Collaborative Class Project in Art Club Online

For years I have dreamed of creating a mural or other large artwork with my students. Logistically this can be a bit of a challenge with my students being scattered all over Ohio without the ability to converge in one location very often outside of graduation and perhaps prom. So this year I set out to make my dreams come true with a collaborative project for my Art Club students.

First came first, choosing a theme. For this one I was inspired by "The Eye Project" (above, more photos here). I liked this project because it shows the diversity of students but also ties them all together into one composition. Myself and the other Art Club facilitators held a meeting with students to discuss how eyes express ideas and emotions within artwork. We provided tutorials for creating eyes and encouraged students to think beyond a typical realistic eye if they wished.

Second, I had students sign up so I could mail them the materials they needed for the project-in this case that included a letter of directions and a rectangular piece of watercolor paper. The students chose what media to work with for the project, created their compositions, and mailed them back to me. Then, I had a blast putting it all together. See below!

The final product!

Art Day: Intervention and Supplemental Opportunities

Last year, I had a crazy idea to meet one of my failing seniors in the library and work with him to complete the art projects he needed to pass and graduate. It worked! He successfully completed art right in front of my eyes. At that point I thought it would be great to offer this opportunity to more students. Lots of organizing and paperwork later, Art Day was born!

Yesterday, myself and 3 other teachers on my team, met at our school headquarters to facilitate a day of making art with failing students, many of them seniors. We each invited our struggling students and set up a room with 5 different stations for various projects in Art 1. We provided lunch, materials, and instruction. The result was awesome! The students really enjoyed working side by side and creating artwork. They are also now all passing and I am hoping Art Day will give them the confidence to continue working on their own.

On Art Day, we also had the opportunity to invite our advanced students to paint ceiling tiles for our headquarters building. Selected students from all levels of art were invited to paint the tiles and I am so impressed with their work! It was a really great day and fun to get both groups together for a day of artmaking.

Aiming for Higher Achievement

Over the past 5 years, I have written about my passing rate, reluctant learners, and working to increase the number of students successfully passing my Art 1 class to earn their fine art credit. But this year, I have grown tired of pulling teeth for my students to achieve the minimum. I am tired of begging for students to do work when I really want them to learn more than the minimum, try more than the minimum, and achieve more than the minimum. So, I wrote a goal on my whiteboard that hangs in my office this year, "Aim for A's, not just passing."
Until this semester, I believe I have been aiming too low at times for my students. So, this semester I have been working through some new strategies to increased achievement, rather than simply pass rate. And, it is working!
Here is what I have been trying:

Page 1 of the catch-up packet

• Emailing all students who are missing assignments from the previous week every Monday morning with helpful strategies and scaffolding worksheets when applicable
• Increasing my phone calls by an average of 20 more reaching out calls per week, encouraging students to complete their work and addressing any questions
• Freeing myself of the "passing packet" and replacing it with a catch-up packet (click here to download) which includes more weeks of art projects, better directions, and is marketed towards improving a student's grade with no promises of receiving a passing grade.

Surprisingly, students seem to gravitate towards the catch-up packet far more than they ever did the passing packet, and it doubles as an intervention tool for students with an IEP or who simply prefer to work in a worksheet-style method. It works well as a way to help students who were added late to the course get caught up as well. 

We are only halfway through the semester and already I am seeing an overall 10% shift to higher achievement (letter grades) than at this time last semester! 

With 2% more A's and 8% more C's (and 8% less D's) I am over the moon. Go students go!

Process and Progress Checks

I think one of the biggest challenges I have teaching art online is helping students mid-project as I would if I were walking around a brick and mortar classroom. Of my two courses, Art 1 is the most fast-paced, and I am able to see a student's growth and process as they progress from project to project as well as through practice sketches and one-on-one sessions. However, I rarely see an "unfinished" project before I see the final one. This is because students are generally completing one project per week and students often do not choose to show me what they are working on in this condensed time frame. Art 5 is much slower paced with artwork being created over many weeks as they are higher level, more independent, and aimed at portfolio development. Thus, this course became my guinea-pig for developing ways in which to see a student's artistic process.
This year I have instituted progress checks for Art 5 students where they check in several times throughout the process of creating a piece of art. It is important in an online environment when working with students individually, to plan out structured checkpoints and have clear expectations. Each project begins with a brainstorming sheet such as the one below.

Following the brainstorming sheet, students have a progress check dropbox where they submit their project at least once before the final project. Though I only require them to show me one time, my students have all chosen to show me their work multiple times for each project. These progress checks give me an opportunity to give each student detailed feedback through screencast-o-matic and dialog about their artwork on the phone or via email. Below are a couple examples of progress checks and final work.

The conclusion of this process is reflecting upon the piece and self-assessment. In Art 5, students are encouraged to grade their own work in order to develop their skills of selecting work for a portfolio. They are also asked to answer reflective questions which differ based on the goal of the project. An example of one is below.

Adding progress checks to my Art 5 class has been very successful so far and I am receiving higher quality work from my students and having more conversations about their goals for each piece and how they are effectively communicating their ideas. How do you encourage process-oriented thinking in your classroom?

Dressing Up Engagement Strategies

As I mentioned in my September blog post, I have been working on making tip videos in my classroom which highlight tricky concepts for students and seek to correct misconceptions before they happen. I have been successful with these videos and noticed an increase in the quality of student work that I have been receiving since I made them. However, I noticed that some students were still not watching the videos (Screencast-o-matic lets me check my view count for each video). I did notice that I had a higher view count than any other week during the week that I dressed up for Halloween. This got me thinking, perhaps students would be more likely to watch a video if I dressed in something silly or unusual. Students are able to see a thumbnail of the video when I embed it into my announcements. Cassie Stephens, a fellow Art Ed blogger is the queen of dressing up for the art classroom. I am not quite to the point of making my own outfits, but here are some of my silly video outfits:

This seems to be entertaining students as much as it is entertaining me. My view counts have almost doubled since I switched to costumes!

Tablets as an Option for Art Making

I am getting very excited about next semester starting next week and I am preparing my semester 2 classroom with new technology on my mind! Big surprise right? I have been working with my team this semester to create tablet options for all of my Art 1 projects. Previously, all projects were required to be done on paper through traditional techniques. However, I have found that students really enjoy the option of creating a different way and it also benefits students who do not have art supplies or are having problems with their scanner. Also, having a digital option prepares them for all kinds of careers and it helps meet UDL guidelines. So, I have finally done it!
Each lesson in Art 1 offers two options for the assigned projects: a traditional option and a tablet option. All of my students have Android tablets to work on and all the apps I use in my class are free. Some of my projects offer a similar option for the tablet option as the traditional. For example, students may paint traditionally for their Impressionist Landscape, or they may use a painting app such as Sketch Guru.

Traditional watercolor

Using Sketch Guru

Other assignments have a different way for students to show their understanding of a given concept. For example, for my proportion lesson involving foreground, middle, and background students are able to draw the interior space of a room with pencil, or they can create a digital collage using PicCollage. Both assignments accomplish the creation of a piece that shows depth and understanding of proportions but some students might prefer one over the other. 

Traditional drawing

Using PicCollage to manipulate images

Some of these apps add additional materials for students to use that they would not have access to at home easily such as the texture tablet option. Students are learning about visual and tactile texture and then asked to either create a drawing showing 4 textures or create a sculpture showing 4 textures in TrueSculpt. 

Traditional drawing

Using TrueSculpt

I thoroughly believe in teaching traditional art skills and would never want to move towards 100% digital in my classroom but I think options are important. I am excited for students to have the opportunity to experience more diverse materials in their art making and get a taste of digital art if they choose. Stay tuned! 

Shameless plug: I'll be giving a presentation at NAEA this year on Saturday at 2pm all about using free Android apps in your art classroom!

Scheduling to Help All Students

As I have written about before, phone calls are a major way that I reach out to students in my courses each semester. Phone calls act as one-on-one time between myself and a student (or sometimes their voicemail) in an effort to connect and engage. I am guilty sometimes of focusing more of my time on re-engaging reluctant learners rather than building up my students who are engaging consistently. This year I have made a plan to help myself stay on track with giving each and every student the attention they deserve.

This schedule helps me have target groups selected to focus on throughout the semester in a way that makes sure no student goes very long without hearing from me. For the first time in a while I was able to reach out to the parents of my students who are doing excellent in my course. I also mailed achievement postcards to students with high live session attendance. This schedule has kept me on track and balanced this year and my student engagement is higher as well.

Addressing Weaknesses and Clarifying Concepts

This school year I am working on addressing common mistakes students have made during previous years at the beginning of a lesson so they can be more successful this year. I am doing this through a short weekly video announcement.

Each video presents 3 tips for the current project. I am getting a good amount of student views on these videos. Aside from increasing the quality of student artwork, these videos also serve as a weekly greeting from me that my students see when they enter the classroom. 

Keeping Parents and Students Informed

My summer school course has wrapped up and was a very positive experience. I conducted a parent and student survey at the conclusion of the course about the efficacy of the course to help them achieve their goals and how their experience was. I received many positive results and one thing both my parents and students mentioned being helpful was my consistent communication.

Each week I sent out an email to students and parents about the subject of study for the week unit, assignments, and due dates. I have discussed emails like this in previous entries (Communicating with Students Part 1, Part 2).

The main new type of communication that I incorporated in this course was to email parents and students progress reports every other week. Because the course was only 5 weeks long, it was important to keep parents and students informed. As a policy, I always allow students to resubmit projects through my course after reviewing my feedback. Even though students had access to their grade books, sending these progress reports seemed to do a nice job of alerting students to potential issues and put parents at ease. A school may already have a schedule for sending out midterm and quarterly grades as mine does during the school year. I have found that student achievement improves when students are parents are more aware of what is going on in the online classroom. It was helpful to employ this knowledge to a summer course and to include detailed information about each assignment for everyone involved.

Click here to download the progress report template:
Word version
Pages version

Impressionist Landscape Watercolor

I have been really enjoying teaching my summer school class so far. My students are creating wonderful artwork and making meaningful connections with the world around them. It has been awhile since I brought my Google Glass out for a spin to create a demonstration video, but today I took it on an adventure in painting "en plein air".



I am very excited to see what students create for this project and I was happy to have an excuse to go paint outside on a beautiful day like today.

Preparing Brick and Mortar Students for an Online Course

This summer, I have the pleasure of working with a group of students who normally attend classes at a brick and mortar school but have enrolled in my online summer art course. I have spent the last several weeks creating a compressed 5-week beginning art course for these high school students and I have really enjoyed building the course and experimenting with a new (to me) LMS, Moodle. I created a syllabus and a welcome letter for parents and then I took some fantastic advice from my colleague Teresa Potter (blog here), to make an introduction and planning activity to help students be successful in an online course.
While most of the year I am working with students who are already very familiar with online learning, these students may be taking an online course for the first time. And they're taking an art course at that, something that confuses even my online veteran students. So I used a part of Teresa's design and combined it with features I have always used in my courses to make a worksheet that would guide students through the freedom they have when working in an online course. Students get to decide when they will work, how they stay focused, and how to be successful in an environment that is not structured for them. 
First, I created a tip sheet for students about how to be a successful online learner, specifically in my art course.

Things you can do to help yourself be successful in this course:

1. Build class time into your schedule: Just like having English class from 12:00-12:50 Monday-Friday, time spent learning in this course should have a dedicated time in your day
2. Familiarize yourself with deadlines: Print a copy of the class schedule and/or mark deadlines on your calendar
3. Be prepared: Get your art supplies early so there is nothing holding you up from completing your work on time
4. Practice with technology early, and have a backup plan: Technology does not always cooperate with us on our time table. Make sure you test for problems and find a solution or ask for help well before the deadline.
5. Take notes: When watching videos or completing readings in the classroom make sure you take notes and write down ideas that emerge to refer to later
6. Ask for help: Unlike in a traditional classroom, I cannot see if you are struggling. Make sure you keep me informed of any issues and reach out to me for help-it’s why I am here!
7. Read your feedback: I will provide detailed feedback for each assignment in this course and this feedback will be instrumental in helping you improve and grow.

Second, I put together a Getting Started Activity which students are expected to complete the very first day the class begins. This beginning portion of the sheet consists of the questions below:

1.What do you know about art?

2. What is you favorite subject?

3. What do you hope to learn or achieve in this course?

4. What is the best phone number and time to reach you?

5. Do you prefer calls, texts, or emails to communicate?

6. What are 3 things I should know about you? (interests, hobbies, learning styles etc.)

I use questions like these to help myself get to know students, learn how to contact them, create talking points for building rapport, and get a general idea of what students hope to gain from the course so I can address their needs. 

The second portion of the sheet is all new to me. It asks students to plan a schedule of when they will complete their work for class and I listed which assignments they need to plan for. 

This activity allows students to take ownership of their learning plan and emphasizes the importance of staying on top of their work. Even my online veteran students could really benefit from something like this. Previously I have offered little help in my own course when it comes to encouraging student planning, but perhaps if I encourage student planning early, students will be more successful. 

Download the complete worksheet here.

Video Feedback

After a bit of a rough semester due to lack of attendance in my live sessions, this semester I have decided to re-focus my efforts on rapport and community building in my classroom. I have several new techniques I am trying in order to do this, but I wanted to share one of these today.

This school year, I have been using a screencasting tool called Screencast-o-matic to provide snippet lessons to my students (more about that here). This semester, I have also been using this tool to provide personalized feedback to my students about their artwork. Below is a sample:


 Video feedback allows students to hear what I have to say in my own voice. It also allows me to draw on the screen in a more animated way than I have been able to before-see here. See below.

I have found that about 80-90% of students watch these videos (something I was not able to track before) and students seem to be more willing to make a revision and resubmit than they are with written feedback alone. I am enjoying giving students feedback in this way and hope to see even more improvements in their work throughout this semester as well as improved rapport!

Course Building

As I continue to learn about the various best practices for creating curriculum for online learning, I have chosen my Art 5 course as the curriculum that I am going to beef up in my University of Cincinnati course on curriculum design for online learning.
I have revised this course several times since I began teaching it 3 years ago. At first, I set up the course in an independent study style where I expected that students would be able to design, plan, and create their own art projects. I assumed all of my students had enough experience in 4 levels of art before my course that they would feel comfortable being autonomous with a coach or guide giving feedback. What I found is that students wanted more direction.
The second version of Art 5 included more conceptual direction for students with parameters for them to follow but freedom to choose materials and make compositional choices. For several years this has worked but I have noticed that students are not putting forth their best work technically or spending the time required on these projects. This is a challenge when working with students online because they do not have idle studio time to fill like they would in a brick and mortar classroom. They choose how long they work on a project and many times they do not plan for long enough when left to their own devices. This, along with the motivation from class has caused me to create a course overview page that explains to students what I expect of them.

I am also working on altering a few of my weaker lessons to include some technical demonstrations and challenges for my students. Other advanced/AP art teachers, how do you push your students to give you their best work? What kinds of projects would you offer for a portfolio development class? Any ideas are appreciated!

Thinking About Instructional Design

I am excited because this week I began a class at the University of Cincinnati all about curriculum design for online learning. Though I have created my own curriculum before, I have not had much formal instruction on how to plan with the online learner in mind. I have been learning and working through trial and error. For my first assignment in class, I was prompted to design my own instructional planning model based on research and existing models. Here is what I came up with.

What does your model look like? Think about the steps you go through when planning instruction for your students. What do you find most effective?

Whatever it Takes

I have hit a little bit of a static time within my classroom these past few months. I haven't had many new teaching strategies I've been trying as I have been focusing much of my time leading my colleagues in completing the Ohio 5-Step Process as Teacher Based Teams. Leadership is also the focus of the 4th year of the Ohio Resident Educator Program which I have been working on as well. It feels refreshing that this week I have finally been able to focus more on helping individual students.
As I have said before, one of the strengths of an online environment is being about to work with students on an individual basis, in fact it is much more rare for me to work with students as a group. This week I have been focusing on engaging students who have not been successful on their own as of yet. Previous to this week I sent out letters, made calls to parents and students, and sent countless emails to attempt to engage these reluctant learners.

This week, I tried putting my money where my mouth is so to speak and invited these struggling students to one-on-one synchronous sessions. For these sessions I prepared slides that walk students through each step of every project in my course. I invited students to attend via phone calls and individual emails (with their names in the subject line!). Once a student entered the classroom I would direct the students through each project step-by-step using the slides on the board and demonstrating each step over the my document camera. These sessions did get pretty lengthy but students were willing to stay, with the goal of passing the course at the end of our time working together. I'll be honest, until this week I have had lackluster attendance in my synchronous sessions, but these catch up interventions are working their magic on some of my most difficult to reach students.

Online Professional Development for Any Art Teacher!

I am no stranger to online PD as my school occasionally offers it instead of face-to-face PD. However, the awesome website The Art of Education now offers online PD for any art teacher several times a year. Today was the first AOE conference I have attended. In previous years, I have attended several NAEA national conferences as both a presenter and attendee and I have thoroughly enjoyed them. However, high cost of travel and registration are preventing me from going this year, but the low cost of the Art of Ed Summer Conference makes it reachable for practically any teacher! Here are my observations from today about what it is like to attend an online conference:
-The first 1000 art teachers to register for the conference received a "swag" box in the mail full of the samples one would normally obtain in the vendor room at NAEA. This is a big perk to me as though it is fun to run around the giant room and create art projects with different supply companies, I always feel I need to spend more time there than I want to. Also, the swag box offered many full samples such as a set of 25 oil pastels, lesson plans with sample materials, block printing ink and block, sketchbook, an issue of Scholastic Art with discount code (great common core resource), re-usable color mixing palette, drink koozie, and an "Art to Remember" mug. I am really impressed with the amount and quality of items in the swag box!
-You might not think you'd make many connections when attending an online conference. However, I had so much fun today connecting with art teachers from all over the world via social media. Using the tag #aoeconference I could see what everyone was saying about the conference in real time. Also, the Art of Ed community offers the ability to discuss the presentations any time after the conference. This means I can ask questions to the presenters after the fact all in one easy place.
-Wow, what a wealth of information! The topics today ranged from incorporating contemporary art, use of tech, specific clay techniques, organizational tools, to breaking down barriers between students and colleagues...etc. There were so many great pieces of advice from art teachers with all different experiences. I felt like each presentation brought me an idea or two that I am excited to incorporate into my classroom.
-Dynamic, fun, and quick presentations! Each presentation was about 10 minutes long and were shared via video that was prepared prior to the conference. This allowed for the most important information to be highlighted (and expanded upon in handouts) and the video format allowed for demos, views of classrooms, and even guests (children of several presenters helped with their videos). As a video-nut myself, it was fun for me to be able to share snippets of videos I've made and screen recordings of my classroom in my video.
-Holy handouts Batman! The conference offers an Afterpass which allows attendees to watch all of the presentations and download handouts from each presentation for 6 months after the conference. The handouts and blogs posted in this resource are so great! I will surely be using them for this coming school year, and of course I have started following all of their blogs!

Today was a great day and I am so honored to have been a part of it. Thanks Art of Ed!

Reflecting on the 2013-2014 School Year

Wow! What a year it has been. It is hard for me to believe that it is once again June and that this weekend, 2,560 students from my school have graduated. I couldn't be more proud. I feel so lucky to be a part of their lives and help them be successful. Every year at graduation I get to personally congratulate many of my own students face-to-face for the first time and this year was no different. I received hugs and smiles and I cheered each of them on as they proceed to their next stage of life.
Much like our students, the school year is full of learning for teacher as well! This year, my third year of teaching, I have learned so much and experienced many new challenges and celebrations.

I began the year armed with a new tech tool: Google Glass! I used it to make demonstration videos for my students and also to make videos explaining art concepts like linear perspective and getting inspiration from the world around you. The students responded positively to my videos with a higher engagement rate than I've ever had before and better quality work. These videos have become a permanent fixture in my art classroom and I continue to use Glass to make new resources for students. Hopefully next year I will be able to try out a virtual field trip! Also tech related, many of my students received tablets to access and complete their school work. Though I didn't have much time to implement tablet lessons this year, next year students will have the option to complete some of their art projects on their school tablets in order to give them more exposure to digital art and solve supply and scanner issues. Students will also be able to use them to photograph their work so 3-dimensional media is finally possible in my classroom!

This year, I experienced a training about Formalized Instructional Practices where I was reminded of the value of measuring student learning through all parts of the instructional period and also how to help students set their own learning goals. I have now implemented FIP into several of my lessons and the majority of my synchronized instruction. I am excited to further implement these strategies next school year.
I also learned how to best prepare my students for Student Learning Assessments so they meet learning targets. This new practice of evaluating student learning in the art classroom was very challenging for me as my students barely met the minimum growth the first time I gave the test. For the second time around I used study guides, review games, and increased the number of motivated students taking the test. Because I teach online, students are able to choose to take my SLA rather than being required to. This was a tricky issue to combat but a much higher percentage of my students hit their growth targets the second time around.

I implemented a discussion board in my classroom for the very first time this semester and even though it was extra credit, I received extremely high engagement. I asked students to reflect on contemporary and relevant questions about art. I used Scholastic Art magazine to start the discussions. I learned that some of my questions were more text-dependent than others and not all of the questions inspired high quality responses. I also only tried a handful of assignments where students needed to respond to each other. Next year I would like to implement more responses that encourage student-to-student interaction and improve the questions to be more text-dependent.
It has been a fantastic school year and as always, I am excited to take what I have learned and make next year even better. To close this entry I wanted to share an email I received from one of my graduating seniors this year. I feel incredibly lucky to do what I love every day and to make a positive difference in my students' lives. This is why I do what I do!

Getting Students Talking

Lately, art teachers have been focusing on creating more opportunities for reading and writing in their classrooms to align to the Common Core. This semester, I have begun using the discussion board in my classroom to provide students more opportunities for writing, but also in hopes of creating more of a sense of community in my classroom.
Each week, students have a prompt to respond to that uses an issue of Scholastic Art Magazine. This magazine has fantastic digital resources I would recommend to anyone trying to expand their text resources in the art classroom. I have tried to keep these prompts fun and intriguing to encourage engagement.
For Week 1, I wanted insight into students previous experiences with drawing and art. I found an interview with Tim Burton where he discussed his experiences as a student throughout school. I asked students to respond to the following:
Read or listen to the interview by Tim Burton (an artist who has worked on The Nightmare before Christmas, Corpse Bride, Edward Scissorhands...etc.).
1. Why do you think some children stop enjoying drawing?
2. When has a teacher inspired you in school?
The results have been very impressive. 73 of my students responded to my prompt which is an extra credit assignment in my class. Below is a student example.

During the first week, students were responding to me only. I made sure I replied to each student to show I am reading their responses and to model communication with others in the discussion board.
During the second week, I asked students to reply to each other using the prompt:
Read the article "Is there Art in your Xbox?"
1. Do you believe video games are art? Why or why not?
2. Respond to a classmate's post
Below is a student example:

As you can see, student responses started out generic. I provided feedback to help students expand their thinking and make sure they address specifics when replying to a classmate. I am hoping to see growth in their responses throughout the semester. So far, I am happy to see students engaging in this type of assignment and with each other.

                      

Getting Silly and the Passing Packet

As we approach the end of semester 1 for 2013-2014, there has been a big focus in my department around pass rates. This school year is the first time in Ohio that a fine arts credit is required for all students to graduate. As an art teacher, I think this is fantastic news! However, it has been a challenge this year with an increased population of students being placed in my Art 1 class who do not want to be there and also might not know about the new requirement. Engagement is always a challenge in an online environment, especially when students are not interested in the content. I also often find that students have high anxiety about drawing and art in general. There are many ways I work to soften and break down these barriers of learning in my class through video, step-by-step instructions, live lessons, demonstrations, and working with students one-on-one. However, for the students who aren't looking at my lesson pages at all, it is a bit more difficult to help them. Thus, I have begun to get a little more creative with my approach to reach reluctant learners, and even a little silly. 
I have created a document called the "Passing Packet" which is a word document that includes all of the lesson materials and project instructions for all of the projects students are required to do to pass. I have broken it down to make it as simple as possible. Complete the packet, earn your credit. Now, I do not distribute this information to students who are already engaging and being successful. I only give it to students who have not engaged in the content throughout the first 15 weeks of school. It is my hope that I can engage even the most reluctant learners to engage and pass Art 1. I also worked with my co-teacher Dana to create a fun video that helps remind students we have a sense of humor, and even though they might be frustrated, we are here do everything we can to help.

Remembering Why We Do This

For the past few weeks, I have been collecting data from my post-test for my SLO. I wrote about this test earlier this year when we implemented it for the first time. At my school, this test is 23 multiple-choice questions offered through a website outside of our LMS. Students take this test during the first 3 weeks of school and the first 3 weeks after quarter 1 of Art 1. I started this journey feeling very upbeat and excited to see what my students came into my classroom knowing and how they would grow throughout the quarter. What I have found is some unsettling data.

At the moment (several hours before the closing of my post-test), I am sitting at 58.9% of my students hitting their growth targets. That puts me in the "Least Effective" category as a teacher. Throughout my young career as a teacher over these past 3 years, I have been told nothing but good things about my teaching methods by administrators. My students have given me positive feedback about what they are learning when I speak to them and I have generally felt fulfilled and proud of where I am as a teacher. These results threw a wrench into my teacher ego!

As it is, I am still not sure what is causing my students to do so poorly. I know of the barriers we have that might affect their performance; students not engaging with the content, test anxiety, students tired of taking all of these assessments (one per class, 2 times in 10 weeks), the weakness of multiple-choice questions to assess project-based learning, home environment, test questions with confusing wording, and a lack of effort to name a few. I have gone through many days of discouragement this week, feeling like everything I have learned about education is wrong and all the compliments about my teaching methods have been lies.

But then, I started to look at the data more closely. I began to see students growing by leaps and bounds! Some of my weakest performers have grown by the highest percentage. I even have students who have scored 100% on my post-test. When I was inputting the data of one of my students with special needs and saw that he not only hit his growth target but surpassed it, I jumped for joy! I was reminded why I am a teacher. It is not about crunching the numbers and hitting this arbitrary goal. It is about teaching each individual student and helping each of them grow. Maybe the data isn't showing it, but the students who have actively engaged in learning in my classroom have a wealth of new knowledge. I know this from talking to them, and from watching their work improve every single week.

I will continue to troubleshoot my assessments for my SLO and how I can overcome these barriers so the data starts to really reflect more of what is going on in my classroom. But, there are just some things that you can't quantify.

Am I a least-effective teacher? I certainly don't feel like one.