Closing One Chapter, To Open The Next

Well, I've had a hiatus from teaching and blogging, but I'm excited to get the ball rolling again. I've moved over to Adelaide in South Australia, and next week I start part time teaching here. I'm looking forward to learning a new curriculum, and being back in the classroom! The New Zealand teaching journey is likely to continue in the future, but for now I need to get used to people pronouncing h as 'haych', and learn the rules of Australian footy! 

Closing the first 5 years, 2 schools and country of my career encouraged me to check out which posts had the most views. Although this blog is a place for me to store my reflections and an artefact for my teaching evidence, it's also for me to share, connect and learn with others. Therefore, I do like to follow the statistics behind how many people view my posts and where they view them from. According to my view count, these are my top 10 most read blogposts to date. I'm intrigued to see what the top posts from my Australian chapter will be!

1) Engaging Students From Afar!

2) We Like to Move it, Move it!

3) A Seesaw, A Wheelbarrow and An Arm

4) Co-Teaching Celebrations

5) Lockdown Learnings

6) A Day In The Life Of A Learner

7) Assessment - More Than A Test!

8) Student Opportunities To Respond

9) Keeping Up With The Teacher Load

10) Restoring Relationships Through Restorative Conversation

Classroom Management: More Than A Waiting Game

Over the last three years, I have volunteered for Physical Education New Zealand, specifically the Auckland branch. See more about this in an earlier blog post. Usually we (the Graduate Mentoring team) run three face to face sessions for beginning teachers throughout the year, but this year have held off and decided to host two online sessions. On Monday, our session was focused around behaviour and classroom management strategies, using the below scenarios to create discussion. 

Although the session was designed for new teachers, it was a great reminder of all of the different tools and strategies we can use in the classroom, to help with behaviour management. Put yourself in the 'walls' of these classrooms, and think about how you would respond. 

- Do you think your response has changed the longer you have been teaching? Why/Why not?

- Do you think your response would be the same if they were Junior students or Senior students? 

- Have you considered restorative practice, before jumping to punitive measures? (See this post and/or this post for information about restorative conversations)

- Should you respond to the scenario immediately, or a little later? When? Why?

The inspiration for this post came about when I met my student teacher this week, and we were discussing her goals for her practicum. One of the Learning Outcomes is to Apply a range of strategies to manage student behaviour, clearly aligning with the scenarios! So I have given these to my student teacher, for her to reflect on how she would respond now with no teaching experience and then once she has some teaching under her belt, we will have another look. I think this simple activity will ignite great reflection and discussion, and is an activity any teacher could do regardless of their experience.

I found the below visual which explains some strategies that can be used in the classroom, here. In addition to these, there are sooo many other strategies/tools that can be utilised such as; 

• Tone and/or volume of voice
• Physical placement and proximity to students
• Countdown verbally and/or with fingers
• "I've noticed you aren't yourself lately..."
• Observations of students in other subjects
• Whistles
• Music
• Differentiated learning activities
• Student choice
• Challenge and competition
• Discussions and plans made with other teachers
• Activities including student interests/hobbies
  

Ultimately, every teacher, every class, every student and every situation is going to be different. One day one strategy may work and the next day it may not. But that's the beauty of teaching - we have to be flexible all the time!

Behaviour Management: Conversation Over Confrontation

Late last term, Adam reminded us of the importance of attempting restorative conversations. These are a behaviour management strategy, which focuses on the repair and rebuild of relationships, as opposed to a punitive approach. The aim of developing confidence to create restorative chats with students, is for the students to gain closer connections with others and become more empathetic and aware of others thoughts, values, feelings, decisions. 

Learning how to hold a restorative conversation, and practicing how to complete them, are important for the future of the student's relationship with you and others, but also their long term behaviour. I leant a lot about these conversations at Tamaki (see here and here), but as I was so new to teaching, I found these conversations very difficult. Throughout this year I have been attempting to have more, because I think they are significantly more beneficial for the student's learning than punitive measures like writing lines and detentions (which I unfortunately still give, as they are part of the school system!), because the students are likely to learn more from a personal, honest chat as opposed to copying words onto a page or a confrontational grilling!

I decided to write this post late last term, when Adam asked the department if we are open to learning. If we are open to discuss the things we are challenged by or things that are not working. It is of course much easier to write a post about things that are going amazing, but we are obviously more likely to learn from reflecting on and thinking about the not-so amazing stuff. For me, two  things I am struggling with are having these conversations with students, but also having challenging chats with my colleagues (I plan to read a lot more about the latter and write a post in a few weeks).

The most recent attempt I had at a restorative chat was with a Year 9 student late last term. This student had repeatedly been disruptive throughout the lesson, disrespected others and was not getting involved the activities. After several reminders of how to talk to others, he threw a racquet forcefully at the ground for his own entertainment. By that point I'd had enough, and asked him to sit out. He went and sat on a chair a few metres away from the class game and a couple of minutes later I sat on the floor in front of him. I attempted to maintain the WARM layout for the conversation (as previously linked and alongside), and keep a calm voice. He was able to explain to me what'd happened throughout the lesson and who may have been affected by some of his decisions. He agreed that these needed to change. What actually emerged from the conversation was that his mum was really sick, and it was unexpected. He was angry about this. Why did his Mum need to get sick? Why couldn't he help her? So every time he was bugged by someone or something, that was pushing him closer and closer to the edge. We both felt a lot better after our discussion because he knew that I was more understanding of how his actions came about, and he was more understanding of how some of his behaviours were unacceptable. Moving forward, I hope to see more positive choices from him, to see whether this conversation did have an impact on him!

I watched the above Ted Talk which explores restoratives practices to resolve conflict and build relationships. Some of the key points I took away from the talk were;

- Students may not understand what they have done is incorrect or wrong, so it is important we educate them about why it is not ok. If they don't understand why it isn't, the behaviour may reoccur.

- Katy used a 'time in' instead of a 'time out' - when students were deemed as 'misbehaving', instead of sending them out of the class, she had designated a 'time in' zone, where she asks the students to go, to then have a chat with them.

- Before having the conversations, consider how whatever had happened leading to the chat, and the chat included, could have actually contributed positively to the future.

- Be honest and empathetic

- Understand why the restorative conversations are important in the bigger picture.

- Use I statements rather then saying You, to avoid blaming or accusing.

- Consider and attempt a discussion about why the student made the decision(s) they did - what is going on in their lives, did anything possibly trigger it etc.

- But also avoiding the use of the word why when possible

- Talk with the student, not at them!

Know Thy Impact, You're A Leader

Our teacher only day today had two focuses; unit planning and restorative conversations.

Recently, the middle leaders have created a unit plan, which they would like to have consistent across the school. The house representation on the left were some of the many things taken into consideration when developing the unit plan template for teachers, as these are the key parts of our teaching and learning at Tamaki College. In addition, we were suggested that students reading and writing levels should be considered, inclusion of opportunities to increase literacy and numeracy and pastoral care logs may change how particular activities are managed.

Our deputy principal, Russel Dunn, spoke about the importance of lifelong learning, and how we might see it in the classroom. He discussed how students won't 'close their lid' at the end of the period (or earlier than!), because they want to continue learning, even after the bell goes. This really made me think about how so often I feel like my students do want to leave as soon as the bell goes, which really saddens me. This suggests they aren't engaged in learning and aren't interested to learn more, therefore I need to adapt my teaching so they don't feel tempted to close their lid. So, I will attempt to seek some feedback from students this week about the learning activities and lessons, in hope for some feedforward to increase engagement.

The key message I took from our discussion before heading into creating a unit plan, was to know thy impact - a message from John Hattie, the golden rules for educators.

Other reflective questions we were posed, which I am still reflecting on include;

What is success? Can the students explain what success looks like? What is expected of them?

Can students self regulate? Are they able to identify on their own strengths and weaknesses when they have met the expectation/success criteria of a task?

We spent a couple of hours throughout the day attempting to use the unit plan template to create one of our own units. We were also encouraged to use data as often as possible, in order to improve current unit plans.

Part 2 of the day was a restorative practice session, encouraging teachers to get into the learning pit. initially we were asked to think about low level behaviours in the classroom, and categorise the behaviours, then discuss how we would respond to the situation (see below photos).

We were then given the scenario of students gaming or on Gmail chat during a lesson, and then we needed to role play a restorative conversation using the acronym WARM. Please see my previous post about the structure of restorative conversations. This short clip also discusses restorative questions. As small groups we created short videos acting out a response to this scenario, which is a positive conversation, a restorative follow up. Please see below the example of Whaea Melba (HOD Māori) and Mrs Pamaka (principal), which I thought was a great example.

Restoring Relationships Through Restorative Conversation

Near the end of Term 1, I heard from some of the other beginning teachers about a PD they were receiving fortnightly at school. The teachers were mostly new to the school so were offered an opportunity to work with RTLB on site to explore PB4L teaching in practice. This is the first year the opportunity has become available, so we did not receive this additional behaviour management support as first years last year. 

I had a bit of a fear of missing out, and the PD sounded like it was a great place to discuss ideas and techniques of how to manage behaviour positively. So, I leapt into the PD this term!

The first session was about lunchtime duty - something which is not regularly discussed. I remember thinking on my first duty last year "what am I actually supposed to be doing?" To be completely honest, because no one ever actually told me, I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing until this PD discussion!

Simply, we should be scanning the area, moving unpredictably, and interacting with students. Many of the group discussed duty as a role to prevent misbehaviour to occur, but holistically is it about ensuring all students feel safe and are safe in your area. This means affirming positive behaviour which is modelled, rather than always focusing on behaviour less preferred. If you would like further on this session, please read Cheryl's post (our PCT facilitator).

Our second session for Term 2 was focused on the structure of a restorative conversation with a student following misbehaviour. Two acronyms for the key components of a restorative chat are below.

I had a moment yesterday with a student where I had the opportunity to try and put this structure into practice. After taking the time to have a conversation with him after he told me to go away and shut up, I felt the chat went well. I took my time to give the student the opportunity to reflect on what happened and then explain what/why he was possibly disrespectful/inappropriate (i.e. to think about his behaviour, rather than me telling him what he did 'wrong'). After attempting to use the above steps at the end of the conversation he apologised (which I felt was sincere) and we discussed how he could have talked to me respectfully about what was going on at the time, rather than taking things out on me. He even told me he really wants to learn and he knows that I can help him, but he was stopping that from happening! He came into class today, and although wasn't where I would quite like him to be yet in terms of progress, he was considerably different to yesterday (in a positive way!). I really hope my attempt at a restorative/PB4L conversation sees long-lasting effects and benefits!

Looking forward to seeing what else we discuss/explore in these sessions in the future.