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Allicia Hilton
Staff meeting write up
On April 1, 2019, I was able to attend a districtwide staff meeting in order to talk about
our math program. The district has been using Envisions math for a while now, but last year
Envisions changed their books, and now the district is trying to refamiliarize themselves with the
material. It has been clear since the start of my student teaching experience that teachers are
frustrated with the changes and the program altogether. A math specialist has been coming to
our staff meetings and even coming into the classes to model a couple of lessons for the
teachers. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to watch her teach a lesson, but I have heard
some really great ideas from her. We have been doing a lot of work with Envisions in all of our
staff meetings, but for this one, in particular, we were going to gather districtwide.
I thought this time was a very useful and eyeopening experience as a student teacher.
We were able to get into grade level groups and talk about where we were at with Envisions,
what kinds of support we are offering our students, how we are working with this new program,
and how we feel about its effectiveness. I believe this experience was eyeopening because it
was great to get feedback from other educators, as well as, put in my feedback of what I had
been seeing. It felt good to have the other educators listen to my feedback and truly take it into
consideration. I couldn’t believe how far ahead we were in the program compared to the other
schools in the district. It was a little concerning to me that even though we are teaching the
same material we are on completely different levels. A lot of the teachers from other schools
expressed that they thought their students were just not retaining the information that was being
taught, and it was nearly impossible for any of the work to be independent work. This is when
my teacher and I expressed that we make our own versions of the test that is actually assessing
the student's math skills rather than their reading skills and that we have small group work so
that the work is never independent.
Another thing that came up during this meeting was the fact that some teachers were
creating their own test. From what I have heard a majority of teachers agree that the Envisions
test is more on reading comprehension rather than the math skills, and while the reading and
math vocabulary is important it is also important to pick and choose your battles. For instance, I
have a student who goes to the resource room for reading but stays in the classroom for math
so do I want to see his reading skills when he is taking a math test or do I want to see his math
skills. Although a lot of us in the younger grades believe it is beneficial to create our own test for
the students, teachers in the intermediate grades do not feel the same way. This can cause
serious issues for the students. If the students get used to tests that are solely math based in
the younger grades, and then they go to the higher grades and are hit with the wordy test they
are more than likely going to do very poorly. This became a bigger issue that the whole school
will have to take time to discuss and iron out.
Overall, this meeting was very eyeopening as a student teacher. I loved seeing the
whole district get together and try and tackle this new program together instead of fighting
against it. I also believe that sometimes we get into a comfort zone and keep reusing the same
ideas, but it is important to remember that other teachers also have ideas that we should listen
to and maybe try to implement in our classroom. I truly believe this experience helped me grow
as an educator.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kLZxMZcO4vVPCMDaIJTyHigXizOhnxUIAbROK0Xehuo/edit 1/1