How to engage your stakeholders in your data team, how to collect data and compile it into a presentation, and how to properly create an action plan are the most important things I learned during this course. These are all areas that I know I will reference as I continue to grow as a teacher and are key points that a teacher needs in their classroom. It is one thing to have a plan, but if the execution of the plan or the follow up on the implementation is not there then the plan will not be successful. I see more than I have before, how you can take data that you are collecting in your classroom and turn it into something that will benefit you and your students, and even other teachers. Just because I teach social studies, does not mean that the strategies I use in my classroom can not correlate or be used in another subject area. By analyzing the data and creating an action plan, it paints a big picture of where you are headed and the steps to achieve your set goals. The strategies as to get stakeholders involved is important because without the support then it will be extremely difficult to have any changes and make the difference you want to make. As a teacher leader, I foresee myself referencing this information as we continue to grow as a school and district.
I believe the Data Overview was the most valuable field experience to me because it required me to take an inside look at the social studies department. As a fellow, social studies teacher, I found it interesting to see how our school’s trends when compared to the state and district scores. I taught US history a few years ago and I currently teach it now, so this allowed me to get a pulse on what has been going on since I was not teaching it. I am also the US History PLC leader, which requires me to have this knowledge to assist our group in the direction we need to be heading. By collecting this data, I have valuable information to share with my team, the economic PLC group, the social studies department head, and the administration at our school including our instructional coach. Social studies do not always get the most attention when compared to a math or English course, so to have this data it gives us a great starting point to improve instruction and student performance, especially students in the sub-population groups. While collecting the data, I met with our instructional coach to discuss my findings and gather resources from her research. We continuously share information and ideas regarding ways to improve instruction. I plan to continue to work with her through the year as we roll out Data Teams For Learning (DT4L). I had the opportunity to teach a training on how to collect data using our learning management system, Canvas, to aid teachers in seeing the data in their classrooms that they can bring to the PLC meetings. I also will be participating in a pilot program within Canvas called Gauge that works more with the data collection process. My PLC group will be participating with me to see how this will work next semester. I believe that by having this experience in this course, I will be able to best serve my PLC and represent our school well as we embark on this new data adventure. Through implementing our action plan and working in Gauge, I believe there will be some learning curves considering some of these teachers having been teaching this subject for several years, however, I believe that with the skills that we learned in this course, the instructional coach and myself will be able to show how essential data collection is and what information it can provide. There may also be some challenges as to what are the best practices and how to create these authentic data collection assessments that will provide important information for us to use. This along with the pilot program will have some growing pains as most teachers operate within their own classroom without seeking outside influence, but these pains are necessary and will be for the best. I am excited to continue to collect data and be a teacher leader in the school.
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January 2024
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