Chapter 27

Looking at the 2004 ISPI/ASTD PT competencies I would like to focus on three of them. Hopefully I am some what competent in all these areas but as we all know there is always room for improvement in our professional life. I will focus my discussion on the three listed below:

• Focus on results and help clients [students] focus on results.
• Use partnerships or collaborate with clients [students ] and other experts as required.
• Be systematic in all aspects of the process including: The evaluation of the process and the results.
  

In the teaching profession it is often difficult to see the results of our work. A teacher has a student for one school year, my classes run for 50 minutes, if you figure out the math it comes out to 6 days [24 hours ] and 6 hours, that I actually teach the student. That really isn't a lot of time when you consider my students are 12-13 years old. So what I teach the kids usually doesn't show itself in the school year that I have them. Perhaps they will remember something in their next History class or when they vote for the first time or when they are talking to their parents, so a teacher many times will not see the results of the 6 days and 6 hours of instruction.
Results for the student most often is the grade they are receiving. For most of my kids the most important thing about an assignment is filling in the correct answer on a piece of paper. For me the most important thing is that some information goes into the students brain. The only way I can tell if they have it or not is to continually refer back to something that has already been taught to see if they can continue to reply with the correct answer. This reinforces their learning and hopefully something sticks for a long period of time. In the end the goal is to have the kids focus on learning something not on the grade they receive, this is hard to achieve because grades are so important in society today.

Collaboration between students is definitely an area that I need work on. I know the experts say that students working with other students is a great way for everyone to learn something. I have not found this to be the case at all. If I choose the groups then the students generally don't divide up the work evenly. Some kids don't trust the others to do the work, and are not willing to risk the project not getting completed because a member of the group does not hold up their part of the project. So some of the group members end up doing all the work so that it comes out the way they want. If I allow the kids to pick their own groups then people work with their friends, some of the projects are well done, while others don't get done at all. So while the research shows that group work is a valuable learning experience I am still looking for the happy medium that I feel allows all the kids to be a valued member of a group. This is an on going process for me.
On another level working with my co workers in a group is not at all a problem. The staff has been together for a minimum of 5 years, some of course have been there longer, be the newest staff member has been there for 5 years. This makes group work so much easier, we all know each others strengths and weaknesses, so when we divide up the tasks we all know who is good at what and we plan accordingly. No one gets "stuck" with something they don't want to do, and the project runs smoothly. All because we have professional people each doing a portion of the work that is interesting to them.

As I have already talked about results in the above paragraph, I will focus this discussion on the evaluation portion of the statement.
Fortunately I teach a subject that can be evaluated objectively, this makes things so much easier. Tests can be true/ false, multiple choice, short answer, or essay, the first three of which are objective evaluations. Essay questions can be open to interpretation and thus are subjective. So on most of the tests I give the answer is either right or wrong. Student evaluation is easy.
Now when we move to the program level of running the school things are a little different. The staff sees a problem and suggests a solution, or the administrator sees a problem and tells the staff what the solution will be. Evaluating this kind of program is a bit harder to do. Every person on the staff has a different opinion of what is working and what is not. Generally, they all have a different suggestion on fixing the problem. If the principal mandates a solution the staff feels the process was forced upon them making buy in very difficult. Many times if a new program is unsuccessful it is just thrown out rather than being evaluated, tweaked, and tried again. The more veteran teachers are much harder to convince to try something new because in many cases "they have tried it before and it didn't work." Once again junking a good idea because it was not evaluated and revised to fit the needs of the school. So evaluating any school program is essential but not always put into practice.