Hackschooling

Another posting based on an interesting clip - this one focuses on a TED talk by a 13year old boy who discusses the goals and ambitions of the youth of today.  

As our own school year draws to a close, I have been discussing the question "What goals or ambitions do you have for one year or ten years?" with many students who are setting off to college. Not one has mentioned the ambition of "Being Happy", although maybe some were saying this in a more ambiguous way "make friends", "have a good job" etc.

As educators, we do constantly focus on preparing students for the next step in education. ECC educators getting 4 year olds ready for college, Primary Educators getting students ready for college and college educators preparing teens for university and onward to a job / career. 

While I know that this ambition and goal setting is essential, I do wonder if we have to make sure that our students aged from 3-23 are enjoying what they are doing in the process. Not all learning can be 'fun' and nor would I want it to me but the unmeasurable and unquantifiable happiness within each student needs to be developed and fed to prepare our future generations to live in an increasingly competitive society....

Anyway - if you have eleven minutes;

 

John Hattie - Expertise of teachers is the most powerful impact on student achievement that we can control...

The Black Bruins

Powerful Clip.

1. What makes this clip sound familiar to issues faced in this country?
2. Why are these issues worldwide?
3. Who is getting it right?
4. Why aren't we doing that?
5. Why does the majority of the dominant majority fail to grasp the fact at 4:10 above?
6. How can we give students the experiences and confidence to be able to share their personal voice with the passion shown above?

The Busyness of business... and student motivation

The last few months have seen a lag in my own posting on this blog. It was something I was keen to avoid - the inconsistent blog is almost as frustrating as the forgotten blog.

I have made several posts but none have got past the draft stage as when I have finally got around to editing and revising my post I am no longer in the same line of thinking - other priorities have taken over my thinking.

The last post which is still as yet unpublished had at is focus the dilemma of working in the business instead of working on the business (or is it vice versa...).

It is a constant struggle for many teachers and principals - especially the non walking DP at a small primary school. It is impossible to find the time to keep abreast of latest professional readings, fully analysing teacher performance and planning appropriate professional development for myself and colleagues, working on latest school initiatives etc. while still maintaining an effective class programme, completing standard managment tasks and having a Life!

It was a subject that I explored with various Principals last year during the NAPP programme - ensuring that you have time to lead as well as manage. At this stage of the year and term, my priorities have unfortunately pushed leading and learning about leading to the rear as there is too much management to do.

Student Motivation

Another topic that I have wished to explore in more detail is the importance of child centered and stimulating content for students - especially so in the Intermediate years. This term my students have started to debate with great fervour (Topics such as "Are Zoos ethically wrong?""Should SPARC have given $36 mil to Team NZ?"and "Should all tap water contain Fluoride?"). It has been quite a while since I have had the complete student led intrinsic motivation in learning that matches our debate work. Student have got indepth and passionate about their subjects - the standard Intermediate indifference is not good present.

Students have also been looking at the Bob Dylan song - The Hurricane and African American Spirituals a spart of our Story Telling inquiry unit. They have got intensely focused and keen during these lessons also. undertaking own research after school hours, impressive!

So why?
Why are these topics capturing their attention so well?

I think it comes down to fairness. Children have a strong sense of fairness - and combined with students reaching an age where they are keen start to form and express their own opinion means students are motivating in these areas.

I am keen to keep exploring how Fairness can be brought into other curriculum areas or content knowledge and used as a motivator.

Education...

I found a link via twitter to a school in AKL called Willow Park School, I was in email contact with the principal about a tweet when he sent me to http://my-learning.me/ - A website and pedagogy being developed by a young teacher at his school. It has sent me on a continual train of thought about the current state of education and its government led direction. The website is well worth checking out - I have browsed several times and am always left thinking.
I also rewatched a Ken Robinson talk which calls for a paradigm shift in education.


I am not entirely sure that I have my thinking sorted on what I think I think I think about any of this - so in the interim I will complete a small task that I have been asking my own students to do lately - See, Think, Wonder.

I see an educator who has a completely different perspective on education than most educators. I see an educator who has a strong vision and understanding for what education should be about.

I think that most educators would agree with at least 80% of what is being said by Sir Ken. I think that most educators lose sight of what is important in the day to day busyness of the job. I think that is quite sad.

I wonder how parents and communities would respond if a drastically different education was given to their children (I am not wondering about charter schools!). I wonder how teachers could reignite passions that would be required to create and deliver a different educational experience for their children. I wonder how it would be possible for this little country in the south pacific to take a step into the unknown and lead, instead of follow global trends for a change...

Writing this brief post has forced me to think about education from a higher perspective - It has convinced me that i need to find out more about pedagogies such as My Learning and create something new for my tamariki...

ma te wa!

Technology and Teachnology

I recently read an article that stated technology in education is useless without up-to-date and evolving pedagogy that suits the current century. 

I agree with about 60% of this statement. Ideally, technology will open doors within classrooms to ensure that teachers have new ways of teaching and collaborating with students in innovative and creative ways. Ideally, teachers will have the skills in using technology and the confidence in their own knowledge (and self) to adapt to current pedagogies. Ideally, technology will evolve every classroom in overnight. (Ideally technology will work first time, every time!!)

Technology in education has the capacity to transform the way in which we teach and subsequently the way in which learners (teachers and students) learn.

For technology to be helpful to the curriculum and to teachers in general, firstly teachers must have an awareness of how to use technology and secondly, see the benefits of pushing the boundaries and trying new things.

The awareness  of how to use technology only comes about through use. This is where I depart from agreeing with the other 40% of the original statement. Teachers need to be encouraged to use technology. This will have two positive outcomes

1. Student engagement in the short term will increase
2. Teacher knowledge and confidence in using technology will increase 

These two benefits will happen regardless of pedagogy model. I do not believe that we can shift to current pedagogies without having the teachers on board and competent in using technology first.

So while I agree that technology enables an open and expansive curriculum and style of pedagogy - teachers are still the ones in charge of the class programme to varying degrees. teachers themselves need to see the value and options created by using technology.

My revised statement:

Curricular and pedagogy can be greatly enhanced using modern technology, teachers must lead this change through developing their own knowledge of and confidence with using such technology.

Musings from the 'Naki...

I picked up the Taranaki Daily news on Monday morning and was a little disgusted in the opinion page:

Teachers' wrath at charter schools off the mark

It infuriated me on a number of levels - for the first time in my life I wrote a letter to the editor. (in the end I wasn't very happy with my letter as I had to try and constrain myself to 250 words - and I can be verbose at the best of times)

Two days later I can now see the opinion article for what it is, an attempt to rile teachers on their first day of the school break, a time when they would have time to write letters and discuss the opinion piece in more depth. Opinion writers obviously do try and get a reaction from the readership and in this case - the author was successful with me.

To summarise the article very briefly - It touched on many points:

1. Teachers are angry as they dont like Hekia; are annoyed that National Standards are uncovering poor teaching practices; and, 'have it in' for charter schools
2. The current system is failing its Maori and Pasifika learners
3. 1/5 students are failing
4. Teachers should want to try something new
5. Unions and Education departments are in cahoots all over the western world to bring down expectations of achievement to ensure that teachers are not uncovered as abysmal failures
6. Charter Schools have been successful overseas
7. His wife's insitution (Taranaki Educare) is already acting as a Charter school and is the Gold mine for what success should look like.

And now to summarise my response(s)...

1. I feel that teachers are angry with Hekia for some fairly decent reasons - poor communication, poor performance and poor consultation to name a few. For someone in her position - we expect more. I am aware that a Minister needs to make tough calls and not everyone is going to be happy - however, I am sure that many current ministers could have handled the issues with far more integrity that Hekia.                                          I feel that teachers are annoyed with National Standards - but not for uncovering poor teaching practices. Teachers are annoyed at the time and effort that has gone into introducing and reporting on National Standards that has little educational benefit for the students in our care. I do like aspects of the National Standards, but the New Zealand Curriculum (2007) in all of its vast open opportunity did not intend our curriculum to be shrunk down in order to produce nice graphs for the MoE and BoT's.   Thirdly, I would dare say that most teachers do not know a great deal about Charter schools - the limited amount of research that I have done has been fed from colleagues and others in my PLN that are anti charter schools. So all of the research that i have done personally has yielded negative results - It is also disconcerting knowing that the faith that this Government has in teachers is so poor that Charter school teachers will not necessarily be required to have any teaching qualifications. Schools have to jump through certain hoops for the MoE - most of which is good practice. We expect the same for Charter Schools.
2. I dont disagree in the slightest that Maori and Pasifika students are being under-served in the current education system. I have spent the last three years researching this and have a 30,000 word thesis that shows that I do care about this inequality. This inequality is happening in more places than just schools - it is happening in health care, the justice system, and all vital social indicators of a good life. What is happening in society that we allow groups of peoples to face so much inequitable outcomes? This is not to say that Schools are not at fault at all - schools are places that should be dynamic and reflect the communities to which they serve, too often this is not the case. There needs to be a systemic change in the way that every school operates in order to cater to the needs of its individual community. I believe the NZC encouraged that change away from Eurocentric schools with a top down hierarchy to schools as communities of learners who share knowledge and collaborate for the best interests of the students.
3. 1/5 students are failing - I am unaware of where these statistics come from but they are repeated frequently. I do not doubt them but am aware of the question - Failing What? Are the 1/5 failing in social indicators of Character that I wrote about here? Are the 1/5 failing Eurocentric standards of education? I am currently reading about work by Lyn Sharratt - who is focused on putting faces to the data. The students are the most important factor here - not the statistics (while i do not doubt the importance of the stats). If the government wants to invest in our future, it needs to put qualified educators on the ground with appropriate resources so that we can work with the faces of these stats - not just the stats themselves.
4. Teachers are constantly trying something new - this is where I realised that the author didnt know much about education and schooling. If there is not much movement toward something new- then leaders within schools should be pushed and led to be more welcoming of change. The issue here lies with conformity to MoE Negs and Nags while not wanting to make the job of Principal or leader within a school bigger than it already is. Change is not easy and is only made harder by the media who inform the general public that schools are not to be trusted.
5. I am unsure as to the basis of this claim. I will leave it at that. What educators and what politicians want can be vastly different things. I think I want my daughters' education in the hands of educators as opposed to politicians.
6. I still havent found this research? If someone knows,                                                             can they please direct me to it?      
   
7. I have no information about this institution.                 I encourage research to be done based on what is happening here - so that it can be rolled out in Schools across the country.                                                       This is the only point that the author and I agree upon.

RANT OVER - I can now get back to picking Mushrooms...

Fail Forward....

A link via twitter pointed me to an article from last October in Forbes Magazine about the importance of failure and its role in success.

I have always been an admirer of people who can rise from failure. I seek to be honest in my self assessment and critique my own practices with a keen eye. I know that through this honesty improvements can be made.

After teaching in four schools in NZ and relieving in various schools in the UK, I believe that schools can be breeding grounds of comfort (read complacency). Failure is the nemesis of comfort - indeed it is uncomfortable (If it isn't then there is something seriously wrong!). 'Failing forward' is even more uncomfortable, as it involves facing failure head on and focusing on the reasons for failure as a means to evolution. 

Although 'failing forward' is learning, and should come naturally for teachers, too often teachers can confuse their professional identities with their own beliefs of self worth and identity. This makes confronting professional failure all the more difficult.

If teachers were to be honest, we fail daily in our classrooms, and we can always be improving our practice. This is hard work and confronting, it is challenging and difficult. If it undertaken, it is worthwhile.

Another article read recently that focused on teacher observation as a form of PD. See it here on Luke Dyer's blog. At this school, all teachers were released on one day to teach a lesson infront of their peers (ie: each teacher takes a specific lesson infront of all other teachers in the school, before answering questions about their lesson, then repeat for each teacher). I think this is an amazingly effective way to both use the 'knowledge in the room' and to honestly improve (by failing forward) in a hopefully friendly and collegial environment. As was evidenced in Luke's blog, he seized the opportunity to be honest, to embrace the uncomfortable and learn, grow, develop - including effectively falling forward. 

I know Reading Recovery teachers use a similar practice with their own peers each year, they describe the difficulty and reward involved in this process.

While some schools may not have the correct structure in place to run whole day PD sessions as described above, where all colleagues observe and question one another, I do think that school leaders have a huge responsibility to act in the right direction.  

The right direction is striving to establish an environment where all staff develop the habit of honestly critiquing their own professional practices, observing and providing feedback to peers and embracing failure as a means to grow, develop and learn. Failing forward.

Grant Lichtman -

This was quite an insightful video for me... I found it very interesting and thought provoking. I encourage you to have a look.

A favourite quote of mine:

"Our students should be asking questions more than giving answers"

Half way through the video, I had to go and complete some researching on John Dewey - an educational theorist from the turn of the 20th century. If I had encountered him before, I had unfortunately forgotten this educational visionary. A quote that I uncovered could have easily been from the latest twitter feed, but was written in 1897:

The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these. Thus the teacher becomes a partner in the learning process, guiding students to independently discover meaning within the subject area. This philosophy has become an increasingly popular idea within present-day teacher preparatory programs.

I was of the opinion that the reform (for want of a better word), that I thought I was part of (the movement from "sage on the stage" to "guide on the side") was a movement away from teaching practices of the mid 20th century, toward a 21st Century model. How wrong was I? John Dewey was espousing such theory 100 years before I left secondary school and had no idea of the knowledge sharing and collaboration potential of the world wide web.

Check it out:

How Children Succeed: grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character... A Summary

The book 'How Children Succeed' provided a great means to reflect on the purpose of education and my own thoughts on what is important, not only in education but also in society. To help my recall of the book i made some notes as I was reading - these notes are in the post previous to this. For a slightly more indepth read - check out that post. 

The main learning that I took from the book was the importance of early nurturing and care as key factors on success later in life. While much of the book was focused on children and families overcoming the barrier of poverty in order to attain academic and life success, there was much learning that could be carried over for all children. 

A key aspect of the book, as the title would suggest is the role of character as important in providing the skills and attitudes that would outlive the mere knowledge that is attained in schools. While I would never doubt the importance of a sound base in educational skills, (everyone needs to be fully numerate and literate and have cognitive ability to problem solve) the book to raise my own consciousness of the need to foster character (in my own children and the students in my class/school).

While some of the americanisms in the book proved a little off putting, the need for students to be self regulating, resilient, determined, goal oriented young people was clear in its delivery.

The questions that have now been floating around in my own head since finishing the book a week ago - 
How can i provide authentic experiences for children to develop such character?
How can i provide the support and guidance for children as they make mistakes, and learn to stand up and keep going without being overbearing and controlling myself?
How can i share the importance of character development with fellow staff members and the wider community

The final question has provided much thought and i am keen to share ways with the parents of the preteens in my own class that they can start to support what we are working on in class - ownership, self control, organisation, self regulation, critical and conscious thinkers etc!

Thats all for now...

If you are keen to read / view a bit more about the book check out some of the links below.

For a brief summary provided by Bruce Hammonds - check out this link.
A Video of Paul Tough (Author) talking about his book: Check out this link or this link.
There are a few more good sites I've found on the topic here and here.

How Children Succeed by Paul Tough - A Summary

This book was brought on a whim, I heard about it thanks to Bruce Hammond's weekly leading learning e-mail. It is the first book that I have brought digitally.

The following is a summary, I will upload my own personal thoughts on the topics raised in another post.

It started off reading much like a scholarly text book, filled with references and dropping names I have never heard of. However a few vignettes started to appear that quickly caught my eye and grabbed my attention with the 'hit you in your face common sense' sensation. In order to retain meaning and keep a track of what i read i started ro create this summary.

I will not go into these vignettes and minor examples at the moment - but instead split the book into a few parts (the book itself is in five main chapters, however, I will split it up as I see necessary).

PART ONE
The beginning of the book looks at the single perspective that pervades our education system - and is coming more and more into the fore with the acceptance and reliance on National Standards - the single perspective being that cognitive ability is the sole purpose of schools. While we, as teachers have moved away from transmission model teaching in most instances - the focus in the media and from the government still ensures that schools are places to go and fill that pretty little head.

The second half of part one brings to the fore the role that poverty plays in affecting educational achievement. A number of blunt stats were raised, including:
A. The average number of words a 4 year old not born into poverty has heard is 40 million. The decreases to only 10 million words by 4 years for a child born into poverty.
B. The amount of stress that is faced by children born into poverty is exponentially greater than those born into more stable situations.

These facts outlined the role that stress plays in raising anxiety levels, increasing health deficiencies and decreasing the amount of time and attention that can be given to school.

Te answer that comes from Part One is the need to focus on developing character within students and families more than just academic knowledge.

PART TWO:
Part Two starts by looking at a study on rats where scientists noticed the differences in nurturing tendencies of mother rats. Mother Rats who licked and groomed their young when they returned to the nest were seen to be more attentive and caring - their young were more emotionally balanced and secure (they behaved more confidently in a number of rat situations!)
They measured parts of the rats brains and found that they had increased activity in certain areas.

This was correlated to humans with a focus on attachment theory. Children who were reassured and openly encouraged, given positive feedback by a parent or other adult with whim they had a strong relationship were more balanced and secure and More Likely To Succeed At School!!!

A second focus was on the evidence behind children who were able to delay gratification and the links between this habit and success at school and in life.

A third focus was the discussion about motivation and volition. While aspects of motivation can be taught/trained, volition is a harder beast to train. Both are needed to succeed.

A fourth focus shows the compelling link between conscientiousness and life success, more so than pure iq. From cradle to the grave people with high conscientiousness scores are healthier, wealthier and happier. Although, self control as part of conscientiousness has to be strong without behind dominant, an excess of self control creates bland sheep with limited creativity.

A list of seven characteristics were finally selected as representative of Character and predictors of success and happiness:

grit
self-control
zest
social intelligence
gratitude
optimism
curiosity

The discussion led into a split between values based character (respect, tolerance) and success based character (conscientiousness, self control). Both aspects being vital, but the second occasionally forgotten in lower years education.

There is a need for parents to encourage and foster high expectations of both types of character as well as academic success. Tough points out that many well off parents who provide pressure for their child to succeed academically will not provide the same pressure to develop any sort of character. It is a toxic mix, 'helicopter' parents who will save their child from failure (a necessary part of character learning) but expect their children to display character when in the face of academic adversity. These parents are putting the pressure on for academic success without understanding that character is an important part of success.

Whether academic or character development is the goal, people (including students) normally form one of three approaches:
1. Optimistic. See the end, enjoy the sensation of what life will be like when goal is reached. Not actually very useful in itself.
2. Pessimistic. See all the obstacles. Not very useful.
3. Mental contrasting. Both of the above combined. Also involving implementation elements- if/then statements that allow students to overcome obstacles and focus on the reward at the end. The only effective way of planning toward a goal

Identity and self efficacy obviously play a role in success. Tough discussed a number of studies that focused on students getting identity cues before sitting tests. Students who believed their cultural group was good at a task raised performance whereas students who believed that they were part of a group who were not good at a task lowered performance. This only proves to reinforce stereotypes.
The way to get around this as teachers/ parents is to constantly reinforce the idea of intelligence malleability before tests. Everyone can improve their intelligence.

PART THREE:
Part three brings in a couple of anecdotes about a charter school 'franchise' called KIPP. The state of students and their families is brought into focus and the role that character development plays in success. Parallels to the KIPP Anecdotes are given about an underprivileged Chess team. The chess team are unrivaled in their success and the teacher in charge is an unlikely guru who unknowingly utilizes many of the character aspects above when coaching her students.

Links are made between the brain analysis description early in the book and the learning that can be found in the chess anecdotes as well as in the description provided of 'One Goal' (an intervention programme run for at risk youth to help them perform at college).

“Noncognitive skills like resilience and resourcefulness and grit are highly predictive of success in college, And they can help our students compensate for some of the inequality they have faced in the education system.”
Jeff Nelson - CEO 'One Goal'

Nelson identified five skills, "Leadership Principles" that he wanted One Goal teachers to emphasise: Resourcefulness, Resilience, Ambition, Professionalism, and Integrity.

Students need to be aware that intelligence can be improved (Children who had this message alone drilled in to them prior to test taking achieved greater than peers who did not receive the same message) and likewise, character (in all of its forms) can be manipulated and developed, it is not static.


PART FOUR

• Character can and should be developed from infancy. Protect children from serious stressful trauma and provide them with at least one nurturing relationship with a parent.
• Toddlers need to develop the ability to calm down after a tantrum or scare - this occurs when a child feels safe and secure. Children on edge, are not in a position to develop their character (have their character developed?).
• All children need to be taught how to manage failure, front up to it, own it and LEARN FROM IT
• Teacher quality is important in education and child development - second only to a stable, nurturing and loving home life. The impact of quality teachers (and as a result, less quality teachers) is not to be taken lightly. In any given year, teachers can spend up to 800 hours with a child - quality teachers use the time to develop relationships, foster personal growth and master academic achievement.
• BUT... it can be a distant second to that secure, stable, nurturing home life when the home life is none of the above. Government and Society a a whole needs to address issues that are facing our young people who grow up in some families in order to both save these children and minimise the negative impacts that these children have on society when they grow up.
• The statistics of American socio economic based interventions show that the success is again largely dependent on wealth. That is, even within the band of peoples described as "poor" the more well off in this band have the desired outcomes, where the poorest of the poor seldom have success at such interventions.
• Tough acknowledges that talking about the influence of family on the success and failure of poorer children is an uncomfortable proposition but one that needs to be addressed at a societal level.

If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got

Last Wednesday I attended a Learning and Change Network meeting (a new national project designed to engender shared consciousness of the dilemmas faced in schools and possible solutions for each, making strong networks and utilising the knowledge in the room). It was a good start to a hopefully positive experience for myself as a leader of change and for staff and children at SHP -

A collaborative discussion started our first meeting and one part that struck me was the collective groups ability to break down the invisible barriers in our minds that often limit institutions such as schools (The dreaded "we've always done it this way" mentality). We briefly shared a couple of targets that we might set for our school and then posed deep questions for others. This brought me back to an interesting video I saw last week (thanks twitter PLN) - The purpose of school has changed in the last century and decade - have the schools changed to suit the purpose? or do we continue to do as we have always done?