Holiday thoughts

Time to recharge the batteries

Often we hear people talk about the amount of holidays teachers get. I certainly needed mine this time around. A new school, plenty of travel and courses and lots of learning meant that by the time I got to the end of term I was ready for a break. I spent the first few days just reading and baking (something I do to procrastinate) and felt I needed those few days to get myself into a frame of mind where I could do some work, both for school and for home. A large karate tournament for my own children took out a few days in the middle of the holidays, so time went very quickly. I know there was so much more I wanted to achieve, but sometimes you just have to accept it won't get done. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Prep for Term 2

Working on resources for students and looking at ways of getting information and work out there takes time and thought. I have been setting up OneNotes for topics and learning more about some standards I either haven't taught yet, or taught a while ago. Keeping up to date with changes is important and new versions of standards are fairly frequent so even thought I taught some of these a while ago, there were some changes to look at. Rewriting tasks for the cohort I have this year is fun, I enjoy looking at different scenarios and working with ākonga to support their learning.

MLEs

Modern Learning Environments - those huge spaces with lots of students in them. So many teachers really dislike them and find them difficult to work in. I get it. If you try and teach the way you have always taught, they would be a nightmare. They are not made for teaching large groups of students with a teacher led style of learning. The environment has changed and the teaching has to change to reflect that. Breakout spaces are there for staff to be able to take a group of students in and teach them specific content if required. The open spaces are for students to work in and for staff to roam and be facilitating the learning. This is a whole different mindset and requires students and staff to learn new skills to enable them to get the most from the space and the learning. Many of the conversations I have with teachers start with "but how do you teach in those spaces" and the answer is, we don't - well, not in the way they are thinking.

Reading

I am always reading new articles around education and learning.  This is continual Professional Development for me, along with Twitter and Facebook groups that I subscribe to. I am continually searching out articles and watching talks. There are some fascinating schools out there doing different things including a school learning through roleplaying. I looked this up further as I was keen to find out more about LARPing! You can read more on Sue's Education Page on Facebook where I post a lot of my articles so I can refer back to them, but also to share ideas with others and get people thinking.

Term Two

I am spending some time in the other hapori this term in my role as the Specialist Classroom Teacher (SCT) and am looking forward to seeing how learning is delivered in the younger age groups. This is an area that I have a lot to learn about and I am keen to get started. I have been doing some reading around National Standards and Bilingual Provisions in schools and am finding it very interesting. I am looking forward to learning more.

Musically there is a lot going on this term, with many competitions and groups keen to rehearse. I am working on getting more performances around the kura and in the community by our students. Getting groups motivated and organised can be a real challenge and there is pressure to get things done for a specified date. 

Our work in Ihutai (the Year 11-13 hapori) is developing every day and we have a great team who are motivated to support our ākonga. I am really lucky to be part of this group and working alongside these kaiako and kaiawhina is a real joy. We learn so much when we work together and I can't believe how different it is collaborating with others as opposed to the traditional single cell classroom. This can take some time to get used to for some people and can have it's challenges but I'm in boots and all and would not want to go back to working on my own again. Collaboration is awesome!

Loving it at Haeata - bring on Term Two.  

Classroom Environments

So do you have an ILE (Interactive Learning Environment)? A FLS (Flexible Learning Space)? Or an MLE (Modern Learning Environment)? What ever you call it, there have been many discussions on whether they work or not.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend who has a daughter at school in a class that works in a MLE. She had some valid and interesting questions, some of which I could answer and some I couldn't. Her main concern is that her daughter would not learn how to sit at a desk for hours on end, because, as she rightly pointed out, the High School she was going to attend the next year does not have a MLE. Then she was concerned about University after that, having to sit in lecture theatres. She also wanted to know if it was actually making a difference to the learning. It's an interesting concern and one I decided to find out more about.

One of the things I thought about was how the space is used. I felt that it wasn't so much the environment, but the mindset and work of staff that made the difference. Much of the reading I have done since certainly backs this up. Mark Osborne from Core Ed says in his report from 2013 "Providing teachers with an open, flexible learning environment where inquiries are shared, interventions devised collaboratively and reflections based on both self and peer observations, can lead to the development of a robust, continuously improving community of practice." I think this is where a MLE can really make a difference.

Does a MLE raise student achievement? I found a good range of answers about this very question. Mark Wilson's Sabbatical Report from this year found that there was no research to directly link student achievement with a MLE. The Virtual Learning Network (VLN) had a discussion thread on this in 2014, where quite a few staff showed clearly that what they were doing had been making a difference in the classroom. It comes back to how the MLE is used and this was clearly stated in a Educause article focusing on the University of Minnesota and their New Learning Environment.  Their three key points were:

• In the new technology-enhanced learning spaces at the University of Minnesota, students outperformed final grade expectations relative to their ACT scores.
• When instructors adapted their pedagogical approach to the new space by intentionally incorporating more active, student-centered teaching techniques, student learning improved.
• Students and faculty had positive perceptions of the new learning environments but also had to adjust to the unusual classrooms.

I have an amazing classroom at the moment. My main teaching load is in the School of Apps where students design and build mobile apps. This is run like a business and the room has been set up to reflect that. I think this is why the room works - it is how we are teaching. As you can see, they have a range of spaces to work at and there is room for collaboration space. The students are all young adults or adults and they love the room.


So, universities can head in this direction as well as schools, although few have done so at this stage. How long it will take is anyone's guess. I believe more and more schools are heading down this line, with the Ministry of Education certainly encouraging this in any new buildings (have a read of their design standards for school property). I just hope they have thought about changing the mindset of staff, as well as the furniture.


“I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” 
― Albert Einstein