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.

Curriculum Review - Part 2: Establishing a Direction

Establishing a direction:

In order to do our curriculum review we needed to have a clear understanding of what we wanted our students to 'be' when they got to the end of Year 6. We needed to consult with our stakeholder groups what they thought a learner should be when they left our school. 

On the NZC Online Blog, a post titled "Graduate profiles - a vision for future-oriented learners,' states: 

Viewable at: http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-resources/NZC-Online-blog/Graduate-profiles-a-vision-of-future-oriented-learners

This post states that a graduate profile describes 'skills, knowledge and attitudes that students will need to develop in order to participate in a range of life contexts beyond school.' In order to progress we needed to explore just what this meant for us. To do this we needed to use our vision (to create: confident, connected learners who make a positive difference) to guide our community in developing a graduate profile that identifies the skills, knowledge and attitudes we want our leavers to possess. 

Below is a picture of my understanding of the 'flow.' The vision informs the graduate profile which will, in turn, inform the school curriculum. 

Time to consult with teachers, parents, BOT and students. Time to explore those voices. . . 

Curriculum Review - Part 1: What can I expect?

Getting started: 

Reviewing the curriculum is very challenging and I have had a number of false starts. Please refer to image below:

As you can see from the model above, "false starts" are a result of not having an action plan in place. Although I very much agree with this model, sometimes jumping into change can prove to be difficult - I know I have a tendency to over read, and think, for instance. This has the inevitable effect of me procrastinating because I want to make sure that I am doing things 'just right.'

In order to help me get things 'just right,' I spent numerous hours looking at the Curriculum Review section on TKI, trying to educate myself on how best to proceed. I found the following statement helpful.

Available at: http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Reviewing-your-curriculum/Setting-the-direction

Like anything that involves taking abstract ideas and multiple view points, and making them concrete, curriculum review can be a 'messy business.' This statement gives me hope and allows me to understand that sometimes you just have to march forward! Another statement, shared with me at the NAPP Conference in 2014, was from a presentation by Richard Edmundson. He said quite simply that, "change: Sticky, messy." I take comfort from both of these statements as they are clear in what to expect: a journey where in order to get the best outcome, I need to be prepared to be uncertain and take comfort in being out of my depth.

So here I go. I'm holding my breath and about to get stuck into the madness of curriculum review! What can I expect? messiness!

Making the Switch - Our First Four Weeks in a 1 to 1 Environment.

This year the Year 6 teachers at our little school in the valley have made the jump into digital learning. Our Year 6 students have purchased their own Chromebooks and bring them to school every day ready to learn. We have been planning to make this change for a long time and to finally see it in action, in classes, is fantastic.

When I was still in the planning phase of this initiative I recall speaking to a fellow educator about their journey. This educator said to me that when teachers at her school were making the transition they found it difficult existing in both worlds (physical and digital). Now that we have made this transition I find myself knowing exactly what she meant. There is a 'headspace' that you adopt when planning for a digital class and a 'headspace' that you adopt when planning for a more traditional environment. Trying to plan and implement a learning programme for both of these environments simultaneously  can provide an educator with logistical problems, to say the least. For example, if you decide to plan your programme digitally you can create access issues for students who do not have a device when they are trying to plan their day. A teacher could plan around this by printing out timetables and learning links for those who do not have a device. However, issues like this begin to eat into already valuable preparation time and, as every educator knows, we never have enough time! I realise that many schools do make blended models work, and I have seen many such excellent models in action, but all I am saying is that with ubiquity you have more resources at your disposal and more options for teaching and learning.

Planning is an area of my practise that is beginning to change. Rather than my planning being a sole record for me and my colleagues, it is now becoming a resource for students and parents. I used to fear this notion, but recently I have begun to enjoy and appreciate the importance of having your planning accessible to everyone, as it enables students to talk about their learning using the planning resource as a guide and scaffold. Parents can also use it to ask their child relevant questions about the learning at school. Is this not a valuable exercise? It is a work in progress at the moment but isn't everything? I must say that I was inspired by seeing what the ever-inspiring Point England School did with their planning programmes, which were accessible through their website.

Finally, I would just like to talk about the individual blogs that are slowly becoming widespread at our school. Having ubiquitous access to a device enables the power of blogging to come to the fore. I am excited about seeing how students are able to publish their learning and writing. Previously, when using devices with students, there were issues around access and reliability. I admit these issues were exaggerated because this was before our school's infrastructure was upgraded - our hardware was aging. This year, however, students have been able to blog when they want to blog! This gets their thoughts and ideas to the world more quickly. I am excited to see how this development continues in the coming months.

I have been enjoying teacher more than ever before in the last 4 weeks. Our infrastructure is good and reliable and I am able to plan without the fear of needing to try and fit a square peg in a round hole. I am able to focus on teaching, learning and developing student agency and I LOVE it!