hire people who believe what you believe

Posted on June 10, 2014 by mwalker

I was listening to this Ted Talk by Simon Sinek on inspiring leadership and one line he said was the title of this post “hire people who believe what you believe”. He talked about a connector between inspiring leaders being “they answer the why question first”. All the data in the world will not convince us unless we “buy into the why”. 

It’s an interesting question/s to ask your staff – do you believe what I believe – about why we are here – help a family educate their child, support young people being successful and increase their well-being and life chances, make connections with other young people around the world so that they can better understand their world and perhaps even take action with others to improve it …….. it’s a big question and it might even help us understand people who work with us just a little more.

Posted in teacher efficacy, Teaching, Uncategorized, Video Clips | 1 Comment

start where they are at?

Posted on June 5, 2014 by mwalker

lucas drawings

Recently I was sent these pictures from a proud mum of her 4 year olds drawings about one of his passions – footy. Yes that’s right a 4 years old – and if we to diagnose what’s his next steps of learning it might be to learn to write some lower case letters but it certainly wouldn’t be to start to learn Aa and progressively every letter of the alphabet after that. If teaching art it might be about proportional sense.

So what I’m saying is lets use the student work as artefacts to assess the next steps and not wait till a formal test and certainly not start all children learning the same thing at the same time. What I hear some people say is that differentiated teaching. Well yes in part.

Interested in thought here?

Posted in school, Teaching | 1 Comment

the strap!

Posted on June 2, 2014 by mwalker

photo[42]
I was searching my back storeroom at work recently I came across one of the original straps used by Principals and some teachers who were delegated to “dish out” corporal punishment.

Corporal punishment (that is legally striking a student with wooden cane or leather strap for misbehaviour) was banned in 1985 in Victorian public schools. It took until 2006 (that’s 21 years later) before it was banned in all schools (includes religious and independent schools).

I remember as a young teacher in the late 70’s and early 80’s being issued with a strap by the head mistress and being told to strap all the 5-8 years children sent to me. I know this might sound like the dark ages but it did happen.

I recall one day before recess while I was teaching English to my class when a young boy was sent to me by a female teacher for answering back. The punishment was 2 hits across the hands with the strap. At first I was a little shocked that someone had actually sent someone to me – so I dismissed my class early for recess and told the boy that this thing would hurt – but I still couldn’t get myself to hit him. So I thumped the strap loudly on the wooden desk for effect – which it had for the poor little tyke started screaming and wet his pants.

I quickly dismissed him and from that day on given the scream and tears had everyone convinced I had given him the strap. Of course my reputation preceded me every day onwards as all the 5-8 year olds ran from me every time I was in yard duty.

I think it left a mark on me as an educator and human being – let alone the poor boy who was sent to me. I guess it’s why I so strong an advocate for the willing to engage in restorative justice where the theme is restoring broken relationships. I do wonder where corporal punishment or the thought of physical punishment contributes to the wider family violence issues we still face today.

Interested in your thoughts on this one.

PS I never again either used or pretended to use a strap on a young person till it was banned 6 years later.

Posted in Leadership, parenting, school, Teaching, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Federal Government changes University funding – I fear for the worse!

Posted on May 29, 2014 by mwalker

university protest

It was with some trepidation that I write in this weeks school newsletter on the recent proposed changes to university funding arrangements.

The links between primary schools and universities is not obvious in many cases. Quite a few of our parents at EPS either work in or attend courses at various universities and a few of the older parents, like me, have children at universities as well. We, as an institute, have close relationships with two universities here in Melbourne and one overseas at which various teachers are either attending or thinking about attending to either update their qualifications or participate in professional learning institutes. As the principal in the organisation with close links to universities I think it appropriate to at least raise the issue with the community.

Recent demonstrations at universities across Australia highlight the discontent of some about the recent proposed changes to university funding arrangements. The Hon Christopher Pyne recently wrote in the Age newspaper:

“Traditional university students, meanwhile, remain protected. The government will continue to support all 750,000 or so full-time and part-time Australian students studying for a regular bachelor degree by offering what we believe is the world’s most generous loans scheme. Not a cent of university study needs to be paid for by Australian students upfront. Students borrow their share of the cost of their education through the Higher Education Loan Program (otherwise known as HECS). They don’t start repaying until they earn over $50,000 a year. It’s the best loan deal a student will ever get, especially given the interest rate is protected – it just matches the government’s cost of borrowing. There’s an ever bigger win for university students. Freeing universities to set their own fees, rather than having them dictated by government, will encourage competition between higher education institutions – and that means better courses, better teaching and more competitive course pricing. It will result in a greater focus on students than ever before in Australia.”

A few newspaper commentators like Peter Martin the economics editor in the Age newspaper corrected some statements saying

On higher education the minister Christopher Pyne said the changes would give Australian students the “best deal in the OECD”. That’s wrong. University education is free in Germany and cheap elsewhere in Europe.

More disturbing was the Prime Minister’s advice to intending students when asked how school leavers about to enrol could possibly make a sensible choice without knowing what they would eventually be charged, he told them to relax. “If you start a course under one system, you will finish it under that system,”. Reassuring, but wrong. The higher fees will begin in 2016. They will apply to everyone who enrols from now on. The school leavers who enrol this year will indeed have no idea of what they will eventually be charged.

The National Tertiary Education Union says an accountancy degree now costs $30,255 and takes 10 years to repay. From 2016 it is likely to cost $75,000 plus $24,000 of interest which will take 23 years to repay, bringing the total to $99,000.

From the Sydney Morning Herald; No one knows how high fees will rise, or how big student debts will become. Prime Minister Tony Abbott refuses to rule out some course fees doubling. Bruce Chapman, the architect of the HECS repayment scheme, warns of prices tripling, with the cost of prestige degrees rising above $120,000.

Some University vice chancellors, like Jane Den Hollander from Deakin, are now defending the existing HECS systems saying “that higher interest charges on HELP loans and fee hikes will especially hurt lower income graduates such as nurses and teachers, as well as women who take time out of work to have children but will still face compounding debts while they aren’t earning.”

In raising the issue I do question the link between competition and better teaching standards however my intent is simply to provoke a conversation for many of our young people I speak to aspire to continue their education at university. The question might be who is able to afford such a debt whilst saving for some of life’s other needs like a roof over one’s head.

Posted in Monash University, parenting | 1 Comment

Naplan hits headlines

Posted on May 1, 2014 by mwalker

This article headlined in my school newsletter this week and I have invited comments.

Unless you are a teacher or parent of student in Years 3, 5, 7 or 9 you may switch off when reading a newspaper headline with the word NAPLAN, which is short for the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy.

I don’t blame you and in fact an educational test of and by itself wouldn’t be considered newsworthy unless the results are what’s called “high stakes” in the education industry. Before exploring what high stakes might hold for us lets briefly examine (excuse the pun) what the headlines around the country are saying two weeks out from the event:

Brisbane Courier Mail: Hands up who thinks we teach our students that cheats thrive as NAPLAN prospers?

Written by a year 9 teacher: “I AM a NAPLAN cheat. Yes, that’s right. I am a teacher and a cheat. How I cheat is that I am preparing my Year 9 students for NAPLAN. I am drilling them on their punctuation, homophones, paragraphing and syntax. Oh, I forgot to mention, we have had to suspend the teaching of Romeo and Juliet, because NAPLAN is more important. You see my students won’t be tested against their appreciation of English literature and Shakespeare.”

News.com: National crackdown on national assessment program literacy and numeracy classroom cheats.

“SCHOOL teachers have been banned from coaching students for the national literacy and numeracy tests and classroom security will be tightened under a major crackdown against cheating. Teachers have been accused of helping students gain an advantage during tests by giving verbal prompts and notes to change answers. At a government school a parent complained there was a “strong similarity” between spelling words in a Naplan language test and words in the spelling list students had practised a week earlier.”

The Advertiser (in Adelaide) Principals and teachers banned from coaching NAPLAN tests. 

“For the first time schools have not been told in advance of the writing genre — narrative or persuasive — that will be tested preventing teachers from spending months coaching and preparing students.”

The Age (in Melbourne) Naplan results show public private gulf

“The difference in academic performance between state and independent schools grows wider as students progress into high school, a Fairfax Media analysis shows.”

I attended the Year 3 curriculum planning meeting this week where teachers were discussing NAPLAN or as it’s called by some NAPALM. Teachers already have quite detailed assessments pinpointing students academic needs in Literacy and Numeracy and have spent some time over the past 2 weeks developing a curriculum to match. Some of this has to be put on hold now like the year 9 teacher said in the Brisbane Courier Mail as they prepare students for these tests. By prepare we are talking about teaching children the test genre language – which simply means how to read test questions pinpointing the important words to focus on or understanding what the question is really asking.

Do we spend months preparing students for exams – No! I read in similar exam situations in Australia and countries around the world teachers spending months providing and marking many practice exams – for what – to pass the test for the results are used in high stakes ways (entry into prestigious schools or universities, parents using the information to decide school entry options and teachers effectiveness being measured on the results of the tests).

So what happens to the planned curriculum? In most cases the skills and understandings students actually need to learn and progress are put on hold while we prepare for and then supervise these high stakes tests. In worst case scenarios the curriculum is actually narrowed as Arts, Music, Other Languages and Physical Education classes are cut or cancelled to make time for test preparation. In my travels to schools across Victoria and in overseas countries I have seen this narrowing of curriculum effects first hand. Is that what we are seeking?

Some other issues out of school also arise e.g. Parents paying tutors for exam preparation after school, home pressures to do well causing a rise in student anxieties and the purchase of supplements and medications to deal with exam pressures. These are very real situations both here in Melbourne, across Australia and around the world.

There are other ways to assess student progress often in more helpful ways for both teachers and students. You may recall our Data Wise project, which in collaboration with Harvard University, we are using to implement many of these more informative ways to collect and use in more timely ways data to help young people learn. If you are a parent and want further information please go to: NAPLAN.

If you would like to express an opinion please go to my blog where I’ll paste this newsletter article for discussion: www.mwalker.com.au.

The tests are on May 13,14 and 15.

Posted in Accountability, Assessment, Harvard, Teaching | 4 Comments

Teachers Overseas: professional learning opportunities that also serve as an acknowledgement of effort.

Posted on April 20, 2014 by mwalker

celebrations model for otero reflections on otero

 

I couldn’t help post these 3 images taken in New Mexico last week. The first is a group of teachers and principals from two neighbouring schools Elsternwick and Elwood Primary Schools who share a common belief that relationships build the social capital for schools and their communities to improve young people’s success and life chances. I think they call this networking – ha ha.

From Elsternwick there was Demos who is one of our Assistant Principals and two very committed teachers Lisa and Nicola. This picture was taken at night so I apologise as it fuzzy but it seems to me that they were proud to be educators. Teacher pride in our achievements is not something we acknowledge too much in Australia – much to our loss.

Judging from the last picture of their reflections about the relational learning model they certainly made a number of connections between schools and communities which we looking forward to hearing about soon. The middle picture is something I have previously referred to – the 30% effect of schools on young people’s life chances.

I have followed the New Mexico journey on a Facebook page they set up and it proved to be the perfect tool to share their stuff on.

As Principal I’m honoured to have contributed to their professional experience and proud of their commitment to our young people.

Posted in Leadership, Networks of Schools, professional learning, teacher efficacy, Teaching, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The case for risky play in schools is building. Does short term pain (injuries or complaints) alleviate long term mental health issues – you be the judge!

Posted on April 19, 2014 by mwalker

Playground460x276

I’ve come to this topic of “play” from several different experiences:

I remember David Rease from Harvard on his first visit to our school standing in our school grounds during recess utterly amazed at children playing with minimal supervision (we had 3 teachers on duty in vests supervising 600 children in our grounds) and then coming to line up for the next class when the bell rang. David comments included they are just getting on, sharing equipment and space and making up their own games. In Victoria and I think Australia children playing at recess and lunch times is common place and the amount of supervision is commensurate with the level of risk perceived by the school leadership. From David’s perspective I suppose this was not as common in the States (if there are other opinions I would like to hear them).

I, am I’m not alone here, just expect children to learn to play together in an undirected way – from an educative experience I see it as an opportunity for them to practice the social skills they have learned.

In reflection I note that the incoming prep children’s parents each year often comment on our large grounds, the number of teachers on duty and ask questions like: is there a confined play area just for the preps, is the playground equipment safe, what happens if a child runs away and are the school gates locked. I think that’s a little of the helicoptering parent condition so prevalent today. They are unsure and just want reassurance its OK.

We had a play survey done (yes that’s right) about a year ago by Play for Life, an organisation that s promotes the value of play. Our report made a number of recommendations one being not to separate preps in the play ground as it limits them seeing right types of play and role modelling of conflict resolution by older students. Anyway part of the report recommended us investing in creative play options for young people. One option they recommended was a play pod. Play PODS are an idea from the UK and for more information check out their website.

Recently I was also pointed to a blog called Psychology Today and a post Risky Play by Peter Grey who wrote the book “Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life”. He makes several conclusions from the research:

“Briefly, the evidence is this.  Over the past 60 years we have witnessed, in our culture, a continuous, gradual, but ultimately dramatic decline in children’s opportunities to play freely, without adult control, and especially in their opportunities to play in risky ways.  Over the same 60 years we have also witnessed a continuous, gradual, but ultimately dramatic increase in all sorts of childhood mental disorders, especially emotional disorders.”

 

“The story is both ironic and tragic.  We deprive children of free, risky play, ostensibly to protect them from danger, but in the process we set them up for mental breakdowns.  Children are designed by nature to teach themselves emotional resilience by playing in risky, emotion-inducing ways.  In the long run, we endanger them far more by preventing such play than by allowing it. And, we deprive them of fun.”

He also makes the point about parents over emphasis on competitive sport as opposed to a balance between play and sport saying

So, we prevent children from their own, self-chosen, thrilling play, believing it dangerous when in fact it is not so dangerous and has benefits that outweigh the dangers, and then we encourage children to specialize in a competitive sport, where the dangers of injury are really quite large.

So having made some points here on the value of play, community and parent perceptions what about schools?

First let me say schools and teachers are not stand alone places they are effected by community perceptions of risky play sometimes via courts and insurance claims. I have heard of teachers being taken to court for getting children down from trees and piles of claims for medical bills being submitted to schools when students are injured.

Just a side note here to say that schools are not covered by insurance for personal injury unless there is a neglect claim proved – although government public schools insurance companies prefer to settle out of court on a no liability basis as its usually cheaper.

I once had a work cover assessment suggest I wipe all play equipment down each time it rains to prevent children from slipping and causing an injury. Needless to say I resisted such an action not only for its impracticability but I think it would have been the death of all playground equipment in parks and schools in terms of risk management.

There are newspaper stories from schools around the world who supposedly banned playing with balls before school or at recess (Canada, Canada, States, Victoria, Victoria). In most cases it’s a response to parent complaints. The move to sanitize school grounds is very much alive.

But the point being its all about reducing risk in or through play.

So where do we go – try to allow some risk and accept some injuries along the way or as Peter Gray calls it employ more child psychologists to cope with young people’s mental health issues?

I say resist reducing all risk but do look to promote all sorts of undirected play (e.g. creative, athletic, sports, strategy games – large chess pieces) so that young people have both fun and a chance to learn by taking some risks in undirected ways BUT watch this space.

Posted in Community, play, school | 1 Comment

Stop bashing public education for the tsunami effect will be big and long lasting.

Posted on April 18, 2014 by mwalker
tsnumai sign

I took this photo while on Phi Phi Island where a real tsunami took place.

I’m indebted to Greg Whitby for provoking me to write this post when he wrote on a quality education for all.

Greg, I think was stirred by Prof Dinham when he recently wrote in the Age newspaper about what he perceived as a relentless attack on schooling (and particularly public schooling) and teacher pre-service education. He saw a continuing free market solution with multiple sticks and carrots solutions to fix what must be a failing public system (based on international test results like PISA) as the achievement gap between usually disadvantaged students and others is growing.

Prof Dinham also decried the retro view that pre-service education is like an apprenticeship best served in schools saying this would widen the gap between theory and practice and perpetuate the cycle of teachers teaching as they were taught.

Finally Prof Dinham likened this attack to a tsunami where a long wave of ill-founded change that ignored research and would lead to total destruction as happened on Phi Phi Island in Thailand

Well Greg I’ll join you in voicing my strong opinion to stop this attack on public education, teachers and universities. The Washington Post featured an article by Arne Duncan, the US secretary of Education, talking about this same achievement gap. He looked at two areas where the test scores bucked the national trend and went on to say these states

“ensured that teachers could use good data from multiple sources to identify learning gaps and improve instruction.”

While I agree with this strategy his premise on why schools are failing was again based on the Pisa results.

Firstly let me say that research by people like Dr George Otero and others suggest that schools have about a 30% overall effect on a person’s success and life opportunities. The person themselves has about 50% with about 20% attributed to family and other factors. So this is about changing the school’s contract with the community (this includes governments and parents) by saying our task is to help a family educate their child. This doesn’t say we neglect our role in helping people meet this success. It means that we need to look beyond just schools for a more coordinated approach to promoting this success for all.

Secondly a growing group of educators that include Yong Zhao are asking serious questions about the effects of Pisa on education in many of the countries who rank highly on the test. He questions how community (include parents here) and authoritarian structures in places like Shanghai and Hong Kong continue to place pressure on students to score well on these tests. Do we really want to be like them?

An interesting article in the Washington Post  by Kelly Yang talked about this pressure

“A 2011 survey estimated that 72 percent of Hong Kong high school students receive tutoring outside of school, often until late in the evening. So when our schools get out, the school day is just beginning for most kids.”

So success on test taking (not education) might not lead to increased life opportunities and again interesting data from South China Morning Post newspaper headed:

“Study: One in four Chinese students drop out of Ivy League schools”

I think the last word on replicating China to achieve similar results on Pisa is best left to Yong Zhao

The exams can be gamed, and have often been. Teachers guess possible items, companies sell answers and wireless cheating devices to students[1], and students engage in all sorts of elaborate cheating. In 2013, a riot broke because a group of students in the Hubei Province were stopped from executing the cheating scheme their parents purchased to ease their college entrance exam[2]. “An angry mob of more than 2,000 people had gathered to vent its rage, smashing cars and chanting: ‘We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat,’” read the story in the U.K.-based newspaper The Telegraph.

Tucker’s assertion, that “because the exams are of very high quality, they cannot be ‘test prepped,’” is completely untrue. Chinese schools exist to test prep. Every class, every teacher, every school is about preparing for the exams. In most schools, the last year of high school is reserved exclusively for test preparation. No new content is taught. All students do, the entire year, is take practice tests and learn test-taking skills. Good schools often help the students exhaust all possible ways specific content might show up in an exam. Schools that have earned a reputation for preparing students for college exams have published their practice test papers and made a fortune. A large proportion of publications for children in China are practice test papers.

Last, and I say last because the post is getting quite long, is that we know from research lots of what to do to improve learning in schools – collect data to find learning gaps and improve instruction, providing quality feedback to teachers, focusing our efforts on strategies that work (Hattie’s work), sustaining this improvement work over time (years), ensuring the parents are informed and seeking where possible their support, building learning communities for all that are based on relational trust and shared norm and values. working to build relationships with students and amongst their peers. Not bad for a short list. We also know lots of barriers as well increasing expectations of community (parents and governments). Some of this can be fixed by increased financial resources (in my case more support staff to take some of the managerial expectations from my leadership team), some by increased community trust and support of teachers (we in Australia are some of the biggest knockers sometimes to our detriment) and some by sharing the teaching load with parents (after all we help them to educate their children – e.g cyber bullying from the home, respectful conversations at the table, finding space and time for young people to complete their homework, family outings to places and exhibits of interest and the list goes on).

Well Greg I’m stopping my rant and left the pre service education argument alone but others may want to start theirs.

Posted in China, Community, Instruction, Leadership, teacher efficacy, Teaching, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Michael McQueen on decoding todays students

Posted on April 15, 2014 by mwalker

This is the last post from the Principal conference and the second on Michael McQueen I thought worth sharing.

In this post he identifies 7 paradigm rifts if we are to understand todays students:

  1. The concept of truth being an absolute (black and white) which I take from my baby boomers era is now seen by later generations as relative (meaning shades of grey).
  2. Respect which is a core value and once bestowed because of role must now be earned and be reciprocal. Teachers may to go first in the giving of respect, more than 1/2 way and watch their language as behaviour is language.
  3. Communication is 24/7 for Gen X and Y’s as they are always in contact on their smart phones with a “short is better” function. They have a fear of “not knowing” but there are growing concerns here, namely: physiology simply their hands become too sore to write for long periods thus achieving some measure of quality, they lack deep sleep as they don’t switch their phones off, they have less face to face contact with people so they miss out on body language which leads to less empathy, and finally their vocabulary (of 14 yo’s) is down compared to 20 years ago which promotes frustration and sometimes violence as they don’t have the words to express their thoughts. (Boys that’s a lot to digest and perhaps contest!).
  4. The value of patience is getting lost in the world of instant gratification. The old sayings of life is meant to be hard or work hard and you will be rewarded (delayed gratification) are now being replaced by instant enjoyment and not being bored. TV drama shows display frenetic life clips in 30 minutes and the generations see that as life. When things get hard we must have set the wrong goal or there must be something wrong with me as I’m not the first. Our youth hear our adult conversations about adult anxieties  so youth struggle and have panic attacks when things get hard. Persistance is now hard.
  5. The need for constant affirmation is here where us baby boomers seem to have to praise Gen X and Y’s for simply turning up. We have moved from my generation’s  internal self affirmation to a dependency feed on a steady diet of external affirmation. Michael suggests this dependency for external affirmation drives social media and the likes ones seeks from posting comments. He goes further to suggest the these generations see constructive feedback as a personal attack – this sort of explain some students reactions to teacher feedback. We need to constantly prop up everyone’s self-esteem so we give everyone ribbons for participating and rewards are now seen as entitlements.
  6. The future is now not a linear path where we work hard in school (possibly deferred gratification) and then go to university and to a secure and well paid job. Now we keep our options open
  7. The Gen X and Y’s do learn differently with more noise. Michael does point out the difference between noise and interruptions which do affect the quality of learning and the advantage of using digital technologies wiped out (read Facebook being open at the same time we are trying to complete some writing). He also points to the need for silence which is needed for creativity, reflection and solitude.

My hope is that sharing his rifts we might understand and better be able to work with youth in schools.

Posted in Conference, school, Teaching | 1 Comment

Michael McQueen on navigating around student engagement.

Posted on April 15, 2014 by mwalker

This is the second post from that Principal’s conference I attended last term. The theme if your read the first post (McCrindle) was on social trends and their impact on education, schools and teachers.

We were fortunate to have two keynotes from Michael the first on understanding the eras of the various generations from the builders of the 1930’s to the Gen Z’s 1999 onwards. If your interested in that information Mark has a PDF titled “Understanding the Generations @ Work” which is free to download and McCrindle has a chart worth looking at titled” Generations defined Socialogically“.

In his talk he puts out 6 shifts for teachers if they are to engage young people”

  1. Put relationships before role
  2. Matrix Learning
  3. Adopt a facilitator role
  4. Give regular feedback
  5. Use stories to make your point
  6. Go for commitment not compliance

Perhaps a few words on some of these shifts might help explain his shift:

Relationships: Michael attempted to debunk the old teacher myth of don’t smile before Easter tip as that was about role separation (command and control) and not relationships. Don’t get him wrong he has a formula (rules + relationship = respect). He suggested that students have a well-defined BS (bullshit) meter and that teachers need to be themselves (authentic) and interested in students as people. I think is close to Mark McCrindles thinking here and certainly our work with George Otero – relationships matter.

Matrix learning is simply about showing the relevance and interconnectivity with other subjects of what’s to be learned.

The facilitator role was really about being a good questioner. “the purpose of a question is not to get an answer but lead to a discussion – so ask with an inquiring tone”.

Feedback was an interesting area and I think he was talking about praise and his “rules” challenging

  • do it in person – eye contact with touch if appropriate
  • do it publicly – people work hard for public praise
  • give it proportionally for effort (i think he was talking about praise here) don’t give it for everything.
  • be unpredictable and give praise randomly

He talked about adjusted your expectations and finished this point saying “what gets recognised gets rewarded gets repeated”

Using stories to make your point is good one for as Michael suggests stories show how it work in life.

His last point on commitment is that we need to give a reason to do something not just because we expect it as that leads to compliance.

I hope this summary helps you.

Posted in Instruction, teacher efficacy, Teaching, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

McCindle says students don’t care how much you know till they know how much you care.

Posted on April 15, 2014 by mwalker

Mark-McCrindle

Mark McCrindle, a social researcher,  presented at a conference I attended last term. His presentation was full of really interesting data or information on the various mega trends that effect education in general. The presentation is featured below.

In the presentation he outlines community attitudes towards schooling based on recent national research McCrindle Research has conducted which showed that while schools are innovating and increasingly engaging with students, they have yet to effectively communicate these shifts and the reasons for them to parents and the broader community who have a somewhat negative perception of the current practice of the school sector.

This is interesting as most schools would say they do communicate with parents at least through newsletters, emails and verbally. So I’m thinking it’s not only what and why but the how of communicating. Is the current trend towards short visual clips (e.g. You Tube) the way to carry the message to a greater audience and not the traditional newsletter. Our communication and marketing sub committee are looking at differing mediums now to convey messages.

The last part was an overview of the seven emerging trends redefining schools. Please feel free to have a look at these but I’ll comment on only a few:

  • post literate

We are all influenced by words and now increasingly images. This is not that surprising as our brain processes images faster than words. My reflection is perhaps a well-known one that teachers must now use images in the delivery of content to the Gen Z students. This almost sounds like a plea for teachers to use their large interactive whiteboards doesn’t it.

  • post logic

We have more people now than ever creating new learning and information. There are 2 million peer-reviewed articles and 7,780 PHD’s published annually with most only read 4 times. So there is great content available – so why is so little read. McCrindle suggests that learning is now not just logical but also relational. The reflection here is that young people “don’t care how much you know till they know how much you care”. 

To encourage students to use new knowledge we must therefore engage with them as people first, then set a context that is real and relevant to them.

Posted in Teaching, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

time for great teaching – a report on how

Posted on April 14, 2014 by mwalker

teacher

 

I’ve recently read the Gratton Report “Making time for great teaching“. In the executive summary is says:

Government regulations restrict schools. Enterprise bargaining agreements restrict changes to work schedules, and duty of care requirements restrain schools that want to free their teachers from child minding to focus on improving teaching. We cannot expect teachers to lift our students to  the  world’s  best  while  also  insisting they spend time on yard duty, pastoral care, and supervising extra-curricular activities.

While this quote might appeal to a great many teachers I would just caution that I hope pastoral care is not another word for relationships with students for that is at the heart of great teaching.

The report argues that one of the effects of decreasing class sizes is the increase time teachers must spend in classrooms. Parents here might say well this is a good thing isn’t it? The writer, Ben Jensen, would argue only if the teaching students engage with is of high quality. That begs the main question of the report – how do we make sure teachers get the time for quality professional learning and feedback to meet these high instructional capabilities. The report alludes to nations that score highly on international tests that do the opposite – increase class size (up to 45 students in a class) and decrease the time teachers actually teach so that this professional learning and feedback occurs.

Lets explore what this professional learning looks like then. The report highlights 5 essential elements in a schools plan:

  • teacher mentoring and coaching
  • lesson and grade group planning
  • teacher appraisal and feedback
  • classroom observation and feedback
  • research groups

Probably the 4th point of classroom observation and feedback is the bigger sticking point. The report suggests that schools might consider appointing up to 8 (for a school of about 1,000 students) teacher coaches who would conduct fortnightly teacher observation and feedback sessions. Of course there are trade offs to do this and in fact any of the 5 elements.

In reflecting on this at EPS I would make the following comments.

  • We have 3 leaders with time allocated for mentoring and coaching duties (essentially about 15 hours in total each week). They each have laser like foci on building classroom learning communities based on open and trusting relationships, one on using data to effective instruct at the students point of need and building the capacity of less experienced teachers at their point of reflected need.
  • Each grade group meets weekly for about 90-100 minutes. They plan on a subject rotation basis for a specific curriculum area for the following fortnight. The rotation means they can spend up to 50 minutes each fortnight on planning for say English (regularly looking at student work and determining the next points of learning). These groups also meet for a day each term to examine standardised data to measure both progress or effect, next major points of learning and develop a framework around clear learning intentions.
  • Research Groups: We have several research groups operating – one on the effective use of formative assessment data to determine next points of learning in association with Harvard University and one on creating learning tasks in mathematics that promote the transfer of skills to new contexts in association with Monash University.
  • Teacher Appraisal and Feedback: well new teacher standards and appraisal systems are in progress at this point but there are few principals I know who wouldn’t acknowledge the need to spend more time in classrooms doing this.
  • In order for classroom observations and feedback by teacher coaches to be effective it means substantial culture building work around a common instructional language, the art of description not judgement in observation and feedback, having sufficient relational trust in one another and time which I addressed above.

I think we have achieved more on some points than others but it constantly involves making trade offs to create the resources to do these things well. A number of trade offs are now well embedded (e.g. use of staff meetings as professional learning time, buying time for testing and data to be compiled for teachers, focusing PD on our major improvement initiatives rather than a lot of small personal teacher pd off campus).

I think the journey is never complete to achieve this and we live in a political world where some measures have been sold really well and are harder to change (e.g. small class sizes in Western countries is one of them).

On the whole I think the report serves a read and others might reflect where they are at with tradeoffs and the 5 essential elements.

Posted in Accountability, Collaborative Communities, Data Wise Program, Feedback, Instruction, Monash University, Observation | 1 Comment

Understanding defined by measurement?

Posted on April 4, 2014 by mwalker

“It is important to measure performance because if you can’t measure it, you can’t understand it; if you can’t understand it, you can’t control it and if you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” The Times of India

I recently read an article on rewarding student leadership in schools and it had this quote which to me suggests that measurement is a key component of understanding and I have a wondering about that.

Dictionary definitions of the word say that to understand means to either comprehend or to be able to empathise to another’s feelings. Well we do have tests in schools for the former – comprehension but not that later empathy. So on that basis alone since we don’t measure empathy we cannot understand it nor improve it.

We do of course have the lack of empathy effects and we do measure those ( student counselling, suspensions, incidents etc..).

On the whole I actually agree with the statement but there are a number of things quite difficult to measure in context but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand them it’s about focus really. y

Posted in Accountability, Leadership, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Is there a mindset change needed to engage parents when using formative assessment during parent teacher interviews?

Posted on March 10, 2014 by mwalker

I’ve been thinking lately about our upcoming parent teacher interviews which we now hold in March and August of each year and whether we need to reset the context for both teachers and parents?

Let me set a little background context for this question. Last year a group of teacher leaders published a book on our revamped assessment processes. The book takes a formative assessment lense. Part of the book schedules parent teacher after an analysis of testing data conducted by teams. The teams pick out the essential next steps of the learning for groups of students and then plans a content and instructional framework for the next 4 months. We then hold parent teacher interviews to communicate the plan for their child.

I think traditional parent teacher interviews were held for the teacher to communicate progress over the preceding 3-6 months. Parents sometimes asked questions but generally it was a one way conversation. Some teachers attempted to ask parents questions to get further information about their child (generally a primary teacher) or allowed them to start a conversation about their concern but in a short scripted conversation time was limited for this.

In holding parent teacher interviews to communicate a forward looking plan to meet their child’s learning and or social needs I think we are trying to invite them to join teachers in some ways in meeting these goals. This is essentially changing the parameters of the relationship to a joint partnership rather than just a one way communication about results.

The question I have is then about how we frame this conversation – is it as simply as I’m planning this …… And your child needs to practice …… And see the relevance of this practice in ….. ? Is the parent role therefore about reinforcing school learning with practice?

Let’s be clear I’m not saying supporting practice is a bad thing for the research about practice is clear – done right and in the correct frequency it’s actually very important.

When I was in China last year teachers only taught 3 or 4 lessons a day (out of a 7-8 lesson day) at our sister school as the other time was taken up in setting and correcting daily homework (practice) as well as observing and perfecting lessons (instruction). In order to afford this classes were large in number (45). Parents expected and reinforced the 2-3 hrs nightly homework.

We have taken a different approach that is to have classes of around 25 and teachers teach around 5 of the 6 lessons on average a day. I think there is an interesting correlation here that we expect about 30 minutes homework about 4 days a week and I wonder is that about expectations of teachers time for correction?

Anyway I digress this is about reframing teacher parent conversations with a more formative lense. I appreciate some suggestions here for as George Otero says a schools job is to help a family educate their children.

Posted in Assessment, Sister School, Teaching | Leave a comment

student leadership can promote a sense of belonging

Posted on February 26, 2014 by mwalker

Recently I was given the honour of presenting the special year 6 rugby top, to all our year students. The rugby tops, which have all the students names on the back, is one of the key symbols of student leadership at EPS.

The ceremony began with a short talk on the symbolism of the rugby top and how it identifies them to the younger students who see what’s really acceptable at EPS. All of our Year 6 students are Young Leaders, they run the Monday morning school assemblies, organise social service fund-raising events through their SRC representative, some train as peer mediators who are active in the school yard and other elected captains organise sports and social events at lunch times.

They was a real buzz of excitement as each student was presented with the top and we finished with a fun group shot.

student leaders1

We still present badges for certain elected positions e.g School Captain / House Captains but they value that top as a memento of their time at EPS.

It’s nice to see young people wanting to belong and feel proud of their school.

Posted in Leadership, school | 1 Comment