This has been a very busy summer filled with data, data, and even more data. Going into this class I knew that it would be challenging, but I now how a healthy dose of respect for our district testing coordinator. I learned a great deal during the duration of this class. Some things that really stuck out to me were the UDP Process and the Data Wise Process, making time for collaborative work, and how to relay your findings to your staff. This year my school really jumped into the pool of data and we struggled in some areas, but by the end of the year we began to find our feet. While going through the chapters, in our textbooks, there were a lot of ah-ha moments for me. There were concepts that I can now fully understand better. Both the UDP Process and the Data Wise process are both initiatives that our schools can implement to prepare, inquire, and act on our data. This cycle of inquiry will be on-going because it provides so much useful information to help improve our teaching and student learning. The most valuable field experience during this course was the Data Overview. I've worked on several data teams before, but I had no idea the amount of work that it took to create a data overview.
It was really eye-opening the abundance of data that is available from our schools. For example, demographics, transient rates, data on our teaching staffs, socio-economics, and so much more. Next year during our grade level data teams, I will be able to bring a better understanding to our collaborative plannings. I'll be better informed of the process and be able to plan and organize our data findings more effectively. I also plan to share with my data teams how we can visually show our data using Excel. I use Excel often, but never to the level that I did with this course. Visually displaying our data will help others develop a better understanding and it can open the lines of communication. I believe that we will still have some push back, but I believe that with a better understanding of the importance of data and how to use it that our staff will continue to flourish.
It was really eye-opening the abundance of data that is available from our schools. For example, demographics, transient rates, data on our teaching staffs, socio-economics, and so much more. Next year during our grade level data teams, I will be able to bring a better understanding to our collaborative plannings. I'll be better informed of the process and be able to plan and organize our data findings more effectively. I also plan to share with my data teams how we can visually show our data using Excel. I use Excel often, but never to the level that I did with this course. Visually displaying our data will help others develop a better understanding and it can open the lines of communication. I believe that we will still have some push back, but I believe that with a better understanding of the importance of data and how to use it that our staff will continue to flourish.