Failure to Launch

https://www.flickr.com/photos/paxson_woelber/5434541912

I didn't take a lot of big risks as a child.  I was shy and my mother was happy to let me sit back; she was disabled and couldn't run after us.  She adored being a mum and doing everything for us.  I remember being scared about learning to swim, playing with children I didn't know and catching a bus by myself into town.

All that changed when tragically, I had to stand on my own two feet.  I became a risk taker. I had to. I couldn't wait for someone else to do it for me.  I couldn't wait for someone else to lead me gently by the hand.

My husband to be took it to another level; he was happy to kayak over water falls or leap out of an aeroplane.  I white water rafted and took a kayak course (not my thing but I had a go).  I went from the initially scary arena of publicly speaking in a classroom to speaking in front of a hall full of people.

Having my own children brought home to me how much I needed to demonstrate risk taking: I tried things I had never dared do: luging, roller coasters, water skiing, leaping from a high jumping rock. I wanted my children to be risk takers.  I wanted them to give things a go.

The New Zealand Curriculum document has a similar vision for our young people:

Ministry of Education, New Zealand Curriculum, Crown 2007, page 8.

Being enterprising, seizing opportunities, developing life competencies, being confident, connected and actively involved, are all features of risk takers.  And as actions speak louder than words, it is up to us to model these attributes.  Teachers, like parents, need to role model risk taking.

It's something I think about a lot as I watch the widening digital divide and the polarities between traditional schooling and "modern learning" pedagogy.  Take the news article from AGS in the Herald last week:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11446451

The reporter misses the point about "bean bag lessons".  It's not about the furniture; it's about being lifelong learners and owning the learning; having a growth mindset and always telling myself that I can still do better, that I can't be complacent with the traditional. That regurgitation type assessment is not going to equip our children to come up with the creative solutions our ever-changing world needs.  Sure, our education system works for some, but other news articles in our media remind us that we haven't got it right for everyone.

And it is about me.  Everyone counts.  I first heard the term "imposter syndrome" a few years ago when I laughed when it was suggested that I could hold the workshop on "teaching as inquiry" for our cluster principals.  I didn't think I was good enough. But I took the risk and took the step.

Educamp Hawkes Bay brought this to forefront to me.  At educampnz, a group of New Zealand educators, who aren't complacent with accepting the traditional "winners and losers" model of education, join together to share and explore new ideas.  Just being there is the first step; they are there in their own time and they share without financial recompense. Often it means long travel and a tank of petrol.

The content is determined by those who take the risk to stand up in front of their fellow to share ideas. Workshop timetables are determined by the audience of teacher learners. Presenters present the workshops with little warning.  They are just happy to share and discuss.

You still meet people in the group who are "first timers" and feel nervous.  I hear the words, "Oh, I'd have nothing to offer." Yet others embrace them into the flock and remind them that there are no celebrity presenters, that we are all learners together.  

New faces appear on the Twitter feed and are followed by the old hands. Risk is encouraged!

And some of the content is about taking risk and trying something new.  Nick Mason (@fuse711) and Troy Duckworth (@tewakatroy) talk about developing learner agency and pedagogy in their collaborative working practice at Russell Street in Palmerston North.  They have gone much further than "beanbag lessons".

Sometimes it's about changing up something traditional to make it fit better with today's learners, as with Jo Makinson's Literacy Evolution (@JoMakinson).

Phil Jones (@MrPhilJones) leads discussion about the place of 3d printers - using today's tools today. 

So come on folks, have a go. Don't wait for the help sheet.  Don't wait for the directions. Take the first step.  The view will be worth it!

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7330/9965262403_3195ffde1c_z.jpg

Yes, We Can Get Our Boys to Write!

My last post was about dyslexia and why some students, who love words, did not find their school writing experiences positive. This post on being an effective teacher of writing, looks at how we can address some of the problems for writers. 

It's great when you come away from a course excited.  It's even better when you feel like that even though you should still be on holiday. And it's "fantabulous," when your colleagues feel the same way.

Like many others, we've identified that our students, as a group, are weakest in writing achievement. Our qualified hunch is that this is because our teachers could be better teachers of writing.  But how do you address this?

When I first arrived at the school three and a half years ago, the focus was writing.  Our first step was to introduce a more robust assessment tool and we chose e-asTTle.  The last three years have been about unpacking the tool and looking at how we unpack a piece of writing.  The new e-asTTle writing rubric came out, so we spent time adapting to that.  We knew moderation was important, so we hosted interschool moderation workshops and had a lot of practice and discussion within our own staff.

But we all know that testing and being better at testing, does not make a writer who is passionate about writing! I am very aware of this need.  I can see that not everyone on the staff shares my passion for crafting words into word pictures; word pictures that engage readers and take them away on a magical video in the cinema of our imaginations.

We identified and talked about this need with our change team; it was suggested that Gail Loane might be available before the school year started.  Our principal shared our needs with Gail , on the phone.  Some of us had attended her two hour seminar on Boy Writers last year. Like our students, we wanted a workshop that would be interactive.

I set myself the goal of reading "I've Got Something to Say," Gail Loane's book on writing, in collaboration with Sally Muir.  It had sat on my shelf for two years. Recommended by other colleagues, it was always superseded by the best pulp fiction I could find to take my brain on holiday over the Christmas break.

As expected, I'm embarrassed I didn't open it earlier. Gail and Sally have created a primer for effective writing practice that embraces effective pedagogy, samples of writing, how to present and unpack them and surrounds them with real experiences with students.  Interwoven is Gail's obvious passion for writing and unrelenting belief that every child can write, has a story to write and has a story he or she wants to share.

And that's how she ran the workshop.  I enjoyed recognising pieces I had discovered in the book and knowing that the ideas I wanted to revisit - and that's all of them - were all in the book.

She asked us to question whether we believed that some students' lives were not rich enough to have their own starters and bemoaned the fact that so many draft books were short on work and short on completion. We read the poem "That Was Summer" by Marci Ridlon.

We clarified meaning; not everyone comes to a piece with the same set of experiences and understandings. We used topics that students can relate to: summer, playing hide and seek, building huts and playing a sport. We unpacked and co-constructed criteria that everyone can use.

We wrote our stanza in about ten minutes. We shared and read it as a group poem. We were all writers.

(I've attached my full notes from the day on a Google doc as well as the storified tweets from teacher Kassey Downard @kasseylee11 and myself @mrs_hyde.)

Further note - I was excited when I read, at the start of the book, that Gail had attended a workshop run by Ruie Pritchard in the late 1980's. So had I. I was blown away to discover that we were on the same week-long inservice at Waikato. How marvelous that she has carried it further, so that I may again pick up the threads so many years later.

Chatting About Student Centred Pedagogy

Another great chat tonight with forty other twiducators from around New Zealand. It is so reassuring we have educators who are continuing to inquire about their practice.

Big ups to Maurie Abraham and the group of teachers he has gathered around him at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. They are having fun - yes fun - being able to design a school from the foundations up with people who are building a shared vision and being given permission to explore and experiment. It will be exciting to follow their progress as the first students enter their doors.

@mrs_hyde @MissDSciTeacher @mattynicoll #edchatnz to change students experience teachers must change pedgy and schools change institutions
— Maurie Abraham (@maurieabraham) November 14, 2013

#edchatnz Let them fly... Via @venspired pic.twitter.com/ub8YiI9VV6
— Sally (@SallyHart72) November 14, 2013