Courtney Gough

TE 807 Final
June 23, 2017

Part I: Peer Coaching Reflection

The Peer Coaching Cycle provided an in-depth protocol for a comprehensive analysis of
each teacher’s focus question(s). The protocol not only provided time for another teacher
to analyze your artifact, but also allowed time for you to analyze and reflect. However, I
believe the most beneficial part of the process was being able to analyze the work of
another teacher and engage in conversation about their classroom, practice, and ideas
centered on their focus question. It was particularly helpful for me as my partner also
taught Geometry. That being said, we were able to engage in conversation about content
and pedagogy. It is always helpful to be able to think through a lesson or question with a
colleague. Doing so forces you to think deeper about your own practice and the
implications from your conversation. Through our conversation, I was able to gain ideas
on how to better approach the tangent ratio that focuses on conceptual understanding,
how to incorporate technology into my lesson(s), and how to engage my students in
reflection.

Although the Peer Coaching Cycle was largely beneficial, there was one component that
made the process more difficult. It was challenging to both chose an artifact that we
thought demonstrated quality teaching and how that artifact should be defined. What I
mean by this is, should an artifact be just the discovery part of a lesson? Should it include
every piece of a project? It was difficult to reach both objectives and be sure to not
include too much that would cause it to be difficult to ask just a couple focus questions
and to not be overwhelming.

Through the Peer Coaching Cycle, I was given valuable feedback to transform my lesson
in the domains of content as well as collaboration. My focus question was about
differentiation to make the lessons more accessible/ challenging to fit students’ needs.
Shannon’s suggestions allowed me to gain insight on this. She suggested using Desmos
to graph. This could allow entry into the project for my students who are struggling to
visualize the trend/ figure out scaling etc. For excelling students, she suggested having
students travel to other groups to do peer tutoring, allowing them to create their own
solution, and collaborating with the English/History teachers for a cross-curricular
project. These suggestions allow my project to be low entry, high-ceiling, adapting to my
diverse set of learners and address a variety of skills.

In the coaching seat, I did an okay job. I believe I did a good job of deeply analyzing
Shannon’s document, thinking about how we could answer her focus questions, and how
her artifact connected to the high- leverage teaching Practices (Teaching Works, 2015).
However, my thinking could have been more organized when I presented it to her in
order to better help her make the connections. I had a lot of ideas and suggestions, as I am
used to having more of an open floor when speaking about artifacts with colleagues. That
being said, the protocol is a great way to keep the conversation focused and coherent, that
I need to get better at following to a T and having my thoughts and suggestions nice and
organized to do so.
Courtney Gough
TE 807 Final
June 23, 2017
I envision this protocol being extremely valuable in my school. We are beginning a
transition to a new integrated math curriculum and this protocol will enable us to be very
intentional about our inquiry and conversations with one another. I also envision this
being helpful in our grade-level teams when we analyze cross-curricular lessons and
provide a springboard for more collaboration across contents.

Part II: Revised Stance on Quality Teaching

Quality teaching is multifaceted. To me, quality teaching involves content knowledge, an

understanding of how students learn, reflection, collaboration, inquiry, personalization,
relationships, and a community or learners that values diversity.

A deep content knowledge is important for quality teaching for many reasons. For
instance, quality teaching should involve student explorations that cause them to ask
deeper questions, and make connections across the content area. Boaler (1998) reveals
the results of using process-based mathematics over explorations, explaining: “in real-
world mathematics situations, adults and students do not use school-learned mathematical
methods or procedures” (Lave, Murtaugh, &de la Rocha, 1984; Masingila, 1993; Nunes,
Schliemann, & Carraher, 1993). It is crucial that as teachers of mathematics, we gain
content knowledge and the skills necessary to create explorations for our students that
bridge this gap for our students, allowing them to transfer their learning to different
contexts. In order to set up and facilitate these explorations and discussions, a teacher
must have a deeper understanding of how the students will perceive and engage in the
activity. Feiman-Nemser (2001) supports this thinking, stating that “subject matter
knowledge for teaching” is key. Without the necessary depth-of- knowledge in your
specified content area, creating and facilitating a classroom of exploration can be very
challenging.

Steaming from obtaining the content knowledge necessary for teaching is the ability to
predict student misconceptions. Specifically, teachers need to have an understanding of
“what students find confusing or difficult and having alternative explanations, models,
and analogies”. In other words, it is important for teachers to be able to predict possible
student misconceptions on any given activity, which takes a specialized content
knowledge. This is important as quality teaching involves teachers meeting students
where they are and being able to build off of their previous misconceptions, to help them
reach a new understanding. For instance, if a student were confused about the difference
between absolute value bars and parentheses, a high quality teacher would be able to set
up a problem for him that helped him investigate the difference and eventually reach a
new understanding on his own.

Predicting misconceptions is related to the idea that quality teaching also involves an
understanding of how students learn. Every classroom is full of a set of diverse learners
who may learn, engage, and connect with lessons differently. As a teacher, it is important
to insert different strategies and approaches to help reach all learners. For instance, some
students engage the most in an activity with the use of white boards, some when they get
Courtney Gough
TE 807 Final
June 23, 2017
to use the computer, etc. Assistive technology is an important aspect of responsive
teaching and differentiating for students.

Creating a classroom community that values diversity where students feel welcome is
another key component to quality teaching. A teacher who is able to pull on students’
diverse backgrounds and experiences, bringing them all to their classroom community to
learn from one another, is one that will be successful. Students need to feel comfortable
sharing their thoughts, making mistakes, and being themselves. McBee (2007) states:
“caring and being cared for is more central to our lives and our success and happiness
than is any piece of academic knowledge”. Student relationships, both with the teacher,
and their peers, are the first step to learning in a classroom (especially if the classroom is
centered around working with classmates). A huge part of quality teaching is a teacher
who is able to create these communities and empower the students to learn the content
and help them to realize they are fully capable of doing so (if they are skeptical).

A school that values quality teaching would involve a lot of teacher inquiry and
collaboration. Grimm et al (2014) outlines a form of teacher driven observation, which
allows teachers to identify a specific inquiry question they want to find more about. Then,
teachers work together and are given the time to collect data, analyze student work, and
plan action steps together. These teachers work to follow a formal data protocol in this
process in order to keep the group focused on the initial inquiry question. Ideally, in my
opinion, these teacher groups should be comprised of teachers from the same or different
subjects and each teacher would have a role. This group should also have a diverse set of
teachers in terms of experience. This way, there would be multiple different perspectives,
allowing each teacher ample growth.

Moreover, teacher collaboration in planning lessons is also extremely valuable. Mosle

(2014) speaks of the importance of lesson study: “where colleagues routinely sit in on
one another’s classes and then scrutinize a single session for hours, extracting general
guidance for future instruction” further enforcing how valuable teacher collaboration can
be. Bouncing ideas off of other educators or engaging in lessons study can be a very
powerful step in improving your teaching. Specifically, being open to have an observer in
your room and help collect data on your practice can help open your eyes to both the
good, and the not so good. This encompasses the extremely important attribute of quality
teaching of never becoming static, and embracing the life-long learning pursuit that is
teaching.

Furthermore, a quality teacher is not only one who engages in inquiry with their fellow
teachers, but also engages their students in inquiry and employs their curiosities in
learning. Dewey (1933) states: “ a genuine enthusiasm is an attitude that operates as an
intellectual force. A teacher who arouses such an enthusiasm in his pupils has done
something that amount of formalized method, no matter how correct, can accomplish”.
As teachers, in order to encourage our students to be life-long, critical thinkers, we must
promote question asking, open-mindedness, and whole-heartedness into our classroom
teaching and learning (Dewey, 1933). We must provide students with prompts that spike
their curiosity and help them to ask why before accepting things in the world. We must
Courtney Gough
TE 807 Final
June 23, 2017
“create a headache” before providing the aspirin (Dan Myer, 2015) to problems, ensuring
we are not the main source of information, but students themselves have the power to
engage in critical thinking together and reach new understandings. A quality teacher must
always keep in mind that “working on learning in the classroom involves concerted
action by at least two people, the teacher and a student” (Lampert, 2009). In order to
engage our students in critical thinking and inquiry, we must always remember we are
not simply givers of information, but facilitators to learning.

Fenstermacher & Richardson (2005) state that “Quality teaching is what we are most
likely to obtain when there is willingness and effort on the part of the learner, a
supportive social surround, ample opportunity to learn, and good practices employed by
the teacher”. Fenstermacher & Richardson (2005) clarify this definition to include a
careful balance of “good practices” which are age appropriate methods which further
students’ learning in the specific content and “successful teaching”, meaning “the learner
actually acquires, to some reasonable and acceptable level of proficiency, what the
teacher is engaged in teaching”. Overall, in order to achieve quality teaching at any one
point, one must remember all of the moving parts mentioned above and the careful
balance that comes into play when teaching students. Teaching is a complex endeavor
that requires commitment, inquiry, collaboration, and life-long learning. Although
sometimes overwhelming, it is the outcomes of, and relationships with, our students that
make it all well worth it.

References

Boaler, J. (1998). Open and Closed Mathematics: Student Experiences and

Understandings. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education,29(1), 41-62.

Dewey, J. (1933). Why reflective thinking must be an educational aim. In R. D.

Archambault (Ed.), John Dewey on education (pp. 212–228). Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.

Grimm, E., Kaufman, T., & Doty, D. (2014). Rethinking classroom observation.
Educational Leadership, 71(8), 24–29.c

Feiman-Nemser, S. (2001). From preparation to practice: Designing a continuum to

strengthen and sustain teaching. Teachers College Record, 1036(6), 1013–1055.

Fenstermacher, G. D., & Richardson, V. (2005). On Making Determinations of Quality in

Teaching.Teachers College Record,107(1), 186-213.

Lampert, M. (2009). Learning Teaching in, from, and for Practice: What Do We
Mean?Journal of Teacher Education,61(1-2), 21-34.

Meyer, D. (2015, June). dy/Dan. If Math Is The Aspirin, Then How Do You Create The
Headache? Retrieved from
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TE 807 Final
June 23, 2017
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2015/if-math-is-the-aspirin-then-how-do-you-create-the-
headache/

Mcbee, R. H. (2007). What it Means to Care: How Educators Conceptualize and

Actualize Caring.Action in Teacher Education,29(3), 33-42.

Mosle, S. (2014, August 13). Building Better Teachers. Retrieved June 24, 2017.

Teaching Works. (2015). High-leverage practices. Retrieved from

http://www.teachingworks.org/work-of-teaching/high-leverage-practices