LEARNING LEADING CHANGE: Claire Victoria Amos: NZ Educators casualties of flawed opinion piece

LEARNING LEADING CHANGE: Claire Victoria Amos: NZ Educators casualties of flawed opinion piece



This a very well written article in response to a Herald opinion piece published last week. Thank you Claire for going to the time to pen such an eloquent, well thought out response.

Another blogpost worth reading is from the Principal of Hobsonville Point Secondary School, Maurie Abraham.

Here is the link to the original Herald article by Bernadine Oliver Kirby. Need to read both sides of the argument I guess.

Defining the support you are giving your team

Here are some graphics that work well when you are considering the support that members of your team need and thus impact on how you lead. This may help in giving  specific feedback to team members that will be effective in helping them move forward with their thinking and contribution to the team. It is from the work of Ken Blanchard, he talks about how situational leadership and how you lead will differ depending on the context.  Have a look at: How we Lead, some great posts to consider.

Connecting with Learners

Relationships are at the heart of learning and this article certainly illustrates this. We recently held interviews for teaching positions and one of the questions was about what you would do if you realised that a child was not reaching potential in your class. This article, by Lisa Medoff, is full of fantastic ideas that are centred on improving the relationship with the child. The child the author references has ADHD but I believe the suggestions would work with most learners.

Click here for the full article.

• Ask the student to help you figure out what he needs and how you can help him. 
• Frame new strategies as experiments, not decrees.
• Teach students how to question and challenge in a manner that will get them heard.
• Rather than trying to clamp down on off-task behaviours, use them to get to know students better. 
• Share stories with students about your own struggles.
• Make deals with students about behaviours that you both want to change. 
• Try as hard as you can to limit negativity in your interactions with a challenging student.
• Have students teach you something. 
• Take a beat to stop and acknowledge that a student may have the right answer even though it is different from what you were expecting.
• If a student seems to be off-task or is having trouble getting started, don't assume he hasn't been paying attention; 
• Allow students to work just outside the classroom door.
• Be patient. 

Whilst this blog post is essentially US based there are some predictions well worth thinking about. Having watched 'Most Likely to Succeed' last week I would also suggest that there are a few more that could be added, particularly for secondary hill.

1. Exam based assessment be a thing of the past - why ask students to perform in isolation without access to information? They will never have to do this again in their lives!

2. Subject integration has to be the norm, where in life to we face an issue to only consider one aspect?

Any others you can think of?

Making Collaborative Practice Work

This is a case study of Wildwood IB World Magnet School. Teachers there believe teacher collaboration fosters a supportive professional culture, lessens conflict between teachers and provides students with school-wide best practices.

The reading provides a video, overview, explains how it's done and gives links to further reading.

Modern, Innovative Learning and Practice

This is a great post from Derek Wenmouth from CORE. It examines what is the most important thing about MLEs and that is the practice. Does an MLE suit all learners, turning the question on it's head we consider does a traditional classroom suit all learners? The answer is simply "it depends". Derek poses some great questions to consider when reflecting on practice and moving forward with modern learning environments and practices. By visiting this page you can browse through categories to find other thoughtful blog posts on MLE and other topics of interest.

How effective are the teams that you are working in?

This is a predecessor of a recent post about the effectiveness of school teams. It is a quick measure and is worth reading and reflecting on the teams that you are a part of.

The Importance of Feedback and Other Interventions

I have always believed that effective feedback is the teaching strategy that makes the most difference to learners. When asking for feedback about my teaching from my past students they often commented on this being a strength of my teaching, stately simply, "you let us know our next step or what we need to do to make it better."

There is often debate as to whether this should be written or verbal. The age of the learner and their ability to read written feedback certainly impacts this decision. The quality of the feedback is important and I reflect on this considering the work of Dweck et al when working with students. Praising effort and hard work is critical whilst given the student an indication of next steps is also crucial.

Feedback is central focus of the original article. It outlines ways of giving feedback and the writer shares their school's policy. Links to other readings related to feedback are also given. What is of interest is the graph that is also provided and the information that is linked to evidenced based interventions.

The graph from the site simply illustrates the effect of a number of interventions. It plots them on a graph considering their cost and the impact they have on student achievement. What I particularly like is that you can click on a strategy and go to a synopsis of the research that led to the placement of that strategy on the graph. For example, I had always believed that homework isn't very effective for improving student outcomes of students. When you look at the research you see that this is indeed the case and it summarises where and when homework is effective. The website where you find this information is found here.

You can visit the source used to place these interventions on the graph at the Education Endowment Foundation. It is very useful to select an intervention and then be able to connect to the research that led the author to place it on the graph. Great access to a wealth of information about solid interventions you can try in the classroom.

More Mindset Moments

Everywhere I look and read I seem to come across reference and readings about mindsets. These links came via Twitter today.

Carol Dweck talked about asking questions that would determine ones mindset. Although we need to bear in mind that we will use different mindsets throughout the day and in different situations. Click on the image to take the survey.

The website itself hosts a wealth of information, resources, video clips and other things to develop your own understanding of mindsets and ways that they can be used with your children. Click on the image to discover more.

Finally a graphic that illustrates the differences between fixed and growth mindsets.

Guy Claxton and the Idea of Building Learning Power

Guy Claxton is an English educator, researcher and scientist who has made his life work investigating and spreading the word about learning power.

His website is well worth investigating and can be accessed through this link.

The basic premise of this is that teachers will work on building students power to learn and creative capabilities. The brain is always growing and intelligence can be developed through experience.

" When teachers focus on building learning power in their classrooms, the impact on learners can be startling. I've seen this happen in schools across the UK when teachers have begun to think creatively about the ways in which they can help young people become better learners."
Guy Claxton, 2007

Jan Rivera - Support for Educators and Parents of Gifted Children

Thanks to Judy McArthur for sharing this blog. It is a great place to visit for informed and easy to read posts about aspects of gifted education. I particularly enjoyed the summaries of the over-excitabilities and the articles on the six types of gifted learners. I have subscribed to her mailing list and look forward to new posts as they are shared.

Edutopia

This website is a fantastic source of inspiring readings and thought provoking articles. Well worth taking some time to browse or following their twitter feeds.

This is what took me there today.

What does it mean to be a great teacher? Of course credentials, knowledge, critical thinking and all other faculties of intelligence are important. However, a great teacher should be much more than credentials, experience and intelligence.

Click here to read the rest of the article.