#PLN – Honor Learners

Unlearning, relearning, and growing

Over my teaching career, there have been many things I have changed over time. I have moved from an environment of direct teaching to an environment where inquiry and learner agency is expected. Some practices have fallen away, some are revisited and others are evolved over time.

One such practice is the Must dO,Should do, Could dO,Want to, or MOSCOW method. A few years ago, a friend suggested I try Must, Should and Could do centers as a way to manage learning centers. I tried and failed. I felt that learners were not accountable for learning, I had not mastered the art of documentation ( a skill I am still working on…) and it was just not working for me. Moving from teaching in older grades in an environment that relied on direct teaching to a play based PYP inquiry model was quite a challenge for me. Upon reflection, I can say that I had been pushed way out of my comfort zone; I was not in control. As Sascha Heckmann (@sascha_heckmann) recently pointed out to me, I had not made the shift to understand that learning happens within the learner. I can provide an environment to promote learning and thinking, but I cannot control the learning.

Recently, I was inspired by Taryn BondClegg (@makingoodhumans) and another member of my PLN, David Gostelow (@davidgostelow1) to try again. In his post titled From Learners to Leaders, David shared how he was using this method in his early years class.

“Students learn best and work harder when they are excited by what they are working on. And when they design their own work, they understand why they are doing what they are doing and engage much more deeply with their learning.”
David Gostelow

I shared the idea with my colleagues and we had several decisions to make. We decided to keep our language teaching as stand alone. Though our program is quite structured, we have seen the amazing progress our learners are making. Furthermore, we know that our learners love writing because any day we have deviated from our structure, we have had complaints about not writing! So, we decided to start with changing our Explore time to Choose, Act, Reflect, or C.A.R. time.

We began by running 3 workshops in rotations to tune into learners’ understanding of the concept of form. These included exploring the form of a story, the form of circles and the form of a computer as they identified computer parts.

*Exploring the form of the story ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,’ by Michael Rosen.*

*Exploring the form of circles. What is it like? What is it not like?*

Then we asked our learners what they would like to learn, and to consider whether each experience would be a must do, should do, could do or want to do center. If we could not accommodate an idea in the following week, we added it to the parking lot, to revisit in the future. We also considered if some learning experiences were better as workshops.

Our CAR time choice board.

*Workshop about drawing a Wild Thing inspired by a learner’s question- ‘How do they put pictures in books?’*

*A workshop to develop and share our understanding of the early number sense relationship: part, part, whole.*

Using this information, I matched learning experiences to our learning outcomes. I decided to use a template that had been shared by Taryn in her post titled Getting Parents Onboard, to map both learning and our conceptual understanding. Following Taryn’s example, I shared this with families via Seesaw because I have learnt that by keeping parents informed, they stay involved in our learning community.

As we are trying to promote a free flow environment with lots of choices, we wanted to ensure learners took accountability for the centers they had decided to be must do centers. To support this, we have a printout with every learner’s name to highlight as they complete their learning.

Now that we had the choose and act elements of CAR time, the next step was to add the reflection. This again was inspired by a tweet sharing an idea from Sonia Wright (@MsSoniaWright31.)

The original idea post asked learners to share:

What did you do?
What did you learn?

Making this change to our day has given us the opportunity to be more present with our learners. We are learning more about our learners through observation and our interactions. As a result, we are now ready to take a risk that we were not ready for before. We are moving from a structured language program to giving learners more choice and ownership over their learning.

Our day will start and finish by coming together for our morning meeting and our closing circle, when we will interact with stories and songs. Math talks and phonics will be done in smaller groups at the same time allowing us to differentiate as needed. Guided reading will continue with small groups, but our timings will be more flexible. Writing will be promoted through our continuous provision, inquiry and as a tool to document learning. We can also engage in modeled, shared and interactive writing during our morning meeting, phonics, guided reading and through play. We will also continue to offer workshops when we feel they are appropriate. As we plan for the following week with learners, we will select games and learning experiences that develop literacy and numeracy skills. Another change we are planning is to have our reflection time in smaller groups utilizing all the staff in our learning hub. This will reduce group sizes, allow us to check in with learners to and support them with their accountability. It will also enable us to honor learners who would prefer to reflect in Portuguese.

I strongly feel that this model will give us more flexibility, and allow learners to make authentic connections as learning will not be broken down by subject area. It will also give us the time to observe and interact, without feeling like we have to stop to move onto the next thing in our timetable.

Teaching and learning in a collaborative hub continues to be a journey with many bumps along the way. Each of those bumps is a learning experience and an opportunity to #risk&reflect, and grow. I am grateful for both my #PLN and colleagues for their support, ideas and for continuing to challenge me as I unlearn, relearn and grow.

Teach Like a Pirate – My Interpretation

Teach Like a Pirate – Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator by Dave Burgess (@daveburgess) is not a new book, yet it is still a relevant and engaging read for educators today. When first published, I remember the hype, but I was not in a place to join the pirate crew. I was about to embark on my own journey to rediscover my passion as an educator that led me back to Africa as an international teacher. Earlier this year, I found the book again as I delved into Twitter and its amazing network for educators. I committed to the decision to find out what it means to ‘teach like a pirate.’ #tlap

My first question was, ‘Why Pirates?’ The answer is twofold. First, it is a mnemonic for the pirate system and philosophy. Second, Burgess defines a pirate as follows:

“Pirates are daring, adventurous, and willing to set forth into unchartered territories with no guarantee of success.”

With this definition in mind, it is easy to see why many educators are joining the pirate crew as we look to shake up education to support our learners to thrive in an ever changing world.

Part I of the book is dedicated to explaining the pirate system and philosophy.

Burgess defines three types of passion. Incorporating passions into our teaching can be a source of motivation for both educators and learners.

Content Passion stems from the areas of curriculum that you are passionate about. When I think back to the subject areas I enjoyed in high school, I would say economics and history. Now my husband would laugh to hear this because I never remember any historical information, nor am particularly financially minded. However, in high school the content passion of my teachers rubbed off on me.

Professional Passion is the reason we become educators. As Burgess wisely surmised, we don’t always have content passion. At these times, we should focus on our professional passions.

Personal Passion doesn’t require a definition. Bringing our passions into our learning spaces means that we are teaching from our strengths and demonstrating to learners how following our passions can lead to learning.

“Your ability to completely give yourself up to the moment and fully ‘be’ with your students is an awesome and unmistakably powerful technique.”

Personally, I have always felt it important to model expectations for learners. If we want them to be fully engaged, then we need to be fully present. Burgess also notes that learners know when we are not truly present. He adds that through immersion, we don’t miss the ‘teachable moments’ because we are right there with them. He goes on to state that this is the ideal way to support struggling learners.

We all want to create an environment where our learners feel safe and valued, an environment where learners are willing to take risks and fail forward. It is paramount to know our learners and build those relationships; learners need to trust us and each other.

I too feel that this connection with our learners is integral to learning, and this is why I value our morning meetings. Following the Respons ive Classroom (@responsiveclass) morning meeting structure helps us build our learning community and gives us an opportunity to start our day with a bit of fun through a variety of greetings, sharing, activities and morning messages.

This section of the pirate system and philosophy deals with creativity.

“Creativity is not the possession of some special class of artistic individuals, but is rather something that can be nurtured and developed in all of us – including your students!”

Burgess makes clear that creativity is developed through engaging in the creative process. “It is the process of consistently asking the right questions.” He goes on to add the importance of actively seeking answers. “Your brain won’t be happy until it has provided the answers.”

This reminded me of the process of diffused thinking. This is when you think of a problem and then relax and drift off. When you awaken, your brain has incubated ideas for focused thinking. This is explained better by Barbara Oakley (@barbaraoakley) in this video.

To take it further, I see Creative Problem Solving (CPS, #CreativeProblemSolving) as a way to transform learning experiences to both engage and empower learners. CPS approaches problems or challenges by developing new ideas following a process. The process begins with clarifying a problem to ask the right questions. Divergent thinking is used to generate ideas, and convergent thinking to evaluate and develop ideas. This leads to action or implementation. I look forward to sharing how I find ways to use CPS in education in future posts.

Transformation is about making learning irresistible to learners. To do this we need to know our learners and position and personalize learning to make it relevant. I think this ties in beautifully with learner agency, giving learners voice, choice and ownership of their learning.

Burgess suggests that if you only have one takeaway from this system, it is to ramp up the enthusiasm in your learning space. If you ‘act as if’ you are enthusiastic, you will begin to feel it. If that is not enough, “Make a conscious decision to focus on what empowers you.”

Bringing together passion and enthusiasm will make learning memorable. Last year, I has the opportunity to visit with my year 1 class from 2012. As they shared their memories with me, I was amazed by what they had retained. One asked me if I remembered what a cephalothorax was and others sang a dinosaur song I had forgotten. Neither spiders and dinosaurs are subject areas I am particularly passionate about, but I brought my professional passion, creativity and enthusiasm to our learning space, and made learning memorable.

Part II: Crafting Engaging Lessons

After outlining the pirate system and philosophy, Burgess moves onto the ‘How.’ He suggests working collaboratively to engage in the creative process to enhance the presentation of learning experiences. He shares a toolbox of strategies to energize lessons. He calls these hooks. They are questions designed to help you consider elements in your lessons. Burgess groups his hooks to incorporate different elements such as movement, art, music, drama and dance, STEM, props, suspense, etc.

“How can I harness the power of connecting my content to what students are already interested in?”

“Can they create something ‘real’ that will be more than a classroom project, but also allow them to interact with the world in an authentic way?”

“What types of essential questions can I ask that allow students the opportunity for personal reflection and growth?”

Again, I see the potential for using CPS tools in conjunction with Burgess’ hooks to promote engaging learning. To take it further, I would like to co-construct with learners to empower them.

Part III : Building a Better Pirate

In this final section, Burgess begins by asking:

“Do you want to be great?”

He suggests that great educators benefit learners and mediocrity fails to motivate learners. He then considers what holds us back:

The fear of failure
The belief that we need to have it all figured out before we begin
Paralyzing perfectionism
Lack of focus, or focusing on the insignificant
Fear of criticism or ridicule
Burgess makes three recommendations to overcome these barriers.
First, take action and overcome the inertia. Once you get started, the ball starts rolling.
Second, find a crew. Burgess advices you to grow your Professional Learning Network (#PLN.) Seek multiple perspectives, read widely, seek professional development, collaborate and reach out on social media.
Finally, share treasures. Reach out and share your experiences. #tlap
My Final Thoughts
As an educator who has lost and found my passion, faced criticism and struggled on my journey, there have been many takeaways from this book. Some of my own practice reflects the pirate system and I can see myself integrating more, especially as I look to give learners more autonomy. I am excited to join the pirate crew and strive for excellence.
“Striving for excellence and full engagement is about getting better. It’s about adapting, adjusting, and trying to tweak and improve everything you do.”
Lastly, I leave you with a visual hook. It’s unlikely to be an original idea as I’m sure others have created iMovie trailers, but after all this writing, I needed to play!

Images used in the video sourced from Pixabay.

Should you wish to see Dave Burgess in action, click on the photo below.

References:

Burgess, D. (2012). Teach like a pirate: Increase student engagement, boost your creativity, and transform your life as an educator. San Diego, CA: Dave Burgess Consulting.

Reflection for Change

As we move towards the end of our academic year, I am in the process of collating data, writing reports and reflecting on the progress of the learners in our class. It is also an opportunity to reflect on my practice as a teacher. A year ago, I was doing the same thing and my reflection left me feeling vulnerable. Though I was working hard, I felt I could be more effective. By admitting to myself that change would benefit my learners, I had taken the first step towards becoming both a better learner and educator.

The first thing I did was to really look at the data. If I could identify my learners areas of strength and growth, it might be a reflection on my own strengths and areas for development. The two areas for development that I chose to focus on were writing and the development of number sense.

And then, I needed to dig deeper. I needed to understand why the learners in my class were not confident writers, nor did they show confidence when working with number. I realized, that though I had taught it, I had not ignited a passion for writing or playing with number. I needed give learners that sense of ownership over learning, so that they felt passionate about learning.

The next steps… the how?

Professional Development

Education is changing. As educators we need to be learners for two reasons. Firstly, as role models for the learners in our care and secondly, to give them the best education we possibly can. So when I felt like I needed to learn more about developing number sense, I looked for online courses and did something about it. I highly recommend Christina Tondevold’s (@BuildMathMinds) number sense courses.

Getting Connected

Education is changing. The best ways to find out and be a part of these changes, is by being connected. Initially, I used educational groups on Facebook to keep me in the loop. Now, I am more of a Twitter fan. I find it is incredibly diverse and generally very positive. I share ideas and I get to see what other people are sharing. Reading the blogs of other teachers around the world, inspired me to start this one. Recently, I read a blog post by Adam Hill (@AhillAdam) ctitled ‘Sins to Avoid as Teacher Tweeters,’ that shares great advice about how you can use Twitter to build your Professional Learning Network.

Collaboration

So far, the focus of changing my teaching practice, focused on things I could do myself. However, to truly make a difference, it wasn’t just me that needed to change my thinking, it needed to be a team effort. I realized that collaboration was not just about attending planning meetings, sharing ideas and trying them out in our individual classes. It was about letting go of the culture of “my students in my class” and start taking responsibility collectively. The my learners became our learners.

Through the collaboration within our grade team, we are able to harness our creativity to problem solve together. We take our ideas and build upon them, hopefully making them better. We are open-minded and willing to try new things. Not everything we have done as been successful and that is how we have learnt and evolved as teachers. Combining our knowledge and experience means we can do better for our learners.

Empowering Learners

The biggest change in my role as an educator has been the shift from my learners, to our learners to we are learners. Our focus this year has been building our learning community. At the center of this is our students, our learners. We need to listen to them and support them on their learning journey, not direct their learning. What does each individual learner want to learn? How can we help them get there? And if educators are there to support learners, then so are their families, thus adding to our learning community. How can we build family partnerships?

By giving learners the ownership of their learning and by keeping their families involved, they have shown an enthusiasm and commitment towards learning that I have not seen before in all my years of teaching.

Sharing Experiences

Finally, if I am truly shifting thinking towards a collective responsibility, then I have a responsibility to share my experiences. I’ll be honest and say that tweeting, writing this blog and leading PD, pushes me well out of my comfort zone. For myself, I do so as a way to clarify my thinking and hopefully get feedback from my learning community. For other learners and educators, I share because I hope I can help others, as so many have helped me.

Quotefancy-6290868-3840x2160 — Link to quotefancy

Take a moment…

This past week has been emotionally overwhelming for me. So much so that by Friday morning I had a migraine and could not lift my head off the pillow.

It is that time of year when are asked to assess our learners, so we have data for reports. It is that time when we are asked to plan for the future. It is a time of uncertainty in an international school as we prepare to say farewell and welcome new faces too. In this uncertainty, teachers begin to complain, and I think that this, along with a thunderstorm that got me.

I would say that remaining positive has been a challenge for me and and as a parent, I need to model positivity for my children. Over the last few years, I have been doing well, but at times, I could do better. So what can I do differently?

A few years ago, I found a bracelet with the following inscription:

It is a reminder for me to live in the moment. Yes, it is important to reflect on the past. But rather than identifying problems and then finding solutions, would it not be better to identify what went well and then find ways to improve?

Looking towards the future and making plans is also worthwhile, worrying about the future is not. I lost my way last week, and that is okay. Moving forward, I am going to make two commitments to myself.

The first, is to live for today and appreciate the little moments. Sunday mornings are for grocery shopping in our household. Each week, we usually see one or two learners from Kindergarten. At the beginning of the year, there is always a look of surprise as they spot me out of context. Today, I heard my name, and one little sunshine bug came up to me and asked “Ms Raana, would you like a hug?” And I have to say, it made my day because she is showing respect for herself and others, and I have had an impact.

The second commitment comes from a book I have been reading ‘Kids Deserve It! pushing Boundaries and Conventional Thinking,’ by Todd Nelsoney and Adam Welcome.

One piece of advice in the book is to ‘find your people.’ Growing up in an international school setting as a ‘third culture kid,’ and now teaching in an international school, I have seen people come and go. Unfortunately, for me, this has made me reluctant to make new friends, as a way of protecting my heart. At the end of last year, my people moved on and I’ll be honest and say that I did not make an effort to put myself out there to make new friendships. This is something I need to change.

My second commitment to myself is to ‘find my people.’ I am going to make the effort to really connect with my friends around the world, and to grow my professional learning network, because as I continue to learn, I honor learners and myself.

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

A few weeks ago, I joined Twitter as part of a pilot program for our school. Initially, I was overwhelmed. There was so much to take in. Once I began to explore, I was like a kid in a candy store. I discovered an amazing network of educators who share ideas, wonderings, experiences and so much more.

I began to download books and was particularly struck by “The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity” by George Couros. I am an avid reader and usually read quite quickly. However, I find myself taking my time and have gone crazy with the highlighter. One quote stuck with me:

“I believe in my voice and experiences, as well as the voice and experiences of others, as they are important for moving education forward.” George Couros

I began to wonder if I had anything of value to share. At this point, I’m still not sure, but I am willing to take the risk to put myself out there. I hope that this journey will help me to believe that I am enough and to honor learners.

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

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