It's been a while... I blame momentum

I haven't posted a blog post for a while now.  Life seems to have gotten in the road in a big way.  As in reflect back on some of the things that have happened to be both professionally and personally in the last 8 months I realise that it is time to do some soul searching and take time to get back some of the things I feel like I have lost.   

Momentum is a powerful and dangerous thing.  Gaining it too fast, losing it, it all can have a serious impact on they way things work.  

Today I'm going to look at some of the aspects that have affected me over the last year in terms of momentum and I'm sure many of you will be able to relate to these.

1) Confusion

Confusion is one of the biggest enemies of momentum.  It can kill it incredibly fast.  Confusion can stem from a lack of direction, people working at cross purposes or a complete lack of communication.  I'd like to be very clear here and say that I believe that confusion is incredibly dangerous.  It fractures points of view which can lead to disagreement, arguments and a breakdown in the way a team can work.  

The Cure:  Communication

Clear, concise communication.  With a focus on a vision that everybody understands.  This is the best way to avoid confusion and keep  the team focused and happy in their roles. 

2) Negativity

Negativity is a tough one.  We can't all be positive all of the time.  We take hits to our emotional state every day as educators and when you take more risks in your practice and put yourself out on a limb this can be even more so.  Disappointment and negativity can directly affect productivity.  We have all had those days.  Where it's a bit much... it's hard to be on top of your game. 

The Cure: Positivity

This one can often be easier said than done.  But surround yourself with positive people, do things that make you happy, exercise.  All of these things can help to pull you out of a rut.  Rember the things you love about education and do more of those things... and do them well. 

3) Change

Change... it can be a positive or a negative.  I was all for change,  I loved it.  The push to 21st-century practice, team teaching, going to a digital environment. It was where I wanted to be and I loved it.  Then things changed.  I was teaching a year level I wasn't has excited about without the tools ad systems I had developed and worked on.  The way I was teaching wasn't at the cutting edge anymore.  Then I realised that what I had before was growth, it was positive and I wanted it but I wasn't coping with change - the restraints and differences in practice forced upon me.  It took a change in mindset, but in the meantime I had dug my heels in, lost momentum in the growth I had valued so much. 

The Cure: Growth Mindset

If I had looked at the change in a more positive way, if I had looked at what I could gain rather than what I was losing then I might have kept more momentum.  This was a big lesson for me and it was one that I am glad I have learnt.  Carol Dweck's work is something that all schools should include for staff and students.  It builds positive attitudes and helps people cope with change... which let's face it, is something that is always happening in education. 

It has been good sitting down and writing again, and I hope you enjoyed my short rant on some of the momentum killers out there.  Please leave a comment about some of the experiences you have with losing momentum and any advice you have for other teachers. 

28 Days Later

This is it.  The end of #28daysofwriting.  It has been awesome.  I have loved the experience and I know I will continue.  Tonight's post will probably be pretty cliche, from the title to the content but I don’t care.  I want to reflect on how this experience has changed me.

Tonight I am going to write about the things that I have learnt over the last 28 days.  It has been challenging but but change doesn’t happen without turmoil.  So by putting myself in the position where I had to do something that made me uncomfortable it changed me… for the better.

I learnt that I can do it. I wrote every day. No matter what. For 28 days.

I learnt that I have a few worthwhile ideas to discuss.  I thought I would have run out of ideas to write, but between classroom practice, leadership ideas and random rants I had plenty to say and felt like as the month went on I got better at saying it.

I learnt that people are actually interested in what I have to say.  Between the awesome feedback from my posts on twitter and as comments and the huge jump in traffic on my blog I was completely humbled by how positive the online community is.  I only began my blog a few months ago as a way to reflect on professional learning and my practice.  But since starting #28daysofwriting I have had over 1500 hits.  That's almost 8 times the number I had before!

I learnt that there are some amazing practitioners out there.  Reading peoples blogs and reading a huge range of experiences and perspectives is amazing for your own professional development.  Between reinforcing your own ideas to being completely challenged in your thinking it has all been fantastic.

I have learnt the power of the PLN.  I have had contact with an amazing group of people who without #28daysofwriting and Twitter I would never have had the chance to talk to.  These new connections are amazing.  I know that I have a number of people that I can now contact if I need help and support.  They range from beginning teachers to principals and educational specialists.  Where else could I have this kind of support in a small school in little old New Zealand.

I learnt that I work with some amazing teachers.  This whole process has made me notice more in my own school.  Between my colleague @BridgeeNZ who is taking part in #28daysofwriting who has consistently impressed me with her insightful blog posts, to the other teachers I work with who do an amazing job everyday.

I have learnt to be more courageous.  The thought of writing publicly terrified me before and now I know that I can do it and not do a bad job of it.  This courage has filtered into other parts of my professional life.  I always was an ideas person but know I value my ideas more and second guess them less often.  This has led to a more decisive educator.  I don't always get it right but at least I make a choice and try.

Lastly I learnt that I love being a teacher.  I kind of always knew this but this whole challenge has just reinforced it.  Education is my passion.  Now matter where in the system I sit I am passionate about schools and how they help not only the future of the students but the future of our society as a whole.  This kind of responsibility is as exciting as it is terrifying.

I hope you have enjoyed this final post.  I hope you have enjoyed writing over the last month.  This might be the last post for #28daysofwriting but it will not be my last post.  I am thinking about maybe starting #52weeksofwriting.  Writing every week for 52 minutes.  This gives time for planning and a less rushed post!

Anyway thank you all for you support, thank you all for you posts, and most of all thank you all for being part of this amazing profession called education.

This was my last post for #28daysofwriting.  I would like to say a huge thank you to @tombarrett for organising this absolutely amazing challenge.  

Good Days and Better Nights

It’s the second to last day of #28daysofwriting.  Hard to believe.  I remember back to day 7 thinking that there was no way I could keep it up but I have and I have really enjoyed the process.  I hope everyone else has had a good time doing the same thing and has learnt something along the way.  I know my practice is better for it.

Today was a really good day.  Things started to come together.  It started with a trip to the library.  After talking to the class about the importance of having a good book for Read to Self from the Daily 5 I felt like the students were ready to go with focus and enthusiasm.  And they did!  

Then someone had forgotten to return a book I had issued them under my name in the library… I couldn't get any more out!  So I sent someone back to class to look,  a long shot I know but they found it!  On the day went!

Next was reinforcement lessons for Read to Self and Read to Someone from the Daily 5.  Was I pushing it on a Friday… Nope!  It worked brilliantly.  We broke the class record and got to 16.42 minutes before someone moved because they had forgotten to get a second book.  And it was a really awesome 16.42 minutes too.  Total focus.  Not bad for 4 weeks into Year 3!

This let me even see a couple of extra reading groups that I hadn't planned to see and the guided reading lessons just flowed (Thanks to our RTLit for the few reminders the other day about effective guided reading!).

Then Read to Someone else went almost as well (it was only the second time!) and we were stopped by the bell!  

So far so good.

Next was LEARNerS Time where our students get to have choices about what they do as long as it meets some criteria.  I pushed my luck and told my class they had to finish their School Values movies before they could go.  Not a single complaint.  In fact total focus and drive to do a brilliant job.  Two days ago I thought it was going to be like herding cats but these guys pulled together and by today they were adding titles and voiceovers like pros on iMovie.

Then it was swim time,  Free Swim Friday!  We got there early and had the whole pool before the seniors got there.  I got to spend time seeing all the “mean as bombs” the kids can do.  It was nice seeing the kids relaxed and having fun.

Then one of my awesome colleagues came over and said she had come to let me go back and finish putting the videos together for assembly that afternoon!  I work with a really great team.  

Lunch time and I had finished the videos.  I typed up the script for my presenters and added the finishing touches to the assembly PowerPoint.  10 min sit down and talk in the staffroom.

Assembly went great, videos were a hit.  The song we practised and chose sounded good.  Then we tidied up and went home.

After school I got lots of jobs done, wall displays up and the classroom is tidier and looking good.

Then I picked up my own two kids and shot home to get ready to go to the Gourmet Night Markets at Mt Maunganui.  This was great.  Met friends there.  Had amazing food! Pork belly sliders, mussel fritters, bbq corn, steamed pork buns, caramel brownie, cold chai and COLD DRIP COFFEE!!!  A walk down the beach on dusk letting the kids run around picking up shells and watching a cruise ship head out was the perfect end to the night.

Sometimes a well deserved break is exactly what you need. Just some quality down time doing something really fun! Teachers are people too!

Some days just work… Some days everything falls into place and you feel like a really, really good teacher.  Today was one of those days for me, and I really hope it was for you too!

A bit of a personal rant tonight sorry! The day was too good not to write about.  I hope everyone enjoys their weekend and is having a good end to their #28daysofwriting.

What Type of School Do You Have?

Day 26 of #28daysofwriting.  Tonight I finished my Parent / Student / Teacher meetings.  They went well and I am relieved that they are over.  Tonight I am going to keep it light and humorous and hopefully get you thinking about what type of workplace you have.  Please don’t take this too seriously and I hope it helps you through the end of the week.

What type of workplace do your have?  That is the question tonight.  You spend a huge amount of time at work and you can either love or hate the experience.  To help you think about this I have provided a few examples.

Magical Fairy Sparkle Land:

Depending on your personality type this is heaven or hell.  Everything is smiles and lollipops.  Everyone loves their job so much and everything seems so perfect it almost can't be true.  Tigger type personalities will thrive here.

The “Kim” Work Place:

This school looks good on the surface,  but everyone knows there are problems.  Usually people avoid this place unless they have been living under a rock.  A key indicator of this workplace is STRONG top down leadership. But hey, what happens in this place at least makes sense to one person...right?

The Greek Centre for Philosphy:

This school is a hive of thinking and best practice.  Teachers discuss practice, talk about theory and contemplate and reflect.  This is the school where you develop and grow as a teacher but it will become all consuming and you will probably have no life.

The ‘Winners’:

This school is where everyone wants to be.  No one is quite sure what or how they do it but they are always seen as a team.  Cohesive, intimidating and generally awesome.  A job here always seems awesome but watch out if you don’t know much about what really happens.

The Office:

The normal School work place.  A real mixed bag of teachers.  Everyone brings something amazing as well as a few cringe-worthy traits.  Always expect the unexpected, but also always expect someone to have your back.

That is it.  That's my post tonight.  I hope you got a smile out of it.  What type of school are you at?  What works what doesn’t?  I guess the point of this post is that Culture matters.

The importance of the home school relationship.

Days 25 of #28daysofwriting and I thought I would take up a challenge I set myself right back at the start - write a blog post entirely on my phone.

Tonight was student goal setting night at our school.  Parent - Teacher meetings really.  But it was a really good night. 

We changed the format and had all teachers in the learning centre running meetings at the same time.  It worked really well.  It broke down the barriers between classes and we felt like a real team.  Our principal did a great job greeting parents as they came in. Taking time to drum up support and feedback from parents.

But the biggest success is having teachers and parents work towards the common goal of student achievement.

I had one parent thank me for 'getting' her child.  I had just noticed that the student was having a few stumbles around phonics knowledge in class and the parent said she noticed a similar thing in reading.  This wasn't something I had noticed but it made sense and there might be a bigger need there.  This parent told me she had tried to explain this before and she was so relieved I had picked up on it.

We are both on the same page now and we have a plan to work on at home and school.

Another parent told me her son had a new iPad and had been playing maths games.  This student has struggled in Maths in the past but over the past few weeks had shown a lot more confidence.   I knew what I was doing was making a difference but it definitely didn't explain it all.  When I realised the student had gone home and downloaded some of the maths games we use at school I was so proud of him for taking the initiative.  This home-school link has obviously helped improve how he feels about maths and he is getting himself on a roll in his learning.

I'm pretty tired after a long day.  But even just those two meetings alone made the night worth it.  Teaching is about making connections for students and we should never underestimate the power of the connection with their family.

Pencil Suites and Power Cuts

Day 24 of #28daysofwriting.  Almost over.  I am a little sad.  I know I will remain active on my blog, I love the habit too much now.  Maybe I’ll do #52weeksofwriting and write for 52 min once a week!

We celebrate new innovation.  The shiny new gadgets we have in the classroom…

I have a really great tool I would like to share.  Beautifully simple, it is accessible by all students, it is very intuitive, anyone can use it.  It requires no charging, which in a classroom environment is amazing.  It can help students to share their learning and develop their creativity.  Mistakes can be addressed really easily.  It is made of eco-friendly materials, and unlike tradition tech, it can be disposed of easily at the end of its life.  Everyone who isn’t using one needs to right now!

It’s a pencil…We don’t celebrate it, we don’t spout its benefits from the hilltops. We don't have Pencil Suites where teachers fight to try and get their class extra time on the school pencils. It gets the job done though.  Students use it when and how they need to share their learning.  So if we don’t celebrate the pencil why do we get all evangelical over the newest i-chrome-app-web-2.0-gadget?  Is it going to replace the teacher… I sure hope not because I like my job.

I am an avid supporter of tech in the classroom.  I think it is the vehicle for learning, an amazing tool that opens up learning possibilities for our students.  I know that I have blogged about useful web tools and apps and I have always tried to explain and justify their use in a classroom programme.  But apps and tools alone do nothing without some serious pedagogy behind what you do.

I was thinking today as @BridgeeNZ and I explained what we did with team teaching last year when we had too few devices.  I realised that underpinning everything we did were some core beliefs around learning.  

The Four C’s was one idea we tried to weave through our programmes.  Critical Thinking, Creativity, Communication and Collaboration.  To do this we made sure that what we were doing with tech to achieve these goals was reflected in the pen and paper work the students did.

We tried to make learning fun,  relevant.  We tried to make sure our learning tasks were scaffolded and allowed students to use multiple ways to share learning.  We excited the students about their learning.

The last few nights I have been blogging about how I am starting my Daily 5 journey.  I know that tech will enhance what I am doing, apps will be used and YouTube videos will be watched.  But none of these things replace me, the teacher.  If the power goes off, or the internet drops out, I will still be able to continue.  Because the pedagogy of what I am doing sits within the Daily 5 and best literacy practice.

I saw this great little image tweeted by Shawn Blankenship (@Blankenship_S) and it really reinforced that our conversations around tech should always come back and focus on the learning outcomes, not the tools themselves.

So if your school has a Pencil Suite or if you panic at the idea of having no devices tomorrow maybe you should rethink what is really important in what you are doing, what are the big ideas and pedagogy that would still be important without the devices and apps. And then be thankful we live in a time where these devices are available!

Daily 5, Hashtag Fails and Twitter Debates

Day 23 of #28daysofwriting and I am feeling a bit apprehensive about whether I am going to be able to write over the next few nights.  We have Parent / Teacher / Student goal setting meetings…  untill 8pm both nights.  So I think I will have to try and write between my appointments!  But I am still enjoying this, big thanks to Tom Barrett for starting this up.

Today was a cool day… That's the only way to describe it.  Tonight's post will be a bit all over the show but it will reflect my last 24 hours.

I woke up this morning and checked my twitter account.  Nothing, nada, zip, zero.  I put myself out there and tried to set up a hashtag for best literacy practice (#BestLitPrac) and nothing came of it.  Yea it was only 12 hours but you know what its like.  Big dreams of seeing people rally around something you have created… Oh well - I think I did a post on your great ideas not being as great as you think!

Later I was quietly having breakfast when a couple of tweets came through about boys in education.  Hmmm interesting I thought as I watched a few comments being made.  Then I thought I’d throw my two cents worth in,  play devil's advocate.  The ensuing debate went around the cognitive, social and cultural differences between boys and girls.  How personalised learning came into play, whether or not boys classes were the go… it was great.  It's open debate and discussion like this that forces you to examine your practice, reflect on what you believe, how it links to pedagogy and best practice and pushes you to a ‘where to next’ point.  So thank you to those people involved.

So by this time I'm at school and getting a much needed coffee since I missed my morning run.

Then class time.  The day runs through and I trial a few changes to my literacy programme that I talked about in my post last night.  A few things worked but overall it didn't flow like I wanted it too. I think I may have lost my mojo.  

Lunchtime comes around and I am having a discussion with my principal about literacy programmes, trying to fit in the cool stuff and the must haves.  Mentioned that I want to get the Daily 5 going too… Then it hit me.  I shot off and quickly googled Daily 5 and double checked my idea will work.  

Sure enough, for some reason the idea was there all along.  In my brain I had been seeing Daily 5 as a support tool to my programme.  How wrong I was.  The Daily 5 will provide the structure for my programme and the cool stuff, and the must dos will fit into it. I whipped up a revised Literacy Tumble.  

No more groups trudging through a group timetable.  Now students have choice and responsibility - all that good 21st Century skill stuff that you know you want in a programme. They will be responsible for providing evidence, a big mind shift for them and this will take some time to get right.

Student will be given focus areas.  Areas where I know they need a little push.  Areas that tie into their learning goals.

I am excited.  After a few weeks of feeling pretty frustrated and bored by my own programme I think I have found what I want for this year group.  Talking to some of the other teachers about it got them excited (Daily 5 is something we have played around with but never quite nailed) and they were excited to develop some ‘check up’ resources to ensure student could show and share their learning.

I hope you enjoyed my post.  The Daily 5 programme I whipped up is completely in concept stage and would love any ideas and feedback about it.  What other great activities do you use in your Daily 5’s?

This post relates to the following New Zealand Registered Teacher Criteria:

4. demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice

5. show leadership that contributes to effective teaching and learning

6. conceptualise, plan and implement an appropriate learning programme

8. demonstrate in practice their knowledge and understanding of how ākonga learn

9. respond effectively to the diverse language and cultural experiences, and the varied strengths, interests and needs of individuals and groups of ākonga