- Year 2022
- NSF Noyce Award # 1758392
- First Name Stephanie
- Last Name Tubman
- Institution Michigan Technological University
- Role/Position Co-PI, Program Coordinator
- Workshop Category Track 3: Master Teaching Fellowships
- Workshop Disciplines Audience Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Engineering, Geosciences, Physics
- Target Audience Co-PIs, Noyce Master Teachers, Noyce Teaching Fellows, Other Faculty/Staff, Project PIs, School District Administrators, Undergraduate and/or Graduate Noyce Scholars
- Topics Developing Teacher Leaders, Preparing STEM Teachers as School & Community Change Agents, Sustainable Lessons Learned from COVID 19: Challenges/Opportunities and Equity
- Session Length 45 minutes minutes
- Additional Presenter(s)
Ashley Poole (poolear@kalamazoopublicschools.net) & Laura Ruelas (ruelaslm@kalamazoopublicschools.net)
Goals
1. Participants will be able to identify shared contexts (e.g., common curriculum, defined leadership goals, virtual collaboration) that are supportive of leadership development.2. Participants will be able to describe a model for virtual collaboration between teacher leaders.
Evidence
Data analyses from qualitative surveys and interviews with Noyce fellows. Participant observation from virtual PLCs Use cases from specific PLCS.
Proposal
The Michigan Master Teacher Fellow (MTP) is investigating a scalable approach to advance the leadership abilities of middle school STEM teachers in their schools, districts, and state. The project has nineteen Master Teacher Fellows, eleven of whom had a Master’s degree upon entering the program and eight of whom received their Master’s degree through the program.
The project has focused on providing virtual leadership opportunities and learning related to a statewide middle school science curriculum called Mi-STAR which is designed for NGSS and emphasizes applications of science to real-world, relevant problems. Virtual and in-person coursework around leadership and principles for effective professional learning communities have complemented collaboration in virtual PLCs around issues facing the fellows and other teachers implementing Mi-STAR and NGSS.
Fellows from across school districts statewide came together in successive PLCs with different subgroups to work on issues related to NGSS-aligned science instruction and Mi-STAR. Each PLC provided an explicit opportunity to build their ability to address instructional issues, as well as their skills in leading virtual PLCs. The pre-COVID virtual collaboration and community-building focus of the project uniquely situated participants to continue collaborating around NGSS-aligned science instruction during the pandemic, as well as to support other Michigan educators to work through many of the challenges presented by the pandemic.
Fellows will share their experiences collaborating virtually. Participants will also have time to brainstorm and share ideas for how to leverage a common context as the foundation for a leadership development project.
