Looking Over My Shoulder

The work I do as a member of the Home Base cohort has been a good reminder and affirmation…or maybe a gentle nudge in my side…about who is really most important: my (and any!) students. As I search the web looking for quality instructional resources, I have seen quite a variety of materials from the incredibly terrific ones that make me wish (and grind my teeth a bit…) that I had found it earlier so that I could have been sharing it with more of my students, and the ones that are shallow  and more (as one of my cohort members said one day) “cute-sy”. Oy vay! The Internet can be such a quagmire of materials! I feel pretty great that in my own little way, I am preventing NCs teachers from having to navigate through at least a smaller portion of it. I know that when they access Home Base’s instructional resources section, they will not find resources that are shallow in thinking level. Nor will they have to filter out so much of the unacceptable lesson plans to find that one lesson that will provide the best learning for their students.

I have had LOTS of experience with the National Board experience from getting my initial certification in 1998, renewing in 2008, being a Candidate Support Provider for dozens of teachers and scoring National Board entries. The one common thread with it all is the idea of reflection and reviewing the relevance of the instruction for the benefit of student learning. I think this background actually helped me with the idea of how the NC Summary Rubrics truly raise up the level of the “playing field” to higher quality and expectations. I am also very heartened with the idea that the philosophy going into tagging resources for Home Base reflects those of the National Board standards. One validates the other, I feel.

So, what will I bring to my students (and any students) as a result of my Fellowship? I am bringing the ideal that the higher test scores will come when I focus on increasing and improving the level of the learning. I have always been told that I am a teacher who holds very high expectations for my students and that I provide a classroom environment that celebrates deeper thinking. It is a good feeling to know that resources are ready and available to continue that philosophy.

Here is a short video (and I won’t go into how many times I had to make the video to fit the parameters of the blog…) about what the Home Base fellows do.

Onward…

video021