Week Seven Post - Google Doc Department Success
This week, we had a half-day with our students to facilitate department meeting time, followed by PD opportunities.
Our January department time had been postponed after so many missed snow days this season, so our department goal of course comparison work had not been accomplished. First, we need a resource that lets teachers easily see their own course in comparison to teachers who have the same course, similar courses by grade or level of students, and where each course fits in a given students' progression of skills and expectations.
Advised by colleagues as to the table's contents, I created a google spreadsheet identifying key features of each teacher's quarterly grade book - e.g. number of columns, number of tests, number of literature units, etc. - thinking it would be a good snapshot of what happens in each classroom across quantifiable and comparable data sets.
In advance of the department meeting, I sent this Google Sheet as a sharable link to fifteen other English teachers, promising them the meeting would be over more quickly if they could enter their data in advance of our meeting.
I entered my own information and a brief explanation of the situational context - what the data was for, why my subheadings did not add up to my total number of grade book columns, etc. - to help them understand the process and value of the request.
Out of 15 English teachers beside myself, 6 of them had their information posted before the meeting. This was a very exciting result for me, because I have been working for six years as chair, and this is the first time I've had more than two or three contributors complete preparation in advance, although I always ask them to.
Predictably, another 4 or 5 completed the work while we were discussing other topics in our meeting (preparing for and working with a collection of department members is no different from prepping and working through a collection of teenagers), and the remainder filled in a printed version of my sheet once they got to the meeting and asked if they had printed the right document...
But I was glad to see that the majority could do the work themselves, and happy to encourage the paper-dependent crew to try entering the data on a desktop, politely offering to come type it ini for them, if they thought they needed me to, as soon as the meeting concluded.
And the net effect, now is a document that illustrates a usefully comparable data set from freshman through senior year, from AP-tracked to grade-level-proficiency-recovery-tracked students. When I ask members to complete further sheets for quarters 2-4, I know they'll know how to do it, and they'll go back to see what their colleagues are entering.
This gives us talking points for June's end of year meeting, where we can set goals about collaborating, and defining assessment and instruction validity, based on our own sets of data and evidence.
A great week for English tech-savvy department work!
Our January department time had been postponed after so many missed snow days this season, so our department goal of course comparison work had not been accomplished. First, we need a resource that lets teachers easily see their own course in comparison to teachers who have the same course, similar courses by grade or level of students, and where each course fits in a given students' progression of skills and expectations.
Advised by colleagues as to the table's contents, I created a google spreadsheet identifying key features of each teacher's quarterly grade book - e.g. number of columns, number of tests, number of literature units, etc. - thinking it would be a good snapshot of what happens in each classroom across quantifiable and comparable data sets.
In advance of the department meeting, I sent this Google Sheet as a sharable link to fifteen other English teachers, promising them the meeting would be over more quickly if they could enter their data in advance of our meeting.
I entered my own information and a brief explanation of the situational context - what the data was for, why my subheadings did not add up to my total number of grade book columns, etc. - to help them understand the process and value of the request.
Out of 15 English teachers beside myself, 6 of them had their information posted before the meeting. This was a very exciting result for me, because I have been working for six years as chair, and this is the first time I've had more than two or three contributors complete preparation in advance, although I always ask them to.
Predictably, another 4 or 5 completed the work while we were discussing other topics in our meeting (preparing for and working with a collection of department members is no different from prepping and working through a collection of teenagers), and the remainder filled in a printed version of my sheet once they got to the meeting and asked if they had printed the right document...
But I was glad to see that the majority could do the work themselves, and happy to encourage the paper-dependent crew to try entering the data on a desktop, politely offering to come type it ini for them, if they thought they needed me to, as soon as the meeting concluded.
And the net effect, now is a document that illustrates a usefully comparable data set from freshman through senior year, from AP-tracked to grade-level-proficiency-recovery-tracked students. When I ask members to complete further sheets for quarters 2-4, I know they'll know how to do it, and they'll go back to see what their colleagues are entering.
This gives us talking points for June's end of year meeting, where we can set goals about collaborating, and defining assessment and instruction validity, based on our own sets of data and evidence.
A great week for English tech-savvy department work!
Kyle - Yes! Getting teachers to prepare in advance for a meeting is no easy task, and you got six English teachers. Well done. Pretty soon you might be able to have meetings online! In all seriousness, we have a heck of a time getting all our department members on the same page. We have technophobes who are reluctant and we have near-digital natives who run things practically paperlessly. Looks like you've made a good start in getting everyone on the same page.
ReplyDeleteI love that you were able to "jump in" as Dr. Lattimore talked to us about. It sounds like you had a good turn out of teachers willing to collaborate using the Google Doc and hopefully the other teachers were able to see the positive effects of doing so and will be more willing next time. We started using Google Doc's at my school for PLC's this year and it has helped tremendously. One of my teammates at the beginning of the year swore she would not do it and that it wouldn't work for her and the past four PLC's she has had no problems and actually now prefers the Google Doc's to track data. I think it is a great organization tool and prevents teachers from losing important data or discussed information after collaborating.
ReplyDeleteWe, too, have noticed more teachers preparing in advance when using Google Doc's as you mentioned, now I'm wondering, do you think it may be the pressure of teachers seeing one another entering information instead of waiting until the meeting to hear about it or maybe it is just the ease of entering it? Just a thought I had.