Mighty Microblog May

Throughout the month of May Andy Milne seeks bitesize blog posts from contributors around the world. These posts cover a whole manner of things depending on what the contributor would like to reflect on or share! This was the fourth year of microblog May and the third year I contributed. To learn more about the month (especially if you are keen to contribute next year!) check out this post.

The microblog posts I have written: - Classrooms should be safe places, right?: A prompt for teachers to consider what their physical classrooms look like and the impact this has on the general vibe of the room as well as the success of the students - Outside of Your Comfort Zone: I discussed my experiences leaping into the unknown to move to Australia and why it's important to be comfortable with the uncomfortable - From Unprecedented to Familiar: I described some of the positive impacts on my teaching that came from the last few years

In addition to the 3 microblogs for Microblog May, I have also been a guest blogger for Andy twice on his #slowchathealth website.

- Te Whare Tapa Whā: A brief description of the Māori wellbeing model based on the concept of a house with four walls

- Mental Health ≠ Mental Illness: Hopefully a helpful explanation of the difference between mental health and mental illness and strategies to support with mental health

I enjoy reading the short posts while I have 5-10 mins to kill or during break times. Much more interesting and beneficial than some of the mindless scrolling I can find myself doing! Here are my favourite posts from this year with a quote from each of them. 

- Finding Their Swish (Judy LoBianco): "We want students to internalise the joy of physical activity and to do that they must feel a level of personal success".
- Informed Decisions (Sarah Hawkins): "The STI National Strategic Plan from the U.S. Department of Human Services shares that 15-24 year-olds account for around 50% of the 20 million new STI cases in the United States each year".
- A More Engaging Pre-Test (Shelby Hosmer): "A written pretest is not my jam".
- Know Your Why (Cara Grant): "Sometimes by changing schools or positions our Why can look different, and still maintain fidelity and feed our intrinsic values as we persevere through difficult times".
- Walking Away From The Stigma (Donn Tobin): "If we are to truly change the notoriety of physical education, we need to continuously address what is considered best practice. Demonstrate what exceptional teaching looks like, how it can be highlighted, celebrated, and keep those to a higher expectation teaching it".
- The Joy of Eating (Nadia Moya): "Food is one of the great joys in life that we can all share. I want students to walk away from health class with excitement and curiosity about eating, and the skills to build a healthy relationship with food".
- Embrace the Goblin (Michelle Rawcliffe): "Goblin mode is when we transition from treading water to floating. In other words, our body and brain pin us down and force our head back on the pillow".

I would encourage you to get amongst Microblog month next year, even if you don't contribute there are heaps of great posts to peruse!

A Tricky Blended Experience

This was the first year I have had to start the year 'meeting' some of my students online. New year, new school, new experience! Not only have the past two weeks been challenging because of teaching online to students who I have not met yet, this was only for some of my classes! South Australia decided to have Y7 and Y12 students face to face and the rest of students online. This meant I had to switch my energy levels and general 'vibe' much more frequently than usual. I found this super hard and mentally draining.

I had no clue where to begin trying to develop relationships across a screen. This wasn't something I had experienced before. I genuinely didn't realise how much easier it was to engage students and try to start discussion when I already knew them! Because Adelaide also has had few lockdown experiences, majority of students wouldn't turn their microphones on, let alone their cameras! 

Naturally I turned to Twitter and got some great ideas as can be seen below. Andy Milne's post was also helpful to get me thinking and for some starting activities/resources. Finally, I reread through my previous posts tagged engagement to try and get some inspiration. My reflection after a webinar facilitated by The Education Hub reminded me of some key things to consider too.

For the first time I’m starting my year with some classes online learning. Looking for get to know you/relationship building activities for meeting kids! 🙏🏼🤞🏼 @carmelhealth @NicholasFerroni @ScottAmpersand and anyone else - any ideas?? 😬

— Georgia Dougherty (@_gmdougherty) February 1, 2022

A few things that I attempted over the last two weeks (from several people's suggestions) include the following;

- A survey to compare the things myself and students have in common

- Personality tests for students to discuss their character strengths and how they can be utilised in our classroom as well as the character qualities they would like to develop

- What 5 things in your home would you save to be stranded on an island and why, then a discussion around what each of these things and decisions mean for the group 

- Projects that develop key skills students will need throughout the course such as technique breakdown or skill analysis using YouTube videos and designing their own camping trip

- Group contributions to shared spaces such as Google Jamboard

- Scenario based learning prompts and discussions

- Small group discussions for questions/queries/challenges (which I also do face to face to give student choice how they use their time)

This half online and half face to face experience has been really strange and I am glad that it's over! I cannot imagine what it must have been like for teachers that have/had hybrid within the same class, that's a whole different level. I empathise with anyone who has been in this space or similar before and here's hoping this is the end of it!

Teacher Wellbeing & Manaaki Orewa

During the holidays I was involved in an online wellbeing workshop facilitated by PPTA and Worksafe Reps. The overall aims of the workshop were to develop greater understanding of how to increase positive workplaces and what bullying and harassment actually is. To sign up to one of these workshops, as there are several more, please see more info here.

I created the alongside sketchnote throughout the workshop, summarising some of the key things I took away from the session. The things that left me thinking. Overall, I was naturally left pondering my own teacher wellbeing. More specifically, what am I doing to balance my own bucket? How am I helping my colleagues to balance theirs? Is there any more I can be doing to show the importance of teacher wellbeing? 

I feel that taha tinana/physical wellbeing is generally considered to be a more significant risk within health and safety policies, especially for employees. However, it is positive to note how there is a clear shift towards a greater focus on the other dimensions of Hāuora in NZ (and globally), particularly taha hinengaro/mental & emotional wellbeing. This was evident in the Positive Education conference I attended last year, and lately in the national budget from our government. 

At the end of the workshop we were asked what action we were going to take, after learning and reflecting throughout the day. Because I was thinking frequently throughout the day about our school values, Manaaki Orewa, and how these support student wellbeing, I thought I could create a visual to be shared with the staff related to the values and teacher wellbeing. Manaaki Orewa (Respect Myself, Respect Others & Respect the Environment) is embedded within the school culture of Orewa College, but is often discussed more specifically around how the students can display Manaaki. Hopefully this is shared around our staff and can become a print that is displayed in teacher spaces as a small reminder!

Clearly, putting up this visual around school, and implementing some of these strategies for teacher wellbeing won't be able to happen until we are back at school though. During this time of uncertainty, the lines of work and home are even more blurred than usual. Maintaining our own wellbeing is incredibly important for the safety and welfare of ourselves, our whānau and our students. 
If you would like to read more about self care and wellbeing whilst at home (and some general tips), see some of the below microblogs shared by Andy Milne for #microblogweek.

Three Tips for Self-Care as an Educator (Pran Patel)

Looking For Sticks (Mel Hamada)

Managing Your Self-Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic (Mary Jo Geddes)

Shoot For The Moon (Andy Milne)

Making Lemonade (Brenda Carbery-Tang)

Don't forget - be kind to each other, but be kind to yourself too!

Student Engagement & Motivation: A Few Tips!

Although there is significant research/evidence/readings about engagement and motivation individually, there is also an clear link between the two. I'm sure many would agree, that students are likely to be more motivated in the classroom to complete tasks, asks for help, aim for success, if they are engaged in their learning. This seems obvious, but unfortunately can be easier said than done to achieve. I am struggling to motivate some students, struggling to engage some students, and struggling to motivate AND engage others. As a result, I decided to complete some research on tips to increase student engagement and motivation. 

For your reference, these are the articles and videos I read/watched and have summarised;

• 5 Best Ways to Engage Your Learners (Augmented Learning)
• The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice (OECD)
• An introduction to engagement in educational settings (The Education Hub)
• 10 strategies that promote motivation (The Education Hub)
• Why you MUST engage students (Rob Plevin)
• HOW to engage your students (Rob Plevin)

Key Points Related to Engagement:

• Provide students with a sense of ownership
• Give opportunities for student choice
• Use activities that promote curiosity
• It's important to build connections between home and school (see how I'm trying to create positive connections here)
• Give explanations/insight into why the students are learning those things/completing those tasks, the bigger picture
• Learning needs to be adaptable to reflect differences in student needs
• Include tasks that encourage group work and collaboration

Key Points Related to Motivation:

• Teacher expectations need to be positive, high and realistic (see high expectations blogpost here)
• Quality of Knowledge > Quantity of Knowledge
• "Students' motivation is strongest when they believe they are socially accepted by teachers and peers and their school environment is fair, trustworthy and centred on concern for everyone's welfare." (The Education Hub) 
• Make links between the learning, and students' overall/ongoing goals
• Students need to feel confident that they can meet the level of challenge and have the skills needed for a task, in order to feel they can be successful
• Rather than comparing to others, encourage students to focus on personal improvement
• Provide ongoing, reinforcing, positive feedback
• Actually discuss what motivation is, why it is important and what strategies can be employed to increase motivation

A quote to finish, from Rob's YouTube video, that left me thinking...

"When things are too dull and too easy, the students get bored. And we know that when the work is too difficult, and too confusing, the students get frustrated. Both of these situations led to students switching off..."

Professional Development is to develop me

One of my goals this year is to read educational blogs. Even though I have read lots of posts, I have not found the time to reflect on many of them. I stumbled across two articles on Twitter about teacher professional development (PD), which encouraged me to start thinking about the PD I am involved in. The articles were Craig Kemp's 4 ways to improve teacher professional learning, and Richard Wells' Why Teacher Professional Development has to be D.I.Y. 

Recently, after attending the PENZ conference, I have been reflecting on the importance of regular, personalised PD. I love how the conference (like the Google Summit conference) offered a huge variety of sessions, which I could pick and choose between, rather than a set programme. This enabled me to develop where I feel I have gaps in my knowledge. Richard mentions that "changes are happening too quickly to expect institutions like schools to be able to organise enough one-size-fits-all training to keep all teachers up-to-date", which relates back to the importance of individualised, self-selected professional development, especially with the growth and demand of the use of technology within classrooms today.

Craig suggested four tips to improve professional learning for teachers;

1) Encourage Social Media Use for anywhere, anytime learning.

I feel I am ahead of many others, as I have been active on Twitter for one year now, and in that one year I have made many connections, found new resources and my thinking has been challenged. As a result, I have also been moderating a chat I created alongside a friend (Mal Bish). We presented at PENZ about our journey on Twitter and how we think that it is incredibly valuable for educators. So, I am 100% supportive of this tip!

2) Establish a Coaching Pedagogy 

"You are never left on your own, but you are expected to take some steps to do things on your own, increase your skill set, and push yourself to be better". I feel this is so true. I am saddened there are many teachers who aren't continuing to learn, aren't continuing to push themselves, and so aren't increasing their skill sets. Every day I am wondering how I could be better, or how lessons could have gone better, or how I can increase my students enjoyment and engagement! This tip suggests you become responsible for your own learning.

3) Establish a Professional Learning Network (PLN)

This time last year I was encouraged to get on Twitter, but I was very hesitant, fearing it was 'just another social media'. However, I now know that it is incredibly valuable having people around the world, and around the country to support me, and give me tips/resources when needed. 

Craig mentions how he can ask a question on Twitter and quickly he will get an array of responses from around the world, which I have experienced too. For example, last Sunday afternoon I tweeted asking for help to teach a new topic, and multiple people responded within an hour, with resource ideas or activity suggestions. Many of them I hadn't met before! So there is often someone out there to help.

Additionally, Richard's post discussed the reduced need for teaching about applications to use within classes, but an increased necessity to develop our PLNs. Like my tweet, Richard suggests a PLN can "directly tackle [teachers] most pressing professional needs". So when I have burning questions, using my digital PLN is incredibly helpful, at any time of the day and any day of the week!

Check out Sylvia Duckworth's sketchnote, which gives further reasons for the development of a PLN.

4) Make Learning Fun and Personalised (and provide TIME)

Although Senior Leadership need to create the overall strategies goals for the school, and think about how they can support the teachers to reach the goals, the teachers PD needs to have some freedom. Craig discusses the importance of teachers having the freedom to learn about what they feel is important for their development, and be provided with the facilities and time for that PD. This is evident in our PLGs at school and our priority learners. Regularly in our PLGs we have an icebreaker type activity, so our learning and reflections are fun/enjoyable. For example, alongside you can see my 'Avatar' I created of myself, which I then had to explain to my group. 

The overall school goal is to improve student achievement in NCEA, and we have all been asked to have a priority learner or two. From there we needed to determine what to do to support our priority learners progress, therefore we had an umbrella expectation but could take the steps we felt necessary to support our priority learners to achieve more credits.

After reading and summarising these articles, I am left wondering where to next? I feel I am quite active about finding support when I need it, but I think I need to reflect more regularly on what my weaknesses or gaps in my learning are. From there can seek out the appropriate professional development. Not necessarily appropriate for everyone else, but appropriate for ME and my learning journey.

Giving Back to the PENZ Whānau

As previously posted, I attended a Health, PE, and Outdoor Ed conference last week. I stepped out of my comfort zone and decided to present twice this year! Before starting presentation prep, I realised that I had never created my pepeha, so this was my first step. A pepeha is how you introduce yourself, related to the community you identify as home and your ancestors, spoken in Māori.

I worked alongside Whaea Melba, our HOD of Māori to create my pepeha, which was an awesome learning journey. I found out a lot about the history of the land I grew up on and more about my whakapapa (genealogy), and became incredibly interested in my family connections to and with the land. Melba asked me to write out my pepeha on popsicle sticks, cut up each word and then match the words to practice putting my pepeha together. I enjoyed this task as I was physically moving the words into place and practising how to say the words at the same time. After a few weeks of practising, I was excited to finally present my pepeha at conference! 

My first presentation was with my friend and fellow HPE teacher, Mallory Bish. Mal and I moderate a Twitter chat (#NZBTchat) together, and have found Twitter to support our journeys as Beginning Teachers. See more about the chat here, and more about our BT journeys here. Unfortunately, our chats are very quiet currently, and we are struggling to recruit new BTs onto Twitter. So, we presented about the affordances of Twitter both professionally and personally in hope for newbies to join in. Please see our Google Slides presentation below, which also includes my pepeha. We also showed/taught the attendees two digital tools - Plickers (example here) and Lino-It (example here).

I really enjoyed creating this presentation and running the session with Mal, as we have grown as professionals as well as grown closer as friends (check out our costumes below for the conference dinner - the characters from the movie Up!). We were also incredibly blessed to have been awarded together the PENZ award for 'Outstanding New Professional'! I feel so proud of our achievement, and incredibly thankful. I was nominated for the award by Celia Fleck for sharing on my blog and Twitter alongside the moderation of #NZBTchat. Until last Sunday night, I had never actually met Celia before, we had just read each other's blogs and interacted via Twitter - again showing the power of Twitter! So I feel so blown away she nominated me for this award without even knowing me. Please see Celia's blog here.

Other people who have been incredibly supportive of Mal and I, and the development of the chat are Rachael, Carl, Susie, Alex, Hayden, Myles, Hanchen, Stuart, Andrew and Paul. These people have been there every step of the way, and without their help, challenges and critiques we would not have continued to moderate our chat, nor would we have presented at conference! All but one of these people we 'met' through Twitter!

My second presentation was more of a show and tell session of my visible teaching and learning, followed by a Q&A. I showed how my students access my site to see their learning resources, and how my planning is also available for teachers. I also demonstrated some ways to use GAFE applications within teaching and learning, and then answered questions the attendees had about anything I do and know. Finally, I showed how Blogger (and blogging generally) can be used for the learning journeys of teachers and students. Reflecting on the session really highlighted to me how much I do know, and how much I have learnt throughout the MDTA programme over the past 18 months! Shoutout to Dorothy for getting me to where I am today, and continuing to push me to have the greatest knowledge possible. I also found the GAFE conference last holidays to be incredibly useful for educators of any experience with Googley things.

I loved giving back to the HPE community, and hopefully the attendees took away something to reflect on, implement into their practice or experiment with!

Teaching - The Realities

On Monday night, Mal Bish and I had the opportunity to share our experiences as Beginning Teachers to student HPE teachers. Hayden Viles follows us on Twitter and #NZBTchat, the chat we moderate. He tutors AUT student teachers, and wanted us to share some of the realities of being a BT - the questions unanswered at university. 

We felt so privileged to have this opportunity and to give back to the community! So we really gave everything we could think of, in the one hour time slot we were given. Although the presentation was not interactive at all, we felt successful walking away, as we were able to share many things we wish we knew about before getting our first jobs, 'tricks of the trade' Hayden suggested.

These are our presentation points, and we have also shared detailed descriptions and examples of the key points (i.e. our planning) with the student teachers.

Hayden gave us great feedback/feedforward in preparation for our PENZ conference presentation in two weeks time. Our presentation will be focused on our BT journey, as well as the affordance of Twitter for educators. Please see the main feedback points Hayden gave us in prep for our presentation in the infographic I created alongside.

Overall, we feel blessed to have this opportunity. We were encouraged to really reflect on our first 18 months of teaching and what we have struggled with. We wished we had of had the opportunity to have a Q&A session with 'real' BTs while we were at uni, as some of our lecturers had been out of teaching for a while. Finally, this presentation opportunity reinforced the power of Twitter, because we hadn't met Hayden until we showed up today! Please see Mal's blog reflection of our presentation!

Google, Google and More Google!

For the past two days I have been cramming lots of new information, tools and resources into my brain at the EdTechTeam Google Apps for Education Summit at Aorere College. The conference included 8 sessions, 2 keynotes, a demo slam session and ignite talks, all based around Google in some shape or form! I have left with lots of new ideas, and feeling mentally exhausted as the two days were jam packed. Overall I really enjoyed, and was thankful for the opportunity to attend - this post outlines the highlights for me across the two days.

As I have blogged about before, I think Twitter is so valuable as an educator. Throughout the conference we were tweeting regularly using the hashtag #edtechteam (this is used globally so will continue to grow). I have followed and been inspired by the work of Richard Wells and Stuart Kelly since joining Twitter, and I was really excited to have the opportunity to meet the two of them (see pictures). In addition to Twitter, the summit was a great opportunity to network, meet new people and put some faces to names. I feel I am always in my HPE world, so I liked stepping into the wider GAFE community.

My top session takeaways;

Kimberley Hall shared her A-Z list of Googley things. This session was incredibly fast paced, going through dozens of extensions and websites useful for educators. I left feeling bombarded, but have lots of new things to try out! My favourites include the Boomerang extension for gmail (allows you to resend and schedule emails to send), Autodraw (you draw pictures and it offers ready made pictures which look like yours), and Q&A in Slides (useful for when there is a need to 'chalk and talk' or when presenting - allows the audience to ask questions directly to you within the Google Slides).

Jeffery Heil discussed why educators should teach about failure, drawing on the work of Carol Dweck's growth vs fixed mindset. He explored the need for discussions in the classroom about how 'failure' should be recognised as positive for steps towards success. Jeffery also discussed the need for rubrics to encourage students to aim for mastery, not provide opportunities for students to aim achievement lower than needed/failure. This really made me think about the importance of having high expectations for my students, encouraging all to aim for Excellence. Unfortunately, many of my students have the 'Achieved will do' attitude he talked about, which is something I am hoping to change.

Angela Lee's session explored some Virtual Realities which can be used in the classroom, including Google Expedition. I am excited to try and use some of the VRs throughout the anatomy unit particularly, so students are able to 'look inside' the body'. Expeditions investigate multiple systems within the body such as the respiratory system (which could also be used in Health, as it discusses the impact smoking has on the lungs). Because anatomy involves a lot of rote learning, I am keen to include new and exciting ways to learn about the body, that isn't memory based. Some of the apps Angela suggested specifically related to the body include Anatomyou and Anatomy 4D (Augmented Reality). Very excited to have a play!

Following on from my interest in enhancing my culturally responsive pedagogy, including the need to increase my use of reo in the classroom, I attended Te Mihinga Komene's session. She suggested some ways of getting to know where we, and our students come from. We used Māori Maps to research our local maraes and find out further information. I feel there is so much more I need to know about myself and more about my students after this session. I love how she shared some ways to 'pimp our pepeha's' - because I am going to write mine this term! The HOD of Māori at school and I are going to create a digital version of my pepeha, because my students create them too. Throughout, I am likely to learn more of the language to include into my teaching and learning.

To conclude, however, many of the sessions I did not attend, and some I did attend, really highlighted how much I do know. Even though I am only second year, so have very little experience, I forget how far I have come since the beginning of 2016. The conference showed me that I know so much more than I thought I did, so maybe I could present something next year! I highly recommend the conference for educators from all fields and of any ability/confidence level.

I am excited to try out all of my new things, and possibly get my Level 2 if I find time...

Moderating a Twitter Chat

About six months ago I blogged about joining Twitter. Until a few people encouraged me to join, and then it was part of an MDTA Friday, I had no desire to join up as I thought it was just another social media. However, I was incredibly wrong. Twitter is a great place for networking, sharing resources, and finding interesting readings/articles, so I have learnt so much since I joint Twitter.

Twitter chats are incredibly insightful and thought-provoking, and there are soooo many out there! Some PE related, others around digital technology and some purely about education and learning. If you would like to join Twitter, or engage in chats please flick through these slides.

Although the chats are interesting and I take a lot away from them, I started to feel the presence of BTs was low. I suspected this may be due to the feeling of inexperience, thus thinking one cannot share thoughts and ideas. I know I feel that way! So, my friend and I decided to develop a Twitter chat for New Zealand BTs - #NZBTchat.

Tonight we (Mallory Bish and I) have completed moderating our fourth chat. Our topics so far have been BT support, a 2016 reflection, classroom culture and behaviour management, all things we know we like to talk about, as we are both BTs. The aim of the chat is to bring BTs across NZ together to share their ideas and resources, as well as network with other people in a similar boat, going through similar challenges - which I think we are starting to achieve!

By moderating I feel I am learning so much by interacting with others and providing challenges questions in response to those engaging in the chat, so my critical thinking skills are increasing. I also feel proud that we are giving back to the community, and attempting to start a place where like-minded people can chat!

Hopefully the chat picks up a little more as the year progresses! Check out some of the things we have talked about by reading through the chat here.

Keeping Up With The Teacher Load

After losing some work because of restarting my computer, and forgetting some ideas I had for future lessons - Dorothy suggested I download Google Keep. The next morning I was listening to Carl's podcasts and he recommended for all teachers to have Google Keep. To be suggested the same application within 24 hours sold it to me!

And now I cannot imagine being without it!

Google Keep was created as a note taking service, to capture your thoughts, ideas, images, websites in one place; such as recipes you would like make, lesson ideas you want to jot down without losing the piece of paper, to do lists to cross off, links to come back to without bookmarking... The options are endless, which has been so great for me trying to juggle so many balls in the air. 

There are several features I am yet to experiment with additional features of Keep including labels, colour-coding, sharing notes and using my phone to add notes. These features will be great once I have more on my Keep, in order to organise and easily access notes of similar themes/ideas.

I have found Keep to be a useful place to jot things down for my future studies especially. I am going to be writing my dissertation next year, which is going to be a huge task to tackle. Keep has afforded me to keep an ongoing list of ideas I have as soon as they come to my head, rather than trying to remember everything next year. Similarly, if I see cool lesson plans online for topics/units I am not currently teaching, I can save them in Keep to come back to in the future, rather than try find the link again later.

If you are interested to download Google Keep - check it out on iTunes! Highly recommend.

I'm Basically A Bird

Not quite a bird, but this morning I have been tweeting up a storm!

Recently I have been building a professional relationship with Carl Condliffe, an educator who is quickly becoming well known in the HPE field in NZ. He, along with many others have encouraged me to create a Twitter account to get my name out there. So, after weeks of deliberating whether I wanted another social media platform to get addicted to, not really sure what it is, I finally created one on Wednesday night!

Little did I know - our focus for MDTA this morning was about Twitter and how tweeting can impact our Professional Learning Network! I can definitely see the value of Twitter as PD at my fingertips. I can access information from an array of professionals quite easily, and engage in 'chats' to develop my thinking as well as challenge others. Our task today was to engage in one of these chats.

We were provided with provocative questions in order to push our thinking outside of the box, and responded to the questions by tweeting. Our tweets included the hashtag #MDTAchat, so all responses were collated in one space. We were then encouraged to comment on our peers tweets to continue conversations and critically think further.

Check out our chat here!

I am definitely a newbie to Twitter, but I see the value it has. I enjoyed how this morning was about myself as a learner, as I feel sometimes I don't spend enough time developing myself as I am so focused on developing the students.

I look forward to learning from and with others amongst this enormous professional networking medium!