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.

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?

Why, why, why, why, why?

Kia ora!

This post is another in a series following my MIT ( Maniakalani Innovative Teacher) journey through the design thinking process. If it is the first time you have visited this blog please come along for the ride. I would also value your thoughts and feedback, so please feel welcome to add any ideas to the comments below.

The Five Whys

After creating a proposal outlining the challenge impacting achievement, I was partnered up with the lovely Jo Gormly to look below the surface and investigate the root causes beneath this issue.

The challenge with its following flow of questions is listed below.

Reach for the Moon

Kia ora! Thank you for checking out this blog! 

Last year I was given the incredible opportunity to attend a DFI ( Digital Fluency Intensive) being a teacher within the Maniakalani schools group. This subsequently lead to applying for the 2020 MIT ( Maniakalani Innovative Teacher )  opportunity, an initiative designed to encourage innovative thinking and creating of new 'tools' within education.

Each applicant was required to propose a problem that they had identified within teaching and learning.

My proposal centered around learning through listening in independent groups.




I noticed that as teachers we often grouped children to share and learn together. However, when observing groups in my classroom I noticed that the children's ability to learn from each other was often impeded by social status and a lack of attention or value placed on what another child was saying.

Defining the challenge that impacted achievement took four re-writes to hone and clarify. It now reads:

 

The following deck of slides shares some of my initial thoughts around how I might address the social connection among students in a learning group.



Thank you for reading this post. If anything resonated with you or if you have ideas to contribute to developing a solution please feel free to comment below. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Nga mihi nui