One of the most emphasized teacher professional responsibilities in my system is that of collaboration with colleagues. Towards meeting this obligation, I participate monthly in science department meetings, weekly in formal grade 8 science teacher common planning time meetings and once or twice a year in “embedded day” in service meetings with my fellow grade 8 science teachers. Additionally, each grade 8 science teacher has the same free “planning” period each day, and we have taken the initiate to regularly spend this time not planning individually, but rather collaboratively. One of the foci of our collaborations is the instructional methods and materials that we will use in each of our Engineering Technology units. A product of these collaborations has been the development and use of common assessments as one of the concluding activities of each project conducted in our Tech classes. Linked below are the QUIA-based quizzes that we developed collaboratively for use not only to assess student learning in the Solar Car design / construction and WestPoint Bridge Design projects, but to also create a data pool by which we could critically assess our own efforts to effectively instruct our students. The quizzes are linked below:
TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING CLASS COMMON ASSESSMENT - QUIZ: SOLAR CAR PROJECT - Use your browser's back arrow to return to this page
TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING CLASS COMMON ASSESSMENT - QUIZ: WESTPOINT BRIDGE PROJECT - Use your browser's back arrow to return to this page
I also maintain a teacher QUIA website to facilitate home-school connection, and to provide students with after-hours access to information and resources, so that my ability to communicate with students extends beyond the classroom, and is expanded to multiple modes of expression. My QUIA website is linked below:
MY TEACHER QUIA WEBSITE - Use your browser's back arrow to return to this page
In order for students and parents alike to best utilize my QUIA site, I have produced an informational sheet that details the types of information and resources available, and how to utilize them and the site as a whole most efficiently and effectively. A link to this informational sheet is below:
TEACHER WEBSITE INFORMATION RESOURCE FOR STUDENTS AND PARENTS
In order to uphold my responsibility to communicate with parents regarding student progress in a timely and effective manner, I provide via email academic updates to parents of struggling students at ¼ and ¾ term marks to initiate dialogue. It should be noted that a typical term lasts 8 to 10 weeks, so by use of these email updates, I am ensuring that the parents of my neediest students are receiving approximately bi-weekly progress reports, whereas my school requires such communication only at the midterm and end of term periods. Linked below are examples of the emails that I send to parents, to both inform and initiate further dialogue:
EMAIL TO PARENTS - 2 WEEK UPDATE - SAMPLE
Lastly, I also consider my participation in the Master’s Degree in CIT program through Framingham State University as an effort towards fulfilling my professional responsibilities. An example of how my participation in the CIT program has produced immediate and significant benefit to my students, but perhaps to my school at large, was the completion of my Educational Research Project towards fulfillment of the requirements of the course EDUC 999. This project investigated the efficacy of using QUIA-based assignment and feedback vs. traditional methods towards increasing student participation and performance. I was able to quantify that the use of QUIA assignments does confer benefits to student and teacher alike, and was able to share these results with my principal, prompting future discussion of the ramifications of my findings. Linked below is this research project:
EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH PROJECT: EFFECTIVENESS OF THE USE OF QUIA-BASED ASSIGNMENTS
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