Franklin DLI - January 2022 Newsletter available

Check out the Franklin Public Schools January DLI newsletter. 
#FPSDigitalLearning @FranklinPSNews #franklin
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Shared from Twitter: https://twitter.com/DliFranklin/status/1487098034055954439

Franklin DLI - January 2022 Newsletter available

Staff Spotlight: Ms. Waters

From Pantherbook, we share this acknowledgment of Ms Waters by Halle Goldsmith:

Ms. Waters has been teaching at Franklin High School for a total of twenty-three years and has put on around 115 productions, but has finally decided to retire. 

When she first started teaching, she wanted to teach inner-city kids. At the time, Mayor Menino only allowed people who lived in Boston to teach in Boston. So after her student teaching period at Dorchester High in Boston, she started teaching at FHS. 

Waters wasn’t always a teacher though. Before teaching, she worked in retail merchandising in the fashion industry and had the hopes of being an actress. When asked why she decided to start teaching she answered, “I became a single mother with three children, I was divorced, retail is 364 days a year job and I never thought I would remarry. I thought I should pick a profession that I could enjoy while taking care of my children. I ended up remarrying, but I fell in love with teaching.”

Continue reading the article
https://franklinpanthers.us/student-life/2019/06/12/staff-spotlight-ms-waters/

Ms. Waters (Pantherbook photo)

"evidence of student learning must be included in the body of evidence evaluators use to determine educator ratings"

"The state’s education commissioner, aiming to end a long-brewing controversy, is proposing to scrap a rule requiring school systems to develop individual ratings for teachers and administrators based solely on student test scores. 

“I heard loud and clear from teacher unions and administrators that having a separate rating has more downsides then upsides,” Mitchell Chester, commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said in an interview. 

His proposal, however, would not entirely do away with the use of student test scores in evaluating teachers and administrators, prompting mixed reaction to the proposal Tuesday. 

Instead, it would require school systems to fold the scores into a separate system of judging educator performance: the annual job review, a process that has been based largely on observations, and a review of other evidence, such as lesson plans."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/23/state-may-scrap-teacher-ratings-tied-test-scores/FMn4OSFqbuVvYFGSgyX8YM/story.html

The full agenda for the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education meeting scheduled for Tuesday, Nov 29, 2016 can be found here
http://www.doe.mass.edu/boe/docs/FY2017/2016-11/

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

"Importantly, the proposed amendments eliminate the separate student impact rating, but preserve a focus on student learning in the evaluation framework. This approach addresses the concerns about a separate student impact rating while retaining evidence of student learning based on multiple measures, including common assessments and statewide student growth measures, as a component of the educator's summative performance rating."

http://www.doe.mass.edu/boe/docs/FY2017/2016-11/item2.html

Summary of Proposed Amendments

The proposed regulatory amendments include the following:

• Eliminating the separate student impact rating of high, moderate, or low, which was to be reported to the Department at the educator level.
• Retaining the 5-step cycle, which culminates in a summative performance rating based on multiple categories of evidence and the professional judgment of the evaluator. (See the attached Quick Reference Guide for more information about the evaluation process.)
• Establishing a "student learning indicator" under Standard II: Teaching All Students (for teachers) and under Standard I: Instructional Leadership (for administrators). Standards describe the broad categories of knowledge, skills and performance of effective practice, and indicators describe specific knowledge, skills, and performance for each standard. By including a student learning indicator, impact on student learning is a component of the rating for the Standard. The rating for the Standard, in turn, is a component of the Summative Performance Rating. The student learning indicator does not result in a separate stand-alone rating.
• Providing additional information about the types of measures that can be used as evidence of educator impact on student learning, including: a definition of common assessments, establishing the use of common assessments and statewide growth measures in the evaluation process as optional for educators who are not responsible for direct instruction, and clarity that other evidence of student learning beyond common assessments and statewide growth measures may be considered.
• Adding a new definition of "expected impact" on student learning to guide evaluators and educators in understanding the role of professional judgment in looking across multiple measures to understand an educator's impact on student learning.

In addition, the proposed amendments also include technical changes unrelated to the student impact rating, such as removing provisions describing timelines that have expired.

http://www.doe.mass.edu/boe/docs/FY2017/2016-11/item2.html

Scholarship Fund in memory of Colleen Ritzer

From the Essex County Community Foundation website:

To carry on the legacy of our beautiful daughter and sister Colleen and her passion for teaching, we have established the Colleen Ritzer Memorial Scholarship Fund. This scholarship will be awarded to students who are pursuing a degree in education so they can continue her legacy of making a difference in a student's life. 

Colleen Ritzer

The Colleen Ritzer Memorial Scholarship Fund is managed by Essex County Community Foundation. If you have any questions regarding your online donation, please contact Kathy (978) 777-8876 or k.moriconi@eccf.org. If you prefer to make a donation by mail you can make a check payable to: 

ECCF/Colleen Ritzer Fund and mail to: 

Essex County Community Foundation
175 Andover Street
Danvers, MA 01923

You can donate online via this link
https://secure.etransfer.com/ecomm/donation/donation1.cfm?d2org=EssexCCF&d2tool=ColleenRitzerMemorialFund


Who was Colleen Ritzer? An Assumption College graduate and teacher at Danvers High School.
http://www.massteacher.org/News/archive/2013/ms_ritzer_scholarship_fund.aspx

Things don't always go as planned

Spending sometime in today's classroom environment would be rather interesting for most folks. Especially for those who claim to "have had 30 or more kids in their class and they did alright." Teaching in those days is considerably different from today.

• There has been an increase in standards, 
• There is more of a requirement to teach to the test
• The students themselves are all post-Sesame Street

Coach Brown reflecting on a lesson plan that didn't work writes:

In the end, the lesson provided a decent idea of marginal analysis.  But it was clear that the lesson had little flow, was veering off track on every opportunity, and became a greater bane than a benefit to class time.  Was a total failure?  No, not by a long shot.  But by this point I want a certain vibe and flow to my class, and this new lesson didn’t provide that.  So it was a disappointment that I want to change before I teach it again in January to my next semester of Economics.  Hey newbs, even ten years in things will not always go as planned.  Get used to it and change it for next time.  You won’t have much time to mope about the negativity.  The next class begins in 7 minutes.  

Bold for my emphasis. Read the full posting here:
http://ukiahcoachbrown.blogspot.com/2010/09/clunk.html

Read more of Coach Brown here:
http://ukiahcoachbrown.blogspot.com/


Franklin, MA

What are Smartboards?

Some Smartboards have been installed in Franklin's classrooms and more are being requested in the capital budget. What is a Smartboard and how does it work in the classroom?

These two videos will provide an overview:






"Interactive white boards" is the better description for this tool. Smartboard is also a brand name which is becoming like Kleenex and used to refer to tissues.

What the heck is Goomoodleikiog?

Goomoodleikiog?
What the heck is Goomoodleikiog?

Click to watch this brief (less than 4 minutes) video about transforming teaching in plain english. The creators pay homage to Common Craft with their presentation on how to transform the old paper based teaching with Google, Moodle, Wikis and Blogs.




Enjoy!

My thanks to WNY Education Associates for sharing this posting!

"Doc, can you help me study?"

By Joyce Kelly/Daily News staff

Sun Nov 02, 2008, 06:39 PM EST

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FRANKLIN -

Don Roemer, affectionately known as "Doc" to his students and colleagues, spent 37 years in a job he loved.

"I loved it. I loved teaching," said Roemer, a Franklin resident who worked for 27 years as an English teacher at Wayland High School, and 10 years prior as an English professor at Northwestern University and Northeastern University.

Life felt a bit empty when he retired three years ago, so he decided to fill that hole by returning to his passion, he said.

For the past year, he has volunteered as a part-time teacher working alongside a few full-timers at Franklin High School, in a pilot program he proposed last October to Franklin Superintendent of Schools Wayne Ogden. Ogden is the former assistant superintendent of Wayland Public Schools.

"I really wanted very much to have something to do with education. I missed being with the kids. I may be old, but I have a lot of experience, a lot to offer," Roemer said.

"I never got tired of the teaching, I never got tired of the kids, but I did get tired of correcting papers," Roemer said.

As a volunteer, he gets the best of both worlds: giving students one-on-one academic attention, without having to pour through essays and tests, as well as a flexible, albeit, confusing rotating schedule, he said.

Read the full article in the Franklin Gazette here

A video clip by Joyce Kelly interviewing Doc can be seen here:

Twitter - a teaching learning tool

From Nottinghamshire (yes, Robin Hood country) Tom Barrett teaches and writes a blog. This post goes into great detail on how he uses Twitter as a teaching and learning tool.

In my experience, and in the short time that I have used it, Twitter has grown quickly to play a major part in the way that I interact with fellow colleagues and professionals from around the world. In my classroom and with the children I teach it has been an exciting tool to utilise and support learning. However it is one of many tools that we have at our disposal. I do not see it replacing any of the others we use nor do I see the positive impact upon learning being exclusive to Twitter.

Read the full posting here.

Cruise around Tom's site. He has video tutorials. He has some wikis.

Do you twitter?