It is good to look at it from multiple viewpoints. It helps give differing perspectives to get a clearer picture of the ethical dilemma.

I’m sure that the idea of moral definition can shift considerably from community or district or state. Our country is made of so many different types of people and varying concepts that it would be difficult to give exact moral definitions of behavior across the board.

It is difficult to come back from poor public actions. People talk and gossip spreads, making it difficult for these types of situations to go away or for the person in question to remain a role model.

I think that the correlation to job responsibilities is important.

I think you really have to know your community when taking a teaching position. I think different communities and districts will have different opinions about what is ethical.

This is something that I will bring up in my professional development. One of the LSIC goals is to improve positive interactions with parents this school year.

Parent involvement is so important for students success!

There is a long path for students to be effected by the implementation of strategies. It takes everyone working together as a team.

I think it is interesting to note that administrators are key to encouraging teachers who will encourage families. This trickle down process affects many aspects of school so it makes sense that it also affects family involvement.

Again, if there was more top-down support to staff members on how to engage with parents, than I think community and parent involvement would be higher. If it is seen as important to leaders, than teachers will be more likely to buy into increasing engagement.

I would like to see this happen more often in my district. Often I feel like some teachers just don't know how to interact with or are anxious about contacting parents and families.

The textbook does give a great many resources of how to evaluate engagement.

I did not think about evaluating the success of engaging family and community partners. It was brought up during our LSIC meeting that we should count parents and families that attend activities. We also decided it would be measurable to have staff engage positively with parents and famlies where they are though phone calls.

I feel like my LSIC team needs to become more involved with workshops with families. We don't offer a lot of parent nights and that would be something that could help parent and community involvement.

It is evident that my district leadership views good communication as an essential aspect of leadership.

I agree that sometimes parent involvement is an afterthought. We as educators are so used to being leaders and making decisions that we often times forget about the resources of parents and families.

I think that this is true for learning overall. After looking at test score data this last year I have noted how different grade levels or ages drop during transition years. I wonder how much these factors that we cannot control have affected this study too?

This is a good point. I think that preset frameworks of districts will determine how quickly success will be seen.

This data is very encouraging!

We just implemented with by using the test authoring tool through the state testing Cambium portal.

I think that this has a lot to do with the attitude and perceptions of teachers too. During my interviews for our previous assignment half of the teachers answered that they don't believe that we need more professional development and that they only do what they have to do concerning PD.

I feel like this is speaking my language! I have always believed in creating a curriculum using a backwards design method which utilizes state and national standards.

This is why it is so important to have a framework of using set standards for assessment, curriculum, and instruction. If we view the state and national standards as a framework instead of policy than it can be used for better student learning.

I have worked with both early adopters and early majority leaders. I have been more comfortable with early majority leaders because I feel that having data driven results is important when choosing and implementing changes. I wouldn't want to disrupt teaching processes and strategies for something that may not work out in the end.

I find that having a complimentary person with a realistic viewpoint helps me to put my optimistic sideinto focus on what can realistically happen.

I think that my district does this well. There are always PL days that will pertain to policy, but there are so many professional learning opportunities to choose from. Also, the amount of principal led PL allows for administrators to choose professional development that best suits their team of teachers.

I think that trying to look at external factors in a positive way can really set the tone for the district and schools.

Data driven goals are important to implement improvement.

I know that some, if not all of these key conditions exist within my county. I'm not sure to what degree but this is something that I should ask my supervising administrator.

I have seen this play out both negatively and positively according to the capacity of my administration. I have worked with a total of seven different administrative leadership teams and fourteen different administrators, eight of whom were my direct administrative supervisors. Capacity really does make a huge difference!

My district holds principal PD time countywide to help improve and support our administration. I have seen that many administrators also attend conferences and workshops for improvement.

There has been a great deal of administrative change in my county over the decade that I have taught and it has had effects on culture and success. It is interesting to think about how the school climate was during each of the administrative changes that took place during my career.

I have found through my research that having the right supportive leadership in place is a big part of retaining teachers. I'm sure this concept of the right leadership for successful teams can be seen at multiple level- superintendents, pincipals, and even teacher leaders.

Building and sustaining a coherent approach seems necessary to effectively running a school district. When everyone is on the same page with the same goals, than districtwide student learning can take place.

These strategies seems like a lot to implement but are reasonable steps.

I can definitely see this in my class. There are important concepts that I teach that I’m not jazzed about but need to teach students. If I’m not careful to conceal my feelings or I don’t psych myself up about those assignments, I can tell students behavior and attitude when completing those assignments is negative too.

I think parent and family understanding of homework probably gets more difficult as students get older and learn more complex concepts.

This is where curriculum mapping and lesson plans are important. There is such a pushback from some teachers about these things but they are beneficial.

We do not have summer work time but we do have paid stipend overtime. Many teachers, especially at the upper levels, would not do this unless they are paid. I wonder if this district had something similar. It is unreasonable to expect all teachers to work during their summer time without incentives.

I like this! It is the student’s responsibility and they also need to learn when to ask for help. These concepts seems like they would build great opportunities.

This is an interesting concept. It would certainly help in instances where parents and families don’t know how to help their students for their homework

As a parent of a middle school student, this seems pretty high to me. I personally believe in reminding my son about homework but not hovering over him about it. It is part of his personal responsibility that he needs to learn how to manage. He knows he can ask for help but after his 6th grade year, he rarely asks for help. I’m sure this is different for other people and that my personal experiences impact my perceptions in a biased way.

I can agree to this. Once my oldest son started in middle school honors classes it became more difficult to estimate how much time he was spending on each type of homework because he was given class time in many of his classes to complete homework. He also completes a great deal of his homework on his iPad so it is more difficult to monitor compared to paperwork that is sent home.

I think this is an important aspect of homework. If concepts can be learned in school, how much reinforcement does the concept need before proving students comprehension?

Having support from parents and families is essential to students perceptions about school work. Building positive relationships can help with this perception.

I think this has become a cultural variant. Areas with higher levels of students who do not attend college or who go to trade schools tend to devalue homework more. It’s a perception that if their parents did not use that they were taught in school than what their students are learning is useless.

I think this hits home for my school. We have a large population of students in poverty and many of our parents do not know how to help their students with their homework.

These are good ideas for family involvement. I think having a recognition breakfast (or dinner) and presenting small gifts to the parents is a great way to get them involved. These types of parents who are involved usually just want the recognition and to help their kids.

I think this would be extremely helpful to parents but how do you get teachers to buy into being at school that late? Do you offer overtime or extra PD Horus? I don’t think it’s realistic to expect teachers to be at school that late without an incentive.

Having a two way line of communication would be very helpful. My schools LSIC committee just created a goal to increase parent communication through direct, positive phone calls home for all students. We are helping that this builds a better relationship and a two way line of communication with our parents/families

This is such a good idea! We are planning on using our next Open House to invite parents to a workshop where they can learn more about how to utilize our LiveGrades system.

I think this would be a process. First we would have to shift the perspective of the community, families, teachers, and students to a more positive growth mindset concerning testing and test scores. Once we have started to shift the attitude then parents will start to participate in guiding their students learning.

This is something I would like to see shifted in our community, especially in teachers. If we look at test scores as a way to self evaluate our teaching and apply knowledge of deficits into more personalized learning, than it would be easier to explain to families and the community.

Our district often gives recognition to students and staff who go above and beyond. It would be nice to see our school recognized for the goals that we have created this year.

It would be interesting to see the students’ perspectives. It would be a unique way to self evaluate.

I think that if our schools had more incentives to participate in LSIC than it would increase buy-in but. I also think that recognition for schools who are doing it right would help.

It is important to make a good impression by using engaging activities. I think that crafting activities bring crowds into our local elementary schools. Trick or Trunk is also a big activity for our younger students. At the middle school level there are a lot of athletic events that bring in groups of parents because they want to support their children.

It is easier to just use parent contacts who are willing to volunteer but usually those are not the students who need their parents to be involved. If we could engage the parents who view the school negatively than maybe we can change both their and their students' attitude toward school.

We use several different platforms for communication including all calls, Facebook and Twitter posts, and flyers.

We use this tactic with a program that we call Trojan Triumphs. Teachers can nominate students for any reason they feel should be highlighted. Parents are invited to a before school event where teachers award certificates to the students they nominated and we post pictures on our Facebook account.

These are helpful ideas! I'm so glad that this article was assigned this week because it's relevant for my work for the next.

This is an important question to ask at my LSIC meeting next week. It brings parent involvement into perspective as to what events we want all parents at and which ones are for groups of parents and community members.

I think this is a very important aspect of family engagement. Sending supplies and information home in a way that builds positive communication.

Celebratory activities seem like a fun way to engage in activities. I wonder if this includes tings like the science fair?

This would take great collaboration from teachers. I see this happening a lot at the elementary level. I wonder how this could be more geared towards the middle or high school levels.

Creating mutual trust and respect seems difficult when you as a school leader are not given these things from the community or parents. Giving a proverbial olive branch would be a good way to start.

Finding these community partners will be essential. Sometimes I think that community businesses give donations to help the publicity of their own business and are not really invested in the education of students.

Part of our district vision is to build communities. Creating permanent district culture of community involvement is an important part of what we should do as educators. We are helping our students become functioning members of society and sometimes as teachers we lose track of what that really means.

Our CISL helps with this but using a survey could help pinpoint these needs. I developed one last year that I passed onto our administration. I hope that it will be used by our school culture and climate committee but if not, we can use it for our LSIC committee.

It is important to think about and use our local resources. We have so many that I feel are not utilized and could help our students.

This is where relevant data comes in. Knowing our deficiencies and strengths helps to make better goals.

We have a CISL (Communities in Schools Liaison) who is an extra resource specifically for chronically absent students and it really seems to help. She has so many ideas to help target these students.

School culture is so important! Part of my graduate thesis involved identifying aspects of work culture that helped retain teachers and this is such an important aspect for teachers. I never thought to apply it to parent and community involvement too but it makes so much sense! Creating a welcoming environment has helped our grade schools recruit parent involvement so continuing these tactics at the middle school would be good.

There are many routes for book donations. I know that my younger son receives monthly books that are mailed directly to our home. This would be a great initiative for our middle school kids too as our ELA test scores are overall pretty low.

I see this at the elementary level, but this would be a fun idea for middle and high school too.

This is a very good resource. My administrator prefers data driven methods to help create and achieve goals so this will be a good resource for me when facilitating the development of goals for our LSIC.

This is something that I am trying to do when developing our LSIC team at school. Because I am in the art department, I tried to recruit teachers from different departments so everyone has equal representation when creating goals.

I think this is very important. As part of one of my other classes, I read that parent engagement is one of the most important things that help a student be successful. Parent audiences are encouraged this year in my county as we gave out free activity passes to all community members that allows free admission to all sporting events and performances. I think this will help with community involvement too.

I think it is key to note that it needs to be well-designed and well-implemented. I wonder what constitutes as well-designed and well-implemented?

It would be easier to reinforce punishment for plagiarism if there was a unified cross-cultural agreement on the parameters.

I wonder is the push to publish has affected fabrication and falsification more in current times or was more prevalent before the use of technology?

This is the software used for WLU classes.

Again, I am surprised with the idea that professors would be so lenient about plagiarism.

I never really equated plagiarism to poor language proficiency, but it would be difficult to summarize in your own words if you don't have as many words. I find the use of a dictionary and a thesaurus very helpful when rephrasing concepts from text.

This would greatly effect the evaluation process in writing.

I find this astonishing as it was synonymous for me throughout my academic career and when talking about the concept with my students.

I wonder if this has increased with the availability of AI.

The idea of correctly rephrasing and citing published work was gently reinforced during my recent capstone class. It is important to ensure that you are citing correctly, especially when you are planning on publishing work.

This is interesting that there is not one specific definition of plagiarism and it can be interpreted in various ways.

This would be an important part of the required technology use or required technology section of a syllabus.

I actually find the discussions on my WLU Sakai online classes to be more interactive, helpful, and thoughtful than those on the Hypothes.is annotations.

This would be an issue that could easily be overlooked.

Although this is deterring in the sense of open annotations being offensive, it should be noted that the internet is a public space.

This happened to me the first time I annotated. I actually found it interesting that our class did not have a private channel for this assignment.

While this is possible, more often than not, I have found in my WLU classes that students purposefully choose separate parts of the text to annotate instead of replying to other's annotations.

I can see how this would be helpful to many different classes and areas of study.

I do find having a private class channel to view my peers annotations to be helpful.

I imagine that grading forum posts would be tedious, regardless of how it is graded. It would be a lot to read and process.

I find that having open annotation does bring about different perspectives about text. It is interesting to see these differing viewpoints.

This is a unique way to analyze a text.

My son, who was learning to use citations last year, often had both of these problems.

This seems like research. When I design products I often look at the demographic of my audience but seeing this broken down into a method of transferring yourself to the natural environment to learn how they behave and to conduct interviews makes a basic demographic guide seem extremely detached.

This is nonverbal communication. When I renewed my CPI training, the new trainer spent a great deal of time explaining how to recognize nonverbal communication and how to react in certain situations.

Making sure you make the right kind of insight is so very important! Inferring the wrong thing from someone's actions can make a situation worse. I think research and time with people is the best way to ensure you are extracting the right kind of insight from different people.

As a teacher I find that these thoughtless acts or involuntary actions are easier to understand the more I look for them. As teachers we have to go through training to recognize signs of abuse or mental illness in students and this is very similar.

I wonder if this is from nature or nurture or both? Are these variations ingrained or developed. Or do some have more of a predisposition that can be nurtured or not?

I automatically thought about being at a football game! I have often been guilty of telling my husband that the people in the tv can't hear him, but I often feel the same way when attending my son's soccer games or wrestling matches. I met another mother once who told me that if she didn't yell, she felt like she would get sick. I think it is from the sheer amount of emotion. I also getting a little weepy when seeing my son play his violin or trumpet or hear my younger son say another word that wasn't in his vocabulary before. It truly does speak to humans as being empathetic by nature.

I wonder if this is why artists are generally seen as more cultured? As an artist, I do feel a closer connection to people and landscapes that I have drawn and painted, as if I am experiencing them in a different way.

I recently completed a book study on "Emotional Poverty" by Ruby K. Payne, PH.D. that explains reasons behind student behavior. Part of the book discussed the idea of the 'emotional classroom dance' that delves into the meaning of what students say and how they say it.

I had a teacher in my undergrad who told us she started her day looking at the news from her students perspectives to gain better understanding of what types of emotions and situations would be present in her classroom that day. As I get older and the generation gap between my students and myself get wider I find that I often have to think about students reactions to situations differently. I recently discussed with my husband and another coach, in context of coaching track, that these kids are built differently than we were. Kids aren't motivated in the same way the we were when we were students.

While this may be ideal for empathizing, it would be difficult to do this for every student in my building. This may be why we teachers tend to remember students who excel or cause trouble because we look into their lives more to examine the 'why' behind their behaviors, such as their parents/guardians or homes.

I never thought of sympathy as being detached or displaying superiority but when explained as project feelings of pity onto another person I understand better what sympathy means.