. One major strand is my personal reading strategy. I have developed into a stack reader. I

read books and articles, record main ideas on one page, and stack materials according to main ideas. When astack contains three books and/or articles, I re-read a stack with more serious note-taking, mind-mapping, and

instructional connecting. Currently, my primary stack includes project-based learning, assessment, and changetheory.

The second major strand is online writing and reading resources of a shorter or different nature than books

and articles. For example, I try to watch a TED talk every morning as part of my routine; I try to write to a blogat least once a week; I read other blogs and websites to which I subscribe; and I have joined a personal learning

network of educators on Twitter.

The third major strand, and arguably the trunk line of strands, is the time that I spend with the JH faculty andPLCs. To engage in regular, purposeful, job-embedded conversations about teaching and learning provides a

practicum and support-filled laboratory for the research and theory and ideas that exist in education. Because ofmy role as principal teacher/learner, I have the great blessing of an excuse to visit classes and see great folks in

action as they facilitate learning for adults and children alike.

Fourth, I utilize the component pieces of the Faculty Assessment and Annual Review Plan. I trust the Goals andSelf-Assessment process to catalyze my thinking and reflecting about my annual practice. I desperately want to

add in peer visits and administrative feedback in my practice as principal. Using various survey methods withfaculty, I am fortunate to have a piece very comparable to student course feedback.

Fifth, I am trying new things like Synergy 8. There is a common assumption that schools are for student

learning, but they should be for adult learning too. I am certainly stretching and challenging myself with the

Synergy 8 plan. It is not like the past eighteen years of my teaching career, and I consider myself most fortunateto be in a team-teaching role.

Sixth, I try to weave in innovations and ideas to JH faculty meetings. For instance, at the first meeting last year,we started a Build Something Together project. I hope to continue this as this year progresses.

2. I believe my co-piloting of Synergy 8 provides a rich example of my willingness to take risks and try new

ideas. Additionally, I think my growing commitment to my two blogs and my Twitter tweets shows furtherevidence of calculated risk taking, consistent and regular growth, and practicing a growth mindset to build in


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my thinking and writing abilities. As just one more example, I believe my presentation skills with slide decks

and video production demonstrates a rich learning area for me in 2010-11.

3. Developing a second blog with a service called Posterous is proving to be transformative for me relative toproject-based learning. In addition to my primary, Wordpress blog called Its About Learning

(http://itsaboutlearning.wordpress.com), I maintain a second, email-based, Posterous blog(http://boadams1.posterous.com) for observation journaling. As I am playing with my sons, kayaking during

vacation, or walking around campus, I often snap a quick iPhone photo or videotype a short inquiry and

reflectionand post to Posterous. This developing practice, first conceptualized as I attended the Solution Tree21st C. Learning Summit in October of 2010, is promoting the grinding of a lens for me through which I seealmost everything as potential PBL threads. In Synergy 8, during the 2011-12 AY, students will employ such a

practice as a means for keeping their observation journals.

[NOTE: All of the above reflection I see as nodes of a connected thinking and learning web for me.]

BASED ON REFLECTIONS FROM PAGE 1,WHAT EMERGED AS ONE OR TWO OF YOUR

Strengths:

Desire and commitment to explore more deeply the complexities of LEARNING! Growing capacity to try new things, learn with others, facilitate team efforts, assess learning

Challenges:

Taking more on my plate than I can sustain long-termwanting to be involved, not just informed. Taking time to reflect, breathe deeply, stay healthy by making time to exercise (my hobby can seem to be

my work because I love the reading and research and writing and practicing new things so much).

PRIMARY GOAL SETTING

Summarize your primary goal from the previous academic year. Briefly describe yourprogress on reaching this goal.

During the 2010-11 school year, through the use of Guskey/Marzano-type rubrics,100% of the students in Synergy 8 and 100% of the Junior High teachers involved in

formalized PLCs will reach the proficiency standards set for all of the essential

learnings established for their respective work. (Working to make teacher-part of goal

not so PLC-centric.)

In short, this goal is revealing itself to be a multi-year project. While I cannot report that all

of the proficiency standards are established, revised, polished, benchmarked, and achieved


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for Synergy 8 or the JH PLCs, great progress has been made in establishing meaningful

assessment frameworks for the Synergy course and the JH PLCs.

For Synergy, we have established 12 essential learnings organized in four primary

categories. We have developed rubrics (paper and electronic) for several of these essential

learning categories, and we have developed and practiced a routine for student learners

taking more ownership of their self-tracking and self-reporting of progress relative to those

standards being established for problem identification and solution, data collection andanalysis, etc.

For the JH PLCs (and HS math), we have a second year of data collected by the PLC

facilitator team a data set that includes formative assessments used throughout the year in

various PLCs, as well as the summative assessment used for a second time at the

conclusion of the year. The PLC facilitators have spent several sessions analyzing and

processing this data, including sessions undertaken during the recent CFT Summer

Institute for PLC-F. We are using the quantitative and qualitative data to identify trends for

group instruction as well as individual enrichment and intervention. The data analysisprovides us with direction for what we can focus on for 2011-12. We continue to develop a

set of rubrics for adult learning and PLC assessment, too. The facilitator team is revising

these assessment tools and developing an updated assessment plan to track adult learning

and growth, as well as child learning and growth.

RECORD YOUR 2011-12 PRIMARY GOAL:During the 2011-12 school year, through the use of Guskey/Marzano-type rubrics,

100% of the students in Synergy 8 and 100% of the Junior High teachers involved in

formalized PLCs will reach the proficiency standards set for all of the essential

learnings established for their respective work. (Working to make teacher-part of goal

not so PLC-centric.)

a. Predict how student learning will be enhanced as you work to implement your goal.For Synergy 8, Jill Gough and I have established twelve essential learnings organized

in four integrated categories inquiry and deep questioning, problem and solution

identification, data gathering and analysis, and communication and collaboration.

Through facilitated work with the students, we will continue to establish four-point

rubrics for the essential learnings in the course, and students will track their progressand achievement of proficiency. Therefore, the students and facilitators will possess

concrete evidence of the learning that occurs relative to the essential learnings of the

course. [See Synergy 8 Essential Learnings Logo]

For the JH PLCs, the facilitators and teachers will continue to establish rubrics to

track progress and learning on the essential learnings of a PLC, such as norms,

SMART goals, essential learnings, collaboration, common assessments, etc. By


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formatively assessing the developing skills of PLC work, participants will possess

concrete evidence of progress and growth relative to the essential learnings of a PLC.

Additionally, by growing in these domains, teachers will be able to track more

accurately the learning and progress of their students, through such practices as

common assessment analysis of student work. Many may even employ rubrics to

assist students in tracking learning and growth.

b. What action steps will you take to reach your goal?1) Establish and revise the essential learnings for Synergy 8 and the JH PLCs.

Reach agreement and ownership with the participants using the essential

learnings.

2) Develop rubrics with leveled achievement descriptors for the essentiallearnings. Set 3 as the proficiency target for each essential learning. Establish 1-

2-4 based on the levels of achievement relative to the proficiency target of 3.

3) Create and follow an assessment plan that regularly employs the use of therubrics, tracks progress, and adjusts courses/paths based on results.

4) Employ blogging tools as a means to create a digital, archived portfolio oflearning and growth.c. What support do you need to reach your goal?

1) First and foremost, I need the support and collaboration of Jill Gough inSynergy 8, and I need the support and collaboration of the JH PLC facilitators

and teachers. We must work collectively to establish the essential learnings, the

rubrics, and the assessment plans.

2) Based on my experience in 2009-10, I will be much more successful at strivingfor and reaching my goal if I have a critical friends group with whom to

work. I missed this in 2010-11 and suffered from the absence.3) I will need to continue learning about best-practice uses of rubrics for tracking

progress and growth. Most likely this support will come from my own

determination to learn, and collaboration with the PLC facilitators and teachers.

4) In reality, I need the support of the entire JH faculty. While my goal containsspecificity related to the formalized PLCs, I serve the entire JH faculty. My goal

will be more attainable with the support of ALL of the adult learners with

whom I work. I believe conversations with interested colleagues will help

forward my work that is focused on learning in Synergy 8, learning in the

PLCs, and learning among the entire JH faculty.

PLEASE SIGN: ____Bo Adams (e-signature)__________ and DATE: 7-21-11 E-mail or send copies of this completed form to your department head and division principal by

the due date. Thank you.

Documents

Bo Adams 11-12 Annual Goals and Self-Assessment