Reflections on Final Presentation

Currently there is much attention on Head Start programs to show that they are indeed improving children’s school readiness skills for kindergarten entry, and much of this burden lays on the shoulders of the teachers. As I had mentioned in my previous post, the CLASS is being used to assess teacher quality, and recently the Office of Head Start (under the Administration for Children & Families) has proposed rulings to use low CLASS scores as one of the criteria for which underperforming programs would need to re-compete for the continuation of their grant. While I am a firm proponent for high quality programs, I do also see the real need for professional development supports that would enable teachers to do better.

Recent research shows that job-embedded professional development (JEPD) is effective in improving teaching practices. Professional learning communities, when teachers engage each other to discuss their day-to-day teaching practice and how students are learning, is one form of JEPD and can provide an opportunity for teachers to construct learning from the professional knowledge that exists among their colleagues. For my final presentation, I plan to introduce the concept of blogging as a forum for establishing a professional learning community among the Head Start programs (specifically, the education managers who supervise the teachers).

During this class I’ve appreciated the time and space that I had to devote to reflect on my learning process, and valued even more the feedback from Kiki and the other students. It is my hope that the education managers would be able to experience the support of others through collaborative problem-solving—they currently attend “cluster meetings” which serve this purpose, but given that they may travel up to 2-3 hours to attend these meetings and coordinating time away from their programs is often difficult, the “virtual cluster meeting” would address these issues. (Also my company uses GoToMeeting as the software for webinar trainings, which is very limited in its ability to allow for discussion and interaction. Therefore I am thinking that blogs can be a medium to bridge that gap--post-webinars or even post-conferences to allow staff to reflect on their learning, practice new skills, and have multiple perspectives analyze their work.) One challenge to this format shift is that the education managers vary in their computer skills and comfort level with using technology. Therefore, I plan to have them read and comment on my blog first before developing their own, thus allowing me to model constructive thinking by posting reflections on a text, which will be assigned reading, related to teaching practices, educational policy, or research trends. Thoughtful questions will be given to guide the education managers to comment on how the information relates to their day-to-day classroom practices and program policies (similar to action research). Eventually, the education managers can progress towards creating their own blogs with posts of their lesson plans, staff development plans, and/or policies and procedures for self-reflection and critique (similar to critical friends group and professional learning community).

While preparing for this final presentation, I researched education blogs and was amazed at the wealth of knowledge and resources available! I will definitely be reading several of these to add to my own professional development. Unfortunately, there aren’t many that focus on teaching preschool (or infants and toddlers, since I also provide training for Early Head Start programs), and the ones that are geared for early childhood teachers tend to be rather “cutesy” as opposed to scholarly and focused on professional development and school leadership, which is more common for K-12 teachers. Nonetheless, I do think it useful for the education managers to follow a few of these blogs, too. The Head Start community tends to be “Head Start-centric,” yet much can be learned from and shared with others. Finally, I'm sharing a video that sparked my thinking about the final presentation.