Pedagogy and 'old school' design working together

Any school that is serious about providing a modern learning environment for their children, whether they are getting a new build or not, is looking at their teaching pedagogy (the method and practice of teaching and learning) and therefore its learning programme structure and how it connects with the physical space you have.
 
Pedagogy and design working together creates the environment of a 'third' teacher. While a new school gets a design built for this century that encourages this philosophy we have approached it from the inside out! By developing the purpose behind what we do and how we do it we have challenged our thinking around what our learning spaces were set up to do. The elements of the room layout, the type of furniture you have and the connection between the learning spaces are all pieces of the puzzle and impact directly on your teaching philosophy (and vice versa!) Whether you have a new school that challenges the status quo straight off or a 1950-1970's design that demands a bit more radical thinking you can still make it happen! Myross Bush School designed our teaching pedagogy to bring our design into the 21st century. Our school still looks the same from the outside but things have radically changed on the inside and its our challenge this year to help all our learning community understand a bit more about just how much school has changed since they were there.

Below are some answers that parents are asking about this teaching and learning shift.  

 

Why teach in teams?

Our staff are passionate about developing learning pathways that are personal and individualised for every child. This means that we strive to have every student learning the right thing, at the right time, in the right way. Team Teaching allows us to enhance these deliberate acts of teaching through a combination of ‘Workshops’ and ‘Action Stations’ by having two teachers giving the students focussed teacher attention during these times.

This team approach also gives us the opportunity to grasp the power of teacher collaboration, student to teacher feedback and also formative assessment methods; all highly ranked teaching approaches highlighted in John Hattie’s Research into effective teaching and learning strategies. (Visible Learning, 2009)

How does Team Teaching Work?

Team Teaching at MBS involves 2 teachers working together with 2 ‘homeroom’ classes. They are directly responsible for the pastoral needs of their homeclass and are the first ‘port of call’ for parents and students. During the day, however, both teachers are involved in running workshops and action stations for both classes.

A typical learning hour would involve one teacher teaching a focussed workshop with 8-15 students in one learning space, while the other teacher facilitates the rest of the students during the independent / co-operative learning time. Both students and teachers have reflected (and the research conducted in other schools has reinforced this) that team teaching has given them more focussed learning time and an overall increase in student / teacher time.

Could my child’s learning get lost in such large numbers?

We work very hard to ensure that our learners do not ‘get lost’ at MBS. Everything we do, from goal setting, to grouping students according to learning needs and the individual tracking systems we use, is done to guide and direct the next learning step at the right time.

We have found that the benefits of teaching in teams are 3 fold: 

The teacher in the action station rooms are able to fully focus on the learners working on independent and cooperative learning experiences.

The teacher in the workshops are able to fully focus on the learners and the learning that is happening in front of them.

The students are always supervised and able to have a teacher’s full attention in a way not available with a one teacher system.

How do you keep track of where they are if they move around the school so much?

All of our teaching teams work with 2 or more learning spaces next door to each other and the students and teachers move between the rooms regularly as the day plays out.

We have also developed some accountability systems for students of all ages and abilities. Every class, from the New Entrants to our year 6s, use a ‘Learner License System’, for example. This is a rights/responsibilities system that guides each learner to develop their next step as a learner through developing 4 key learning strategies (such as ‘Staying on Task and Focussed’). They are also allowed certain rights that come with each level that matches their progress as a learner. This develops high levels of independence and gives every student the support they need to succeed. 

We believe in giving each learner the right level of support they need, when they need it and in the way that they need it. Team Teaching gives us the time to be able to be able to do this effectively.

VideoNot.es - another brilliant Google App!

Found a great link from my twitter network about the new VideoNot.es. This app adds a folder to your google drive and lets you take notes while you watch the video of interest. Your notes are timestamped to the specific period of the video that you are watching. This lets you click on a specific part of your note to jump back to that specific part of the video. You can also add/edit at the same time and share your video and notes with anyone you like - just like all your other google docs etc!

Go to your drive, click on 'Connect more apps'

type in 'videonot.es' in the search bar and click 'connect'

Go back to your Google Drive - click 'create' and VideoNotes is now one of your options

Paste in the video url you want to watch, give the file a new name and start watching and taking notes. Hit share to invite others to collaborate!

2014 - a year on...

This is the first for 2014 and I will definitely be making a more concerted effort to post some reflections a little more frequently than once a year!

When I look back at some of the pieces of the puzzle that we wanted to see come together for our schools teaching and learning programme is it satisfying to say that all the facets I identified in my last post are all in play today.

Some big steps were taken in 2013 in what I'd call a journey of our 'desire line'. Instead of following the set path made by others we have forged our own direct route and in doing so made our our decisions our own. This is important for any school and some decisions and timelines will always be different depending on a schools context - where they are, where they want to be and how they think they might get there - which is important for all school communities.


Fibre connection & Ruckus Wireless - thanks to Focus Technology Group we were able to get our rural fibre connection, along with our Ruckus wireless infrastructure up and going within a managed solution!


Ultranet - Became the new home on the web for our parent connection. Inside the school we began this journey across the senior school classes (Y3 - 6) and it really came together when we took the step of classes closely collaborating in their teaching and learning programmes. Ultranet then helped provide the connection across the two classes of the shared learning programme. It meant that students could upload media, work on their set tasks and collaborate no matter what learning space they were in or what teacher they were with. As this shared philosophy grew across the school its also starting to develop across our junior school. 

Google Apps - It began with moving our school domain under the Google App umbrella for our school google site (our whole school framework), shared google docs (basically everything we do) and gmail (completely browser based) and then it morphed into a natural extension for our senior students learning. Shared google docs can be embedded straight into the ultranet page for collaborative student work. Something that an Ultranet page is not great for.


Solo Taxonomy - The SOLO framework as introduced to us from the work of Pam Hook became a natural progression of our thinking curriculum framework. We wanted to use our enriching curriculum to develop our student's thinking, and not make it all just about knowledge. We wanted to show our students and parents that being smart isn't about luck - it's about how hard you try and that no matter where your thinking is at there is a next step for you to take it further. This philosophy has underpinned our inquiry programme and we continue to resource teacher time in their teams to embed this practice together. 

We've also used it to underpin our development of each student's learning management. Our licence levels example how independent a student can be with their learning and is applied across our school. Each stage is aligned with the SOLO steps so it's a consistent framework for our students to work with.

Pam Hook is also coming to our school in early February for a whole day with our staff to challenge us on where we are and help us set the course for our next steps in this exciting curriculum development.


iPad mini's - with our thinking curriculum developing nicely, the fibre connected, wireless up and running and learning platforms put in place we needed the actual tools to connect it all together. For 2013 that saw the leasing of 80 iPad mini's across the school. We wanted to show how these tools were used in our learning programme and felt that if this was seen as authentic then, over time, the growth of personal ownership would grow naturally. This has been the case. 

Looking forward this choice of leased tool by school will became more of a combination of iPad mini's and Chromebooks as each is better at different tasks.

2013 - a new year with new opportunities...

A new year with new opportunities to continue to build the potential of what our programmes offer our students. Here are some things on the way that we are phasing into the operation of our school and classroom during this year:

 

Fibre connection which will open up increased capability for connected learning...

 

Upgraded wireless system to handle the fibre connection...

 

Online structured environment in which our students will be able to innovate and showcase their work in a managed way... checked out the beginning of this via the senior teams classroom blog pages linked off our website...

 

An increased number of iPad mini's provided by the school so we can give every student an equal opportunity to access and utilise our online learning resources...

 

SOLO Taxonomy (structure of observed learning outcomes) provides a simple, reliable and robust model for three levels of understanding – surface deep and conceptual (Biggs and Collis 1982). So simple yet so effective in scaffolding students thinking...

uLearn reflection...

Notes, thoughts, ideas...words like what, how and why - were all bouncing around in my head from ulearn12 while preparing for an ERO (Education Review Office) visit in the first week of November which, now that we're through that, I thought that it was time to share some key points which I hope will provoke your own thinking... 

Jason Ohler

• What can we do differently at school for our students? Kids should have 1 life - not 2 - they shouldn't go home to learn!  
• A concern is just a negatively stated goal. 
• Whatever you do - go tell your story!

 I loved the thinking of flipping the 'concern into a goal!'

  Pam Hook - Solo Taxonomy

• To learn something, you have to disrupt something you know
• 3 levels of understanding  
• surface - knowing heaps of stuff 
• deep - relating ideas 
• conceptual - extending ideas

“Learning to learn” requires the learner to think about the strengths and weaknesses of their own thinking when they are learning and to make thoughtful decisions on what to do next. We are excited about this simple, yet powerful model of learning and the possibilities it has of further enriching our learning pathways!

 

 Glenn Capelli

• in a spint paced world we need to sit & notice - 'scratch' time - where do you go scratching??
• best place to go 'scratching' is with each other
• Discipline is about disrupting the disruption so that learning can continue (Michael Grinder)
• "A tiger is a student who will stretch you and have you to think and teach in different ways."

Funnily enough this idea of 'scratch time' was something I had just been reading. We all get so busy in our work that it is sometimes hard to find the time to go deep with your thinking about something. The time and space for reflection is precious!

 

Mike Scaddan - Brain Stems

• Know what you do well!
• What is your role if you want today to be a successful learning experience?
• Passive?
• Active?

• Your footprints in the sand show not only where you have been but also where you are heading to.
• How good are you at seeing your potential?? At seeing your students potential??
• 2-3 people in your life who speak the 'positives' to you - who have you got in your personal life / professional life??
• Many of these thoughts are non conscious. However, because of the negative to positive ratio, they can have significant effect on our conscious beliefs and performance.
• Ongoing failure or successes and repeated practice creates 'permanent' performance and attitudinal beliefs. These beliefs become us.

Long time between drinks...

My last post was near the end of May - nearly five months ago! Well time to break the habit that broke the initial habit! Over the last five months it's not like I've had nothing to reflect on - at the end of Term 2 we completed our mid year student report through our Assembly student management system.

The team at Assembly did a great job of replicating the visual look of our report while giving us a streamlined online input system that allowed our teachers to concentrate on our students progress and achievement making process and not have the worry about formatting word tables and spacing! We were also concentrating on utitlising the space we have around the school to best meet the teaching and learning needs of our students. This gave us the opportunity to move our office area to a more central part of our school and the 'old' office space, back storerooms and the Principals office (it was too big anyway) made space for some badly needed teaching space. It was great to move things around for the core purpose of school - that is giving the best possible space and learning resource to our students and their teachers! It was slightly ironic that at the time the government was talking about raising the student teacher ratio we were doing everything we could to lower it! Maybe they heard what we were doing (along with what the rest of the country was saying) and they did a complete u-turn on that one! I have also recently had the chance to attend the Principals Conference in Melbourne and, just this week, the ulearn teaching conference in Auckland along with our whole staff. Watch this space for a few more reflections as the term starts - along with an ERO review!

New Staffing Levels will impact Student Achievement

The rhetoric that quality is better than quantity, like any political sound bite, makes sense when first heard - but only when taken out of context of the full picture. We are a school that has a passionate, committed staff of quality teachers. They collaborate together to ensure that we leave no stone unturned in making our children’s learning journeys as successful as possible. Part of making sure that happens means that class size does matter. Already from the new Ministry formula that they will apply for allocating school staffing next year our school could lose at least .3 of a full time teacher out of an allocation of approximately 9.63. To put that figure in context, that is what helps funds our specialist learning support in 2012 every morning for reading and maths. Our Minister of Education keeps saying - its schools that decide about class sizes, however, you can only cut up a pie into so many pieces depending on the size of the pie you’ve been given! Next years pie is determined from figures taken by the Ministry at 1 March and 1 July of the current year. If we lose the staffing that funds our student support then our choices are either bigger classes, no student support, try to fund it from within the actual operating grant (which takes away from other curriculum support) or fundraise for it (that is ask parents for more!) Is this giving our children the best chance of progressing in their learning - no matter what their achievement level? What do you think? Below is a brilliant sketch from "Saturday Night Armistice" uploaded in June 2010 - which gives a satirical look at, what has now, become very topical for the New Zealand situation.

A Celebration and a Concern

Tonight our schools amazing new entrant teachers and I hosted our new entrant family night. I wished I had snapped a photo - we had around 40 new and existing parents/couples turn up to hear a bit about our school, their child's transition into school and how we cater for each child's uniqueness once they are there. I started the night (once we had got everyone a seat!) with what turned into a very passionate (I thought) introduction about our amazing school and the environment we work hard to provide to each and every child. I talked about team work, I talked about collaboration, I talked about staff supporting each other, I talked about our school working together like a village raising a child, I talked about all our teachers working to meet the learning needs of every child - no matter what their age - at what ever level they are working at.
We then showcased the teaching and learning environment of our school with our video clip (compiled by Mark) for one of our parent workshops in Term 1. It introduced some of the ideas behind our teaching and learning philosophy- from classroom setup to programme delivery to learning tools used.

A question and answer session then followed with the opportunity for anything 'on top' to come out and be discussed around the environment that Jan, Amy and our school will provide for our children. Parents then had the opportunity to visit the two rooms with the teacher concerned and see some examples of work and the environment provided. Awesome - the night had a real positive feel to it.
Then... I couldn't help but reflect on the announcement made today by our Minister of Education about the new staffing levels and the beginning of the introduction of performance based pay - both which seem to work against everything we are trying to do and what I talked about. Who adds the value - is it the amazing new entrant teachers who ignites the learning spark inside our kids in that precious first year of school? Or, is it the next teacher who builds on that wonderful foundation - or the next teacher who strengthens it and broadly enriches it across the curriculum - who adds the most value? Which individual gets the reward?
But the positive vibe of the evening reminded me again of the importance of a strong and connected community between home and school. A community that stands together to support and resource the collaborative environment that makes such an effective teaching team for our children. Now, more than ever, we must walk together to encourage and support our children, so they get the richest learning opportunities possible. For indeed - when the village works together, anything is possible!

Tomorrow today...

 In the last week the 10 schools in our ICT cluster had the opportunity of hosting Stuart Hale. Over the two days Stuart shared his thinking on where mobile technology is heading, how it is impacting on education and why we can't afford to sit still. Our cluster lead teacher support person, Mark Herring, did an outstanding job of collating his major points from the different sessions.

• For the discussion shared at the morning principal and lead teacher sessions click here

• For some key links and resources from the 'everyone' afternoon session click here 

• For some reflection from the Board of Trustees and Principals evening session click here

For me, couple of key points stood out from an overall school perspective:

1. 'Wireless connectivity' - we need to ensure that the infrastructure behind whatever mobile devices is robust and able to handle multiple connections without any drop in performance. The government has poured a huge amount of money into improving schools data network and into providing internet fibre connection 'to the gate'.  We are doing that support a disservice if we don't ensure that our bit - the wireless network that supports these devices - is of the same 21st century quality.  
2. 'Cognitive blisters' - Learning new concepts can sometimes be hard or quite frustrating, like with learning to play a guitar. This can quickly put you of as the gain doesn't always seem to be worth the pain! Like the guitar metaphor, the initial learning phase has a lot to do with getting blisters on your fingers until they toughen up. The point was made that mobile technology can help students overcome those 'cognitive blisters' and find success where before they only experienced failure and disappointment. 

As I unpack more of the learning from the two days by myself and with staff I am sure that further reflection will emerge which I will try to add on to this post.  What thoughts and reflections do you have on this exponential journey of discovery that mobile devices is bringing to our world?

Finland's Formula for School Success - how do we measure up?

 
Point 1: Early intervention
My response: This is something every good school does from day one. We do.  

Point 2: Schools are assigned a 'special education teacher' who helps identify and supports 'at risk' students.  
My response: Every school in New Zealand has some choice with their allocated staffing to try and balance classroom teaching needs and providing specific student support teachers but this is usually only 'affordable' on a part time basis. Depending on your decile rating a New Zealand school may have more or less 'discretionary' staffing to play with? Reading Recovery specialist teachers, Maths intervention? The government would argue that every school has enough staffing to do whatever it wants - the Principal just needs to increase class sizes to free up some staffing as class numbers don't matter - it's the quality of the teacher. I believe this needs a balance of numbers, a great teacher and adequate staffing for specific support - no matter what the decile!  

Point 3: "Every school in Finland has a student welfare team comprised of the principal, the special education teacher, the school nurse and psychologist, and the classroom teachers. The teams meet twice monthly to discuss the progress of students who are receiving extra help."  
My response: Our schools do not have a specialist team, outside the staff team itself. It is only accessible on an individual case-by-case situation. If an individual has been identified as needing further specialist intervention and support then the school is able to provide from within their own budget and staffing (which is linked to decile rankings - the higher the decile the lower the funding and staffing per child) then the student in question can be referred to the Resource Teacher of Learning and Behaviour (RTLB) team. They then decide if the level of need is appropriate for extra support or, if a case is deemed 'extreme enough', refer the individual to Group Special Education (GSE).

While the Finnish example is from a different cultural perspective than our New Zealand one you would hope that our policy developers / politicians are taking note of one of the best performing education systems in the OECD. Hopefully they are taking note of not just the American and the British systems, who do not enjoy the same level of achievements that we do! But, is it politically more attractive? Whatever they decide and whatever happens around funding and staffing levels I can still work on providing the environment where our teachers are able to have time to plan collaboratively, are supported with strategic and planned professional development and who know that their individual effort and passion all contribute to our wider staff and school culture that gives each and every one of our children the chance to enjoy personalised and customised opportunities to succeed. And that, is the main thing!

raison d'etat

A slightly left field example of how diverse a classroom is - how our programmes need to be diverse and personalised - not standardised, cause every child gets the call at some point...

Every child has their own story...

In this section of the 'Blue Man Group - CNN's the Next list' youtube clip Sir Ken Robinson comments again that the way to improve education as a system is not to standardise it but to personalise and customise it, because in the end every child has their own story!

I see my challenge as a school leader as providing the environment where our staff team have the skills and desire to 'personalise' and 'customise' our local school curriculum with the enriching contexts that the wider curriculum provides and not just let the focus be dominated by the concepts of reading, writing and maths! What do you think? Will the pressure on our public system become to great and will we end up opening our own 'Blue School'?

The top of the T gives way to....?!?

In our current climate, I have whimsically found a parallel with our recent change to the give way rule - where the top of the T now gives way - to someone?!?  How so? Well, we seem to be at a point in time with our public education system where suddenly performance pay, academic achievement results and what value is added to an individual student are being touted as the key drivers for change to a system that for too long has allowed mediocrity to survive and the failure of too many of our 'clients'.  We fly politicians to the states, where privatisation is championed, and employ English administrators (Secretary of Education and of the Treasury), who help espouse the sorting of 'the wheat from the chaff'!  Is our highly successful education system, which ranks in the top 10 of the OECD, about to have its give way rule changed?  Are we, as Scott McLeod ('Dangerously Irrelevant') says of America, seeing "...societal and political trust in schools and educators... on the decline. Educators face increasingly stringent demands to standardize what used to be a profession and to try and make error-proof what is by definition an enterprise fraught with uncertainty."

 

One of Scott's latest posts was entitled 'Making room for innovation' and is centred around one of his favorite books on leadership The Future of Management by Gary Hamel. Reading through his post has inspired me to order a little light reading, which hopefully will arrive during the term break, but if not I see a few late nights with the bedside light on! The essential premise of the book (and I quote Scott McLeod here) "...is that current management models, which are centered on control and efficiency, are extremely ill-suited for an era in which adaptability and creativity drive organizational success. This has major ramifications for how we think about leading schools and preparing school administrators, of course." 

I look forward to reflecting on this book and how it answers some of the key challenges that relate to the importance of my leadership position in our school to answer questions such as: How do I keep developing the right climate where innovation becomes a natural part of everyone's job and to keep a highly engaging work environment that inspires everyone to give the very best of themselves?  This at a time when the top of T is certainly not giving way to me!

Warwick B. Elley: Education system's weak spot

 

If you haven't read the article by Warwick B. Elley (emeritus professor of education, University of Canterbury and recently served as evaluation consultant for the World Bank) which is online in the nzherald then click on his photo to have a read.  He summarises the recent OECD Report which evaluated our education system as he believes that it deserves more public discussion than it has so far received.  He outlines that despite our international high standing and our system being commended, like Finland (who is the OECD's star performer despite what Gerry Brownlee says) have so far kept compulsory assessments and league tables out of the primary classroom.  He then summarises the OECD's report of its 5 major criticisms of where the current trend of national standards is taking us and then outlines a Plan B.  And I quote:

"Make National Standards optional, trust schools to use their own less-damaging approaches to showing progress, re-direct funds to other targeted initiatives, and attack the poverty-related problems that create those barriers to learning. "

Targeted spending of tax payers dollars sounds pretty sensible to me - what do you think?

Hekia Parata speaks at the opening of Learning@School 2012

While I did not attend the Learning@School Conference this year in Hamilton I was interested to see that our new Education Minister - Hekia Parata - was one of the opening speakers.  Thanks to CORE I watched the video of her speech (see this link).

Her speech was centered around the following four points (a) placing the learner at the centre of all we do, (b) a commitment to quality teaching, (c) raising student achievement, and (d) enabling all of this to happen through the use of ICT.

I was impressed with how she spoke - no notes, no lectern and certainly with passion.  It was obvious that she has done a lot of reading for her new 'portfolio' and its seems that she is already more enthusiastic about working with the sector than was apparent last year.  What she wants is certainly aspirational and what every school wants for its students.  Just how we go about it and what policy is put in place, or pushed further, will be interesting.  Watch this space...

The dawn of new opportunities...

2012 - another school year begins with a real buzz around our place of learning as we set out together with our children on making the most of every opportunity that is presented to us and by us.  We have some exciting initiatives planned for this year and I hope to reflect regularly on those as the year progresses! 

Already, one of the ways we have kicked off the year was through the traditional 'Meet the teacher evening'.  I began the evening with a quick 5 - 10 minute welcome to our school families, reflecting with them on the importance of the relationship that we have together and that this 'triangle' of parent, child, teacher is essential for every child to be able to realise the full potential of their gifts and talents, and, to get the most from every opportunity they are presented with. 

I thanked them for the wonderful support and encouragement they do give to their children and acknowledged that it was with this enthusiastic support, in partnership with a passionate and dedicated teaching team, that we were able to achieve excellent progress and achievement for our students. 

I asked them to reflect during the sharing time they were going to have with their child's teacher on the differences in classroom routine, and of the teaching and learning practice from when they were at school.  I wanted them to note that while we do still talk about reading, writing and maths other words like 'inquiry', 'e-learning', 'student workshops' and the personalising of learning programmes were not just words but authentic examples of a distinct shift in how 'school' now happens! 

I stopped there - as one person yawned and someone else whispered to their neighbour (with the expression telling me that I'd said enough) but it's hard to do that when you are on a roll and genuinely passionate about what you're talking about!  But - I had to remind myself - just as a little bit often produces real results in most things, the same goes for getting the message across.  As our school vision statement echos - from the strong foundation (that our school and community provide to each and every student) we are all able to grow and stand tall together!

New Zeland General Election - Education D-Day?

Today is the general election in New Zealand. The current government, with its controversial education policy and attitude to the schooling sector, is still riding high in terms of it popularity - around 50%! They seem to have got it right with the general population (or generally anyone not involved in our schooling sector) in saying that our school system must do better and National Standards will help make that happen! As Ken Robinson said once - no one wants to lower standards - so why has this struck such a connection in our country? It seems that the sound bite and out of context remarks that our education minister has made on our 'poor' achievement rates (1 in 5 leaving school not able to read, write or do maths!) has given the government the 'mandate' they want while our successes are over shadowed.  Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General in his opening address in Washington on the 7 December 2010 stated that the new PISA identifies several countries as the strongest overall performers. These are Shanghai, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Finland, Canada, Japan and New Zealand.

The latest flyer from the New Zealand Principals Federation included this reflection from the President, Peter Simpson;

"Meanwhile our profession has become more alienated from its natural policy discussion forums. The environment becomes more competitive and more privatised which undermines the whole concept of public education and creates a culture of distrust rather than trust, openness and collaboration."

But I fear that the battle of perception has been lost and the reality is that the general population like the idea of national standards - they sound good!  People seem to not see the irony of recognising their own child as an individual and the uniqueness of their own development but then expecting their schooling to be reduced to a series of benchmarks - being achieved in a sequential and straight line fashion!

The ethos of our national curriculum is premised on the belief that every child is unique, learning does not progress in a straight line and every child will learn in their own way and at their own pace.  Assessment and monitoring of progress happens along the way and the individual child’s progress is reported and discussed with their parents regularly.

We are at a crossroads with one political party saying more openness and accountability for our primary and secondary schools will continue to improve standards.  The age of league tables and school ranking has arrived in New Zealand.  How ironic when the example of this practice overseas has achieved the opposite of its intention.  A narrowing of the curriculum and an increasing disconnection of the learners gives what sort of employable skills?

As NZPF President Peter Simpson stated, "Everywhere else in the world, National Standards and its sister policy National Testing, has failed. Early adopters are now rejecting such policies and they look to countries like ours with our world class curriculum to lead them out of their National Testing wilderness. The irony of this situation is overwhelming. What these countries are finding is that the kind of accountability that comes with such policies negatively changes the whole culture of the education environment. It engenders disconnect between the professionals, the Ministry and Minister."

This is the situation our education system and our schools finds itself in.   Today is akin to an Education D-Day!

Marching to a different beat

Our kids come to school with this creativity and the love of learning - how do we do school so we don't take it out of them?  As a society, as a country what does it take to create a happy, creative, motivated human being?  How do we balance the pull of the traditionally orientated curriculum with the flavour and intent of the actual New Zealand Curriculum??

Skennynz made this following clip after a brilliant day listening to Lester Flockton explore the National Standards. He put this together to share with his staff in order to create discussion and debate about the complex issues surrounding assessment, intending it to draw attention to the fact that children have different abilities and needs and that we as educators need to develop the whole child.

The idea for the song came to Harry Chapin when his secretary told him about her son who brought his report card home from school one day. The teacher had written a note in the card saying: "Your son is marching to the beat of a different drummer, but don't worry we will soon have him joining the parade by the end of the term."

Moving the Front Line

One world war started because of train timetables and empire arrogance.  The other started because everyone thought that no sane person would really make it happen so giving in was ok.  So how does that short (and very simplistic) history lesson of how the two worst world wars that the world has seen apply remotely to education in New Zealand or to what I do in one small primary school?!?


Well, here we are, already a decade into the 21st Century and as Derek Wenmoth said in his latest post 'The state of digital education' ..." we have...thousands of independently operating, often competing and generally struggling entities called schools around the country – each trying to re-invent the wheel, and the majority still not grasping the significance of the digital revolution that is sweeping the world."  And it troubles me, because I believe he is right, that we find our schools and our wider education sector in such a predicament.  

2010 was the official year the revised curriculum was to be implemented, or in reality carrying on the process of, but it was a document that encouraged schools to reflect on and develop the big picture that school life is a part of -  to think outside the 3 R's box and it had (and has) the potential to shift a schools pedagogy and thinking of the rapidly changing educational landscape of the 21st Century learner.  It said things like:


"All New Zealand students, regardless of where they are situated, should experience a rich and balanced education that embraces the intent of the national curriculum. The principles should underpin and guide the design, practice, and evaluation of curriculum at every stage. The values, key competencies, and learning areas provide the basis for teaching and learning across schools and within schools. This learning will contribute to the realisation of a vision of young people who will be confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners." 
(The school curriculum - design and review - TKI)

2010 was also the year that the November mail surprise was meant to begin to take effect - those curriculum look-a-like trio of books called the national standards and the associated justifying soundbites - '1 in 5 failing' (though not often finished with the clarifying remark of 'at NCEA Level 2'!) '20% of schools are failing our students' etc etc.


Don't get me wrong - I am not anti-standards.  Every high performing school, should and do, use a range of nationally referenced assessment tools, as well as day to day interactions to make judgements on how an individual is progressing and what their next learning goal needs to be.  But it needs to be done (as the national curriculum says) by providing a "rich and balanced education" that will "contribute to the realisation of a vision" for each individual student - not on some 'back mapped, looks like the curriculum but it isn't' set of books that put everyone on a standardised and linear pathway!  


But, to many people the current 'sound bites' of education make sense.  Primary education is about Reading, Writing and Maths.  It sounds right that there should be one set of standards so we can compare our kids against each other, as they should all achieve things at the same time as everyone else - shouldn't they?  We should know if little Jonny is failing at age 5 - shouldn't we?  Shame on him for not progressing like everyone else his age!?!


I believe this potentially high stakes narrowing of what really matters in the curriculum has distracted schools right when the potential of the visionary curriculum was being realised.  It has lulled many into losing sight of just how significant the shift in the real educational world is.  That as Derek said "...the majority (are) still not grasping the significance of the digital revolution that is sweeping the world."  The problem also is that the majority of our community's relate to school as it being what they remember it was like when they were there.  That it is the place for learning to read, write and do arithmetic!  That this thing called e-learning is a fad - anything digital is just playing - wasting time - not learning - its not real school work!  


This is where the warfare reflection comes into play.  There is a war going on around the heart and soul of what school is.  The real shift in how we do school - that balances the curriculum needs of foundation and enriching learning - will only be authentic and gain real traction if our teachers, principals and community's grasp the concept of it.  Part of that shift must happen with the profession itself as exampled by Derek's quote.  Once a school has an authentic idea of what e-learning and this digital revolution is then they can actually strategically plan to go 'over the top'.  It's a dangerous place - no mans land - and yet if we can shift the front line (once we know where we want to go!) and push back the traditional model of school that seems to be being reintroduced then the rewards for our schools, our learners and indeed the future of our country will be immeasurable.  As many Asian countries throw off the yoke of standardisation, conformity and the raising of test scores at all costs to encourage the skills of creativity and entrepreneurship we seem to 'back mapping' our way to raising standards?!?


Authentic, creative learning that engages and empowers our learners to "seize the day" (Carpe Diem!) is personalised, organic and almost un-measurable - something you can't test or write a national standard for!  The rallying cry for dynamic and future focussed leadership in our schools is reaching a crescendo - do we have the capacity across our schools and in our political leadership to respond appropriately?!?