The Road to Our School Community of Learning

We are on our way...and it’s a great feeling.

We’ve had a full on year so far, but the difference is that the tiredness is bearable because we are building something positive.

After six years in this school, the difference is palpable.  Why does it feel so different?

Staffroom talk

A lot of discussions in our breaks are now centred on learning.  We are sharing the excitement of a fab learning experience.  Teachers get together informally to plan or to moderate a piece of writing.  Staff get to the staffroom on time and the room doesn’t empty out when the meeting is over.  A two minute catch up turns into a two hour strategic discussion and we smile because we’ve solved an issue or come up with a great idea while “chewing the cud.”

Sustained PLD

Our professional development doesn’t consist of one off disconnected staff meetings led by the senior leadership team.  Last year our ALL initiative didn’t take off because it wasn’t given priority or time allowances in the school calendar.  This year, after a well facilitated meeting on accelerating literacy, the literacy leader and I came back to a school with an action plan to discuss and made sure that our fifteen week initiative was given the time allowances needed to meet its goals of building a literacy learning culture and community engagement. Teachers were grouped into PLGs of four teachers and given in school release for peer discussion of their inquiries.  The message was made clear that their development was important enough to give it in school time.

Distributed Leadership

The literacy lead teacher is a staff member who isn’t an expert in her field, but has a number of qualities that make her a great leader.  She shares these with the maths lead teacher.

• Love of learning and a desire to keep learning and keep looking at how others learn and what they might learn
• Listening to the needs of others 
• Learning to deflect and filter negativity
• Creativity
• Ability to keep up with the paperwork
• Understanding of the need for data to drive an initiative and to help filter particular needs

Middle leadership development

It’s important that middle leaders understand their importance in ensuring that syndicates of teachers are improving their teaching and learning and not just that their role is about administration and behaviour management.  This year has seen more input into the role, including targeted professional development opportunities.

We’re on our way...but there are still pot holes to navigate and a few learning pits to climb out of.

Teaching As Inquiry

The ALL and Maths development this year have both focused on learning through teaching as inquiry.  This hasn’t been an automatic success.  Teaching as inquiry requires a desire to trying something new in order to improve teaching and learning; it means dedication to being a data gatherer, a researcher, a risk taker and reflective practice.  No more nor less than we are required to do to meet the Practising Teacher Criteria, no more nor less than we expect from our students. No more or less than the values and attributes embodied in the Key Competencies, themselves an evolution of the future thinking of groups like the OECD, who last century began to discuss the need to change education to meet the aptly called wicked problems of our present and future.

It’s new for some.  They might not like “one size fits all” professional development, but they find it very hard to operate when given the freedom to follow their own learning path.  It means disruption to “doing it as we’ve always done it”. It means leaving our comfort zones.

Listening to Student Voice

In our inquiries we are getting better at gathering student voice and sharing what we hear.  We’re discovering that it’s not what they say, but rather what they don’t say that is most indicative of learning.  What we aim to hear is ownership of the learning process; we’re not there yet.

Self Regulated Learning

What we aim for is self regulation, where akonga are engaged in what they need to learn and how they want to learn.  To do this, they need to understand how best they learn and the reason for that learning.  We need to all realise that these learning dispositions need to be taught.

What we need to come to terms with is that akonga, the term used for learners in the Practising Teacher Criteria, is not just about meeting the needs of our child charges.  Teachers are akonga too.  When we as teachers - and teacher leaders - understand that we must keep growing our pedagogy, we will be better equipped to role model self regulated learning to our students.


OECD. (2005). The definition and selection of key competencies: Executive summary. Retrieved from​   www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd.org/dataoecd/47/61/35070367.pdf

Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Image attribution

In it there is a spaceship
and a project
for doing away with piano lessons.

And there is
Noah's ark,
which shall be first.

And there is
an entirely new bird,
and entirely new hare,
an entirely new bumble-bee.

There is a river
that flows upwards.

There is a multiplication table.

There is anti-matter.

And it just cannot be trimmed.
I believe that only what cannot be trimmed
is a head.

There is much promise in the circumstance that so many people have heads.

MIROSLAV HOLUB

Recently my middle daughter, now an adult living away from home, admitted that one summer she had an accident which she hid from us, her parents.

We live on a long straight suburban road, just below the bit where the uphill incline starts to steepen. With a group of friends, predominantly boys, she took the challenge and long-boarded down from the top.  She's always been our "Xena, Warrior Princess," taller and stronger than her sisters, and always able to beat the boys in any sporting event at primary level.

But this time she came off, knocked herself out and skinned her arm from shoulder to wrist.  With a national rowing competition coming up, she decided to hide the whole event from her family, and suffered for a number of weeks under long sleeves and from the unknowing knocks and bumps of her unsuspecting family members.

While the story was told, the other kids in the room only laughed knowingly.  And while my husband rolled his eyes, his mother too, can recount the stories of her four children on their farm, three boys, including lucky car accidents, spotlighting and running over neighbourhood roofs.

It's what kids do.  And especially boys. It's about that risk and the fellowship of risk that belongs in childhood...which goes on until the mid twenties for some.

And my reaction mirrors the reaction of many teachers of writing when they see the "blood and guts" or toilet humour in the writing of boys. Really? Did you have to do that?

Ralph Fletcher, a father of four boys and a teacher of writing, addresses my concerns in his highly readable book, "Boy Writers."

He reminds me that the life of boys is very different from the life of middle aged female teachers.  I know that my students enjoy listening to the weird and wonderful writing of authors like Paul Jennings:

Finally it is time for bed. Cynthia changes into her nightie in the bathroom and then joins me in the bedroom. 'The cat's on my bed,' she says. 'But it doesn't matter. I like cats.' She pulls back the blankets.

And screams. 'Aargh. Cat poo. Filthy cat poo on my pillow.' She yells and yells and yells.

Just then Dad bursts into the room with a silly grin on his face. He goes over and looks at the brown object on the pillow. 'Don't let a little thing like that worry you,' he says. He picks it up and pops it into his mouth. But this time he does not give a grin. His face freezes over.

'Are you looking for this?' I say.

I hold up the bit of plastic poo that Dad had hidden under the blankets earlier that night.
(from 'Funniest Stories", 2005)

Do I accept that the boys in my class might also want to write like this?

In a series of short chapters, ideal for after planning quick reads, Fletcher outlines his findings, anecdotes and reflections, ending each with a list of "What Can I Do in My Classroom?"

Ideas he covers include:

• giving boys choice
• accepting their humour
• understanding their unique voice
• the place of conversation
• handwriting and fine motor skills
• why violence has a place
• relationships
• why fun is important

He leaves us with four main points to better nurture and support struggling boy writers.

1. Just let them write

2. Take the long view - you want them to want to be writers.

3. Consider pleasure.  Is it fun?

4. Think relationships. "We're not teaching writing - we're teaching writers."

As a mother of girls, this is a book I need to put in my kete along with Celia Lashlie's excellent text, "He'll Be OK - Growing Gorgeous Boys into Good Men"(2007).

It's a text I'll be buying several more copies of for our teachers as they launch into the second year of an inquiry into improving writing for boys and "reclaiming their voices."

Related blog posts:

The Great Debate - To Type or to Hand Write? That is the Question. September, 2014

Yes, We Can Get Our Boys to Write, January 2014

Dyslexia and Loving Words, January 2014

Personalised Learning on #edchatnz

Wow - another twitter speed dating - should that be speed writing and reading - session.  Powerful and pithy!

My worries are that teachers forget that it's not about just following passions for students.  As teachers, facilitators and activators (thanks @digitallearnin), it is our job to know our students' needs and scaffold their next steps. "Standing on the side" does not mean standing at a distance. We stand close enough to motivate, question, and assist.

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