10 Major Takeaways from AMLE2014

I had the great fortune to attend the Association of Middle Level Educators (AMLE) 2014 annual conference in Nashville, TN, this week along with eight awesome colleagues from Deerfield Public Schools District 109. With a conference of this magnitude the amount of information received was overwhelming. In an attempt to condense and process this information for myself, and anyone else that cared to read this blog entry, I captured one major takeaway from each session I attended.

The biggest overarching takeaway was that Caruso Middle School and District 109 are on the cutting edge of so many areas including: 1 to 1 learning, standards-based grading, school culture, middle school model best practices, and differentiation. A multitude of reasons to be proud of how we serve our students!

How to Engage, Motivate, and Inspire Your Students – Dr. Cedrick Gray, Kim Campbell, Dr. Nikki Woodson, and Dave Burgess

Dave Burgess energetically promoted the idea of effective lesson delivery taking the form of a three-circle Venn diagram. The three components were 1) content, 2) strategies/methods, and 3) the often overlooked element of presentation. His Teach Like a Pirate philosophy emphasized the importance of adding curiosity and excitement to lessons to make the students beg for more.

Transforming School Culture – Dr. Cedrick Gray

Dr. Gray started his presentation with a quote from Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, “Treating people with respect and valuing them is a universal language. Culture trumps strategy.” He went on to charismatically illustrate how school leaders can have all the best ideas, methods, and strategies in the world but without a strong, collaborative environment that values respect and relationships even the best ideas will never take flight and impact our students.

Building the Master Schedule to Facilitate Flexibility – Barbara Kalina and Elliot Merenbloom

The presenters reinforced several critical middle school model schedule essential conditions for flexibility. These conditions are largely present in the middle school model that we introduced last year. These elements were: same teachers, same cohort of students, same teaching periods, common planning period, and consistent focus on role and function of the team. As we continue to reflect and consider modifying our own schedules moving forward we need to remember these tenets.

Differentiation and Common Core: Supporting Success for All Learners with Complex Curriculum – Carol Tomlinson

The guru of differentiation, Carol Ann Tomlinson, reminded the audience that differentiation is most simply, “A sequence of common sense decisions made by teachers with a student-first orientation.” The reality is these common sense decisions take the skills of a master teacher, but the fact remains that differentiating instruction to meet our students needs is a non-negotiable when promoting the growth of each student.

Developing an Effective Advisory Program: Now More Than Ever – John Niska

Professor Niska shared the need to make an advisory program a continuous four part cycle: design program -> prepare advisors -> develop activities -> evaluate all components. In our own district we have moved away from an intensive advisory program, instead of utilizing this cycle, and we need to reassess our practices here to systematically revive some important advisory topics in order to best serve our students.

Queen Bees and Masterminds – Rosalind Wiseman

A frequent conversation that occurs in our day-to-day operations of most school, including CMS, was highlighted by Rosalind Wiseman; bullying vs. drama. She defined both:

Bullying: when one person repeatedly abuses or threatens to abuse their power against another person.
Drama: exciting, unexpected, emotional series or events. A conflict where both people are involved and can be serious or hurtful.

She followed this conversation by noting that conflict will happen in both forms. She shared that it is impossible for schools to be truly be “bully-free” zones. Trying to do so heightens anxiety because students assume that if they are met with conflict- something is seriously wrong.

Differentiated Grading: Fair Isn’t Always Equal – Rick Wormeli

The substance and depth of Rick Wormeli’s knowledge in relation to differentiation and standards based grading and learning may indeed be endless. One of the most important points shared was that grades are not compensation but instead are communication and an accurate report of what happened. When we use grades for reasons other than communicating attainment of academic standards it results in a gross misuse of the instrument. That serves as a great reminders as we make the shift in our district to standards based grading and learning.

Digital Citizenship and Digital Natives – Renee Teraoka and Gail Vannatta

Renee and Gail shared how their digital citizenship curriculum focused on topics such as social networking, netiquette and digital etiquette, digital health/wellness, digital diet and addition, rules/responsibilities, cyberbullying, and copyright and fair use. We have incredible and authentic digital citizenship learning going in our classrooms every day in DPS109. This session was a good reminder that a system-wide approach still may have a place in our middle schools.

FLEX Time, Giving Students What They Need – Travis Axeen, Eric Rausch, and Janelle Steichen

This team from Linn-Mar, Iowa, shared two periods they created to cater to their music curriculum and their promotion of enrichment, intervention, and remediation. They carved time out of their day to create 42 minute regular periods and a 30 minute FLEX period where students would either have choice regarding which class to attend or would be invited by a teacher. This was paired with a WOW (work on work) period that had students in music classes or working on work with non-core teachers. Interesting components to bring back as we look to move band and orchestra into our own school day, but the short core periods may be cause for consternation.

The District 109 Contingent