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.