Cherish the journey

Going on a journey from point A to point B means you get to view different things.  Especially the first time.  Arrival is not as important as the journey and what you see and think about on the way.

While on a journey whether a physical one like a holiday or a mental one like professional learning, you are open to change.  The very nature of journeying is to expect change.

Teaching as inquiry which New Zealand Teachers embark on every year can feel compulsory.  If we can drive the inquiry by deciding which direction to go in, it will be authentic and meaningful.  My inquiry this year around learning through play was motivating, iterative, focused, meaningful.  I was driving it.  Like all authentic learning it expected me to take it seriously.    I learnt more this year than any other year.  

Starting a Facebook community that really took off was significant.  The community included experts, practitioners, researchers, novices.  This mix meant posts became useful.  Provocations, inspiration, ideas, examples all made up the content.  They called me on deeper.

This type of journey may not happen everyday, but I would like to believe it could.  Finding the right topic, the right people and the right medium.  It makes professional learning dynamic and inspiring.  People who hold knowledge on the topic become very important.  They help those new to the discussion by giving helpful tips, books to read, photos of examples.    But for those experts, the newbies also offer a fresh look at the journey they have taken, maybe several times.  Their staleness is challenged and they get to see the issues and dynamics of the topic through new eyes.  This is gold.  

I have loved the journey and appreciate the gems of discovering something for the first time.  Being able to make the discoveries myself makes learning fun and meaningful for the students I teach.  Being supported and enabled by others so amazing.

I look forward to 2016 and the new discoveries to be made.  If you haven't taken a journey like this before, find your passion, mix it with some danger, take some risk, step out and share and ask the questions even if you think they sound dumb... they won't be.  Try a new online medium.  Form a community.  You will be amazed at how it develops your teaching.  

Breaking Limits One Word Reflection

Breaking Limits Open One Word 2015 Reflection Tara O'Neill

 Like many Educators I work within certain limits.  Curriculum limits, school wide limits, parental limits and often limits set in my own mind as to the way things have always been done.  Mostly I don’t question those limits because I am not aware they are there.  Sometimes, I pretend they are not there because they are scary and I don’t want to be pushed outside my comfort zone.

Up until this year, where my one word has been limit, I have experienced the safe side of limit. As someone who often finds myself outside of personal limits set to keep me safe from burnout, I came to realize that limits have another side.  Professionally, acknowledging limits has enabled me to move beyond them, to explore and develop new practice.  Not for my sake, but for my students.  In pursuit of excellence breaking limits is all about learning.

Professional Limits

I ended 2014 by writing about the exciting journey of play ahead for 2015  http://www.tkaslessons.blogspot.co.nz/2014/12/learning-through-play-tara-oneill.html)

I am pleased to say it has been successful.  Learning has become explosive, captivating, enabling learning but not in the way I expected.

I am learning a whole new way of teaching, a whole new pedagogy.  It feels like my brain has been removed and put back a different way.  I see teaching and learning in a totally different light.  

Keys to changing practice

1.  Release to inquire into new ways of teaching and learning given by my Principal.  Thanks Karyn Grey because without your leadership, I wouldn’t have even ventured out of my limits.  Being in a school where breaking limits is encouraged and highly regarded an environment is created, which embraces change and new ideas.  

2. Owning the journey and the learning. I wasn’t copying anyone else.  When I began the journey I didn’t know anyone trialing what I was about to do.  I did some professional reading as time allowed, and had so much fun trying different ideas in the learning community. I used courage to redefine and challenge old practice acting as a limit and change my teaching practice.   I wrote a blog earlier in the year (http://www.tkaslessons.blogspot.co.nz/2015/07/limits.html) about this discovery.   

My professional learning hasn’t cost loads of money.  A fraction of the cost of what I pay to do Postgrad learning.  It has cost my time and effort and I have had to take risks.

3.  Connecting with other professionals through technology at a grass root level.   I went to my first Educamp in Palmerston North.  I took a chance.  I decided I wanted to share my short journey into play-based learning.  To my surprise I got to share.  There I sat sharing with 20 other educators.  At the end of an hour, we hadn’t finished the discussion so I suggested I start a facebook page.

Which I did a week later. That was August.  And to my surprise it took off.  I spent my evenings sitting on facebook sharing practice. I called it Learning Through Play. Online I met two researchers, Sarah Aiono and Keryn Davis, experienced in play based learning. They linked me in to some significant research.   I met Linda Cheer from The Forest School an experienced educator in play-based learning.  I met Early Childhood Educators who totally got where I was coming from and could further my practice and I met other Primary Teachers further down the track and some interested beyond belief in starting play based classrooms.  The page is now sitting at just over 650 people all within 4 months.  More important than the numbers is the fact we are an active online learning community.  Different people post and loads of helpful conversations are had.  The Learning Through Play Facebook Group has provided a place where educators at different places on the journey can share and get feedback and response to what they need in the moment.

Early on in the Learning through Play facebook page we decided we wanted to meet in person.  I talked with Karyn Grey and decided the facebook community would hold an Unconference. An unconference encapsulates authentic learning. Participant driven professional gathering. The 'un' refers to the fact there is no top-down organisation. Self-authorized learning, the experts are amongst us.  I opened up the idea and two Kindergarten teachers from Hineomoa Kindergarten in Taupo offered to host the event.  We set a date for October.  What a success.  It was very very useful. We had 20 educators (one skyped in) from 6 different cities in North Island, two different sectors ECE and Primary and Deciles ranging from 1 to 10.  Powerful. 

4.  Connecting with different sectors locally.  I have appreciated making connections with other local New Entrant Teachers who meet once a term in Gisborne.  Sharing practice and hearing others experiences is always helpful. Start connecting where you are.

Not being afraid to ask for help has led to another hugely valuable learning stream. David Spraggs and Christine Taare from the Kindergarten Association have been very supportive and helpful.  David has come several times to visit me at school and spent time discussing learning through play.  The other valuable resource has been REAP who also have connections in the community.  Being invited to as a Keynote speaker at the Tairawhiti Early Childhood Symposium has enabled me to give back and make further connections. Finally, the Pre-school next door to my school have provided a layer of relationship bringing context into learning that has enabled significant progress towards transition to school.

  

Asking questions from other practioners from different sectors and deciles has been significant to my changing practice.  I have experienced engagement and flow at a whole different level.  I understand how learning isn’t primarily about knowledge but about being able to ask the right questions and finding the right people.

Finally….

This has been the most significant year for my professional practice.  Like a snowball it rolls gathering pace. It has enabled me to learn quickly in a way I have never experienced.   I have broke limits of past thinking, I have redefined what teaching and learning means for me and the students I teach. I have redefined my own professional learning journey. This time I see limits as my friend.   

What about you?  How can you fast track your professional learning?  What questions do you have to ask? What relationships can you form?  What platforms – facebook, twitter, educamp, ignite can you explore?   Take a risk, share with someone.  

It wasn't about the science it was about thinking.

It wasn’t about the science it was about the thinking.

I have the most vivid memory of sitting in a classroom at Teacher’s College in 1987 and the lecturer bursting through the door announcing to us all that we couldn’t think.  Yep.  We were all regurgitating information given to us by lecturers. They lamented at this dreadful state of affairs, advising us this could no longer continue and that they would teach us how to think.  They did this and I remember being spellbound by this thing called logical reasoning.

I was the product of a schooling system, where I quickly discovered the rules to learning included, listening, writing, memorizing and regurgitating.  I remember students who did get into trouble. I think they were the question askers. I choose not to question and just do what I was told.

Hold that story.

Yesterday, a colleague and myself, Primary teachers, attended a workshop about science for early childhood teachers.  I was a little nervous to be honest, first time to cross the great divide between sectors.  However, I was totally blown away by the learning.  I knew that what David Spraggs, the workshop facilitator was saying could be applied to any age and certainly embraced pedagogy followed at Te Karaka Area School.

A few quotes.

“New experiences trigger change only when they cause us to question our beliefs.  Whenever we believe something strongly enough, we no longer question it in anyway.”  Anthony Robbins.

Ask Questions, ask questions, ask questions.

“It surprises me how our culture can destroy curiosity in the most curious of all animals – Human Beings.”   Paul Maclean.

“Teaching science is teaching thinking skills.”    Nancy P. Alexander

To learn – Children need to make mistakes the same as scientist do. 

And that led to the concept of continuum thinking.

This is where we find students no matter what their age, somewhere on the continuum from concepts that they believe, to early logic.  We help them move along by providing experiences, next steps, that help them to challenge their thinking.

Magical perceptions --------------------------------- Early Logic

Now - the important part.  It doesn’t help students to move along the continuum if we tell them the answers.  What does work is if we provide an environment in which they can experiment.  Allow time to think.  Help students to recognize their working theory and then support them to move on from it.  It is not about being right or wrong, it is not about telling them how a light bulb works or why bubbles pop. It is about letting students challenge their own thinking.  Teachers can be the most significant barriers to not allowing this to happen.

The important point in all of this is how our Early Childhood Colleagues are teaching not what they are teaching.  We have so much to learn from them.

Think for a moment, not about the what, but the how?  If you are a Primary teacher, what happens when a new 5 year old comes in to your class or school?  How are they taught?   They often come from an environment where they are allowed, encouraged, and supported to ask questions.  They are often self -directed learners.  Okay, they can’t always tie their own shoelaces, open their own lunchboxes and even go to the toilet but they can think and ask questions. 

Are your students allowed to ask questions?  Do you model question asking for them?  Are your students allowed space and time to explore, experiment and discover? Do you take the learning to them instead of them coming to you for ideas?

How do we push through the barriers of say, others expectations of our performance, lack of time, national standards, pre-conceived ideas of where a child should be by a certain age.  I have to ask myself, do I limit my students because of the way I was taught?  Am I a teacher who believes in how I teach so strongly that I have stopped asking questions?  Maybe I have stopped asking why students are ‘naughty, lazy or unmotivated?  Maybe I have stopped asking why students don’t want to learn what I am teaching?  Maybe I have stopped asking why I teach the whole class the same thing the same way?

And that is what I started to think about as I listened to the workshop with a group of teachers from a different sector.  I realized that asking questions was vital to my survival and my students.   It wasn’t about the knowledge so much as about how students get knowledge.  It is important that we are not afraid of a different sector in education and that we learn together and from each other.  It is really important that we don’t think we know all the answers and become so sure of how we teach that we stop asking questions. 

My goal is to move my students along the continuum from Magical perceptions to Early Logic, but the truth is I have to move myself along this continuum as well. 

You can learn without reading or writing!

It is the core job of all teachers to teach students to read and write.  Without doubt these are useful skills in todays world.  However, in my opinion they are not deal breakers.  The deal breaker for me is a love of learning.  The want to learn.  The deep urge to inquire.

As teachers we often miss this urge.   Focusing on academic subjects, we miss student's deeper thinking.  Likened to being short sighted, we can't see the long view. Learning treasures like perseverance, logical thinking, curiosity.  Drivers of inquiry.

I'm concerned.  Deeply concerned.  For students who don't learn to read and write within New Zealand's current guidelines.   These students are extremely vulnerable to loosing a love for learning. The can become 'the naughty ones'  'the dumb' ' the disengaged'  'the uninspired' 'the unfocused'.

 A love of learning needs to be protected at all costs.  For me this is authentic learning.

Take Jamie.

Shortsighted view:  Struggles to read.  Finds it difficult to read words.  Won't come to reading time with teacher.  Hides under the desk. Give him a pencil and he draws a picture. At a deeper unspoken level, he is letting the school down, labeled as 'the tail' of education, the result of bad teaching.

Longsighted view:  A student asks to build a model.  The teacher pulls out the hammers, nails, wood shapes, bits and pieces of sparkles, paint and glue.  Jamie's face lights up.  Teacher says, draw a plan of what you want to make.  Jamie draws a car.  He chooses a square piece of wood, 4 circles, 1 rectangle, nails and  hammer.  Very deliberate.  He starts from the bottom up.  Nails on two wheels then switches sides and nails on two more.  His skill with hammer and nail is exceptional.  His focus complete.  The teacher notices the way he works shows evidence of a plan.  Logical and thoughtful.   The plan comes to life.  He knows exactly what he is doing.  Next the rectangle piece of wood becomes the flames.  Then he draws a shape at the top.  He directs the teacher to cut this shape out.  As this happens, the car appears.  Jamie has clearly displayed the ability to think and learn.  Namely his ability to take a concept in his imagination and create it in real life.  He is able to do this step by step.  He does it with ease.
Is he a failure now?  Does he let the school down?  Is this the result of bad teaching?

If we only focus on the academic skills which are part of lifelong learning we might miss students deeper thinking.  I have heard teachers say, if they just learn to read and write now, they can go on and do whatever they want.  This works fine for some students, but what if you are one that takes longer to learn the skills?  What happens to your will to learn when everyday you are forced to sit and learn the same letter, the same word over and over again.  What if you never had books to read in your home.  What if you haven't had writing modelled to you and were not aware of the purpose of writing.  What if you are 5 years old?  What then do reading and writing become?

What we need to do as teachers is use full sight.  Do I expect this student to read and write? Absolutely, but it will look different to other students.  It may take longer.  But learning to read and write later on doesn't mean you have to stop learning in the meantime.  The risk of loosing motivation is very real.  The risk of thinking that learning to read and write are in fact the definition of 'learning' is common.

That is why education needs to change.  That is why I use learning through play as the main vehicle to educate students in my learning community.  I protect at all costs the child's will to learn. Engagement in learning is the most important teaching point. Allowing children to play, is not a weak option.  Play supports learning.  In my learning community we have clay, paper and pens.  Lego and blocks.  Dress ups and carpentry.  Children are trusted, listened to.  We dance together.

Ways to support students who struggle to read and write continue to learn with passion.
1.  Allow learning through their strengths.  Let them play!
2.  Allow them to use technology to record ideas and listen to books.
3.  Allow them to set the pace - trust the learner, they are not being lazy.
4.  Invite them to take part in a 'group lesson' further along.  They will be exposed to the new learning.  We learn in waves not in a linear line.  Often learners who don't make expected progress are held back and only given the same old lessons but what they need are the next steps.  That way, they can learn these and then circle back. Often when this happens, the old knowledge makes sense.
5.  Acknowledge strengths and skills in the same way you would acknowledge some one who can read and write at standard.

Take the long view

There is nothing as devastating as watching your children fail.  Failure is natural, but not when you try and try and try again.  I remember when my son, Josiah failed to learn to read.  He just couldn't remember the letters.  In year 2 his teacher said he wriggled on the mat and couldn't sit still.  Josiah who was placid and happy, got very angry.

It was at that point we got help and a diagnosis.  He would have been around 8 years old?  The school had tried everything, but nothing had worked.  I mean everything that was available like reading recovery, a teacher aide 1-1 teaching alphabet sounds and identification, rainbow reading and a Specialist literacy teacher (3 times a week for 1 hour each time).  Josiah could do all the tricks, he could re-run, he use picture clues, he could even work out missing words from context, but he couldn't read small words consistently and he couldn't read without help.  Basically, he couldn't hear sounds and relate them to letters.  We got Josiah labelled at Child and Adolesent Mental Health by a Phychiatrist.  We were very lucky. We got some counseling for him.   We also paid for him to have the special assessment with a developmental eye specialist.  Also we paid for another private assessment confirming the first.

A wonderful teacher aide left the primary school and trained in the Davis Programme.  It was this programme with this teacher that made the difference.  It was here that in two weeks, he learnt his alphabet letters and sounds.  That in it self is astonishing.  We had the job of continuing the process in helping Josiah learn the 220 or so trigger words that.  It is a big job.  Each word takes 30-40 minutes.  We paid for a teacher aide to do this once a day for a while.  Even with all this we didn’t finish.  However, it was enough to make a difference.

The biggest difference from the Davis Programme was that Josiah was at peace with himself.  He identified as being dyslexic and became his old self.  He accepted who he was and how he was.   He also learnt some tools which he still uses and helps him to focus.  Simple but profound.

Over the next few years, Josiah scored a PAT stanine 9 twice in listening comprehension.  We celebrated as we saw how he had compensated and had become an amazing listener.  I will never forget his Year 5 and 6 teacher the most amazing teacher who took him and treated him as an intelligent and able student.  She allowed him to sit in lessons with her highest reading group and highest maths group.  She affirmed him. 

Now Josiah is in Year 11.  NCEA 1 looms.  Josiah is not worried one bit.  His school has applied for compensations, without a paid diagnosis, purely on assessment information and observations.  Sensible, logical stuff, this is how it should be.  We heard this week that he has been accepted no questions.  Common sense.  Wonderful.  He can use a reader/writer or computer.  He can have a room by himself for exams.  The playing field has been made level.

The thing about Josiah is that he believes he can do anything.  He believes he is a learner.  He knows he is successful.  He doesn’t doubt his ability or his skills.  He knows ways around not being able to read and write.  Learning for him isn’t defined by paper and pencil but by thinking, remembering, creating. 

As a mum, my heart sings.  I remember when he was a little boy and the most important thing was to make sure he loved learning. We talked to him lots.  We took him on trips.   We read to him – a lot.  He listened to stories on tape, then CD and then a kindle.    I never forced him to hold a pencil, I never made him practice senseless letters over and over again.  I never made him read over and over again.  He never had to do homework.  Unless of course he wanted to.   I protected his personhood. Even when he wanted to stop the Davis Programme learning we listened.  Forcing was not an option.  What this journey has shown me is that a passion for learning and listening to the person, working for them and not against their will, is fundamental to success. Trusting my son to know what to do and when has been important. 

Reading and writing may be helpful to learning, but it is not essential.

Sure I am under no doubt that the next few years will be hard work, but isn’t it like that for all learners?  New learning is always hard fought for. 

You don't need a pencil to write or do you?

You don’t need a pencil to write or do you?

“As soon as they hit my class, they are expected to sit down and write,” said one teacher of New Entrants.   “Make sure your students know they are Writers from day one, get them sitting down, with a pencil and get them writing in their exercise book” said a person offering professional development.  These statements seem sensible enough after all that is what teachers do, they teach.  What are your thoughts?

I heard the statements, and I didn’t agree with them.

 Who said humans were ready to write at the age of 5 years?  Who said that the definition of writing includes a pencil and paper? Who said that you had to sit down to write?   Is writing defined by a picture of something you did in the weekend and then a sentence written by a teacher underneath?

Writing is about communicating ideas.  Physically writing words down is one way we can do this.   Many of the students in our learning community come to school without necessarily having used a pencil.  Consider the writing stages, shown here in this link from https://www.kinderplans.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Writing-Stages.png.

There are many such examples if you goggle them.   My point is children don’t all start school ready to write in books with a pencil.  

Consider this approach.  A group of children are interested in fire fighting.  Our teacher aide is a local firefighter.  He brings in helmets for them to use in play.  He talks to the students about different situations he has been called to.  He explains to them that after every call out, the team sits down and records what has happened.   The following day, another teacher walks past this group.  They are sitting around a table.  They yell out, “We are having a meeting about our call out”.  The teacher says, “You will need something to record it in, and goes and gets a book”.  One child takes charge, and starts to write in the book.  It doesn’t matter how she writes, the point is writing it is now meaningful.  Once students have ‘got writing’ and begin to understand the power of it, further instruction can be given to the particular skills needed to evolve their writing.   

Some writers in our learning community haven’t been exposed to story.  Some find it difficult to speak in sentences.  We believe that before a child can write, they need to speak or at least show understanding of communication.   What would happen, if you arrived in a foreign country, and on your first day, the tour guide said you were in charge of writing the request for breakfast, in the foreign language!  How would you feel? 

Writing is about communicating. You will be able to think of many cultures that have an oral tradition of passing down stories.  Are their stories any less valuable?  Of course not!  Writing reflects the ideas, sequence and logic of the writer. To communicate ideas that are important and rich orally makes the writer no less an author than those who write with pencil and paper.

Of course we want all our students to be able to write, it is very useful being able to record ideas even essential.  Lets face it, much of our paranoia over students sitting down with a pencil, and writing from day dot, is brought about by needing to met a summative assessment. That is expectations that all children write at a certain level by a certain age.  Having goals are important, but the goals must be purposeful, meaningful and show progress.  What happened to meaningful learning that is not parroting someone else’s ideas in a robot like fashion? 

Would it not be more purposeful teaching practice, to identify where the child is in their development of writing, and design learning to meet this need?   Developmentally, the child may need to learn to draw first.  They may need to be in an environment where they hear words and are spoken to.  The achievement objectives of the New Zealand Curriculum say “a school’s curriculum is likely to be well designed when – students are helped to build on existing learning and take it to higher levels;  – the long view is taken: each student’s ultimate learning success is more important than the covering of particular achievement objectives”  (TKI, 2015).   I guess that is my real concern, that young children are being expected to learn something before they are ready and in doing so we risk turning them off learning. 

Personally, I love walking into our learning community and seeing groups of children, self managing themselves, learning, some around white boards, writing, others with paper, drawing, others playing in the family corner, designing some clothes for the doll on scrap paper and still others on reading eggs on the ipad.

What do you think?  How do your students travel with writing?  What is their existing learning in writing?  Are they successful communicators of language?

Reference

TKI (2015) - http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum/The-school-curriculum-Design-and-review