Disillusionment

It's hard, when I love what I get to do here at HPSS, to hear of negative attitudes in other contexts.

The other weekend I caught up with some people from the university course I did a couple of years ago. One of them has in the interim trained as a teacher and did his first year teaching at a school which is trying to bring MLP into a traditional context. I was really excited at the thought that 'traditional' style schools are trying to bring MLP into their own contexts, so I asked him more about it.

What followed was so disappointing.

This second-year teacher had moved on from that school. He felt that although the SLT were really focussed on making the move to MLP work, the staff had not bought into it, and many of the staff who had been there a while were vociferous in their negative opinions. He seemed to have taken on those staff opinions rather than been inspired by what the SLT were trying to do.

In addition, he trotted out what I felt were excuses, rather than reasons, for the difficulties the school was having in moving forward, and for his having left. He said that the school clientele, being predominantly PI, didn't understand the new way of doing things, and their parents had cultural expectations that the mode of schooling would be traditional; that the parents, who were often working two or three jobs, would not have the time or inclination to come and learn more about what was happening in the school; that many of the teachers were 'burned out' by the amount of work that was expected of them anyway and so it would be impossible to ask them to do more with a new system; that staff turnover was too high to really train people into doing MLP well. What I saw was someone who had, in less than two years, gone from a trainee teacher with ideals to the old hand who has seen it all and doesn't like it.

I wish I were better at off the cuff replies. I couldn't say much at the time, because I always need to process stuff before I can answer to it. What I wish I had been able to convey ran along these lines: It is exactly those schools who are catering for students with low expectations, with parents working too many jobs just to get by, that need to be introducing MLP, and sticking with it when it doesn't work like a magic bullet in it's first outing. It is precisely because 'If you always do what you've always done, then you'll always get what you've always got'. 

Those students need someone to have faith that things can change for them, that they won't also end up working those same three jobs as their parents, that they can do things and be things that they can't even imagine yet.  And yes, maybe it easier to be cutting edge where HPSS is (as he informed me) and because it is new, but change is even more vital in those schools where student need for change is higher.  Grant Lichtman tells us that change is not difficult, it is simply uncomfortable.  It horrifies me to think that some teachers have become so comfortable that they don't see the needs of their students as their highest priority. 

When I left teaching, it was because I was becoming the kind of teacher that I had always said shouldn't be there any more, and I recognised that. I returned because I found somewhere where I could be passionate and feel empowered about changing things for my students, for the better.  My biggest regret at the moment is that I wasn't able to explain that to that second-year teacher.  My sadness is that I wish that school success, but if he is a reflection of the wider staff, I am not hopeful.

Being a Life-long Learner, this year.

A bit of context to start: having committed to writing a post every time I ask my hub students to, this morning we looked at SMART goals and set at least one academic and one dispositional or habits goal. My students then had to commit to their goals by enshrining them in their blogs. I showed them my list of possible blog topics, and let them choose what I should write about next; they decided that my own goals for the year, in my learning, would be best.

So, in short form, these are they:

- LOs on display

- empathy for difficult students

- being a full-time working mum

- being a social scientist and historian

- project learning

In a slightly longer form...

Part of being a good teacher is making sure that each lesson I teach is purposeful. I know that if I have a clear Learning Objective for each lesson, that is a pretty clear check that what I am doing is meeting a need or has a purpose in my students' learning. Last year, I was pretty bad at doing this, and especially in making it clear to students. I like to think what I did was purposeful anyway, but there is no way to tell really. 

My aim this year then, is to make sure I write an LO into my planbook for each lesson I plan, and that way I will be sure that not only do I know what I am meant to be doing, but I can tell my students too.

My next goal comes from the fact that one of my greatest difficulties is being tolerant or empathetic of difficult behaviour from students, and looking for understanding of its causes rather than simply reacting to the behaviour itself. I think I tend to judge people generally quite quickly, and I know I am quite black and white in my worldview - this is not necessarily a very productive way into student relationships.  (A caveat - I don't always do this, and have developed some excellent relationships with students which have been helpful for both of us. Just so I don't sound totally hard-hearted or down on myself...)  

I have decided that I need to aim for greater compassion with my students, by listening harder to those who don't necessarily want to talk to me. I feel this quite strongly as a weakness on my part, and so I have decided to make this the focus for my teaching inquiry. I will be relying on my colleagues Sally and Cindy a lot in this, both in helping me frame my inquiry, and because they are both really excellent role models in this area. (Actually, there are a lot of staff at HPSS who I think I will be calling on the expertise of.)  

It's funny, sortof, that empathy is something that actually is vital in a teacher of teenagers, but is not something that previously in my career has been shown to be necessary or valued. It's something that - like the dispositional curriculum that is taught at HPSS and not many other schools - is valued in staff here but not given any professional learning time anywhere else. I like also that what we teach the students is also valued and thus role-modelled by teachers; as in, I need to learn to do these things just as much as they do, and I am encouraged in my learning, not viewed as having a weakness.

Right, I will come back to my other goals next time, as this has already been in draft for a week, waiting for time to be finished. 

Walking the walk

Or: Doing what I tell my students to do.

On Friday Claire, one of our DPs and an awesome example of making blogging work for oneself, spoke to our community students about the purpose and scope of blogging. Not only did she inspire a lot of them, but she also inspired me - to the extent that I now have a list 12 items long** of things I really need to say. This is one of them...

After Claire's presentation, while Sally showed those students who didn't have a blog yet how to set one up, I went back to our hub with my students. Even after what Claire had said, there were a couple of them who still didn't get it, or were resistant to the idea of blogging about what they are learning. I was trying to encourage them, by explaining how writing about stuff is such a good way of thinking things through and coming to conclusions you might not otherwise get to, when I realised that I was talking the talk, but I hadn't actually done any of this myself, in my blog which was also already set up, for even longer than they had.  

So I resolved that for every blog I make them write, I will write one too. I will try and be an example of how useful blogging is, as a record of my thinking and my learning, and of how it doesn't have to be this earth-shattering momentous piece of writing every time, but can be just a note.

For me this serves as a reminder too, that I am a learner; that this forum is an excellent place to gather records of my learning*; and that I can't expect my students to do something that I am not prepared to do myself.  

All of which are very important things.

By the way, you might note that I have added my students' blogs to mine, so please read them too and comment:

*Seeing as I am in the process of renewing my practicing certificate, and the docs I did submit for this were pretty boring, this seems particularly apt.

**And dammit, while I was just now out running, I thought of two more, but one of them requires a playlist, so may be a while...

#hpsschool 

The difference between MLE and MLP

I was speaking with a researcher who came in to school today. She had been prompted by Ros MacEachern's blog about Critical Friendships to visit our school, and I was one of her interviewees.

Towards the end of the interview, she expressed the opinion that our school was an example in so many different ways, and then she asked a question that I have actually been considering myself: "Does the MLE make all the difference, or could you still do this in a traditionally set up school?"

This is the long version of my reply:

I think that what we do at Hobsonville Point Secondary School IS transferable, because our focus is our practice, and what we do to make learning outcomes better for our students; the environment is simply one of many tools that we have available to help us do this. 

I believe that a school needs only two things to be able to change to the type of practice and ethos that we have: a willingness to change the timetable, and complete staff buy-in.

The way I see it, changing the timetable might actually simplify it. What I imagine is that you divide the school time into eight equal parts. Whether that is over a week or a fortnight or a certain number of days is irrelevant. Then you structure it so that for example, all the year 9 English teachers are in one option line, all the year 9 Maths teachers are in the next option line, and so on across all the curriculum learning areas. There are seven of these in the NZ Curriculum; the eighth option line is for the hub/tutor/form class time, and the dispositional curriculum.  You do the same for year 10, year 11, etc, making sure that of course year 9 English is in a different line from year 10 English, so the teachers will teach across year levels. You might need to mix it up a little in the senior school as a wider variety of subjects comes in, so that students still have choice, as long as you keep any compulsory subjects in the same line.

Having set up your new timetable format, you then say to your English teachers, for example, as we have in our learning area - "In the course of this year you will need to cover the curriculum achievement objectives of purpose and audience, ideas, language features, and structure; and you need to include the processes and strategies for both making meaning (understanding texts) and creating meaning (creating texts)" - I'm using the actual objectives from the curriculum document here. Every learning area has different achievement objectives, and some are more prescriptive or content based than others, but in each, there are certain non-negotiables. What English doesn't say, is that you have to teach certain text types or specific parts of language.

So, having established what it is that the curriculum is actually telling your English teachers (or whichever learning area) to teach, you as leader can say, "Okay, set up a course that covers those things." Then your teachers, who are passionate about different things and actually do have a lot of skills, can imagine a course that they actually want to teach. And if they want to teach a course about coming-of-age drama in novel and film - to choose a random possible example -, they can. Or whatever. (I really want to tell you about my proto-feminist literature course from earlier in the year, but I won't ... yet. Maybe in another next post.)

And then, if one of your Arts teachers, for example, likes that idea, they could say, "I could co-teach that with you, o English teacher, because I would really love to look at the way coming-of-age is portrayed in various artistic media!"  Or your Human Bio teacher might want to link that to a study of the havoc hormones wreak in teenagers as they are coming-of-age.  And they both could set up a course that would be taught by each of them in the option line that they were teaching the level at - thus the separate option lines for learning areas...

This way, you have total curriculum coverage, choice for students and therefore more likely a higher level of engagement, and teachers teaching stuff they actually like with a higher level of engagement on their part too.

You would have to have a good timetabling program, because when students choose their courses, there might be a whole pile who want to do one course, and not so many who want to do another, but that is logistics and happens with senior subject choices anyway. And it's just software.

The hard part is the other aspect of the change - total staff buy-in. I suspect this is why schools are not even willing to look at MLP, because in every staff there are the people who 'have always done it this way', and unless you have some leaders who really want to drive the change forward, it is not going to take hold and be effective across the school organisation. HPSS is lucky in some ways; being a startup school, the teachers who are applying to work here have chosen to work with MLP and are open to the change in their own practice that will have to occur. Other schools don't have that luxury, and I know that in every school there will be some who are resistant, just to be resistant.

To introduce MLP in all schools nationwide, which I believe is the goal of the Ministry of Education, there must be something to show schools how it can be done, and maybe that it isn't such a hard thing.  This could be along the lines of the Core Education course that I am getting so much out of, or professional learning days put on by the ministry such as when NCEA was introduced. Maybe we just need every school in the country to come and visit HPSS (as so many already do!) and look at how we do what we do, and not just at the flash new toys we have. I have to admit that that part is beyond the scope of what I have been thinking.

But I feel, that if I, who has taught all my career until this year in exceptionally traditional schools, can open my way of thinking and become so enamoured of doing it differently that I have become an advocate for MLP, it's something that the right amount of will can make happen.

All schools and all teachers in the end really only want one thing; to make learner outcomes the best they can be. If our school really is such an example, as the outside researcher believes, how do we encourage other schools to follow it? How do we make it easier for them to initiate change? Could it be as simple as showing them a two-step process?

Or showing them that the difference between the Modern Learning Environment and Modern Learning Practice is that the first is buildings, but the second is methods? Buildings are irrelevant - I could teach all of the courses that I am doing now in any building or room or environment. Methods are key. How I teach is what makes my educational world shine.

Earth-shattering questions in the car.

Every day, the blue Toad and I share a 20 minute ride home in the car. And every day my brain is challenged.

I don't know if he saves them up during the day, or if the road home has particular inspirational value, or quite where his musings come from, but every day, I can expect at least three random questions about life, the universe and everything from the blue Toad.

These questions are the very opposite of yes/no questions. Not only are they open, but they require both an answer and either an explanation or a discussion.  The blue Toad does not take my answers for unequivocal truth either, but questions them, wanting verification, or more detail, or ... something.

I can tell when a question is coming.  There will be a deliberate silence from the back seat (in contrast to the more usual train-of-thought burblings). Then, "Mummy?" - quite long and drawn out. "Yes, Ben?" I answer, and wait...

Some days I am not able to answer them. "We might have to google that when we get home," I say.

One day last week, for example:

- "Mummy, have you ever seen a mirage?" Upon my answering that I hadn't, we had a discussion about where you might see mirages, and what you might see in them, and why you see them at all in the first place.

- "Mummy, is a linguist a whole lot of languages?" Well not quite, but then we wondered why being one might be a cool thing. I was reassured (being sortof a linguist myself) that he decided that it was.

- and "Mummy, what is the most often kind of car you see on the roads?" (the compulsory car question, as the blue Toad is obsessed). What do I know about cars? The blue Toad thought that it would be Toyotas, as he saw so many of them. "But they aren't the coolest, so I won't tell you every one I see." Thank goodness for that! 

Sometimes I have had a busy day and have become very outcome focussed, and sometimes I really have to concentrate on driving, but mostly I welcome his random questions. I like that he really wants to know stuff, and I like that it's not just ordinary stuff.  I like that his mind is totally non-linear, and that although he can't remember five minutes later what we were talking about, three months down the track he will pull out his understanding in some completely other context. I like that I am challenged by his questions, and that I don't know all the answers either, and that sometimes when we do google it, it's because I want to know too.  I like that he thinks I know so many answers, but I also like that he accepts that actually I don't know everything.

I hope the blue Toad never runs out of questions; I am pretty sure he won't. 

I just hope that I can keep up.

The kids just want to learn!

The Toads don't watch cartoons and kids' shows.  It's not so much that I haven't let them (although I freely admit to having philosophical issues with so much of it) as that they just aren't interested.  Once they got past Disney junior (a long-awaited day!) they moved straight into Mythbusters and Top Gear. Now they are starting to branch out, from info-tainment to real documentary stuff.

I know this because of a conversation I overheard: 

Toad 1: "No, I want to watch Living Channel ... O it's the Antiques Roadshow, I love this." 

Toad 2: "Okay, yeah, me too."

And because the blue Toad's latest addiction is National Geographic wildlife documentaries.  Or anything National Geographic.

Both Toads, in their different ways, want to learn stuff.  The blue one wants to know facts and details; the pink one likes to fit things together and know how things work, in a societal sort of context.  Their ways of thinking are very different, but both of them want to do it.

A lot of secondary school professional development for teachers seems to be based around engagement.  There is a belief that students don't want to learn any more once they reach high school.  That whatever they had when they were young has gone.

I don't think it is gone.  I think what they want to learn isn't being given to them.  

I admit that I am being strongly influenced in my thinking on this by the professional learning that I am doing this semester. I have begun a course called 'Modern Learning Practice', which is showing me the changes in thinking that have happened while I was at home producing Toads. 

One of the most important things to come out of the course so far for me has been this quote from Andreas Schleicher: 

"the world no longer rewards people for what they know - Google knows everything - but for what they can do with what they know." 

For me, this resonates so much because I have always felt that it is not the information which is important, but what you do with it; and I hate teaching something I loathe simply because 'we have to do a short story study now'.

Okay, this post has been slightly high-jacked by all the pedagogical stuff that is happening in my world at the moment.  I'll get back to my point.

One of our topics in the staffroom at lunch today was a student in a colleague and my combined PE and English class.  She is really interested in what we are doing; as a class the goal is to research, design and implement a fitness trail for the community around the school, while making a link between physical fitness and mental fitness.  A couple of weeks ago she had completed the research task we had set about the links between physical and mental health and wanted some extension.  I don't know a lot about PE, so I sicced her onto google scholar. We had a look at what a scholarly article looks like, how to read them a bit, how to search them, that sort of thing, so I didn't just throw her in the deep end.

This is what she came back with: kimmimindandbody.blogspot.co.nz/concluding-comparing-and-contrasting.html.

There are several awesome things about this that I would like to point out:

• Kim is a year 10 student, and she is voluntarily reading scholarly, tertiary-level articles, and understanding them!
• She is doing this because she wants to.
• She is learning in an authentic context; this is the sort of thing that could be a job in the real world, not just a school assignment.
• That one blog post is all the evidence you could ever want as a teacher/assessor for both research skills and reading comprehension.  What more could I ask?  A test?  Um, no.

In another of my classes, a combined Science and English one, several of my students have asked whether they can "just have some time to work on/finish my writing".  They want to do all that good stuff that previously I had to ram down students throats, like crafting, and drafting, and understanding the reason for the grammar bits, and having a theme, and ...  

The reason is that the context is right for them. They have chosen this course. These ones are 'off-task' and having private conversations while something is going on - about the research they are doing themselves, on scientists we haven't covered but who are in the same period as the ones we have.  And making links, and understanding context.  They are driving their learning in all sorts of directions where my co-teacher and I are just providing the framework.

Because they want to learn. Isn't that cool?

Last Friday, I was a Science teacher!

One of the really exciting things about teaching where I do is the blended learning.  What this means is that although I am an English teacher, each of our modules is constructed and taught with a co-teacher from completely another subject area.  Not only does this mean that I get to work alongside some very cool and clever people, it also means that I get to actually do things in that subject area too.

Last semester I learned more about the Treaty of Waitangi from my Social Science colleague than I have learned in the whole rest of my life combined, and I got to design and build stuff and make concrete (yay!) with two of my technology colleagues.  This semester I am working with a geographer, a phys-eder, and a chemist; we will be filming, making a fitness trail, and writing speculative fiction. None of this is stuff that I would even imagine doing in a traditional context!

But last Friday my science colleague was away.  We had a great lesson planned with some scientific history (my bit) and an experiment (his bit).  I could quite happily have made a class of mostly the English component, but my colleague asked me whether, if he got everything organised, I might be able to run the experiment.

Don't get me wrong, it is not that I am completely ungifted in this area; after all, I did pass 7th form Chemistry all those years ago.  By two marks, but that's still a pass.  However, doing anything with a practical component in the classroom is not something I feel at all confident in.

So of course, I said yes, I'll do it.

And I did.  I ran that science lesson, and that experiment, all by myself.  We didn't blow anything up, or melt anything (both of which were possibilities) and we even got some results! What's more, the results were the type of results we should have got.  Goodness, I must have done something right. I even had a student tell me that they enjoyed the class!

O, the relief!  But also the sense of achievement. I was totally outside my comfort zone and not at all confident that I could make it work.  

That's what I really like about my teaching (and my job) now; I am always doing new stuff, not just recycling the old, and that makes teaching exciting. Teaching should be exciting. If teaching is exciting, learning will be happening, both for me and the students.  

We certainly all learned stuff last Friday.