The Process of Making Changes

Throughout my working life (teaching and non-teaching), I've worked for, with and under many different people with different leadership styles. I have started to recognise what I really value in a leader, and what isn't as effective for me and my development. I'm now at the point in my career where I am wanting to up-skill to be able to become a leader of others, so The Education Hub's webinar 'Shifting the focus from change to improvement' caught my eye (Distinguished Professor Viviane Robinson). The session was focused around making changes and why/how these changes are being made.

There were several questions that left me thinking, as outlined in my sketchnote. One question in particular was related to listening to staff and students before making any changes, or suggesting new initiatives. The biggest thing that I took away from this webinar was how important that is. To really stop and listen to why someone (or why a group of people) are doing something the way they are currently. They are going to have understandings, evidence, observations to justify their reasoning, which you may have not considered, even if you are their leader. From this conversation your change/initiative/proposal may adapt, using the knowledge and feedback you now have. Don't just make this decision on your own, listen to the why, listen to your colleagues, include them in your decision-making process.

The second takeaway for me, was what are the different puzzle pieces that contribute to the problem or issue you are suggesting to adapt/alter. From conversations with staff and/or students, you may find there are several factors at play for the low achievement for example, not just how the unit of learning that is delivered. For instance, there may be low achievement because the teacher needs support with behaviour management, or the class sizes may be too big for 1:1 support, or they don't have the content knowledge to deepen learning for higher grades. All of these puzzle pieces will contribute in some way, some more than others. So if the major puzzle piece is the need for professional development around behaviour management strategies, but they are offered a course on deepening content learning, this won't support success toward increasing student achievement for that particular staff member. Reiterating the importance of including your colleagues in the process of adaptations/additions/changes etc.

Finally, Viviane discussed in detail her theory engagement model, as pictured alongside, which is explored in her book Reduce Change to Increase Improvement. Put simply, the first step before making any changes is for parties to agree on the proposed problem. From there, evidence to suggest why this is a problem needs to revealed. This step obviously includes discussions with staff as aforementioned, but can also include open and honest conversations with students, lesson observations and assessment data. Evaluating the evidence gathered, considering the overarching problem and discussing the alternatives is step three. To conclude the cycle, the new ideas/resources/suggestions are to be trialled and implemented. The cycle of course continues to repeat itself, to determine what the long term changes are for staff and ultimately students (positive and negative).

Overall, I recommend watching this webinar for any new leader, or anyone like me who is aspiring to be a leader. It really leaves you thinking about the importance of consultation before diving into any changes!

Engaging Students From Afar!

Last night I attended a webinar called Supporting student motivation and engagement when learning from home, facilitated by The Education Hub and Harry Fletcher-Wood. If you are wanting to watch the recording of this webinar, you can access it here. This webinar was good timing for two reasons; I'd already been looking into motivation and engagement (see blogpost here), and we are back into online learning after one week before the holidays. The two things I left thinking more about, and two things I could put into action immediately, was that less is more, and to use the chat box to encourage students to share - give them opportunities to respond. 

We are using Google Meet with our classes. For the most part, I'm keeping myself available at the beginning of lessons for 10-15 minutes to give instructions and answer questions and then again for the last 10-15 minutes if students need further help or to have a debrief. This morning though, I wanted to have some deep 'discussion' with my Year 12s, in an attempt to replicate what we'd do if we were at school.

We started to discuss gender and sexuality stereotypes. I would ask a question such as when you think of male or masculine occupations, what do you think? Then students would post into the chat box what they were thinking, and as their comments came through I would read it, and then ask follow up questions. Even though I was the only one talking, the students were actively engaging in 'discussion' through this chat box - it gave everyone a voice, and to be honest there were WAY more voices heard (obviously not literally) than if we were in the classroom!

Secondly, we keep getting reminded that less is more, that we can't expect students to be able to meet the same expectations and complete the same amount of tasks as if we were at school, that we need to prioritise key learning we want the students to retain. After the stereotypes discussion, showing them a prerecorded video I'd made (which included reading a picture book!), and then an adaptation of a human continuum (displaying numbers on their video (could have just used fingers) to represent their opinions on a statement I gave, such as it's embarrassing for males to cry in public), I'd had 26 students actively involved for an hour. I was absolutely stoked!!! So, even though there was still half an hour left, and I had another activity planned, there had already been rich 'discussions' and I felt the students had learnt a lot, so I called it there and told them to go and have a cuppa! I decided to stay on if anyone wanted a general chat, and for half an hour 6 students stayed and conversed with me and each other about their isolation experiences so far!

As we navigate this unusual time, we are learning a lot as teachers, as partners, as colleagues and a lot about ourselves. In addition to these two considerations, remember to maintain your connections and relationships with your students, don't try to recreate the wheel, and help the students to develop study habits/ a routine!

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!

Ethically Viable Research

A huge part of conducting research is applying for, and being granted ethics. Research needs to be ethical in order to be carried out, and supposedly approval takes a substantial amount of time. Many from the previous MDTA cohort, and my friends who have carried out their postgrad, have complained to me about the hideous process! However, we are considerably lucky that ethics is, hopefully, going to be granted to our cohort together.

This morning's job was to get the lowdown from the Ethics Team from uni about why application for ethics is incredibly important, and how they are able to assist you along the way. Although unlikely in our studies, there is a possibility to cause harm, long term damage, or affect the participants or researchers, but the aim for ethics is to minimise the likelihood of harm as much as possible. Check out the sketchnote I created as we were given the presentation this morning.

We were then given the difficult task to create an umbrella ethics application to submit together. As expected, this was difficult as we all have very different studies, thus have different methodologies, parameters, samples etc. We came to somewhat of an agreement by the end of the discussion, many conforming to the rest of the group in order to meet the blanket application. 

Although I still need to do a bit of thinking in the next week or so, my hope is my research will investigate student and teacher (myself) perception of the impact of blogging on learning, in my Year 11 PE class. I have a bit to redevelop after this morning, to fit under the ethics proposal, but I am both petrified and excited for what is to come! What this space...

Getting Artsy in SOS

Our Linoit to represent what we have learnt

For the past two weeks in Social Studies we have been discussing the Olympic values; Friendship, Excellence and Respect. After a few lessons learning about the values and what they look like, feel like and sound like with both reference to the Olympics and their own lives, this morning we begun a sketchnote to summarise our learning.

Yesterday we brainstormed key words, phases, and ideas associated with the values, to conclude the learning. From there I explained the three key components of sketchnoting (text, image and structure) and showed my own examples so the students had some knowledge and insight into the phenomena. From there, I suggested some possible layouts, texts and images the students could use and let them go for it.

Key ideas and learning about sketchnotes

Although some students struggled to start, eventually nearly all of the kids had started their sketchnotes, and what they have come up with is incredible. Many of the kids wanted to stay in class and keep going, and similarly at the start of the period I had many eager beans ready to go inside and start sketching before I was even there! I was pleased how engaged most of the students were, including some students who I really struggle to get engaged in classroom activities.

A few of the boys are known for their 'artwork' some may call it, sometimes in inappropriate places. I have seen some of the block writing and drawings they do, and am often blown away - so this activity was aimed to cater for them and their interests. Although they didn't complete the whole task, they were completing a sketchnote and able to explain the values to me, which was a huge step in the right direction.

Although I cannot include everyone's on here, these are some of the sketchnotes which have had the greatest progression so far, and some really cool ideas. I am so proud of the efforts the students gave!

If you are interested in the Olympic values, here are two clips to learn more!

Fun with Infographics

Cluster-wide PLG

Today at the cluster-wide Digital Immersion PLG we discussed the Summer Learning Journey Research and then created our own infographics. Our umbrella focus was the Share component of the Learn, Create, Share, keeping this in the back of our minds throughout the PLG and our own creations.

5 TC staff squished into a 2-door hatchback!

The Summer Learning Journey involved students learning and blogging from home over the summer break, to reduce the summer drop off. Many of our akonga lose a lot of the knowledge and skills they have developed throughout the school year, over the Christmas break. When they return to school in February to start the new year, their e-asTTle scores are not as positive as we would like, so Rachel Williamson set out to reduce this drop with the Summer Learning Journey.

I attempted to complete a live sketchnote to reflect some of the key parts of the discussion in our PLG and the findings from Rachel's research. Although it is rather messy and all over the show, I don't think it is bad for my first live sketchnote - I hope to complete more of these and include in the classroom.

This afternoon we were asked to explore the statistics behind our professional blogs, and then create an infographic to reflect some of our findings. I really struggled with this creation, possibly due to the data/information I was attempting to project. I am not 100% proud of this creation either, but I gave my best!

The original Google Drawing can be found here, which has links to the top referring sites and blog posts!

Notes and Doodling Combined

Today's digital immersion focus was sketchnoting - something I have been doing myself without even realising it! Sketchnoting can be utilised for jotting down key ideas when learning something new, planning out new knowledge or revision. To sketchnote, one draws and writes down notes that are important, things we need to remember or continue to think about. I have enjoyed having the opportunity to create some sketchnotes of my own, and my own thought process.

There are two types of sketchnoting, which I will be able to utilise as a learner myself, and within my classrooms; live sketchnoting and summary sketchnoting. Live sketchnoting would be useful when in a lecture, or a presentation when attempting to retain a lot of information. This is sketchnoting in the moment, when something is actually happening, and recording the key ideas or take-aways from the session. Creating sketchnotes in the moment would be useful for students when I have a lot of content to teach, and feel it important their full attention is on me and what I have to say.

Summary sketchnoting would be useful as a reflective process at the end of the lesson. Students could create a sketchnote to summarise the key ideas from a lesson, as well as possible ideas they need to know more about. Thus, a summative sketchnote is also a summative and formative assessment of student learning and whether they have met/understood the learning intentions for the lesson, in order to plan for lessons following.

I believe this tool would be useful in the classroom as a different way to engage with and reflect upon learning. Students are often asked to take notes and then study the main messages of a lecture/presentation/lesson, which can become mundane and repetitive. Incorporating drawings into a sketchnote enables the learner to think about how the ideas can be represented in a different way, or they may simply prefer to draw than write. 

In order to teach how to sketchnote, I would encourage students of the three major components of sketchnoting; text, images and structure. Inclusion of all three ensure for an effective sketchnote for the present and the future. in addition, I would encourage students to draw for themselves, not for others. Their sketchnote may be shared with others, however they do not need to understand it - only the person who created it does. A sketchnote can be very personalised, to make sense to the creator, not constructed with other people in mind. I believe this would ensure true self reflection and engagement with the sketchnote as well as the lesson content. My blackboard sketchnote is my current though process around my dissertation and further study - but that is difficult to see for someone who sees it for the first time.