Professionalism

Our teacher meeting this week was on the topic of Professionalism. Our guest speaker was Tony Burkin.

I thought it was a fantastic session. The one big takeaway I got from this session is that we are professionals. The emphasis is all too often on teaching practice - it is what teacher meetings are made up of and it's what appraisal is made of. Therefore, the perception by default, is that you are a good teacher if you can teach. The perception is only a portion of the whole.

It was easy to get caught up in the surface discussion of the session - the things you are allowed to do, the things you probably shouldn't and the things you aren't. Then there was the grey areas like drinking in public and crying. These have caused a lot of discussion amongst the staff and it's interesting to listen to the perspectives. 

But, there was more to the session, and the nitty gritty really is looking carefully at the code of ethics. 

1 - Commitment to Learners
2 - Commitment to Parents/Guardians and Family/Whanau
3 - Commitment to Society
4 - Commitment to the Profession

And the four Principles - Autonomy, Justice, Responsible Care, Truth




All of these can be broken very easily - missing deadline, not reflecting, making up awesome lessons when you have a scheduled observation, not reading emails, resisting change, poor punctuality, talking behind backs.... etc. 

The word of the day for me was Truth. I was fortunate to have attended an earlier session with Tony as well that talked about Truth being an indicator of a Growth Mindset. You have to be truthful to yourself and to others.

The session has certainly provided me with food for thought, and I'm pleased mostly to be thought of as a professional, but now there is a standard to live up to! 

Concept Curriculum

A few weeks back the teachers got together to discuss our Concept focus for 2016. 

I think it's important to think about why having a concept focus is important. The leadership team could probably add more to this, but I think the importance comes in consistency across the school (children having conversations about their learning with each other) and develops understanding of some quite complex things across a range of 'topics' and across the curriculum through an integrated approach.

This year our focus has been 'Change' - which was most appropriate as we embarked on the journey of our foundational year. Change is a huge concept to grasp, and across the two habitats, there has been some variation in the learning for the children. In the end though, it is evident that their understanding has changed a great deal.

At our meeting we were presented with a number of Pam Hook's Macroconcepts:

There is a number to choose from and we were able to select next years through a process of defining each one, 'selling' it to others and then voting.

However, it's not the children I want to talk about in this post... It dawned on me, that although we, as adults, have understandings of these things - developing our ideas around these is not a silly idea. One that really struck a chord with me is 'Structure'. As I grow and develop as a teacher and leader, I believe my ideas around structure are beginning to change.

The group defining structure came up with:

Structure in my head was the traditional model of hierarchy and control. It is only as I begin to understand models of leadership that I can see that although hierarchy remains as a technicality, the relationships, and the elements of the relationships (trust, compassion, etc.) allow structure to be much more complex. 

As I work through my journey of leadership, I will be keeping some focus on 'Structure' as my personal development in understanding this complex macroconcept. 

What Big Questions does it leave for me?
What is the impact of structure?
Where can you find structure?
How does structure form?
What would happen if we didn't have structure?
What causes structure to form?
What are the types of structure?
Why should we have structure?

Term 4 Reflection on Desired Reality

My January desired reality was:

I altered it slightly at the end of term one when I had a better idea of things. My goals were:
1 (continued from Term One) Develop a strong understanding of students and their relationships (personal and learning) in Y1-4.

2 Build effective and and interesting literacy practises to engage foundation (emergent) students into reading and writing.

3 Be proactive about interactions with parents

In the middle of the year I wrote about my progress on those goals. And now I get to do the final check off! It's nearly time to complete the appraisal process for the year and so it's a good time to have a think about where I am with my goals. 

I've really enjoyed the appraisal process as an on-going event. Not a scramble at the end of the year to check the boxes. It is especially important as being part of the foundational team to keep the culture of reflection and not lose sight of the "climate of possibilities".

1 Develop a strong understanding of students and their relationships (personal and learning) in Y1-4.
I have learnt so much about 'junior' teaching this year and I'm grateful for all the professional development opportunities I have had from the experts within the school, and also externally - particularly with literacy. I recall one of the SLT saying at the beginning of the year "you've all had children you've taught at Level One, the only thing that changes is the age." And, it is so true! I've really enjoyed my learning here and I hope I get another chance in the near future to consolidate my new understandings here.

2 Build effective and and interesting literacy practises to engage foundation (emergent) students into reading and writing.
This has been a big learning curve here and the biggest thing I've learnt is that I can, and need to, push harder. I've seen massive improvements in my literacy groups and it really has proven that 'if you focus on the learning, learning will happen'. 

3 Be proactive about interactions with parents
Wow, I'm actually a little bit chuffed with myself on this one. I was a little like this penguin in the video - but once I'd made a 'stumble' and was 'thrown in' I realised it really wasn't so bad. It's scared me for so long and I really don't know why. I've been making an effort to go out of the classroom at least a couple of times a week at the end of the day and mingle with parents. It's really not that scary and it's made necessary conversations so much easier and far less 'eventful'. Toastmasters has also probably helped a little with confidence too. 

I defined my job to be: to make learning successful for all students.
How did I go on this? 
I think all students have progressed this year in all areas - including growth in character. I have absolutely done my best job in achieving this with the time, resources and energy I had. Having said that, there is a lot of improvement that can happen from here. I feel like I've had too many focuses, and therefore flitted from one thing to the next. 

Development in reading has been one of the biggest areas I've focused on and I know a great deal more now, but I wish I knew it all from the start. Writing has been the area of least development for me, and the least satisfaction, yet it was probably one of the ones that I thought I would be more competent at. Maths has been great. I've loved teaching collaboratively all year and having the chance try different things out with my teaching buddy. My struggle is that with so many children I don't feel I know them as well as I would like to in terms of knowledge and strategy ability.

SPS Teacher Criteria and looking forward to 2016
I have also had a look at the teacher criteria I need to meet and reevaluated the progress I have made along the continuum. My appraisal team will be able to see this doc, where I had made judgements at the start of the year of what I was doing. Now I have highlighted my progress for each of the criteria and also my goals for next year.
Some of the things I will be working on (one from each area)

• communicating confidently, especially in leading difficult conversations
• coaching individual children to know their potential as well as to know they're supported in goal setting and action
• recording the actions I take from reflections
• knowing that children are engaged by the process of learning
• using the physical environment to show value to the learning process and children's work
• taking on a whole-school leadership role

Many of these things I am kind of doing, but have little evidence to prove it or I'm not doing them to a standard where I feel I can say it's being done. 

The first point will be my main goal for 2016. I feel it's a good continuation of my 2015 Desired Reality 3 and applies not only to parents, but to colleagues too. 

Term Three Reflection

Term Three was hard. I tried to write this reflection in the holidays and couldn't bring myself to it. I tried to write it during the first two weeks of Term Four and I couldn't bring myself to it. It's only now, that I've had a long weekend away that I feel ready to record my reflections in writing. 

It's not that it was a bad term - far from it. I even quite like a busy term, so it wasn't totally that either. But there was something about the term that didn't go right and I really can't put my finger on what exactly it was. Unfortunately, whatever it was had a snowballing effect and by the end I was making big about little things. That's not really me. 

It was a really odd feeling, it was like my head was full of fog and I couldn't see anything clearly. I didn't feel like I was doing my best work. I dealt with this snowballing by keeping the focus I had on the children and the team. I reduced whatever personal 'work' I could. I stopped tweeting as well as stopped publishing blog posts. There's a few drafts there that I will go back and review.

In an open space and ILE, your team are your flatmates. For 8 hours a day you 'live' with them. The are your support - like a machine in which all the components work together in a rhythm. Unfortunately one of our team members became quite ill for a time, and although no one is irreplaceable as far as work load is concerned, you do miss the rhythm that that person provides. 

If there's one thing I've learnt about this year, it's about teaming and collaboration. I've blogged before about the value of working in this way and I would find it very difficult now to go back to single-cell teaching. However, (and I'm very brave to put this out there) I do wonder if I'm the only one who sometime feels like it holds you back a bit. In some ways you can only go as fast as the 'slowest' person. Let me explain - when you're in your single cell you prioritise your next steps/focus: maths development, use of space, teaching technique, school belief etc. and you get on and do it. When you're in a team, each of you are still individual thinkers, so often your priorities will be different and two things can happen. One - you feel like your priority is not priority enough. Two - they all become priorities and then you feel overwhelmed because not only is there a number of different focuses, but there is a number of different people to bring on board. 

It adds a certain pressure to each team member because you're constantly trying to please everyone - and as the saying goes "you can't please everyone". Of course this is where a shared vision is essential and I feel most grateful that this is a constant focus of staff, teacher and team meetings. 

I would like to finish this post with some of the highlights of term three:
Skiing
CL conferences
Art PD
Pirate House Day
Open Evening
Flash Mob
The movement in some of my readers

Putting myself in the learners shoes

It turns out learning is hard. Especially if it is in an area that is not particularly 'your thing'.

I have a passion and interest in literacy and I mostly enjoy being challenged and put in the pit in this area.

Sport is not my area. And I have traumatic childhood memories of skiing. Nevertheless, I decided that it was something I should have another go at. 

Conditions were ideal - the sun was shining, there had been a little extra top up snow overnight, I had all the gear I needed and some supportive friends. 

I got out on the learners slope and was zipping up and down there in no time. It was time for the next step. The chairlift. This was my big barrier. But with some perseverance and grit I managed that - and experienced the joy that comes after conquering the pit. And to top it all off, I had been convinced that the bigger chairlift was just as easy as the smaller one.

And that's about where the good part of the day ends.

The mountain was too big. My legs were too tired. My determination diminished. I was trying to run before I could walk.

And will I go skiing again? Not this year.

I took away from this experience a few things as a learner.
1) Conditions have to be ideal in order for positive learning experience outside of someones comfort zone.
2) A gentle push is OK. But always take the smallest step to build the learner up.
3) When a learner says enough is enough - STOP now. It is likely they will come back to it and pick up from where they left off.

Can change happen in an Open Learning Environment?

A fellow tweeter posted this quote: 

"Great teachers change their methods min by min: while being staunchly consistent in their relationships with students."  @Charbonneau 

with their own comment, "One of the reasons I love my single cell classroom! I love change & are always trying new things!"

Naturally, this got me thinking.... The big question that popped into my head was, well if I'm not a single cell teacher does this mean I cannot change my methods and therefore I'm a poor teacher!?!? But it's more important to answer the little questions.

• Can I and do I change my methods min by min?
• Have I made changes since moving from single cell to open environment?
• Are my changes any less?
• Do the students 'miss out' because I may not be able to make an immediate change?

I think there are different levels to what you might change in a classroom. 

There are those days where students or the teacher is 'not feeling it' and so in the morning, or throughout the day you 'throw away' your planned writing and you spend that time doing something else - an experience that leads to great oral language, values building, skills in other areas, and then perhaps even writing about it at another time. In a single cell classroom, this can happen on a whim. In an open learning environment it can require a bit of communication but actually, there's no reason why the group of children your with can't have that opportunity too. As a school and a team we believe in the importance curiosity has on 'in the moment,' engaging learning and therefore it is always our best intention to have the children's idea and questions be the vehicle for any learning.

Then, there's the changes of groups. At this moment in time, with the phase we're in (phase - suggesting we're changing/refining the way we work), for some learning areas a student is assigned a mentor for that area. For example, I have a group of children who always work with me for literacy, they are 'my' literacy children. Within those children I DO frequently change their groups depending on their needs and pull them out for workshops based on that. This is not necessarily levelled, but based on their needs. What about between mentors? Well, overnight they move mentor groups. Assessment, planning and anecdotal notes (most importantly conversations) are open for all mentors to see. They are really 'our' children. And yes it does work even with high numbers - but that's a whole other blog post!

So what about within groups? Well that's easy. It's no different to a single-cell classroom. For example, if you're trying to teach subtraction and you quickly observe a student or students can't count backwards, you immediately change the learning purpose for those students.

Quite simply, I don't think I have lost any freedom. We are encouraged to be innovative, share ideas and make change happen for better learning. The team are always talking to each other and when you have support from others, I have found it's often easier to put change into place.

Am I lucky with the support I get from the team I work with? Maybe. Or is it the culture and expectation?

Word Power

With a background and big interest in most things literature based, I thought I knew a lot about literacy. That was, until I taught emergent readers.

At the beginning of this year, I volunteered myself to take our habitat's emergent readers on. It was a challenge I really wanted, and I really needed it to prove to myself my literary abilities. It wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. I think almost everyday I initiated a conversation with our school literacy expert, gathering little tidbits of information and help where I could. 

I'm feeling a little bit more confident now, and six months later I can see the progress in the children. More important than just noticing reading levels increase, I am noticing changes in their oral language, alphabet knowledge, phonics, concepts about print (that was something I had never considered before with older students!), listening, writing, the list goes on! More than that, I had taken it for granted for so long that children would know how to spell their first and last name (let alone what their last name actually was!), and would know about concepts such as beginning/end, opposites and that things had to make sense! It really has been huge learning for me.

I have been fortunate enough to extend myself through some professional development as well:

• A Ready to Read course (provided by Otago Literacy Association)
• Observation of teachers in our other habitat
• Observation at another local school in their NE-Y1 block
• Observation of our literacy leader working with my students
• In-house Teacher Meeting looking at ELPs Dimensions of Effective Practice
• Being observed with formal written feedback

The final one was a great way to finish the term and see some affirmation. It was great to see that:

• I'm doing a great job of introducing and de-bugging the book
• This children (but I think most/all) are really keen to read
• I'm encouraging correction through use of visual and meaning clues
• I step in at the appropriate time (this particular child can get quite stressed), but not too early to encourage learned helplessness

What does this mean for me now?

I need to allow the child to read on further (than I am allowing) to see if they can correct themselves and I need to show less hinting on my face. 

With the guided reading coming along reasonably well, my focus for next term is working on shared reading.