A Fatally Flawed NCEA?

It just wouldn't be school holidays without debating education with my friend and anchor. We see education from different perspectives, and these debates always invigorate me. Today he told me how an article by Elizabeth Rata resonated with what he sees. I was going to rebut. Then I decided to ask questions instead. Going through the article, it didn't resonate what I see. Sadly, what I see is not normal in New Zealand education. What I see is exceptional, defies the norms, and challenges thinking at all levels and from all perspectives. What I see is a rigorous approach to knowledge that manifests through skills and application. What I see is a mode of teaching and learning that is ako - it is reciprocal. It is matauranga - it is knowledge that is demonstrated through doing.

What I see is awesome.

Elizabeth Rata, come visit us. Come in on a Wednesday and see first-hand how projects can be done from a context of knowledge that allows young people to explore, make sense, evaluate. To focus, generate, and evaluate. To test, refine, and evaluate again.

But make sure you come to Hobsonville Point Secondary School. If you go to Hobsonville School, you'll wind up at the primary down the road.

Elizabeth Rata: NCEA's fatal flaw is to assess projects before knowledge

The author sounds warning alarms, the title disengages me. But, I'm open to reading a range of viewpoints and debating their merit. I persevere.

By: Elizabeth Rata

When stuck in a hole the best advice is to stop digging, but what if you can't spot the hole in the first place? The NCEA review's promotion of project-based learning is an example of the sort of frantic digging that occurs when profoundly and blindly stuck.

Where is the hole? By whose estimation is PBL a hole? Is it only white, privileged, middle-class people who define PBL as a hole? Why is it a hole? Because it doesn't fit the model of learning the Empire established? What if the empire's way of thinking is no longer relevant? What if the skills needed for the current innovation climate are not the same skills that were needed for the Industrial Revolutions climate?

What's wrong with projects? As the Hobsonville School students argued so passionately in the Herald recently, learning by doing projects is motivating and encourages learning. This "knowledge-how" approach also fits nicely with New Zealand's skills-based national curriculum. But what does the approach actually mean and what is the source of this learning?

When was Elizabeth Rata at HPSS? Does she realise that Hobsonville School is the primary down the road? Has she seen what the students must do and know in order to complete these projects? I invite her to come and spend a Wednesday with us and see how knowledgeable these students actually are. This learning not only fits with the NZC, but also with the Kaupapa Māori notion of ako and matauranga. Does Elizabeth Rata include these priority learners in her discourse?

These are the questions the NCEA review needs to ask. We curriculum designers call the source of learning "knowledge-that". It's made up of propositions, concepts, and content, referred to broadly as academic subjects. Knowledge-that is very different from the knowledge-how we practise in activities and projects.

Are teachers no longer designers of curriculum? Is the role of teachers to be conduits only and roll out knowledge that may or may not be accessible to those in front of them? Or should teachers be holders of knowledge who can deliver BOTH knowledge AND skills? Why does the conversation need to be binary? Instead of EITHER skills OR knowledge, shouldn't we be equipping students with BOTH?

The difference between the two forms of knowledge matters because the problem for our education system is to do with their order. The fatal flaw in the national curriculum and NCEA is that the knowledge order is wrong.

How can my students do their skill-based assessments without knowledge? Can they write in sophisticated ways if they only know skills? If I teach skills only (as I admit I have erroneously done in the past), I am teaching only to the assessment. Was NCEA created to be this way? Or was the point of NCEA to be flexible in the delivery of knowledge and assessing of skills. If evidence towards assessment is collected as naturally occurring as possible, doesn't that promote knowledge development alongside skill development? If I teach BOTH/AND in a context that is designed to promote this, doesn't this meet the needs of the students in the classroom?

At present we put the skills of knowledge-how first. But we need to start with academic knowledge (knowledge-that), then have the well-designed and exciting activities and projects which allow students to show their understanding.

Is this the fault of NCEA or is this the fault of teachers not having shifted their mindsets? Is this how we've ended up with a culture of credit counting and teaching to assessment? Is this why students are stressed so much?

Assessment comes in at the final stage. Crucially, it should measure the understanding of the knowledge as demonstrated in its skilful application. At present the assessment tends to measure the skills themselves. It's easier that way. 

Why do assessments do this? Is that because of the creators of the assessment or because of NCEA itself? Where in the English, Art History, or Classics curricula are skills assessed in absence of knowledge? Is this a judgement of more numeracy-based subjects than literacy ones? Does NCEA insist on numeracy-based subjects being skills-based assessments? When we combine subjects with a mix of content and skills-based learning, does this provide the context for BOTH/AND learning?


Let's look at some examples — the alphabet (for young children), trigonometry (for older students), electrical circuits (for university engineering students). The same design principles apply to all ages.

If we use a knowledge-how approach to start, we would ask students to sound out the letters of the alphabet, measure the viewshafts from Auckland's volcanoes, calculate the current in the resistor in the circuit. It certainly sounds a sensible approach. After all, we do want young people to use the knowledge they acquire at school.

What's missing from these examples is what we need to know first so that using the skills is actually showing what we understand as well as what we can do.

When children sound out alphabet letters how do we know they associate the squiggles on the page with alphabetical names or are they just parroting the adult?

Is this a real question?

What trigonometry do you need before you can measure the viewshafts from Auckland's volcanoes or do you simply follow a list of instructions?

We may be able to calculate the current in the resistor in the electrical circuit by following the rules. But if we want to be able to do this in other projects, to generalise in other words, we need to know that current is a response to the application of electric potential to a closed circuit.

Why are 2/3 of these examples numeracy-based? How can we include knowledge and skills in all subject areas?

Following instructions and applying skills won't tell us that. We have to be taught it.

This is the crucial difference between the two forms of knowledge. Academic knowledge (knowledge-that) enables us to understand the meaning of what we do. It is challenging but also deeply fulfilling when we finally "get it". Because it can't be picked up from experience, it needs to be taught by an expert; a teacher in other words.

Does academic only only belong to academics? Is there no room for allowing autodidactic learning? Can we not curate experiences for ourselves or engage with the experiences of others? If we always need an expert to tell us what to do, how are we going be life-long learners? If we always need an expert, what will happen when no one in the room is an expert? How does this align with the principles of ako?

It's the old saying, academic knowledge is "taught not caught". The problem is academic knowledge is not as visible as knowledge-how so we tend to think the skills we see in action are the same as understanding what is meant.

Is this NCEA's fault? How can teachers make academic learning more visible? Do teachers understand the importance of visible learning? How do we empower teachers to make learning visible within the NCEA setting?

A serious limitation of knowledge-how is that it doesn't provide the knowledge needed to generalise. When we think of professionals such as engineers, medical professionals, and teachers whose knowledge has consequences for the lives of others, whether the skills we see on the surface are informed by deep knowledge really does matter.

What happens when we know what we need to do but don't have the knowledge? Are we expected to teach only the things we've been taught? Should there be a space for knowledge creation? What happens when the teacher knows the skills the student needs and not the knowledge? Can the teacher engage with ako and take the students through the process of knowledge creation in a genuine way?

Starting with knowledge-how, with the project hands-on approach, leads to the very rote learning its supporters are, rightly, so opposed to. But there are deeper problems caused by starting with knowledge-how.
Does it have to?

Without being taught the academic ideas behind the "doing" we cannot generalise to other projects or other situations. We are stuck in the one instance, in the here and now. We can follow instructions. We can apply skills, often quite advanced skills, but we can't understand, let alone explain and justify, why we do what we do.

Is this an NCEA problem or a teaching and learning one?

It should concern us all that while New Zealand students are stuck in the knowledge-how world of experience, the NCEA review is there too.

Should assessment be a one-size-fits-all scenario?

• Professor Elizabeth Rata is director of the Knowledge in Education research unit in the faculty of education and social work at the University of Auckland

It should concern us all that while New Zealand is going through the NCEA review that researchers are publishing work that appears to lack due diligence to work happening in their own country.

When Technology Becomes a Teaching Trap

I went to the mall today to pick up a few things. I stopped at a small jewellery store and chose two items for my daughter - one for her birthday, and one for Christmas. When I was ready to pay for them, the sales lady used an app on her phone to send the purchase through to the computer. We then walked three steps to the computer to pay for the items. The store was not large - perhaps five meters across and 10 meters long. The store was not busy - I was the only customer. Why then did we have to go through such a show in order for me to purchase these two items?

It reminds me of what we can be guilty of as teachers. There is a not-so-silent voice that perpetuates this idea that using technology will make us more productive. It will make us more efficient. It will improve life for all. If we're using technology, that automatically makes us future-focused and twenty-first century-ish.

The trouble is this: If we weren't good enough without it, we'll never be good enough with it.

I love technology, and I use it in the classroom every lesson of every day. I 'speak' both Google Apps for Education and Microsoft Office 365. I use the best of both worlds and manipulate tools to suit my purpose and the purpose of my students. But if using technology adds more pressure, more steps, and takes longer to achieve the purpose that I set out to, then I'm using it wrong. A good friend once encouraged me not to look for "workarounds" when using technology, but to "look for new and better ways of doing things".

Technology becomes a trap for teachers when we expect it to make us better teachers. When we get it into our heads that the technology will teach the students, engage the students, relate to the students. When we forget that technology is just a tool. When we do the basics well, technology will enable us to fly with our students, and launch them onto greater heights.

Let's use technology what it was used for - to genuinely make us more productive and efficient and let's avoid the trap of relying on technology to make us look good. If we genuinely are looking forward to the future, and preparing our students for their world, these things will follow. Technology will be the tool we use to equip our students, not the bedazzlement to show how futuristic we are.

Whoa-ora and Sheesh-kanga

First off, an apology to my colleagues. A conversation taking place around me yesterday left me feeling concerned about a few people I care about. The emotional toll left me a bit empty for staff only day today, which impacted my filter, my ability to receive from those teaching, and my ability to engage with people on anything beyond the surface. I eventually took myself off to a quiet corner to refresh and restore somewhat. I am aware that my lack of freeboard will impact the telling of this story, however, I am also aware that our students come into our classes with their own lack of freeboard. For that reason, I hope this will help us all. Help me to process and be back to normal, and help us to remember to look beyond the surface when a student is disengaged.

So, whoa-ora and sheesh-kanga. What do I mean by that. Firstly, it is not meant as derogatory slurs against te Reo Māori. It's to express my feeling of overwhelm at concepts that feel so foreign to me. I thought I was pretty good at ticking the criteria 3 and 10 boxes in the previous Registered Teacher Criteria (they're the ones that were to do with Māori learners and Māori learning). Seems that's actually exactly all I was doing. How was I being inclusive? Chuck a couple of NZ short stories in the year somewhere and yup - I've included Māori learners in my curriculum. If they had actual te Reo words in them - great. 3 and 10 done. Tick tick.

So when I started teaching Kaupapa Māori as a critical lens to teach literature through this term, I actually had no concept of the magnitude of the task we are undertaking. I am so grateful that my students expect their teachers to be learners, because right now we are all wrestling together.

Here's a website that clearly outlines Kaupapa Māori.  Whaea said "ka rewe", so I'm going to use this as our base.
Here's a Mansfield text. How well is it fitting Kaupapa Māori? Not great - she's Pākeha (Kaupapa Māori includes "by Māori, for Māori, about Māori in its definition). Nonetheless, we explored the Pākeha construct of Māori in this text, as breaking down the Pākeha-born identity is one thing Kaupapa Māori seeks to do (Kayla.net)
Here's an Ihimaera one. Same event as Mansfield, but a Māori author's response. How are the two stories the same? Different? Where's Waari in this story? What's Kaupapa Māori about this story?
Let's watch Waru - Whaea said this was Kaupapa Māori. But how is this Kaupapa Māori when Whaea also said that The Pā Boys isn't Māori?
Let's watch The Pā Boys and see if we can work it out.
We are wrestling. It's hard. The students are doing better at it than I am, that's for sure. I'm joining in with all the learning activities, including myself in the groupings, because I'm learning right along with these year 13 students. Once we've finished watching The Pā Boys, we'll go back to critical texts again and try and work this out together. I gave the students their Assessment documents at the beginning of the unit, and told them to hand them into me on or before the first day of next term, so they know what ways they're evidencing their learning this term. Which means right now we can focus on this challenge of deconstructing texts to work out what Kaupapa Māori actually means.

And yet despite all this - or perhaps because of it - when I went to the workshop on matauranga Māori and the one on tikanga, I still felt very overwhelmed. I did a full year paper on Matauranga Maori in 2006 as a compulsory part of my dip ed., but I can't remember anything other than circles - teach in a cyclic way and keep coming back to content. So when asked "What do I want to know", I freeze. I have no idea - I'm so challenged in my own understanding and I'm so emotionally depleted that I'm struggling to know even where to begin. I feel like the student we write off as being disengaged: just tell me what I can do. Tell me something. I can't think yet because I feel so overwhelmed that I don't know where to start because everything is spinning. It's not that I'm intentionally disengaging, nor am I disengaging out of disrespect, apathy, or arrogance. Simply not knowing means there's nowhere where I can fit yet. Nothing to build from. Nothing that looks / sounds / feels familiar and I don't quite know what to do about it.

So when it came to writing my goal based on what I learned that session, sorry kaiako, it's still blank. I think it'll probably read "by the end of this term I will have prioritised the principles of Matauranga Māori and chosen one to incorporate into a class".

The following session on tikanga I thought I'd be a bit better with. I had a whole place on my back wall with the tikanga of my class written on it.
We respect:
Ourselves by doing our work and asking for help.
Others by supporting their efforts and encouraging their risks.
Learning by trying everything and trying again.
The environment by keeping it clean and keeping it calm.

Tikanga - a way of doing things. There are so many tikanga for so many differnt things. I kinda feel like my 10yo daughter a bit - she often laments all the rules she has to know. Why so many rules? Well, it's the way of doing things in society.

It's not that they were tricky, and many of them are already in place in my home even - we have Kai karakia at home, we just have them in English. It wouldn't be hard to ask someone to help me translate a few into te Reo Māori for me. It also wouldn't be hard to have some karakia that we all know to start each lesson with. Every time I observe a Māori class, I see a karakia being given, and I really like it. There was a lot of tikanga Māori that really resonated with me, and I kept finding myself staring at the list in awe and wonder, "that's really ok to do?"

One of the reasons I came to HPSS for my next set of challenges was to extend further into skills that I valued and are normal here. I romantically forgot that challenges come with struggles, and learning pits are innate too! Fortunately I can recognise that in myself - this is a learning pit, it won't last.

And fortunately also, I carry with me my learning from my previous kaumatua: to take one thing at a time, to be patient, to count on people to support me in my struggles (bless you, Whaea! Answering my continuous questions).

And so, by the end of the term I will have started a journey with my year 13 students towards a deeper understanding of what "as Maori" really looks like.

To MLE or Not to MLE... That is the Question.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The ways and means of teaching no longer relevant,

Or to take arms against school traditions

And by opposing change them.

To learn —to sleep, no more;

and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That past is heir to: 'tis a redundance

Devoutly futile.

To learn: to teach;

To teach: perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:

For in the teaching of teens what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

They give us pause—they reflect upon our time spent

And they thank us for a life taught to dream.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of cynic?

Th'oppressor's wrong, the children create!

The pangs to innovate and lead the way,

Silences the office, and the spurns those

That block path many innovators take,

When naysayers might their quietus make

When learning flourishes. Who would history bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

When that the dread of visions unfulfilled,

The undiscovere'd brilliance, from whose mind

No brainchild is birthed, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills of tradition

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus custom does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of transformation

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great import and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Shakespeare was such a great writer. He had such a way of communicating big ideas. I borrowed his structure and changed up a few words to change Hamlet's speech to be one about the changing face of education.

Is it hypocritical to use a piece of writing more than 400 years old to lead into a post about Modern Learning Environments? The traditionalists might be surprised: No. Shakespeare has just as much place in modern teaching environments as in traditional schools. The teachers I know - in a range of school types - don't wheel out Shakespeare because they can't think of anything else, or it's the 'right thing to do'. Shakespeare's work comes out when it's the right fit for the class (although this might change if people are afraid that English teachers don't know how to teach, and an arbitrary panel of disengaged 'experts' tells the nation what they will and won't read and learn about...)

Open plan learning works. Modern learning environments work. Single-cell classrooms work. None of these concepts are new. Traditional teaching is no longer as relevant as it used to be. Flexible and responsive spaces enable flexible and responsive teachers. Flexibility and responsiveness happen in single-cell classrooms, MLEs, and OPLs.

As a student I was a quiet introvert in an MLE environment in intermediate. There were two teachers (sometimes more) around and 60 students in a twin-class set up (one room that was the length of two classrooms). There were three of these spaces in my school, a number of single-cell rooms, two rooms for independent learners... It had a film studio, a music room, a dedicated science room - and this was a public school.

I always felt my teachers knew me, and knew where I was at.

This year we moved, and my children have moved from a traditionally-built school to a full MLE school. They received excellent teaching at their previous school in their single cell rooms, however there are some significant differences I've noticed this term.

1. My eldest child has struggled with self-direction to start with because she was so used to being told what to do. She wasn't used to thinking for herself. This is a child who attended a gifted school one day a week alongside her regular school. The gifted school is a place where creativity and own thinking was not only encouraged, but expected. She one referred to her new school being like the gifted school on steroids. It has taken her a term to transition, however I still believe that this environment will be of the highest benefit to her as there is a duel focus: academics and relationships.

2. My son is at the other end of the scale where he has a team of therapists and other adults around him helping him to access the curriculum. At his most recent team meeting I was blown away to hear that he was talking, participating, answering questions in class, and that he had made friends BECAUSE HE WANTED TO. This had never happened before - he usually required a lot of intervention from his teacher aide to support him to do these things. He is a completely new child  the MLE. He is not lost, he is a happy, contributing member of the class.

3. My third daughter is exceptionally advanced in her reading, and so I give her te Reo books to read because she loves learning the language. When her teachers found out, they invited her to run a workshop to share her love of te Reo with others. She's so excited to be given this opportunity.

What I love about my children's school is that they acknowledge individual needs and have flexibility. There are large open spaces and small enclosed spaces. There are quiet spaces and communicative spaces. The teaching is online, off-line, high-tech, low-tech. It's hands-on, hands-off, It's reading, writing, maths, and science. It's playdough, it's music, it's sport, it's STEM. It's relationship building, communication enabling. It's a place to try, to learn, to make mistakes, to have a go, to fail, to try a different way, to explore, to make sense, to focus, to refine, to generate, to evaluate, to test, to refine. It's a place to learn to be people. A place to learn knowledge and skills. A place to practise skills.

My experience shows me that MLEs work - and they work well. So well, in fact, I too have returned to the MLE environment. I want to be a part of this. In a world where, like the Industrial Revolution times, society is going through a massive change, unlike the IR times we have a different type of change. It's exciting. I want to prepare my students for this world as I explore it with them. I want to go out into businesses and enterprises and find out what the future of employment looks like, and bring it back to school and unpack that with my students. My students in my MLE school get the same high expectations placed on them that I've always in traditional schools. They also get to have real-world experiences to an extent I've never been able to provide on my own before. The students' thinking is sophisticated and interesting.

Do all of them always do all their work all the time? No. I still work with teenagers. I still have to keep track of where they're at and make sure they're completing what they need to complete so that they can demonstrate to others the proof of their thinking ability. If they don't do their work, they still get fair and logical consequences.

Kids will be kids and environment's important. An MLE can, in fact, be found in a traditional, single-cell classroom. I certainly did, and many of my colleagues did too. It's not about being right - it's about being flexible. When spaces and teachers are flexible, they can respond to the needs of the students. That's what teaching is about.

I believe in MLEs. They work. But even more, I believe in teachers who teach in these spaces, and the kids who learn.

A Week in my HPSS Life - Friday

🎉🎉The last day of term!🎉🎉
💤💤It's time for sleep...💤💤

There's newborn tired. There's special needs tired. There's teacher at the end of term tired. It's its own special kind of tiredness. Pretty sure we've all seen this doing the rounds on the internet before!

Source: Internet

08:30 - Community Kitchen Table

Gathered in spaces around the building four communities of teachers could be found. I found Tiriwa in the kitchen cooking breakfast - smelled amazing. I found Taheretikitiki sitting in a Porohita on the floor in Delta. My community, Waiarohia was in Kilo, and I don't actually know where Onekiritea were. One thing was the same of almost everyone I saw today - we were all wearing black. An email was sent out yesterday from one of the teachers about wearing black today to make visible the stand against sexual harassment in the work place. In a school usually so full of colour and colourfully-dressed people, it was uncomfortable and unsettling to see so much black.

But that's the point - sexual harassment in any form isn't ok.

#MeTooNZ Tweets

So far this year I have worn orange for Domestic Violence awareness, Teal for athletics day, Green for St. Patrick's day, and black for Sexual Harassment day. I'd better make sure my Pink is ready to go for Bullying Day in May, too.

As for our community meeting, today we discussed what we wanted to do with huis next term, our leader checked in with how everyone was feeling about our Learning to Learn topic, and also checked in to see how we were going with our one-on-ones and logging them into Kamar.

09:00 - Hub Check-in and send off

Birthdays! Two birthdays this morning, happy birthday was sung, and my directive from the hublings for next term is to be more proactive about celebrating birthdays and making a big deal about them. I'm also thinking next term I'm going to move spaces, as I have been eyeing up the lab opposite me for a while...

09:10 - Block 1 - TEENAGE

My Level 2 class today had a set series of tasks to achieve as they prepared a piece of writing for their writing portfolio. The task we are working on at the moment is writing a letter to Chris Hipkins, expressing our views on what should be included in the education reform. I had my idea of what it should look like - however every step of the way at least one student has said "I don't want to do it like this. I think..." and this stoked great discussions as the students had to justify their reasons. These discussions led me into areas of exploration that stirred me as well. One student I was discussing work with had the point that relationships are important in teaching. He said he couldn't find any where where Chris Hipkins was talking about relationship in education. I found this interesting, as when I looked at a range of sources, including his twitter stream and his webpage, I couldn't find any mention of relationship either. It was a cursory glance, but it led me to think about the relevance of omissions - the importance of relationships in education was conspicuous by its (perceived?) absence.

I know the Ministry of Education places a huge importance on Knowing Your Student - so why couldn't I find any evidence today?

10:30 - Morning Tea

10:50 - Block 2 - Office Time

I keep calling it office time, even though I'm not always in the office. Fridays are when I meet with my Foundation co-teacher and today we were planning for first week back next term. In a good way our planning session exposed how white we both are, especially when we invited Whaea to come and help us with our planning! We want to explore pepeha and get each student creating a cuff bracelet out of copper that portrays their own pepeha, using Maori symbols and design. It's going to be so cool! But man - do I know nothing about te toi o Maori!! I used to think I was pretty good - I did a paper on taonga in my Art History Honours...

12:10 - Block 3: DBAD101

The same as yesterday, we separated the students into two groups and gave them focused time to get work of each subject complete.

1:30 - Lunch time: Duty in Taharetikitiki

It's a fairly quiet space, so when one of my students walked past who I needed to have a restorative conversation with, it was easy enough to chat with him as well. What I really like about restorative practice is that students and teachers can both get to a place of calm with behaviours discussed and and solutions put in place. For me, it allows me time to settle myself before I have a conversation with the students. It can be trying, because I like to tell students that they're wrong if they've done something they keep trying to find excuses for their behaviour. I have to breathe - not taking the bait is something that I'm getting better - but there were still a couple of times when breathing didn't quite engage the filter...

2:10 - Block 4: DBAD101

Time for PE outside... with a whole bunch of gannets! I was eating some lunch on the run, and had a pot of beetroot and pomegranate falaffel in one hand and a bag of corn thins in the other. A couple of the students saw this as I walked on the courts, asked what it was, and then asked to try it. I have long known the importance of sharing food in building relationships - but I don't usually share with students! Sharing kai has been discouraged in many situations, and so it isn't my natural response. The first thing that came to mind this time was our presentation on Monday about kai and pasifika cultures. So, I let them share my lunch and eat together.

3:29

"Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy! Have a great holiday!"

3:30

We made it through another term - for me my first term at HPSS.
I might do a first term review later in the holidays.
But for now...

A Week in my HPSS Life - Thursday

I have been duly and wisely informed that my husband will only read my recounts if they're written in the past tense. And then being highly clever, he referred to this pun:

So, for the sake of my husband, I'm going to write the rest of this blog post in past tense. 😀

8:30

We had the second Q3 (level 3) teachers meeting this morning. Thursdays are put aside for learning design  - so curriculum thinking - and the first time we got together we shared what we were doing in each of our classes. This enabled us to make connections with what other subjects were doing, and therefore identify potential crossover.

This morning we focused on footnoting. We established that English and potentially Social Sciences are the two subjects which formally assess referencing, and asked that everyone else did the same thing as us. To do this, English and Social Sciences will need to come together at some point soon and work out what we each need to assess and formulate a plan from there. Just as how the whole school does PEEL paragraphs, and the whole school uses the learning design model, we'll make sure we have a whole-school structure for referencing as well.

Hobsonville Point Secondary School Learning Design Model

8:55 - Hub Time

Quickly checked in with the hublings, talked to them about where they were when they were missing during extended hub yesterday, and sent them off on their day.

9:10 - Block 1: LITHEO

My lovely year 13 class worked away on their first (three) assessment(s). (Brackets because it's one unit of work that we have been doing all term, and I've been able to align three standards to it: connections, oral presentation, and writing portfolio). Working in this way on this unit of feminist theory in literature has been really cool. It did mean that I had to say no to a student who asked to join my class at this stage of the year. When I explained to him how we've been working, he said that it was "how my teacher last year did things too". A quick look at the Kamar screen we were discussing showed me he did Black Civil Rights for his English course last year. I know who that teacher is and I'm stoked to have my practise recognised as being similar to hers. Biggest compliment!

10:30 - Morning Tea: Duty

Wandering up and down the Waiarohia section of corridor is nice this morning. The students and I are getting to know each other more, and I regularly hear "Toni!" being shouted out followed by a wave. Even students I don't know will fall into really relaxed and natural conversation when I wander into their space. It again shows me what an impact building a school on relationships has. 

10:50 - Office Time

Marked a bit, teased a bit, chatted a bit to the teachers either side of me. Told a science teacher that yes, formal writing can be typed, and yes students can use spellcheck in English assignments. Then followed that conversation with one of my all time favourite spell check gimmics:

Candidate for a Pullet Surprise
by Mark Eckman and Jerrold H. Zar

I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when eye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

Bee fore a veiling checker's
Hour spelling mite decline,
And if we're lacks oar have a laps,
We wood bee maid too wine.

Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know fault's with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.

Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier.
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped word's fare as hear.

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should bee proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaw's are knot aloud.

Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear four pea seas,
And why eye brake in two averse
Buy righting want too pleas.

12:10 - Block 3: DBAD101

We split the class in two today to give them 30 minutes of focused English with me and 30 minutes of focused PE with the PE teacher. We needed to make sure that everyone had their work complete before they go on holiday tomorrow. It was great to see that people made use of the time, asked meaningful questions, and that everyone had a chance to feel successful today.

The other thing that was really powerful for me was the way students reacted when other students had difficulties. Students included and encouraged another who was feeling incompetent. They understood when I sat of the floor with this student and practised sentence structures with him. Later in the block when two students were upset and needed support, other students supported them quickly and without fuss. When I needed extra support to help the students, and asked one student to go downstairs and find someone the atmosphere was positive. No shame or ridicule came from the students because they know that adults are here to support them through whatever they're going through. There was no rubbernecking or FOMO running through the class - as soon as everyone knew that their friends were looked after, they got back on with their work. No derailing of the lesson, just a temporary detour.

1:30 - Lunchtime

2:10 - Block 4: KAKAHU

The last lesson of the term with these awesome young people. I was really bothered when one student told me today that he didn't like the class, and didn't understand what was going on. I wish he'd told me sooner. As we sat together, and talked about reading and fashion, we explored different angles and looked for ways that would be meaningful. We talked of motocross, and I was shown photos of injuries that were sustained as a result of crashes. That was when I was able to reshape his perception of what we were doing. His task then became to read stories about motocross accidents and conceptualise what he could do to improve the protective wear and prevent more injuries.

3:30

And then, just like that, Thursday was finished. So too, I hope, is everyone's work...

A Week in My Life at HPSS - Wednesday

8:30

Stories of power loss and stranded teachers - a bit of an exciting start to the day as people were catching up with each other about how they were affected by the storm. Turns out the primary had lost a bit of roof - whoops, didn't notice that this morning when I dropped the kids off! Cold though! I found my toe socks this morning - and wore these with my jandals. :) 

Wednesday morning is PD morning. This morning, two of our LCLs (Learning Community Leaders: Deans, pastoral leaders... I'm not actually sure where they'd fit into the model I'm used to) took us through the Hub curriculum planners. We were given time to look back on our goals from the beginning of the term, and to reflect and evaluate how we were going to go forward next term. I finished two columns, 3 to do. I was surprised at how much I had done - it's easy to get caught up in the day to day and following up with different things that don't end up on the planner, so taking that moment to breathe and acknowledge the things I had accomplished was pretty cool.

The next job - have a look through Term Two's planner. Yus - I've been looking forward to this topic! Learning to Learn!! I've been interested in this for so many years, and collecting information for so many years that I'm looking forward to sharing it with my hub!! I've used the information in my own teaching and learning practises, and I've been longing to teach it so I'm so excited that the opportunity is here this year! :D 

The third section of PD was considering the effects on hauora using Bono's thinking hats. I didn't take a photo so found this one on the internet. We didn't have the purple hat, but I thought it was cool enough to include.

It was interesting. We were split into groups using the coloured hats, and my group was to look at the negative effects on hauora (we got the black hat). Each group quickly presented back, as the LCL also mad the connection between what we were doing and writing an essay. A sneaky way to build literacy skills in to hub - love it!

credit: https://mgrush.com/blog/2017/06/22/debono-six-thinking-hats/

9:30 - Block 1

The kids have a late start every Wednesday morning. I've worked out that we make up for this time by finishing school at 3:30 every afternoon, not 3:15. This is the day they do projects - on site, with a rigorous curriculum. As I don't have a project, this is essentially an office day for me.

The office day starts with my weekly meeting with my PE co-teacher. Every week we sit down and work through what we need to do with the students for the next week. Today we were going through the markbook and checking who's handed in work. We were updating notes on Kamar. She was teaching me about what to look for when assessing the PE kids. We reviewed a video I took of the kids on Monday where they were playing basketball - and I mentioned how I found it less overwhelming to view the video and mark than to mark in real time. I feel this is how I go with most unfamiliar situations - find a way I can control my learning, and once I've got it I can feel more confident with using the knowledge.

10:50 - Morning Tea

Later today because of the late start. :)

11:10 - Block 2 - In the Office

Winter arrived - I went looking for my office-mate's blanket!

Office time = thinking time. I was working through preparation for the next few lessons, and just working through stuff - as we do as teachers.

12:30 - Block 3 - Office time continues.

The students have floor time during this block and as my books arrived from London during this block, I sat with the students working near my office door and opened the package! :) A couple of the students also happened to be my English students, so they were reminded to get on with the English work they were behind on! 

The new books from the National Galley of London that disrupted my thinking time!

The cool thing about opening this package meant that I was sharing something I love with the kids, I was talking with kids whom I hadn't met before, and we were exploring this together. At the moment I'm really intrigued by text adaptations, and one of the books that arrived is Metamorphosis: Poems Inspired by Titian. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I'm pretty sure that there's some way I can work with biology in the future and create a unit out of this.

Wednesday. Thinking time. So Awesome.

1:30 - Lunchtime.

Deeply back in thought, I was retrospectively vaguely aware of my critical friend telling me to stop for lunch. I can't even remember what I was working on at the time - but it had me hooked at the time!

2:10 - Hub Time

This is our second 80-minute block of the week. We started off with a celebrations assembly today, and then came back and finished off our porohita question from yesterday morning. The furniture had been left in interesting places today - and it kinda made a cave-like feel. We girls sat on the floor, while the boys were on chairs. Following that, they finished their forms for me - Floor time selections for term 2, reflections, and student voice. I then gave them time to catch up on assessments, as they requested, and I tried to get around students who I hadn't chatted with for a while and just chill with them.

I was talking with a friend tonight about how much time we spend with our hublings. 80 minutes twice a week and 20 minutes four times a week because relationships are paramount. Relationships are the most important thing, and they're what everything else is based on. Without a strong foundation, we can't have a strong building. The storm last night illustrates that nicely!

3-storey scaffolding (a structure with no foundation) that blew over in the wind storm.
Photo cred: Carrick Hill

3:30 - Home time

Throw the shoes in the drawer and put on the toe-socks and jandals to walk home :)

8:48pm - LBC Whanau: Love you

I've just come back from the farewell of an amazing teacher at Long Bay. Spending time at LBC, the place where my training wheels came off, was like going back to mum and dad's house. It was like whanau. Mum was there, Dad was there, aunties, uncles, cousins... I've always said (and I heard it tonight) that a school is not about the building (or the results... ;) ), it's about the people. I came home filled with aroha at having spent time with whanau I love. Whanau - you know I write these for you. I couldn't bring you with me to HPSS in person, and so many of you expressed desires to know about what's happening over here. So many of you look at HPSS and see glimpses of what we're doing and want to know more. This is my way of helping to remove the fence so that you can see what goes on and how we make it work.
Arohanui tatou.