Personal Narrative: My Administrative Project Goals

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My administrative project goal focused on collaboration and working on our curriculum with my English department 9-12. Personally, this has been an area that I wanted to focus on for years because I felt that each ELA teacher was not able to move forward when it came to developing a viable curriculum. As teachers, we were planning on an individual grade level, but we were not specifically aware of what our colleagues were doing. For example, questions like: How much research was being done with students?, Who was practicing the skill of close reading?, What literary elements were being covered?, and What types of writing assignments were being done? needed to be answered. Other than a sporadic professional development day, there was no time built into our schedules to discuss, analyze, and plan for curriculum goals. If there was one goal we as ELA teachers could agree upon it was: helping our students become better writers. Therefore, my focus during the year was aligning and scaffolding the high school ELA curriculum with Common Core Standards, while planning for ongoing collaboration within our department. First off, for two days over the summer (2016), the ELA teachers met to discuss curriculum goals. During this period there were two immediate goals: teachers first looked through Common Core Standards to analyze what ELA skills would be common and necessary across all grade levels (9-12), and teachers needed to share what they presently do (literature, writing, research, technology, projects, units etc.). Our discussions lead us to compile a list of common skills needed across all grade levels (e.g. write arguments, reading closely, demonstrate command of English grammar/usage). Utilizing this information, wide ranging goals were established for grades 9-12 and shared with one another, as well as administration. For instance, teachers were asked to utilize the writing process, teach the skill of close reading, and create writing portfolios. The next goal was to create a diagnostic assessment which would be administered to all students grades 9-12. I created the assessment at the end of the summer and it was given during the first two weeks of school. The assessment had to do primarily with implications of writing; students were asked to: problem solve for grammar and mechanical errors, find the main ideas of passages, practice close read skills, and to submit two samples (paragraphs) of writing-one narrative and one argumentative. A paragraph rubric was created for grading the writing samples, according to criteria and task. What was the impact of the project? Data from the diagnostic assessment was aggregated, evaluated, and shared with the English department and administration. Unfortunately, the grading of the initial assessment took up the full first quarter. Why? Each test has to be hand graded and with it being the beginning of the new school, all the ELA teachers were busy planning and grading their daily assignments. We had to prioritize finish grading them as the second marking period was fast approaching. My next step was to analyze the data. I was able to see where the largest deficits were in their learning. Data driven decisions were then planned for accordingly based on curriculum goals. Since our priority had to deal with improving student writing skills, each quarter, there would be three ELA composition goals: one mechanics, grammar, and writing goal for all students, 9-12. Also, to save teachers time, each quarter I created folders with worksheets of exercises which teachers could use in the classroom. I also sent out links to helpful and …show more content…
Some of the meetings were scheduled by the principal, but they were not held on a consistent basis. We did have a few professional development days and superintendent days that we were able to work on curriculum as well. Also, when we assembled for our department meetings (once a month) we were able to discuss how the quarterly goals were being implemented. On various occasions, I also met with the department head (ELA 11th grade) to problem solve and discuss quarterly goals. Our ninth grade ELA teacher will be retiring this year and I have been part of the team to communicate our 9-12 goals to the new hire, a middle school ELA teacher.
What are lessons learned and what are next

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