Developing My Call to Action
This video is intended for the campus leadership team and professional development committee at Round Rock High School (RRHS). The message in this video is about changes that should be made to make professional development at RRHS more effective. While our campus has made some positive changes in recent years, such as involving teacher presenters and enabling teachers to choose workshops during breakouts, there are still elements of ineffective professional learning that exist. This is evident by the persisting negative attitude of campus staff towards professional learning. Some quotes included in the presentations are based on the sentiments shared by campus staff. These feelings are not unique to our campus as evident in The Mirage report published by TNTP (2015). In order to improve student outcomes, especially for our special populations, we must make professional learning more effective. Effective professional learning enables more effective classrooms.
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To structure the proposal for changing professional learning, I identified three main areas for improvement, and recommendations for each of them, at our campus. These included making development activities relevant, long-term, and engaging for teachers. These three ideas are rooted in the 5 Principles of Effective Professional Development determined by Gulamhussein (2013). I restructured these principles to support the three solutions for improving professional learning. Gulamhussein’s first two principles connect to the need to change stand-alone workshops into long-term initiatives. The long-term nature recommended in my recommendations includes supporting teachers through the implementation phase of initiatives. The third and fourth principles relate to engaging teachers when presenting them with new ideas. Lastly, the fifth principle is about making professional learning relevant by being specific to the discipline of teachers (Gulamhussein, 2013).
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When creating my slide deck on Google Slides, I incorporated presentation elements from Phillip’s (2014) TED Talk on effective slide presentations. I used contrasting colors and animation motions to help the audience think about the current state of professional learning versus what it could be. I narrowed the recommendations to three memorable takeaways to help the message stick with the audience. The dark slides tell the story of the current ineffective professional learning, while the light slides explain how professional learning can be improved. When ineffective methods are mentioned, they transition from the left, making the audience feel they are looking backward on a timeline. In contrast, the solutions for effectiveness are animated to transition in from the right as though the audience is moving forward on a timeline. The presentation method of switching between the current state and what could be is inspired by Duarte’s (2010) theory of effective storytelling in presentations.
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This video was filmed using Yuja’s Screen Recording. It was my first time using it, but the software was simple and intuitive to use. Yuja recorded both my face and Google Slides presentation as two separate videos that can be layered together. When embedding the video on my portfolio, I chose to only include the Slides video to prevent key images and text from being covered by the moveable video of myself. A link to both videos together is included on the website for those experiencing trouble with the embedded video or wanting to have a more personal experience where they see the presenter speaking. To ensure the video's message is accessible to all viewers, a transcript is attached. The video was not scripted to give it a more natural and welcoming tone. The transcript provided was generated by AI from Go-Transcribe. I uploaded the audio from my video to the website and received the generated text within a few minutes. There were a few minor errors that needed to be fixed, but overall it was a very useful tool.
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References
Duarte, K. (2010) TEDxEast: Nancy Duarte uncovers common structure of greatest communicators. [Video] Retrieved from https://youtu.be/1nYFpuc2Umk
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Goodwin, B. (2015). Research says: Does teacher collaboration promote teacher growth? Educational Leadership, 73(4), 82–83. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec15/vol73/num04/Does-Teacher-Collaboration-Promote-Teacher-Growth%C2%A2.aspx
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Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the teachers effective professional development in an era of high stakes accountability. Center for Public Education. Retrieved from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/system/files/2013-176_ProfessionalDevelopment.pdf
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Philips, D. (2014) TEDxStockholmSalon: How to avoid death by powerpoint. [Video] Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Iwpi1Lm6dFo
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TNTP. (2015). The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth About Our Quest for Teacher Development. Retrieved from http://tntp.org/publications/view/evaluation-and-development/the-mirage-confronting-the-truth-about-our-quest-for-teacher-development
