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Mitchell About the Author Home Learn More Inspiration About the AuthorAbout the Author
Hi! I’m Caitlin Mitchell. I am currently a 1st grade teacher at Shearer Elementary school. I was hired there 8 years ago and after a wonderful journey I will be moving up to 5th grade. I remember when I hung up the phone after scheduling an interview to teach at Shearer my husband said to me, “ You do know that that will be one of the most challenging places to work here in Napa don’t you?” At the time I felt scared and unsure. I knew I would have many students that did not speak English, many students who were suffering from some kind of trauma, or students who lived a impoverished life. I could not and would not chose to change these circumstances today even if you asked me to move to a new place. These challenges that riddle my work day have become cornerstone to what motivates me to do better and try harder.
I am a mother of two young girls. Emily who is five years old and Leah who is 2 years old. They have helped me to view education through the eyes of a parent. Although Emily will just be starting Elementary school in the fall I still feel like I have gained a lot of empathy toward parents and what they go through on a daily basis. My husband is a teacher at Vintage high school and went through the Technology masters program at Touro University a short time before I applied. He motivated me to take this journey. He was persistent about asking me if I was going to sign up to get my Master's Degree from Touro University in Innovative learning. Being married to another teacher has been so beneficial for me. He empathizes with me when things get hard, and he understands the difficulties of being in a classroom and making many second by second decisions. I knew early on that learning was one of my favorite things to do. When I graduated from Sonoma State University with my BA in Liberal Studies and my credential I knew that someday I would come go back to school to further my education. I felt like enrolling in this program came at a very opportune time. I needed some new ideas, new strategies under my belt to reinvigorate my teaching and the learning of my students. The tech tools I have learned about in the Innovative Learning program have given me the confidence to move up in grade level. I am inspired to try these new techniques on older children. I have been challenged to adapt these new technology strategies to the needs of 6 and 7 year olds which has been a challenge all in itself. This program has given me the jump start I needed to propel me through the next few years until I pursue my next ambition as a lifelong learner. TPACK has helped me to see the connection between what I teach, how I teach and how technology implementation in the classroom is connected to both of those. TPACK has helped me to find ways of implementing new forms of technology without simply using a “fancy pencil”. The forms of technology that are put in place need to transform the educational setting. |
Reflections on your Journey
I was originally apprehensive about enrolling in the innovative learning program. I didn't know how I would balance being a parent, teacher, student, wife and friend. I decided that the benefits outweighed the risks and applied. From the the very first class I felt reinvigorated in my teaching. I was inspired to try new things in my classroom that I had never tried.
I was given tech tools to try that would engage students in 21st century skills. I started this semester looking into improving the active listening skills for my first grade students. Although this was very interesting to me I felt as though my discovery of a tech tool called Seesaw was influencing a change in my driving question. I invested a large amount of work in the first semester in finding out if teaching active listening skills was helpful in their ability to exhibit active listening skills. This most definitely was true. Teaching student active listening skills was very helpful for them. My next question was, HOW do we make them want to listen? I felt like that teacher in Charlie Brown whose voice the children heard as a monotone muffled boring bugle sound. I wanted to limit my teacher talk and increase student conversation in my classroom, but I wanted that conversation to be intentional and directed toward the learning. I gradually came to realize that peer feedback was the way in which I could solve these problems I was having in my classroom. By teaching student efficient ways to give peer feedback I could engage them and make them strive to work harder and produce better work.
I am so glad that Touro and Napa Learns have enabled me to take these steps in improving my teaching. I sincerely hope that what I have learned and the knowledge I have to share will be of use to other professionals who strive to find answers to their difficult questions. I hope that Napa Valley Unified can make public the capstones of past cohorts that share such amazing insight into how to begin teaching and implementing 21st century skills in the classroom.
I was given tech tools to try that would engage students in 21st century skills. I started this semester looking into improving the active listening skills for my first grade students. Although this was very interesting to me I felt as though my discovery of a tech tool called Seesaw was influencing a change in my driving question. I invested a large amount of work in the first semester in finding out if teaching active listening skills was helpful in their ability to exhibit active listening skills. This most definitely was true. Teaching student active listening skills was very helpful for them. My next question was, HOW do we make them want to listen? I felt like that teacher in Charlie Brown whose voice the children heard as a monotone muffled boring bugle sound. I wanted to limit my teacher talk and increase student conversation in my classroom, but I wanted that conversation to be intentional and directed toward the learning. I gradually came to realize that peer feedback was the way in which I could solve these problems I was having in my classroom. By teaching student efficient ways to give peer feedback I could engage them and make them strive to work harder and produce better work.
I am so glad that Touro and Napa Learns have enabled me to take these steps in improving my teaching. I sincerely hope that what I have learned and the knowledge I have to share will be of use to other professionals who strive to find answers to their difficult questions. I hope that Napa Valley Unified can make public the capstones of past cohorts that share such amazing insight into how to begin teaching and implementing 21st century skills in the classroom.
Lasting Learning from the Innovative Learning program
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Cohort 16 has awarded me a safe, non-judgemental environment to make mistakes without fear. I see these people as my allies, who I will hopefully I will stay in touch with after the completion of this program. They have inspired me to take risks and step outside of my comfort zone. They have given me encouragement when I lacked confidence in myself and they have helped me to transcend what I believed was possible in my classroom. I look forward to continuing this journey of life long learning and never settle into a comfort zone where I dont challenge myself to teach so that students WANT to learn.
My journey through TPACK |
My goal from the start was to engage students. To make them want to learn and try their best. Motivation is a hard thing to quantify but work quality is not. The TPACK model is a overlap of what we teach, how we teach it and what tools we use to make it possible.
The WHAT started out as active listening skills and slowly transformed into peer feedback skills. From my first round of research I could tell that student really could show improvement in their active listening skills if the teacher took the time to teach them. They next step in my quest was to find out HOW to make them want to listen. I no longer wanted my voice to be the only one heard in the classroom. I no longer wanted the students to only look to me for help. I wanted them to become my allies and for them to take ownership over their learning. As a result my question evolved into:" How can strategic peer feedback instruction with the use of technology tools help to improve work quality in the classroom?" I began teaching them the steps to giving good feedback. We learned about the do's and don'ts of feedback. We watched tutorials such as Austin's Butterfly. This lesson taught them what good peer feedback looked like from a group of students who were also learning to use this skill. They learned an acronym called T.A.G which stands for : TELL what you liked, ASK a question, GIVE a suggestion. All of these lessons were the building blocks put in place to help them gain more independence with the act of giving feedback.
Next, is the HOW or the pedagogy. I built in time to our schedule each week that was set aside for giving feedback, we called this Feedback Friday and the kids could not wait for this time to come around each week. We had been using the digital portfolio tool called Seesaw since the beginning of the year. They post phonics lessons, reading recordings, math exercises, videos of themselves answering questions and much more. Prior to the implementation of Feedback Friday myself and parents were the only ones to leave comments on student work. Opening up the feedback forum was a little bit intimidating at first, but any sort of comment that was made would need to be approved by me first which was helpful. We would take time at the end of each session to pick out good feedback and also pull out feedback that needed more work. They knew that only the good feedback would be posted to student journals.
Finally, without the use of technology this change would have been impossible. Seesaw enabled me to see the feedback that my students were making on each other's work so that I could more effectively scaffold my teaching to help meet their needs. This tool also allowed for good opportunities for me to me to teach digital citizenship as well because some students found it entertaining to post comments under someone else's name. They also were leaving comments on work that they would never have said to the person's face. This raised some important conversations about cyberbullying and proper internet conduct. The use of pencil and paper would have not been adequate for teaching these skills because many students were unable to leave written comments but Seesaw allows for students to leave verbal feedback as well. This was a good way to differentiate the expectations to all of my students.
In the center of this model, where all of these parts come together is a place where students effectively utilize peer feedback to improve work. It is a balancing act. I found sometimes one area would need a refresher course to stay on track. They sometime need help re learning how to use the technology appropriately or they need to be reminded of what good feedback is. This balancing act is what teaching is all about but, when it come to the impact that any given strategy has on student learning feedback is considered one of the most effective especially by John Hattie and his research. From trying this in my classroom I now know this to be true.
The WHAT started out as active listening skills and slowly transformed into peer feedback skills. From my first round of research I could tell that student really could show improvement in their active listening skills if the teacher took the time to teach them. They next step in my quest was to find out HOW to make them want to listen. I no longer wanted my voice to be the only one heard in the classroom. I no longer wanted the students to only look to me for help. I wanted them to become my allies and for them to take ownership over their learning. As a result my question evolved into:" How can strategic peer feedback instruction with the use of technology tools help to improve work quality in the classroom?" I began teaching them the steps to giving good feedback. We learned about the do's and don'ts of feedback. We watched tutorials such as Austin's Butterfly. This lesson taught them what good peer feedback looked like from a group of students who were also learning to use this skill. They learned an acronym called T.A.G which stands for : TELL what you liked, ASK a question, GIVE a suggestion. All of these lessons were the building blocks put in place to help them gain more independence with the act of giving feedback.
Next, is the HOW or the pedagogy. I built in time to our schedule each week that was set aside for giving feedback, we called this Feedback Friday and the kids could not wait for this time to come around each week. We had been using the digital portfolio tool called Seesaw since the beginning of the year. They post phonics lessons, reading recordings, math exercises, videos of themselves answering questions and much more. Prior to the implementation of Feedback Friday myself and parents were the only ones to leave comments on student work. Opening up the feedback forum was a little bit intimidating at first, but any sort of comment that was made would need to be approved by me first which was helpful. We would take time at the end of each session to pick out good feedback and also pull out feedback that needed more work. They knew that only the good feedback would be posted to student journals.
Finally, without the use of technology this change would have been impossible. Seesaw enabled me to see the feedback that my students were making on each other's work so that I could more effectively scaffold my teaching to help meet their needs. This tool also allowed for good opportunities for me to me to teach digital citizenship as well because some students found it entertaining to post comments under someone else's name. They also were leaving comments on work that they would never have said to the person's face. This raised some important conversations about cyberbullying and proper internet conduct. The use of pencil and paper would have not been adequate for teaching these skills because many students were unable to leave written comments but Seesaw allows for students to leave verbal feedback as well. This was a good way to differentiate the expectations to all of my students.
In the center of this model, where all of these parts come together is a place where students effectively utilize peer feedback to improve work. It is a balancing act. I found sometimes one area would need a refresher course to stay on track. They sometime need help re learning how to use the technology appropriately or they need to be reminded of what good feedback is. This balancing act is what teaching is all about but, when it come to the impact that any given strategy has on student learning feedback is considered one of the most effective especially by John Hattie and his research. From trying this in my classroom I now know this to be true.