Christian

Quintero 05/31/2011 Assignment #33 Irene Herrera-Stewart Charter College of Education Multiple School Levels Visit/Observations Date: February 16, 2011 Description of the Activity: I was invited to a Local District 4s principal meeting held at Pickwick Gardens. This meeting is held monthly and combines all principals in local district 4. I was invited to this particular meeting because of my experience with projectbased learning (PBL), my participation in the Principal Residency Network at California State University, and my involvement with PBL training. Local District 4, under the guidance of the new local superintendent, Dr. Dale Vigil, wants every school, elementary, middle and high school to instruct their students using a PBL model. Dr. Rosa-Maria Hernandez delivered a PowerPoint explaining what the tenants of PBL were and coupled her PowerPoint with video to illustrate PBL in action. After about 45 minutes of her presentation the Principals were allowed to ask questions. The Q & A lasted another 45 minutes. Description of Involvement: Initially I was asked to come as an observer of the meeting, but later was asked to respond to some of the questions being asked concerning PBL. Results/Evaluation of the Activity: Unfortunately my experience was not what I imagined. I sat in a room of two hundred plus administrators, mainly principals, and I was appalled at what I saw. As Dr. Hernandez was delivering her presentation a majority of the tables nearly half from my estimates were not paying attention. The table right next to mine had 9 administrators talking about what was on their facebook account not listening to one word being discussed by Dr. Hernandez. I mentioned to Felipe, my

Christian Quintero 05/31/2011 Assignment #33 Irene Herrera-Stewart Charter College of Education principal, during the presentation how they would handle that amount of disrespect if they were delivering professional development on their own campus. Aside from the initial trauma of seeing this, the delivery of the information I found very interesting. What Dr. Vigil and Dr. Hernandez are attempting to do is transform the culture of Local District 4. They noticed that by altering the means of instruction the students, growing up in this digital age, would benefit greatly from PBL. Their next step is to convince their instructional leaders to deliver that message back at the schools. (I am afraid for those principals who were not paying attention, how could they deliver anything to their schools.) During the Q & A I was impressed by how Dr. Vigil took charge of the discussion. The first 5 principals that asked questions actually made comments to describe how a system like this would not work at their schools. (Change is bad and scary) Instead of allowing that negativity to fester Dr. Vigil immediately stopped them and said, transforming your schools will be a challenge, but instead of thinking of the negatives imagine the possibilities. From that point on the questions were more along the lines of, the timeframe for the change, what schools to use as models for this change and what types of supports would be needed at their schools. At this point I was introduced and I talked to the principals about how using PBL and having access to technology has broadened the scope of my instruction. I mentioned how my team teacher and I got all of our students to create a twitter account and used that as an access to academics in the field of government secrecy (the top of the project). To no surprise a total of 5 principals in that room had a twitter account, it made me wonder

Christian Quintero 05/31/2011 Assignment #33 Irene Herrera-Stewart Charter College of Education how they were getting access to the newest information concerning education. In the end the meeting let out and many interested parties went directly to Dr. Vigil and Dr. Hernandez to ask more clarifying questions and a few asked me to come to their school to help with the training. I could never in my mind imagine running a meeting of that size, little accountability and I believe wasted time. Reflection of Involvement or Learning: What I learned from a crowd that size is the PowerPoints should be out the door. Instead I wonder if LD4 used the PBL process to help their instructional leaders understand their dilemma and find their solutions using PBL if that meeting would have been more effective. The stark reality is that the individuals running the event have had little to no practice using PBL on their own. I wonder when I am in my fifties, and a new instructional practice is being touted as the next best thing, how would I deliver that message. Is it a symptom of the bureaucracy that those that are in the power positions are the ones that may know the least of the new instructional practices? My reflection of this experience has done two-fold, first made me realize the difficulties of managing large groups and second brought to the forefront the realities of aging, I need to make sure that I am always up-to-date on new instructional practices and still teaching so that I am putting them to use before I tell other to do the same.