September 2002 — Features
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Bringing Induction to the Teacher: A Blended Learning Model
These newsletters will hold tutorials on the business office procedures, what to do if you are absent, basic technology functions and curricular support information, to name a few. At College Community Schools, every teacher gets a laptop with access to the campus' seamless wireless network. New hires pick up their laptops in June and are expected to use their district e-mail account to dialogue with their colleagues from that point forward.2. Face-to-face processing. As great a tool as the Web is for moving content, human interaction is still necessary to build a deeper understanding. When adult learning works well, it is transactional. There is a give-and-take relationship between the learner and facilitator that produces deep learning. Also, because schools at the core are social institutions, we believed wecould not abandon the face-to-face component of induction. We hoped to get much of the administrative and training overhead out of the way via the Web. New teachers will come to induction already knowing how to use the basic technology tools, have their insurance and payroll paperwork complete, and know the names and faces of who they will be working with on a day-to-day basis. Our goal was to give them time to process all the information we've given them on the pledge, mission, vision and instructional design, then have them build it into knowledge.
Face-to-face sessions do not mean just sitting and listening to someone talk. It is about knowledge building, creating understanding of the core values of the district and putting peers to work in a classroom every day. Face-to-face sessions during induction week include sessions with district instructional leaders, building principals and colleagues, both in work-alike groups and mixed groups. New hires also have several sessions to themselves to create and reflect on their learning.
3. Creating deliverables. It's not enough to just build knowledge; we expect our new hires to create products that can tangibly share this knowledge. This happens in three ways. After working with experts in face-to-face sessions, new hires write down how they will put into action the district's customer pledge, mission and vision in their classrooms. This first draft is shared via e-mail with other inductees and experts for feedback. This sharing sparks new ideas and enables participants to refine their thinking. It is also a nice way to crystallize their use of the e-mail system. The second deliverable is a syllabus. We have a tool, described later in the article, which lets teachers create and post multimedia-rich curriculum to the Web with little training. New hires create and publish their syllabi to the Web. Secondary teachers will also post their first two weeks of assignments to the Web for one course. Syllabi and assignments are viewed, and feedback is given by the group to one another. Finally, each new hire creates an electronic newsletter that will be sent to their students and parents. This newsletter has articles that contain an introduction, classroom expectations, communication channels and instructional philosophy.
4. Collaborative extension of learning.
