Practice 1, Activity 2: Current issues in my professional context

I work in a decile 3 girls' school. The ethnic makeup of the school is 73% Maori,15% European, 5% Pasifika, and 7% other. Many of these girls come from low socio-economic backgrounds. This background brings with it issues such as poverty, domestic violence, gang-related situations and criminal activity, not to mention unsettled family and living situations, low academic achievement and low expectations. There are students who regularly come to school without any breakfast or lunch, and kids who cannot afford to go on school trips, pay for replacement of books or uniform items. Along with these socio-economic factors have come behavioural issues, which, for some time, led to a negative public perception of the school, a falling roll, poor NCEA results and the image of a 'failing school'. Teachers and higher-achieving students were scrambling to escape, and there was a feeling of 'last one out, turn off the lights'.

A new principal four years ago, though, led to new initiatives to change the school culture in a concerted effort to address all these issues. On a practical level the school runs a breakfast club through the Wellness Centre, offering weetbix, toast and milo for those who need it. In winter, soup and toasted sandwiches are often provided for hungry students. The food supply is dependent on donations. The school does what it can to help with uniform and stationery issues. Our girls can choose to attend trades academies and gateway placements, they are offered individual learning programmes to meet their needs, and literacy and numeracy is tracked through twice-yearly e-asttle tests. As a school we are also several steps ahead of other schools in our area in terms of BYOD and e-learning initiatives.

The new principal's vision for the school was that we needed a culture change that would lead to an improvement in academic results which would, in turn, lead to an improvement in public perception and, hopefully, lead to an increased roll. Her vision was in line with Mark Wilson's statement (TEdEd.(2013, Jun 21)  that "if you want a successful school, start with culture...culture is the beliefs and priorities that drive the thoughts and actions of the people at the school." 

When the new principal arrived she inherited a school that had reached the  'Maturity and stagnation and decline' point (Stoll, 1998), where the internal and external contexts of the school had changed, but the school had not responded adequately to those changes. Elements of the teaching and learning had become dysfunctional. Four years later, the roll is increasing and NCEA results have improved to now be above both national standards and decile 3 girls' school standards, with Level 2 and 3 provisional pass rates at 97% and 93% respectively (as at February 2017). To get to this point we have experienced a time of rapid change. Like Mark Wilson's school we had to have a vision, had to ask 'what is it we are seeking a do as a school', 'who are we?', 'what do we wish to be and why?', and 'how do we become what we wish to be?' (TEdEd.(2013, Jun 21).

To build this new 'culture of excellence' (as the Principal called it), we began with a new school charter. Underpinning the vision of this charter are our Te Ao values, which have been woven into the fabric of school life. Our Te Ao kaupapa is based on the life of the Te Arawa ancestress, Te Ao Kapurangi, and her qualities are now part of our PB4L expectations. Te Ao stands for:

T - the willingness to learn

E - engaging to achieve

A - always shows respect

O - offers to serve

These values are promoted around the school in our signage and discussed in assemblies and classrooms. Students are encouraged to exhibit the Te Ao values in everything they do, and they can earn points for doing so; many now proudly wear badges that show their commitment to Te Ao. These values, which I know many of us were sceptical about at first, have proved to be a unifying concept within the school. Even the teachers are celebrated in the staff room at the end of every term for showing Te Ao, and this is a nice 'feel-good' recognition of our efforts throughout the year. 

Another element of building this culture of success is an emphasis on relationships. For many years our form classes have been called Whanaus, and whanau teachers are now playing a much greater role in nurturing relationships with students and their whanau. We spend lots of time getting to know the students on a personal level, and are encouraged to create whanau blogs to share and celebrate what we do as whanaus and as Houses. House spirit has always been strong at the school, but to build this new culture, we created new Houses based on strong women from our area with whom many of our students have family connections. As Salvatore Gargiulo pointed out (Principal Sabbatical Report, 2014) building relationships is essential with students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Students from these backgrounds value relationships over achievement, but if you can build a strong relationship first, if you understand what makes the student tick, then you can work on their academic achievements.  The student's family is an important part of this, so we are welcoming parents into the school more. We now have two academic planning days a year, where parents/caregivers come in to meet the whanau teacher to discuss student goals, attendance, behaviour, literacy and numeracy and anything else of concern. It is a great way for the whanau teacher and the student's whanau to get to know each other and to create lines of communication. 

After four years of building this new culture, our school can now be said to be exhibiting most of the norms of improving schools as identified by  Stoll & Fink (cited in Stoll, 1998). In  particular, I believe we have a sense of shared goals, responsibility for success, continuous improvement and lifelong learning. Risk taking has proved trickier for some, the 'laggards' who were slow to adopt new ideas and new technology, but they are in the minority now. And I believe we still have issues to work out around collegiality, openness, respect, celebration and humour. But the positives for the school as a whole, and for the students and their achievements are a strong indicator of a school on the rise.

References:

Gargiulo, S. (2014). Principal sabbatical report. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Leadership-development/Professional-information/Principals-sabbatical-reports/Report-archives-for-2007-2014/Secondary-award-recipients-2014/Gargiulo-Salvatore

TEdEd.(2013, Jun 21). Building a culture of success- Mark Wilson.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_8Bjz-OCD8

Stoll. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture

Practice 1, Activity 1: Defining my community of practice

Wenger defines a community of practice as a group of people who share a passion for something they do and regularly get together to learn how to do it better. The community of practice has three main elements:
1. A domain - an area of shared inquiry

2. A community - relationships, a sense of belonging

3. Practice - a shared body of knowledge, stories,methods, tools, documents

Further, the community of practice must keep learning at the core, foster a deep sense of community and a degree of self-awareness of its repertoire of knowledge and the effects on members' practice.

My main community of practice is my faculty at school. We are a tight-knit group, a family really, who are passionate about the Social Sciences and who constantly strive to improve what we are doing in order to improve learning outcomes for our students. Our sense of belonging has developed over several years of working together, we have built trust and understanding of each other, our strengths, weaknesses and motivations. We each know that we can drop into the other's classroom at any time to discuss any aspects of our teaching and learning and both give and receive constructive feedback. The collegial nature of our faculty has also often been commented on by others who have occasionally been co-opted into teaching Social Sciences for brief periods. As a faculty, we believe in supporting each other, both the long-term and newer members of the community, to learn and grow as teachers in general, and as Social Scientists in particular.

In formal, scheduled faculty meetings, we not only have a great deal of fun and laughter, but also work effectively together to design and revise units of learning that are aimed at enhancing our students' skills, knowledge and understanding. Moreover, with two of us learning with the Mindlab, and sharing the new ideas we have been exposed to, our faculty has become more reflective and has, as a consequence, begun developing a clearer vision of what 'future-focus' learning should look like in Social Sciences. 

Interestingly, as I came to thinking about communities of practice, I realised that the Mindlab has come to be one for me, but only now towards the end of the experience. I didn't feel a sense of belonging during the face-to-face sessions, there were too many differences between us all and hardly any interaction between people from different schools. It is really only now, during the blogging phase that I feel more of a sense of all three elements of a CoP coming together. The sense of a joint enterprise feels stronger now; perhaps the walls have come down through the sharing of our thoughts online. Certainly, the readings and videos and other materials provided by the Mindlab are now our 'shared repertoire' of knowledge, something we have all been reflecting on here online, and something that, hopefully, we will continue to reflect on after our Mindlab time is up.I am sure that for all of us, it has made an impact on our teaching of the young learners in front of us.

Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.

Crossing the boundaries - interdisciplinary practice

My interdisciplinary connections map:

'Cross-curricular', 'interdisciplinary', 'collaboration', 'integration': say them with a flourish of your wand and you have a spell from Harry Potter! But are these 'academic buzzwords' really that magical? Certainly, when watching the video on the Ross Spiral Curriculum one could be forgiven for thinking that some kind of wizardry was afoot - it was an interesting watch. I was intrigued by the idea that Ross uses cultural history as the core, with all other learning areas spiralling off it; for an historian and Social Studies specialist this is curriculum gold. The spiral is quite complicated though, and one needs to be mindful that Ross is a specialist school, not the standard state school that most of us are working in.

I found the video on Interdisciplinary Learning a more realistic, attainable goal in terms of interdisciplinary collaboration. In this video we see a  thematic approach, wherein the core subjects all teach the same theme, but using their own subject-specific language and skill set. This approach allows students to see the connections between subjects clearly. It's an approach that has been discussed at my school, but never really implemented. I can see the potential to create an interdisciplinary programme with the English and Drama faculty; the example in the video of 'Power and the abuse of power in Nazi Germany' would fit in perfectly with our current Human Rights unit in Social Studies. The difficulty would be getting buy-in for this theme from the English faculty and collaborating effectively with the teachers and Head of that Faculty.

ACRLog conceptual model for success of interdisciplinary teaching.

I know from experience that collaboration across faculties can be extremely difficult. Last year I was part of a new initiative at my school - a year 9 digital, project-based-learning class with an integrated curriculum. Four teachers - one from each of the four core learning areas of Social Sciences, English, Maths and Science - were told to 'go forth and collaborate'. It was a challenging experience. There were issues around lack of time for planning, misunderstanding of each other's learning areas, different concepts of the purpose of the initiative, reluctance to give up control of our individual subjects, and personality clashes and lack of trust amongst the team. If one looks at  the ACRLog conceptual model for success of interdisciplinary teaching, then almost everything was missing for us last year. However, after a year of experimentation and missteps, the programme may be looking more positive this year, without me though; I opted out.

Which is not to indicate that I'm a non-believer; as a Social Studies teacher, I already teach in a cross-curricular fashion, with units of learning that include a bit of science, maths, economics, literacy and drama. I can see how powerful a co-ordinated approach to interdisciplinary teaching and learning could be for our students. If anything, I have some doubts as to the efficacy of a fully integrated curriculum, particularly within our current school system. As Mathison and Freeman (1997) point out "little evidence is provided that illustrates that these [positive] outcomes occur".

Still, I have already approached the head of the English Faculty about the possibility of a cross-curricular programme and maybe, if we get it right, it could be a stepping stone to greater integration across the curriculum.


References:

A Conceptual Model for Interdisciplinary Learning. (2015). Retrieved from http://acrlog.org/2015/05/14/a-conceptual-model-for-interdisciplinary-collaboration./

Interdisciplinary Learning [video file]. (2014, Oct 24). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA564RIlhME.

Mathison,S.. & Freeman, M.(1997). The logic of interdisciplinary studies. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, 1997. Retrieved from http://www.albany.edu/cela/reports/mathisonlogic12004.pdf:

Twitterpatered? or Teaching the Meme Generation. (Applied Practice 2: Activity 6 - Use of online social networks in teaching and professional practice)

Social media can be a great way for teachers to connect professionally to share ideas and resources. I enjoy being part of several Teachers' Facebook pages, finding the discussions and materials shared there incredibly valuable. As Melhuish put it, these teachers' Facebook pages are shared "funds of knowledge". And that is certainly one of the reasons I joined up to them, to connect with other teachers of the same subjects, to find out what and how they are teaching those subjects, and of course for that exchange of resources!  I do tend to be one the 'lurkers' Melhuish writes about, reading much, posting seldom, though I have been commenting more often in the last year. And there have been some fantastic discussions on these pages around the philosophy of what we are teaching, so it isn't just about physical resources. 

I don't really participate in other forms of social media for professional development though. I constantly get messages from Linkedin, asking if I 'know these people', so I must have signed up to Linkedin at some stage, probably to get access to some slideshare resources, but I have never used it and am not sure what use it could be. Nor do I blog, except for Mindlab, but I have often read  other Teacher blogs from around the world, again, trying to gather ideas for the classroom. And Twitter? Well, I know what it is, but I've never had any desire to tweet, though I did note some interesting tweets on the Mindlab page. Perhaps it is something to look into to connect with other teachers? 

At school, we are being encouraged to create blogs for our tutor classes, though that is about relationship building rather than specific learning goals. Last year, though, I was involved in a Future-Focused class in which a blog was one of our main forms of communication with the students, but it was used as a way to post tasks and resources, rather than as an exchange of ideas or place for academic discussion. However, I could see the potential of a blog when listening to Kathy Cassidy tell the story of her kindergarten class in the US connecting with a kindergarten class in New Zealand via each other's blogs, and her kids being opened up to the vastly different experiences of the kids down here - volcanoes! sharks on the beach! Perhaps there is potential here for Social Studies classes??

I can certainly see some value in using Twitter in the classroom after reading about @RealTimeWWII and PepysDiary.com (Sharples et al). These Twitter accounts have real application in the History and Classics classroom, bringing the past to life for students. I can already see the possibilities for teaching Homer's Odyssey, getting Odysseus to tweet about his journey! In that vein, I did try a brief experiment in the use of Instagram in History last year, getting students to set up accounts as personalities involved in the French Revolution, and instagramming as those people. It provided a bit of fun and could, I believe, enhance student learning as students try to get inside the skin of historical figures, building that empathy that history teachers are always trying to nuture in their students. The creation of memes by students too, to show their understanding of topics in History and Classics is another social media tool I am keen to use in class; if you can joke about it, cleverly, you probably get it! 

As the Netsafe clip pointed out though, it is important to ensure that we have fully thought through the process of using social media for teaching, before implementing it. That means thinking about the purpose and the plan and entering into discussions with parents and the school, so they understand too. Next steps then? As Kathy Cassidy suggests, perhaps I will pick out just one small thing that seems doable and plan to put that into action, so I can "harness the power [of social networks] in authentic learning contexts" for myself and my students.

References:
Kathy Cassidy on engaging young students with technology, retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1p0TuwfdS8

Education Council.(2012). Establishing safeguards.[video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49216520

Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrived on 05 May, 2015 from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/han...

Sharples, M., de Roock , R., Ferguson, R., Gaved, M., Herodotou, C., Koh, E., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Looi,C-K, McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Weller, M., Wong, L. H. (2016). Innovating Pedagogy 2016: Open University Innovation Report 5. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Retrieved from http://proxima.iet.open.ac.uk/public/innovating_pedagogy_2016.pdf