134: Jake Collins Talks PLC's and On-Line Support Tools

Mr. Jake Collins is a high school math teacher from Statesboro, Georgia. He likes "being in the classroom and seeing the light come on when the kids enjoy the mental exercise of mathematics." Additionally,  he knows that the kids don't always come to math classes excited about the content. It becomes his job to figure out how to make things engaging and to excite the kids about learning math.

Jake knows that it is important to give the kids different activities to choose from. He believes that this technique encourages more ownership by the kids of their learning. He also is a huge proponent of using PLCs to help teachers understand what the data is showing them about the needs of the kids they teach. Jake talks about the power of teacher collaboration.

Mr. Collins uses his YouTube channel to help him reach his kids and to help others with outside of the school day help. Originally, he did this to help kids get caught up who had missed class. Eventually, he discovered that all of his students wanted to use the videos to help them understand the concepts, not just those kids who had been absent from school. He creates clips of himself so that the kids can watch their teacher do the explanations. 

He and another teacher developed what they called Enhanced Learning Targets. He realized that the information that he was producing was becoming too cumbersome, so he needed a way to organize the resources, standards, and targets to help the kids. Out of this need, came the Enhanced Learning Targets which made it easier to connect the standards with explanations and videos as well as other resources. All of these are listed by date. Jake explains that these have become his pacing guides, curriculum maps, and learning targets. 

Think about how you could follow Jakes' lead and do similar activities for helping your kids better understand your content.

Jake is happy to talk with you so reach out to him at his email listed below.

Connect with Jake or find out more information:

jcollins@bullochschools.org

SHS Geometry

Here is the link to the case study.

This link takes you to the Enhanced Learning Target sample.

His YouTube Channel. Jake Collins or MrCoachCollins

Length: 39:19