Effective Teaching at MICDS

Name: Elizabeth Helfant

Fall Action Plan

I. Personal Statement

As I think about my fall action plan and goals and reflect on my job and goals
to date, I do realize how fortunate I am to have the opportunity to grow and
learn and to help others do the same. I enjoy the challenges of technology and
figuring how best to implement it to support learning. I equally enjoy building
learning relationships that allow us to explore good pedagogy and curriculum
in a one to one environment. I am looking forward to an excellent year in
which we implement a number of good ideas and complete the move to
becoming a one to one upper school. My job has evolved from integrating
technology by exposing faculty to tools to integrating technology by designing
curriculum and exploring pedagogical best practices in a one to one school.
My job has become equal parts professional development for faculty,
curriculum design, and determination of technology solutions.

II. Strengths
Using Charlotte Danielson’s materials and your spring reflection notes (if available),
choose 4 (or more) criteria (e.g., 3d, Using Assessment in Instruction) that represent
your strengths as a teacher. Briefly discuss below.

Criteria Descriptors Notes

 Knowledge of Content This resides within the
1a.  Knowledge of Prerequisite TPACK framework – and
Demonstrating Relationships alludes to differentiation
Knowledge of  Knowledge of Content-Related
Pedagogy
and assessment
Content &
Pedagogy  Knowledge of Charactersitics of
Age Group
 Congruence with Instructional This is a focus for our
1f.Assessing Goals work next year and,
Student Learning  Criteria and Standards ideally, we should pilot
 Use for Planning
faculty (my students)
 Variety/ Alternative assessment
portfolios to assess their
understanding of things
2b. Establishing  Importance of the Content This is the environment
a Culture for  Student Pride in Work we are working to create
Learning  Expectations for Learning and in US
Achievement
3e.Demonstratin  Lesson Adjustment I’m pretty flexible and
g Flexibility and  Response to Students can roll with things-
Responsiveness o Persistence technology does that to
you
Effective Teaching at MICDS

4e. Growing and  Service to Students I’m also pretty strong in

Developing  Advocacy ongoing learning
Professionally  Decision Making

My strengths lie in my ability to learn rapidly and to build relationship as well as in

my passion for challenges and ideas. I have used these strengths to try to move the
upper school to become a community of designers as defined by Mishra and will
continue to do so this year.

III. Goals for the Year

Using Charlotte Danielson’s materials, select 2 or 3 goals based on criteria you want
to focus on for the year. Briefly discuss below.

Criteria Descriptors Notes

 Accuracy I blog to reflect and it forces me to flush
4a.Reflectin  Use in Future out my thinking and learn more deeply-
g on Teaching its good- This needs to live in faculty and
Teaching students at MICDS and I hope to help
make that happen.
 Learning Activities This will be a year of curriculum revision
1e.Designin  Instructional and design- it will be great fun but we
g Coherent Material and have to keep essential questions, enduring
Instruction Resources
 Instructional understandings and skills in our focus-
Groups and not fall back on what we did last
 Lesson and Unit year- we can’t just re-chunk stuff
Structure
 Representation of This is where I believe we all need to
3c.Engaging Content live- If we are sincere about developing
Students in  Activities and lifelong learners, we need to engage
Learning Assignments
 Groupings of students in the learning process either by
Students leveraging their intrinsic motivation or by
 Instructional creating curiosity and relevance. We need
Materials and to create learning environments that best
Resources serve students passions and interests
 Structure and rather that our own.
Pacing

My personal goals this year will be to develop an even deeper understanding of

pedagogy and curriculum design in a ubiquitous environment and to expand the
application of TPACK to our program. I will also work to make sure that initiative are
not located in personalities but have roots in the institution so that our changes are
sustainable.
More institutional goals are attached.

IV. Peer Observation

Effective Teaching at MICDS

In my job, I get to do a ton of peer observations. I will make sure that I observe each
department chair this year with an eye towards tech integration, differentiation, and
formative assessment. I will also use observations to support the TPACK evaluation
and faculty portfolio.

V. Your Professional Development Needs and Interests

 21st Century Learning Summit (http://www.solution-

tree.com/Public/InstituteDetail.aspx?
node=&parent=&ProductID=CFF266)
 Hathaway Brown Innovation Summit - http://www.hb.edu/page.cfm?
p=2138
 Maybe Educon and ASCD

VI. All School Committee Work

Please list any committees of which you are –or plan to be—a member.
 Upper School Learning Committees (suggesting 4- Portfolios,
Differentiation, PBL, and Scope and Sequence/Common Language
 Academic Committee
 TLC (?)

VII. Please describe what you’ve done over the past year to grow professionally.
This can include workshops attended or presented, books read about pedagogy
or curriculum, etc.

This could take quite awhile Learning is a necessary part of the job that I do.
Some of that learning is specifically for me and I make decisions about
technologies that we should pursue and filter out those that do not seem to be
a match to our school culture. Some of the learning is about curriculum,
pedagogy, theory and is something I try to then share with the Upper School
community. Much of the learning is in collaboration with Upper School
faculty. We are becoming much better at following up on professional
development experiences and sharing them with the greater community.

My PD wiki is a source of details about readings I’ve done and presentations

I’ve given. http://helfantpd.wikispaces.com/
Effective Teaching at MICDS

Books -

Conferences Organized/Convened
 MICDS Summer Teacher Institute 2010
(http://micdssummerpd2010.wikispaces.com/)
 MICDS Summer Teacher Institute 2009
(http://micdssummerpd09.wikispaces.com)

 K12Online Conference 2009

Conferences Attended
 Educon –Fri-Sun, Jan 29-30, 2010
 ASCD – Wed-Monday, March 3-8, 2010
 Lausanne Laptop Institute Sat-Tues, July 17-20,, 2010
 METC Tuesday, Feb 10, 2010

Presentations:
METC
 Rethinking Assessment

MICDS Summer Teacher Institute

Effective Teaching at MICDS

 UbD, DI, and TPACK Acronyms for Learning

 Portfolios in the Classroom

University of Chicago Lab School

 Journey to 1-to-1
 Technology in the Math Classroom

Lausanne
 Collaboration, Peer Review, and Reflection = Lifelong Learning
 Cool Project or Essential Learning Experience
 Formative and Portfolio Assessment
 Making English Relevant for Today’s Students
 Professional Development – Creating Teachers who live in the TPCK
“sweet spot”
 Re-Thinking Homework in Light of Technology
 Research in a Digital World
 Training the Integrator
 Using Technology to Differentiate the Classroom

Virtual Presentations

NCTE – Monday May 10, 2010

Implications of Assessments Given 21st Century Student Work
Tandem Session Presented By:  William Kist, George Mayo, and
Elizabeth Helfant  

DyKnow Training Sessions

School Visits
 Lovett School
 University of Chicago Lab School (in conjunction with the
presentation we gave and on a Saturday following a consulting job-
Met with the tech director to explore Tidebreak’s ClassSpot software.
 Glenbrook North High School - Chicago

Consulting
I include consulting because I have never done a job where I did not learn
something. I also include it to be transparent about it. This year I took 10 of
my vacation days to do consulting work (Educational Collaborators-EC) and
did an additional 4 Saturday sessions. I believe that 10 days of my vacation
time is sustainable but do not plan to take more than that as I need some days
for me. I will continue to do a handful of Saturday sessions.
 1 day Brookstone School (allowed me to visit Lovett School for a half
day as well since travel and accommodations were paid for by EC)
Effective Teaching at MICDS

 4 days Round Lake (2 Saturday sessions and 2 sessions from 2-8PM

allowing me to work on MICDS stuff from 9-12 on both of those days)
 3 days Daviess County KY
 3 days (1 Sat) St Mary’s Central
 3 days New Berlin High School

Powerful Learning Practice – Expert Voice for ADVIS Cohort

MICDS Outreach
 Taylorsville PD Day- Hixenbaugh’s father is superintendent – did a
half day session on moodle – left MICDS at 11AM – Louise did not
count this as vacation time-

Learning on Time Off –

I took 11 vacation/personal days and have 4 remaining. Below are the learning
experiences I had on those days.

 Friday July 30th – spent a half day at St Christopher’s in Richmond

talking to Hiram Cuevash, Director of Academic Tech, about their
technology program. We spent some time looking at the Dell tablet,
Windows 7 features, and talking Live.edu.
 Monday August 2 – Spent half day at VCU understanding action
research and measuring TPACK for teachers
 Tuesday August 3- Spent 2 hours with William and Mary discussing
their use of TPACK rubrics for assessing TPACK in curriculum

VIII. Fall Meeting with Department Chair / Curriculum Coordinator

I meet regularly with Department chair and will continue to do so. I also attend many
grade level planning sessions in order to develop appropriate PD and to assist with
designing curriculum