Data with Purpose, Teaching as Intervention

I've decided I'm quite fed up with a much quoted false dichotomy: -" A teacher is a guide on the side not a sage on the stage".

I've decided a teacher is neither.  A teacher is a teacher. Teaching is an intervention. Its not just a business where we guide our learners through different stages of development.
If we want and need to get acceleration in learning to the tune of 1.5 years progress in 1 year, we need learning design to be understood as an intentional, focused, evidence based intervention. This is the guts of what teaching is: -understanding where a learner is at, what they already know, what they need to know next and in a highly engaging and relational way, nudging, chivvying, cajoling, demanding that they make their best effort to achieve it.

This is not a guide on the side, -neither is it a sage on the stage, (perish the thought), it's a TEACHER!

Must Our Children Fail at School?

As I finished the summer break and pondered the state of NZ Education as well that of our community and school, the words of this title rang in my head.

I needed a factual, 'no ducking' yet encouraging way to think about this with our staff to focus attention on where we've come from, where we are now and where we'd like to be.

I hope the the content of this post is a foundation for an ongoing inquiry, with a sharpening focus that lasts through all of 2018. This is a year of Review writ large in education in Aotearoa. What shape should ours take?

As I thought about our past, including that of my own family, and all that we've learned along the way and as we wrestle with an over crowed curriculum and the ever increasing constraints of compliance, I decided to coin Vivianne Robinson's phrase as part of my conclusion.

"Do less to achieve more".

2017 Review

Having worked at Pt England since 1991 and wound up the year "in this chair" in 1993, I do celebrate the work and effort, wins and needs to win, of each year!

This has been a good one. We certainly have some stuff to work on, but we also have some stuff to celebrate.

The embedded screen record below is my "partnership meeting" with our Pt England whanau where we talk about what has gone on during the year and how we might approach things in the New Year.

Thanks SO much for supporting us in 2017! We need all of you to make this the village we would all like it to be.

December, and I really feel like putting the seesaw graphic in there again. -I won't because I'm sure you're all really bored with that one already!
Our emerging end of year data shows the need to:

• focus on language acquisition
• focus on mathematics
• focus on learner and staff wellbeing
• focus on the environment

Any one of these would normally be at least year's work. As I commented in an earlier post this year, I think the only way ahead is integration.

So.....we have to find a really smart way of putting all these things together so that teachers don't feel as though there are more and more "bolt ons" that nobody can do justice to.

We're fortunate to have scored 600 hrs of centrally funded PLD, which we can use to apply to the Manaiakalani and Language challenges and equally fortunate to have been offered the opportunity to participate in DMC Mathematics PLD.

So we have the money, ...but do we have the time and capability?

Fortunately Jannie Van Hees has some exciting ideas about how we could use environmental themes to carry the language development and develop maths and science at the same time.

Lets see how this plays out!

Weaving the Mat

I can't believe its October already!

We now have the culmination of our Welcome To School Research along with the combo of in and across schools Teacher Inquiries.

The Manaiakalani Hui is always an annual watershed of class observational data from WFRC and the Inquiries of our own gifted and dedicated teaching staff. Hard on the heels of this event comes the Manaiakalani Wananga where we get to hear back from the Manaiakalani Outreach clusters in the North, Auckland, Christchurch and the West Coast.

This produces a compelling collection of information which has prompted my thinking beyond the last past back in June.

As is frequent for me, I've collected the ideas together into a presentation which I've discussed with staff, providers, Trustees and other audiences.

This only serves to strengthen the determination to make Language Acquisition, Development, Sustaining and Transfer the main focus for Inquiry in 2018

Pulling the Threads Together

At this time of year, its always important to learn from one's staff. That's actually really important all the time, but at mid-year in a New Zealand Primary School the best data is formative data that comes from the people working directly with the learners.

The source of information for me, along with kids' blogs are the Inquiry Blogs of Pt England teachers and those of the Manaiakalani Kahui Ako. The blogs create a really rich tapestry of threads that are beginning to show some really strong and colourful themes.

The theme that I am finding the most urgent and that is commanding my attention more than any other, is that of the acquisition of language of our learners. Its abundantly clear from Teacher Inquiries across schools, levels and subjects that this single but large and complex factor is most significant impactor on whether our learners are doing well or not.

The problem with "noticing and knowing" in education is that it immediately produces a moral imperative. -"So what are we going to do about it?"
What I'm going to do about it, is starting talking, asking and inquiring myself into:

• who could help us with this problem
• understanding the problem more fully
• how we would design a strategy to deal with it (this will take all of the 2nd semester)
• appropriating resource to apply to it
• having something "ready to roll" for Term 1, 2018

Watch this space!

Balance through Integration (sharpening the focus)

As I've pursued and had repeatedly brought to my attention, this need for balance and a nationally expressed concern for teacher workload, I've been reading and teasing some ideas out for myself.

When you're working with the nation's more fragile families, it's not OK to stop questing for improvement. Equally, if quality, high performing staff are "the goose that lays the golden egg" we don't want to kill the goose by our continual quest for improvement or the improvement certainly will not happen.

I notice that in lots of the conversation about these and related challenges the issues or elements rapidly become dichotomous, i.e. this or that; -or this versus that.
I kept wondering if our teachers and team leaders as first researchers, were looking for the affordances of "this with that" and how we would balance, plan for and resource that, what that combo might look like and how achievable it might be.

So I began the year, thinking about how to do what we do really well and have it sustainable. What we are discussing here, emerges as a key sustainability issue and brought about a sharpening focus, from looking into the affordances and balance of digital learning and teaching, to how we might integrate well to enhance the balance and reduce the tension in the system.

I also continue to think about what we can safely get rid of in the environment of an ever expanding curriculum.