Project ENABLE - Day 4

Day 4 began with a presentation on motivation and management by Dr. Ruth Small.   We discussed the ARCS model of motivational design originally created by Dr. John Keller.  The over-arching idea that in order for students to be motivated, they must expect that they can succeed and value their success.  When students are not motivated, they get frustrated, angry, withdrawn and discouraged.  I think this is true of adults as well as students.  

Some of the suggestions offered by the ARCS model are things that we plan to implement immediately.  We try very hard to promote active participation and provide variety and choice wherever possible.  Several of the principles mentioned are things that we incorporate in many of our inquiry-based research projects.  Not coincidentally, our inquiry-based projects often are those that show our students at their most motivated. 

 After Dr. Ruth's presentation, we heard from our special education colleagues.  It was interesting to hear their perceptions of what they do and how they see themselves and their role in our schools.  It was obvious that many of the valuable things that they have learned have been through experience--many spoke of learning from their students and from their paraprofessionals. I found it particularly interesting to see how many of the things that the special educators saw as their role were also things that the librarians mentioned--supporting students and teachers, encouraging, collaborating, communicating and advocating were all roles that stood out for me as things I do all the time.  I don't think that I've ever sat down and considered all the ways our jobs are similar.  To be fair, I also haven't analyzed the differences--just not something I've given much thought to at all.  It has been nice to hear from other stakeholders in an informational discussion setting. 

After the presentation by the special educators, we had another group activity where we discussed how librarians can be more involved in the IEP creation and modification process.  Our group had already discussed this after an earlier conversation and had decided that Colleen will start including me in her emailed requests for comments on students' IEPs.  She already emails all their teachers, but as I don't show up on the students' schedules, I had heretofore not been included.  Other suggestions that we may look at included using the librarian as a resources to get the materials and resources that are required by IEPs for students, including librarians in SST meetings and including librarians in professional development that may help them to support students with special needs.

After lunch, we worked on our lesson plan at great length, and nearly finished it.  We were thrown a bit of a curve ball, when we were issued a hypothetical student with a disability and asked to build modifications into our lesson.  Coincidentally, the student we were given was extremely similar to a student that we actually have in our school and we had built the original lesson in such a way as to allow her to complete it with very few modifications.  It almost felt like we were cheating :)

Following our lesson plan work, we learned how to upload our lesson to the S.O.S. for Information Literacy site.  No idea how I was unaware of this site before today...it will be in my favorites from now on!  We'll be finishing up our lesson plan and uploading it within the next day or so.

We got out of class a bit early today, after our daily test.  I'm enjoying the workshop immensely, but my energy is starting to flag a bit, and the early release followed by a short rest was very helpful.  My team finished our action plan this evening and we're excited about some of the changes that we're going to try to effect. 

I attempted a bit of photo-blogging during class today and was pleased with the results.  This has been an interesting experiment in documenting my professional development and playing with different tools to do so.  I'm looking forward to making reflection a more regular practice.