As I finish creating my personalized course for teachers; I am very excited to see all of the learning that that takes place. On the other hand, I wonder how many teachers will truly venture out into the universe of taking an online course during the school year. As I start my new position as an Elementary Innovation Leader (Technology Coach) for my district; I have found many teachers that have a very different expectation for their students learning compared to their own.
Many teachers tend to think that doing things the same way all the time will improve student learning, and they should not have to change what they do in their classroom. This is a prime example of why I wanted to provide my online course for teachers who feel they cannot grow as a teacher without taking huge amounts of time outside of the school day to become a better teacher. I have learned over the last five years to look for areas I need to become more effective as a teacher, but that is not a common practice for educators.
Since I am not in the classroom anymore; I continue to brainstorm ways I can extend or recreate this course to reach more teachers. My first thought is going to be to use the resources I have to get feedback from teachers who take my original course and other teachers in the district about what they need and want in an online course.
My first idea for a new course is to find the more relevant area of need for a large amount of teachers in my district and provide an interactive, online course that allows the teachers to go at their own pace and show their learning in multiple ways. Hopefully this will allow for the most significant growth for those teachers. Some of the topics that may come up include: differentiation, classroom management, formative assessment, and the PLC process.
My second thought when it comes to additional online courses is to build a consistent evacuation process into the course to allow for teachers to earn professional learning hours that they normally might have to earn during the summer. I hope to construct a quality assessment and feedback process that is easy and less time consuming for teachers to complete during the school year and allows for true growth that helps the achievement of all students in our district.
The feedback I receive on my initial online course will be an important step to begin the construction of the aspects of my future course ideas. I also hope that the teachers that take my course will grow from the feedback they receive as much as I hope to grow from theirs.
Mischnick Mindset 