Kylie recently told me of a great little way she explains the problem of judging people on their looks. She explains that our appearance is like the wrapping paper of a present. Our appearance is simply a covering for what is inside and it is what is inside that is most important. As for the present, the wrapping paper is far less important than what is inside and if we were to judge presents by the wrapping paper it would be very difficult to determine the quality of the present inside. Shabby wrapping paper can cover the most beautiful presents and beautiful wrapping paper can cover up some not so nice presents. This goes for people too. If we judge people on their appearance before we know them then we may miss out on the wonderful gift that is inside.
I just found a great video to help discuss stereotyping from Britain’s got talent. Susan Boyle blows everyone away with her performance as Paul Potts did 3 years earlier and this too has a lot of potential to be used in the classroom. The introduction to the video shows a very cynical audience and judges who clearly judge Susan before she performs. They expect very little from her and when she sings she immediately blows them all away. I think this would be worth stopping the video just before she sings to discuss the stereotyping the judges and audience do and what they expect and think about Susan. Love these videos!!
I noticed a job application recently that teachers were to submit their educational philosophy as part of the application. I like the idea so thought I would give it a shot. (This will be edited and refined into the future.)
1. All students are capable of learning and learning is a natural human desire and something humans enjoy and seek. The classroom should aim to stimulate this natural desire.
2. Learning should be engaging and challenging for students.
3. Teachers have a responsibility to attempt to connect with the wide variety of learning styles that students posses.
4. Teachers have a responsibility to continually develop their skills and commit to lifelong learning themselves.
5. There is no one right way to do things. What works with one group or students may be totally ineffective with the next and vice versa. This supports the importance of the teacher knowing their students and continually evaluating and reflecting on what they do.
6. Relationships are critical for the classroom to thrive. Respect and trust being central.
7. Passion for the subject area is infectious.
8. Students will work to the level you expect them. Set the bar low and they will just make it. Set it high and they will just make it. Be unrealistic and lose them altogether. High expectations are essential for students to reach their potential.
9. Questioning is one of the critical skills in developing ‘thinking’ students. Give them all the answers and you may help them for the test but you cripple them for life. Make them think for themselves and constantly challenge them – (I need to improve here).
I just came across some great notes in regards to superior educational leaders. These are taken from Professor Viviane Robison (2007) at the 6th Conference of the Australian Centre for Educational Leadership.
Superior educational leaders demonstrate the following 7 sets of practices.
1 - Action focus – the leader is focused on making things happen, on clear goals and objectives.
2 – Performance focus – the leader is focused on planning and reviewing teaching and the curriculum and is actively involved in setting objectives across all year levels, decision making and teacher evaluation and feedback.
3 – Improvement focus – the leader is focused on making continual improvement and ensuring there are concrete improvement goals. The leader uses student evidence to improve teaching and monitors student progress.
4 – Contact focus – the leader stays in touch with all members of the community and involves the community in being a part of a learning organisation.
5 – Relationship focus – the leader develops and maintains positive work relationships within and outside the group. Staff feel protected from undue pressure and conflict is addressed quickly and effectively.
6 – Development focus – the leader is focused on participating in teacher learning and development. The leader is an active participanting in teacher learning and development, promotes discussions about teaching and displays intellectual leadership around pedagogy.
7 – Character focus - the leader displays at all times the highest personal ethics and work standards.
The 1:1 initiative by the government provides an opportunity for classes to connect and share as has never before been available or possible. How can we best use this opportunity?
While the government initiative is to be applauded and presents wonderful opportunities, teachers will be largely left with minimal to no training in how to best utilise these tools to assist students and engage them in their learning.
Is the government hoping they will be used to assist and improve on what is currently happening in schools or is there a hope that this will lead towards a whole new pedagogical approach to teaching and learning. When their whole schooling comes down to a high pressure examination how much scope is there to utilise the laptops for exciting and challenging projects that students can engage with, particularly in year 11 & 12?
I have been reading about a number of teachers who live stream their teaching to the world and thought it would be an interesting project with a Senior PDHPE class. The next time I have a senior class my plan is to record all lessons and edit to the key teaching aspects and then upload these to the web so students and others can see what is happening.
Benefits I can foresee include students having access to classes if they are away and being able to use it for revision. Others could also critique the lessons and it has the potential to open up conversation around the teaching and learning strategies used. I see the major potential barrier as being the time required to edit and upload the videos and it may be the breaking point of the project but I still think I will give it a try and see how it goes. While the focus would not be on students I see it would be necessary for students to give consent along with their parents on the project.
I would like to see a DET or statewide attempt at the project where they identify a few quality teachers and organise for them to be recorded and use it as a Professional development type project. I think this would be great for beginning teachers especially but all teachers could potentially benefit.
Just listening to an interesting video by Benjamin Zander at Poptech 2008. He certainly comes across as a passionate teacher and does well to engage the audience. I liked some of his points so thought I would get them down.
2 salesman are sent to africa to sell shoes. One telegrams back – situation hopeless. They don’t wear shoes. The other – Glorious opportunity – no one wears shoes here.
These are reflections of attitude – not statements about circumstances.
scarcity versus abundance.
scarcity – students are competing and worried and anxious and he talks about a downward spiral of negativity that we can be consumed in – I am not good enough, complaint, no chance, it cant be done, it is too difficult, the resources are not there, other people are doing better.
abundance – is about possibility and what can be done and achieved.
He teaches exceptional students who are held back by the competitions and grades and pressure to perform. See’s the student’s being affected by the scarcity principle – I am not good enough, what if I make a mistake etc.
Gives each student an A at the beginning of the course if they write a letter to him and explain what they will do in the next year to achieve that A. He tells them to fall in love with that person. He finds that the person they write about is the one who turns up to class.
Michaelangelo – in each piece of marble their is a beautiful statue, all you need is a hammer and a chisel to get rid of the stone that is in the way of that beautiful statue.
Model of education we use is teacher is above student and student tries to reach the teacher. In michaelangelo’s model the teacher and student are equal and work together.
Leaders we need are those who can recognise the scarcity downward spiral and move it to an area of possiblilty.
This got me thinking about the ways I may inadvertently promote the ’scarcity’ principle in my classroom, and how I can move that to an area of possibility.
Just read an interesting article on 21st century skills that is worth a look. The article looks at the
argument that 21st century skills should replace the teaching of content where the article essentially suggests that content has an important role to play in developing the 21st century skills.
“Unfortunately some 21st-century skills proponents believe these skills should replace the teaching of content. They believe that because so much new knowledge is being created, students should focus on how to know instead of knowing. This view threatens to reopen a debate in American education that is not new either: content pitted against critical thinking rather than the two complementing each other.”
“Content undergirds critical thinking, analysis, and broader information literacy skills. To critically analyze various documents requires engagement with content and a framework within which to place the information.”
Found this interesting quote on a blog I subscribe to. How much truth is in this comment?
“Anyone who has worked very much with teachers realizes that once they’re out teaching, most of them actively avoid learning anything new. After all – they already know it all! Teachers make the worst students, just like doctors make the worst patients.”
Are we that busy that we have taken our eyes off the prize? How can we encourage teachers to continually learn and develop their teaching ability when they feel stretched to the limit already?
I read an interesting article today on Australia’s push towards league tables for schools.
It seems a little odd to me that Australian politicians want to follow America’s lead in the push towards league tables and increased mandatory testing to try and improve educational outcomes for students. The fact that America is one of the poorest performing countries in a recent OECD study involving 26 countries should ring alarm bells. It would seem logical to me to try and analyse the countries performing better than Australia (we actually perform quite well overall) to look at what they do. Finland who have topped the OECD comparisons in most areas over the last 6 years have one of the least prescriptive curriculums, minimal testing and some of the best trained teachers in the world.
Leading countries have a strong focus on the quality of their teachers and the McKinsey report provides lots of information on what has been happening around the world to improve educational outcomes. The findings overall are quite simply put. Quality school systems have the following thins in common.
1. Getting the right people to become teachers
2. Developing them into effective instructors
3. Ensuring the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child
The report is broken into a number of sections whose headings really say it all.
“The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers”.
“The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction”.
“High performance requires every child to succeed”.
Michael McQueen spoke at the PDHPE Conference again this year about engaging gen y in the classroom and it was once again a very interesting and well delivered presentation. While there was a lot of cross over from last year I enjoyed it anyway and felt it was worth summarising the key points as there is lots of food for thought for teachers.
5 Keys to engaging gen y
1. Put relationships before role
‘treat us like people – not just students’
“don’t smile until easter’ – power and control method – do you want students to fear you?
“don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care”
“students learn teachers, no subjects”
2. Develop rapport – be authentic – be real.
students relate best to real teachers – not necessarily hip and cool but honest, genuine, vulnerable and admit mistakes.
Take an interest – get to know your students.
3. Matrix learning connecedness and relevance of what you do in class to what they know and their own experiences.
connect learning to the real world.
4. Use stories to make your point
don’t tell me it’s right – show me it works – you can do this through narrative.
be honest and authentic
beware of sharing that is self serving
don’t presume much
get to the point
5. Adopt a facilitator role teachers are not the source of all knowledge anymore
teach them to think and question
avoid closed questions
ask one question at a time and choose your questions carefully
never ridicule or dismiss a response
Other messages he conveyed included
using positive affirmation – catch people doing the right thing and reward it – if people are recognised and rewarded it will be repeated. In prac lessons look for opportunities to recognise the less abled students.
Hi touch – no necessarily hi tech (students will respond when you engage their emotions and connect with them as human beings)
Questions the technology push – can be a great tool but it is not the
strategy and using technology for the sake of it misses the point.
It is an early call as I have only just stumbled over it, but I think I have a new favourite presentation program (over powerpoint, slideshare, sliderocket). The “Google presentation” program allows viewers of the presentation to interact with the presenter and other viewers as the presentation is going on. Their is a panel on the right hand side of the presentation where viewers can discuss what is happening and ask questions of the presenter. I am keen to try this one out with one of my classes and see how they take to it and if it helps some of the quieter students ask questions and become part of the conversation.
I have started a presentation on Web 2.0 tools for PDHPE to test it out. Not finished yet but will keep updating it as I go.
I have said before that I think the commentary that our students (Digital natives) are all technology experts and teachers are all ‘digital immigrants’ who are behind the students and will struggle to catch up are gross generalisations. From my experience students are definitely more willing to experiment with computer based technologies and will ‘play around’ until they figure it out. Teachers who are uncomfortable with technology from my observations seem uncomfortable with this idea of playing around and learning by mistakes and doing things on computers and think that they are going to ‘wreck’ something and use this as a reason to avoid using technology.
To me this seems to be a key difference between the two groups. Even though most students may be adept at using technology, being able to use it for educational reasons is not generally a strong point and I think there is a lot that we as teachers can add to their ICT usage to help them harness the power of the technology they use. A glaring example here is their use of social networking sites and online safety. Go search through a few of your students facebook/myspace/bebo etc profiles and you will learn a lot about them that you may not want to know and more importantly they probably don’t want you to know. A lot of students don’t seem to realise that what they post on their site is available to ‘everyone’ that they need to think carefully about the online profile they are developing.
I just came across some great notes in regards to superior educational leaders. These are taken from Professor Viviane Robison (2007) at the 6th Conference of the Australian Centre for Educational Leadership.
The 1:1 initiative by the government provides an opportunity for classes to connect and share as has never before been available or possible. How can we best use this opportunity?
I have been reading about a number of teachers who live stream their teaching to the world and thought it would be an interesting project with a Senior PDHPE class. The next time I have a senior class my plan is to record all lessons and edit to the key teaching aspects and then upload these to the web so students and others can see what is happening.