WESTMINSTER FACULTY

ANNUAL GOALS & SELF-ASSESSMENT NAME: Bo Adams YEAR: 2011-12 Self-assessment Objectives: To encourage reflection and goal setting. To facilitate dialogue and communication. To support faculty and professional development. To provide a framework for positive, constructive, and systematic feedback. Directions: Use this goals and self-assessment document to guide, direct, and record your reflections and planning about your work as an educator. Complete both pages. Past feedback and ongoing reflection should help you set your goal.

As Professionals, at Westminster We Strive to Be Community Members

Related Competencies Collaboration with colleagues: Team player, ability to enhance and to contribute to the faculty as a whole; involved in the spirit and energy of collective effort. Contributions outside of the classroom: Professional commitment, responsibility; advising, coaching, sponsoring, supervising; ability to contribute beyond primary assignment; etc. Illustrate or write to complete one or more of the following: 1. Describe one or more ways in which you collaborated with colleagues last year and how you plan to collaborate this year. 2. How do you contribute to the community beyond your classroom?

I believe that I keep collaboration as my watchword. Different from communication and coordination, I see collaboration as genuinely co-laboring with others, on a regular and consistent basis, to combine efforts and strengths into corporate, collectively-made solutions the kind that reveal that WE are smarter than MEthe kind that masks any ability to identify the individual contributions to the whole because of the work of the team. More often than not, I probably fall short of that vision, but I do try to stay determinedly focused on reaching that collaborative state of being. I collaborate with a number of teams and groups. On this day that I am drafting this reflection, three or four collaborations in particular stand out for me: 1) Jill Gough and I co-facilitate the course Synergy 8, as well as the JH PLC efforts; 2) I co-labor with a team of eleven PLC facilitators who led the formalized PLCs in grades 6-12 during the 2010-11 AY, and I co-labor regularly with the 42 JH faculty who were formally participating in the JH PLCs in 2010-11; 3) I collaborate with educators around the country (and beyond) through such tools as Twitter and blogging applications one example being my work with the Connected Principals group; 4) I collaborated with various strategic-design teams at Unboundary as I served my sabbatical in spring of 2011. Even this summary and organization feels artificial, though, as I re-read my own writing. All four of these examples blend together as I bring ideas from Twitter into my work with the PLC facilitators, and as I bring my work at Unboundary to bear on the environment that Jill and I try to create in Synergy to simulate a real-world working environment. Therefore, I view these examples of collaboration and those that I have not included here as a web that is anchored, connected, resilient, and sticky (from B. Harrison post at http://www.connectedprincipals.com/archives/4047 Waiting forSpiderman) and a structure that weathers well in a windstorm, catches a great deal of sustenance, etc. Additionally, the collaborations that stand out to me all come not from my work on logistical, managing school teams, which are also critically important, but from my work on teams that are directly influencing, practicing, and implementing instructional approaches with adult and child learners. These instructional-leader collaborations feed my soul, and they are the best
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means by which I can positively affect student learning at Westminster. These are the types of collaboration I plan to remain focused on in 2011-12 those that demand instructional leader and lead learner time. Whats more, I mean to spend more time with the entire faculty in the Junior High, as we undertake implementing the vision statement Learning for Life, integrating the 1:1 technology platform, and further developing the Faculty Assessment and Annual Review (FAAR) process. A few bulleted details of this years collaboration plans: First, I will participate in the JH PLCs. With my fellow JH teachers, I will work arm-in-arm with the JH math-science PLC, the JH English PLC, the JH history PLC, and the JH Spanish/French PLT. On average, I will attend at least one meeting per week of each PLC/PLT. Also, I will try diligently to spend time in everyones classesmultiple times (this means 100% of the JH faculty). Second, I will continue my work with the facilitators of the JH PLCs. During weekly meetings, usually on Thursday mornings before school, our facilitator team works together to collectively establish the learning paths of our various PLCs and PLTs. During the June 2011 CFT Summer Institute, we drafted plans for the 11-12 AY, and we will be working to accomplish our collaborative goals for adult and student learning. Third, I will continue my daily/regular routine of personal learning via the PLCs and PLTs, stack reading, Twitter, blogging, and work with Unboundary, TED-ED and TEDxAtlanta. [Some of the offsite professional learning offerings that appeal to me this year are 1) NAIS, 2) EduCon, 3) Learning Forward, and 4) ISTE. These opportunities bring possibilities for collaboration as well. Moreover, Jill Gough and I will continue to present and facilitate at various conferences and institutes. Our first engagement of the year is the keynote at MCTM (Mississippi Council of Teachers of Mathematics) in mid September, and we are working with Bob Ryshke and the Center for Teaching to facilitate various sessions on PBL and PLCs.] NOTE: Collaborating with the senior admin team, the Academic Leadership Team, the principals group, and the Junior High Guidance Committee, as well as with various other standing and ad hoc committees represents crucial collaboration for me, too. However, as this is a GOALS document and reflection, I am setting my goals toward staying focused on the instructional leadership collaboration with faculty. I believe this best plays to my strengths, passions, and bright spots, too. Master Teachers
Related Competencies Classroom teaching effectiveness: Knowledge of subject, as well as human development and learning, tone, energy, organization, pedagogy, use of technology, student engagement, skill development, instructional planning, assessment, etc. Responsive to all students: Understanding various learning styles, levels of maturity, issues of diversity, gender, and students strengths and challenges; adapting instruction for individual needs; utilizing multiple instructional strategies; communication with students, parents, colleagues, and administrators; etc. Relationships with students: Approachable, open, engaging, respected, and respectful; understands and relates to students as individuals; good classroom motivation and management skills; etc. Write a reflection: Look at the related competencies in this section. Select one or more that you believe you need to work on and describe what steps you will take to strengthen your competency as a master teacher. This may be related to your goal(s) for the year.

Pedagogy; Assessment; Understanding Various Learning Styles; Communication with Students, Parents, Colleagues, and Administrators! [At the core of the reflection that follows is my 2010-11 response to this prompt. I have made revisions and additions, but I will continue to focus my professional learning in these areas, as they are long-term projects that do not fit nicely and neatly into the constructs of a single school year.] Because of my interest in and developing work with PLCs, I have become well-versed in the four key questions
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of a PLC: 1) What should be learned?, 2) How will we know if they are learning?, 3) What will we do if they already know it?, and 4) What will we do if they arent learning? But it is not enough to know these questions; I need to live these questions for myself and for those that I serve as lead learner. After eighteen years as a professional educator, I have realized that I have been much too focused on teaching, and I have not been focused nearly enough on the far more important goal of learning! Sven Nater wrote a book about legendary UCLA Coach John Wooden entitled, You Havent Taught Until They Have Learned. I have grown to believe fully in this philosophy and practice, so I am concentrating on the master-teacher traits relating to pedagogy, assessment, learning styles, and communication. I think the four key questions apply to any age learner, and I believe the nucleus of my goals work will remain centered in assessment how will I know when students (and teachers, and I) have learned? Consequently, I am devoting a great deal of continuing attention to the topic of assessment, which I increasingly see as the center of it all. In 2011-12, I will continue to read all that I can consume about 21st century teaching and learning because a major component of this movement involves a richer understanding and use of assessment. Much of the writing and research in this area is devoted to balanced assessment. Balanced assessment integrates formative and summative assessment, and it utilizes techniques to examine learning targets across the spectrum of knowledge, skills, reasoning, products, and dispositions. Balanced assessment also requires us to make instructional decisions based on the responses we gather from the four key questions. Assessment and learning should determine differentiated, instructional paths, not isolated teacher planning that I have typically done in the summer for efficiency. Instruction needs to be more responsive to assessment assessment is a cyclical beginning, not something to do at the end of instruction to merely record a grade. Balanced assessment is also a major component of our newly revised vision statement, Learning for Life. Additionally, project-based learning and integrated studies exist as related, major components of the vision statement, and I want to focus a great deal of attention on these three areas areas that relate intimately with pedagogy, assessment, learning styles, and communication. These focus areas for me come together tremendously in my work with Synergy 8 my primary laboratory for pedagogy, assessment, PBL, and integrated studies. In Synergy 8, a new course that co-teacher Jill Gough and I created and piloted in 2010-11, students experienced myriad assessments for learning, but they did not receive a traditional grade averaged as a percentage score. During the first iteration of the course, we built a substantial assessment framework, but we have a lot of work to do still. Therefore, Jill and I will continue developing a balanced assessment plan for Synergy 8, and we will continue employing methods advocated by Tom Guskey, Bob Marzano, Rick Stiggins, and other gurus of educational assessment. Primarily, we are developing four-point rubrics with very specific descriptors of proficiency targets, and we are utilizing these rubrics to guide students in assessing their growth and progress relative to the four categories of twelve essential learnings in the course. In order to achieve best practices in this assessment plan, Jill and I will need to continue to research and study rubric creation and use. Furthermore, we will need support from the various PLCs in the JH as we engage in assessment practices that reach across the disciplines (Synergy 8 is an interdisciplinary course). Additionally, Jill and I plan to use a much more formalized blogging plan for providing a primary communication scheme for students to reflect and project about their learning. At the same time, I hope not to overly define the parameters of learning in Synergy so that the student learners can exercise their creativity in ways that too much teacher-generated structure may hinder. I will be striving for the sweet spot of instruction that Kelly Gallagher describes in Readicide. So, a quick bullet list of possible action steps: Continue to use personal learning plan and PLCs/PLTs for growth and development in my own understanding of pedagogy, assessment, learning styles, and communication. Continue to develop the assessment and instruction framework of Synergy, in part as a practicum for the vision work in PBL, integrated studies, and balanced assessment.
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Work with JH faculty to implement the vision statement in meaningful ways through determined, incremental, progressing stepswhile integrating the 1:1 program.

Lifelong Learners
Related Competencies Collaboration with colleagues and students: Collaborates with students and colleagues to further knowledge and understanding. Staying current in field: Demonstrates a willingness to take risks and an openness to engage new ideas; stays current with evolving teaching strategies and methodologies; models reflective practices; seeks opportunities to grow, etc. Respond to one or more of the following prompts: 1. How do you stay current with evolving teaching strategies and methodologies, model reflective practices, and seek opportunities to grow in your content area and/or grade level teaching? 2. Describe an experience that demonstrates your willingness to take risks and an openness to engage new ideas. 3. After reading a book or an article, or after attending a conference/workshop or participating in a collaborative experience, describe how you incorporated or plan to incorporate the learning into your teaching. Please list the resource.

1. [repeated from 10-11 reflectionstill applies strongly] To stay current with evolving teaching strategies and methodologies, I attempt to build a learning weba personal learning network. This web, or network, has many interwoven strands. One major strand is my personal reading strategy. I have developed into a stack reader. I read books and articles, record main ideas on one page, and stack materials according to main ideas. When a stack contains three books and/or articles, I re-read a stack with more serious note-taking, mind-mapping, and instructional connecting. Currently, my primary stack includes project-based learning, assessment, and change theory. The second major strand is online writing and reading resources of a shorter or different nature than books and articles. For example, I try to watch a TED talk every morning as part of my routine; I try to write to a blog at least once a week; I read other blogs and websites to which I subscribe; and I have joined a personal learning network of educators on Twitter. The third major strand, and arguably the trunk line of strands, is the time that I spend with the JH faculty and PLCs. To engage in regular, purposeful, job-embedded conversations about teaching and learning provides a practicum and support-filled laboratory for the research and theory and ideas that exist in education. Because of my role as principal teacher/learner, I have the great blessing of an excuse to visit classes and see great folks in action as they facilitate learning for adults and children alike. Fourth, I utilize the component pieces of the Faculty Assessment and Annual Review Plan. I trust the Goals and Self-Assessment process to catalyze my thinking and reflecting about my annual practice. I desperately want to add in peer visits and administrative feedback in my practice as principal. Using various survey methods with faculty, I am fortunate to have a piece very comparable to student course feedback. Fifth, I am trying new things like Synergy 8. There is a common assumption that schools are for student learning, but they should be for adult learning too. I am certainly stretching and challenging myself with the Synergy 8 plan. It is not like the past eighteen years of my teaching career, and I consider myself most fortunate to be in a team-teaching role. Sixth, I try to weave in innovations and ideas to JH faculty meetings. For instance, at the first meeting last year, we started a Build Something Together project. I hope to continue this as this year progresses. 2. I believe my co-piloting of Synergy 8 provides a rich example of my willingness to take risks and try new ideas. Additionally, I think my growing commitment to my two blogs and my Twitter tweets shows further evidence of calculated risk taking, consistent and regular growth, and practicing a growth mindset to build in
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my thinking and writing abilities. As just one more example, I believe my presentation skills with slide decks and video production demonstrates a rich learning area for me in 2010-11. 3. Developing a second blog with a service called Posterous is proving to be transformative for me relative to project-based learning. In addition to my primary, Wordpress blog called Its About Learning (http://itsaboutlearning.wordpress.com), I maintain a second, email-based, Posterous blog (http://boadams1.posterous.com) for observation journaling. As I am playing with my sons, kayaking during vacation, or walking around campus, I often snap a quick iPhone photo or videotype a short inquiry and reflectionand post to Posterous. This developing practice, first conceptualized as I attended the Solution Tree 21st C. Learning Summit in October of 2010, is promoting the grinding of a lens for me through which I see almost everything as potential PBL threads. In Synergy 8, during the 2011-12 AY, students will employ such a practice as a means for keeping their observation journals. [NOTE: All of the above reflection I see as nodes of a connected thinking and learning web for me.]

BASED ON REFLECTIONS FROM PAGE 1, WHAT EMERGED AS ONE OR TWO OF YOUR Strengths: Desire and commitment to explore more deeply the complexities of LEARNING! Growing capacity to try new things, learn with others, facilitate team efforts, assess learning

Challenges: Taking more on my plate than I can sustain long-termwanting to be involved, not just informed. Taking time to reflect, breathe deeply, stay healthy by making time to exercise (my hobby can seem to be my work because I love the reading and research and writing and practicing new things so much).

PRIMARY GOAL SETTING Summarize your primary goal from the previous academic year. Briefly describe your progress on reaching this goal. During the 2010-11 school year, through the use of Guskey/Marzano-type rubrics, 100% of the students in Synergy 8 and 100% of the Junior High teachers involved in formalized PLCs will reach the proficiency standards set for all of the essential learnings established for their respective work. (Working to make teacher-part of goal not so PLC-centric.) In short, this goal is revealing itself to be a multi-year project. While I cannot report that all of the proficiency standards are established, revised, polished, benchmarked, and achieved
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for Synergy 8 or the JH PLCs, great progress has been made in establishing meaningful assessment frameworks for the Synergy course and the JH PLCs. For Synergy, we have established 12 essential learnings organized in four primary categories. We have developed rubrics (paper and electronic) for several of these essential learning categories, and we have developed and practiced a routine for student learners taking more ownership of their self-tracking and self-reporting of progress relative to those standards being established for problem identification and solution, data collection and analysis, etc. For the JH PLCs (and HS math), we have a second year of data collected by the PLC facilitator team a data set that includes formative assessments used throughout the year in various PLCs, as well as the summative assessment used for a second time at the conclusion of the year. The PLC facilitators have spent several sessions analyzing and processing this data, including sessions undertaken during the recent CFT Summer Institute for PLC-F. We are using the quantitative and qualitative data to identify trends for group instruction as well as individual enrichment and intervention. The data analysis provides us with direction for what we can focus on for 2011-12. We continue to develop a set of rubrics for adult learning and PLC assessment, too. The facilitator team is revising these assessment tools and developing an updated assessment plan to track adult learning and growth, as well as child learning and growth. RECORD YOUR 2011-12 PRIMARY GOAL: During the 2011-12 school year, through the use of Guskey/Marzano-type rubrics, 100% of the students in Synergy 8 and 100% of the Junior High teachers involved in formalized PLCs will reach the proficiency standards set for all of the essential learnings established for their respective work. (Working to make teacher-part of goal not so PLC-centric.) a. Predict how student learning will be enhanced as you work to implement your goal. For Synergy 8, Jill Gough and I have established twelve essential learnings organized in four integrated categories inquiry and deep questioning, problem and solution identification, data gathering and analysis, and communication and collaboration. Through facilitated work with the students, we will continue to establish four-point rubrics for the essential learnings in the course, and students will track their progress and achievement of proficiency. Therefore, the students and facilitators will possess concrete evidence of the learning that occurs relative to the essential learnings of the course. [See Synergy 8 Essential Learnings Logo] For the JH PLCs, the facilitators and teachers will continue to establish rubrics to track progress and learning on the essential learnings of a PLC, such as norms, SMART goals, essential learnings, collaboration, common assessments, etc. By
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formatively assessing the developing skills of PLC work, participants will possess concrete evidence of progress and growth relative to the essential learnings of a PLC. Additionally, by growing in these domains, teachers will be able to track more accurately the learning and progress of their students, through such practices as common assessment analysis of student work. Many may even employ rubrics to assist students in tracking learning and growth. b. What action steps will you take to reach your goal? 1) Establish and revise the essential learnings for Synergy 8 and the JH PLCs. Reach agreement and ownership with the participants using the essential learnings. 2) Develop rubrics with leveled achievement descriptors for the essential learnings. Set 3 as the proficiency target for each essential learning. Establish 12-4 based on the levels of achievement relative to the proficiency target of 3. 3) Create and follow an assessment plan that regularly employs the use of the rubrics, tracks progress, and adjusts courses/paths based on results. 4) Employ blogging tools as a means to create a digital, archived portfolio of learning and growth. c. What support do you need to reach your goal? 1) First and foremost, I need the support and collaboration of Jill Gough in Synergy 8, and I need the support and collaboration of the JH PLC facilitators and teachers. We must work collectively to establish the essential learnings, the rubrics, and the assessment plans. 2) Based on my experience in 2009-10, I will be much more successful at striving for and reaching my goal if I have a critical friends group with whom to work. I missed this in 2010-11 and suffered from the absence. 3) I will need to continue learning about best-practice uses of rubrics for tracking progress and growth. Most likely this support will come from my own determination to learn, and collaboration with the PLC facilitators and teachers. 4) In reality, I need the support of the entire JH faculty. While my goal contains specificity related to the formalized PLCs, I serve the entire JH faculty. My goal will be more attainable with the support of ALL of the adult learners with whom I work. I believe conversations with interested colleagues will help forward my work that is focused on learning in Synergy 8, learning in the PLCs, and learning among the entire JH faculty.

PLEASE SIGN: ____Bo Adams (e-signature)__________ and DATE: 7-21-11 E-mail or send copies of this completed form to your department head and division principal by the due date. Thank you.
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