I started at a new school 2 years ago--a high achieving, well respected school. I was eager and excited to work with a group of veteran teachers and a visible and outspoken administrator. What I would soon find out is that this incredibly dedicated group of teachers had only a few teachers who I would describe as progressive or cutting edge. I was joining a group of teachers who were happy with the status quo and content to try one new initiative a year as a way to push themselves. This wasn’t enough for me. I was coming from a school where teachers pushed themselves day in and day out to reach a struggling population of learners. Words like innovative, inspired, and passionate would describe the group of teachers I had just left. And so I began my journey as an innovator, even though I didn’t know it yet.
What started as me trying to learn third grade curriculum and behaviors after teaching kindergarten for 13 years, turned into a new job where I was a cheerleader for teachers and actively encouraging teachers to try new things. All of a sudden I was talking about Depth of Knowledge, Data Teams, and building common formative assessments. And the teachers wanted to know why…why do we have to do this and how will this help me? Slowly teachers went from the why to can you help me? Within each of those areas I was a champion for came a technology piece and a steep learning curve.
Teachers are finally getting more comfortable using the Google family of products—docs, sheets, and slides. Most teachers can now access the shared folder we have as a site and direct students to go there for resources they have found. My goal for next year is to teach teachers how to actively use these tools in their everyday teaching and to direct them to some other tools as well.
What started as me trying to learn third grade curriculum and behaviors after teaching kindergarten for 13 years, turned into a new job where I was a cheerleader for teachers and actively encouraging teachers to try new things. All of a sudden I was talking about Depth of Knowledge, Data Teams, and building common formative assessments. And the teachers wanted to know why…why do we have to do this and how will this help me? Slowly teachers went from the why to can you help me? Within each of those areas I was a champion for came a technology piece and a steep learning curve.
Teachers are finally getting more comfortable using the Google family of products—docs, sheets, and slides. Most teachers can now access the shared folder we have as a site and direct students to go there for resources they have found. My goal for next year is to teach teachers how to actively use these tools in their everyday teaching and to direct them to some other tools as well.
And this is where Diffusion of Innovation fits in. I am working closely with a few teachers, who I’ll call the early adopters. They share my (and the principal’s vision) for what our site should be doing in terms of moving out of what Doug Reeves (2006) calls the lucky quadrant (not knowing why you achieve the results you do) and into the leading quadrant (knowing what you’re doing and why it’s working.) |
Teachers know they make an impact on student learning, but just how much is the subject of John Hattie’s Visible Learning for Teachers (2012). The sooner we make teaching (and learning) visible to teachers the sooner we will get more teachers into the group of early and then late majority teachers to continue with the initiatives we started last year (data teams with a focus on writing) as well as the new initiatives (a new math adoption and GLAD.)