Today I met Andrew Patterson in an online video and enjoyed his inspiration.
His main discussion was around building confidence first and creating experiences for children which make their desires in life seem like real possibilities.
He is inspiring as he loves disruption and having a go, trying big ideas, things that arent easy but are possible.
How can I create confidence in my students, and how can I bring more experiences based in the real world - not just the world they are born into - but the possibilities that their are in the real world, in the future world, into my students lives?
This week I was introduced to a rather long but relevant study by Wayne Freeth around the Reconceptualising of Leadership through the Revised NZ Curriculum.
Now the new curriculum has been in place a few years now, I personally have worked with this new curriculum for twice as long as I worked under the last one. But in reading this study I was once again reminded of the forward thinking that went into its concept. Thinking that has been somewhat forgetten.
Years ago when the NZC came back our school ran with it. We embraced change and looked at a new curriculum map for our school. We accepted the future focused themes, added our own communities values, and embraced the key competencies as important... And then got on with teaching units based on themes just like always. We simply headed the themes with the FF headings and tagged terms with a values and KC, like they are taught once a year and thats it.
Looking back, and looking at how our schools adoption of the NZC has developed since then, it seems we stopped thinking about the possibilities that had been opened up to us.
Reading this document reminded me of the importance of the few pages at the front of the NZC, the pages that seperate the skills learning from the competenices for life.
It is time to get back to looking at what the students need in skills AND competencies and working from them up towards the NZC objectives, rather than leadership picking topics they want our kids to do...
Its time to focus on knowledge as the verb... rather than knowledge as disconnected fragments of nouns.
What is our shared understanding of what a student in our school should be when they leave...
Is it only what they have attained academically that is valued - what about what they have become as a human...
Week two of Mindlab asks questions around the purpose of education.
What is the purpose?
What drives the purpose?
And how do we know we are creating opportunities for kids to be successful in their education?
We started by discussing an interesting venn diagram on the purpose of education which contained three circles.
1. Education as a means to give qualifications
2. Education as a means to socialise to customs and traditions
3. Education as a means to create subjective thinking (autonomous).
We debated the size of each part and discussed how currently the size of each changes from ECE to Higher education: where socialisation is the focus in ECE and Qualifications the focus of higher education.
We seemed to agree that subjective thinking was taught least in our schools, and that the norms, cultures and traditions our schools are teaching can be very upper, middle class European based. I wondered about the advanced social adaptablility of children these days as they move easily between the culture and traditions of home, to school, to friend groups, to online relationships, multiple family homes etc.
We looked at the 21 century learning Rubrics which cover the 6 important skills that 21st Century education needs to be teaching.
collaboration
knowledge construction
self-regulation
real-world problem-solving and innovation
the use of ICT for learning
skilled communication
Our videos show the steps of success towards achieving each of these skills.
Thanks to Neil, Kersty, Kath - Mindlab Rotorua
Thanks to Vanessa, Shaun, Aimee, Andrea - Mindlab Rotorua
Thanks to Clare, Graham, Brigitte, Liz, Marnel - Mindlab Rotorua
I will have to add the other skills videos created tonight, later, due to uploading issues.
Let the storytelling begin...
Last term we participated in Te Rangihakahaka, a professional development program to help Rotorua teachers become more familiar with and connected to the stories of Rotorua. During our Marae stay at Ohinemutu we learned and reheard the stories of Tamatekapua, Ngatiroirangi, Ihenga, Rangitihi and more.
I understood the value in these stories as a way to connect to this place I grew up in - Rotorua, and decided that the best way to confirm my own learning was to pass it on as soon as possible.
This week I became a storyteller - not a story reader - but a storyteller. I had had a go at telling Tamatekapuas story a week earlier, but had needed to keep checking the sequence of events and charaters names, but this time the story flowed. I was able to tell it freely with the best storytelling vocabulary that I could muster.
The reaction was great. The kids were transfixed.
My goal for the children was to introduce some of the major characters in Te Arawa history, and for them to take ownership of the stories so that they are, in turn, able to retell them. For this we have begun a few steps.
1. The kids drew or wrote as they listened to the story (backwards planning).
2. We retold the story orally in a group as a chain - each person telling the next part.
3. We wrote the story for ourselves so we could refer back to it if we forgot.
I hope to take it a step further later in the year and have the children retell these stories through multimedia for future generations.
The children really have enjoyed this first story and are engaged in their writing. I have yet to read the quality of this retell but I have seen an increased engagement in particular in a few of the Maori boys (J-R and S-R), writing screeds and screeds, and showing a strength in recalling what happened.
Epistemology, ontology, axiology, rationalism and empiricism...
Boy, have I been obtaining knowledge this week, including practising all my reading skills to infer meaning of new words from the sentences around them. It has been a while since I last read academic articles.
Mindlab Rotorua has begun with the small topic of
What is Knowledge?
and
What is the purpose of education?
Not such easy questions to answer but great questions to discuss with the open-minded forward thinking participants of Mindlab.
So what did we discover?
Video by Neil, Kath, Bevan, Anne and Kirsty. Our flowing river is representative of how knowledge is created and evolves over time. Our knowledge is always expanding, it can head in certain directions, change direction, bend and curve. Knowledge can become unused and drift into the small distributaries that break off the river. Along the rivers journey are the things that influence our knowledge and that our knowledge influences. Our knowledge is influenced by our time and place, by our beliefs and values, by our environment (our place in the world). Our knowledge collects facts, ideas and skills, as it flows. Some are caught up in the flow, others swept to the sides of the river. As our river of knowledge grows it can be used and applied to create more in the world, just as the river helps create the forests growing along its sides.
Knowledge flows and grows!
So what is the purpose of education then, if not to impart knowledge? Knowledge is so much more than school. Education happens regardless of time or place, but (we discussed) that its purpose is influenced by time and place. The purpose of formal education in western society, many years past, was elitist, it was only for 'certain' people, to keep them in power. Then it was to produce mass workers who knew enough to follow instructions and do as they were told to man the many factories. Now we want to create active members of society, contributers, innovators, citizens. And whats more - we are unsure what the society that they will be members of is even going to be like...
How do I see this 'new' purpose of education in my class...
I attempt to create a community of learning. A place where we all can make decisions about where we work and who we work with. Where everyone can be considered a holder of knowledge, and I promote children to seek knowledge from each other. Where we celebrate together, have opportunities to collaborate together, and time to share our strengths and passions with the group. I challenge children to take responsibility, to debate, to agree and disagree, and to feel they each have an important part to play in our learning journeys. School is no longer about sitting in one spot, producing the same work as the person next to you, listening without responding, accepting without questioning, doing without thinking ... Transformation is required.
