Student Reactions to Doing Online Work during Snow Days.

For many teachers who put in many hours gathering artifacts, analyzing data and composing responses, it is a shame that all of that work is only seen (and only can be seen) by a tiny group of people. Here is my attempt to break out of that mold. 


Standard 3 of the Effectiveness Project reads, 
"The teacher effectively engages students in learning by using a variety of instructional strategies in order to meet individual learning needs."

Examples:Annotated photographs of class activitiesHandouts of sample workVideo/audio samples of instructional units

• 1. What did you learn about your professional practice?
  For our Art of Succeeding project, which was centered around genetics since successful genetic traits are the ones that continue. All students researched their family history using ancestryclassroom.com, then wrote a story about a decision or event from their families’ history which led to their success. Students examined character traits like growth mindset, grit, and infinite thinking which provide the launching point for the spirit of success. They developed a leadership style horoscope, examined a variety of popular movies, books and TV shows and categorized their leadership style. Some students examined financial success while others decided to take on the task of determining the success of digital learning days by surveying Neenah Joint School District parents, teachers and students about their reactions to the days.
  For those students who chose to analyze data, they received over 1,000 responses to their survey. From the responses we learned that the majority (64.2%) of students feel they can learn as much or more via digital format as they do in a classroom. This can inform our professional practice in that occasionally including a blended element will be beneficial because some students feel they learn more in that fashion.
  If one definition of the purpose of school is as practice for the rest of students’ lives, and the future of education for everyone is going to include some percentage of blended (or all online) learning in the same grain as LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, Udacity, or edX. By using blended tactics we give our students an opportunity to practice learning in this format in a safe environment, where they can work out the details of some of the most difficult tasks in life: knowing oneself and when one works most efficiently, time and task management, and self motivation.  
  
  
  
  
  
  2. How did you use your learning to grow as a professional or enhance your students' growth?
   To enhance student growth, we will want to provide a wide variety of blended learning experiences for all of our classes, but according to question 7 of the survey of high school students, there is room for growth in having online availability during any digital assignments because only 60.2% of students got feedback about digital learning day work. With no previous announcement or expectation of having online office hours, during one three hour online office hour session, I interacted with 10% of the Arete students averaging 5 emails sent to each. If students know about the availability ahead of time, they would have a greater chance of receiving timely feedback on their learning, which may also boost the numbers of students who feel like they learned more in comparison with a day in the classroom.