Engaging Pasifika Parents

I was lucky enough to be able to attend one of Core-Ed's breakfast Seminars in September. I find these really interesting and always come away having learnt something new and making connections with other educators. This one was on Engaging Pasifika Parents and had the inspiring Aiono Manu Faaea-Semeatu presenting. Her Twitter handle is @AionoManu and she has a great blog that has lots of ideas on it. Aiono has a Masters in Gifted Students in Music which ties up two of  my passions, so I was very excited to hear what she had to say. Here are my notes from the morning.
One of the websites she directed us to was http://pasifika.tki.org.nz/Engaging- with-parents which has great ideas supplementing what we learnt on the day.
She started with a beautiful mihi that included pictures which I enjoyed as it really portrayed who she was as a person and as an educator. She then moved on to explain the Pasifika Education Plan as written by the Ministry of Education. She underlined specific areas and expanded on these. From this came many questions we should be asking ourselves.

• How do Pasifika families learn at home?
• How do we transfer skills knowledge from home to school? Some may feel their culture is not as important as others feel. Look at alternative opportunities pathways.
• Remember parents may not be Pasifika descent.

RELATIONSHIPS

Parents are people - not just parents

Aspirations - what do you know about what they want for their children?

Strengths - what are these families known for?

Interests - what can you connect to them with?

Families  - know both contacts that you have - could be grandparents or other relatives. Hook into parents. Lots of contact.

Individuality - help parents to foster and celebrate what the student does well. If the students are good at arguing - join debating!

Kinesthetic - ask parents to come and do things at school. Take time to connect and explain that their students have a shot at doing well.

Access - give parents information about where students can go after they leave school.

You come with the hopes of your ancestors

Explain Abs SNA NCEA and all the acronyms we use. Need to show parents what and how things work.

Scaffold work.

Unite - do things together. It's ok to be smart. Look at the student's record of learning frequently.

Co-create work.

Capture - bring class back on track but foster contribution.

Elevate - no cap on learning, they can always do more.

Thrive to strive - about persistence.

Support- how we can we help - flipped classroom so parents can help at home.

What happens when no one wants to lead in a group situation?  Be specific with them. One in charge of each part. Give time frame and scaffold what you want from them.

Aiono would have an excellence table at the front of the classroom and would only teach to the front table. Would always maintain high expectations and students would want to be at the front.

Don’t say shame - no shame in this class.
Things that should be on your enrolment form to give you information about parents:

• language spoken
• qualifications and learning experiences you have enjoyed at home
• how do you like to get information - email, phone, in person

Foster warmth and embarrass with love. Use humour -  be funny by association.

The relationship is only as strong as the conversation

We then moved into a workshop where we had the chance to work together and discuss best practice.

It started with us learning about the people we were sitting with and introducing them to others, an excellent way to make sure we were listening! Aiono was amazing and learnt all our names in the first 10 minutes.

Some of the ideas that came out before we started writing were:

• Be aware of your own bias
• Listen to student voice
• We need to try and break down parent bias and previous experience
• Use music, singing, drumming, dance
• Have a place in the library with Pasifika flavour. Keep other language newspapers in library for the community to read.
• Prize giving - give lei
• Have lunches for families a couple of times a year

Then we gathered in groups to write ideas for best practice in three columns - Learners, Families and Communities, and Staff. Here are the three groups findings.

Aiono said in her classes, many may fail the first NCEA standard as she would set deadlines and make them stick to them. If they fail, they learn more.

Got her students to call out in the grounds how many credits they had.

She then challenged us to write some goals. Some of these are difficult next term without students, as I am starting a new school, but I want put these into play for 2017.

And here are mine:

Learn Samoan	Find a class and practise lots!	Long term goal to be fluent
Communicate more with families	Finding the most accessible way and make sure I send positive comments.	Mid term goal for students at Haeata
Bring parents into the school to contribute to projects	Look at curriculum and see where this can fit. Make connections.	Term 1 2017
Musically - concerts - connections	Look at resources for Pasifika and find out what parents can help with/do musically	Term 1 2017
Attend church/community time	Gain knowledge and find out what is on that I can attend and get to know families	Term 4 if possible

Some further reading and helpful links that she gave us:

http://www.thecoconet.tv/

http://www.vln.school.nz/discussion/view/813572?orderby=desc

Golden Circle

https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en

And this one is from me, as I really like her style.

Miss Daisy - PolySwagg 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C5lF-KIecQ

Moving Schools

Ah, the joy of moving schools. So many things to tidy up and sort, so little time to do so. After a very hectic Term Three, I finally had some time these holidays to pack up and get ready to move on to my new school, Haeata Community Campus.

So, clearing out things and digitally sorting things meant I found out all sorts of interesting facts which I thought I would share. I didn't want others to go through the same difficulties and some of the ideas might allow you to prepare yourselves early if you are thinking of leaving.

I started by tidying up my desk and my corner in the office.
I was amazed how little I took away with me. I remember in previous schools having large amounts of books and folders to take with me, but now almost all that I do is online and I only took a couple of bags of my books away with me. I was stunned. There was also very little rubbish - I got a recycle bin in, thinking that I was going to fill it with junk but really only had a small pile of paper to throw away.
But wait - the digital me, that is a different story. Where to start...
Making sure someone has the passwords to the sites I used for school. Changing the Admins on the Facebook pages. Making a list of all those subscriptions I have under my school address and changing them all over. I now have a gmail account for all those in future - I call it my Music Sue account so I can subscribe to lists, still get all the information, but don't have to change everything if I move schools again. This goes for my Microsoft Educator account, my TKI lists - everything to do with work. I had already made sure Twitter and my blog were on a different account, but I should have made this extra one a long time ago! It also gave me an email to give to staff to keep in touch, rather than giving my personal one, or my new school one (which I didn't know at the time).I also use it for my Youtube channel, putting up music instruction videos that I make using StaffPad.

 Reminder: Make a "work" email to use for subscriptions.

I had great difficulty trying to copy files from my OneDrive when they were not synced to my computer due to syncing problems with the Surface Pro4. I got around this by using a different computer and syncing that so I could just drag them onto an external hard drive. Also, huge problems with the new Sharepoint - FINALLY (and I mean hours) worked out I had to be in Internet Eplorer to enable the "Open in Explorer" button to work (which was one fix I found) then found out you can't download more than one file at a time anyway! Grrrr - spent a good few hours downloading files that I had put up to share with others and not saved elsewhere. **Update - just managed to move my Sways to another account - get the shareable link, then open in your new account and duplicate. Phew :) But it has also made me realise how easy it is to use someone else's Sway. More thought required about using Sway.

Reminder:  Don't save just in Sharepoint.

Oh, the next school is a Google school so that won't be an issue there, but down the track I hope Microsoft sorts that!
Exporting OneNotes worked well - easy to transfer sections, and whole notebooks. Love OneNote - have I mentioned that before?

Plants - I had a real dilemma about whether to take my pot plants or not - I don't have room for them at home and my new school is not built yet so I decided to leave them. I hope someone waters them.

The first few days of the holidays I spent doing marking (students handing in work on the last day of term!!), helping set up the teacher trainee who is taking my classes so she knew what to do for the four weeks of seniors in Term 4, and helping run the auditions for the Shcool of Music for 2017. Still doing what I called a brain download - trying to make sure that all the information I know is transferred across. Difficult when you are in charge of an area. I had started to write "how to" sheets, but never managed to do all of them.

Reminder: Make "how to" sheets wherever possible - for everything!

The last week of term was full of farewells, made a little tricky as I was away for a few days - although it seemed to make it easier for the staff and students to plan evil things for me! Reminder - do not go away for a few days in the week you leave a school.
The staff meeting on Wednesday morning was lovely, some awesome words spoken and nearly a tear shed - tried hard to keep it all together! The Performing Arts staff gave me a lovely bottle of whisky which I am keen to crack open with one or two of them around to help me. From the Hagley staff I got a beautiful pounamu bracelet and earrings. A lovely gift and something I will cherish as I move on.
That evening was our music showcase concert. I had an inkling that something might happen as one of my groups was last on the programme, which was unusual. It was a real pleasure to conduct the Junior Jazz Band for the last time and I was so proud of all the students over the evening. A few of the students gave me some really heartfelt words and the tears welled when the audience gave me a standing ovation in the middle of the evening. So, the final item came, my group sang but they didn't leave the stage. Sure enough, the planning had been done - Nanako Sato, a most amazing music teacher, had written a version of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious for the students to sing and play for me. They'd been rehearsing all week - easy, since I was away! I was blown away and the flowers and gifts were amazing. It was a really special evening.

Reminder: Do not go away the week you are leaving.

Then I had drinks after school on Thursday where a few of my dearest and finest colleagues gathered and we had a good chat. Many of my students gave me gifts and the wine, flowers, chocolates and my blue teddy are all amazing. On the final day I was called out of class to "shift my car", only to find it covered in Gladwrap with beautiful messages all over it. The boys were close by filming my reaction and gleefully posted it on Facebook. Lucky I just smiled at them....
The cards and gifts were overwhelming and I really felt quite emotional all week. Part of me so excited about my new job, part of me sad to leave such amazing students and staff.

My holidays are full of two things:
My teacher side: professional reading, learning more Google Apps, writing blogs, learning to use my new Mac, Tweeting, and sorting my digital self so I can find things easily.
My personal side: spending time with my children, painting a bathroom and gardening for my mother, gardening for me, reading and getting the pool ready for swimming.

 I'm excited about my new job and look forward to learning new things. Bring it on.

Microsoft Tips

As an MIE Expert I am lucky to attend some amazing sessisons with other MIEs and with Microsoft staff. We had a Microsoft Teacher Talk in Christchurch where we were given an overview of Microsoft products and the chance to throw some ideas around.
Having used most of these products for a while, I didn't take copious amounts of notes, but as always there were a few tips that I found really useful and wanted to share with others, so here they are.

OneNote - I use this all the time, but am always learning something new.

• You can pull text out of an image by right clicking on the image and right at the bottom there is "Select Text from Image". I didn't see it there when I had the Onetastic addin disabled, so you may need to download and enable it to have this option.
• Use the Learning Tools Dictate feature to scribe audio from a video. Run the video on YouTube while recording and it will write the text for you.
• If you right click an image and "Set Picture as Background" you can annotate it without it moving around.
• Don't forget to use the Audio recording for feedback. You can annotate at the same time and it links the audio to the annotations. If you are having problems with work on multiple pages, go to File>Options>Advanced>Printout and untick the "Printouts on Multiple Pages" box.
• Remind students to copy their written work before they highlight or make changes, then you can see the progression.
• In the Class Notebook you can distribute sections and pages to a small group within your class.
• You can add a Teacher only section to an aleady made Class Notebook. Under Class Notebook go to Manage Notebooks, choose your note book and Enable Teacher-Only Section.
• Use OneNote for Teacher Appraisal.
• Only comment for improvement is it would be nice to have the full functionality of the Word spell check within OneNote.

OfficeMix - I haven't used this yet, but some of my colleagues have, with good success. Keen to have a closer look when I get some time.

• Download this  into Powerpoint - not available for Mac yet.
• If you write in the notes section of your Powerpoint, these will come up when you record, so you can read them while you record.
• If you want to take a small section of a video, you can do a Screen Record into your powerpoint, or you can right click and save it as a short clip for later use.
• When you upload to OfficeMix make sure you save the settings for students to sign in, then you will get analytics.

Snip   - I use this all the time, and love it!

• Download and have it sitting on the side or top of your screen for easy use.
• Use it to create little snips to explain short concepts.
• Great for annotation of screen clippings.
• Use the whiteboard to draw on then save.
• The library in Snip saves all your snips for quick access.

Sway - love this alternative for presentations

• Great for collaboration of Authors.
• You can share and enable students to duplicate your Sway so they can add to it. Share>More Options> Duplicate.
• Drag and drop photos in to make a quick newsletter for parents and community.
• Good for portfolios. Can show the before and after of art work with the slider.
• Use like a blog for a school trip, share with parents so they can keep updated.
• You can use this offline, download the app from the store.
• It is Mac friendly, but one teacher mentioned that students couldn't edit on their phones.

Classroom and Teacher Dashboard - a quick discussion was had about both of these, although no-one was using in any depth. Definitely in the beta stage where we are experimenting and seeing what works. It was good to hear that Microsoft have been working with KAMAR to get these linked together.

Tasks - This looks good to use when planning a group event such as Prizegiving or a production. Good to be able to allocate tasks to staff. It would be good to be able to allocate tasks to more than one person.

Forms - I have done a couple of surveys and quizzes using Forms - so far so good.

• You can now add points to questions.
• You can turn the link into a QR code which I like.
• Great for surveying the community.
• Good visuals - yu can see it updating if you do it live.
• You can export as a spreadsheet.
• You can delete a particular student response, if you have set the survey for students to sign in.
• A few things that are still needed - the ability to co-author, to duplicate and to stop people voting more than once.

Educator Community - I have learnt so much on this site!

• Plenty of Courses and Resources.
• Loving the new layout and look.
• The 21st Century Learning Design Pathway comes with it's own OneNote which has rubrics to code your activities to see how well you are using tehnology.
• There are webinars to watch.
• It's a good idea to use your home email to sign up, this makes it easier if you change schools. 

I ran a quick session on using StaffPad - an amazing app for SurfacePro that is a great tool for teaching music. 

Overall, a great session and I have a few more tips and tricks to add to my bag. I am keen to give OfficeMix a go - that will be a holiday project.

Thought Leader - Dr Yong Zhao

Dr Yong Zhao

@YongZhaoEd
zhaolearning.com

I was lucky enough to hear this amazing educator talk at Christ's College in Christchurch on Friday. He was entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time. Many laughs were had and many conversations were held about how his research and ideas would challenge our way of teaching and how we think our students learn best.

This blogs is a summary of my notes from the talk. Most of the information he  gave us in his talk is on his website (I have linked to some of his blogs), but I wanted to sum up what I felt were the main points.

What makes a good educator?

 Counting what counts - Reframing Education Outcomes

 What we mainly focus on now is the curriculum. Students should be able to do this and know that. For example, in the USA they focus on language and math. We want to prescribe best possible programme for students to achieve but so much is based on assessment and content. See Dr Zhao's blog on A World at Risk: An Imperative for a Paradigm Shift to Cultivate 21st Century Learners

Parents want to know who is better so we rank students and we rank schools (PISA).

What we need is transformation. In an interesting story about his childhood, Dr Zhao showed how useless it was as a farmer to go to school. He also showed that in one place you can be useless and in another you can be useful. It's about finding what your place is.

Problems

Disengaged students.

Youth unemployment. This generation had more education than any other generation but still in the USA there are over 50% underemployed or unemployed.

Boomerang generation  - average of $20,000 in debt.

See his blog on College Ready vs Out-of-Basement Ready for expansion on this.

Equity issues

He talked about talent being the potential to learn something. Being talented in math means you can learn faster. Everyone is talented in some area. Nature gives us the ability, nurture gives us the opportunity. Are you exposing students to lots so they can find out if they are good at it? Just because they can learn something doesn't mean they will be good at it. School can narrow us down from our talents.



He talked about the 16 basic human motivators and their object of desire by Dr Steven Reiss, which he related to education. Some people are naturally more curious than others. Some people love to run or ski because they get energy from it, but others are not interested. If we look at these motivators, there are a lot of bell curves and we could be high on some and low on others.

At the moment we want to turn students into homogenous students who can all do the same things. He related this to a sausage making process. If you want sausages then a sausage making machine is good.  However, we do not produce great kids. Lady Gaga would be useless on a production line.

Universities have students who play the game, get their degree but can't find a job. They have played the game but the game no longer works. We are delivering the wrong education.

This picture shows the types of jobs  and the change over time.  We can see the changes that the Industrial Revolution had in the 1800s and then in the 1950s when technology became more prevalent. We are now entering the 4th Industrial Revolution with smart machines and computers doing a lot of the work. He talked about the flow-on effect from just one area - driverless cars. Once we have those then many other jobs will become redundant. Police Officers, Traffic light controllers, no job is safe.

On the other hand it brings new opportunities.  You can drink more wine becuase there won't be drink driving issues, people will want new things in cars that they can do while travelling. There will be more leisure time and more disposable income. In this age of abundance you consume more. When it is personal it is better because you have choice.

 He talked about shampoo - you have a huge choice. So many people involved, from producers to advertisers.

 When you are not useful in one area, you can be useful in another. He talked about Kim Kardashian who is famous for being well known! He used the story of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer being brought up where the national standard for noses was black. Rudolph became famous because he was unique and had a global following.

New paradigm of education

He suggested reading "The End of Average" by Todd Rose

Every student comes to us unique so we need a student driven and personalised profile. We need to find out what they have and develop it fully. Get students to discover strengths and weaknesses for themselves. This then changes the effect of schooling. Schools should give students opportunities to shine.

Product-oriented learning

The last section was about identifying problems worth solving. Are we bettering people's lives? Entrepreneurship was highlighted with particular comments around projects outlined on http://www.edcorps.org/ . One in particular he talked about was  a group of students setting up a business that made a lot of money which they then gave to charity. Every child played a role and they ran it as a company that played to their strengths. Each student had something to offer and it was shown on a global campus.

The following are taken from his book "World Class Learners" which has some great questions for educators to think about. Here is a Youtube clip to watch as well.

Student Autonomy - What

Product-Oriented Learning - How

Global Campus - Where

We can learn from, with, and for everyone in the world.

When you assess something you lose something. Top scores have been shown to correleate to low confidence and interest. This might improve test reading score but then they may hate reading for ever.

We need to foster curiosity. If you teach a 4 yr old how to play with a toy, they will learn quickly but lose interest quickly.

We need to ask businesses to sponsor schools to support change. Businesses do not lie in the past. Education does not have enough funds to be innovative.  We need a diversity of ideas, institutions and practise. Encourage local students, staff. Teachers need to be a curator and create learning opportunities with feedback.  Students need to be free to play.

I really enjoyed the morning and certainly have a lot more reading to do. I know I am on the right track with what I am doing in my classes. It was nice to have some validation for this and ideas on what I can improve on.

 I think we worry so much about teaching we forget about learning. Leave students to do it themselves and just guide them in their passions.

Digital Badges for staff and students

My Profile on the
 Microsoft site

I have been working through a lot of courses on the Microsoft Educator website over the last few months. Some of this is part of my learning as an MIE Expert and some of it has been driven by the fact that I can get a badge to show what I have done. I have been upskilling in a lot of areas and it’s not always easy to prove that you have those skills, but I have found that doing these courses and gaining a digital badge has given me a lot of personal satisfaction.  I have also found myself looking at what other badges are on offer, to see if any other courses interest me, whereas without the badges, I probably would have just gone there to learn specific skills. Some badges are relevant, some aren't (I don't have a passion for Mystery Skype in large quantities due to the type of classes I teach) so I will be picking and choosing which will be of use or interest, but I know that the badge at the end is a good motivator if I’m feeling a bit blasé about learning something new.

This has been a new experience for me – although I have had badges before at conferences when I have presented or attended, but I really haven't experienced them as a student would. I did get some for being a connected educator last year from Core-Ed and this site has some really good information and links to video about being a Connected Educator and the badge system. Mozilla has a great wiki with lots of information as well.

Before I was introduced to the Microsoft site, I had spent quite a bit of time over the last year setting up some digital badges for the skills that we have based our School of Apps on.

Self Management

Critical Thinking
Creative Thinking

Communication

Presentation
Collaboration

The process has been long, working through issues with our backpack provider and making sure the badges are working correctly, but I feel it has been worth it.
I spent a lot of time reading about digital badges, and about these skills so that I could set them up in the best possible way for our students.

What can badges do for students?

Often a large percentage of our class time is working towards assessments and credits that the students need to enable them to pass their qualification. So many articles now are reinforcing that some of the other skills are actually far more important when it comes to getting a job and looking at what students can actually do. These skills that we based the School of Apps on, are ones that are used in all courses (transferable skills) and are also the qualities that employers are looking for.

Students can gain these at 3 levels to show their proficiency and I have written criteria for these that outlines what each badge is for. An example is our Level 1 Presentation skills. 

Criteria for all Presentation badges:

• Plan their presentation by gathering relevant information
• Organize the presentation effectively
• Use appropriate media for displaying data and enhancing the presentation

• Use effective verbal and non-verbal techniques when making a presentation
• Effectively field questions

• Respond to feedback from peers and the educator 

Requirements - each level has certain things that they must achieve.

 Level 1:

• Includes information relevant to the topic
• Present to a small audience (peer group)
• Has good timing, good voice control and eye contact
• Short 1-2 min presentation
• Basic use of presentation tools (such as a basic powerpoint with graphics)
• Effective content with start, middle, conclusion
• Connects with the audience
• Answers simple questions with ease
• Reflects on their presentation

Students can access their badges through a backpack and are able to download and share them.

They can also connect their backpack to their social media account and display their badges. This could also be within a CV for prospective employers.

Although this is still in it's testing stage with my classes, I am keen to pursue this way of thinking and see if students rise to the challenge. As for me, I'm going to do some more learning today and hopefully get another badge.

Further Reading:
Using Digital Badges as Assessment Tools
Use of Digital Badges
Digital Badges to Motivate students
Things you should know about badges
Badges unlocking jobs