Education 652/654 Directed Teaching and Problems and Principles of Secondary Education— English

Education 652/654: Directed Teaching and Problems and Principles of Secondary Education— English

Winter & Spring 2017
Meeting Day and Time: T 4:30-6:00 pm
Location: SEB 2229

Instructor: Ann Burke
Office: SEB 4204
Contact Information: acburke@umich.edu
Office Hours: By appointment

*This course will start at 4:30 PM and will not recognize “Michigan time”

Field Placement:Monday and Tuesday mornings 7 a.m. – noon and all day Tuesday/Thursday 7am-3pm until March 24. Beginning March 27, all day Monday through Friday until last day of school in June according to the host school’s calendar.

Course Description

Field experience is a significant part of your professional development as prospective teachers. Beginning in January, you will gradually ramp up your skills to begin full-time student teaching. You will work with your mentor and field instructor to hone those skills so when you leave the program in June you will be ready to teach in your own classroom. Throughout this period, you will have the opportunity to work on your practice and reflect on the growth that will take place. Studies of teacher learning suggest that teachers who study and reflect on their work and connect it to research and theory are better able to identify areas for improvement, consider alternative strategies, and solve problems of practice (Freese, 1999; Laboskey, 1992). EDUC 654 is a seminar designed to enhance your learning in the field by encouraging such studies, reflection, connections, and applications. During the seminars, you will be engaged in discussions about teaching, learning, and other issues relevant to your field experience. Through your work in the RoPs, RWTs, classroom observations, lesson planning, teaching practice, conversations with teachers and students, seminar discussions, and other coursework, EDUC 652/654 will challenge you to:

● critically reflect on teaching moves – your own and your mentor
● develop awareness of assumptions (your own and others) about teaching/students
● identify problems of practice, articulate them, and solve/manage them
● develop a discourse for talking about/improving teaching
● engage in reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action
● differentiate instruction
● collect and assess evidence of student learning
● become members of a professional community

EDU 652/654 Seminar & Field Expectations

Course Assessment

You will demonstrate your success in the seminar course in the following ways:

1) by attending and actively participating in the seminar course;

2) by completing seminar assignments and tasks, including the compiling artifacts and records of practice from the field to bring to seminar discussion, lesson plans, and others as requested

3) by attending your field placement in the designated days outlined in the section below, ‘Expectations about Field Work Attendance’; and

4) by achieving a rating of 13 in three of the five competencies by the end of the winter and spring terms.

This is a “Y” course and will be graded “Satisfactory” or “Unsatisfactory” at the end of the spring term for EDUC 652 and with a letter grade at the end of the spring term for EDUC 654. 80%+ is needed to attain “Satisfactory”. Please understand that you will receive a grade of “Unsatisfactory” if you do not achieve the required rankings on the competencies. You may also receive a grade of “Unsatisfactory” for not meeting a combination of the goals.

Grading

FIELD – EDUC 652
● Attainment of competencies	80%
● Attendance	20%
SEMINAR – EDUC 654
● Assignment/Task Completion	80%
● Preparedness & Participation	20%

Assignments are scored on a point basis. Unsatisfactory assignments will be reviewed with you and may be resubmitted, within a reasonable amount of time as designated by the instructor.

Late Work

I expect that all assignments for this course will be turned in on time. If extenuating circumstances prevent you from turning in an assignment on time, please contact me via email prior to the submission deadline. Unexcused late work will not be accepted.

Expectations about Field Work Attendance

As a professional, it is expected that you will be at your teaching site all day and on time (at the time agreed upon at our Getting Started Meeting) every morning and all day on Monday and Tuesday until March 24. Then, all day, every day until the end of the host school calendar in June. In the event that you need to miss a day due to illness, emergency, religious holiday, or any other reason, it is imperative that you let your mentor teacher know as soon as you are aware of the absence. When contacting your mentor teacher, please make sure you have communicated with a person, sending an email is not enough. Check with your mentor teacher about who to contact. For example, you might call your mentor’s cell phone, the main office or another teacher at your placement. Additionally, if you were responsible for any part of the lesson, you should send appropriate plans to your mentor teacher in your absence. Second, you must notify your field instructor before the absence via phone or email. Please note that regardless of your mentor teacher’s attitude toward absences, the School of Education requires you to attend your placement every day you are scheduled to be there and does not excuse absences for sport events, vacations, or family functions. Please review the Program and Policy Handbook for further information about SOE absence policies while student teaching and plan your life accordingly so that you do not miss field placement time. Interns will follow the host school calendar for this time period, following the breaks and professional development days in their placement school.

In accordance with the Program and Policy Handbook you are permitted one personal day in each term of your field placement for a non-specified reason for absence from the field. However, this absence must be arranged well in advance with your field instructor and mentor teacher.

Professionalism and Preparedness Expectations

Another aspect of professionalism is preparedness. It is expected that you will thoughtfully prepare for all field-based work in this course. For our field-based assignments, being able to work with students is contingent upon submitting acceptable plans on time. Failure to submit plans in a timely manner (at least 24-hours prior to teaching) will result in not being able to engage in the field-based work and you will receive a 0 for the assignment(s).

Another aspect of professionalism in a school setting is professional dress. Take your cues from the teachers at your school site regarding dress and ask about what is appropriate. In the past, interns have been surprised to find that people in the school setting considered their clothing to be “revealing” or too informal. When in doubt, go for the more formal clothing choice. As an adult in the classroom, school faculty administrators, parents and community members, and students should be able to identify you as a responsible adult given charge of children’s learning, care, safety and security. Continuous wearing of unprofessional attire to your school site after being warned may be grounds for removal from your placement.

Personal Technology Use

Appropriate use of electronic devices is a part of your professional participation in our class. Using laptops or cell phones as tools for your learning is acceptable, as long as it is not distracting to you, your colleagues or your instructor. Examples of acceptable use of electronic devices include making records of your practice and consulting resources for work in class. Non-instructional texting, phone calls, social networking, shopping, and other non-instructional use of these devices during class is unacceptable, and will result in a reduction in your participation grade. If you are concerned about your ability to meet this professional expectation, please discuss your concern with me. Please let me know if there is an emergency that affects your need for using a phone during class time.

Accommodations for Students with Disabilities

If you are registered with the Office for Services for Students with Disabilities, please share your VISA (Verified Individualize Services and Accommodations) form with me at your earliest convenience. Some aspects of this course, the assignments, the in-class activities, and the way the course is usually taught may be modified to facilitate your participation and progress.

If you think you may need an accommodation to complete the requirements of this course, we can work with the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) to help us determine appropriate academic accommodations. SSD (734-763-3000; http://ssd.umich.edu) typically recommends accommodations through a Verified Individualized Services and Accommodations (VISA) form. Any information you provide is private and confidential and will be treated as such.

Part 1: Field Experiences

Be sure to read the Program and Policy Handbook for University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Teacher Education Programs found in Google Drive. We will adhere to the policies in that document.

Field Experience Goals

The goal of your student teaching experience is to demonstrate that you have become an effective and influential novice teacher who is prepared to enact high leverage practices for teaching in a secondary school. Effective teachers can demonstrate, through evidence, that student learning has occurred in relation to instructional goals. Influential teachers (Ruddell, 1995) are characterized as:

using highly motivating and effective teaching strategies to create excitement about subject matter content,
exhibiting a strong sense of personal caring about students, and
demonstrating the ability to design and adjust instruction to meet student needs.

Throughout the semester, your seminar work will support you with achieving these goals. In your clinical fieldwork you will be gaining practice-based experience with and knowledge about the Secondary MAC Competencies as you plan for and enact your teaching. Your field instructor and mentor teacher will work with you to help you reach the seminar goals. During your student teaching we will ask you to demonstrate:

Your knowledge of the practices associated with the Secondary MAC Competencies. During seminar and lesson planning we will expect you to use professional language when describing the practices that successfully advance student learning or represent that you are an influential teacher.
Your capability to justify your selection of these practices to reach your instructional goals. During seminar discussions, in your lesson plans, or through observation debriefs, we will ask you to use program competencies, readings from the program, or professional experiences and knowledge you have gained from working with mentor teachers or schools to explain your choice of practices and why you think these practices support student learning.
Your successful use of these practices to support student learning. You will be asked to provide evidence through artifacts, records of practice, or data from field instructor or mentor teacher observations to show your use of high leverage practices. In addition, you will be asked to document how these practices advanced student learning to meet your instructional goals. If your instructional goals are not met, we will ask you to describe how you will improve your practice for future teaching.

You will demonstrate success with these goals in the following ways:

1) By successfully completing and documenting all of the Field Experience Tasks during your student teaching (described below)

2) A successful rating expectation on the teaching practices competency final assessment in spring that includes receiving no ranking below “appropriate for student teaching” and a majority within each domain/standard at “ready for hire”.

I. Student Teaching Stages

Stage 1. Co-Planning and Co Teaching – Apprentice Teaching

Interns will be expected to be in the classroom with their mentor teacher every morning and two full days starting when the host school returns from winter break in January. This modified full/half day schedule runs through March 24^th. When it is most appropriate in your school, you should take on responsibility for teaching classes in the morning, supported by the mentor through modeling, co-planning and co-teaching. The scheduled time in school should match the schedule of the mentor teacher- a general guideline is starting 30 minutes before the start of the school and ending at least 30 minutes after classes have ended at the school. It is possible to stay after to work with your mentor teacher based on your mentor teacher’s after school responsibilities. During this time the intern will participate in two levels of co-teaching:

Level 1, Jan 2 – Jan 20:
The intern will assist the mentor teacher with teaching to help end the quarter/semester and review lessons in preparation for the mid-year assessments (if appropriate). The intern should be involved with daily routines and activities such as starting class with bell work, working with groups during seatwork, and end-of-class activities. During this time, the intern will do his/her co-planning with his/her mentor teacher for their student teaching.

Level 2, Jan 23 – Feb 24 (or after the start of the new quarter):
The intern will participate in a variety of teaching activities where the intern takes on co-teaching with the mentor present to co-instructor to provide support for one to two classes of one “course prep.” Support can consist of having the intern collaboratively teach with the mentor teacher where each person carries out a lesson activity in the same class period and/or parallel teach where the intern copies the work of the mentor teacher by duplicating the work of the mentor teacher (e.g., the mentor teaches first hour, the intern teachers the same lesson second hour). All lessons taught by the intern should be co-planned or reviewed by the mentor teacher prior to teaching. During this time, the mentor teacher and the intern will work to transition classroom authority for management of behavior to the intern, including agreeing on which classroom management issues will be handled by the intern and which by the mentor teacher.

Stage 2: Novice Teaching

Feb 27 – March 24: Monday and Tuesday 7 a.m. – 3 p.m.; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 7 a.m. – noon) in the placement school and March 27 – the last day of school in your placement district: Monday through Friday 7 a.m. – 3 p.m. in the placement school.

During Novice Teaching, the intern will be expected to take on more individual responsibility for planning, teaching and assessing students. Interns will follow the host school calendar for this time period following the breaks and professional development days in schools.

During Novice Teaching, the intern will plan a teaching sequence that lasts for several weeks. During this time, the intern will be co-planning and co-teaching with the mentor teacher, but the intern will take the primary instructional role. For the later part of Novice Teaching, the intern will take the lead for one or two class preparations for several periods a day, and operate on an assistive, collaborative, or parallel teaching / co-teaching model for the other periods, different subjects, or AP classes. The intern could experience what it is like to plan and teach for a full day of instruction for multiple days.

II. Field Instructor Observations and Conferences

An important part of the seminar is to provide a hub where you will connect with your field instructor and peers, make plans for field visits, and handle issues that arise during fieldwork.

Formal Observations:

From the start of student teaching in January until April 24, you will be observed formally by your field instructor four times and will debrief about those observations with your field instructor each time. You will be formally observed once during the last six weeks of the MAC program in May/June. Observations are to be spaced out appropriately over the course of the semester and scheduled at least a week in advance.

To schedule our conferences and my observations please use the shared Google calendar. If you schedule a meeting less than three days in advance, you need to e-mail me to check that I am available to meet. Remember to plan for travel time, and please schedule my visit from the beginning of the passing period. In addition to scheduled observations, I may stop by unannounced. Please inform me of any dates where there will not be instruction happening in the classroom so that I do not show up on these days.

Observation Lesson Plans and Video Documentation

At least 24 hours prior to the observation, submit a lesson plan, any supporting materials (i.e. handouts, worksheets, PowerPoint presentation) and the pre-observation memo to me via the M+Box folder (EDUC 654_LastName) you have shared with me (acburke@umich.edu). Please also leave a hard copy of the lesson plan and handouts with me the day before the observation or have them ready for me as soon as I arrive to your site. Following your observation, you and I will debrief your lesson (mentor teachers are welcome to participate). Finally, no more than 48 hours after this debrief meeting you must submit your post-observation memo including goals for your next lesson, a reflection on the lesson and your debrief meeting, and your annotated lesson plan. These should be submitted via M+Box.

You are required to video-record all four of your observed lessons (arranging for video equipment is your responsibility) so that you may review the video following your observation and debrief with your field instructor. Videos should be submitted via M+Box, along with your lesson plan documents. Please submit videos to your folder and label with your last name, observation number, and date of observation (Last Name, First Name. Observation #X. MM/DD/YY).

Competency Conference

Over the course of the winter and spring semesters, you will have three competency conferences with your Field Instructor (field instructor) and Mentor Teacher (mentor teacher). The first conference will be a mid-term conference in winter term and then, an end-of term conference at the end of the winter term. The final competency conference will be at the end of the spring term.. At each of these meetings, we will use the competency evaluation document to discuss your progress. It is expected that for each of these conferences, you, your field instructor, and your mentor teacher will complete the competency evaluation document prior to attending the conference. The goal of these meetings is to review what progress you have made, and identify what areas of difficulty need to be addressed in your teaching. After each of these meetings, your field instructor will provide a summary document of the discussion that identifies areas to be addressed before the next conference. It is our expectation that you will demonstrate growth between each conference.

Drop-in Observations

In addition, your field instructor may be in your classroom doing informal observations or check in visits. No documentation is required to be submitted before these visits. However, expect to be asked to provide a copy of your lesson plan if you are asked.

Observations & Conference Timeline:

1. Getting Started – Goal Setting Meeting (w/ mentor teacher and field instructor): should be completed no later than week of January 16

2. Observation 1: January 23 – February 10

3. Observation 2: February 13 – March 3

4. Midterm Conference (w/ mentor teacher and field instructor) before February 24

5. Observation 3 March 6-March 24

6. Observation 4: March 27-April 28

7. End-of-Term Conference (w/mentor teacher and field instructor) before April 21

8. Observation 5 May 1-May 26

9. End of Program Competency Conference (w/mentor teacher and field instructor). This must be completed before June 2

**NOTE: Though a recommendation to certify an intern will likely be made at the Final Winter Conference meeting, actual recommendation for certification will not be done until the end of May. If an intern does not continue to meet the expectations of student teaching after this meeting, the decision to certify can be rescinded and a “U” earned for the “Y” course.

III. Field Experience Tasks

To help you demonstrate that you have met these clinical goals, we ask that you engage in a set of specific teaching tasks during your student teaching and gather artifacts of these tasks that may be used as you compile your master’s thesis portfolio.

Teaching requires routine goal setting, determining assessment practices to measure if students have met these goals, and designing instructional tasks to help students learn. To document your competency with the Secondary MAC Competencies, we have identified a set of key field experience tasks that will be integrated into your student teaching experience. For each task, you will need to document your successful completion of it. All documentation (with the exception of videos) should be brought to seminar class on the dates indicated, as they will be used as a part of our seminar discussion.

For each task, documentation will include:

your lesson plan/or a description of the action (this may also include annotation and reflection)
a “record of practice” or artifact to demonstrate your participation in the task. This might include handouts, 3-5 examples of student work, or video of you teaching.

1. Establish and Maintain Productive Instructional Routines – Classroom Management Plan Due Week 6 – February 14

Interns will provide a short description of a classroom management plan for when s/he is taking the lead for classroom instruction. This plan should build off of the plan already in place by the mentor teacher. This description will include:

A description for how key management problems will be addressed. This includes the expectations, rules, or norms that the interns have for student behavior, the practices for communicating these expectations, rules, or norms to students, and the consequences for students if these expectations, rules, or norms are not met. Consequences should go from least to greatest form of intervention and match the school practices for behavior management.
A description of the routines and practices for preventing management problems in a target class summarizing the routines for launching a lesson, the routines for transition between lessons, and the routines for student organization and arrangement. The description should include how student attention is achieved (100%, Strong Voice), how directions are presented to students (Signaling “What to do” and “Do it again”) and what actions are taken if students do and do not comply with the routines.

The plan should include considerations for managing people, space, time, information in the secondary classroom, including:

Procedural considerations (attendance, material distribution, seating arrangement, calling on students, classroom interruptions,)
Student work and grading
Entering and leaving the classroom
Classroom guidelines/rules
General student behavior
Communicating with families

2. Communicate with Parents & Build Relationships
Varied Due Dates

By January 31: Write a letter introducing yourself as a student teacher in the classroom to the parents/guardians of the students in your field placement. The draft must be approved by your mentor teacher and field instructor before distribution to parents/guardians. This assignment is part of the evidence for Competency 5 – Professional and Ethical Behavior.
By February 21: Observe mentor teacher making a call or work with mentor to compose an email
By March 21: Contact 4 different parents, two via e-mail and two via phone. You should give both positive and corrective feedback using each mode of communication. You can also talk with parents face to face instead.
By April 25: Attend an after school event and talk to parents informally at this event to learn more about your students.

Parent correspondence and log of your contacts and events that you attend could serve as an artifact for this task.

3. Design a Formative Assessment Task
Due Week 15 – April 18

You will co-design an “informal” formative assessment task with your mentor teacher. Examples include having students draw a model of a process, completing a KWL chart, or completing an exit slip at the end of class. This should not be a quiz. Your mentor teacher will teach the class and you will give the assessment. Together, you will determine how well the task a) provides information about what the students have learned and b) how to use this information to plan the next steps in instruction.

4. Probe and Use Student Thinking Before, During, and After Instruction: Provide Feedback to Students
Due Week 17 – May 2

You will co-design an assessment task with your mentor teacher that gathers evidence of student learning on a specific topic for a lesson taught by your mentor teacher. This assessment should have students working out a problem or explaining something. This assessment might be a short quiz, constructed response, or written assessment. You will be responsible for reviewing the student’s work and providing feedback to the student on the expressed ideas. Together with your mentor, you will review the practices for providing feedback that support student learning.

5. Design a Summative Assessment
Due Week 21 – May 30

You will co-design a summative assessment task with the mentor teacher that gathers evidence of student learning on a specific topic and competencies for a set of lessons co-taught by you and your mentor. This assessment might be a larger quiz, test, or project. You will be responsible for reviewing the student’s work and providing feedback on the assessment. Together you and your mentor will review the practices for providing feedback that support student learning.

6. Professional File Cabinet (PFC) Due Week 22 – June 6

The Professional File Cabinet (PFC) is a collection of evidence demonstrating proficiency in the five teaching intern competencies. The PFC will be composed of artifacts that you accumulate over the course of the winter/spring terms and is to be organized by unit and/or topic. Once during the term, you will conference with me and present items from your PFC. The PFC must include, but is not limited to hard copies of unit plans featuring annotated lesson plans, worksheets, guided notes, assignments, assessments and student work samples. You may also include your classroom management plan, parent communication tools, assessment guides, grading policies, and other materials that you deem useful to your teaching. The goal of the PFC is to give you the start of your first file cabinet for teaching, so that on day one as a professional you will have folders, organized by unit/topics to utilize in your teaching. Complete requirements for the PFC will be explained in detail in seminar.

Part 2: Seminar

Assignments

Case Conference-
During select seminars you will use the case conference protocol to discuss your practice with your peers using your artifacts:

Once over the winter/spring terms, you will present a case conference to the class on a self-identified problem of practice related to Classroom Management and Discipline; Parental Engagement/Communication; Formative Assessment; Summative Assessment. We will be “diagnosing” the cases as a group of professionals, using both readings and experience, as well as examining the way in which peers’ cases support, challenge, and extend our own experiences of teaching. Cases are expected to be presented in a professional manner. Case conference criteria and groups will be posted to Canvas with protocol discussed in class.

Best Practice Lessons –
Over the winter/spring terms, you will present a best practices lesson from the field that you have been taught, planned, or observed. Best practices lessons are defined as engaging or innovating ways to teach a particular English Language Arts topic or skill. These lessons will also be shared in order to add additional resources to your PFC. You are expected to provide hard copies of the best practice lesson and resources for the class.

Tentative Schedule (I reserve the right to make changes, this schedule is not set in stone, and most likely will change.):

Date	Topic	Assignment Due
Week 1: January 10	-Class Overview: Syllabus; observation protocol and due dates -Intro to the Professional File Cabinet (PFC) -Intro to letter to parents/guardians (as a student teacher) -Intro to Best Practices Lesson presentation; Sign-up of presentations -Self assessment of competence
Week 2: January 17	-Workshop letter to parents/guardians -Classroom Management Strategies -Intro to Classroom Management Plan assignment -Intro to Case conference protocol -Best Practices Lesson #1:	Draft of letter to parents/guardians
Week 3: January 24	PD: Inside Teaching: A Powerful Force for Equity. \| Building respectful relationships with students (Sponsored by TeachingWorks)
Week 4:January 31	-Workshop unit plan -Classroom Management & Discipline Strategies -Best Practice Lesson #2:	Communication with and build relationship with parents – documentation of task 1: Final draft of letter to parents/guardians Bring in unit plan to workshop
Week 5:February 7	-Classroom Management & Discipline Case Conference -Workshop Classroom Management Plan	Classroom Management Plan (draft) Observation 1 completed by Feb. 10
Week 6: February 14	-Communicating Expectations and building relationships with Students and Parents -Workshop unit plan -Gallery walk of Classroom Management Plans -Best Practices Lesson #3:	Classroom Management Plan (final)
Week 7: February 21	-Discourse Workshop	Communication with and build relationship with parents – documentation of task 2 Midterm conference and Chalk and Wire evaluation completed before February 24 Observation 2 completed by March 3
Week 8: February 28	No Class UM Spring Break
Week 9: March 7	-Parental Engagement/Reporting Student Learning to Parents -Best Practices Lesson #4: -Midterm evaluation
Week 10: March 14	PD: Inside Teaching: A Powerful Force for Equity. \| Conclusion and moving forward. (Sponsored by TeachingWorks)
Week 11: March 21	-Parental Engagement/Communication Case Conference -Prep for Job Interviews	Communication with and build relationship with parents – documentation of task 3 Observation 3 completed by March 24
Week 12: March 28	-Formative Assessment Intro and workshop -Best Practices lesson #5	Draft formative assessment
Week 13: April 4	-Writing Workshop
Week 14: April 11	-Formative Assessment: Checks for Understanding -Best Practices Lesson #6:
Week 15: April 18	-Formative Assessment Case Conference -Best Practices Lesson #7	Formative Assessment Task
Week 16: April 25	-Formative Assessment -Providing Feedback to Students -Grading and Evaluation -Best Practices Lesson #8:	Communication with and build relationship with parents – documentation of task 4 End of term conference and Chalk and Wire evaluation completed before April 21 Observation 4 completed by April 28
Week 17: May 2	-Reading Workshop -Unit Plan workshop	Feedback Task
Week 18: May 9	-Best Practices Lesson #9:	Draft PFC
Week 19: May 16	-Summative Assessment: Intro and Authentic Assessments -Best Practices Lesson #10:
Week 20: May 23	-Best Practices Lesson #11: -Summative Assessment Workshop	Draft of summative assessment Observation 5 completed by May 26
Week 21: May 30	– Summative Assessment: Case Conference – Analysis of Student Work	Summative Assessment Task Summative Assessment Student Work Samples End of program conference and Chalk and Wire evaluation completed before June 2
Week 22: June 6	PFC Gallery Walk Reflection on the course and practicum	PFC
Week 23: June 13