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The last post which is still as yet unpublished had at is focus the dilemma of working in the business instead of working on the business (or is it vice versa...).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