2023 Summer Hours

Descriptive Reflection

Paul and I met over two days in July to work on various projects. These two meetings were not part of our official, paid summer hours, but they were quite productive and worth documenting. Our goal was to prepare proposals for the March 2024 SXSWedu conference. We knew we wanted to submit two proposals, so our first day was devoted to idea generation and selection. After a lot of discussion and caffeine, we narrowed and refined our ideas to the two we thought were the most powerful: the power of ePortfolios in challenging teacher bias and showcasing student learning, and the importance of a clear vision when launching a pilot program. The second time we met, we worked exclusively on crafting the proposals, preparing videos for the application, and further refining our ideas. Neither of us completed the proposal, but finished on our own in time to meet the deadline. 

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On August 7, Khris, Paul and I met in the STEAM space to work on an implementation structure for ePortfolios during the 2023-2024 school year. Khris plans to implement ePortfolios for the first time this year, and Paul and I are always looking for ways to refine our process so that it is more student-friendly, more organized, and ultimately easier for other teachers to use in their classroom.

 

After bouncing around ideas, we hit on a structure that we think will work. Every Friday is ePortfolio/S.C.W.O.P day. For the first four weeks, we will collectively take time to establish good habits around ePortfolio. As a team, we will conduct ePortfolio seminars for all three classes meeting in the space. These seminars will center on the what, why, and how of ePortfolios. Following the seminar (20-25 minutes max), we will each run workshops focusing on different aspects of ePortfolios. These could be content specific, they could focus on the logistics and technical aspects of ePortfolios; they could really focus on whatever we feel is necessary to meet student needs. The goal is that our learners are experts in ePortfolio work by the beginning of October. Additionally, we committed to collective, space-wide ePortfolio work the last 15 minutes of every class. This will help keep us on track, accountable to one another, and establish good habits. 

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Dialogical Reflection

These were productive sessions. Paul and I work almost seamlessly at this point, at least in my opinion. For me, it is always helpful to prepare conference publication proposals because it helps me to clarify and refine my own ideas and processes, which in turn makes me a more competent practitioner when I enter the classroom. And ultimately, that's the goal: to be the best practitioner that I can be, which benefits my learning community. 

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To that end, having a third voice to contribute ideas and critique existing structures was hugely beneficial. Because we needed to have a structure that existed somewhere besides our own heads and could be explained to someone else, the reflection process was quickly streamlined. Ultimately, we have a better process and a better product because Khris joined us in this work. That's huge. 

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Critical Reflection

​I'm excited to see how our work can impact the broader school community. I think the structure that we created will help other teachers implement ePortfolios in their own classrooms. It makes it so much more approachable: just bring your kids down to our space, and we'll do the rest! And actually, our kids will do the rest because they're also trained experts in ePortfolios! In the end, the structures we created will only strengthen our learning community, and hopefully have an impact regionally as well: as part of my work, I'm refining a proposal for a capstone project that would replace a soon-to-be-implemented, Regents-like exam in World Languages. ePortfolios are an integral component of my proposal, and the easier we make it for others to implement, the more successful my proposal will be (I hope!).

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