Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda

What a year it has been! 

A year of learning, confusion, change, challenge and hope.

A year of new ideas, adapted ideas and creativity.

Welcome back to another blog post catching up with the 'Learning Through Listening' project that has stimulated so much of the learning and ideas for this year. 

This year I have had the opportunity to work with the incredible MIT ( Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) team to investigate how to actively teach the 'act of deliberate listening' in the classroom... and now we are coming to the end of this journey.

Today we are meeting for the last time as a team for this year but this is not the end.

In a teaching environment children explore literacy especially through so many contexts. Children explore and learn interaction, social skills and oral language everyday through the natural management and context of the class. It is hard to genuinely differentiate how much progress has been made because of the effect of the listening skills taught. I say this to acknowledge the children themselves, their effort and learning, ideas and the implementation of DMIC maths which heavily supports  conversation and discussion in mathematics.

In saying this since the beginning of the year the children have grown in their confidence in speaking, listening and engaging with each other. When I started in term 1 I was looking a head to the skills that I hoped children would be learning by term 4. It is now encouraging to be looking further ahead to the skills that I have not year listed on the rubric that would be beneficial to their talking and engagement with each other.

So what is the difference I have seen in my children?

The norm in my reading groups in term 1 was most of the children would look at the floor. They waited until they were asked a question and then answered the question by speaking to me( the teacher). I struggled with this a lot. But started the journey with the goal being simply to look at each other and greet each other by name when we arrived in our group.

The contrast in term 4 is wonderful. The children in the groups come ready to share and look at each other while they are sharing. I start with a key question sometimes find myself needing to interrupt and ask for a pause in the conversation to redirect or bring the focus to evidence or the original question. Often in reading or maths I now ask a child to summarise and redirect back to what the question was. Often children who are asked to summarise will ask for the original question to be repeated. Children are also challenging each other regularly and are happy to challenge myself as the teacher using phrase like, "I disagree with that because..." or  "Mrs T, I would like to challenge that because before you said... " 

These conversations fill me with delight as it is clear evidence that a child has heard and processed an idea shared by someone else and has  the confidence to voice what they have processed and heard. They are giving feedback on what another child has said.

This is the positive. 

In reflection, there is still so much to do. The educational world is constantly updating and I need to as well. As a team we took some time to share what we would have done at the beginning of the year if we knew what we knew now, what we could have done had lockdown not struck, and what we should have done. 

Woulda

If I could go back to the beginning of the year I would have connected sooner with more experts that I had identified at the first hui. The value in having experts and feedback from the early stages of this journey would have been invaluable. 

Secondly, seeing the world through a different digital lense after distance learning has been implemented has changed the way we connect and added an online aspect I would have liked to have this foresight and understanding to consider how we listen and connect online.

Coulda 

There is always the excuse that I could have done it except that COVID...

so I should leave this space blank. However,  Level 4 Lockdown was both exciting, stressful and stimulating. Designing and updating digital distance learning took most of my attention and passion. This diverted my energy and enthusiasm for developing my Listening Skills Project into a new digital educational age.

Shoulda

There are a million things that I should have done... if only I could boil the ocean and have more time. 

I should have made more videos of our group learning especially during maths and reading to show the progress and group listening skills which the children were practicing in these contexts.

 I should have taught more of these skills during lockdown when we were online and adapted them to an online context. I should have created an online listening page of the site.

So now...

All of those things I should have done, these are now my next steps. Please keep following me and if you haven't already click on the link below to take you to my 'Listening Through Learning Site'.

I would love your feedback and comments so please feel free to comment below or take 10 seconds to click on the feedback form linked to the site.

Nga mihi nui,

Alethea

Presentation

Welcome back to another MIT (Maniakalani Innovative Teacher) blog post. 

Thank you so much for being here and joining this journey.

This post is the culmination of a year's thoughts in action aided by the amazing team and lead by Dorothy Burt. 

Earlier this term in October, I had the privilege of joining the team in Auckland for the Principal's Wananga. This was what we were all waiting for as it was here we would be sharing our inquiry.

Everything we had learnt and processed had to be honed and refined into 6 minutes or twenty 20second slides.

Here is the presentation recorded as presented at the conference:

Slide Link

Please feel free to comment or request any further information. 

I would love to receive feedback and comments from you! 

Nga mihi nui, 

Alethea

Learning Through Listening

Do your students look at you blankly?
Do they speak to you during group sessions and not to each other?
Are they in tune with what you say and don't take each other's ideas seriously? 

These are some of the challenges that I believed needed addressing in the classroom and wanted to create something that would teach children how to engage with each others ideas.

What skills do we expect children to do naturally that could be explicitly taught?

I have created a site that breaks down the individual skills to listening and engagement. This includes the resources and assessments I am developing along with some modelling videos.

You can access the site through the link below:

Learning Through Listening

I would very much appreciate your feedback using the link found at the bottom of each page as I am still developing this resource and would like to make it as helpful and applicable to your classrooms as possible.

Nga mihi nui!

Next Steps

Kia ora readers and colleagues,

I am writing to you from the seat of AirNZ A320 happily masked up and brain buzzing with next steps for my MIT 2020 project. 

I was happy enough to hop on a plane for the first time since our Level 4 lockdown and head over to Auckland for an elongated weekend. 

  

Our small collection of teachers which had been restricted to meeting via google since the beginning of the year were delighted to reunite on the Auckland waterfront. We enjoyed a day of sharing and feedback along with wonderful hospitality from the team at KPMG.

This was just the incentive and reboost that I needed and am very grateful for the ideas and feedback shared by the team.

Learning Through Listening: A Website for Teachers

So I have some next steps which I am currently working through to achieve.:

Create Google Forms for Assessment and Feedback

Sonali shared an assessment which she had transferred into google form. This was a brilliant idea from a teacher perspective because it would be easy to replicate. I or any other teacher could fill it in quite simply once it was created. This could also be easily duplicated and adapted as a student self- assessment. So I am currently creating two google forms using the criteria from the orginal rubric which I designed earlier.

I have also created a feedback form for the site which is accessible at the bottom of each page of the site and can be filled in here.

Set up Google Analytics and Video Group Sessions

I have yet to set up google analytics on the site and video group sessions during reading and maths. These are the current top priorities.

Get the Site out there!

The second major priorty is to promote the site and get it out to teachers in order to gain feedback and to see if it is something that others find useful.

Data and Evidence

Data will be very important for backing this idea. Once the forms are created I need to get the students to self assess. I will also need to scale them on the rubric and compare the data to term 2s data from this year. Data from listening PATs is unlikely to be available until term 4.

 

Keep your eyes peeled for the next post promoting the new site! It may even pop up on your facebook feed! I look forward to your comments and feedback! 

Nga mihi nui,

Alethea

MIT2020: Mission in the Making

What a mission.

Lately, I have been thinking about the missions I have been tasked with or tasked myself with. And missions that others have been tasked with too.

On the weekend, my partner, his brother and I tasked ourselves with the mission of tackling a ridge for the sunrise, up a valley on the West Coast of the South Island.

There are so many parts to a mission, from waking up early, braving pre-dawn swamp darkness, to navigating rain slicked boulder fields and false summits.

I think about Dorothy Burt, the instigator to this MIT journey and her mission to achieve equity for students through connection, devices and ubiquitous learning.

And I think about the mission I chose: to teach listening. 

Kia ora and welcome to my blog where I am journeying through the design process to develop a project on a challenge based idea.  I am one of a team of MIT team (Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) You may have visited some of these posts before. If you are interested use the MIT2020 label to follow the progress of this project on my blog.

It's great to have you here!

Since the last post, my next steps were to record some student voice, create video models of each listening skill ( broken down) and pull all this information together onto a site for teachers to access.

I was grateful for two days of release time to connect with a great bunch of students who gave of their time and energy to help record and share their ideas.

This was the first time I had deliberately recorded students for a teaching video.

It was a pleasure to work with them and to figure out what it really was that I wanted to capture.

Some of the learning gleaned:

• Multiple camera angles make a difference.
• Many takes are required.
• Scripting is important.
• Always plan for more time than required.

This is what I have managed to create so far:

These are the skills that the children and I put together. 

What I need to accomplish for my next steps:

First I need to gather evidence for Analysing and Identifying behaviours.

I plan to video reading sessions and maths session. Then choose a target group of children, take a sample of each video and analyse it to identify when positive listening behaviours occurs. This should complete

the resource in the following section by providing a rubric and data to show trends and hopefully, improvement.

What I need now is to organise my time and prioritise teaching these skills specifically.

I look forward to having some data to share with you soon.

Prototyping #1

Hola y comostas!

Thank you for popping in and being here with me today!
For this post I need you! Yes, you my dear reader...

In the past months I have been working through a project with the incredible MIT ( Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) team to investigate how to actively teach the 'act of deliberate listening' in the classroom. 

This first starts with data. 

To begin my prototype and understand the data I needed to gather I started to break down what listening looked like for me. What had I seen others do? What did people do when they showed they were listening? What did the research have to say?

I categorised the physical 'symptoms' of listening into three categories, physical, verbal and social and emotional.

When considering the minute interactions of a listener and a speaker, I observed that the listener.  If the listener was fully engaged in the idea presented by the speaker, he/she would initiate a continued interaction.

This lead to grouping all the symptoms into responses ( of acknowledgement) and responses that involved an initiation of extending an idea or conversation further.

Here are the 'symptoms' which I gleaned:

Responses of Acknowledgement

Physical

• Looks at person who is speaking.

• Follows different speakers with eyes.

• Facial response present.

• Leans forward or moves to attend.

Verbal

• Responds with talking stems

• Repeats ideas spoken by someone else

• Asks for clarification

• Extends someones idea

• Questions someones idea

Responses with Initiation

Physical

• Uses facial expression to indicate a response or statement.

• Uses a hand or body motion to indicate an idea.

• Follows different speakers and waits for a pause before motioning to speak.

• Pauses after presenting an idea in order for others to respond.

• Pauses when other speakers initiate simultaneously.

• Uses body language or manners to encourage others to speak first.

• Notices when others initiate a response or initiation with body language.

Verbal

• Responds to questions with a full sentence answers.

• Uses talking stems to present an idea or response to a question.

• Speaks in full sentences presenting one idea at a time.

• Speaks to the group.

• Responds to a current idea before presenting a new idea.

• Extends own and others ideas with justification.

• Invites others to respond to the idea they have presented.

Social and Emotional

• Shows patience, includes and recognises those who haven't presented and makes space for them to participate.

The rubric prototype is HERE and is the basis on which I hope to gather data along with using the FORM from the previous post to gather student and teacher voice.

And yes, this is where you come in!
Your experiences and understanding are valuable. Are these symptoms correct? Is this what you notice in conversations? Is this a fair assessment of behaviours? If you were using this as a teacher, colleague or researcher, what would you question or change?

I look forward to your feedback and the exciting challenge of adapting this prototype to your responses.

I hope to see you here again soon!

Updating my Thinking

Kia ora and thank you so much for visiting!

In this post I am sharing some post COVID updates on the adaptions to my thinking and subsequent teaching. I also have the incredible privilege of working with the MIT team (Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) to develop a project on a challenge based idea. ( You may have visited some of these posts before. If you are interested use the MIT2020 label to follow the progress of this project on my blog).

It's great to have you here along for the ride.

This post finds me back at school with a nearly full single cell class of eager learners hungry for engagement, ideas and resources to sink their creative teeth into. But is this learning the same?

No. Needs and human nature remain the same but we as learners and teachers can never be static or we are no longer learners.

In reflection here is my 'meat and potatoes' of the lockdown learning meal:

• Visible teaching and learning is utterly essential
• A learner without the ability to blog is equal to a learner without the ability to use a pencil. 
• Children can accomplish so much without the teacher taking up their valuable time with talking
• Without the means to be self-directed and self motivated a learner accomplishes little.

The subsequent changes I have made to my teaching are in creating more rewindable videos for tasks, acknowledging the self-directed learners and providing a platform ( similar to the lockdown learning lessons) with which they can continue to drive their own learning. And... to try to talk less.

Talk Less, Speak Better, Listen More

Listening, now more than ever, is vital for human connection wether online or in person.

This validates the challenge: Children do not listen to what another child says in an independent group.

Re-iterated, how do we teach children the skills of deliberate listening?

Some interesting thoughts have arisen from looking through online articles and videos. What is most interesting is what is not there, unless I am looking in the wrong place. There are many articles, posts and videos about extended learning conversations, oral language and classroom discussion but little about listening. Julian Treasure, at the end of his TED talk puts forward the pleas for such a skill to be taught in schools.

Julian Treasure in his TED talk shares his acronym R.A.S.A (Receive, Appreciate, Summarise, Ask) a snazzy and easy to remember catch phrase.

The next steps for this project will be to collect the thoughts and views of my students and of others too. If you would like to participate in this survey your anonymous data would be very much appreciated.

                                                                       SURVEY LINK

The survey addresses the questions relating to how we listen and how we know that others are listening to us.

• Do you think that your friends listen to you?
• How do you know?
• Do you think that adults listen to you?
• How do you know?
• How do you feel when someone listens to you?
• When you’re working in a group of children at school, like a reading group or a project do you think that they listen to you?
• Do you think that you listen to others?
• What do you do that shows that you listen to others?

My next goal is to prototype. I feel the pressure of being somewhat behind in this process but also the weight of completing the process well. 

What is it that I am aiming to create?

What is it that is missing from our teaching to enable learners to be confident engaged listeners with each other?

...and...

How do I share this in a way that will be effective?

MIT: Distant Thoughts

Kia ora my lovely readers,

In some strange way I feel so privileged to be riding out a time like this with the affordances I have. With routines out the window and new routines slowly forming, I force myself to avoid rushing into a new agenda flooded with activities to fill space. It's difficult. I already have an agenda filled and I'm looking forward to the weekend!





I know all the right things to do. I know that relationships are vital. I know I have been given this time to love my family. To practice kindness and communication. To 'have the time' to look at someone and listen to them fully. Was it really time that I was lacking? Or is it a lack of discipline and character.

Children know these things too.

They know that they should be kind. They know they should look at someone when they are speaking. They know they should take turns to talk.

Children tell me these things.

However, I wonder how many children will experience this in their own homes over this quarantine period.

So here's the clincher. If they know these things but never practice them. If they know these things but never see them in practice, how will they learn.

Therefore, it is our role as educators to teach them.

Now, how do I do this by distance?

We are always talking about preparing our children for the future. "What will future learning and future careers require?" Suddenly the answer is glaringly obvious: remote offices and distance learning.

So, how does this affect my project?

To recap, since the beginning of the year I have had the privilege to work with a Maniakalani team of teachers given the time and scaffolds to investigate our own challenge or project. This is what I am addressing today. The challenge I am tackling with our students is...

This developed into ...

What I now hope to do is use Google Meet as a platform to practice listening skills with students. Google meet cannot function without turn taking. Social connection is now at a premium.

Next steps:

• Set up google meet with small groups.

• Focus on one goal at a time. This might look like etiquette, turn-taking, watching a persons eyes, making your eyes available by looking at the screen, showing validation, or responding to an idea by repeating it. 

• Re-develop the students listening skills rubric to include online inter and intra personal connections.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below. I look forward to hearing from you. 

Social and Emotional

Kia ora and welcome back to my blog,
If it is the first time you have popped along to check this out it is great to have you here.

What comes to mind when you think about 

social - emotional learning?

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

It is incredible when people come together in groups and give each other the space to share, guided by clear questioning and response. The knowledge and depth of experience that is shared is often rich and usually agreed on. Usually none of this is academic. It may have some relation to the knowledge of the world, shared tacit knowledge but mainly these conversations are highly affected by our emotions. In sharing, these are social. They are brought to the fore by the deepest human need: connection.

When trying to unpack social emotional intelligence it is ridiculously broad. I believe that it is the science of understanding what it is to be human.

How do we feel? Why are we feeling this way? How does this effect how we connect to others? Can I change the way others respond to me by how I act and speak to them?

Social and Emotional intelligence relates to cognitive, physiological and behavioural areas of self.

Some ideas that have been shared by colleagues suggest:

• being able to read the cues, emotions and communication of others both verbal and non-verbal.
• knowing one's self identity that doesn't change and identity that is affected by others.
• Awareness of mindsets and the ability to be open to others
• Ability to present one self in a way that others can relate to 
• Managing our internal dialogue
• compassion vs judgement
• equilibrium: the hauora model - a balance of spiritual, identity etc.

This highlights 'social and emotional learning' as an umbrella term.

What I find interesting is that with most investigation and research someone has come up with the idea before. Similar to ideas I am investigating currently are 'Talk Moves' and ideas related to social and emotional intelligence in 'CASEL' (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) which categorises SEL competencies.

What we strive to instil as educators in our children is pro-social behaviour - understanding others and affecting the behaviours of others in peer to peer relationships. In other words, my behaviours related to others affects how others relate to me.

Learning pro-social behaviours is not necessarily linear. Life isn't either. We learn things in many ways and contexts. We develop facets of ourselves as they are brought to our attention. If we had a linear scale of development of behaviour many people would not be capable of leading adult lives.

Both pro-social behaviour and personal awareness  develops from or within a 'space' of competency or confidence in ones ability to accomplish something. Children need to be given the competency to say, negotiate, talk and listen. This builds their self- awareness and self- management or faith and depth in themselves.

Everything is integrated. 

We are educating children to be humans not just academics.

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

Something Needs to Change

"Change in attitude is the key to all positive and long lasting change."

Photo by Bluehouse Skis on Unsplash

What is it that you can change and improve on?

Kia ora again readers,

On Friday, we had the first teacher only day during the school term that I can remember!
Kelly Sheppard came in for our first PD session with all the staff at Hornby Primary.

With the short DMIC course which I attended last year I had a head start with accepting and understanding the heart of the DMIC pedagogy.



Kelly was emphatic that this way of learning is just mathematics. We might identify this pedagogy as DMIC in teacher jargon but for the children in the classroom this is maths. Here are some thoughts that I took away:

• Results published from 2018 the national Monitoring study found that in maths 27% of Māori students where achieving at standard in year 8. Pasifika results for year 8 is at 24%. NZ pakeha students sit at around 44%.

• What is deficit theorising? It is focusing on the negative and identifying what is not there. (ie. This child is cannot count to 20. They have no ___ from home.) It is up to us to make sure that we are doing something about this. It is easy to focus on the negative.

• It is often difficult for the Pakeha children to understand that they have a culture. They see ethnicity as a culture. It is not. Good teaching is about identifying with a child's own culture. Who they are at home and their collective knowledge and experience. There is such a disconnect between home life and school life especially for Pasifika students. But we see this reflected in all students. Who are they in themselves? What is their culture and their knowledge that they can involve in their learning and in their maths?

• As teachers it is our values that affect our children's learning. It is also values that impact on their learning. We need to teach children the skills to work with anybody. Teaching must be inclusive - not exclusive of anybody. It must be culturally sustaining for the students in your classroom. The students should be informing the next step of teaching.

• Use the cultural narrative from the Taumutu Runanga to develop rich maths tasks.

• To be good at maths you need to be good at mathematical practices. Instead of saying 'You got it right!' say 'You used these good mathematical practices.'

• When working out in a group - every single person in your group needs to be able to explain - if you don't understand, ask a question.

• Choose the group that used the highest order thinking to share second. (ie. Use the drawing and additive thinking first and then get a group to share their multiplicative thinking.)

• The whole group comes up when sharing - group accountability.

• Ask: whose responsible for your learning? If a child is sitting there being a passenger say: 'Your group is doing this. Today I want you to share so what are you going to do and ask your group to help prep your sharing.

• As a group is presenting they stop after each step and ask: are there any questions?

• The  teacher needs to facilitate this. Stop - ask the class. If there are no questions the teacher says, 'Oh yay! No questions so everyone understands... so can you repeat back what they said in your own words... ? Ok I'm glad you're clarifying and your're not sure. This means we can all learn from this.

• Use a misconception as a teaching point. Prep the group first. "You have a misconception I'm going to get you to share because we need to change this and we can all learn from this."

• Teach at the end - If all the students solve by addition teach them how to multiply.

• A cultural problem is about one child's life outside of school.

• Kids need to be engaged in productive struggle - raise the expectation for learning - avoid any dependency on the teacher. You know you are doing it well when you can stand back and listen when the children are doing group work.

• Teach only half the class the other half work on an independent task. Set the norms- one pen. The thinking and strategy needs to be talked about before being written down. Group activity - only 15 mins  - large group discussion. The teaching time is the most important at the end.

• For senior independent tasks - then the children individually need to solve the same problem that they did the day before and record it in multiple ways in the maths books - it is important that they are quiet and have a purposeful task that supports the teaching from the weeks lesson.

• You're not just telling the teacher anymore - its a collective environment. When students first start to share record on the board and clarify - this shows the students what is expected and what recording an idea looks like.

• Get the children to have a discussion first - do they all understand the strategy that they are using. What strategy do they want to record and how are they going to do that? Can they all explain it now?

These are just some thoughts that I took away from the session. If you have experienced DMIC before or just have some ideas or feedback to offer please share your thoughts in the comments below. 

Kind regards,

Alethea

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

Crazy 8s!

If anything was possible what 8 crazy things would you create or influence?

Welcome back to another design thinking process blog!

All of these posts in this series with the MIT2020 label have been inspired by the great leadership and instruction of Maniakalani and are designed to document my journey as a member of the MIT2020 team.

The final task for our hui was to generate solutions to create for the identified challenge. We did this using the Crazy 8 system designed to get thinking on the page and overcome blockages ( eg. writers block).

We were given 8 sections on a page in which we would brainstorm 8 ways to action a solution to our challenge.

In reflection most of my 'actions' were the pre-process to the ideas for a digital tool that I could create. I also believe that any great ideas that I would wish to create would be clearly identified through further research. In this light I totally missed the intent of the exercise as none of my solutions were either crazy or even solutions. I also only did 6!

After we had brainstormed our ideas, we all gave feedback to each others ideas by putting blue sticky dots on the ideas that we liked or thought would be most successful in the context. We then went around a second time and identified the one best current solution.

It was a validating and a worthy exercise to get feedback and to 'dot plot' the popularity of our ideas.

As this was the final task, I want to say a big thank you to the amazing MIT team. Thank you for your feedback, ideas and encouragement. It  was incredible to meet, work, think and relax with you!

Can't wait till next time!

He Tangata

He aha te mea nui o te ao, he tangata he tangata he tangata.

Kia ora and welcome back to another MIT blog post reflecting on the design thinking process from the previous weekend.

As referred to in the above whakatauki people are always the most important thing on the planet. It is the children and families that are at the heart of this project and it is the people who surround that can make a difference to the challenges and issues that we face within schools and communities. Often knowing the right people to contact can open possibilities never before considered.

It was in this frame of mind that the next step in our team's process  was formed.

Who was going to be a part of our project?

I began with the children and the people I was closest to at school whose leadership and support I valued. I then added any experts in the area of social-emotional intelligence that I had contact with. 

LET'S GO BIGGER

After finishing off our list, Dorothy asked us to go bigger. Who were the greats, who, if we could contact would be able to provide unimaginable resourcing or information? I chose Brene Brown, John Hattie and Jordan Peterson.

REMOVE

The next step was to remove someone/s. Perhaps people who had possibly been involved before or were too 'close to home'.

And finally to ADD SOMEONE NEW

This was the easy part. As team members shared their thoughts and who they included new ideas and contacts sprang to mind and got quickly written down. 

I'm excited to follow up with the contacts that I have identified and look forward to combining knowledge and bouncing ideas together.

If you know someone that might be able to add some ideas or knowledge or would like to contribute please message me in the comments below!

Thank you so much for reading and sharing this journey with me!

Kind regards,

Alethea

HMW - How Might We..?

Kia ora! This is another blog post in a series of MIT ( Maniakalani Innovative Teacher) posts outlining the design thinking process for my project.  Welcome aboard or welcome back!

So, up to this point my challenge was clearly defined with the target group at the heart of the challenge. The next step was how to make this challenge an opportunity.

This is where the HMW ( How Might We...) process came in. And doing this process with the team allowed me to view all of our challenges as opportunities for design.

Our challenges with their corresponding data and explanations were posted around the learning space and we all shared 'how might we...' suggestions of post its for each persons challenge.

This became a wealth of ideas to follow up on and spark possible solutions to create. As Dorothy called it, our challenge covered in post its was now gift.

This is my poster with it's edits and thinking clearly visible filled with the colourful 'gifts' from my team.

Thank you for joining me on the journey and reading this post. If you would like to find out more about HMWs check out this Design Kit link here.

Empathy

Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash

Empathy

Empathy is the visceral experience of another person's thoughts and feelings from his or her point of view, rather than from one's own. Empathy facilitates prosocial or helping behaviors that come from within, rather than being forced, so that people behave in a more compassionate manner. Psychology Today

Welcome back to another post relating my experiences of the first MIT2020 hui of the year. It's good to have you here. 

In the previous post I referred to a role play of Dorothy as a frustrated customer bringing her problem to a designer to seek a solution. As part of that role play and in order to create an accurate diagnosis of the issue, empathy for the customer's frustration and need was required.

The MIT team partnered up again with our buddies from the 5 Why process to create a role play allowing us to experience our identified challenge from the point of view of the learner or parent.

Not only did we gain significant empathy fro our colleagues but really connected through this process to the child, teacher or parent at the centre of our selected challenges.

A role play maths session where I am steam rolled into presenting a wrong answer with my 'maths buddy' even though I have appropriate knowledge to share.

A role play where I am trying to explain to a Pasifika mother how to play a learning game at home in the first parent teacher meeting of the year. ( ...while being regularly interrupted by a child - the teddy bear.)






Thank you for reading this post! I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comment thread below.

Tweak tweak...

Kia ora and welcome again to another reflection on the design process for my MIT (Maniakalani Innovative Teacher) project. 

Please feel free to add your thoughts and shared experiences in the comments below.

I remember reading an incredible book called 'On Writing Well' by William Zinsser. Along with many other gems, one impacting idea was the amount of words one needed to strip away from multiple drafts in order to achieve the clearest and best iteration of an idea.

In role play this was demonstrated to us by our lovely Maniakalni hosts in our recent gathering. Dorothy acted as a frustrated customer sharing her challenge with a 'designer'. Her problem was inundated with emotions, examples and details that clouded the root cause of her frustration.

This lead to our next step in the design thinking process which was further stripping back our challenge and tweaking the wording to present a strong and stable idea that would lead to a clear solution.

In slides 2 through to 5 below you can see the various iterations of my challenge.