SED 695D                                            Seminar Facilitation Assignment                                                           Spring 2008

 

Purpose:  The purpose of this assignment is for you to hone your ability to inspire and engage colleagues in productive work—key proficiencies for educational leadership.  Once or twice during the semester, you will facilitate the processing of the weekly reading(s).  You may choose to lead one session independently or two sessions with a partner.  Unless otherwise specified, you will be expected to facilitate discussion and activities for an hour on your assigned evening(s).

 

 

Goals:  Your facilitation plan should aim to accomplish the following:

 

1)  Help your classmates more deeply understand the reading(s)

2)  Encourage them to consider the implications of the ideas in the reading(s) for schools generally

3)  Encourage them to connection the reading(s) to their own local situations or leadership projects

4)  Interest them

5)  Orchestrate the discussion and activities so that productive work ensues.

 

Obviously, to accomplish these goals, you will need to know your assigned reading(s) very well. 

 

 

Suggestions for Enhancing Your Facilitation:  None of these suggestions is required, but one or more of them may be valuable additions to help you reach the above goals.

 

á          Connections to prior readings, discussions, and activities, to build continuity in the course.

á          A small amount of outside reading or research.  For example, you might look to other sources for clearer definitions of terms, find local examples of a kind of leadership or school-change issue, or investigate the background of the author (to help classmates understand his/her perspective) or of people or locations mentioned in the reading(s). 

á          A short pre-session homework assignment.  You should read your sections two weeks in advance.  Then, you may decide to give the class, the week prior, some questions to focus their reading, a very brief writing assignment, or some other task to make your activities more effective. 

á          Presenting other material.  News clips, videos, Websites, photos, school documents, or other realia could make your presentation more relevant.   

 

 

 

Scoring

FacilitatorÕs apparent knowledge of the content of the readings(s)                      4

Relevance to classmatesÕ work and/or leadership projects                                         4

Engagement of the class                                                                                                                         4

Productivity and depth of discussion and/or idea generation                                    4

Effectiveness of orchestration of discussion and activities                                         4

                                    Total                                                                                                                                                              20

 

If you facilitate two sessions (with a partner), your score for this assignment

will be the average of your scores for each session (same for each partner). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SED 695D                                            Leadership Project Assignment                                                              Spring 2008

 

The Leadership Project is a way for you to use what youÕve learned in the masters program in the service of your department, school, or a broader audience.  Your project, which must be approved by me, should aim to improve mathematics education, or possibly education in general.  It will also be a good candidate for your MA Portfolio SLO 5 entry.  Depending on the scope and depth of your project, you may not be expected to fully implement it by the end of the semester, or even to begin implementation.  How far along in implementation you must be—that is, the product you submit—will be individually negotiated with me. 

 

Possible Leadership Projects (not exclusive)

á          Writing and submitting an article manuscript for publication. 

á          Writing and submitting a proposal for a conference presentation or leading a professional development (PD) workshop. 

á          Writing and submitting a proposal for a school- or teaching-improvement grant (e.g., the Murdock-Thompson Center fellowship at http://users.ids.net/~murdokca)

á          Becoming trained as a leader in an existing PD initiative (e.g., Dr. ChengÕs SITTE project)

á          Designing and leading a curricular, pedagogical, or assessment change in your school

á          Starting an academic student-support organization (e.g., an AVID chapter, math tutoring center)

á          Preparing a proposal for a major teaching award (e.g., PAEMST).

 

Your progress on this project will be supported by discussions with classmates, ideas from guest speakers (local teacher leaders), and ÒworkshopsÓ during the course.  YouÕll also receive feedback from me on two drafts of your project write-up.  Draft 1 is due March 11.  Draft 2 is due April 8 or 15.  The final write-up is due April 29.

 

Elements of the Leadership Project Write-Up

1)  Rationale—The problem or need that your project will address, and the target audience

2)  Background (optional)—Historical or contextual information necessary to understand your project

3)  Goals—A brief overview of your project, the specifics of what you want to achieve, and a delineation of what you learned in the masters program that youÕll     

                 utilize

4)  Project Activities—What actions you took and/or plan to take, with a timeline

5)  Product—The artifact(s) you agreed to generate (e.g., grant proposal, workshop agenda, participant surveys, informational flyers, PowerPoint presentation,

                certificate of training, manuscript)

6)  Results (if project was implemented)—The outcomes of the project, including evidence of accomplishing your goals (or not)

7)  Reflection—What you learned about leadership from this project, what you did that was effective and why, what you would have done differently and why,     

                and what youÕll do to further the work on this project or goals (much of this can be recycled into your write-up for SLO 5).

 

 

Scoring

Validity/clarity of Rationale, Background, and Goals                                                    5

Potential effectiveness of Activities, given the Goals                                             10

Completion and quality of Products                                                                                      10

Clarity of and warrant for description of Results*                                                            5

Quality of Reflection                                                                                                                         10

                                    Total                                                                                                                                                              40

* Scoring category omitted for projects not implemented to the point of yielding results

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guidelines for the CSUN Secondary Education Masters Portfolio Write-ups               Spring 2008

 

 

 

Student Learning Outcomes for MA Programs (SLOs)

Secondary Education MA Candidates will develop as professional educators who demonstrate:

 

1)  REFLECTIVE PRACTICE by critically examining their subject knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and pedagogical skills to improve their diverse studentsÕ learning;

2)  THEORETICAL UNDERSTANDING by reading, synthesizing, and evaluating educational theory and research in their field and applying research findings to their practice in diverse classroom settings;

3)  RESEARCH SKILLS by designing and conducting research ethically and effectively and presenting their findings at a professional level in oral and written forms.

4)  EDUCATIONAL AWARENESS by knowing current discipline-based and current general educational issues and how those impact schools; and

5)  LEADERSHIP by influencing policy and practice in educational communities through advocacy and example.

 

 

 

 

In your Masters Portfolio, you will demonstrate your achievement of each of the SLOs with one artifact of your work in the program and an accompanying write-up, per SLO. 

These guidelines will help you prepare satisfactory write-ups.

 

á          Each write-up should be about 2 pages each, in a double-spaced, 12-point font, with 1Ó margins.  This page guideline is not firm—use the space you need to make your points clearly. 

 

á          Each write-up should have these parts:

 

1)  Description of the artifact, to establish background and context.  Describe not only the practical context of the artifact (e.g. a unit plan for a 7th-grade math class), but also the context of the artifactÕs generation (e.g., a course requirement for Course A with x, y, and z criteria).  Write out the entire wording of the SLO; many readers wonÕt be familiar with these. 

 

2)  Explanation of how the artifact demonstrates your achievement of the SLO.  Help the reader see how specific aspects of the artifact show your competence in the SLO and what youÕve learned about it. Refer directly to parts of or examples from the artifact text.

 

3)  Reflection, connected to the SLO.  As appropriate, address questions like:

o        What did you learn from this work related to the SLO?

o        Why was this significant work, for you and/or for its audience, in terms of the SLO? 

o        What does the artifact reveal about your beliefs regarding teaching, learning, students, assessment, or broader educational issues? 

o        Did producing this artifact influence your prior beliefs in any of these areas?

 

á          If additional information is important and relevant, you may include it in the write-up. 

 

á          Use headings for the parts of your write-up.