TEA Collaborative Learning Group
Overview of Plan

Trummel

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Team Members:
Betty Trummel, Jan Sarbaugh, Susie Danielson ***We are all fourth grade teachers in District #47, but each one of us is at a different school in the district.

What is your role within your team?
My role on the team is facilitator, planner, experienced science educator, TEA representative, and many other roles mixed together. I believe that the key responsibilities of a good mentor are, (not in any parcticular order):

1) To provide opportunities for classroom visits with feedback. This includes the TEA protege visiting my classroom, as well as me visiting their classroom to model teaching strategies, give presentations, observe their teaching, and work with students.

2) To demonstrate professional competence and share in the professional competencies of my team members.

3) To work with these team members to expand our repertoire of teaching strategies and teaching materials, as well as content knowledge. We need to reflect and investigate together and expand our science knowledge and our thoughts on the process of science. I feel I can be a catalyst for change and growth.

4) To provide a task oriented focus that is established through a three way interchange about goals, activities, projects, and professional growth and development as educators.

5) To present a positive role model and positive feelings about science research as part of a classroom and life, science teaching, and education in general. To listen to concerns, progress, questions, and to have those same things addressed for myself and my own professional growth and development as a teacher. That is one thing that is a STRENGTH of TEA in general. It has provided me with an incredible group of colleagues from around the country and world, who add to my ability and excitement in delivering an outstanding science program for my students, my preservice students at the university level, and for my own content knowledge.

6) To facilitate work on new activities, units of study, projects, and ways to bring polar science (and the process of science) into our classrooms in a way that excites children, infuses technology and research, and addresses the science standards written at the state and national levels. Our district places KEY importance on those standards, and we must prove that we are addressing them with every unit or special project we use. TEA falls under this umbrella, giving us a way to bring more science content and process into classrooms, especially when teams can share ideas, resources, and strategies for teaching.

7) To encourage connections with current and "seasoned" TEA's and encourage use of the TEA website and technology in their classrooms.

What professional growth goals do you and your team members hope to reach through this partnership?
1) Learning about existing Antarctic and Arctic teaching materials and how these can be used in the classroom. Some of these materials would be used to improve our own content knowledge and teaching practices, some for students, and of course many would be a mixture of both.

2) Developing our own new ideas, activities, and teaching plans for bringing polar research and materials into classrooms.

3) Informing our own teaching style and practices by observing each other in our classroom setting. Teachers do not get enough opportunities to observe their colleagues and this is such an important part of mentoring and partnerships in education.

4) Since these two women are veteran teachers, (but not necessarily key science teachers --- one has been more active in science, the other in Language Arts) we want to develop ways to integrate science, social studies, English, reading, and math, as well as use technology in our classrooms. Technology has been an issue in our district, but with more computers, labs, and on line access, things are definitely improving. In the three years I've been involved with TEA, great strides have been made in computer access, Internet capabilities in each individual classroom, and software available to us and our students. A key goal for us has been to improve our use of technology in our classrooms and provide quality experiences for the students we teach. We want to connect them to real time events and experiences, help them interact with people all over the US and world, and this can tie in with many Language Arts standards as well as other content areas.

5) Teachers need time to share concerns, curriculum, positive feedback, and to share mutual interests in a setting outside of the regular classroom/daily routine. Meetings provide an outlet and forum for many discussions, encouragement, observations, skills, and a renewed commitment to education that just cannot be accomplished within the framework of a normal school day. We also work in different buildings, so meeting with each other provides an opportunity for teachers of the same grade level, from different school situations/environments, to enrich our teaching through a mutual exchange of ideas, materials, teaching styles, and activities/projects.

How will you and your team reflect on these goals and on learning and classroom practice (e.g., pedagogy, the use of technology, content, the process of science)?
1) TECHNOLOGY, CONTENT OF SCIENCE, CLASSROOM PRACTICE: Thorough exploration of the TEA website, including reviewing goals of the program (yearly), current TEA's in the field, activities posted on the site, journals and digital images, and the resources of the Glacier web site as connected with TEA.

2) CONTENT, CLASSROOM PRACTICE, CONTENT, PROCESS OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY: Materials provided from the Australian Antarctic Division were a key focus of 2001. The Australian program has many excellent publications, web connections, posters and curriculum materials (some under development) that will be explored and tested for classroom use.

3) TECHNOLOGY, CLASSROOM PRACTICE, PROCESS OF SCIENCE: Real Audio was used in my classroom. This was possible only in mine, since our district computers can not allow for that to happen because of fire walls and we do not have permission to access Real Audio, but I have a laptop computer with a phone line in my classroom. Discussion of Real Audio sessions and how I used them in my classroom for follow-up work and connections to other areas of the curriculum besides science.

4) REFLECTION would include: discussion, practice with materials and activities, classroom observations, time to experiment and USE the technology we want to integrate into our classrooms, journaling what works/doesn’t work and thoughts on teaching styles/methods, feedback on curriculum plans and materials from our district as well as those we consider from other sources, planning for future lessons/units/activities/projects, developing/perhaps changing our philosophies in science education, and identifying key motivational points in teaching and learning.

Mentoring Plan (Revised from Orientation)
Not applicable for my TEA Orientation/responsibilities.