Assistance Structures

For this discussion, choose a type of assistance that you believe has the greatest
potential for helping instructors improve education and explain why.

Cite at least one resource in your response, and answer the following:

● What does assistance for improvement of instruction look like in your

educational setting?
● What are ways you can get help improving your lesson plans?
● What assistance structures are in place? What would you like to see
added or changed? Why?

Refer to Unit 4 assignment Lesson Plan Guidelines and the scoring guide as a
resource for this discussion.

● How does the leadership at your organization approach assistance for

improvement of instruction?
● What do you believe would make efforts to improve instruction and learner
achievement in your organization more effective?
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The type of assistance that has the greatest potential for helping instructors improve

education is professional development courses. If a teacher is not being offered PD

courses, he or she can replace that by taking online courses (such as these here at

Capella) or perhaps MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses). MOOC courses fascinate

me since they are free yet are given by places like Yale, Harvard, Univ of Notre Dame,

and countless other universities. A few examples of MOOC sites are edX, and

Coursera. edX is free and offers classes from MIT, Harvard University, Boston

University, UC Berkeley, Kyoto University, Australian National University, University of

Adelaide, University of Queensland, IIT Bombay, IIM Bangalore, Dartmouth College,

Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Curtin University, Cornell University (2012-2018).

Coursera is free and offers classes from Stanford University, Princeton University,

Arizona State University, University of Maryland College Park, Ohio State University,
and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2018). I have kept an eye on this now

that those free courses are slowly becoming acceptable as transfer credits to colleges.

For a $100 fee, those “free” classes become real credits that can transfer. For those of

you interested, click here to see that: https://www.edx.org/credit .I do not think we are

there yet, but I predict in less than ten years, one would be able get several classes free

from MOOCs that would transfer to standard colleges. I am glad to see this trend too.

In my school, we are required to get our “Read to Succeed” endorsement on our

teaching certificate, so that is reality the only class we are being offered right now for

PD. We have to take 5 very small and very easy classes to get that endorsement.

Those classes are $80 each, but I have gotten the first two for free through district

grants. I would have all five long done but decided to focus on classes here at Capella

for the time.

I teach at a charter school, and our sponsoring district has actually gone out of its way

to prevent us from using the PD classes that it offers to its schools. Sadly, our charter

agreement with the school district clearly states we are allowed to attend those PD

classes, yet they do things to prevent us from coming. Usually they just do not tell us

about the classes, so we find out about them after they have occured. This is

particularly upsetting to me since I enjoy and seek out classes such as those.

I wish I could attend those classes since they would help me create better lesson plans.

Another reason I wish I could go is simply to network. I enjoy meeting new people and
bumping into the countless people that I have worked with. Those classes would help

me and my coworkers a lot.

Because we are shut out of the loop, I do not know what assistance structures are

available in my area. I just would like to be involved as we were told we would be. This

has been upsetting to me and the teachers at my school. One thing our administration

could do to make teaching and learning more effective in our school is going to bat for

us and getting us those PD classes that have been promised to us but are blocked from

us anyway. Our administration is aware of this and is sympathetic when we go to them

and ask for assistance, but that assistance never happens for countless reasons.

Still, my school does have its strengths, all of which come from our autonomy. I am

team leader of elementary, and we have hallway meetings, which do not involve

administration (but I could invite them, and they would come and help if asked). We do

something similar to what is written about by Helsing & Lemons (2008) when the write

that “An LPC is not a typical administrative team in that LPC meetings are not devoted

to managerial issues. Instead, members collaborate to develop their individual and

collective leadership practice.” I have a meeting in two days for the teachers on my

hallway (on my team), and we are going to identify our challenges and discuss how to

fix them without much worry about what has been done in the past. We are just going to

do what is needed for the current reasonable reasons.

References

edX (2012-2018). Free Online Courses. Retrieved from https://www.edx.org/

Coursera (2018). Course Catalog. Retrieved from https://www.coursera.org/

Helsing, D., & Lemons, R. W. (2008). Leadership practice communities: Improving

teaching and learning. Leadership, 38(1), 14-17,38. Retrieved from

http://library.capella.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.proquest.com

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