A RAT with a Mouse

It's been one full semester in Clarkston, and the RAT has begun to taste the cheese.  Slowly but surely, I have been working to integrate technology into lessons and units while maintaining verisimilitude with the other teachers.  One by one, teachers have begun to follow my lead.  The clues are there:  spare copies of documents I have made and shared left by the machines, projections of presentations I have made emblazoned upon walls, but the most appealing slice of cheese is one that I will taste in a few short weeks:  when the 11th grade English team is transformed through a series of recorded lessons that will form a legacy of learning for a teacher that is preparing to retire, and a team that is looking to secure its future.

The infiltration of the 11th grade English department began with replacing the traditional modes of instructional delivery.  The culminating activities of the units are already assessed in a student-centered system, based on skill development.  This allows students to advance at their own pace, and to define challenges for themselves.  This had not yet been adapted to delivery, however.  Instead of talking at students and expecting them to take good notes, I created guided notes to go along with the team's slides presentations, and made the presentations available publically on the class webpage, which students could access from their iPhones.  Students advanced through the presentations at their own pace, as I led whole-class and small-group discussions on the information.  Thus, the delivery became as individualized as the assessment.

The 10th grade team experienced the amplification of the otherwise mundane-but-necessary grammar unit.  In order to perform adequately on standardized testing, students need to be able to differentiate between types of punctuation and use a bevy of comma rules to determine whether or not a piece is grammatically correct.  A portion of each of five pre-exam class periods was to be spent reviewing a new rule each day, and then working through examples as a class, and then on dittoes.  During the first of a litany of snow days (with perhaps more to come, per Punxsutawney Phil), I decided to rewrite the unit.  I put the comma rules into Quizlet, which allowed students to review the rules over the other snow days.  I found four examples of each comma rule, each from an opening line of a novel in my class library.  The students were then tasked each day, during the grammar section, with looking through my library to find the lines on the board (with punctuation removed) and add the punctuation in the book.  They would then explain to the class what they were doing to the sentences and why.  Another teacher, who has been in the district since I was in grade school, happens to use the copy room around the same time as I do.  I saw that she was copying the assignment sheet I had made with the unmarked sentences, and beamed.  She asked me where I found the lines, and I told her about my vision.  She asked me if she could teach in my room first hour (I do not have a first hour), and I began to tear up.

While my influence on the technology usage has begun to seep into the time-hewn structure of Clarkston schools, I am proudest of the mark that this year's 11th grade team is preparing to make on the future of the class.  At the last team meeting, it became clear that each teacher had different visions for how students would be performing research, both in terms of the sites used and the methodology for incorporating online databases.  I am most familiar with J*Stor, another teacher is familiar with the Library of Congress, and the teacher preparing for retirement is proficient in navigating the Michigan Educational Library (MEL).  She described ways to mark up texts and save the annotated and highlighted copies to the Google Drive, and we were entranced with the depth of her unshared knowledge.  I volunteered to tutor her in recording tutorials during our shared prep hour (right after my classes at the Junior High were done, but before I have to be back in Novi for ACT/SAT tutoring).  As a result, she will continue to teach and inspire students and teachers even after her time as a Clarkston teacher has ended.