In this course, "EDU 650 Leadership for School Change (Fall)" (instructor: Melissa Daniels), residents met every other week with to learn about the importance of family & community engagement. The course description and essential questions are as follows:
Course description: The Leadership Fieldwork course supports Residents’ leadership development as they explore what it means to be an effective leader and analyze the intersection of theory and practice at their clinical site. The residency provides a disruptive experience for reimagining school-- ideas for inspiration and iteration, not replication. Residents will have ample opportunity to observe, practice and reflect on effective leadership by engaging in three Leadership Fieldwork projects over the course of the year (one per term). (from syllabus) Essential questions:
Goals and actions of my fieldwork project: In order to learn about effective family engagement at my residency site, High Tech High Mesa (HTHM), I exercised my leadership to launch a school podcast with Dean of Students for families and community: A podcast series that will feature students, parents, and teachers engaging in a conversation about "who we are" as a HTHM community. The goal of the podcast is 1) to strengthen community identity, and 2) to build empathy within the community by bringing and sharing the voices of different members of our community. Podcasts in and out of itself will not increase family engagement, however, it may serve as an extra tool to remove barriers to involvement and engagement. Podcasts can give families more flexibility. It can cross the border (some students do not live with their immediate families). It can bring and lift up diverse voices. "Removing barriers to involvement may become a course of action to parent engagement" (Baker et.al., 2016, P. 162). High Tech High Mesa Podcast: The first episode is an interview with Director of HTHM and an 11th grade student. Listen now! Citation: Baker T. L., Wise J., Kelly G., and Skiba R. J. (2016). "Identifying Barriers: Creating Solutions to Improve Family Engagement." School Community Journal, 2016, Vol. 26, No. 2
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In the course, "EDU 610 Cultivating Conditions for Deeper Learning" (instructors: Kimberly Tsai Cawkwell & John Santos) , we learned about conditions for deeper learning and developed a resource (prototype, or pilot) that would cultivate a chosen condition for deeper learning in my school setting. The course description and the essential questions are as follows: Course description: This course hopes to build the capacity of school leaders to design for equitable learning environments. EDU 610 participants will engage with the National Equity Project’s Liberatory Design Process to design a resource intended to cultivate specific conditions that lead to Deeper Learning. The course will be grounded in leveraging the experiences and voices of communities, including GSE participants, educators and students to inform the design of the resource (from syllabus). Essential question: How can we support educators to cultivate conditions that foster Deeper Learning for their community? (from syllabus) Final project: Developing one resource (probe, prototype, or pilot) that will cultivate a chosen condition for deeper learning in my school setting. A condition I chose and a resource I created: I chose "a culture of excellence" to be the condition and created a workbook that would help students reflect on their culture of excellence: What it is, how it is presented within their team and classroom, and what as an individual and as a team will do to cultivate the culture. Through our study, I learned how important it is to create a culture of excellence and what teachers can do to create and leverage this condition for all. Ron Berger (2003) suggests the following 5 pedagogical practices that teachers can take: 1. Assign work that matters. 2. Study examples of excellence. 3. Build a culture of critique. 4. Require multiple revisions. 5. Provide opportunities for public presentation. Teachers are called to guiding students to excel and for developing students' quality of character and work. However, at the same time, students, too, should be given an ownership to create the culture and to build each other up. How can students take ownership in creating a culture of excellence? One of the ways is to provide students opportunities to reflect on their own character and work. This workbook is intended to be used in their reflection as a guide to deepen their thoughts. Workbook: click here More about the quality of character and work: click here |
AuthorKana will share with you her learning experiences and her journey at High Tech High Graduate School of Education (M.Ed. in Education Leadership) and High Tech High Mesa. Archives
December 2021
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