Info Update

• Dr. Z-Coe's Corner
• Call for Facilitators!
• New Quality Assurance Specialist!
• Book Club Update
• Summer Registration Underway!
• Bi-monthly Facilitator Discussion Topics
• Spam Email Blockers
• Focus on the Help Desk

ABC's of Facilitation

• Facilitation Resource of the Month
• What's My Role?
• Dear Felicity,

Chatterbox

• Community Comments
• Monthly Online Chat
• Future Chats

Dr. Z-Coe's Corner

Dear FOR-PD Facilitator:

Happy Spring! I hope that this note finds all of you well. This semester is coming to an end soon it is hard to believe it, isn't it? I enjoyed seeing some of you at the recent ASCD conference. The 7th UCF Celebrate Literacy Symposium was a success! We had 525 educators attend the event. It was wonderful to see many of you there. You may access Donna Alvermann's keynote speech at http://www.itrc.ucf.edu/announcements/alverman2005.pdf

We have had many requests on our facilitator course and facilitator infrastructure from professional development staff from across the nation. As you know, we have been "remodeling" the facilitator course and will be ready to launch it soon. FOR-PD is still going strong! We anticipate a very busy summer semester. Make sure that you inform us of your interest to facilitate for us this summer as soon as possible.

Thank you for all of your help with the monitoring of our participants' progress. We continue to work on our quality assurance checks. I appreciate all of your collaboration and work. The districts need to hear about all of the wonderful work you are doing to help educators learn and meet their professional development goals. As we are approaching the end of the semester, please keep in mind all of the end of the course reminders and thank you for continuing to remind your participants of deadlines and your course schedule.

Our monthly focus this year has been on professional development of FOR-PD facilitators. I hope that you have been learning from the resources we have been creating for your work with each other. This month, our focus is on online learning communities. As we all know, an online community does not occur automatically in any online course. It is not an inherent characteristic of online learning. Online communities include administrative and user-tools. Online communities focus on integrating content and communication between facilitator-participant and participant-participant. The following are key concepts of online learning communities. I hope that you will find this information useful as you reflect upon the ways you create an online learning community with your FOR-PD section.

In an online learning community:

• People learn together beyond the content.
• Collaboration takes place all the time.
• People seem more interested with communicating and learning with each other than with databases.
• People have shared experiences and gain a deeper sense of commitment to the learning process and product.
• People feel part of a larger whole.
• Learning the content is applied in everyday interactions.
• Use multiple forms of interaction.
• An online learning community needs nurturing.
• Enthusiasm is shared—facilitators and participants show an interest in the topic and in getting involved.

In an online learning community the facilitator:

• Facilitates productive conversation—s/he acts as a moderator linking users and content, providing information, resources, exercises, and monitoring course activities.
• Manages the pace of conversation—e.g., starting new topics, reviving discussions, and initiating conversations.
• Clarifies issues, frames a problem, or summarizes a discussion.
• Handles conflict resolution via mediating and adjudicating.
• Establishes trust through reliability, helpfulness, respect, and encouragement.
• Encourages relationships by initiating chats and linking comments.
• Seeds conversation with content and activities
• Brings attention to community elements—i.e., who contributes, who doesn't, what are their styles and personalizes as needed.

Thank you for your time, efforts, and leadership with the FOR-PD course. I wish you continued success. We are here to support you and help you in your facilitation. Please feel free to contact me in case you have any comments or questions at vzygouri@mail.ucf.edu or (407) 207-7296.

Regards,

Vicky Zygouris-Coe, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator, FOR-PD
vzygouri@mail.ucf.edu

Call for Facilitators!

Calling all FOR-PD facilitators! Calling all FOR-PD Facilitators!

It is that time of year when we are in need of summer facilitators. You have seen the recent announcements regarding the REESOL (see below) and the Alternatively Certified Programs (see below) use of FOR-PD. In the last edition of the FFF, we sent out a call for ESOL certified facilitators and anyone who has either been certified using an alternative method or anyone who works with alternatively certified programs. Well now we need facilitators for our summer open enrollment sections! Remember the dates are May 16 - Aug. 22. As long as you have access to a computer, you can facilitate for FOR-PD this summer! If you are interested, please send Wendy an email at forpdfac@mail.ucf.edu.

Haven't facilitated in a while?? Never facilitated?? Do not worry! We are working on having a special one-day meeting for those folks who want to facilitate this summer but need a bit of a refresher. Send an email to Wendy and get ready to have a great time helping educate Florida's teachers this summer!

Below are stories about REESOL and the ACP programs again, for your information.

REESOL

Recently, a memo was issued from the Florida Department of Education regarding the REESOL (see below for highlights of the memo). FOR-PD thought it would be best to group ESOL participants together in cohorts for the FOR-PD course. We plan to do this starting this summer. As such, we will need several facilitators who are ESOL certified to facilitate those sections. Any certified facilitator who is interested in taking on a course this summer, please contact Wendy at the FOR-PD office (forpdfac@mail.ucf.edu) as soon as possible. Also, if you happen to know of any ESOL trained teachers who have taken the FOR-PD course and would make excellent facilitators, please let us know. We are opening up our facilitator training course this summer. Thank you for your interest, and we look forward to hearing from you!

—memo from Florida Department of Education http://info.fldoe.org/dscgi/ds.py/Get/File-2802/reesol.pdf

On March 4, 2005 the Florida Department of Education announced the Reading Endorsement—ESOL Professional Development for teachers who have the 300 hour ESOL Endorsement training.

Increasing the number of teachers endorsed or certified in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) who may also be high qualified to teach reading will assist the state in fulfilling the Florida Department of Education's Strategic Imperative 1: Increase the supply of effective teachers.

Last year the Department of Education completed a Reading/ESOL Endorsement Crosswalk to determine what additional hours of reading inservice were needed to complete the Reading Endorsement for teachers who had finished the 300 hours of ESOL inservice training. These teachers are eligible for 80 hours of credit towards the Reading Endorsement. The Florida Department of Education, in collaboration with Florida Literacy and Reading Excellence (FLaRE), have created a third path to the reading endorsement and developed a Reading Endorsement Bundle (REESOL). The other two paths are completion of the district Reading Endorsement add-on plan or completion of fifteen hours with submission of transcripts directly to the Department of Education certification office. ALL three paths will result in the Reading Endorsement.

The REESOL bundle is add-on training that will cover all of the remaining competencies needed to fulfill the requirement for the Reading Endorsement.

The REESOL training will be available (but not required) for all teachers who have the ESOL Endorsement due to completing the 300 hours of ESOL inservice training. It is advised that if teachers are already completing the district reading add-on endorsement plan, they should continue their pursuit of the Reading Endorsement through that path.

Book Club Update

The FOR-PD Facilitator Book Club is in full swing! You will find the discussion in our "For Facilitator Only" course discussion area, under the topic called Book Discussion.

As a reminder, below is the schedule of when each pair of chapters will be discussed in the "For Facilitator Only" Discussion Board. Again, please do not worry if you do not have the book—we are posting summaries of the main points of each pair of chapters every week. You can read the summaries and contribute based on what you read as well as your experiences. The summaries are now up-to-date. We look forward to continuing our discussion on literacy professional development!

Facilitator Discussion Schedule

Summer Registration Underway!

Summer registration is underway! Below is the summer schedule for your information. Tell your colleagues!!!

Bi-Monthly Facilitator Discussion Topics

The latest discussion topics:

The topic for April 18 - May 1 is summer motivation! We are beginning our summer classes on May 16, 2005 and as you know, summer is a time for folks to slow down. Let's come up with some ideas on how to motivate the group of participants who sign up for the summer classes! I look forward to hearing your ideas. Post them to the Bi-Monthly Facilitator Topic "Summer Motivation" in the "For Facilitator Only" discussion area.

The topic for May 2 - May 15 is professional development ideas. We have done some chats and have created a book club. We have also done a professional development activity on coaching. What ideas do you have? Do you have a book you would like to discuss for the next book club? Do you have some chat ideas? Are there other topics you would like to explore? Other ideas you have for professional development activities? Let us know in the next bi-monthly discussion. Post your thoughts to the Bi-Monthly Facilitator Topic "Professional Development Ideas" in the "For Facilitator Only" discussion area during the next bi-monthly topic.

We also welcome your ideas for new bi-monthly topics! Have something you are particularly interested in? Is there something you recently learned at a conference that you feel will generate discussion from other facilitators? Feel free to share your topic ideas with us—just email forpdfac@mail.ucf.edu. We look forward to seeing you online!

Spam Email Blockers

The FOR-PD office has recently discovered that several facilitators have spam blocker protection on their email. We applaud your efforts to protect your computers from viruses and unwanted solicitors. It is important to remember that several people from the FOR-PD office send out email to your accounts. With spam blockers, many times we have no way of knowing if the email reached the intended audience or not. Therefore, we ask ALL facilitators who have spam blockers to please allow the following email addresses:

• forpd@mail.ucf.edu (FOR-PD project email)
• forpdfac@mail.ucf.edu (Facilitator Support Specialist Hotline)
• wendy@orion.itrc.ucf.edu (Wendy Bedwell, Facilitator Support Specialist)
• vzygouri@mail.ucf.edu (Dr. Vicky Zygouris-Coe, Principle Investigator)
• cc@orion.itrc.ucf.edu (Catherine Glass, Reading Specialist)
• allison@orion.itrc.ucf.edu (Allison Galloway, Quality Assurance Specialist)
• ma555130@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu (Matt Wiggins, Assists with Quality Assurance Efforts)
• richard@orion.itrc.ucf.edu (Richard Scott, Invoice and Payments)
• helpdesk@orion.itrc.ucf.edu (FOR-PD Help Desk)

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. We appreciate your cooperation!

Focus on the Help Desk

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Facilitation Resource of the Month

Our resource is a bit different this month. Recently, Catherine Glass (our staff Reading Specialist) and I attended a workshop titled "Putting the National Staff Development Council Standards into Practice." I would like to share with you one standard: the Context Standard on Learning Communities as that is the focus of this newsletter. Below are excerpts from the NSDC website regarding the Context Standard on Learning Communities. For more information about the NSDC standards, please visit the NSDC homepage.

Let's look at this standard and the rationale in terms of the FOR-PD course.

Staff development standards provide direction for designing a professional development experience that ensures educators acquire the necessary knowledge and skills.

The Standard

Staff development that improves the learning of all students organizes adults into learning communities whose goals are aligned with those of the school and district.

The Rationale

Staff development that has as its goal high levels of learning for all students, teachers, and administrators requires a form of professional learning that is quite different from the workshop-driven approach. The most powerful forms of staff development occur in ongoing teams that meet on a regular basis, preferably several times a week, for the purposes of learning, joint lesson planning, and problem solving. These teams, often called learning communities or communities of practice, operate with a commitment to the norms of continuous improvement and experimentation and engage their members in improving their daily work to advance the achievement of school district and school goals for student learning.

Learning teams may be of various sizes and serve different purposes. For instance, the faculty as a whole may meet once or twice a month to reflect on its work, engage in appropriate learning, and assess its progress. In addition, some members of the faculty may serve on school improvement teams or committees that focus on the goals and methods of school-wide improvement. While these teams make important contributions to school culture, learning environment and other priority issues, they do not substitute for the day-to-day professional conversations focused on instructional issues that are the hallmark of effective learning communities. Learning teams meet almost every day and concern themselves with practical ways to improve teaching and learning. Members of learning communities take collective responsibility for the learning of all students represented by team members. Teacher members of learning teams, which consist of four to eight members, assist one another in examining the standards students are required to master, planning more effective lessons, critiquing student work, and solving the common problems of teaching.

The teams determine areas in which additional learning would be helpful and read articles, attend workshops or courses, or invite consultants to assist them in acquiring necessary knowledge or skills. In addition to the regular meetings, participants observe one another in the classroom and conduct other job-related responsibilities. Learning communities are strengthened when other support staff, administrators, and even school board members choose to participate, and when communication is facilitated between teams. Because of this common focus and clear direction, problems of fragmentation and incoherence that typically thwart school improvement efforts are eliminated.

Administrator learning communities also meet on a regular basis to deepen participants' understanding of instructional leadership, identify practical ways to assist teachers in improving the quality of student work, critique one another's school improvement efforts, and learn important skills such as data analysis and providing helpful feedback to teachers.

Many educators also benefit from participation in regional or national subject-matter networks or school reform consortia that connect schools with common interests. While most such networks have face-to-face meetings, increasing numbers of participants use electronic means such as e-mail, listservs, and bulletin boards to communicate between meetings or as a substitute for meetings. Such virtual networks can provide important sources of information and knowledge as well as the interpersonal support required to persist over time in changing complex school-wide or classroom practices.

Below are several questions. Think about what you have just read and post your thoughts to the FFF* Discussions topic, "NSDC Standard: Online Learning Communities."

• How is this applicable to FOR-PD?
• What are some things you can do as a facilitator to help FOR-PD meet this standard?

What's My Role?

While many district courses have just begun, most courses are well underway. At this point, those courses will generally be running smoothly. If you really utilized those community building techniques, students should be responding to you and to each other. Discussions should be going very well. You need to transition your role to student evaluator. In addition to your normal weekly responsibilities, you will need to do the following:

1. Review each students' work up to your current week. Make sure your grades are up-to-date. You will probably have had some students post work past the lesson due dates. Make sure you have graded that work. One easy way to accomplish this task is to send each student a progress report. Go to the gradebook and copy down the grades. Send a private email to each student with a copy of the grades. Ask them to review and make sure everything is on target with what they have done. If some students have postings graded below a 16, let them know they will have to redo that assignment to get an 80% or better in order to complete the course.
2. Encourage the class! Let them know how close they are to the finish line! The course only has another few weeks and they will be finished with competency 2, will receive 60 inservice points, and will be on their way to earning the reading endorsement!
3. Monitor where the class is in terms of the course schedule. If something happened within your course that has had an impact on the course closing date, you should know at this point that you will need an extension. Notify the Facilitator Support Specialist and request an extension during this week. Extensions are granted on a case by case basis and can only be granted for a maximum of 2 weeks. You MUST request and GET APPROVAL for a course extension. Otherwise, your students will be denied access from the course the next business day following the original course closing date.

Dear Felicity,

Dear Felicity,
Several of my participants are scoring well below the required on their discussion assignments. I hate to post their poor grades in the gradebook and they seem frustrated about what to do to improve their work. Any suggestions?

- Discussion Distressed

"For community building, FOR-PD is incredible. There is substantial support in so many areas.  In technology, we have our own gurus who keep the site running effectively and efficiently and are always available for participant and facilitator problems. They respond to concerns and problems so professionally and so promptly.  There are so many resources for facilitators including the model discussion postings, the discussion area [FOR-PD For Facilitators Only Course], the chat sessions, the syllabus, and the calendar [coming Summer '05].  The cohesiveness of the facilitator group is strengthened through emails and mutual support. Finally, I think the way we respect and value our participants and always try to be supportive and helpful only makes our foundation stronger. I think they appreciate the personal phone calls, the personal responses to postings, the user-friendly aspects of the course and its format.  We have an excellent learning community which is enhanced by a tireless staff in Orlando!"

-- Nancy Tondreault, Spring 2005

I am posting this quote, not as a pat on the back for the FOR-PD staff, but to show the many areas that provide support to our participants and facilitators. Support is an important part of learning communities. Without proper support, facilitators and participants can feel stranded—"alone on an island."

Do you have comments about the course? Have you received any comments from participants? We always look for feedback so send it our way. Email forpdfac@mail.ucf.edu with your stories!