Article: Rethinking Classroom Observation

Rethinking Classroom Observation 

My takeaways from this article: 

1. Observations are based on an observees questions about their OWN practice. 
2. Observation make use of the following data: Scripting, counting, tracking. 
3. best case scenarios involve more than one observer using a combination of the data gathering methods. 
4. Observations should be teacher driven. The observee is in control. 

Ted Talk: Increase your self-awareness with one simple fix.

The principal at my school shared this video with me. It's excellent and I agree with the speaker Tasha Eurich.

My take away from watching this video:
When self examining/reflecting, change the word 'why' with 'what.' This has one effective impact, it changes the nature of the reflection from being supremely internal to external.

With the internal downward spiral:

1. We wrestle with our invisible selves. 
2. We find answers the 'seem right' but may not be, 
3. We go into a mode of potential self destruction, 
4. We make it all about us. 

as Tasha in the video says: 

1. Thinking about ourselves isn't knowing ourselves,
2. No matter how hard we try, we can't excavate our unconscious selves.
3. It leads us away from our true nature,

With the external upward spiral: 

1. Find real tangible solutions, 
2. Our problem solving becomes pragmatic. 
3. It helps the reflector glean insights that are actionable. 

Growth Coaching: Pre-Observation, Observation and Post Observation Conversation.

Session time: 3:00 - 5:00 on Wednesday  1st August. 

Our challenge at the moment is integrating Growth Coaching with Teaching as Inquiry. In this post I will particularly be looking at how we can use teacher observations (in the context of Growth Coaching) as a tool to support teachers in moving forward with their inquiry. Something that is a particular challenge for me is perfecting the art of designing an observation that will best meet the needs of the teacher to help them move forward in their individual inquiry. There! I said it!

The following is my current understanding: 

Pre-Observation Conversation: 

Purpose: To get the focus of the observation, to determine the time of the observation and establish the role of the observer and teacher in the observation.

Observation: 

Gather data: By scripting, counting, tracking.

Post Observation Conversation:

This should lead into a growth coaching conversation at its conclusion. Remember to have a coach/coachee talking ratio at 20:80. This last one of these I did was 40:60. I'm getting better but I'm still not good enough. The coach must not 'feedback' but rather invite the coachee to reflect, examine the data and develop next steps. 

Please refer to image: 

Coaching Leadership Afternoon Session - Part 1

Inquiry: 

This image breaks down inquiry into 3 simple steps:

1. Driven by desire for improvement, 
2. Starts with a question you don't know the answer to, 
3. Should involve effort to answer, 

One key question that emerged for me after the PL: 

If you are working on collaborative inquiry, how do you ensure goals are tailored to each individual in the team? 

Coaching Leadership Professional Learning - Part 2.

Some of my thoughts on Feedback (one of the 8 key skills of coaching)

Giving feedback is one of the 8 key skills of coaching. For this reflection I am going to focus on the skill of giving feedback. Giving feedback is something that can cause me great difficulty. This is often because I worry about hurting the feelings of the person that I am giving the feedback to, especially if the feedback feels personal. I typically have used the 2 positives and one next step method or the sandwich rule but have often found this to lend itself to the ‘dump and run’ method of giving feedback - I have a tendency to use it as the end in itself. 

How not to give feedback!

The skill of giving feedback in the coaching model uses the fantastic metaphor of the ‘feedback bridge.’ Feedback is an obstacle that needs to be crossed in order to have a coaching conversation. It is a framework that allows the coachee to hear feedback. Often this is information they may have not heard before. The Johari Window illustrates the purpose of feedback excellently. The purpose is to make the unknown known. E.g. if you look at the model below, ideally feedback should make the 'known to self' window bigger as this enables the the coachee to be in a better position to have a coaching conversation.

In a nutshell: feedback is a means to an end not an end in itself. Never dump and run! 

My Goal for this Year - 2018

My Smart Goal: 

By the end of Term 1 2019, the ODS Curriculum is realised and is a comprehensive document that has been developed and is being used by teachers at ODS.

Understanding by Design - Part 2 (31/03/2018)

In part 1 we looked at how we have to stay focused to ensure that everything in our plan tracks back to the transfer goal.

In this post I will look at:

1. how transfer differs from understanding, 
2. developing our own transfer goals, 
3. how will the use of transfer goals fit into our school curriculum and the New Zealand Curriculum. 

How Transfer Differs from Understandings:

Transfer goals and understandings. I was stuck for quite some time trying to understand the difference between these 2 terms. Put simply transfer is about doing. More specifically, doing in the long term. For us this means - when students leave Year 6 what do we want them to be able to do.  

Understandings are about concepts. they tend to be abstract ideas. They can vary in complexity and lend themselves to differentiation. They must be framed with the following sentence starter . . .

Students will understand that. . . The reason for this is so the understanding can be framed in way that offers richer learning opportunities for learners. For example, 

If we said:

"Students will understand the perspectives of the treaty partners" we can miss opportunities for scope.

If we said:

"Student will understand that perspective influences understanding" we would have a much richer idea to explore. That is the power of that.

Developing our own Transfer Goals:

Transfer is what we want our students to be able to DO in the long term. For Oratia this means, what do we want them to be able to do when they leave our school. When students leave Oratia at the end of Year 6, that is our long term. When the ODS Curriculum Working Group is formulating transfer goals they are being developed with the follow sentence scaffold. . . 

When students leave Oratia, they will be able to use their learning to . . 

The working group is developing school-wide transfer goals that are subject specific (NZC) and cross disciplinary (ODSC). In our last session we developed a range of Social Studies transfer goals. We are trying to have just 3. Trying to whittle them down can be difficult. Here is an example of how we may be able to whittle down our transfer goals..

Transfer goal 1: 

When students leave Oratia, they will be able to use their learning to use their understanding of Tiriti o Waitangi to empathise, understand and relate to others, 

Transfer goal 2: 

When students leave Oratia, they will be able to use their learning to reflect on and make sense of their own identity and heritage.

Can we combine both of these transfer goals to have just one? Here is my attempt. . . 

1. When students leave Oratia, they will be able to use their learning to use their understanding of tiriti O Waitangi and their identity to  empathise, understand and relate to others. or, 
2. When students leave Oratia, they will be able to use their learning to use their cultural awareness when interacting with others.

This is quite difficult! Does the term cultural awareness in this statement capture identity and tiriti o waitangi? Something to think about perhaps. As you can see, developing transfer goals can be difficult. 

how will the use of transfer goals fit into our school curriculum and the New Zealand Curriculum. 

Transfer goals can be subject specific or cross disciplinary. Therefore as part of our process we are prioritising the aspects of the NZC along with our school curriculum to develop our overview of learning that occurs at our school. All of this filters towards our graduate leaver profile that we spent a big chunk of last year developing. Slowly all of the different pieces of our new curriculum are coming together. It's getting very exciting. 

Piritahi Marae - Friday 23rd March

Some of my take aways from our learning at Piritahi Marae on Waiheke Island with Jan Robertson, 

Morning: 
The Waka Ama Metaphor.

Exploration of this metaphor and how it relates to leadership. 

1. Environment changes - people in the waka need to adapt, as a team, as the external conditions are changeable.

1. One person in the waka can upset the rhythm of the waka if they are not contributing fully. Leadership needs awareness of this. 

1. Have the end goal in mind, you are all working together to achieve the same thing. Everyone in the team needs the same vision. 

Maori achieving as Maori:

What does this mean? This is an idea where NZ educators need to look internally and invest in educating themselves. Do we know the iwi of our Maori students? What is their marae? 

Understanding by Design - Part 1 (27/02/2018)

Today we had a session to help our working group develop our understanding of Understanding by Design. Here are some of my take aways from the session.

We get scatter brain and loose focus: 
In the planning process we must ensure that everything filters back to the transfer goal. EVERYTHING.  I have created this mind map as my way of understanding it. This is somewhat different than the planning template and I think better illustrates the pathways towards transfer through each understanding. It separates out all the pathways towards transfer through each understanding rather than grouping all the understanding together, essential questions together etc. You can refer to the map towards transfer and the planning template below.

Map Towards Transfer.

Planning Template

Spend HEAPS of time on the stage 1. 
The first page which requires development of the Transfer goal, Understandings, Essential Questions, and Knowledge and Skills takes a long time to develop. The more time spent on the more focused the rest of the plan gets. Basically, put in the hard yards up front and then it gets easier.

Collaboration is easy with this process: 
A group of people can do the first page and then go in quite different directions after that. The fist page will normally develop a skill/concept and then the context can vary.

Works in well with our school curriculum and the NZC.

Imogen's Artwork

One of the great joys of being a parent is displaying your 
child's art work around your house. We intend to get some of Imogen's pieces framed. Abbie led me around the house this evening and we admired some of the work Imogen currently has displayed. Here are 3 of my favourite. 





The Unicorn: 
This is one of Imogen's most recent pieces. Paint on A4 printing paper. I think it has a fabulous use of colour and bold agressive brush strokes. This picture is displayed proudly on our fridge. 

The Bug: 
In this picture, Imogen has taken quite a different tack from the usual acrylic paint on paper. She has simply used felt. The contrast of the black felt on the brown butchers paper is very striking and has a popping quality. It reminds that viewer that a bug can 'pop' out from their surrounding environment without warning. This piece works on many levels. It too is also displayed on our fridge. 

The Pig: 
This is perhaps my favourite piece. It is watercolour on A4 printing paper. The use of just two colours is a bold move and the resulting image is somewhat abstract with the outline of the pig becoming hard for the eye to follow at times. This was perhaps the artists intention. The pig seems to be taunting a possible character that we, the viewer, can't see. Is it the wolf? We will probably never know. I like to think that this little piggy is on its way to the house of brick to be with his brothers! This picture too is displayed on our fridge.

Coaching Leadership Professional Learning - Part 1

GROWTH Coaching Leadership (February 21st 2018)

This morning we were asked to place ourselves on a continuum. If we placed ourselves on the number 1 it meant that we knew nothing about GROWTH coaching. If we placed ourselves on a 10 it meant that we were experts and confident in GROWTH coaching.

I placed myself on a 4. Here are the reasons I placed myself at 4.

1. I know what the GROWTH model is
2. I have used it. 
3. I have an understanding of how to coach a colleague using this model (albeit limited at the moment). 

The idea of completing this exercise is gague the progress we made individually over the day by reflecting on whether we have moved up the scale at the PL's conclusion. 

At the conclusion of this PL I have moved up, dare I say, a couple of points. Here are my take aways from todays session. 

Knowing what coaching is

Coaching Vs Mentoring, this is what we spent much of the morning discussing. Currently, I am finding the push/pull metaphor helpful. Mentoring: you are giving someone a 'push' in the right direction, being directive. Coaching: you are 'pulling' or 'giving a hand up' but the coachee is coming up with all the solutions. I love this image that illustrates the difference between the 2 quite well.

(http://www.gtcs.org.uk/professional-update/coaching-and-mentoring.aspx)

Questioning

I love the idea of coaching being a soundboard! Questioning is the tool is which to do this. You don't want to be a coach who inserts themselves too much in the discussion. Everything works best when it comes from the coachee. The next step for me if to experiment with different ways of questioning that will allow me to naturally use the GROWTH coaching model.

Listening

This is something that I need to work on! often when I'm listening I have trouble get all of the white noise out of my head and therefore, become distracted. . . This is a side effect of working in a school. I am getting better at recognising when I'm doing this and self correcting - definitely have plenty to work on here. 

Goals

Setting a goal is the foundation of all productive GROWTH conversations. Wording an 'ISMART' Goal by using the following simple sentence starters: 

1. by, 
2. I am/have,
3. so that. 

Here is my example of an ISMART goal: By Thursday, Week 10 in Term 1, I have developed learning progressions to support our school curriculum (the dispositions under the key components of THINK, DRIVE SHARE) 

so that 

1. Teachers in the new curriculum drive group can use it to inform their UBD planning

2. students have voice and can reflect on their progress in relation to the school curriculum goals and the progressions can be reviewed with teachers/students/community.