Marzano Chapter 3

In this Chapter Marzano presents a rubric that teachers can use to reflect on personal strengths and weaknesses and gives advice on the ways the results should be used to define annual growth goals.

Reflection

My district is a tremendous believer in Robert Marzano. In previous years stipends have been offered to encourage participation in after-school Marzano based professional development led by district instructional coaches. Learning Walk goals are based largely on Marzano practices and the teacher professional library in my building contains multiple copies of the Marzano classroom strategies books. Resting on my desktop is a deck of Marzano based cooperative learning cards. I am well acquainted with the ways of Dr. Robert Marzano, however, despite the fact that I am required annually to submit written personal goals had never taken this self-audit nor was I even aware of its existence.

How I Measured Up
Innovating -16 (4,5,9,11,12,19,23,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41)
Applying - 15 (1,6,8,13,14,15,17,20,22,24,26,27,28,29,30)
Developing -5 (7, 10, 21, 31, 32)
Beginning - 2 (2, 3, 18)
Not Using -1 (25)
I left one space blank. (16)

What Does This Mean?

Highest marks indicate that I see myself as having an orderly, well-organized room, where I know my students. I feel they understand the expectations I have for them and I’m fairly adept at helping them engage with, practice, and understand new knowledge. I think this is to be expected, I’ve been at this a long time. The areas where I see myself as Developing tended to be scattered - 7, 10,21,31,32. Lack of time is one common thread that I see looking through these areas. I see close to 450 elementary students on a three day rotation, teaching six fifty minute class periods per day. Another commonality of these lower marks I attribute to teaching a skill based curriculum that I pretty much loathe. It’s difficult for me to work up a lot of enthusiasm for teaching (and assessing) pure studio skills. I scored low in the areas of helping students track progress and celebrate success. I could improve in this area, but again, I go back to my curriculum. I seldom use games, I do feel there is validity in using them, but I tend to shy away from anything that feels overly contrived. I see this as an area where I could really use improvement. I left homework blank as I do not use formal homework. I may ask students to consider an idea, or come to class prepared for  discussion of a topic, but it’s not a requirement.

In comparing this week’s scale to last,   I either have a highly inflated opinion of myself, or am a relatively strong teacher, probably a little bit of both. As I said earlier, I’ve been at this a long time. Teaching is a difficult job; I don’t think I could do if I did not feel as though I were good at it. I think I need to revisit those areas where I feel I am less than great / developing and determine what steps I could do to improve. I am on my district’s newly formed instructional advisory committee and hope to affect a revision the fine art curriculum.  In the meantime I’m certain that there are ways I could make learning skills more meaningful IF I were willing to invest more time, effort, and energy into doing so.