Friday Memo 9/4/15

CEEDAR

One of the major components of the CEEDAR initiative is to make sure that we are producing educators and leaders who know how to differentiate instruction and utilize MTSS - Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, including academic and behavioral support through RTI and PBIS. We will be working together to ensure we are teaching our teacher candidates how to implement these strategies when they get into the classroom and our leader candidates how to facilitate these strategies in their buildings.

Image Source 

http://www.ascd.org/professional-development/differentiated-classroom-2nd-edition.aspx

Image Source 

http://www.diffcentral.com/model.html

Image Source

https://www.pbis.org/school/rti

PK-12 Potential Partnership

I have been brainstorming with many faculty members, PK-12 acquaintances, and CEEDAR partners, to begin discussing potential schools and districts that might be interested in establishing a partnership with the Education Division at MBU. Over the next few weeks I will be meeting with local school and district leaders to determine their needs to see if a partnership can be established. It is important that the schools and districts with which we partner have a diverse student population, implement best practices in the classroom, and have high expectations for their faculty and students. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Student Organizations

Erica Bumpers, Ricki Roth, Alicia Noddings, and I met to discuss our main campus student organizations. Erica and Ricki will begin recruiting students to participate in SASCD and SMSTA. The Troy/Wentzville RLC has a strong group of students who participate in these organizations thanks to the leadership of Mark Englehardt. We need to provide many opportunities for our students at all of our sites to participate in these professional development organizations. 

Professional Development Planning Meeting

Alicia Noddings and I met with Suzanne Bright, consultant with Leadership Plus, to discuss our upcoming Professional Development meeting. She is a consultant for the Center for the Collaborative Classroom at Leadership Plus. The main PLC topics she will present are purpose, structure, norms, and accountability.  We will begin our PLC work at the meeting on September 22nd. Full-time faculty are expected to attend. Adjunct faculty are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Canvas

I am pleased to see that many of you have been implementing the video component into your online Canvas shell. Thanks to Alicia for motivating and inspiring us to try something new. I look forward to what she will show us Tuesday at our faculty meeting. Alicia will remain on the faculty meeting agenda for the remainder of this school year. I have asked her to spend a few minutes at each meeting to share a new strategy or tool that can be used in Canvas.

MoPTA

Student teachers are in the process of uploading their first task for the MoPTA. As a reminder, this is the first year that the MoPTA is a certification requirement. We have participated in the MoPTA pilot programs for the last two years; however, now it counts! Thanks to our seminar instructors and university supervisors for the support they are providing our student teachers through this process. 

MEES Training

DESE is requiring all field experience and student teaching supervisors in the state of Missouri to attend a training on the Missouri Educator Evaluation System to ensure that we are all consistently evaluating our student teachers utilizing the new form. We met at the Ed Plus facility and spent time discussing and evaluating some videos of teachers in the classroom. I felt the time was well spent and it illuminated the issue of rater reliability and validity. My two biggest lessons learned at the meeting were that I need to ensure I use descriptive language in my feedback to my student teacher and that I stay focused on the quality indicator that I am assessing. I liked the reference to the Sweet 16 and the Final Four of basketball. Although we have high expectations for all of our students and leaders to be competent in all of the standards and quality indicators, the four that we should focus on for our student teachers are 1.2 Student engagement in content, 2.4 Differentiated Learning Design, 5.1 Classroom Management Techniques, and 7.2 Assessment Data to Improve Learning.

Upcoming Meetings

• Division Faculty Meeting     
• Tuesday, 9/8     10:15am   FLD Conference Room
• President's Chapel     
• Thursday, 9/10     11:00am     Chapel
• Ed. Division Professional Development     
• Tuesday, 9/22     10:15am     FLD Conference Room

Closing Comments
1 Corinthians 12:12
The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body.

Our division is a unit. Although it is made up of many parts (programs and sites) we form one division. One of my biggest challenges is to make sure that you all feel part of the larger whole - the division. When one part of the division succeeds or fails  - we all succeed or fail. We are one unit that should function as one as we support one another and our efforts to provide the best program possible for our students.

Enjoy this long weekend!
Melanie