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.

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Something Needs to Change

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

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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

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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

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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.

The scene was set...

Welcome to my blog! 

I hope you have been enjoying some of the previous posts and if not please feel free to have a squiz and add any thoughts that you think are relevant in the comments below. This post is another in a series following my MIT ( Maniakalani Innovative Teacher) journey through the design thinking process.

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

The scene was set. It was another one of those parent community meetings. We gathered in the old school hall and the board chair opened that meeting. We were to talk about all the problems the school was having and ask some hard questions and offer potential solutions or ideas.

I was a lawyer. Born and raised in the community my children attended the school, however only the absolute best education would be sufficient for my children.

The problems the school was facing came up on the screen. Parents around me from all walks of life pulled them apart. How come the school wasn't doing anything about these problems? What on earth did some of these mean? How come the teacher's weren't doing enough? What kind of education were the children getting? Why were some of these issues even valid?

The questions were valid. Some of them were harsh. Some of them represented the cultural views of the parents.

The picture was clear. The wording and justification for the schools challenges needed some serious justification if they were to be accepted by a diverse community.

This role play was the opening session for our group of MIT teachers in our first hui of the year. The problems presented by the 'chair' were our challenges that we had submitted. And the parents asking the difficult questions were ourselves, the teachers, with specific roles given to us to play.

This was a serious eye opener to how a community might respond outside of 'teacher bubble'. It allowed me to reconsider my challenge through different eyes.
Did my statement even make sense?
Could I word it differently?
If I was to be questioned by a member of the public, how would my challenge stand up?