Isolation 10

Thurs 30 Apr
Wow - I can't believe I am writing Isolation 10 already! The time has actually gone quite quickly. Today I felt like some days are more productive than others, I was very productive in bursts today. rather than full on throughout the day. Had some time when I just was not really onto it but then got totally motivated and got a heap of work done. I think it's about being aware of what we are feeling. I needed the time at lunch today to sit out in the sun and pat the cat. Just felt like it was the right thing to do at the time - I didn't even go for a walk which is unusual. But then I worked through until quite late when I felt like it. Maybe this is something we need to think about for work and study - when do we work best? I normally work really well at 7.30am. I know many others would be horrified at that time of the morning but I do work well early in the day. It gives me time to get set up and organised. Recently that has pushed out to 8.30 - I think working from home has made me a bit lax on that 6am start!!!
I got some good news today. I have been waiting for an appointment for my foot for over a year now. It was scheduled for Apr 3rd and of course that got cancelled due to Covid19. I had resigned myself to the fact that I probably wouldn't get an appointment for another few months but today I got a message saying I could go tomorrow. I am just a little bit excited and hope that something can be done eventually as I can't walk very far without it being strapped up. Here's hoping something can be done - I don't mind if it takes ages to do it, just knowing would be good.
I managed to take the pool from green to clear over the last couple of days - had let it go by just not really thinking about it. Might need to concentrate a little more on my surroundings. So much going on right now - there are different things to focus on and a pool is well down the list.

Fri 1 May
I can't believe it's May. It seems like April didn't really exists this year. It's very strange.
I had a good day today - 12 calls online and a very busy day both at work and not.
Went to the surgeon - finally getting an MRI for my foot to get all the information needed to see if he can fix it or not. He had some ideas but wants all of the information before we go the next step - if he can. Feel good that at least there is a next step.
I did a bit of reading today and found this great advice for lots of calls and how to combat Zoom fatigue.
This afternoon I went to the Future of Learning catch up - these have been going for a while - in person, then online. It was good to tlak with other educators and share experiences and ideas. I do enjoy those conversations.
Watching the Repair shop again tonight reminded me of my father's clock. I think I'll get that out and have a look at it.
My Peptalk magazine arrived today. Wow what a great resource. There were two books in one and I found the information was really great. My daughter had a look as well and she thought it was good as well. If you haven't got your free copy then go to this link and order it. Yes, free. I've subscribed to further issues, that's how much I enjoyed it.

Saturday 2 May
Made a big cooked breakfast for my children - it's nice to have one occasionally. Keeps me going all day and I'm a pretty good short order chef. It's always nice to have my 2 children around. We played some games, went for a walk and just had a nice lazy day. Managed to do quite a bit of the jigsaw - I'm worried now, almost finished all the ones I have in the house!

Sunday 3 May
I really have felt very lazy this weekend. I think that the online calls take it out of me quite a bit. I know I have to work extra hard because of my hearing and I struggle with the lag between voice and camera when I know I do rely a bit on lipreading.
I have 187 emails to sort through. Hmm. Maybe I'm a little unsorted right now - very tired at the end of the day and have struggled this week mentally. Finally finished that jigsaw today - found another 2 in the back of the cupboard so I haven't run out just yet!

Later in the week...
So I've slowed down on the day by day account. I think I just find every day is busy with work or just trying to find time to relax so from here on in I'll do an update when I get the inspiration.
Had a Boma New Zealand Rethinking Education Campfire on Tuesday - really interesting to hear some students talk about their experiences of online learning. You can read some of their ideas on my blog. It showed me how important student voice is in this isolation time. I have made a survey for my mentor group and it's been interesting getting their feedback. I'll do another blog on Reflection and Isolation sometime soon.
I attended a NZQA workshop this week. I was happy that I felt confident in this area, but it was interesting to see the questions others asked. I wonder how we can improve teacher knowledge in this area? There are obviously a lot of people not sure of how things work. Something else to ponder.
I've had a couple of conversations with some of the Boma Education Fellows for this year. It's hard not being able to talk face to face and our programme has certainly been disrupted. Getting to know each other is taking longer, but at least this week I managed to catch up with a few and have some conversations both around what our kuras are doing online, and with our own projects. My project is in a bit of a hold at the moment due to many things, but I did do some more research this weekend around diverse learners and looked into some other sites that cater for these learners. Been a good learning weekend in that respect.
Another flashback moment on The Repair Shop this week - a spinning wheel. Mum used to spin and I remember carding wool for her and watching her spin and knit for hours. She also dyed the wool herself - I remember the different natural dyes she used. I still have homespun jerseys that she made for my children. Such memories and a skill that can be lost if we don't take things up. I wonder how many things are handed down from parents anymore now that we are busier in our lives. It makes me wonder if maybe lockdown is a good thing - getting back to spending time with family and not being able to fill our days with things. Maybe this is the start of people learning the old skills again. I do hope so.
I completed my Microsoft Innovative Educator application for the next year today. The MIE group in New Zealand is fantastic. Such great support and I have made some good friends out of this group so hopefully will be able to continue on with this for 2021 - even though I work in a Google school! I still use a lot of Microsoft tools and and I am passionate about their resources. They certainly work hard to make things better for schools and offer some interesting and useful courses on the Microsoft Educator Community site - go and have a look!
I also completed the Science of Wellbeing Course today - and have a blog half done on that - another day.
Well it's Mother's Day. I've done a couple of blogs, a bit of gardening and managed to finally clear my emails down to single figures. Must be time to have a break and get this posted.

Science of Wellbeing course 1

These are a few notes from a course I am doing online called "The Science of Wellbeing". It is offered by Yale through Coursera.  I've done a couple of Coursera courses before and found them really good. I decided to take this course a while ago, then being in isolation was the perfect time to get started on it. I've put a few notes here although there is a lot more in the course itself. I love the way Coursera lets you take notes, it's easy and it keeps them well organised. Worth doing a course with them I think.

Week 1:
They talk about rewirement in the first week - changing how we think and function which makes sense. There is a handout of a Rewirement workbook which I am working my way through. It's meant to be a week for each section, but some I do already so I'm skipping through those quickly.
We started with doing the PERMA Profiler and Authentic Happiness Inventory I'm not sure what my results mean at this stage, but I think we do this again at the end of the course and see if things have changed. It will be interesting. From PERMA my overall wellbeing score was 6.38 and my Authentic Happiness Inventory score was 3.83 - we'll see if these change!

The next step was to do the VIA character Strengths survey. I did this a long time ago but wa skeen to look again and see where my strengths lie. For those of you that know me, these results will come as no surprise!
Love of Learning - Mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge, whether on one's own or formally; related to the strength of curiosity but goes beyond it to describe the tendency to add systematically to what one knows.
Perspective - Being able to provide wise counsel to others; having ways of looking at the world that make sense to oneself/others.
Honesty - Speaking the truth but more broadly presenting oneself in a genuine way and acting in a sincere way; being without pretense; taking responsibility for one's feelings and actions.
Love - Valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing & caring are reciprocated; being close to people.


The first session was about the GI Joe Fallacy which is about our cognitive biases sticking around, even when we know better. This is a good clip to explain how this works. The diagram on the right is an example of this. even though we know they are the same length lines, we still thin k the bottom one is longer. To translate this to our social emotional idea, if we really want to change our behavior, we have to change habits. We can't just learn the stuff. We try to nudge people in the right directions, but does it work?

There were a few extra articles and books to read - here are a couple I found interesting:
Jachimowicz & McNerney (2015). Should Governments Nudge Us to Make Good Choices? Scientific American.
Thaler (2014). The Power of Nudges, for Good and Bad. New York Times.
Martin Seligman’s TED Talk - The new era of positive psychology

Week 2:
The topics this week were Savouring, Gratitude and Happiness.
Savouring - take part in a positive experience, then savour that experience.
Gratitude - being grateful for things. Taking time to write these down or take a picture. I have been writing a gratitude journal for many months now and have also seen it work well in our school setting, with an amazing gratitude journal written by a colleague Justine. We have had our group write this every day and it's been interesting to see their thoughts and mindset to doing this. Hopefully we will carry on, during and after isolation!

Things we think will make us happy. This is opposed to things that will actually make us happy. One things that is mentioned it it does depend on whether you live in a poor or wealthy nation. Obviously if you are in a poor nation, as your income goes up, so does your life satisfaction due to getting even basic needs met.
2 books are mentioned:

Sonja Lyubomirsky - The How of Happiness 

David Myers - The American Paradox.

Begs the question "does money really make us happier?"

Answer is maybe a little bit, maybe if you're in the US and you only earn 10k a year, more money would make you happy. 

But for most of us, it's not going to make that much of a difference and it's making way less of a difference than we actually think. which is interesting.

Cars in hip hop culture - does owning a fancy car make us happy?

Does money make us happy?

Does true love make us happy?

Do these changes in beauty we think are going to make us happy, like losing weight, or changing our hair, do they make us happy? 

The answer seems to be no, in fact, these extreme changes in our looks or maybe even having these looks goals at all seems to actually reduce our well being.

Do good grades matter ? Most of the goals we have actually aren't going to make us happy. We put lots of time into them but it's not those things that make us happy. The rest of the course goes through what goals can make us happy.

Why does this happen? People think we are genetically set this way and that life circumstances matter and nothing can change that. In fact both of those are wrong. There is a big slice that is genetic, but 40% of what happens to us can be changed by us.

A few extras that I did enjoy:

YouTube clip on the  power of gratitude by Robert Emmon

GI Joe Fallacy article: Santos & Gendler (2014). Knowing is half the battle?

Interesting study done on why we overestimate the duration of affective reactions to negative events

High Income improves evaluation of life but not emotional wellbeing

I did the assessment for the first two weeks and passed with flying colours - looking forward to the next couple of weeks and will write another blog once I have completed them.