Our fellowship revolves around using formative math assessments to improve instruction in K-2 classrooms. The specific system of assessments we are developing professional development around is Kathy Richardson’s Assessing Math Concepts (AMC). I use this assessment and instructional approach daily in my work as a math interventionist and math lead teacher for Orange County Schools, and now my goal is to get others to see the value in this hands-on, student-centered instructional approach.
The biggest challenge I see our group facing is the “how” of getting our professional development work distributed. As we were working at the DPI offices this week, the disconnectedness between the different departments struck me. Departments are in close proximity, yet seem to be far off with communication. Even in regards to our Kenan Fellowships at DPI, to my knowledge, our departments don’t cross-communicate about what we are working on. For my group’s math project, how it is distributed may depend on what the assessment department wants to do with it, or on what the Home Base department wants to do with it. In the mean time, we keep working with the rigor and belief that what we are doing is best for student learning and that others will see the value in this project and ensure it is distributed. And of course, if they don’t, we’ll become door-to-door Kenan Fellows pitching our PD 🙂
I agree with you. I have worked at DPI this summer and noticed the disconnect as well. Hopefully your project will be distributed widely and appropriately. I think we in education often miss out on great opportunities to learn from one another simply due to lack of communication. Good luck! 🙂
As a Home Base DPI fellow, I agree–there’s so many initiatives and puzzle pieces to be put into place right now. Between Common Core and Home Base and rewriting assessments and incorporating other programs and philosophies, it’s going to be interesting to see how the products of our fellowships evolve as they leave our hands and trickle down to other schools. Part of me fears it will be like one big game of Telephone and the best pieces will be lost in translation, and that what I think is a great resource may become just another frustration for a teacher later. Hopefully not!
When you mentioned this today it got me thinking about it, and you have a really good point. I agree with the other DPI responders to this post that all us working with DPI want our stuff to be easily accessable and benefitial to teachers across the state. What concerns me is that in the past few weeks I have seen so many cool resources (even one by past DPI Kenan fellows) that I did not know about before I really combed through DPI’s site.
Maybe all the DPI fellows could meet up at one point and use our respective connections to help each other out and brainstorm how to best get our respective messages out there. It sounds like we have representatives in Home Base, Curriculum, and Assessment, which would benefit all of us.
-Kari
I definitely think that the merits of the program and our project will speak for themselves once we can figure out which doors need opening and then get our feet in those doors. I agree with Kari; perhaps we could all chat and at least untangle the overlaps among these different departments in order to ensure that our projects can gain some traction.