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.