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

Staff Meeting of the Year - so far!

Being a foundation teacher at a new school is an interesting process. The 'nerd' in me thrives on all the developmental 'stuff' that is happening. Out of all the staff meetings we've had this year, today's was one I enjoyed the most - and not just because it all started with a visit from Mr Whippy - although that was pretty cool! There are two reasons why today's meeting really impacted me. One was because I've been thinking a bit about collaboration in Modern Teaching Practice, and two, because it gave me a chance to reflect back on our Hermann Brain Modelling and what that means to me now.


I'm going to start with number two. 

The focus of today's meeting was to begin the nitty gritty development of our Capacities (Key Competencies) further. It had been decided that these were to be based around the HBDI model, in that our business is to develop 'whole' children who can reach into each of the represented quadrants (Blue - analyse, Green - organise, Red - personalise, Yellow - visualise). 

Using our own experience from primary school, we had to think about what made a teacher memorable. Interestingly, many of our memories ended up in the Red and Yellow quadrants. My theory on this would be that a child remembers emotion and experience and doesn't know about the behind-the-scenes work a teacher does. 

However, when we were asked to think about the qualities we would like a student to have by the time they left in year 8, many more started to show up on the Blue and Green quadrants. My theory here, would be that the Blue and Green quadrants are perhaps a little more skills based (but don't get me wrong, because I believe you can learn strategies to be more Red or Yellow - or any colour actually), whereas, the Red and Yellow quadrants are more emotions based and we recall emotions quite strongly. 

So where does this leave me with my thinking about my profile? I am equally Blue, Green and Yellow with a little bit less Red. I get this - and I'm a big picture thinker. I have to know the details, I have to ask the question and if I don't know, I don't understand. For me, not understanding come out as frustration (I may or may not actually show this). Interestingly, the point of frustration comes out as quite emotional for me. I can get so caught up in something, sometimes the smallest of things, but I simply cannot move on until I've done the Blue/Green thing. For some time now, my biggest challenge is how to deal with the emotional bit - the getting from frustration to problem solving. I've tried many things. Nothing works quickly enough..... yet!

All of my dominant quadrants are satisfied by a thought-provoking meeting and even more so when it perfectly balances independent thought and collaborative practice.


How's that for a segway into the next topic!

I've been thinking about collaboration as part of Modern Teaching Practice. Collaboration is defined by Google as: the action of working with someone to produce something. I'm starting to define a bit more about what I believe collaboration is. 

So far, I think there's two main types: 1) The team all work independently on something and bring it together to share with others and 2) A facilitator fosters independent thought and brings it together so everyone has equal voice. 

Both types, I believe, have their merits. Organisation of events, timetables etc. are suited well to Type 1 and are a good way to distribute workload. This type of collaboration is generally easier to manage, especially if team members have expertise in necessary areas. Type 2, seems to be a powerful tool for fostering a shared understanding of beliefs and terminology. It is more time-consuming and requires facilitation (not leading), but it is essential to get consistency amongst a team.

The 'nerd' in me, I'm sure, will continue to enjoy the process and thought behind the principles of Modern Teaching Practice, as I continue to develop my understanding of what it's all about.

Addition: July 4 2015
This interesting blog post just released by Core Education's Greg Carroll reminded me of my previous thoughts about Collaboration. It continues to be a hot topic and a very intriguing one too! I feel like there's more to come.