Week 32 - PRACTICE - Changes in Practice

Changes in my practice 

Reflective Journal

Osterman and Kottkamp (1993), talk about reflective practice is to improve practice. They identify there are 2 key ideas that are necessary to develop your reflective practice; 1. to develop an awareness of our habits and how our assumptions shape our actions and 2. that we think about our effective our actions are to our intentions. Over my past 32 weeks with Mind Lab I feel like my development with my teaching has taken a huge change. I feel like I have become more aware of what I am doing, and that there is so much more to teaching then in my classroom. When I decided to do Mind Lab I was really interested in the digital side of it keen to get new ideas that I could use in my class, but over the the weeks my mind changed and I began to really enjoy the leadership side of Mind Lab and how this aspect I felt was changing my teaching practice. 

Key Changes:
Collaboration - Being able to fully understand what this is and how I can best apply it to my class and team. I work in an Innovative Learning Environment and our goal is to become more collaborative with our teaching and planning. I really enjoyed the interdisciplinary idea and I feel this is a better way to move with collaboration, getting there will be my next step. 

Understanding Research - before I came into Mind Lab I didn't take much to research, I had the mind set of "What would these people know about MY classroom". But after doing so much research and seeing how beneficial it can be, I can understand the importance and WHY now. 

Growth Mindset - This was my favourite session as I felt it links a lot with myself and my teaching style. I have now Incorporated having Growth Mindset sessions in my class, we do Yoga daily and have sessions about the different areas of Growth Mindset. I have noticed small changes in my students with their abilities to keep going when things get tough and understanding that there always is another way. 

Where to Next?
My where to next steps are going to be based on the  Practising Teacher Criteria (PTC) in e-learning.

Criterion 1
Fully certified teachers establish and maintain effective professional relationships focused on the learning and well-being of ākonga.
- I hope to continue to maintain my online connections to keep developing. I found that through the different social media options I can quickly read about or look into.

Criterion 5

Fully certified teachers show leadership that contributes to effective teaching and learning.
- Use what I have learnt to share with my team and other colleagues.

I have enjoyed being a 'Learner' again and seeing how much I can still learn all the time. 

References:
Osterman, K. & Kottkamp, R.(1993). Reflective Practice for Educators.California.Cornwin Press, Inc. Retrieved on 7th May, 2015 from http://www.itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/files/RefPract/Osterman_Kottkamp_extract.pdf

Week 31 - PRACTICE - Professional Context

Interdisciplinary

What is this? When beginning this weeks task I found it hard to understand what this was. When watching the videos and going through the class notes I found that its what we are now calling 'Innovative and Collaborative teaching'. According to Dictionary.com Interdisciplinary means combining two or more learning areas, for example science and maths. 

My interdisciplinary connection map

As a primary school teacher we have to cover so much over a short space of time and the idea of collaboration or using Interdisciplinary isn't a new idea to us. In the video Interdisciplinarity and Innovation Education Dr. Deana McDoangh and Joyce Thomas talk about the different advantages and disadvantages of having and using interdisciplinary. I liked how they discussed how as teachers we help to develop our students to be able to understand their value to themselves and how they can contribute to society. Interdisciplinary talks about building better connections for students and that we as teachers can get stuck in 'one way' of thinking and teaching, but if we open our students to interdisciplinary ideas they can understand and become innovative. I understood and agreed with how Dr. Deana McDoangh talked about interdisciplinary isn't always easy, especially when it comes to how people think and feel about teaching, but as long as they are willing to build on come areas they help to build an awareness of this. I liked the table that Mathison and Freeman (1997) used, it gave a good understanding of the definitions surrounding 'collaboration'. It was interesting to see that intresting doesn't always mean collaborative. 

In my own team we have been trying to collaborate and integrate as much as we can to try make it easier for us as teachers. Currently we do this for our team planning, each taking an area and planning for this and then it is left up to the individual teacher to interpret as much as they can for their class needs. 

The potential interdisciplinary connection I am looking at making in my future is within my school we have just merged our Intermediate team with our Senior Team to be one. Overtime we are looking at merging our teaching to make things more collaborative across the two teams. We are looking at starting a discovery programme where teachers choose a strength they have (also based on the resources we have in the school), for example cooking, water safety, and coding, there is also some input from students about what they would like to learn about and then they all choose the area they would like to focus their learning on. Below I have tried to identify some of the advantages and disadvantages I think will happen with this. 

References

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/interdisciplinary 

Jones, C.(2009). Interdisciplinary approach - Advantages, disadvantages, and the future benefits of interdisciplinary studies. ESSAI7 (26), 76-81. Retrieved from http://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=essai

Mathison,S.. & Freeman, M.(1997). The logic of interdisciplinary studies. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, 1997. Retrieved from http://www.albany.edu/cela/reports/mathisonlogic12004.pdf:

ThomasMcDonaghGroup. ( 2011, May 13). Interdisciplinarity and Innovation Education.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDdNzftkIpA 

Week 30 - PRACTICE - Professional Online Social Networks

Activity 6: Using social online networks in teaching or professional development

In beginning this weeks task I came to realisation that I although I use many devices in my class and have lots of websites and online resources that I use with my class in no way (other then them thinking that Google Classroom is like Facebook), do I use any social media with my class. This made me really have to think about why? It's not like I don't use most of the social media options personally so there isn't a 'I don't know' factor, Sharples et al (2016), talks about how social media such as Facebook and Twitter are accessed by millions to exchange information and contact friends and family. And in China, even though they have blocked the main social media sites that everyone uses, they still have WeChat that people use to send photos, messages, have video conferences, read the news, transfer money and buy goods. Within my own professional development it has only been since doing The Mind Lab that I have really started to use social media, I have started blogging, joined twitter and Facebook groups related to education.

It was interesting to read from Melhuish, (2013), when he talks about teachers only will use social media if there is enough evidence to say that it will effective towards their students and teaching. This seems like the common reply from teachers when new things are brought to them. I think this links with myself as well. What evidence is there to say this is helpful for my students? After watching the video Connected Educators I can see the many benefits of how connecting to with other educators can help my teaching practice. I can access Professional Development (PD) whenever and wherever I like and learn at my own pace. I think this links well with how I discovered Google for education. I saw this as something I could really use well and because my school was not yet a Google school I began trailing and learning how to use all the Google tools for my class. I can see the benefits with Google as if you need to know anything, you just "Google It". I have adopted this approach with the classes I have had and teach my students that if they need to know something, you can quickly find the answers using Google. I really liked the article The 5Js approach. This talked about how these 5Js can help you in understanding and choosing the right content for your online PD. 

I guess the biggest reason why I haven't really used any social media with my class is that its not really been a push at my school and that I've seen it have too much red tape around the set up around doing this. A study by Silius et al. (2010) found that social media can help enhance the motivation of students. I am always keen to find ways to help motivate and have my students engaged, and from talking with them and listening to things they talk about in class they are all using some sort of social media, from Snapchat, Facebook, Musically and Instagram. After having to write this post, I can now see how many benefits using social media in my class have.  Education Council (2012), talks about teachers need to have a purpose behind using this and not have it as just another social media platform. I do see the implications around setting this up and that it could a long process in having students and families understand that it will be used for learning.

I guess my next step would be to look at what social media platform will best fit my class and look at how I can get my school and community onboard with it as well. 

References

Education Council.(2012). Establishing safeguards.[video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49216520

Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrieved on 05 May, 2015 from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/han...

Office of Ed Tech. (2013, Sep 18). Connected Educators. [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=216&v=K4Vd4JP_DB8

Sharples, M., de Roock , R., Ferguson, R., Gaved, M., Herodotou, C., Koh, E., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Looi,C-K, McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Weller, M., Wong, L. H. (2016). Innovating Pedagogy 2016: Open University Innovation Report 5. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Retrieved from http://proxima.iet.open.ac.uk/public/innovating_pedagogy_2016.pdf

Silius, K., Miilumäki, T.,Huhtamäki, J.,Tebest, T., Meriläinen, J., & Pohjolainen, S.(2010) ‘Students’ motivations for social media enhanced studying and learning.’ Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal, 2, (1). Retrieved on 7th May,2015 from http://www.kmel-journal.org/ojs/index.php/online-p.

Week 29 - PRACTICE - Influence of Law and Ethics

Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice

After watching the video Commitment to Parents/Guardians and Family/Whānau I found that this could be a ethical dilemma for myself. At my school all parents and students sign a form to say that photos and videos can be used based on the understanding it will be used within the school and for learning in some way. Based on the Code of Ethics created by the Education council I can see how I could come into some trouble with this. We have so many families at my school who don't speak or understand english very well, so when they are signing up their child into the school they find it difficult to understand what they are doing or agreeing to. Yes, we have asked for permission, but do the parents understand what this permission means? Most of the photos I take and upload are on our school website and in our class blog, both of these are freely available to anyone to access and use how they want. I send home at the beginning of the year access to our school website and blog to the parents so they can share this with other family members as well. I guess, with sending the access home and making it so open to anyone and everyone, so every child in my class is exposed to a lot more people then the families are aware of. The other side is that parents are giving permission for the students, I have year 5 & 6 students and they can understand what it means when their photos are displayed everywhere for everyone can see, and some of them have asked not to have their photos or their face shown when things are being displayed. So do we need to consider the opinion of our students and not their parents?

My school has guidelines around E-Learning and that as teachers we make sure that this aligns with good practice. As I stated before we make sure that each student has a signed form for consent of use of their images. We also Code of Conduct that we as teachers need to follow (based on the same ones as the Education Council), the main idea that comes through in both of them is that we always have the students wellbeing in mind when posting anything. I guess this comes down to common sense? And the the thinking of "If this was me, would I want this posted online for the world to see?" and understanding that these students we have are not our own - they belong to someone else and their family so how would they think and feel about these photos being posted?

Week 28: INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE & CULTURAL RESOPNSIVENESS

Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness in my practice

After reading the article from Savage et al (2011), I found that in being a culturally responsive teacher you need to be able to teach though and about that students, with a close focus on who the students are and their backgrounds and who they are as a student and what they can bring to your class. Teachers need to be aware of students backgrounds and cultural practices. Being able to embrace and celebrate students for who they are and where they come from helps to build students who have a strong and proud understanding of who they are. 

I found that the Tes Teach Culturally Responsive teaching tool was really important to use and understand. It talks about how all areas are important in supporting a student in your classroom. Coming from the same back ground as my students I feel that I can understand them a bit better and relate to who they are. Because of how I went through school, predominantly white middle class, I felt out of place with who I was and how important my culture was to me. Once a year we would have a cultural performance and it was token for you to be classed in the Pacific group if you were brown. I feel that I can relate to my students with who they are and where they are coming from. 

The adapted “Pasifika: Participation, Engagement, Achievement” tool:
(Adapted from from Te Toi Tupu’s (n.d.) resource, “Pasifika: Participation, Engagement, Achievement tool”)

• How do you plan activities and lessons to support diverse cultural backgrounds and languages?

My school is very driven from the community. We have whanau groups during terms 2 and 3 and the focus is on language (term 2) and arts (term 3). Through these we have whanau members come in and help support the teachers with teaching this. This is all driven by the community and what needs we have in it. 

Within my own teaching I usually have my class give me ideas about what they would like their math problems to be about or if there are things going on in the community we try and focus on using these as teaching lessons in the classroom. An example of this is, we are having the new airport motorway being built right next to our school. Lots of our learning has been around how this has impacted us and the community. We also have a lot to do with our local iwi. 

Our school also has a range of teachers who come from many different backgrounds so they are able to relate to the students on this level as well. 

My maths lessons I feel are the most relevant to my students, at the beginning of each term I ask them what they want to have their math problems be about - this links to them and makes them feel like they are important and have a say in their learning. We always embrace the cultural language weeks and I always find it good to use the students in my class to help me learn new words or say new things in a different language. 

I do feel that as a school we could do more with the language and culture. Teachers need to be more open to taking part in wanting to learn for themselves to benefit their students. For myself, found that I don't speak my own language (Samaon) and can see how this would be a huge advantage for me know this to support my students. I have been learning Te Reo Maori and feel the need for all teachers and students to learn this teaching in New Zealand. 

• How does the school ensure its vision, mission and core values reflect cultural responsiveness?

My school is always seeking feedback from the community, our board is made of many different backgrounds that help reflect our school. 

With our school vision we are looking at; 'Empowering our Learners to Take Flight'. This means that we look at our students to be able to take flight in their learning, to try new things, to begin their learning journey. 

• How do the school curriculum and resources reflect content from a variety of cultures and ethnic groups?

My school is well resourced we have many different resources, like books, people (teachers, students and whanau members), the community around us and how the internet has made learning new languages easily available to all online.  

We also take part in VLN (Virtual Learning Network) where our students are offered the opportunity to learn more of their own language or to learn a new language online. This is a great way for our students to maintain their language in a digital world. 

• How does the school use achievement information and involve families in planning, and monitoring progress and achievement?

My school is classed as a decile 1, low income and poor upbringing school in Mangere (South Auckland), but although we fit the typical stereotype of a school in South Auckland, we have high expectations for our students. Each year we set the goal of having 100% achieving at or above in all areas of learning, although we don't always achieve it we get very close to our goal, usually int the 70-80% range. 

We have many teachers who are able to translate our expectations and reports to our families and we have an open door where parents are welcome to come in and ask questions if they need to. We hold our 3-way conferences where students lead these and are empowered to talk about their learning and be proud of who they are. 

References:

Savage,C, Hindleb, R., Meyerc,L., Hyndsa,A., Penetitob, W. & Sleeterd, C.(2011) Culturally responsive pedagogies in the classroom: indigenous student experiences across the curriculum .Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(3), 183–198

https://www.tes.com/lessons/ktVzK03Wq9c8GA/culturally-responsive-teaching 

Te Toi Tupu. (n.d.). Pasifika: Participation, Engagement, Achievement tool. Retrieved from http://www.tetoitupu.org/pasifika-participation-engagement-achievement-tool 

Week 27: THE BROADER PROFESSIONAL CONTEX

THIS WEEK’S ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY

Identified Trend: Cultural Diversity

After some searching of different trends in education I found that Core Education (2017), Cultural Diversity trend (2016) is one that is relevant to New Zealand education and my own teaching practice. Core Education (2017), discuss the reasons behind this being a trend in that recently New Zealand had a Superdiversity stocktake and this looked at how the ethic backgrounds of New Zealanders has changed. The Superdiversity stocktake explains that New Zealand has seen rise in numbers of new Asian and Pacific New Zealanders. For myself, this is what I enjoy about New Zealand, the fact that we have so many cultures in one country and each is always embraced. 

So, what does this mean for Education and Teachers?

Being able to say that you are a culturally responsive school is really common these days but what does this mean? Being able to identify and acknowledge all the cultures in you school and classroom, but how and why? Looking at my own classroom of 25 students I have 6 different cultural backgrounds that my students identify with, and with in my school we have over 10 different cultures. As teachers we have been told to 'teach' our students and that our 'one-size fits all' approach will work for all students. But in reality we have so many different needs within our classroom that it can be hard to do this. In a classroom there is so much to cater to and for; non-english speaking students, physical and emotional well-being and behaviour; to name a few. So how do we support all our learners? As our classrooms become more diverse our teaching needs to do that as well. We need have a classroom more focused on the learner and have tasks and opportunities for students to learn in a range of ways.

The biggest change and probably the most helpful for teachers would have to do with technology and how this brings many new learning opportunities, but also challenges as well. With the opportunities comes the access to information anytime and anywhere. This can change with how the information and technology is used in the classroom, teachers have lost the power to control what students learn. Within this trend, you can see that the 'old school' way of teaching has changed dramatically. No more is the teacher in front of the class dictating what students need to learn or how they learn. Technology has a huge part to play with this , educators need to look at how and what learning will look like for a student, the whole school and what it will look like at national level. 

Curriculum and pedagogy, learning environments and whole school strategy can begin to look quite different if learners are in the driving seat and if each member of the community is seen as part of a networked eco-system.

In New Zealand, we can see this trend emerging in new views on curriculum design and reimagined schooling environments that aim to cater to diverse contexts for learning. 

CORE Education (2017)

References:

Diversity » CORE Education. (2017). Core-ed.org. Retrieved 1 June 2017, from http://www.core-ed.org/research-and-innovation/ten-trends/2016/diversity/ 

(2017). Chenpalmer.com. Retrieved 1 June 2017, from http://www.chenpalmer.com/wp-content/uploads/Superdiversity_Stocktake.pdf 

Week 26: PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT

School Culture 

Mangere Central is 158 years old. The first school was founded in 1859 when Mangere was a small farming community. It was one of the first schools in the community and served as one of the first schools in Mangere. The school as had a major part in the community since then and has connections with the local iwi. Fast forward to 2017 and much has changed from the one room school to a school that is vibrant and colourful. The school is very proud of its history within the community and we always look to ways of being a part of it.

Step 1: Identify the socioeconomic status of the community, organisational culture and professional environments.

Mangere Central School consists mainly of students who come from maori or Pacific background. The social economical status of our community is working class to families living in poverty. This is shown through many areas of our school where we struggle to get students to come to school with the basic needs. We receive Kids Can, fruit in schools and Eat My Lunch for our students daily. Money is a huge factor for our community with those who have it have the bear minimum and those that don't sometimes have to make the decision on weather they can afford to drive their children to school or to drive to work. The school hugely subsidises many of our school costs, like stationary, camp and any trips. 

There is another side to poverty that as a school we are always giving towards our families and with that we feel that at times they always expect that the school will cover for them. An example of this is school camp we recently went on. The cost of the camp was $245 per student but because we knew this would be way to much for our families to pay we took it down to $60 per student and $80 for siblings. Families were told the year before they could start paying this off but a week out from camp and we had $5000 owing from the students. This meant that teachers needed to call and follow up with parents and make sure they paid. After camp we still have $400 owning because parents chose not to pay, but we still took their child to camp. We still give the children stationary and make sure that they have what they need at school. But we feel the families know we will do this so they don't put in the effort to try or help out in any way. 

Below are statistics of Mangere-Otahuhu Local Board Area and Mangere-Otahuhu Local Board Area of Maori. 

Total personal income for people aged 15 years and over
Mangere-Otahuhu Local Board Area and New Zealand
2013 Census
Total personal income for Māori aged 15 years and over Mangere-Otahuhu Local Board Area and New Zealand 2013 Census

Although our school has a low socioeconomic status the culture is heavily influenced by the community and their backgrounds. The background maori and Pacific background is highly influenced on whanau being the most important thing. Stoll (1998), talks about how a school culture is influenced by the students and their social class background. We have created our school programme around the needs of our community and seek feedback and support from them. As a school we are always looking for ways to help our students and community. This links with Stoll (1998), Panel 2 of improving schools. 

Professional Environment

I think for our school our biggest downfall would be our professional environment in a range of ways. We have teachers who find it hard to fit into our school culture because they either do not understand where their students are coming from (culturally) and come to our school with assumptions already built about these students. We also have a 'sink or swim' kind of mentality at our school where, if you are not coping or not keeping up that's your fault and you need to find a way to sort that out. This comes from the top management and since our recent change we have had some improvements around this, where teachers feel they are overworked and not valued.  Clearly within our role of a teacher in a low socioeconomic community we become more then just teachers, we are mum and dad, social worker, doctor, chef and miracle maker. Being a low socioeconomic brings with it so many challenges for us as teachers and we need the support from our colleges to support our students. 

References

Stoll. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture

QuickStats about a place. (2017). Stats.govt.nz. Retrieved 30 May 2017, from http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2013-census/profile-and-summary-reports/quickstats-about-a-place.aspx?request_value=13625&tabname=Income 

Week 25: COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

Identify your community of practice. 

When identifying my community of practice it took me a while to look at what this was and who it involved. I was confused as to what this actually meant and had to look at a few readings to help me understand what this was/is. Wenger (2000), talks about how communities have excited for as along as the human race has been around. And that a community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who share the same goal or passion and they are always seeking ways in making this goal better by working together regularly. 

For myself, I found that my main CoP was my team that I work with on a daily basis. I felt that my team was the main CoP as we have an Innovative Learning Environment (ILE) setup. Within this we have split our classes up and have mixed ability Literacy and numeracy groups. Because of the  mixed ability groupings we have split our 5 classes across the 5 teachers and we all have different students from different classes. We regularly have informal discussions about how students and the programme is going and every week 3 and 8 of the term we get together to have a meeting about how our 'target' students are going. Because of the constant informal discussions with the team we are always refining our practice and making it better for our students. Within my team I am classed as an experienced teacher who has been with the team for 5 years now and have been in the ILE environment for 4 years. Although I have been in the ILE for 4 years each year has been different based on the students we get each year and the teachers we have in the team as well. 

The second CoP I have just become a part of it our school leadership team. I have just become a team leader and have been learning how to be in a different role within the school. Because my role as a team leader is very new I feel that I have so much to learn and understand to help support my team, especially because this role means more than just a teacher. Becoming a team leader has made me look into my own teaching and leading abilities and I constantly reflect with my peer mentor about how I am doing and how I can do something better or differently. Something I am finding hard is being able to talk with someone about a matter, I find confronting people, especially about work matter hard and can sometimes come off abrupt or rude, but I am working on this and being able to find better ways with others.  With the team leaders we meet every Tuesday morning to discuss matters relating to the school and then meet every week 3, 6 and 9, to work on how we can become better leaders for our team and the school. Just this week we looked at refining our school message and how this can be transparent for teachers, students and our whanau. We looked at how we could make the The New Zealand Curriculum / Kia ora - NZ Curriculum Online. (2017), explains that these key competencies help students become activity members of society. 

 Shared domain 

Within my team CoP our shared domain is the teaching and learning of our students. We work together to create our planning with online interaction (shared planning), all our students are 'ours' and don't belong to one teacher. We aim to provide students with the skills to develop life long learning. 

With in my team leader CoP our shared domain is the support and learning of not only or students but teachers as well. Being able to support and grow our teachers links to the support and growth of our students. As team leaders we set up peer mentors for ourselves and others with teachers across the school teams, for example senior teachers and intermediate teachers have been paired together. 

References:

The New Zealand Curriculum / Kia ora - NZ Curriculum Online. (2017). Nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz. Retrieved 30 May 2017, from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum#collapsible7

Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246. 

What influences my approach to change?

What influences my approach to change?

A mind map using Coggle to show what influence my approach to change.