Tag Archives: teaching

6. Big Picture, Teaching

I fail too

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kite
Our 6 year old son flying a kite.

Most edu-bloggers, myself included, predominantly rain down on our keyboards to share our successes, ‘what works’, fire the odd rant and share musings on how things could, or even should, be.

Well, I am writing today to share a struggle, possibly a failure. Excuse the odd expletive in there but they are part of the story too.

If you click on Big Picture category here you’ll get a bunch of older posts about the school I now work at and the particular educational philosophy we have embraced as a school. In a nutshell: we are NOT your nice middle class aspirational school by any stretch (low socio-economics with assortment of, sadly, all too familiar related issues) and we follow an approach that may seem ‘out there’ with many who have ‘done school’.

We don’t have subjects at our school. I don’t teach ‘a subject’. I don’t give and mark tests and assignments (phew 😉 ) in an area of my expertise. Kids find and follow their (legal 😉 ) interest(s) in (mostly) areas they already know more about than me, I’m there to help with generics, help find mentors in the community and oversee their progress. Don’t wince in horror or get too rosy eyed just yet …

If I do prepare what I think might be an engaging activity (and probably would be so in a different context, school) it is often met with ‘boring’, ‘I’m not doing that’ and a bunch of cop outs. Ours is a tough crowd, burnt by years of unsuccessful mainstream schooling and suspicious of things ‘educational’.

Back at their old school, there was ‘work’, a teacher (often at their wits end) to tell you what to do and lots of examples to confirm that you suck at school.

To compound the trouble, this new, Big Picture way of doing things independently is something they have never really tried and is still pretty scary. They, the students, need to drive the thing, not the teacher (called ‘advisor’ at our school) telling them what to do. And the freedom is scary!

Like any good confused teenagers,  many of these guys want someone to tell them what to do (like in their previous school, because that’s safe and “that’s what school is” and “teachers make you work and you hate it”) … but they don’t want to be told by the teacher what to do all the time and “do shit that teachers want us to do”. They like the freedom but it is scary to leave the sheltered feeling of structured, pre-fab, teacher-led environment even if they didn’t exactly excel at it. For many, this means doing, creating, trying, learning as little as possible. Safety mechanism.

Or as one of my students said, insightfully, in a lively discussion yesterday: “The problem isn’t the freedom in choosing our interest, the problem is that we choose to do fuck all”.

As you can imagine, refusals, shoulder shrugs, “CBF” and “I dunno …” are common. I have a couple of students for whom I have not a shred of evidence to have created anything in over two months – a letter, drawing, photo, note, recording, journal entry, hardly even a verbal, a question of some learning-related kind … nada, zero, zilch!

And this is what I mull over, often. This is where I start running out of ideas to engage and motivate (standard ones perhaps, might to get more creative :D). This is where I question my professional ability. Can I do better than this? Am I doing the right thing by these kids to keep waiting for them patiently and keep handing the responsibility for learning back to them? As a teacher, I am trained, employed to help, not keep keep putting the ball in kids’ court? What can I then do to ‘start their engines’ so to speak?

But this is where I remind myself of a couple of other things: the ugliness of (middle-class) salvationism and … time.

I have always been suspicious of being a “knight in shinning armour” who will deliver the poor kids from their lot and ‘make them more like me’. Sure, the odd call to a kid to lift their game is fine, even very necessary and welcome (in the long run, often unseen) but it is condescending, unrealistic and damaging to assume that we share values and chances in life. It can turn into the tyranny of of the well meaning C.S. Lewis described so eloquently.

I have expanded (with others) on this ‘salvationist’ reflex and its origins here (see Rolling up sleeves: education as production). Yet this is implied in much of teacher training and the societally assumed job of teachers. And it is damn hard to wrestle with!

The second thing I am reminding myself of is time. It has only been a term and a bit with these kids. It’s only been a term and a bit of Big Picture for all of us. Things take time. Things need to be seen in context. The kid who hasn’t ‘produced’ anything has been coming to our school most days, totally unlike his old (mainstream) school. It’s a start.

I write this for myself, to clear my mind a little. I fail but I carry on. It takes time.

And if my little soliloquy makes you reflect on the work of educators – it’s a good thing.

6. Big Picture, Teaching

Boys to men

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pa and kit and slinky dog

OK, another language warning.

This morning alone, I was called a ‘dumb cunt’ by one student, told to ‘fuck off’ by another. Both after a small thing. But it turned out great.

Here is the latter one.

In a by now pretty standard way, I simply turned around and told him in a serious tone that nobody tells me to ‘fuck off’ in my face and walk off. I reminded him that he can now choose to be a kid and walk off or be a man and face my reply (he must have thought I was going to fight, hit him, seriously). Bravado on my part? No, just to tell the student that sometimes, outside these walls, there are a lot of people who might seriously hurt him for what he had done. Fact of life, especially in this neck of the woods.

As he fumed further, he even took a fake swipe at me. Staff were horrified, a female colleague who is his teacher was enraged as it brought back the feeling of struggle she has had with him in class – aggressive, condescending, petulent, sometimes downright dangerous. I asked him to leave, he flatly refused. Power struggle 101. But we did not want to escalate.

Within minutes, he calmed down a bit. At one moment, ‘the mask’ dropped. The voice lowered and the words: “Really sorry for telling you to fuck off Sir.” came out. Not by order or request. On their own, honest too.

“Now that is a man talking. Before that was a boy, a kid.” was my reply.

We shook hands and looked each other in the eye. Together we fixed the damage we argued about, he even offered to take the item back to my room.

Fifteen minutes later I pulled him aside to state that the behaviour towards my colleague in class is an act of a boy and reinforce my message of difference between a boy and a man. We both agreed that it was good for our encounter today to finish the way it did. He can now come in to see me any time when ‘he starts feeling like a boy’.

What he has been doing is not OK, particularly in the way he treats my colleague and many others, particularly women. He needs both help, support and face some consequences for his actions.

And it reminded of the many boys I have worked with, reminded me of the wise words of Steve Biddulph in an older post, it reminded me that schools can be places that can and do change people’s lives in ways that will never show on any league tables or test.

This was a(n ongoing) test of maturity. Priceless.

6. Big Picture, Teaching

Can scootering save schools?

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I have shamelessly re-purposed the title from what has to be one of my new favourite TED talks, alerted to by @malynmawby (Thanks Malyn!). See it below …

Did you catch those points?

  • Failure is normal.
  • Nobody knows ahead of time how long it takes anyone to learn anything.
  • Work your ass off until you figure it out.
  • Learning in NOT fun. (‘Flow’ and  the ‘Goldilocks challenge’)
  • No grades.
  • No cheating.
  • No teachers. (well, optional…)
  • Real-time meaningful feedback.

OK, on the surface of it, like many TED talks – inspirational, catchy, memorable. Don’t get me wrong – I love the clip but it does beg a few questions.

The clip is  is not ‘universal’ in all of its points all the time. Not everything you learn in life is by trial and error on your own, sometimes it is mighty valuable for someone (a ‘teacher’?) to show what (not) to do and for different reasons  – the notion of real-time meaningful feedback Dr. Tae mentions. Sometimes performance is more important than learning, sometimes the other way around and for different reasons (more on that dichotomy here), and so on …

We could start nitpicking here – and miss the good bits!

But here’s a story. A true one.

There is a bunch of very talented scooter riders in my class (scooters or skateboards – same diff in terms of Dr. Tae’s clip). For their first ever Big Picture project, they decided to complement and extend their passion and interest in scootering and learn how to (better) edit a video clip of themselves.

It has required some gentle manouvering of teens who run away from anything smelling remotely like ‘school work’ as they put it. But last week and today, we went to two different local skate parks and filmed them in action.Today, we even took our school media enthusiasts to do the filming!

At first, the four boys almost didn’t believe me we would go and do such a ‘non-school’ thing but signed up enthusiastically. There’s a whole blog post and beyond about what trips and opportunities like these do for building relationships with kids for whom the staff at our school may be just about the only stable adults in their lives but more on that another time.

We had a lot of fun (read meaningful effort!).  The boys scooted their butts off and we got a bunch of still images and video and some of it is simply awesome, judged so even by the kids’ standards themselves!  Over the next three weeks, these four guys will learn how to edit and put together a great mashup of video, stills, audio and special effects, then present the finished product AND the story of their learning to myself, their parents and whoever else they invite to their exhibition (central item in Big Picture approach – what you do is public and you need to ‘stand behind it’).

Here is a small taste of their talent just off my phone, I will feature their finished products (with their permission, of course).

Now, don’t tell me these kids are ‘poor learners’ or carry a learning disability. They must have failed hundreds of times, worked hard and kept going until they landed these tricks … in short, they embodied exactly the points Dr Tae was talking about! They embodied, purposefully and dare say joyfully, not just learning but, more importantly, the power of wanting to learn, even love for learning in their lives.

The words of my wise mentor water polo coach in former Yugoslavia still ring in my ears, now decades past: “Tomaz, your most important job with these juniors is not how to pass the ball and shoot well – your main job is to get them to fall in love with the game.”

Over the coming weeks, we will hopefully use their efforts in scootering to extrapolate and transfer things about the power of ‘love for  learning’ from scootering to other areas in life they come across.

Now, if you think ‘well, scootering isn’t going to get them a job’ or ‘get them to uni’ or ‘teach them geography’ and things like that, you may, but only MAY be right and even so, horribly myopically. Because what I, as a mentor to these kids, know is that these sorts of things have a chance of giving them the confidence, opportunity, resilience, love of learning that no textbook or teacher can teach.

And THAT is what our school is about. And that is what I am about. And that is what so often, so many of our schools, unwillingly, kill off, for the sake of things that simply … don’t matter.

So … can scootering save schools?

Well, that’s a long shot but if joy of learning is something to nourish and stimulate, it has a thing or two to offer, for sure.

PS Inspired in part by Dean Shareski’s piece ‘Why Joy Matters‘, alerted to by Pam Moran. Thank you both!

6. Big Picture

I did nothing

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I got some very kind replies on Twitter about this ‘golden moment’ so I thought I’d expand and tell the full(er) story.

Quick background: Our class (well … group) is in the middle of (re)designing our room. We have come up with a design, we’ve found and from today already have a large, lovely second-hand corner couch in the class, we have changed desks around so we can easily shift them around or put them away to suit what people are doing, we are creating murals for the walls to transform a boring off-white wall to something that is ours and pleasing to see and (importantly) maintain and more. I’m directing traffic a little, the rest is done by my students. More on the project and the pictures another time.

‘Steve’ (not his real name) is the quietest, most reserved and shy member of our group of nine. Confidence to do things at school had been shot well and truly in the past of his schooling and much meets the resistance and reluctance to give things a go.

A couple of days ago, he started sketching a drawing. Soon, a sketch became a lovely picture of the Road Runner against a landscape. He decided he wanted the whole thing as a class mural … big! This by a kid who’d rather hide and fly under the radar most of the times, suddenly expressing himself.

We found some large boards and he sketched the painting in pencil. Today, he started painting it. Patiently, slowly, precisely, totally immersed even at the recess break. This plus we know that the finished mural is going to look awesome.

Today, a couple of kids from our class were hanging around Steve before lunch. I asked Steve if he would like them to help him with the painting. “If they want to!” was a curt reply.

“OK …” I backed off, issuing no instructions just stepping back a few steps.

Next thing, the two boys, now joined by another, quietly picked up the brushes and started talking to Steve how he wanted things done. Steve directed them with a couple of purposeful instructions and away they went, all painting, creating, helping Steve and each other with no fuss.

mural crew
Magic !

Small thing? Yeah, it may look and sound like to a remote observer who’d probably miss the intrinsic value of all this, particularly if not knowing the kids in question.

Our deputy principal walked past and could not believe her eyes how these four boys and another one from our class also working on his mural, worked well, perfectly content and happy to be there, purposefully helping Steve and one another. This for a class of, *ahm*, notorious for ‘behaviour problems’ (and they do have their moments and sometimes entire days, trust me 🙂 ).

I don’t know exactly how Steve felt today, but this shy, barely ‘literate’ and so often ‘good for nothing’ 14 year old kid got an important lesson, so to speak, of the hidden curriculum at our school – you matter, others can and DO care.

None of this will see the light of day on school report cards, league tables, NAPLAN, pollie and other pundit speeches, performance reviews, ‘merit pay’ and the likes. But it was spine tingling to see, a moment to savour and just enjoy for its beauty.

It reminded me strongly of Evaluate that! And I mean it too …

And what did I, a teacher, do in all this? I did nothing. The kids did it all themselves.

Update:

Well, today we finished the job with the help of a few talented artists from a couple of neighbouring classes. Take a look of the whole process …

And going back to ‘Steve’ – he asked me today: “Will we be able to take these home at the end of the year?” He is PROUD of his effort, something he had thought of, planned and saw it to a great conclusion while including others too.

And that my friends, in the parlance of a popular ad:

Materials … $150

Artists … 7

Days … 2

Feeling of confidence in one’s efforts … priceless

6. Big Picture, Teaching

A kindred soul in our school

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This afternoon, after lunch (and those who teach will tell you the vagaries of THAT particular time) we gathered about 25 school staff and students for a chat with an interesting guest speaker via Skype – Ira Socol. If you don’t know Ira I recommend you check his blog and/or connect with on Twitter – you won’t regret it.

I didn’t want any long convoluted introductions of Ira, just a few factual ‘hooks’ about him (can’t read or write ‘properly’ as many would have it, hated ‘normal’ school, called ‘retard and dumb’, used to be a cop in South Bronx and similar) to start the questions going. This was always going to be a two-way street, not a one-way delivery.

It was wonderful to be a part of the conversation Ira had with our kids. First, he disarmed the initial posturing many would find offensive and rude with simple “yeah, that’s what I was doing when I was like you, I’ve seen it all”. Huh 😀

Ira's skype-in ...

He introduced himself and told us about himself a bit, showed on Google Maps where he worked, grew up, attended school. Of course, being a cop in Bronx was a cool thing to explore. Did you get shot? Did you get to shoot anyone? Did you see any drug deals? and so on were begged to be asked and answered. We also touched on his difficulties in dealing with dyslexia and ways in which people have helped Ira out and the ways he has had to ‘strategise’ to do things he really wanted to do all along.

Among many things, Ira also spoke with deep respect for the late Alan Shapiro as the teacher or rather a person who has affected his life so strongly and things he had done for him. One of our students asked, insightfuly: Where would you be without that person? The reply was vintage Ira: “I would  at best be a pre-fab concrete operator, do drugs and die young. Nothing wrong with concrete operators but only if by choice not as the only option and aspiration one has in life.”

The hour was at times chaotic, at times engaged, funny, noisy, thoughtful, with questions, big and small, exchanged both ways. We kicked a couple of kids out before they literally had a fight, a few left on their own, but towards the end, half a dozen moved closer to the screen and had a more personal chat with Ira. It was wonderful to see …

Through stories and anecdotes, the skype-in was laced with and concluded with Ira’s battle cry for education and life in a broader society – find what you really want to do and work out what is getting in the way of it, strategies to get it and deal with obstacles and successes along the way. Chase your passion and give a damn about yourself and others around you!

And speaking of passions …

Earlier today, I had the first student not just in our class but in the entire school present his first exhibition (a presentation of a project to parents and anyone else invited by the student, a prominent feature of Big Picture model)

This wasn’t a full term’s work or some deep exploration of a topic, it was more of a warm up to many of these in the future. The student spoke very confidently about the topic he chose: comparing parts of scooters, materials, prices, value etc. He acknowledged that there were many things he could explore further if he wanted (for example, materials in alloys scooters are made of, ways of welding, design of wheels etc…). Magically, we got to the point(s) where “I don’t know” did not make him sound stupid but more like an invitation for further exploration, if chosen.

I thanked the student not only as his advisory teacher but as a person wanting to buy scooters for his kids in the future. I genuinely learned A LOT from this young expert. And it was so damn fantastic to see this kid who has been ‘no good’ in so many places come alive as an expert, with confidence in something. His parents beamed with pride and promised to work together even closer with me and their son in the future.

Yes, passion and interest change things. And they are starting to change things for good at our school, despite the mountain of obstacles we as a community of learners have to overcome.

I think we’d make Ira proud 😀

PS Ira, thank you again for the ‘visit’ and apologies about the ungodly hour (1-2am).

6. Big Picture, Teaching

By stealth

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mouth

One of the best times I’ve had in my teaching career was starting and teaching a Philosophy & Ethics course at a high school – even though the course was choked off in the end, read all about it.

I had taught and truly enjoyed teaching P&E not because I think students should know Aristotle by hand or discuss the merits of Kant but to simply wrestle with the ‘stuff of their world’, vagaries of their daily and long term existence. Stuff like: How to be a good friend? What does ‘success’ mean? What is worth getting upset over and why? Is it OK to lie sometimes or never? Can anyone tell you what to do with your body?

While, again, enjoyable and successful, one of the biggest obstacles in running the course was the running of Community of Inquiry, the central (it seems) plank in the practice of P4C (Philosophy for Children, coined by Lipmann). No matter what approach we tried, it inevitably turned into periods of long silences and A-type personalities dominating the skerits of conversation face to face.

Reasons for that aplenty but main ones were the sense of ‘exposure’ and ‘shame’, lack of experience and value of a ‘rational conversation’ ie dialogue not a win-lose debate, cultural inappropriateness to challenge someone older and more. Over time I realised that this mode of exchange isn’t best served straight up with assumptions of nice, clear, rational, scientific-like discourse but needs to be deployed in context of a particular space and group of people.

So, I’ve learned the lesson …

At my new school, we don’t have or teach subjects as such (see Big Picture). So we don’t and are not going to have a subject called Philosophy and Ethics. But for the last couple of Mondays after lunch, we gathered all the students (and staff!!) in a large room, sat in the circle facing each other and, with no great introductions or statements or goals or procedural reminders started simply started talking about failure.

The rules were simple: Share something you have failed in, big or small. If you can’t or don’t wish to, simply say ‘Pass’ and the person next to you will continue. Well, about 40 of us sat in this room after lunch and shared stuff for an hour ! Previously unheard of!

First few rounds were about failure, then one about how school-related failure, and we then finished with examples of something good that is/has been school related.

This Monday, we ran another ‘circle session’ today. Bit rowdier with more interruptions but even to have these kids in the circle, facing each other and sharing this stuff for about 50 minutes is pretty damn good. And pretty damn insightful, with amazing gems among the trivial, teenage posturing/shyness noise.

I made a promise that things we discussed won’t leave the room and I will honour that. But I felt we started something that for now just tickles the 2 C’s our school is built to empower young people with – confidence and curiosity.

Yes, we will need to think carefully how to walk the line between between the ‘novelty factor’ and ‘booooorring!’ and not choke off the 2C’s with over-structuring things … but I tell you that opening of spaces where kids were game enough (and obviously felt safe enough) to share sometimes quite remarkably personal stories was something very, very special.

And I for one would love to see not (just) what philosophy can do for these kids but what can these kids do with philosophy, how can they use it to recognise their uniqueness, their becoming and what matters to them in the process.

So we are doing Philosophy. Slowly, gradually … just don’t tell anyone about it or call it that way 😉

6. Big Picture, Teaching

Letting go

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If you are sensitive to expletives, please stop reading now.

It’s Friday and I need a stiff drink. I have just spent first week as Advisory Teacher at our Big Picture school.

This is about as remote as it gets from the quiet of a desk at Moodle HQ. It is also remote from many a schools I have seen, worked in or read about.

For all the prep on Big Picture (an educational philosophy our school follows), I started the week with a teacher hat on. I had plans. Plans not for some stellar didactic performance but just some simple, ‘engaging’ (or so I thought…) activities, basic get to know you and perhaps a beginning of what I have always been about – valuing (good) questions over answers. Plans for (short) periods of time, where I would be listened to by students in my class, uninterrupted, with some important things to say. Plans for students to express, share a few non-threatening details and ideas…

Well, most I and the whole class got of that at one time was a few minutes. I have seriously re-thought full group (and I ‘only’ have seven kids at most in my class) activities. Cut them down to absolute bare bones.

We are a Big Picture school, an approach that, put broadly, is all about students pursuing their passions and interests. It’s about letting go of teacher over the head telling students what to do about something that the teacher, not necessarily the student, is passionate about. It’s about letting go, judiciously but deliberately, to build resilient, independent learners.

So I asked the students to create above their ‘station’ in our class a wall of images about their passions and interests. Well, serves me right for asking that – I got a wall of images of alcohol, weed, a few bikes and singers thrown in and a bit of soft porn which I requested to be taken down.

This was my first week in a new school with new kids who are so acutely sensitive to criticism, lack of trust because they have had little of it elsewhere. At the same time, these aren’t some poor angels but red and raw teenagers who’d love to get one over you just for the fun of it sometimes. With the lack of ‘history’ at the school, I found myself often relying on gut-feel on what is OK and what I should sometimes let go. One wrong presumption and bridges could be burned or damaged at least, one wrong presumption and I will be a soft target for sometimes cruel teenage jokes.

Sprinkle of a few memorable quotes:

  • Asking for students’ perception of this school, Day 1: “Do you know what this school is? We are retards and dumb c***s.”
  • Creating a login for Moodle that requires 8 characters, 1 capital, 1 number: “This is f***ed. It’s too hard I am giving up.”
  • Student: “Just don’t tell s**t to my mum because that ‘expletive 1, expletive 2, expletive 3, expletive 4’ of her boyfriend will find out and kick the s**t out of me.”
  • Student: “F**k off.”

Me: “Listen. Nobody tells me to f**k off in my face. If you were 18 and we met out on the street you’d be lucky if I didn’t slap you.”

Student: “OK, sorry about that.”

Me: “Apology accepted.”

After that, the student was genuinely very kind to me. An icebreaker of a kind :D. I ended up giving her a Gotcha! Award [recognition of good things] for being reasonable, courteous and quite polite.

  • Catching a repeat smoker: “This country is going down the c***hole. It’s cheaper to have and smoke weed and supply it than cigarettes. For weed you get ……. and for smokes you get ….. (the student ranted on but quoted exact and correct penalties for both as per current legislation – I only knew a part of it myself).”

and many, many more like that.

Yes, we have managed to offend just about all nice, middle-class sensibilities. To thousands of teaching colleagues, this would be horror, Hades personified!

Ours is not your ‘regular’ school. It is for kids who(m) mainstream schools in this ‘tough’ and largely ‘low socio-economic area’ (because ‘poverty’ is a dirty word and only happens in places like Africa, right?) just couldn’t or wouldn’t cater for. We have a group of about 90 kids who have come to this place as ‘terrors’, ‘freaks’, ‘no hopers’, ‘lost cases’, ‘druggies, ‘losers’ … sure you get the picture. It’s a mix of acutely shy ones, (ex)bullies, homeless, kids from broken, dysfunctional families, chronic taggers, spoiled teen brats, kids with degrees of mental illness (well, don’t we all…) and more (and not just with negative baggage here either!).

The name of the game here is confidence. Confidence to have a go. Confidence to imagine, express yourself, and preferably in ways that don’t include abusing oneself or others. Start small, think big.

And to work here, you need to have the longest fuse in the world.

But this is a magical place. No, truly.

This is a place where when an often truant, disruptive (yada, yada, yada, you know how a typical stereotype goes…) Aboriginal kid comes to school and the staff go: “Oh great, ‘Benny’ (not his real name) is here today!” (he is in my class, too 😀 )

This is a place where you hear a kid who got kicked out of a couple of schools for bullying quietly saying: “I want to leave that behind. I want to do better than that.”

This is a place where you see a kid who would not interact with anyone only a few months ago now plays a ball game with a few others.

This is a place where a staff member replies to a student, screaming: “I’m f*****g going home you expletive 1, expletive 2, expletive 3…” with “You know you can go but we are here for you.” The student in question is homeless.

This is a place where staff within 10 minutes board up ideas for an excursion and volunteer for tasks in great spirit, no fuss or excuses.

This is a place where the most reserved of students momentarily overcame the fear of standing in front of others and share an honest line or two about a much loved educational assistant who recently passed away.

This is a place where a shy, quiet student comes up with his first own Independent Learning Plan that includes interviewing adults in the workplace. Huge!

This is a place where students go to the library to pick up a book or check out an audio book for possibly the first time.

This is a place where the principal addresses the conversation about merit of giving ‘Gotcha! Awards’ to either every student or only those ‘outstanding ones’ with the words: “For many years I have heard this argument about ‘diminishing the value of the award by giving it to everyone.Well, I’d rather diminish the value of the award than the value of the child. If we can’t find something good, no matter how little, in each kid in front us, we are not doing our job.”

We have just returned from a barbecue on the beach with the students. Yes, we chased a few through the dunes, told them off for this and that. But we also played 3 on 3 basket, kicked a football, cooked sausages, teased and photographed each other and shared many of those little, precious, golden moments with the kids that build the bridges of relationships and confidence to have a go.

Make no mistake – this is not an easy teaching/education gig! But thanks to the amazing staff with the right ‘chemistry’ even after a few days together we are on track to ‘let go’ judiciously and have the kids experience something few of them have in the past – confidence to get out bed for something that deep down they want to be remembered for.

And that sort of thing grows on your heart, no matter how hard it may be sometimes.

Thanks team, see you on Monday!

Epilogue:

This post was removed after a few days by request of a person whom I respect way too much to make petty issue with.

Today, a few days from the initial posting, this message arrived to my principal from the head of the umbrella organisation our school belongs to and who was one of the main drivers to set up our school:

“… has read the blog [post] and, like me, was quite moved.

When I read it I felt proud of why we set up this school and what we are achieving with these kids.

Our view is we need to have the courage to let Tomaz say this stuff. We understand your concerns about others taking a sentence here or there, but the best defence we can offer is to say “read the blog, read the whole blog, and then tell me what you’re problem is”.

The whole blog is utterly defensible and should be available for all to read.”

Even after such a short time, I am proud to be a part of this organisation, truly.

And if you ever get people whining about ‘why one shouldn’t blog’, feel free to knock them on the head with this.

Tomaz Lasic

But wait … Letting go – again (part 2)

6. Big Picture, Teaching

First impressions

6 Comments

I am starting a new category on Human. Big Picture. A great model of education.

Motto of Big Picture: “one student at a time in a community of learners.” In a nutshell: students select an area of passion and interest and they ‘go deep’ over a term, looking at the interest from different perspectives and through it develop things like literacy, numeracy, scientific reasoning, social skills etc. Advisory teacher helps them develop, refine and implement the plan, together with parents and people in the community and beyond, connecting people, ideas and places. At the end of term, the students publicly presents what they have learned in a format of their choice.

Well, I am now one such Advisory Teacher to 12 14-year olds (Year 10, roughly) in an area that some people might call it ‘a nice place’, others would tell you it’s pretty much ‘one of the rough ends of town’ (usual suspects: poverty, violence, drugs … you know). Here, I don’t teach ‘subjects’ (but I do have strengths; digital technology, humanities, critical thinking, sport etc.), I teach kids. Or better – I try to make them think.

Because this is the launch of Big Picture programme at our school, we are spending the first week with parent/student/teacher interviews before the term actually starts. Now there’s a difference (one of many!), and arguably a luxury (?) from a ‘regular’, mainstream school where those meetings usually happen at the end of term over a bunch of grades.

In meetings, we go through the Big Picture approach, some basic expectations and kick off the planning process that will be refined throughout the term. We speak, but we primarily listen.We repeat the meetings towards the end or whenever required throughout the term.

I have met the first few students and their parents this morning and we’re off planning. I have my/our room to work on a bit (empty canvass at the moment) before we re-design it again with my group to suit us, I have started setting up our Moodle and conducting the first staff session this Friday, learning a lot about the kids and their background, new staff …

Finally, I love the physical setup of this place. You can see it from the pics above. Staff room, admin and common-use areas at the front, massive open area in the middle (all covered) with a range of workstations, then a cluster of smallish rooms at the back, all with desktops and IWBs.

Yeah, rosy glasses on for now but I feeI we are going to have our work cut out here in a good, good way. It’s a great, inviting place to give a damn.

Change, Moodle, Professional development, Teaching

Nobody asks

8 Comments

Last week, I was invited to a high school as an ‘expert’ on using Moodle in the classroom. I had a series of 45-minute sessions to, as my brief read, ‘inspire’ each group of teachers (average size of about 15-20) over two days of PD to use their nice local Moodle & Mahara setup in their teaching.

Yeah right.

I’ve never liked ‘gurus’ showing flashy wares and ideas, especially right at the start of school year with so many things to get ready before the kids arrive. I’ve never liked being considered one either.

So, I thought we’d use the 45 minutes for a guided chat about things we are kinda all good at – talking about our needs. Needs of teachers I spoke to and, importantly, the kids they teach. In the context, shoot a few Moodle ideas past them and see how use-full or use-less they may be. But it was about the hole, less about the drill.

Digigogy Images

I even flashed these sort of things as a visual reminder:

Great teachers

and …

needs

EVERY group sat a little stunned at first. Believe it or not, the ideas did not flow very freely. The replies ranged from encouraging (‘enthusiasm’, ‘motivation’, ‘meaning’ …) to downright pathetic (‘textbook’, ‘ways to easily memorise a range of acronyms we use’). We’d eventually get about 5 – 10 needs on the board to work with.

And behold the question “Why DO you teach?” asked as the conversations began to flow. Many felt a little threatened even!

Or as one teacher put it: “Nobody really gets asked these questions.” Rarely, if ever, do teachers ask these themselves. It’s all assumed, we all know what happens at school and what the school and teachers are there for, we all ‘innovate’ but it basically changes bugger all while giving the impression of progress and change.

I am NOT  bashing teachers here. Quite contrary, I understand so many of them, barraged by things to, often mindlessly, tick and do while lacking time, space, even increasingly a reason for these questions (other than stuff like ‘raise scores’ etc.).

A friend noted in reply to my email containing a few gems collected over two days: “I often reflect that all of these controlling, narrow and limiting views of education are expressed by people who once showed wonder, imagination, a sense of fun, and often got into teaching because they wanted to have a positive influence on the lives of young people. How is it that they are who they are today? Not easy to answer, but important to try nonetheless.”

While I did cover my brief and talked about Moodle and ‘technology’ over the two days, I was glad, while sad and often a little horrified, to talk about the ultimate technology and weapon for change – asking good questions and wrestling with them.

I wish all my Australian & New Zealand teaching colleagues and their students a great school year 2011 (first day today for most). Turn the crap detectors on and use them! Make it matter.

And if you think I can help you in some way in doing that, you know where to find me.

Change, Teaching

And it starts in kindy

12 Comments

Cosmic Kindergarten

Source: Cosmic Kindergarten http://www.flickr.com/photos/hexholden/3374990171/

Yesterday, I did a couple of hours of ‘parent duty’ at my 5 year old son’s kindy (abbreviation for ‘kindergarden’), helping out with learning tasks, minor cleaning and a few other bits. It was wonderful to see this group of 4 and 5 year olds loving being there, playing, sharing, inventing, doing their first letters, numbers, rhyming, painting games and generally having a ball.

Their teacher is ‘Donna’ (not her real name), an experienced, wonderfully caring and professional in the kindest and honest meaning of the word. Kids adore her and are coming along in leaps and bounds. Donna knows I’m a teacher too and we had a brief chat over our morning cup of tea while the kids were busily devouring platters of fresh fruit:

Donna: These are such a great bunch of kids but I am finding myself struggling.

Me: Oh, how so …

Donna: It’s these curriculum and reporting changes and pressure that comes with, I can imagine what’s going to be like with this National Curriculum coming out soon too. They just expect more and more of kids, constantly. So I am finding myself spending more and more time doing this evaluation, covering skills and content and following guidelines and ticking boxes.

Me: More of that recently?

Donna: Yes, particularly since we’d come under Department of Education umbrella attached to the local school. Before we were community based and it was a lot more relaxed and I dare say productive. You know, I had time to do and think about things like room arrangements depending on the kids I had in group that day, shift things around to suit them, listen to them. Now, I just don’t get around to it or maybe do less of it. I have all these checklists to go through.

Me: Checklists?

Donna: Yes, have a look at this pile. And it’s not as if the kids will forget about the thing I ticked today tomorrow. Or maybe they’ll ‘get it’ when I’m not around to tick that box, while they are playing at home or somewhere else. It’s not to say we should not evaluate how things are going with each child and look out for potential difficulties – that is a very important part of our job. But so much of what we do now is just plain silly and a waste of time we could spend a lot better.

Me: And if you don’t follow these things ….?

Donna: That’s the strange and uncomfortable thing – I feel guilty. Guilty for not reaching what I am supposed to be able to cover and guilty for some kids not being able to do what I am told they should be able to do.

Me: So learning becomes a kind of performance and you and the kids … performers?

Donna: Yes, well put, exactly!

Me: And you start seeing yourself and the kids in terms of that performance?

Donna: I resist but often I can see that.

Me: And if we cast our mind in the future, the kids will see themselves in terms of that performance at school, of school?

Donna: And that’s really sad, isn’t it? And it starts so early here, in kindy.

Me: Sad, and a lot more wrong than it is right. Thanks for the cuppa Donna, looks like the kids are done with their fruit.

Donna: Thank you, we often don’t get to talk about these things.

OK Apples, well done for your wonderful eating and sharing of fruit, it’s time to put our plates away …

What Donna has expressed there has actually been noted, researched and has a name – performativity (for this particular kind of performativity I highly recommend the work of Stephen Ball – his “Teacher’s Soul and the Terrors of Performativity” paper is a great start).

I invite you to explore the concept, its impact and its implications, unburdened by any of my own commentary.

And every time you hear a politician or a pundit banging on about accountability, standards, performance, curriculum and the likes in education, every time you hear rants (for AND against) about this stuff – go beyond it. Think about what it is doing not just to what and how we learn but (through it) what we are, what we become and how do we see ourselves and others as individuals and community members.

Socrates apparently said: “I can’t teach you anything, I can only make you think.”

I wish so.