Teacher Work Sample

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE

CI 5055 Connecting Learners and Subject Matter

Appalachian State University

Dr. Melanie Greene

Daniel Smith

Fall 2007

Contextual Factors 3

Learning Goals 7

Assessment Plan 9

Design for Instruction 12

Instructional Decision-Making 13

Analysis of Student Learning 15

Reflection and Self-Evaluation 18

Contextual Factors

McDowell County is located in the foothills of western North Carolina, approximately 30 miles east of Asheville. Notable nearby geographic features include Mount Mitchell to the northwest and Lake James on the eastern border with Burke County. McDowell County is home to approximately 45,000 full-time residents. McDowell County is classified as a low wealth county and had an average per capita income of just under $21,000 in 2002. Only 8.9% of residents hold Bachelor’s Degrees or higher. The major ethnic group is Caucasian making up 92.2% of the population. African Americans make up 4.2% of the population with Hispanics contributing an additional 2.9%. Asians account for only 1% of the population. McDowell High School, which is centrally located in the county seat of Marion, is home to approximately 1350 students each school year.

Community support for McDowell High comes from the usual channels – athletics – but not much else. There is parental involvement and support for the school NJROTC program and the School Band which both routinely win awards and recognition for our school. There is some community support for the Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes and an advisory board to help mediate that process. Beyond this involvement, parental and community support is generally low. The socio-economic condition of our county has created an atmosphere of apathy for education in many homes. Many students drop-out to take jobs simply to make ends meet as they try to create better lives for themselves and their families. At the annual open-house at the beginning of the current school year, I saw representatives from the families of only 9 of my 68 students. Education is not a priority in McDowell County.

My classroom is a 24-seat computer lab. Formerly a science classroom, the room has ample storage in the form of built-in wall cabinets along the back wall. Students sit at one of 24 wooden desks that hug three of the four walls in a horseshoe pattern. The fourth wall constitutes the front of the classroom and is equipped with a standard whiteboard, projector screen, and three bulletin boards. My desk sits in one corner along this wall. There is a column off-center in the middle of the classroom and two doors on opposite walls. One door leads to a main hallway while the other opens to the media center. A continuous-print, large-capacity printer serves all the computers in the classroom and sits on a cart at the base of the column. The 24 student computers and 1 teacher computer are all Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz computers with 512 MB of RAM. Each computer is connected to our school network and the Internet. Two classroom sets of books are stored at the desks – one set for each of the two computer courses I teach. A USB flatbed scanner is available on a separate cart for student projects. I also have an LCD projector, but it is waiting to be mounted before I can use it routinely. The class web site is located at http://dsmith.mcdowell.high.groupfusion.net/.

I have the following set of class rules posted above the whiteboard in my room and on my web site. Additionally, there are numerous school and district rules that students must follow.

Class Rules

Before Class

Use class time wisely. Complete errands and visit the restroom before class.
Be on time to class. The second tardy to class will result in detention.

During Class

Login to your computer at the start of each class. If you know it, begin working on the assignment for that day.
Be respectful of computer equipment. Do not eat or drink near the computers. Using them is a privilege.
Listening to headphones is permitted when working on assignments, but not when the teacher is addressing the class.
Put away all accessories, cell phones, music players, musical instruments, and other devices during class.
Be respectful of people. Teachers have the right to be able to teach and students have the right to be able to learn.
Use appropriate language. Do not talk over morning announcements; channel one, telephone calls, or the wall speaker.
Spend free time completing makeup work, learning new software, practicing typing, or studying for tests.
Internet use and all online activities require special permission from the classroom teacher.
Stay in your seat. Do not line up at the door at the end of class waiting for the bell to ring.

Outside Class

Ask for permission to visit the restroom. Always take a pass when you are out of class.

The students in my Computer Programming I class are between the ages of 15 and 18. There are 3 girls and 20 boys. Only 1 student is Hispanic with the rest being Caucasian. A full 7 students in the class have been labeled as gifted and talented which is very unusual. About 3 students are currently attendance concerns and 1 student has limited English proficiency.

As this Computer Programming I course is an introductory course, no background in programming is expected but a number of students are familiar with various aspects of the course. The course is an elective so all the students chose to take it, but each selected it for different reasons. A handful want a career in computers and are interested in learning how to program to see if that is a viable career path. About half the students are simply interested in computers and technology in general. These students enrolled to satisfy an interest in learning about the programming aspect of computers to add to their knowledge. Others have friends or older siblings that took the course and recommended it. The students are diverse, but share certain commonalities such as an interest in music. Many are also enrolled in higher math classes. Those with friends and older siblings that took the course are more likely to have some programming experience and to understand some key concepts.

These contextual factors influence my teaching in a variety of practical ways. The economic situation means that most students do not have a computer at home or consistent access to one after school. Therefore, I cannot assign any homework because it would be unfair. The same economic situation that prevents me from assigning homework also grants me only a class set of the textbooks anyway. So, to send a book home is to potentially lose a book that I need for use in my classroom. Students who have jobs after school don’t have the time to do any homework anyway. Thus, any learning that is going to happen will likely happen in the classroom under my guidance or not at all.

One of my classroom rules used to be “Work before Play” which meant that class time was precious and should be used wisely, efficiently, and effectively. Rules #3 and #9 continue to embody this principle. Additionally, my pacing guide bears this concept out. I maintain a spreadsheet pacing guide to help my students (and me) keep track of what we have to cover and when. I have built into this guide an understanding of the amount of time it normally takes to complete each assignment so that no single day is too overwhelming for the students. Most students can complete the daily activities with some time left over. I try to channel this extra time into something productive like exploring a new software application. Slower students use the extra time to finish.

The ethnic makeup of the class I have chosen for this study has not presented any problems, but I have had struggles communicating with students in the past. I only have one Hispanic student in this class and she is fully integrated within the larger body of students. There have been situations where I sat Hispanics together so that they would feel more comfortable in a class dominated by Caucasians. Other times I have sat Hispanic students together to help counteract a limited English proficiency in one or both. What one student understood could be more easily explained to the other by the other. In this class, I do have a student with limited English proficiency, but he functions well and does not require any special seating or instruction beyond what he normally receives during class.

Learning Goals

I have selected my third period Computer Programming I course for use with this Teacher Work Sample. The state curriculum blueprint for the course is available online at http://www.ncpublicschools.org/cte/business/course-descriptions.html#6421. I have selected An Introduction to Programming Using Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 by Beth Brown (Hardcover ISBN: 1-58003-113-7) as the primary textbook. A class set of these books has been purchased by the school and each book stays in the classroom for daily use by students.

In addition to the blueprint, the state has provided a book alignment for the course. The Beth Brown book is aligned to this course and was partially chosen for this reason. Since the state blueprints are organized logically and content from them is not meant to be covered in the order included on the blueprint, I follow the book’s chapter divisions for organizing the information in the course into manageable chunks. However, since some chapters cover content not included in the blueprint, only chapters with content that matches the state blueprint are included in the course. The chapter my students were learning over the course of this study was chapter 5. Chapter 5 teaches students about programming loops. Loops are programming structures containing code that is executed in repetition. Examples of loops include the “Do..Loop While”, “Do While..Loop”, and “For..Next” statements. The following is a list of topics covered in chapter 5 that correspond directly with major objectives from the blueprint:

State Blueprint Objective	Cognitive Weight	Performance Weight	Beth Brown Book Pages
007.01 Identify the different types of programming errors.	1%	1%	130
010.03 Compare data types.	1%	2%	138, 142, 143
012.01 Construct Do While statements.	1%	1%	129
012.02 Construct For Next statements.	1%	1%	136
015.03 Use message and input boxes.	2%	3%	132

Topics in programming build on prior learning each day much like a math class. Prior to the learning in this unit on looping structures, students must be at a certain comfort level with the basics of the Visual Basic programming language and environment. Essentially, chapter 5 builds upon and completes the basic knowledge imparted to students in chapters 2, 3, and 4. These chapters introduce students to Visual Basic, teach the students about Variables and Constants, and show the students how to implement Decision Structures, respectively. With the completion of looping structures in chapter 5, students will have a solid base for understanding the remainder of the course which largely involves variations on these basic concepts. The bulk of the remaining blueprint objectives are covered in chapters 6, 8, and 9 concerning Procedures, Arrays, and Graphics, respectively.

Assessment Plan

The following table comes from the pacing guide that I have created for use with my students. It is available online in the files section of the class web site located at http://dsmith.mcdowell.high.groupfusion.net/. It includes a variety of activities from the book.

Date	Topic	Page	Activity	Points
Monday, October 22, 2007	Chapter 5 - Looping Structures	-	Chapter 5 Pre-Test	-
	Do..Loop, Do While..Loop, Infinite Loops	131-132	PrimeNumber	10
	Input Box, Accumulator Variables (Counters), Flags	134-136	AverageScore	10
Tuesday, October 23, 2007	-	136	UniqueRandomNumbers	25
Wednesday, October 24, 2007	For..Next	137-138	Factorial	10
	-	138	OddNumbersSum	25
Thursday, October 25, 2007	Strings	140	LetterCount	25
Friday, October 26, 2007	-	140	StringTest	25
	-	141	FindString	25

Monday, October 29, 2007	2nd Six-Weeks Grading Period	-	Progress Reports Sent Home	-
	String Concatenation	142	FullName	25
Tuesday, October 30, 2007	Char Methods, Unicode	144	SecretMessageDecoder	25
Wednesday, October 31, 2007	Comparing Strings	145	CompareWords	25
Thursday, November 01, 2007	Like Operator	146-149	WordGuess Case Study	-
	-	149	WordGuess (Update to Case Study)	25
Friday, November 02, 2007	-	-	Pick One:	-
	-	156	Exercise 5 - Monogram	25
	-	158	Exercise 11 - NameBackwards	25
	-	159	Exercise 12 - CountVowels	25
	2nd Six-Weeks Grading Period	-	Progress Reports Due	10 EC

Monday, November 05, 2007	-	-	King's College Presentation	-
Tuesday, November 06, 2007	Chapter 5 - Looping Structures	150-152	Review for Chapter 5 Test	10 EC
	Chapter 5 - Looping Structures	-	Study Guide Sent Home	-
Wednesday, November 07, 2007	Chapter 5 - Looping Structures	-	Chapter 5 Test	100

Each activity involves the students in reading material from the book and completing a computer program. The 10-point programs are more like examples in that the book provides the essential code necessary to complete the program. In this way, students are exposed to good programming code and are actively involved in using this code in their own programs. The 25-point programs are more like word problems and describe what a program should do and how it should function. The details of exactly how to create the program to solve this word problem are left up to the student to figure out. A student can, of course, look at code examples included in the book, but these won’t always hold the solution to the activity. By challenging students to apply their learning, they are brought a higher level of learning. Students have as much time as needed to complete each program.

All of the daily activities in this unit either directly align or indirectly support the educational goals in the state curriculum blueprint. Most activities involve one or more of the programming loops corresponding to objectives 12.01 and 12.02 from the blueprint. The same table of objectives for this unit from the previous section is included here. A diagram of the alignment between the topics and assessments to the learning objectives is included afterwards.

State Blueprint Objective	Cognitive Weight	Performance Weight	Beth Brown Book Pages
007.01 Identify the different types of programming errors.	1%	1%	130
010.03 Compare data types.	1%	2%	138, 142, 143
012.01 Construct Do While statements.	1%	1%	129
012.02 Construct For Next statements.	1%	1%	136
015.03 Use message and input boxes.	2%	3%	132

Topic	Activity	Objective
Chapter 5 - Looping Structures	Chapter 5 Pre-Test	ALL
Do..Loop, Do While..Loop, Infinite Loops	PrimeNumber	12.01, 7.01
Input Box, Accumulator Variables (Counters), Flags	AverageScore	15.03, 12.01
-	UniqueRandomNumbers	12.01
For..Next	Factorial	12.02, 15.03
-	OddNumbersSum	12.02
Strings	LetterCount	12.02, 10.03
-	StringTest	-
-	FindString	-
String Concatenation	FullName	-
Char Methods, Unicode	SecretMessageDecoder	12.02, 10.03
Comparing Strings	CompareWords	-
Like Operator	WordGuess Case Study	15.03, 12.01
-	WordGuess (Update to Case Study)	-
-	Exercise 5 - Monogram	15.03
-	Exercise 11 - NameBackwards	12.02
-	Exercise 12 - CountVowels	12.02
Chapter 5 - Looping Structures	Chapter 5 Test	ALL

Activities without a clear alignment to a state objective are indicated with a simple dash. Each of these activities is still included in the course because each one involves material that is used later to directly teach the content from the curriculum. Again, programming topics build on prior learning each day. It is a difficult mental jump for any student to cover, say, the topic of Strings and move on directly to the more advanced topics of Char Methods and Unicode without first going through the StringTest, FindString, and FullName activities.

The pre-assessment is composed simply of 2 True-False, 6 Multiple Choice, and 2 Completion questions. These were randomly taken from the book’s test item bank. The post-assessment is composed of two parts. Part A assesses the cognitive aspects of the chapter and consists of 8 True-False, 15 Multiple Choice, and 2 Completion questions also taken randomly from the same test item bank. Part B assesses the performance aspects of the chapter and consists of a set of instructions (selected by me) prompting the students to create a computer program called AverageTemperature. The program assesses the student’s ability to code a “For..Next” loop and an Input Box. Both assessments with test item bank questions are administered using the ExamView 5 Assessment Suite as LAN-based tests.

All student programs are graded based on a 25-point rubric I developed from the state blueprint objectives. I use this rubric to evaluate each 25-point student program in the form of a printout of each student’s programming code. Printouts are returned to students after grading with a grade and my notes. This is usually done within one day. If there are significant errors in the code, a student is instructed to correct the errors and resubmit the activity.

Visual Basic Program Evaluation Rubric

Window Layout and Design (5)

Objects should be symmetrical and line up.
Leave no large empty spaces.
Use proper spelling and grammar.

Naming Conventions (3)

Use 3-letter prefixes based on object type. (e.g. labels begin with “lbl”, radio buttons begin with “rad”, etc.)
Use a descriptive name after the prefix and capitalize 1^st letters.

Documentation (4)

Include Your Name, Date, Program Name, and Program Description on separate lines at the beginning of your code.
These must begin with apostrophes.
Then, skip a line before the Public Class declaration.

Program Coding Style (3)

Remove empty or extra procedures (subroutines).
Use proper indentation and spacing.

Executes Properly (10)

Includes all parts and functionality.

Design for Instruction

My analysis of the pre-assessment data shows that the students are largely unfamiliar with the concepts in this chapter. Only 1 student out of the 20 who completed the pre-assessment correctly answered 6 out of the 10 questions and that was the highest score in the class. The class average was 3.8. Given the type distribution of the questions, 2.5 would be the statistical result of guessing. Therefore, the students showed some prior knowledge on average, but not enough to be statistically significant or effectively influence their grade.

As this is a beginning level course, this result neither surprises me nor effectively changes my initial plans for instruction. All of the students are significantly lacking in their knowledge of the course content. I will still cover all of the material in this chapter to satisfy the 5 learning goals for the students. Furthermore, the 5 learning goals will remain the same.

The following Day 3 lesson plan will serve as an exemplar for other lessons:

Day 3 Lesson Plan

Introduction – Get the students’ attention. Monitors off. Headphones down. Students instructed to open books to page 136.
Presentation – Read through the material on pages 136-137 in the book under the heading, “The For…Next Statement”. Point out the essential vocabulary and the generic code structure in the book. Make sure students understand the sequential nature of the For…Next Loop. Ask questions to check for understanding. To aid student comprehension, create a table listing the variables during each iteration of the loop. Compare and contrast the For…Next loop with the two versions of the Do…Loop covered previously. The For…Next Loop is used when the number of iterations is known. Both Do Loops are used when the number of iterations is not known prior to the program’s execution or is variable. Ask for questions.
Guided Practice – Students will complete Factorial on pages 137-138 using Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Express software. Students will print out copies of their source code and submit them to the teacher for review. The teacher will monitor student progress.
Independent Practice – Students will complete OddNumbersSum on page 138. Students will print out copies of their source code and submit them to the teacher for review. The teacher will monitor student progress.
Closure – The teacher will collect student work and keep students on task until the assignments are complete. Students have the remainder of the class period to finish.

Instructional Decision-Making

The following table comes from my updated pacing guide. As you can plainly see, I had lots of changes. My original assessment plan did not work out as expected.

Date	Topic	Page	Activity	Points
Monday, October 22, 2007	Chapter 5 - Looping Structures	-	Chapter 5 Pre-Test	-
	Do..Loop, Do While..Loop, Infinite Loops	131-132	PrimeNumber	10
Tuesday, October 23, 2007	Input Box, Accumulator Variables (Counters), Flags	134-136	AverageScore	10
	-	136	UniqueRandomNumbers	-
Wednesday, October 24, 2007	-	136	UniqueRandomNumbers (continued)	25
Thursday, October 25, 2007	For..Next	137-138	Factorial	10
	-	138	OddNumbersSum	25
Friday, October 26, 2007	-	140	StringTest (OUT OF ORDER)	25
	-	141	FindString (OUT OF ORDER)	25

Monday, October 29, 2007	2nd Six-Weeks Grading Period	-	Progress Reports Sent Home	-
	Strings	140	LetterCount (OUT OF ORDER)	25
Tuesday, October 30, 2007	String Concatenation	142	FullName	25
	Comparing Strings	145	CompareWords (OUT OF ORDER)	25
Wednesday, October 31, 2007	Char Methods, Unicode	144	SecretMessageDecoder	25
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Friday, November 02, 2007	Like Operator	146-149	WordGuess Case Study	-
	-	149	WordGuess (Update to Case Study)	25
	2nd Six-Weeks Grading Period	-	Progress Reports Due	10 EC

Monday, November 05, 2007	-	-	King's College Presentation	-
Tuesday, November 06, 2007	-	-	Pick One:	-
	-	156	Exercise 5 - Monogram	25
	-	158	Exercise 11 - NameBackwards	25
	-	159	Exercise 12 - CountVowels	25
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Thursday, November 08, 2007	Chapter 5 - Looping Structures	150-152	Review for Chapter 5 Test	10 EC
	Chapter 5 - Looping Structures	-	Study Guide Sent Home	-
Friday, November 09, 2007	Chapter 5 - Looping Structures	-	Chapter 5 Test	100

Some students were able to complete only PrimeNumber on the first day so I had to move AverageScore into day 2. The UniqueRandomNumbers activity had the same problem so I had to insert a new day for students to complete it. I skipped an assignment with the students earlier in chapter 4 and regretted it. The students did not learn the material and I had to teach it again later. From this experience I found that it is best to teach the material in order even if that means adding in days and shifting everything to come ahead.

The following day went normally and the students were able to complete their work. More trouble came when I got to the three String assignments. These assignments are good and even necessary for students to learn the associated programming skills. However, the book teaches them out of order. It gives the most difficult assignment for students first. Until now, the students have been instructed to create simple programs and practice each individual concept one at a time. In this chapter, the book starts to combine different concepts together – like they normally appear in functional code. In my experience, this concept is critical. The first string assignment is LetterCount, but it requires the students to use a loop to traverse the characters in a word. This interaction of loop and string concepts is just too much for most students. So, after a dismal beginning, I changed the pacing guide to teach LetterCount last. The other two string activities do not use loops to teach their techniques and will ease the students into the concept. This realization came too late to help my current students, but it will surely help future ones.

I did observe learning going on in the classroom during most of the activities though. In particular I remember watching the first student who figured out LetterCount. She was so focused on the task and completely calm like she knew what she was doing – very self-assured. I don’t think she really realized just how significant her accomplishment was because that is the first assignment to integrate multiple concepts in the chapter. Few students possess the ability to grasp that concept so quickly. I was secretly very proud of her, but I did let her know it.

The rest of the chapter fared similarly. I discovered (again, after the fact) that the CompareWords activity went well before SecretMessageDecoder. I also ended up including an additional review day prior to the test to answer students’ questions and help gel their learning. This resulted in the blank day at the end of the pacing guide for the chapter. Future students will benefit from these changes and follow the updated schedule - without the empty days, of course.

So, to recap, my original plan started out looking promising, but underwent a number of changes on the fly. In spite of my experience, I did not allow appropriate time for the students to absorb some of the new content or practice some of the new skills. If post assessment scores do not show significant improvement I may need to reteach this material before the course ends.

Analysis of Student Learning

A great way to begin any analysis of student learning is to compare the PreTest score to the PostTest score. I discovered that having a short PreTest with only 10 or so questions was actually good motivation for the students to really try and answer all the questions accurately. Before this semester, I always gave a massive, 100-question PreTest at the beginning of the year. The data collected from it was essentially useless as many students rushed through completing it since the score didn’t count as a grade. I didn’t use it to inform my teaching and the length of time between the PreTest at the beginning and the Final Exam at the end was far too long. Short PreTests per unit work much better. The following table lists the students in my third period Computer Programming I class along with their pre- and post-assessment scores and subgroups:

Name	PreTest	+ / -	PostTest	Labels
Student 1	40%	0%	40%
Student 2	30%	34%	64%
Student 3	50%	10%	60%	Gifted and Talented
Student 4	60%	8%	68%	Attendance Concern
Student 5	40%	60%	100%	Gifted and Talented
Student 6	40%	32%	72%
Student 7	50%	10%	60%
Student 8	30%	34%	64%
Student 9			80%
Student 10				Female
Student 11	50%	50%	100%	Gifted and Talented
Student 12	50%	42%	92%
Student 13	40%	16%	56%
Student 14	30%	26%	56%	Attendance Concern, Exceptional Child
Student 15	50%	18%	68%	Gifted and Talented
Student 16			76%	Gifted and Talented, Attendance Concern
Student 17	20%	40%	60%	Gifted and Talented
Student 18	20%	60%	80%
Student 19	30%	50%	80%	Gifted and Talented
Student 20	40%	44%	84%	Female
Student 21	40%	40%	80%	Hispanic, Female
Student 22	30%	46%	76%
Student 23	20%	48%	68%
Averages:	38%	33%	72%

Regarding the PreTest, Students 9 and 10 were absent the day of the test and did not complete it. Furthermore, a technical issue prevented Student 16 from submitting a score. Barring these three students for whom no data exists, every single student improved on their PreTest score except for Student 1 who received an identical score. Most students improved drastically. The average improvement was 33%. I should mention that Student 10 transferred to another school and thus did not complete the PostTest. The class average went from 0% passing scores (> 69) on the PreTest to 50% passing scores on the PostTest.

Although 50% is certainly not desirable it does show improvement over the PreTest scores. I was particularly pleased with the performance of Student 9 who scored the equivalent of an 80 on the test. Student 9 is my lowest functioning student in the class and should be labeled, but is not so the student won’t be singled out. Nonetheless, 50% warrants a reteaching of the material in the future. I think that right now the students need to move past this material. There is an old saying about continuing to ride a dead horse. The students need a change and a chance to be successful again before they will be open to revisiting the material later.

My one and only Hispanic student (the rest of the class is Caucasian) improved by 40%, a good amount. My two female students improved by 44% and 40% respectively. My three attendance concerns all improved upon their PreTest scores but only by an average of 14%. My one and only EC student is Student 14 and he managed to improve his grade by 26%.

My seven gifted and talented students improved by an average of 38%. But this improvement ranged from a meager 10% by Student 3 to a whopping 60% by Student 5. I suspect that one of the students has an accurate PreTest score whereas the other does not. But which one? In fact, five of the seven gifted and talented students had large increases. I am forced to conclude that either these students didn’t put forth much effort on the PreTest (and their scores are low) or that these students, arguably the best academically in the class, achieved the greatest gains in the unit (when the best students ought to start out higher in the first place). I do not know which scenario is accurate, but I believe one of the two must be.

Since Student 9 has already been the subject of attention I would like to take a closer look at Student 1 for contrast. Whereas Student 9 is a low functioning student, Student 1 is essentially average. This student turns in all of his work, does not present any discipline problems, and gets his work done. So, why the low score? I can only assume some kind of family issue was going on, the student didn’t or couldn’t study perhaps due to a job, or the student was sick on the day the test was given. I will have to tactfully investigate this and work with the student accordingly.

Reflection and Self-Evaluation

Student learning happened because the following environmental factors came together to support it. I do my best to create and maintain an inviting, yet productive, classroom environment. The students know what is expected of them and what they need to do on a daily basis from day 1. In this unit, the students were challenged at a level appropriate to their abilities and interests. The book used to teach the curriculum is an excellent resource. The pacing guide and daily lesson plans prepared from the book and the blueprint kept students focused and on track learning the core curriculum. Even though several problems arose with the pacing guide and student interest waned as a result, the pacing guide, the curriculum, past successes, and the classroom environment brought the students through. School work doesn’t have to be hard, but it does have to be consistently completed to bring about success. The old saying that ‘slow and steady wins the race’ is true. That’s definitely a motto in my classroom and it leads to success.

I can always use improvement and I constantly reflect on my teaching even though I usually don’t commit any of it on paper. I made some real blunders with the pacing guide. I also know that I should have foreseen the problems because I taught the same course last spring. Apparently, I just forgot about the difficulties, but they didn’t go away. The changes I have made to the curriculum are probably temporary. I am seriously considering splitting the chapter into two parts the next time I teach it. I was that much of a struggle for the students.

I also added some techniques to my lesson plan notes to help me teach the material next year. I wish I had thought up some of these ideas earlier like leading the students to understand Strings as being like the necklaces children wear with the letters of their names on individual beads. The parallel is really close and really helps the students get the concept.

So, having better notes and a better plan is a good start for improvement, but it’s not enough. For example, the students don’t ever see the blueprint. It’s available but they never actually look at what the state says they are to learn. I need to make the blueprint, or rather it’s content, more visible so that the students are better focused on learning the instructional goals. It is my experience that informed students are better students. And simply put, some students need to see the big picture in order to complete their daily work. It’s a learning style and I should harness its power to help steer students toward their learning goals.

Opportunities to improve my professional practice seem few and far between, but I do manage to stay up on current practices and industry shifts. Few schools teach computer programming courses so there are few formal professional opportunities. I remember attending a workshop at the CTE 2006 Summer Conference. It was only an hour long and I had to wait all week to attend it on Friday, but I’m very glad I did. It was that one-hour workshop that gave me my start in completing my programming rubric. I was able to connect with other programming teachers and simply listen to them describe it. It was very enlightening. Listening to those teachers kept me from making several mistakes when I taught Visual Basic that first time.

I wish I could find more opportunities like that one, but as a reasonable alternative I subscribe to RSS feeds and read material posted on web sites. This way, I stay current on technology and best practices from the industry itself. Cutting-edge web sites like A List Apart, TechCrunch, 37Signals, and ZDNet keep me in the loop on a variety of technology-related topics. I am also, of course, attending graduate school and now receive useful information from the cohort listserv too. Lastly, I have a small-scale web site business that I run on the side. I have no employees so whatever needs to be done is what I have to do – design, implementation, business records, programming, and everything else. Real world demands keep my skills sharp.