Being a parent is tough...

Celebrate world teachers day on the 5th oct

Most of us with children have 1 or 2, maybe 4 or 5 children to look after. Can you imagine having 30 children....

Take a minute and imagine your life if you had been blessed with 30 beautiful and individual children.

Imagine remembering when each of your 30 children had activities to get to, imagine ensuring each of your 30 children are eating right, and drinking enough.

Imagine the clothes and shoes 30 children leave everywhere, and having to get each to pick up after themselves.

Imagine how many times you may need to remind 30 children to wipe their feet, blow their nose, put away their things.

Imagine cleaning up 30 children's accidents when they are still learning to be independent toileters, and eaters.

Imagine being there for 30 children to talk about the problems they are having with their friends as they get older.

Imagine trying to give each of your 30 children some individual attention, being their cheerleader when they do well, their energiser when they just don't feel like it, and their support person when things go wrong.


Can you imagine wanting and hoping that all 30 of those children are feeling happy, feeling able to contribute with confidence. That they will learn what you are trying to teach and that they will grow up happy, healthy and wise.


Imagine worrying about your children who aren't socialising as you would expect, who are having difficulties learning, who seem to have the weight of the world on their shoulders.


If you can imagine all these things and more, then you can imagine the life of a teacher. Don't forget to show your appreciation for the time, love and caring teachers have for those 30 children, in their care, each year.

Teaching as inquiry

Each year of teaching I am excited with the new possibilities. A new group of students, a new level, a new room, new ideas for teaching and learning. Each year I develop as a teacher and am amazed at how much new knowledge around teaching I gain (and how much more I miss - because I have to STOP and do something else). When I look through all the notes I've transferred to my private RTC blog, around all the topics I have read about, researched, watched videos on or discussed with others, I see such a wealth of things through which I must make choices and decisions, adapting ideas to suit the needs and wants of the particular group I have this year. It is mind boggling how the brain never loses space for new things.

The Teaching as inquiry process has become a part of teaching. The difficulty in this process is narrowing down the multitude of ideas and topics of inquiry that one looks into each year, and choosing just one to spend more indepth time collecting and collating data and research around. Each year this hard decision does get made, and the focus taken. As these inquiries do involved specific data of individual students they are not published here, but can be seen with permission on my private blog. (see Other RTC)
Here you will also find the multitude of topics and ideas I've researched over the last few years that have been worthwhile enough to note down.

Confidence and Purpose

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?

The Place of the New (old) NZC

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...

What is Educations purpose?

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.

Te Rangihakahaka

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.

I hope the next story gets a similar audience.

What is knowledge?

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.

Day 15- Name 5 strengths you have as an educator

Obviously keeping to this blogging challenge is NOT one of my strengths, after a stall at day 6. But I will try to get back on the horse and try to catch up a few of the missed posts over the next few days.

Today topic is to talk about my own teaching strengths. I'm thinking this question might be a little challenging but here goes...

1. I am a quick learner which means as an educator I am able to quickly pick up new learning, whether it be an assessment tool, a new curriculum, a new programme. I feel I am able to learn about these new things quickly and  independently and then work out the best way to implement this in my class.

2. I am able to make links to prior learning for the children. I find during topics I am always seeing ways that new learning is connecting to the old, and helping children to see how learning is connected.

3. I am adaptable. I am able to judge the moment and make changes to better suit the children's readiness at any given time. I am also adaptable to changes in school wide timetables, they don't throw our class programme, we will carry on with something else we planned to do.

4. I am a risk taker. I am not afraid to try something new. I like to explore ideas with the children in my class, to get them involved in what we are doing between 9am and 3pm. I have brought e-portfolios into my school, explored my own version of Daily 5 and wrote a picture book with 6 yr olds.

5. I am a learner. It is almost an obsession with me, but I love learning. I am always researching things I can do with my home, with my class, management ideas, reading programmes, new technologies, passion projects... Anything that peeks my interest.

Wow...I did it. I found 5 things I think help me to be a good educator.

How time Flies...

A year came and went... and now I find myself suddenly in 2015. Last year was a great year. I was fortunate to be allowed to teach a new entrant class. It was a year of awesome learning.


- Team teaching taught me that two is better than one. Teaching together with an experienced new entrant teacher made my transition to this age group seemless. I was able to build on my teaching philosophy with a likeminded peer, who instilled in me her knowledge and belief in the value of play. We complimented each other with our teaching strengths, and had an amazing time.


- Five years olds taught be about the power of the human brain. Boy, do five year olds learn a lot in just 10 months of school. I feel all teachers should feel the success you feel as a teacher when these little sponges suck up all the information you can put out there. I can't wait to see how these children grow through out all their years at school.


- My inquiry in Maths taught me that five year olds can go beyond what is expected of them. By focusing on remembering an using basic facts, my five year olds we able to start thinking in patterns, and using information they knew to solve problems. Very exciting. I am hoping to test my ideas of skipping past counting on, by promoting use of facts straight from the start, again this year with my year 3 maths class.


- My colleagues taught me that teachers are resilient, risk takers, who are modelling these traits to their classes. I was very pleased to hear that all the year 5/6 teachers(my team I had just left) were willing to throw their hats in and have a go at using GAFE for the first time with their students, and manage individual student blogs. The learning curve was enormous for some... but they made it through with each others support, and said they would never go back.


- I taught myself that teaching can still take a backseat to life. Through having another teacher to share paperwork and teaching with I found I got my weekends back. With two of us working hard Monday to Friday I was finally able to use my weekends for rest. This year I have looked carefully at what helped us to achieve this last year, and am attempting to implement efficient was of meeting teacher paperwork, so I can continue having my weekends to myself this year.


So that's my wrap for 2014.


let the adventures of 2015 begin...

Day 8- What is in my draw?

This question makes me laugh, and I hate what it might mean about me. But in my teachers desk draw right now is

- a packet of staples that don't fit the stapler

- a calculator

- a couple of notepads (gifts from children past)

- some split pins

- some old post it notes

- and a couple of other random bits and bobs.

Why my draw is so empty and disused is probably a better question. You see my desk is tucked away in the corner of a shared office. This small room is well used to store my own and my colleagues teaching resources. It is wall to floor with shelves and boxes of the stuff we use to share a love of learning with our students.  We are both firm believers in creating space in our classroom, so the children have room to move, play and interact comfortably. So our office has become a great storeroom. To access my desk draw, I need to climb over a box and a chair, move containers and I'm there. Hence a very disused draw and desk that is for holding boxes. Who needs a teachers desk anyway...

Day 7- who was your most inspirational colleague.

This one isn't so much a colleague of now, but an inspirational teacher of the past.

Ms B is what she was known as in those days.

She was relaxed, down to earth

She inspired us to follow our interests

She loved animals ( we had mice and pigs as class pets).

She was fair and kind.

She smiled a lot.

It was fun to be in her class and I was lucky to be there for 2 years.

I built a Marae, and rolled hundreds of papers into bones for a human skeleton, I cleaned pig wee off the floor. A few of my memories of this time in her class.

Day 6 - What is a good mentor?

This one can be answered in bullet points.

* lets the mentored try new  things 

* supports the mentored to find their own solutions and answers

* supports reflective practices

* is reflective of their own practise and can model ongoing learning

* someone who upholds a school ethos, and values

* someone who is open, honest and non-judgemental.

That would be a good start to a good mentor.

Day 5 - A picture of my classroom

This blog might have to wait a few days till I go into school to get its picture but...

It's an interesting concept this year as it is not just my classroom. I team teach this year and therefor the design of the classroom has been shared. My ownership isn't as strong as when I have my own room. This is probably also accentuated by me handing over main responsibility to class aesthetics to my co teacher who is very artistically minded.

I like that our room isn't cluttered. I like that we have tried to make space (32 five year olds need lots of space), I like that student work is up but not overdone. I like that the space is practical. I see tired rooms in need of a spruce up. I miss my old room with different learning areas (I had low benches, couches, beanbags, tables and desks). I wish I could be given a furniture budget and design a multifunctional space for myself and my class. I think schools should lease furniture on short term leases and each year a teacher can choose what to re lease and what to change based on their budget, classroom size and shape, year level etc.

Wouldn't that be great.

Day 4 - the thing I love about teaching.

The thing I love the most about teaching, and it's the thing that drew me to teaching, and that is the fun.

Hanging out with kids, seeing the joy in their eyes, playing, singing, dancing and acting the fool, getting involved. That is the fun of teaching. It's kicking off your shoes and racing your kids down the field, it's building sand castles on the beach together. That is the fun. It's enjoying a book in the library, juggling, trying to hula hoop. That is the fun. Saying tongue twisters, reading in funny voices, folding origami frogs. That is the fun.

It's those little moments when you take off your serious "let's learn about..." boots and just hang out with the children as people - and get to relive your youth at the same time.

That's what I enjoy the most about teaching - having fun with the little people we hold so dear.

Day 3 - one thing to improve on

One thing that I would really like to improve on in my teaching practice is my talking. I talk fast, I talk a lot, if I'm passionate about something it's worse. But this isn't the talking I'm talking about. I'm talking about the amount of talking a teacher does in a classroom and at their students. I feel that I can talk to much, explain to much, so I would love to keep working on managing the amount of talk that I do and instead listen to more talk from the children. Wait for them to ask questions before explaining every last step, wait for them to answer each other's queries and challenge each other. I think we are leading our learners down a path to self directed learning and to truely own that teachers need to hand over the talking roll too.

Day 2: A piece of Technology...

Today's topic discusses a piece of technology I would like to incorporate into my teaching and learning this term. This is a hard question as I am a firm believer in the curriculum driving the technology, not the technology driving the curriculum. Being a new entrant classroom our kiddies (I team teach) have been learning how to interact with technologies in the school environment this year. We have focused around using PCs to access learning through our class blog and school server, we have worked on apps on the iPads and learned to handle these carefully and share, and some of us have had the opportunity to use the camera and take photos for our class blog. 

In looking forward to term 4 we are learning about citizenship, practising for our SLCs (Student Led Conferences) and creating things that move in the wind. This is our curriculum. To support this I would like the kids to video their SLC practise for reflection, to take their own photos of the art we create, and in writing I would like to use video to promote multiple sentence stories and richer vocabulary. This could be shown in short snippets so the children view and retell in parts over a week.

Photo courtesy of Thomas Hawk- Flickr

Day 1: Write your goals for the school year

Considering that it is nearly term 4 here in NZ, it seems I will be writing goals for term 4. Here goes.

1. Keep going

Coming into term four all the talk at school starts to turn very quickly to the coming year. New teachers are being appointed, teachers are consulted around their preferred levels next year, end of year data needs loading by week 3, reports written, and planning days for 2015 are all on the term plan and that's just the first 6 weeks. So my number one goal is to stay focused on our little learners who still have so much more learning to gain in the next 10 weeks of school.

2. Get up

Around this time of year I find my bed the most comfortable place, and with that, find it extremely difficult to get out of in the morning. Daylight savings is helping too as now it isn't so light in the mornings. So my goal for this term is to get up and get to school at 8am ( not 8:30am).

3. Stay positive and support people

With the end of the year looming and change coming for staff and students I want to try and stay positive. Change makes people nervous and anxious. There may be some anxious teachers around who will need understanding, and as always, anxious kiddies, as the safety of your 4 classroom walls start to crumble as talk about their new teacher begins. Term 4 can mean tired people as a whole, so my goal is to be positive and helpful.

Reflective teacher- 30-day blog challenge

Connected education month started today. New Zealand is running it for the first time in conjunction with the US. I have always been a bit shy in 'getting connected' but have decided to try Teachthought's blogging challenge. This was held last month ( September) as it was the start of the school year in the States. I'm going to try this challenge as my contribution to Connected Educator month.

Here's the topics...

30-Day Blog Challenge for Teachers

September 1- Write your goals for the school year.
September 2- Write about 1 piece of technology that you would like to try to incorporate this year into your curriculum.
September 3- Mention 1 "observation" area that you would like to improve on for your teacher evaluation.
September 4- The thing that you love the most about teaching.
September 5- Post a picture of your classroom. What do you see? What is one thing that you don't see but would like to?
September 6- What does a good mentor "do"?
September 7 –Who was or is your most inspirational colleague and why?
September 8- What’s in your desk drawer and what can you infer from those contents?
September 9- Write about one of your biggest accomplishments in your teaching that no one knows about.
September 10- Share 5 random facts about yourself, 4 things from your bucket list, 3 things you hope for this year as an educator, 2 things that made you laugh or cry as an educator, 1 think you wish more people knew about you.
September 11- What is your favorite part of the school day and why?
September 12-How do you envision your teaching changing in 5 years?
September 13- Name the top tech tools that you use on a consistent basis in the classroom and rank them in order of their effectiveness, in your opinion.
September 14- What is feedback for learning and how well do you give is as an educator?
September 15- Name 5 strengths you have as an educator.

You are halfway there. Keep it up!

September 16- If you had 1 superpower to use in the classroom, what would it be and how would it help?
September 17- What do you think is the most challenging issue in education today?
September 18- Create an analogy/simile/metaphor that describes your teaching.
September 19- Name 3 powerful ways that students can reflect on their learning. Discuss the one you use the most
September 20- How do you or your students curate student work?
September 21- Do you have other hobbies/nterests that you bring into your classroom teaching? Explain.
September 22- What does your PLN look like? What does it do for you teaching?
September 23- Write about 1 way that you "meaningfully" involve the community in your classroom. If not, write about 1 way you would like to bring that into your curriculum.
September 24- What learning trend captures your attention the most and why?
September 25- The ideal collaboration between students- what would it look like?
September 26- What are your 3 favorite go-to site for help/tips/resources in your teaching?
September 27- What role do holidays and weekends play in your teaching?
September 28- Your thoughts: Should Technology drive the curriculum or vice versa?
September 29- How have you changed as an educator?
September 30- What would you do as an educator if you weren't afraid?

You have finished the Teach Thought Reflective Teacher blogging challenge!

Look out for the next challenge to celebrate Connected Educator Month in October!

A year in Review

2013 came and went - in the blink of an eye - as can often happen when you are teaching. It was a big year of learning for me, and ended in a ton of new developments.

It was my 3rd year teaching year 5/6 class, my 2nd year trying daily 5 for my reading program, the second year having no desks, my 3rd year trying e-portfolios, my 1st year defining what an e-learning class meant to my school, my 1st year of planning online, and my 9th year of teaching, and was full of moments to remember...

Best moment - Camp
Having the opportunity to go on school camp for the second time was great. We had a neat bunch of kids, and seeing some of the children, I taught as 6 year olds who are now as 10 yr olds, in this context was great. It was almost like camping with family.

Saddest moment - Year 6 leavers
Watching one of my year 6 students - that I'd just given an award for class spirit - walking out of the achievement assembly, through the guard of honour, with tears streaming down her face.... says it all.

Happiest moments - Seeing kids succeed
When you can sit back in your class and look around at happy, hard working children. The ones with dyslexia who just keep striving, the poor spellers who love to write, the intelligent kid working at their passion, the figiter settling to a task, the shy kid reading a book to 180 people. Great moments.

Funniest moment - R and the pole
Kids do do and say the darnedest things. I have never laughed as much as when a poor lad in my class literally walked into a pole as we walked down the road to a show at the nearby high school. While I know it isn't polite to laugh at hurt children... he thought it was so funny that he recreated it for a special comedy episode on our school TV show.

Greatest success - The girls
I had a group of 5 Maori girls in my class. Each had come from a different class, each had no other friends in this class, but they found each other and became great friends. The success came around them maintaining this friendship and learning how to deal effectively with disputes, keeping everyone feeling a sense of belonging. We had many lunchtime meetings, initiated  by one of the girls, so they could talk problems through. By the end of the year, they could do this almost independently, and learned to let things go, to forgive and to smile.

Greatest challenge - Leading e-learning classes
Leading this great group of teachers that offered to try e-portfolios with their classes, was a great challenge. I wasn't sure where I stood for this. I was their equal, I didn't have all the answers, I wasn't convinced of how e-portfolios fit, how even I was going to make the best use of the e-learning tools we had been given. But I tried my best to guide them with what I did know, to challenge their thinking occasionally, and to help us all understand the power in e-learning.

Greatest failure - ABTV
Our school TV show. While I know its not great to talk about things as failure, this was definitely a flop this year. With no assemblies to air it, then no core group to run it...it became a nit of a shambles and just didn't happen. Something to work on next year.

Scariest moment - Meeting my class for 2014
This was the day I actually had to face the 5 yr olds (or near 5 year olds) that I would be teaching in New entrants next year... ARGH... nothing like a bit of fear to make you feel alive...

But that's another post.

Great idea 2

Buddy e-books - A great idea but time consuming.


We had our book unveiling today. 56 6-11 year olds huddled in our classroom. Smaller children perched on the knees of their bigger buddies, staring at the big screen, reading aloud the stories they had written. What a great whanau they have become over the year.

We read, we write, we draw, and we talk  - together.

Over 2 terms my year 5/6 students collaborated with a 6 year old buddy to write, illustrate and produce an e-book. From a small idea rose much learning. My senior students learned what true leadership meant, what collaboration, whanuangatanga, accountability, responsibility, and perseverance meant. They had to be helpful, graceful, and tolerant. It was not an easy task. There were a few moans of "Not buddy time..." but once the little buddies were present the big kids were all business.
The little buddies learned about writing a narrative, breaking the parts of the story into pages, taking photos with the ipad, creating illustrations that matched, and how to use powerpoint to publish. Some little buddies also learned that sometimes they have to be a responsible one and keep their team on track.

The Tuakana- teina relationships we developed over the year are valuable to both young and slightly older students . They take care of each others buddies when someone is away. Every year I try to foster this relationship over learning and it always has pleasing results.