The Biggest Bang for your Buck!
In education, we talk a lot about there not being enough
time. No matter what we do, there will never be enough time. The question we
need to focus on is, “What are we doing with that time?” Are we utilizing every
second we have? Have we intentionally planned to maximize the time we do have?
The facts are this; the teachers I work with are working as hard as they can;
they cannot work any harder. The answer is not working hard; the answer is
working smarter. We need to use teaching practices that give us, what John Hattie
calls, the highest effect size in Impact: Visible Learning for Literacy.
Hattie defines the “effect size” as “the magnitude of the impact that a given
approach has.” (Douglas Fisher, 2016) By looking at our
practices and refining what we do, we will make large impacts on the gains our
students make. By looking at the “best practices” and the effect size it has on
students, we can look at what we need to be doing as teachers to get the
biggest bang for our buck. There is no one-size-fits-all or magic answer, but
there is a way to make informed decisions on the instruction in our classrooms
that will make giant impacts on our students learning.
Collective Teacher Efficacy
The belief that the teacher matters and the belief that the
teachers are affecting student learning in a positive way. To have collective
teacher efficacy, teachers on the team fully adhere in the idea that your
students are learning more than they would in another class at another school because
of what is happening in their classrooms. According to Hattie, teacher self-
efficacy can give you 3 yrs. growth in just one year (Douglas Fisher, 2016) . For this to be
possible, it all starts with a team. A group of teachers that set out to do
what is best for kids; they set aside distractions, they plan with
intentionality, they base all planning on data, and are willing to try new
ideas to better meet the needs of all their students. There is student
ownership by the collective team and not by any one or two teachers. We need to build trust in our teams; we need
to be able to rely on each other to help all our kids. This is where we need to
be to help each of our students make gains and be successful!
