The changing face of education

There have been a few things coming up in the media lately around the changes in education in New Zealand. Two have really caught my eye in the last week. One of them I kept reading and going, yes, yes, and one of them got me riled up about what people think we should and shouldn't do with education. That one inspired me to write this and put my own personal thoughts out there in the public forum.

Learning Revolution or Pathway to Ignorance?
Insight Article- link
Podcast link

I took a few notes while listening to this podcast. After reading the article I felt the real disconnect between many schools about where education is heading. There certainly is a divide and I'm glad I am on the side I am.
Hobsonville Point 
Most learning in 2 subjects done in modules of 2 learning areas together.
Deep understanding comes from links between subjects. Students and teachers co-construct contexts. Most schools the teacher decides the contexts. Can engage students more. They don't do NCEA Level 1. Some parents don't understand about what they are trying to do.
One student found it was a shock to do this style of learning, but was loving it. "Instead of just doing work for the sake of a grade and then get ranked, I was doing stuff that I was interested in and that meant something to me and my future".
It doesn't work for everyone. Lots of talk about why it doesn't work. It's up to the student to make it happen.
It's hard for parents to get their head around.

Haeata Community Campus
Working towards a model of students developing their own learning
Want the passion for learning, rather than being credit driven

Teachers have to be a facilitator of learning. Students need to have control of their learning.
Modern approaches in learning are widespread in Primary Schools but not so much in Secondary. Some have adopted the changes and some have not. Some think they shouldn't be moving this way.
Schools need to do more than just teach subjects to get students through NCEA
NCEA review results will be out next April - looking at having a project at Level 1 NCEA.
I think all schools would agree that involving students in designing learning, collaborating and use of technology are important factors in education.

Some comments made in the podcast that I want to say something about:
Teachers can't teach all those subjects in a transdisciplinary way
This is where collaboration between teachers is so important. We have strengths, we have areas of knowledge that are stronger so we need to team up with other staff to help our students get the depth and knowledge around areas we might not be so strong in. We also need to model that we don't know everything. This is an opportunity for us to upskill and learn new things and be passionate about learning. We need to facilitate learning, rather than be the fount of all knowledge.
Revolutions in technology have changed schools a lot
I am not sure many schools are using technology to change education. I see many just swapping the textbook for a pdf and pen and paper for a doc. I'm wondering how many are at M or R in the SAMR model. Perhaps this is something all schools should look at as an overview for use of tech.
You can't show a video or have open debate about things in the new Modern Learning Environments 
I would argue that, as we have breakout rooms and spaces if you need an ecnclosed space, plus we are often using our open spaces in small groups having debate and discussions and teachable moments. We often have debates and show videos, even in our open spaces.
Secondary schools are for learning specialised knowledge not for play
See my blog on Lifelong Kindergarten. I believe that we should be playing - we should be doing projects and that the specialised knowledge will be learnt as required. The old style of passing on knowledge from teacher to student is no longer applicable - the students can learn pretty much anything online if they want to. We need to be teaching them how to access that knowledge, then guiding them through projects into more depth.
Universities are finding huge gaps in knowledge I agree this will be happening - it has happened for a long time. From my own experience I know that in music, many students don't do the aural and theory externals (chosen by teachers to not sit them), but still go to Uni to do Music. There will be gaps in this area. What is needed is for the Universities to rethink how they are also delivering their courses and what they are expecting their students to do. We have so many graduates coming out of Uni not getting jobs. Why? Jobs are changing (check out this infographic). Employers are wanting more than content. They are looking for skills. Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Creativity - the list goes on. Having a degree with purely content is not enough anymore. Workplaces have had to adapt - so does the education system.


The Futures of Learning
Education  Research and Foresight Working Papers by Cynthia Luna Scott
Report link

I read this and highlighted lots of things that I really believe in. I found it really inspiring and affirming that my beliefs about education are on the right track. It's a long document but worth a read if you are really interested in the future of education. Even if you just skim read the headings, it will give you an overview. This paragraph (taken from Pg16) sums it up for me:

"What adaptations can be expected in education in the near future? Teachers will remain, but their roles will be extended as mentors, mediators and guides, facilitators, learning coordinators, assessors, and designers and compilers of learning tools. Testing will most likely continue, but assessment will become more individualized and formative. Learning will become more personalized and customized to reflect students’ individual needs and interests, and informal learning opportunities will become recognized alternatives to traditional formal education. Transformed learning environments will encompass customized learning for each student, wider availability of diverse sources, and collaborative group learning (students will learn together as they work collaboratively on authentic, enquiry-oriented projects). Real-world experience will permeate learning activities. Most likely, schools will remain but classrooms will become more open to diverse learning experiences and instruction will likely move out into the community. Education providers will still offer face-to-face learning, but this will be supplemented by informal and virtual opportunities. Self-responsibility for learning will be essential and learners can expect to determine what their learning profile will look like. New tools for learning will be developed. Technology will support personalized learning processes and facilitate inclusion and equity."

This is what we are heading towards. This is what I believe in. This is why I am at Haeata.

Haeata - Week Seven

Day One

During Mai time we spent time calling families to invite them to met with our staff at either an specified time or at our hui on Dec 1st, or at AFFIRM on Dec 3rd. The chance to meet with whanau and ākonga is fantastic and will help us be informed about our community for next year.

I also read this article titled "What schools can learn from Google, IDEO and Pixar" that one of our staff shared (thanks Fred) and found it to be really inspiring. I really liked this paragraph which made me think: 

"What would it mean for schools to have a culture centered on design thinking and interdisciplinary projects instead of siloed subjects? What if the process of education were as intentionally crafted as the products of education (i.e., we always think about the book report or the final project, but not the path to get there). What if teachers were treated as designers?"

The afternoon was spent preparing for our school visit trips. Our Year 1-7 kaiako went to Wellington and the 7-13 kaiako went to Auckland. This was a great opportunity to see what was happening in other schools around the country.

Day Two

Being picked up at 4.50am to catch a plane is not the easiest start to the day, but our hapori were on the redeye flight to Auckland.

From the airport we went by bus to Hobsonville Point Secondary School where we spent the day. The Principal, Maurie Abraham, went through how the school worked and gave us a lot to think about in terms of curriculum and structure. We then were treated to a tour through the school where we got to see students in action. It was great for those of us who hadn't been in that type of learning space to see how it might work for us.

Off then to our accommodation and a reflection on what we had seen and how it might inform our work at Haeata. Dinner and social time wrapped up the day and we are all asleep fairly early that night (well most of us were).

Day Three

On the bus at 7am to get to Rototuna Junior High, with a stop for breakfast on the way. This was an interesting environment as the Junior High had been open for a year and the Senior High is opening in 2017. Their staff are in the same place as us, having a term to prepare for their students next year, although they get just Year 11 in the first year, where we get all our students at once. 

We had some time in the Junior High, having a briefing by the Principal and then students showed us around the school. We asked lots of questions and got a glimpse of what they were doing with their Year 7-10 programme. Our hapori (Ihutai) then spent some time with the Senior High staff and had a look at their programme for 2017. It was a great window into their thinking and gave us a lot to discuss on the bus later!

One of our staff managed to organise us a visit to the Warriors training facility at Mt Smart Stadium and we spent an hour there learning about their training program, getting insight into their data collection and how it is used to inform the training and then had a tour around the training space. I really liked the words above their screen in the tactics room: 

Off to the airport for dinner and then home for a rest!

Day Four

We were thankful for a late start today after two very tiring days. Our first session had us practising two waiata that we are learning as a group. I really enjoyed learning the actions to ***** , but trying to put the words and actions together was fairly challenging!

We then had a reflection time on our school visit from Wednesday, talking in pairs and small groups about what we saw and how we felt about what the schools were doing. It was interesting to hear different perspectives and to realise that because we come from different backgrounds, we see different things. Those of us who have never worked in an open environment had thoughts around the space more often than those that have worked in those spaces before. 

Our second session was around Relationship Management. As a new school, this is something we need to unpack and get an overall agreement on. We were asked the following questions:

What do you personally believe?

What is important in managing relationships? Managing behaviour?

What do you think about positive reinforcement? About reward systems?

What do you think about consequences? About punishments?

Our answers were then collated and we will be unpacking these more next week. I am sure there were a wide range of answers as some of our initial discussion showed. We were given a Blendspace full of articles and videos to look at, many quite polarising about their viewpoint on the above questions. These are some of the ones I read.

Why relationship-building is vital in schools

10 Ways to make effective rewards systems in virtual schools

Creating culturally safe schools for Maori students

Restorative practices in schools: Far-reaching implications

Our last session was preparing for our Enrolment hui for next week. We have parents and students coming in to meet with kaiako and we talked more about what information we would need to be able to answer their questions.

Day Five

Rebecca (one of our SLT) started today with letting us know about the external agencies that will be involved with Haeata. There are a huge range of people involved, from Youth Workers to nurses, After School care and many more. It is great to see the range of support for our students and our community. This is such a big part of helping our students feel supported and there has been a lot of work going on in the background on getting this all together.

Our hapori spent some time today on a survey around NCEA. We were given a lot of statements and had to give a 2 word reaction to each one. We used the tool Poll Everywhere https://www.polleverywhere.com/ which was a good way to see a snapshot of us as a group. There were many things we agreed on wholeheartedly, but also some things we need to unpack a bit more so we are all on the same page.

During Mai time I wrote my blog on my hearing loss and ILEs . I found some interesting articles that had been written on this subject and it was good to see what others had found and were thinking about. This came to the top of my thinking while we were away this week and certainly is something to think about for next year.

At lunch we had a meeting about Out of School Music hours and Itinerant music tuition. This is a difficult space at the moment as we don't know our students for next year so it is very difficult to say what we will need in the way of support musically but it was good to start looking at what we might want to put in place.

We finished up the day by unpacking more NCEA and were all given the opportunity to speak on points that we wanted to expand on. I liked the way we did this, with each person having two blue (for the statement) and two pink (against the statement) pieces of paper and you could play these to speak for one minute about that statement. It was a good way to make sure everyone got the opportunity to have their say, but not for too long!

One of the main things I am learning is about my view on education. Always being challenged and asked about my point of view has meant that I have had to actually have a point of view on things. I have had to work out how I feel and what are important ideas to me. It has been amazing to have this time to think and be challenged. Loving it.