So what do the best teachers do?  The variety of research will tell us so many things… can this be whittled down to some simple and key areas?

I know that you didn’t ask for this, but you’ll get it anyway.  My three genetically engineered ingredients to procreate that ‘teaching’ golden goose.

1. I will contend that care and compassion for learners and their learning is at the forefront of my mind when it comes to what the best teachers do.
2. Throw in a heap of passion and the desire to make a difference in some way to them all (and their learning) and we are getting somewhere…
3. Then mix in a large dose of capability – the best teachers are capable of putting 1 and 2 into action!  And with that we have the golden goose that lays those golden eggs…

Has anyone got some quality research to back this up?

I have been extraordinarily busy over the last wee while and blogging has taken the backseat.  A bit sad really, because the last post has probably been the forefront of my rants for too long and I don’t want to be known as a ‘one trick pony’.  I stand by the comments, but have more to offer than just political raving.  Check out this space over the next few weeks for some real developments with learning and professional learning.  I am getting very excited about our evolving ideas and the emerging leadership of quality teachers in these ‘innovations’.

Even though I promised I would not do it, I will also have some more on National Standards (Yes, these have been released and not without some growing controversy over the ‘mandate‘) and some ways to implement and integrate these where our kids and their learning is at the fore, and not unwieldy compliance and narrowing of curriculum.

So much to blog… and so much sleeping, work and keeping fit to do too.  This environment will become an increasingly important tool for me and I am planning to make it a more reflective avenue for me to continue to grow and learn.

When the opportunity came up for us to look at adding a classroom and providing for a much needed upgrade of our most dated buildings, the first place I looked was the New Zealand Curriculum.  One of the discussions I have been leading, and certainly an area I am reflecting on a great deal at the moment, is the concept of learning communities and how we can establish and build on learning communities in the School.  I particularly like the simple explanation in Facilitating shared learning under the Effective Pedagogy area of the document:

Teachers encourage this process by cultivating the class as a learning community.  In such a community, everyone, including the teacher, is a learner;  learning conversations and learning partnerships are encouraged; and challenge, support, and feedback are always available. As they engage in reflective discourse with others, students build the language that they need to take their learning further.  (NZC – p34)

Our wonderful staff are taking steps to make this happen… (that’s another blog entry!).  So how could we design our building upgrade to support this?  I had a chat to our Board, reviewed the strategic vision for property in the School to reflect the curriculum and then we engaged an architect to support us to enable this to happen.  I spoke about openness, shared spaces, as a leadership team we have had dialogue about communities of learners and how the physical environment could support this (wider than just our own classrooms).  People are on board.

The result, while only a preliminary 3D sketch and design is outstanding and very exciting… don’t you agree?

(I may post a photo of what it looks like now just as a comparison!!)

I am so pleased to be able to bring some wonderful educators to Nelson on the 22nd and 23rd of September for our cluster’s curriculum seminars.  This is going to be an exciting time for us all.  While we are all doing a variety of things in terms of implementing the curriculum in our own schools, it is fair to say that we are not quite ready to implement our own school’s curriculum… actually, it is not even in its design stage yet, but that is cool – because we are getting ourselves into a position to do this, and do it well!  :-)

Over this next month there will be an incredible amount of development and professional learning around curriculum and curriculum designs for schools in our region.  This is going to help our team and provide us with some much needed ‘digestion’ and ‘reflection’ time to enable us to review our plans and assert what it is we are going to do.  What’s more is that it is collaborative and will lead to some projects and developments across schools too!

This leads me to the reason for this entry… What would you ask schools and school leaders who are well down the track of implementation of the NZC and development of their own curriculum?  Please add these questions as comments below.  I would love your feedback!

Many thanks.

I read with great concern that the Government is going to be making big cuts to funding for physical therapy for students with special needs, here is the question time dialogue from the House on the 3rd of August.

I am not prepared to take sides here, nor am I ignoring the fact that we are still in a significant recession and spending cuts are to be expected.  However, I agree with the Hon. Clayton Cosgrove’s question regarding the extra 35 million dollars that is now being pumped into private schooling in this country (which is to happen over the next 4 years – reading the question time responses, you could be forgiven for missing this important detail) and whether that situation is fair.  I also agree that it is a ‘fair’ question, and that the response was unacceptable.  What I am struggling with here, is the fact that special needs kids have great needs and should NOT be the top priority for spending cuts.

I see that there has been a small ‘about turn‘ by the Minister and while the comments on that link are not very objective, they are certainly better that the Hon Trevor Mallard’s comments on the Labour Party Blog!  For the record here are his comments, and for some balance, the Minister’s comments are also provided.  This is not a swipe at the Minister or this Government over the special needs issue, the extra funding which has gone into the ORRS funding scheme has made the funding more accessible and the process tolerable.

The issue for me, is that when we enrol the child next year who needs extra physical therapy, where is the funding going to come from to help us support the child and the family?  While I value the support the MOE gives, it is the actual therapy that will make the greatest difference.

Aside from the obvious concerns around so much more funding going to private schools (surely if someone chooses private schools – it must be like going private in the health care system… the user pays!  Not the taxpayer!), I would feel so much more comfortable if the Minister would consider cutting costs where there was not a direct effect on student achievement, such as printing and sending of all of the online documents generated by the MOE and ERO to every school.  This documentation is very valuable, but I imagine that many schools cannot read it all – and it is duplicating what is already available.

That would be a good place to start, it would easily save the 2.5 million for the kids who need the physical therapy support.

I had a great afternoon completing some development around numeracy teaching and learning in our School.  This was extremely well facilitated by Elizabeth from UC Ed+ and it is really getting our team together to think about how we are teaching and how we can work together better to enhance outcomes for students.  I am so proud of our teaching team and the attitude and approaches they bring to this… our team is going to be successful due to the fact that they care so much about the student’s learning.

Up until now I have not heard much from Mr Hattie regarding National Standards. He clearly is a man who likes to take time to make a measured and reasoned response.  Congratulations to him. This is indeed a worthy response (assuming the source is accurate!!).

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/education/news/article.cfm?c_id=35&objectid=10587936

I am not so sure about the title, but I will take the credit for the conversation.

Son:  Dad, I don’t like riding my bike on hills, why do we have hills?

Father:  Son, we have hills so you can learn to have courage and strength to ride up them, so you learn to appreciate the view from the top of them, and so you can learn to have fun riding down them!

This was the conversation I had with my 5 year old son on our regular bike this morning.  It didn’t seem to fall on deaf ears… and I think it is original.

I have read two blog posts this week which came to me through Twitter. Both posts talk about the impact that technology is currently having on education and the possible future of education that now that we have such amazing tools at our disposal.  Including the question: ’if every student had a computer’ (can’t find tweet and lost the link – but it was a very good read).  Plus the ever-present impact that social media is having on education.  Both have potentially far reaching and deeply profound impacts on learning and as such, have piqued my interest.

I believe that learning is very much a socially constructed activity which is strongly centered around the way the individual responds to the stimulus and learns from and with others – I could extend that to ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ worlds.  I also believe, that for the teaching profession to survive these incredible developments we must adapt our own learning and the learning of others with the support of these incredible ‘virtual’ tools.  We are not at a ‘teaching’ crossroads… we are reaching a ’societal’ cataclysm, a series of events and developments within our control which could be disastrous if we do not: a) move with it, understand it and use it effectively; and b) make some serious ethical decisions regarding how to use this in a way which progresses humanity and doesn’t see us become a world of people locked in isolated rooms interacting with avatars at screens.  Many of us may have seen the future for humanity predicted in Wall-E?  For the record however, Hollywood has a horribly poor record of getting things anywhere close to accurate when it attempts to predict the future!

The point I am getting to is the ethical decision that e-learning must be balanced, I am sure we all understand that it is equally important that our learners learn to interact with each other in the real world! I would have grave concerns if our vision is that all children had a laptop in front of them (the only difference between the classrooms of the 19th and 20th Centuries is that in the 21st Century there is now a laptops on every desk and an interactive whiteboard at the front of the room!).  This has significant impact on the environment, our health and our future as society.  My assumptions are based on a belief that if you are engaged with a community on the computer, you are often disengaged with the others physically in your presence.

This post is not about being ‘anti’ social networks and eLearning (please don’t read that as anti-social!), as I am a proponent of both… it is about ensuring a balance to protect our future and understanding that our vision for our children’s future should not be one of ‘virtual connectedness’ and ‘real-world isolation’.  I am sure we all realise this, but I just wanted to say it because, as educators, we have a moral responsibility to ensure ‘real-world connectedness’ maintains its importance.  :-)

This may be a little deep, but I’ll give it a crack. I have been thinking a lot about the link between learning and growth.

Isn’t learning one of the most incredible gifts of, and for, humanity? What amazes me and continues to build on my fascination of this topic, is how closely linked ‘learning’ is with growth. When I say growth, I do mean physical growth, but also growth as a person in a cognitive, emotional, social and ethical way (there are many others, but I have not thought at length about categories for this as yet… but this still fascinates me). I am of the view, that one cannot grow with out the strength, resolve, willingness and ability to learn.

I grow through my fascination with the world and what happens in it, I grow with my fascination about my place in this world and how this world affects me and others, and how and what I contribute to this world. As we learn – we grow, as we grow- we learn… these two things are inextricably linked. I believe that this is much the same of our children (although we don’t think like this when we are younger). The way into the future for our children is built on their fascination with the world and their place in this world, and how they interact with it.

These are important lessons to me as I explore how we shape learning and curriculum and how we shape learning growth with ourselves and in our classrooms and make learning authentic and related to the most natural ways to learn.