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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
August 2018 through August 2019
U.PENN PBL CERTIFICATE
In the spring of 2018, after numerous conversations about inquiry and project-based learning, Dan Goduti, Justin Gaudreau, Taylor Smith-Kan and I decided to enroll in the UPenn PBL Certificate course in order to better understand the structure and language of a project-based learning curriculum and philosophy with the ultimate goal of bringing our experiences back to THS faculty. Indeed, a key component of the certificate program is to learn to coach and support other teacher colleagues in PBL and we are discussing now the best avenues toward doing so in our Haverford community. We were members of the first cohort to go through the program and it was clear that the workshop leaders still needed to refine their message and planned experiences of the participating teachers, but it was clear from the beginning that they were very open to feedback. My primary concerns centered what I perceive as an unaddressed tension between PBL and the institutionalization of learning which would include curriculum and assessment. The four pillars of PBL according to the program are Disciplinary Thinkings, Collaboration, Iteration and Authenticity. The first three I don't find particularly unique to PBL the strategies we were taught could be equally applicable in any student-centered classroom culture. Authenticity, however, gets at the heart of the PBL experience because it requires the project tasks to transcend the confines of the normal classroom expectations and develop meaning beyond that of the insulated classroom environment, which is precisely why I found it so challenging. There is very little in the experience of institutionalized education that could inform the practice of Authenticity and in fact there are many elements that would make achieving Authenticity in a project challenging such as grading norms and culture, making sure to teach all the necessary content, funding and scheduling. Many of the teachers in the cohort taught in PBL Charter Schools in Philadelphia, and so worked at a school that administratively sought to address these constraints. In a traditionally operated school, however, these constraints are persistent and would take some creativity and coalition building to successfully overcome. I believe this is possible, especially at a school with the expertise and resources like Haverford. But the will and consensus to make it happen needs to be there across teachers, departments, administration, and students and parents. Otherwise I believe it will only operate in isolated locations around the school and wont achieve the transformative levels for learning of which it is capable.
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You can read more about the UPenn PBL program by reading my Big Room blog post, or that of my colleague, Taylor Smith-Kan.
November 2018
EDWARD TUFTE
DATA VISUALIZATION WORKSHOP
Data Visualization has always been an area of interest both for the aesthetic artistic elements, but more significantly in the new and creative ways we can represent numbers and quantities to communicate truth and narrative. Edward Tufte is an academic leader in this regard and when I was told he would be in Philadelphia, I couldn't let the opportunity pass without attending his workshop. Originally I had intended to develop an IC Day out of the experience but after consultation with other teachers in the Arts Department, we decided to save the idea for another day. The workshop inspired me to discuss more with my students this intersection of philosophy, math and art and it has lead to many intellectually complex and rewarding conversations.
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July 2019
RACE INSTITUTE AT AIG
In July 2019, several of my colleagues and I attended the Race Institute 3-Day Workshop at the Agnes Irwin School led by Ms. Toni Williamson and Ms. Sarah Halley. The focus of the workshop was to guide educators in a reflection of their own positive racial identity, to understand how race affects our students and teaching, and to ultimately develop some tools for supporting our students in practicing anti-racism on our campuses and in their lives. The experience of hearing from fellow teachers - as well as a panel of students - about their stories and truths and sharing my own was powerfully moving and caused me to reflect on how I could use my privilege and the social capital emanating from my racial identity to make a positive anti-racist impact on my community. The margins/mainstream reflection activity was perhaps the most impactful transformative moment for me because although I had participated in the activity before with Mr. Brendon Jobs at a Faculty Diversity meeting one afternoon, doing the activity a second time helped me to think more critically about how the feelings of being on the margins and perspectives of what the mainstream looks like might affect my students and how that activity in particular might help me to achieve my goal of working with my white students more intentionally to understand white privilege and how their racial identity is understood by others in the community. There was one ah-ha moment in particular after we listed the behaviors we would expect from those feeling the emotions of the margin when I realized that after reading Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Carol Anderson's White Rage, that I was able name laws, rules, and norms in society and school that prohibit and punish such behaviors and the historical moments in our country in which they were codified. This was another moment in which institutional racism became clearly defined for me.
The workshop offered me the opportunity to rehearse and refine several initiatives I would like to implement this year including: 1) participating in SEED, 2) addressing the underrepresentation of students of color in honors math classes a) in the short term by supporting math based relationships between boys of color in upper level courses with those in lower level courses, and b) in the long term with moving to a criterion based assessment system in my classes rather than continue the use of a traditional percentage based system and 3) explore the possibility of starting an intentional conversational space for white students to reflect on white-ness and positive white racial identity. Some of these initiatives are tangible and immediate while others will require some additional work to flush out, but I believe all are attainable and that we are ready to push the conversation of race at Haverford further.
November 2019
SIAM/MFA
MATH MODELING WORKSHOP FOR HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS
I always try to look at the positives from every professional development experience, but unfortunately this opportunity didn't quite come through on what I hoped it would be. The workshop was conducted virtually, was quite technical in both language and application, and though the hosts were well meaning, there was very little opportunity to explore the tools and construct meaning around the messages they were imparting. The good news is that there was very little investment of resources in that the workshop was free to attend and only lasted a few hours. I brought back what I took away to our students on the math modeling teams, but I think their success in the Mathworks Modeling Competition will be best served by our introduction of a new Math Modeling elective this year which I advocated and helped write the description for and was expertly taught by Mr. Steve Patrylak in its first year, and the ongoing trainings we are doing during our Math Clubs sessions on Fridays.