Tony Ryan - Inspirational

How refreshing to have sat in on a dinner meeting session on Monday evening run by Tony Ryan. Tony reminded us of the important job and role teachers play in influencing our future generation. Teachers can make or break a students schooling experience. Most teachers make it, however I continue to be confronted with stories of students who were less fortunate. Bad experiences can scar deeply. I was reminded of this when I met with a parent this week who was concerned about her daughters progress. The mother sat before me with tears in her eyes and said 'I didn't have a good school experience and I don't want my daughter to experience what I did' It was hard to believe coming from a warm, caring obviously able mother sitting before me. Why does our system do that? How can we ensure it doesn't happen?
As Tony reminded us we as teachers we are in a priviledged position, a significant position. We need to be energised and passionate to influence and engage all learners. Our ability to motivate and challenge is crucial in enabling individuals to reach their potential.
Lot's of food for thought .... something I will ponder some more on.

3 Keys to Sustainable and Significant Change

Of late I have been thinking about the key enablers for driving significant and sustainable change in education. Often the most significant influences of change can be seemingly quite simple, some would say common sense.
The first important milestone of such change I believe is the creation of a vision. A clear purpose encompassing the organisations beliefs, desires and best crack at foreseeing the future. Such a vision needs to be created collectively and in wide consultation with all stake holders. The consultation needs to be authentic not tokenism, the child’s voice that states ‘stop teaching us stuff we already know’ needs to be heard, truly heard and reflected on. Most visions and mission statements are created and then put on the odd bit of letter head and shelved! A vision needs room to grow and live within the organisation. In an educational setting a visual metaphor helps to ensure the principles within it are owned by the key stake holders, and importantly our clients, our students.

Once a vision is established, a synthesis of up to date theory and research, current practices and trends needs to be conceptualised to prioritise a way forward. Strategic implementation of the vision principles and prioritises is essential. To successfully implement a vision I believe there are two important words to live by. One being abandon and the other embed. Current school practices need to be talked about and questioned as to their alignment to the vision. For example if a vision belief is one of empowerment then students not being allowed to use photocopiers or assessment measured that are done to students rather than done with would need to be questioned, and maybe abandoned. It’s not ok to keep adding more to the load.

When a vision is created and a strategic plan for it implementation established, thought and collective decisions need to be made about how that transfers to the student. After six years in your primary school environment what would you hope your students would leave being equipped with? What sort of dispositions, self worth and learning abilities would you believe were necessary for future success and satisfaction in life? I ponder often as to whether our expectations in a primary school setting are achievable and realistic. Julia Atkin’s question ‘what is powerful to learn? is a fundamental question to ask when living in an exponential information age.
Simply we believe at Red Beach School that students need to leave with four key concepts and understandings. These 4 concepts relate directly to the vision.

We are two steps of the way to implementing sustainable change. The essential questions addressed so far are;
What do we believe education is all about? (vision)
As a result of our vision what do we want our students to leave our school equipped with, being able to do?

Finally the third essential component to achieving sustainable change is to then ask what teachers and teaching practice will make this possible? What do we need to do as practitioners to ensure our vision principles live and our students leave our school living those beliefs. Teachers are the difference makers, they influence and have power beyond reckon to ensure the next generation will be our future leaders. I have not met a teacher who does not wake up each morning and want to do the best possible job they can for each individual in their class. How do we ensure our teaching practice is strategic, future focused and the best it can possible be to move all from good to great?

Visioning has such potential to gain clarity and provide a way forward when done well. It is a wonderful filter for informing decisions and ensuring alignment. From employing the right teacher to providing effective feedback to moving practice forward it is the essential driver of change.

The three steps to significant and sustainable change are
Creating a collective Vision
Decide on what a student should leave your school equipped with as a result of the vision
Create clarity around the teaching practice that will enable the student to leave as decided.


This is all wrapped in an organisational culture that has underlying norms of continuous improvement, deprivatising practice and ensuring learning is the organisations core business. In creating such a culture mental models are shaken up a little, narratives are shared to highlight beliefs and difference valued.

I believe we are in very exciting times in education. I sincerely feel privileged to be involved in such a dynamic and exciting vocation where I learn, think and feel challenged daily.

Life's Awakening Moments - Testing Times!

What a couple of fustrating weeks it has been. As you can see from the last post I have not blogged for some time. Interestingly this has not been due to not having time or procrastinating. I had my computer gear and internet connection stolen. Gutting to say the least - especially being a vigilent individual at backing up, the darlings stole that too. The hard drive itself may fetch $50 on some dodgy second hand sales site however the photos, songs, memories and personal work from the last decade gone in a flash - priceless to me. Well one can wallow in the sorrow for a wee while however one learns quickly that it doesn't solve much either. Lesson number one - don't store your hard drives and computer gear together. Duplicate backups and store in another dwelling maybe.
I count ones lucky stars, if it wasn't for the web the wonderings on this blog would be lost too!
I guess I continue to realise in some of life's trying times that these are the very experiences as hard as they can be sometimes that cause the most learning.
Am happy to be blogging again - I have missed it!

Assessment - Communicating a Balanced Picture

My previous blog entry talked about having a clear and easily articulated 'end in mind' for the students leaving our school.  The bit we are working on and haven't got quite right yet is what are we communicating to our parent body about how students are going according to the 4 major outcomes we would like students to leave our school equipped with.  For so long we have been so preoccupied with reporting on levels of achievement against curriculum areas.  What we have not been so good at is communicating a students ability to 'know what to do when they don't know what to do' or share a students level of competency in say their ability to investigate.  I think we need to take a hard look at current assessment practices.  A far more balanced picture needs to be presented to students and parents about what equates to success.  At the moment success in school and success in life look quite different.  Let's not let outdated assessment measures and methods hold back innovation.  A fresh approach is required to develop tools and e portfolio spaces that students own and manage.  As I was reminded of recently by a colleague, teachers come and go each year in a students education, parents hold the historic overview and students have the greatest potential to positively influence their learning.   When the necessary scaffolds are in place for example progressions that show students in 'kid speak' where am I and what are the next learning steps are.  Secondly when we grow students assessment literacy to know how to answer, how am I going?, Where am I going? and where to next?, students have huge learning power to achieve to their potential.  We need to strive towards communicating a balanced picture to encompass achievement as we know it and include a dispositional overview of an individuals learning capacity.  

Leader Vision or Collective Vision - Our Story

A vision is not a collective one unless all stakeholders are heard, difference appreciated and valued. We began by working collaboratively with the teaching staff of our school. There was the Board of Trustees, parent community and students themselves to share in the process. I believe we are often guilty of doing this well.
Our Board questioned us deeply about the chosen concepts and did not disagree with what the teaching staff had come up with they did however point out that we had missed a very important concept that the school had stood for historically. That was the word achievement.
A representative parent group was consulted with. If we had our time again would we have consulted more widely amongst the parent community? Was it representational of the whole community?
Our students were not consulted – this was a mistake. If we had our time again this would be changed. I think given what we have since learnt from our students we would consult them first.

One said 'Wisdom'

How refreshing today as I was striding around the neighbour on an afternoon walk I bumped into a past secondary school teacher.  It was lovely catching up after so many years.  As we are both in education the conversation soon led there!  We talked about how so much in education tends to over complicate matters.  We agreed that sound practice is common sense.  I then shared that simply there are 4 things we want students to be equipped with in our primary school environment.  He asked what are those 4 things?  I said we want students to; 

• Know what to do when they don't know what to do
  
• Know how to learn on their own (be literate)
  
• Be able to relate and connect with others and the world
  
• Have a process that helps them problem solve, answer questions and investigate.
  

My previous teacher said 'that's wisdom'.  Such a statement took me back - hence caused this blog entry.

These four holistic outcomes are very much based on the School's Vision.  They form a clear direction or what some might term an 'end in mind'.  It is far easier to plan strategically to ensure such outcomes are achieved when you are realistic, context specific (what's appropriate for a primary school environment) and that the outcome is manageable and achievable.  

Lovely bumping into you today Mr Mac - Teachers do make a difference!

Creating Wonderment and Awe

What a fun day I have had.  I joined colleagues to attend the Primary Science Conference today at Auckland University.  'Active learning: Science talk from the classroom to the dinner table'  The theme of the day has been very much about how to create talk around Wow! experiences.  How do we lead into science learning without 'filling in tables and following instructions?'  Many ideas and practical experiences have been presented as a motivating hook for stimulating questions, thinking and talk.

The use of Concept Cartoons (example above) was shared as a great way of engaging students in their own thoughts and explanations.

Steve Spangler - a must see website, certainly makes one go Wow!

I had great delight after the conference popping around to my sisters to show my niece and nephews how bubbles could be bounced when wearing gloves.  The amazement on their faces was priceless.  As I gave them time to play and explore the questions started coming!  The investigating was well under way.

Looking forward to tomorrows session - more on this then

 

Designing Understanding

Have been pondering in the last wee while about how ones knowing about something moves to understanding that something.  Am sure it's not as simple as having it knocked into ones self by  being dragged head first down the stairs like poor old Pooh!  How can learning and teaching be designed to intentionally deepen and support the construction of understanding?  It was incredibly refreshing to listen to Lane Clark last week as she talked about the layers of 'knowledge and comprehension' that are required for students to ask good questions, be able to analyse or pull apart wholes or see wholes as bits and ultimately 'synthesize' (Her definition of apply new ideas) and to achieve far transfer ('what is needed to solve future problems and make a difference in our own lives and the lives of others'). 

Simply in the powerful learning model we have developed 'The Hub' at the core of the Powerful Learning process has 4 key words - reflect, dialogue, question and imagine.  I believe these are key in slowing the learning process down to talk about, reflect on or question for example the matrix that has been completed on ......  

Through taking the time to use the hub students are given opportunities to make sense or meaning of their experiences, prior knowledge and the facts and ideas they are being presented with.  Is this surely not ensuring enduring understandings are acquired?  Is there much more to it than that?

Lots more wondering to happen in this area - your thoughts?

Learner Centered Leadership

In reflecting about a presentation I have been asked to deliver I decided to do some 'googling' to see what was out their on the topic of 'Learner Centered leadership'.  I came across the following article by Danzig et al.  Well worth a read outlines the qualities, beliefs and principles underpinning such leadership.

Chris Dolan writes about Learner Centered leadership.  Synthesizes what the literature says about leadership capacity and capabilities.  A short article well worth the read .

Leadership Change

What brings about change in someone's leadership?  Generally speaking people who move into leadership positions have been identified as effective classroom teachers.  Historically feedback such individuals  received as classroom teachers was affirming and positive.   They have typically achieved success by climbing the leadership ladder.  How do you give feedback to colleagues in leadership positions that does indeed cause reflection, challenge the way in which one does things and is rigorous?  

What feedback as a leaders have you in-turn  received that indeed goes beyond the 'stroke' and critically challenges ones thinking?  

How can such feedback mechanisms for developing teacher effectiveness be introduce at a leadership level.  What tools or strategies provide a springboard to 'reflective dialogue that moves leadership practice forward?

I was pleased to hear recently from a fellow colleague that the leadership matrix (previous blog entry) formed a basis for such dialogue to happen with her leadership buddy.  I think we have a long way to go however great to have a framework to trigger thought and reflection on ones leadership practice.