Action - Judy Imamudeen

Who Cares? Why I can’t “take” it anymore!

By Judy Imamudeen | March 30, 2024 | Comments 1 comment

Last week, I sat through student interviews for our school scholarship program. Students could win scholarship awards for Learner Profile, the ATL’s, and Action. It was fascinating to hear young 6-8 year old children summarize what they believe were some of their best qualities and why they do what they do. But the learner profile award was the most telling. And learner profile trait that made me cringe the most when I heard a student talk about it was caring. Caring? I hear you say. I know. It’s a surprise. Let me explain.

First of all, whenever I hear the students talk about learner profiles, it reflects greatly on the teachers, aspects of the school culture, and family values. Children mirror the learning community.

I heard numerous students talk about how they do caring things because they hope others will appreciate them and extend care back to them. In fact, what they described was being generous in order to initiate reciprocity. I recognize that this concept of reciprocity is apparent in my host country’s culture. People often refer to this as Guanxi. Western cultures refer to it as Quid-Pro Quo. I’m just not sure how I feel about it.

Several years ago, Adam Grant wrote a really interesting book called Give and Take. In the book, he makes a compelling argument for why doing good is not only smart, but should be our goal. Generous and caring people in studies demonstrate better life outcomes, such as greater career success, improved relationships, and health outcomes. Even though he may enumerate many ways doing good is beneficial, that should not be why we are caring and kind.

I couldn’t agree more.

Now, I don’t want to be a book spoiler, but Grant explains how people may look like “givers” but are actually “takers”. He uses the example of Kenneth Lay and his abuse of power that ultimately bankrupted the company and left his employees jobless and without pensions. But on the outside, he looked like a “good guy” because he was charitable. I think this is a prime example of using generosity for optics and is the danger of what can happen when “caring” is miscommunicated and reinforced in our society. Clearly, this man had an intellectual understanding of kindness and generosity but not the emotional intelligence to be able to demonstrate ethical behavior and true responsibility for his employees.

We need to do better at educating our children’s hearts, or this pattern repeats itself in our society.

IB is supposed to be the framework that can adapt to any context in which it finds itself, whether a public or private institution or the values within a nation or town. We are flexible and respectful in how we approach curriculum design. Although I think it’s important to navigate the curriculum through these complex lenses, I think the learner profile is where we might need to take a stand. What do I mean by that? I mean, that has a particular definition of what it means to be caring, and guess what?-It’s not a quid-pro-quo protocol. Take a look:

As you can see, we don’t do caring things because we expect good things to happen to us in return. It’s not about filling our spiritual coffer with good karma or our bank account with money. We do good things because we want a better and more peaceful world. Caring simply for the sake of being caring has no benefit other than knowing that we are helping the world be a better place. Money isn’t the goal. Service is. And we must do that in our schools by explicitly developing empathy-building skills. I recognize that we may be swimming against society’s current paradigm, but it matters. It’s worth the effort. Don’t you agree?

So, if you are an educator who has been promoting the status quo of a “taker” (ie: I give so I can get) in sheep’s clothing, take a moment to reflect on where that type of behavior leads to our society. Let’s go back to the definition of this Learner Profile and refocus CARING on using our empathy skills to inspire our young learners to create systems, products and services that make a difference in our future.

**If you have any great resources that help others to make the connection between our minds and hearts, please share them in the comments below. Sharing is Caring, right?!

Judy Imamudeen

Developing learners as leaders is my joy! I am committed and passionate International Baccaluearate (IB) educator who loves cracking jokes, jumping on trampolines and reading books. When I’m not playing Minecraft with my daughter, I work on empowering others in order to create a future that works for everyone.

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A Difficult Habit Worth Developing (#PYPCBookClub)

By Judy Imamudeen | November 6, 2021 | Comments 0 Comment

Our PYP Coordinator book club just finished reading The Coaching Habit by Micheal Bungay Stanier and it was the simplist book to digest, but hardest to put into practice. Coaching for professional development isn’t about solving the problem-it’s about focusing on the person themselves in order to support them to become their own problem solvers. And through his 7 Essential Questions, people learn how to troubleshoot their issues and engineer their own solutions.

Sounds brillant right? Only 7 easy questions-Piece of cake!……

Except it hasn’t been. It has been confronting. I have learned that I come into meetings, ready to give advice, to share my wisdom, but it’s not actually helping teachers become better PYP educators. He reminds us that “the problem isn’t with advice…it’s when advice giving is our default response”. Very true.

So, it’s made me reflect and ask whether, as a PYP coordinator, am I Modeler of Inquiry or Inquirer Role Model? In other words, do I lead with an inquiry stance or do I just talk about learning through inquiry? There is a difference. You see, the longer you are engaged in the IB, the clearer it becomes that the PYP isn’t just a Framework, it’s a Mindset. The Learner Profile isn’t something that we teach kids, it’s an aspirational way of being. I think Jennifer Abrams says it best:

“One cannot lead effectively without modeling what it means to be a professional, and it’s also important to model what it means to be changing and growing oneself as well as stretching one’s learning edges and developing. Leaders must walk the talk.” from Stretching Your Learning Edges

Thus, as a pedagogical leader, I have to demonstrate our approach as lifelong learners with my actions and words. Clearly I may be able to explain how inquiry “works” but I need to work on developing my curiousity muscles, and keep my mind open to other possibilities when involved in interactions.

Sigh.

Now do you see why this “habit” might be a bit tricky when the leadership paradigmn is that we are supposed to have all the answers? That myth is simply not accurate. And apparently, not effective.

So let me share with you why advice giving is garbage when it comes to coaching. Questioning is the gold. (PS. this is also true for teacher-student interactions, and not only relevant to those of us in leadership titles).

My advice might be for the wrong problem.

When others come to you with their “problems”, the first thing they share is often not the heart of their issue. They need to talk out the issue so they can figure out what is at the heart of their challenge. It is through questioning that they are able to distill what is the REAL problem. Once we have discovered, “What’s the real challenge here for you?”, then addressing it becomes more efficient and potent.

Advice giving is disempowering

This hurt the most, but he’s absolutely spot on. As I reflected on his ideas about helping vs. “being helpful”, it made me realize that when I offer up my ideas as solutions, it develops a power dyanmic that creates co-dependency and it sends the message that “you can’t figure this out by yourself”. If I want to develop authentic teacher agency, then I have to provide opportunities to boost their confidence and give them ownership is solving their own problems. Makes sense, right? So when I drill down to the real challenge and I ask “And What Else?” (The AWE question), they have an opportunity to witness their own capacity to discover the possibilities that exist as solutions while taking on personal responsibility for the outcome. Much, much better, right?

Reflection is THE practice we are cultivating.

All schools are learning organizations, but in the IB being a life long learner is a practice that we wish to embody into our schools. Life long learning is not only seeking knowledge, but reflecting on that knowledge and who we are becoming as we strive to learn more.

Micheal Bungay Stanier shared something in the book that I believe is the genuine reason why reflection as a practice is so powerful:

People don’t really learn when you tell them something.

They don’t even really learn when they do something.

The start learning, start creting new neural pathways, only when they have a chance to recall and reflect on what just happened.

So, as I think about WHO WE ARE as an organization, our goal is always to encourage reflection. Reflection is a habit that I, myself, work to cultivate, but I also wish to develop in others. When I ease off giving advice and instead lean into questioning, “What was most useful here for you?”, I am developing the larger goals of our IB programmes and truly helping others to be leaders of their own learning.

Although this blog post serves as a reflection tool, the real testimony to this habit change comes when I…..

Choose: the question that prompts the reflection in others

Act: in a supporting way to honor the learning and development of others.

Reflect: on how this practice is changing me, as a person, the teachers I support, and the students with whom they serve.

My parting advice to you (Ironic, I know)

The book isn’t lengthy, but starting with curiousity can be a big ask for those of us who haven’t developed “the coaching habit”. Besides reading the book, I would encourage you to watch his Ted Talk on how to tame one’s “advice monster”. No matter where we are and who we serve in education, I believe if we can stay curious longer, we can make a greater impact.

What is an #IBEducation? Developing Moral Imagination in the #EnhancedPYP

By Judy Imamudeen | August 17, 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

Recently an educator asked me what is the difference between the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and a “normal school”. I really stumbled in describing the value of an IB education.

Yes, we do “transdisciplinary learning” with the use of our framework to develop conceptual understandings, but there’s plenty of international schools that attempt to mimic our integrated approach to the subject matter. To me, that isn’t what makes us stand out.

Then I thought about how we are shifting our views to reflect the changing nature of the student-teacher relationship, with having “agency” as the center of learning. However, there are many great schools out there who are developing a more personalized approach to developing content knowledge and skills. I’m not sure if we really have “the corner office” on that one either.

After more reflection, I settled on moral imagination.

Morals?–that’s a word you don’t often hear these days, as it seems old fashioned, harkening back to a time of “purity and goodness”. Perhaps it conjures up some religious connotation that reeks of absolutes and “thou shall nots” as we try to discern “right” from “wrong”. So it is no wonder why this word “moral” has gone by the wayside as something worth promoting in our secular education systems. With this in mind, just because morals aren’t taught in schools doesn’t mean that this black and white thinking doesn’t exist. In fact, probably because we don’t address it, it has become dangerously polarizing, particularly in our politics. Hence the reason why we need to add imagination to our morality.

When you think back to the inception of the International Baccalaureate (IB), its mission to develop “inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect”, came in response to atrocities witnessed around the world such as in World War II. In the early days of crafting the PYP, the curriculum writers were heavily influenced by the progressive ideas of many educational philosophists. Consider the words of Earnest Boyer, whose ideas shaped the model behind our transdisciplinary themes:

Today, not only has this commitment to teach virtue before knowledge dramatically declined, but we now feel uncomfortable even talking about such matters. It’s all right these days to talk about academic standards, but it’s not all right, we’re told, to talk about ethical and moral standards.

And yet if history has taught us anything at all, it’s taught us that knowledge unguided by an ethical and moral compass is more dangerous than ignorance itself. The British philosopher George Steiner defined the challenge this way: “We now know,” Steiner said, “that a man can read Goethe in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert at sundown, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning.

What grows up inside “literate civilization,” Steiner asks, that seems to prepare it for barbarism? What grows up, of course, is information without knowledge, knowledge without wisdom, and competence without conscience.

Excerpt from The Basic School, by Earnest Boyer, 1995

When you consider his words, you can appreciate the depth of thinking and intention that went into creating the PYP. To think that we just do “concept-based learning through an inquiry approach” is really missing the point and value an IB education.

Recently I listened to an interview with Kerry Kennedy in the audiobook Power Moves by Adam Grant. She talked about her work in teaching human rights and empowering students, not only with the skills to become advocates for social justice issues but the motivation to be agents of change. She understands how important it is for young people to develop empathy so that this next generation can transform how power is wielded and how problems can be solved using “moral imagination”.

So what does this term mean?-In the book, Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics , Mark Johnson explains that “We human beings are imaginative creatures, from our most mundane acts of perception all the way up to our most abstract conceptualization and reasoning. Consequently, our moral understanding largely depends on our…metaphors and other imaginative structures…which give us alternative viewpoints and concepts from which to evaluate the merits of a particular moral position. They make it possible for us to envision the possible consequences of a proposed course of action, such as how other people are affected, how it might change our relationships, and what new possibilities it might open up (or close off) concerning how we may grow.” When I read this, I began to appreciate the Learner Profile and how it helps to shape our students into developing the skills necessary to examine issues through a variety of perceptual lens. It is the blend of our “essential elements” which craft the faculty of moral imagination.

So how can we amplify this as we look to “enhance” our PYP programs? When I consider how we look at developing “agency”, it’s more than considering students’ ability to self-regulate their learning, it is the chance to develop their voice as a citizen and a contributor to our humanity. We need to provide opportunities to support this as we consider our students’ understanding of complex issues, encouraging the practice of courage so that they can “be the change that you want to see in the world”. We need to show them examples of young people who are challenging the status quo, whether it is about gun violence, climate change or equity in education. In this way, they can perceive possibilities and really begin to embody the true sense “agency”. And, in my heart, I hope it can transform our traditional views plagued by this dualistic thinking to create thinkers who can rumble in the grey-area of life to create new answers to old problems. In this way, our PYP curriculum will truly be “enhanced”.

Judy Imamudeen

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Becoming “Educated”: How to Give Up Control and Gain True Power

By Judy Imamudeen | May 25, 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

I just turned the last page of the book, Educated by Tara Westover, an engrossing read about a girl who struggled with her “homeschooling” by her fundamentalist Mormon family and pursued a formal college education. I was deeply touched by her internal conflict to find herself in the midst of the incessant drone of her upbringing to follow a path of a “righteous” compliant woman who remains ignorant of the world and tolerant of abuse. And, although her story has a backdrop of extremism, there are many parallels that many of us can relate to. Think about this quote for a minute:

“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

As I ponder this quote, not only can I see the connection between roles and power in my family dynamics but also in our educational system. Most of us have been brought up by the “Shoulds”, an unrelenting group of people who we have given our power over to. We have been socially engineered, and they influence how we design and navigate our lives. And now, as educators, we are presented with a challenge to create agency in our students, something that many of us never had a direct experience of as a child. This paradigm-shifting requires a deep examination of our beliefs about education and what it means to be “educated”.

One of the turning points for Tara Westover was when she read Isiah Berlin’s essays about Positive and Negative Liberty, in which she came to recognize that personal freedom and political freedom are interwoven. And when I say political freedom, I am not talking about Democrats vs. Republicans or Labour vs. Conservative parties, it is broader than that: the ability to choose and exercise one’s values and beliefs in society.

To coerce a man is to deprive him of freedom–freedom from what? Almost every moralist in human history has praised freedom. Like happiness and goodness, like nature and reality, the meaning of this term is so porous that there is little interpretation that it seems able to resist…… Men are largely interdependent, and no man’s activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in anyway. `Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows’; the liberty of some must depend on the restraint of others. Two Concepts of Liberty, Isiah Berlin

power As we move further away from our “totalitarian approach” of teacher-directed learning and transition into more student-led learning, it may appear that our role as a teacher is becoming irrelevant. That ‘Freedom for the pike is death to the minnows’, in which empowering students to be self-directed diminishes the need for teachers altogether, especially with the technology that is out there. But I disagree. As we provide for more opportunities for students to determine where the content takes them in their learning journey, our true power lies in the craft of empowering them to manage themselves wisely. So, on the surface, it looks like we are giving up control, but in actuality, when we are eliciting more student voice, choice, and ownership, we are amplifying our influence and consequently we need to develop more skillfulness in the practices that shape and promote agency:

Fostering aspiration. Cultivating a vision that is orientated in inspiring others to follow their interests and solve problems that seem impossible.
Reflective Conversation. Having discussions that lead students to think deeper, beyond the “what” and more about the “why”.
Feedback. Appreciating that there are levels of quality and students understand where they stand in order to feel empowered to take the next step.
Seeing Systems. Developing the classroom as a living system so that they recognize what they are teaching each other. And then what is the awareness of the larger context in which we’re operating in beyond our classroom?
Actions Matter. Reminding them that you always have a choice; even inaction is an action–a choice to do nothing is still something, so make better choices.

I think all of us can agree that in the midst of our shifting paradigm in education, our knowledge of content is less important and instead, our knowledge of our craft is more highly valued. When I think about professional development for educators, there are 3 things that we have to get particularly good at: Motivation, Feedback, and Awareness.

I think honing our ability to motivate students is a necessary component of our craft. The focus of “classroom management” is becoming less to do with bending the children to our will but more about helping them to sustain their learning through practical and organized systems in our classroom. No more “I’m done” because they appreciate that there is another step along their learning path to take.

Hence, developing real acumen with giving timely and effective feedback is another area for developing expertise. Knowing when to say less yet ask more can be a real talent. Using the ancient wisdom of Socrates to dig deep with questioning is an art of revealing understandings and misconceptions to truly coach students to their next level. Needless to say, teaching students how to engage in this process with each other is just as vital. When we recognize the relational quality of learning, it goes without saying that conversations matter and students need to learn how to communicate ideas and opinions thoughtfully.

So it goes to reason, self-awareness and social-awareness are the driving forces that make education worth pursuing. When we come into an understanding of our own beliefs and behaviors and take action on them for the betterment of our world, that is truly a life worth living. Creating self-mastery involves appreciating the recesses of our minds and the caverns of our heart, and recognizing the consequence it may have on others is another layer of complexity that is worth learning. Now the “why” can be extending into the “how”, creating a meaningful impact on our relationships and communities. To foster this is a great honor that is bestowed upon us as educators. We should not take this lightly and should endeavor to become proficient in it. Though, of all the areas of our craft, this might be the hardest one to master, since it requires an equal amount of our own personal development as it does professional development. As the saying goes, “You can’t teach what you don’t know.” So we are standing elbow to elbow, right along with our students, as we become masters of our own emotion and influence.

To that end, we now must consider what it means to be a teacher, a true leader of learning, a role model of curiosity and open-mindedness. As our roles change, we gain insight and clarity into the value and purpose of education. We no longer need to stand with clenched fists but instead open palms in order to evolve our notions of learning and expand our reach of the classroom. In giving power to the voice of children, may we find our own in the process.

Judy Imamudeen

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What’s the Best that Could Happen? Using a Trans-Articulation Approach to Designing a Mission-Driven Programme of Inquiry (#PYP)

By Judy Imamudeen | January 13, 2019 | Comments 1 comment

Where do good ideas come from? From a lot of bad ones, I think. We have to experiment and be willing to get “messy” in order to challenge ourselves. We have to be vulnerable. And, so I am sharing a very rough draft of some new thinking that I am exploring when it comes to our Programme of Inquiry.

Last week, I meant to work on my Google Training series, but instead, I got the notion about how to rethink our Program of Inquiry with Future Thinking. Inspired, I started sketching out possible approaches. Eventually, I created a Google Doc and started thinking about how I might map out the Programme of Inquiry (POI) based on the big WHY of a school’s mission. That became my starting line.

Excuse Me While I Make a Point

Pardon my digression.

Have you noticed that a lot of schools are really vague and general about their Mission? I think the standard practice of trying to distill our mission into marketing taglines makes it harder to define our success as a school. For example: Inspire. Challenge. Empower.

Inspired to do what? Challenging doing what? Empowering to do what? In my mind, these taglines create a state of “vanilla”, in which your school is, at best, average, instead of being a unique community of learning. I think this vagueness provides an incomplete map of why our school is so vital to the overall landscape of education. Not just in our city, but in the world. We need to think bigger than our school bubble.

Back to the “Start”

Since I was present at our school’s recent Visioning session, I am aware of all the lovely conversations with staff, parents and students about “What’s the Best that Could Happen?” for our 5-year plan. Sustainability was a major theme that came out of those discussions and is a part of our strategic plans. Thus, I feel that our curriculum’s goal should be driven by what a school wants to become–the future they hope to build in 5 years.

The 5-year plan now becomes a living document, as our curriculum can actualize the potential within our community. Sustainability, as a collective desire of the stakeholders, is going to be the “Rome” to which all roads lead to. In fact, it’s not a road, it’s a 4-lane highway, in which the Sustainability Compass comprises the lanes in which our curriculum will drive: Nature, Economy, Society and Well-being. What’s cool about this is that it’s been mapped against the UN’s Sustainability Goals which helps to promote them.

Sign Post #1: Guiding Conceptual Themes

Before looking at the POI, I want you to notice in the POI that I have included a grade level “Guiding Concept” that came from out of the Enhanced PYP discussions. Although I think of this as the tool for coherency and alignment, I love how Lisa Verkerk refers to it as the “red thread” that weaves units together. That’s a beautiful metaphor that describes how grade-level units have an overall conceptual theme that navigates the direction of each transdisciplinary theme’s inquiry. In this way, it makes it easier to map out the sequencing of units, because you consider which unit needs to come first in its understanding and then decide which one is the hardest, to help you to designate the order by conceptual understanding.

Sign Post #2: Layout

Sarah Osborne introduced me to another way of setting up the POI which has helped me to observe patterns of articulation of the descriptors within a transdisciplinary theme. When you just tilt this document on its side, sort of speaking, you get a whole new perspective on your Programme of Inquiry. Gaps begin to glare.

Although this is not a complete POI, once completed, it is a thing of beauty to see how coherent and infused it is deep conceptual understanding.

Sign Post #3: Central Ideas

I have a lot of strong opinions about central ideas which you may already be aware of if you read the blog post: Central Ideas: The Good, The Bad and The Messy. How the Primary Years Program Can Rethink and Define Them. However, I have to thank 25-year Reggio veteran Marianne Valentine for helping me to consider how very broad central ideas are important for play-based learning as it opens up for more personalized inquiry and evolving your role as a teacher into a researcher. So, with that in mind, I have some central ideas that are succinct for a reason. Although I cringe when I read central ideas that sound more like slogans (ex: Ideas revel possibilities), they can be powerful tools in allowing certain units to go into a variety of directions and have their place in a POI.

Sign Post #4: Solution-Focused

I am really inspired by the work of Glenn Hayres, Jen Friske and Lynn Cuccaro with their diligence in writing units of inquiry that are solution-focused in directing a POI to create problem-solvers as students. I love this intention and I think it amplifies agency when we not only bring the world’s problems to the children’s attention but empower them into action. No doom and gloom. We can cope with hope. (Cheesy, I know, but couldn’t resist.)

However, this is a skillful endeavor, and I am still working on developing this skill. But I like a challenge and enjoy giving it a try.

Before you peek at the document, I have another POI that is following this approach. Very much a draft! And the one below that is another POI I created as a warm-up for the Enhancements. It’s an “old” way of thinking about a POI, but I go back to it to steal ideas and reference it to see if this purpose-driven POI is really any different from past ones I have created.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mQRFkpM8Z8V2KwRqvnFX294sm5dWY8g7dIkenP0oeck/edit?usp=sharing

This is a work in progress, clearly. I still have some “Future Building” to work on. But I am sharing this raw POI skeleton so you can start thinking about how your school can use these features in creating a POI template that is motivated with bigger ambitions than covering content in order to prepare students for MYP. One thing I have yet to do is to collaborate–something that is really necessary with designing a POI. You need lots of perspectives and ideas to tap into the genius and experience of others. Not necessarily with the whole staff, but definitely with the right people, can be exciting and fun.

Looking Back at the Map

Because I believe that our written curriculum is a major contributing factor to the ethos and culture within a school, I feel that a well-articulated POI is foundational for dynamic learning and teaching within a school. When this is fully fleshed out, I will have to filter this POI through that the school’s bigger “Why” and whether it will support our school’s goals. We always have to be challenging our POI. Furthermore, on paper this POI is in theory. When these units are taught, that is the really telling sign and the one that matters–What learning came out of this? What was its impact? We’d have to reflect and modify when necessary.

My hope is that your heart is leaping out of your chest with the possibility of how awesome your school can become when you have a written curriculum that is mission-driven and coherent. I wish for all of our schools to ask themselves What’s the Best that Can Happen?

In my mind, silence is accepting the status quo. Please challenge and extend my thinking in the comments below.

Judy Imamudeen

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#Inquiry in the #PYP: From Paper to Practice: 5 Approaches for Provocations (that “Stick”)

By Judy Imamudeen | June 9, 2018 | Comments 1 comment

Even though we all use ‘the framework’, we have all sorts of curriculums in our schools. Some schools use the PYP Scope and Sequences, others use their national curriculums and yet others look at curriculum like a buffet- take a bit of AERO Standards, some of this from the Common Core and a portion of NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards). (Nevermind that most schools don’t even acknowledge any Technology Standards) Whatever approach you take to the “Written Curriculum”, you have to bridge what you put on paper with what is the “Taught Curriculum” is going to look like and how on Earth are you going to let student agency influence it.

This sort of tension is what I am really thinking about and concerned with–how are we going to shift our thinking about the “Written Curriculum” being the driver into it being the “map” that we can use to go on divergent paths created by student’s interests. And I think solid provocations are the “starting line” from which are learning journey begins. Although I have written about provocations before, I wanted to come at from a different angle from the ideas presented from the book, Made to Stick. (I am a huge fan of the writing of Dan and Chip Heath). Because at the heart of a provocation, we want it to leave an indelible mark and make a real impact on students’ thinking in order to create action and authentic agency. They would call this type of learning “sticky”. (Don’t you love that?)

But the challenge of creating a provocation is that you know too much. The Heath brothers term this, the Curse of Knowledge. Here’s what they mean:

It’s a hard problem to avoid—every year, you walk into class with another year’s worth of mental refinement under your belt. You’ve taught the same concepts every year, and every year your understanding gets sharper, your sophistication gets deeper. If you’re a biology teacher, you simply can’t imagine anymore what it’s like to hear the word “mitosis” for the first time, or to lack the knowledge that the body is composed of cells. You can’t unlearn what you already know. There are, in fact, only two ways to beat the Curse of Knowledge reliably. The first is not to learn anything. The second is to take your ideas and transform them.

Stickiness is a second language. When you open your mouth and communicate, without thinking about what’s coming out of your mouth, you’re speaking your native language: Expertese. But students don’t speak Expertese. They do speak Sticky, though. Everyone speaks Sticky. In some sense, it’s the universal language. The grammar of stickiness—simplicity, storytelling, learning through the senses—enables anyone to understand the ideas being communicated.

(From Teaching, Made to Stick, by Dan and Chip Heath)

I can really relate to this, especially when I taught older students because I thought they already “knew stuff”. With that in mind, provocations can really reveal what students are thinking and feeling. So now that you have the context of why provocations can be so powerful and transformative for student learning, I’d like to share with you 5 approaches for provocations (that “stick”):

1.Unexpected: Create curiosity and pique interest with unexpected ideas and experiences that open a knowledge gap and call to mind something that needs to be discovered but doesn’t necessarily tell you how to get there.

Example-Central Idea: The use of resources affects society and other living things.

Take out all the classroom resources that are made from petroleum products after school one day. The next day, have the students come in and be shocked?-where did all those resources go? Then have them consider what these resources have in common. And then have them consider the impact on society if these non-renewable resources went away.

2. Concrete: Ground an idea in a sensory reality to make the unknown obvious.

Central Idea: Economic activity relies on systems of production, exchange, and consumption of goods and services.

Create a classroom economy by “printing” money and having students create businesses. Turn all of your classroom resources into “commodities” or by providing services (like sharpening pencils) to illustrate the conceptual understandings. This provocation goes on for weeks, by the way, so that they can experience the related concepts of scarcity and marketing.

3. Credible: Demonstrate ideas and show relationships to “prove” a point.

Central Idea: Informed global citizens enhance their communities.

CRAAPgraphic Go through news articles either on a social media news feed or through an internet search on a topic that is relevant and interesting to your students or controversial (ex: climate change). Have the students examine at least 3 websites or sources of information and put them through the filter of the CRAAP test.

4. Emotional: Powerful images, moving music, role-play–anything that incites either strongly positive or negative feelings.

Central Idea: Homes reflect local conditions and family’s culture and values.

Using images from photos of children’s bedrooms from around the world have the children try to match the picture of a child with a picture of a bedroom. Why do they think those images go together? What evidence in the photo might suggest the values and culture of that child’s family?

5. Story: Use a story, whether from a book, a video or from your own life, to illustrate a challenge or provide a context worth exploring.

Central Idea: Our actions can make a difference to the environment we share.

Share the story of One Plastic Bag and have students reflect on the impact her small action had made in her community. What would you do with a plastic bag? (During our 1st-grade classes’ personal inquiry time, students were invited to take some plastic bags and play around with those materials. It is interesting to see who and how they took action.)

So there you go. These are just 5 approaches to 5 central ideas. Crafting provocations are probably one of the best things I love about the PYP and when we share insight into how we can approach these central ideas, I think it elevates everyone’s schools because of the insights gained. I’d love if others could share and post ideas for provocations to further illustrate the importance that they play in deepening our students learning and inspiring authentic connections and action.

Judy Imamudeen

judyimamudeen.com

#IMMOOC, Season 4: Does it Matter?- Giving Students Choice (My Personal Inquiry into Empowering Students Begins)

By Judy Imamudeen | February 25, 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

400 minutes a day is roughly what most students spend in school. After 180 school days, my 1st graders will have spent 72,000 minutes in our learning community (given that they are not absent) and move onto 2nd grade.What will they have learned? Who will they be at the end of that time? Will our team really have developed inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect? (From the IB Mission Statement)

That is an incredibly hard question to answer. I know that we work hard to forge new territory and challenge our learners to become self-reliant, reflective and kind. Sometimes it is easy- a simple provocation might provide the nudge, but most of the time, cultivating the awareness and motivation to do what is hard takes a lot of different approaches. In IB-Speak, we call it being principled however others may call it grit–it’s doing what’s right or the best thing to do even if it is hard, boring or uncomfortable, especially when NO ONE is watching you.

To develop “leaders of tomorrow”, we need to develop them as leaders of today.

-George Curous- #EmpowerBook

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately-am I empowering students to make good choices or am I handicapping them by making the choices for them? As a first grade teacher, this is sure easy to do–to “boss” those little ones around and “help” them make those choices for them. Painful as it is to admit, that certainly happens.

As I begin this season of IMMOOC, I really want to shine a light into those dark places of my practice. I want to examine whether or not I am consistently and compassionately developing our learners to be challenged and independent in their learning.

So I am excited to be reading the book Empower to take a more critical look at how I approach student learning and develop greater student agency in the classroom. Perhaps you might be keen to join? If so, you can sign up and join a whole load of us educators who really want to make an impact and create these leaders of today.

Judy Imamudeen

judyimamudeen.com

#SOL: Looking Through a Window of An Open House

By Judy Imamudeen | February 21, 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

As I locked the door and closed all the curtains, I wondered what emotions were stirring in the children – were they excited, were they nervous, or were they blase to share their learning?

Today was their opportunity to present their knowledge and efforts in our unit, how did that make them feel?

At three o’clock, another door swings open and a head of a beaming student pops in, “Can I come in, Ms. Judy? Can I show my mom?”. I look up at the clock. “It’s 3pm. Time to get started! Come on in!-What are you going to present to your mom first? Can you find your planning sheet?”

pierre — Showing how to use Book Creator app.

Before you know it, students start piling in with their loved ones: moms, dads, brothers, aunts, and grandmas–they all show up to see what their child has been up to in 1st Grade.The noise of the activity is fun to observe. We start grabbing iPads to document the interactions. We want the parents to remember this moment, this moment of wonder and curiosity; hopefully a proud moment, a moment when they realize that their baby is growing up, a moment when pride wells up inside.

As we look on, some of the interactions are gorgeous. “C’mon”, squeaks one girl. “I want to show you how to play this game. It’s called BANG!”

Enthusiasm has flooded the room. It is four o’clock and a desire to show off their favorite things in class has yet to cease after an hour.

We asked students to choose five things to present to their families–touching a bit on math, language, technology, and unit. One girl has checked off the entire list. We tried to avoid this from happening since we know that the adult’s time is busy. One mother struggles to get her daughter to stop playing a game.

thomas and charlotte — Playing the “Sound Detective” Game.

“This is the last round, okay?”, she beseeches.

Over in the corner, a sort of game of tug-of-war seems to be in process, in which there is a tension between their interaction, as a loved one is challenging and pulling out the learning from their child, questioning and critical. The child pulls back with counter arguments and claims, then relents. These interactions are difficult to watch from the eyes of a child, but the teacher in me also feels a bit grateful for the pressure that is being applied, hoping that it will make the student more focused in their work. (Today I will find out who has really won this game–has this really changed any habits or behaviors?)

kathy It’s 4:30. Students start to come back to me to report that they have finished. As they hand me their planning sheets, I direct a question towards them, “How do you feel about presenting your learning?” Most smile and reply, “Good!”. I give a high five. I want them to have some small acknowledgeable that what they did today mattered. That the learning they have done up until now and the effort they put into presenting it was important. As I look up to say my goodbyes and thank yous to loved ones, in my head I am wondering and hoping that this experience opened a window into the lives of the learners; that the parents and family members gained some valuable insight and perspective into their unique and wonder-filled child. In my heart, I am hoping that the learners left feeling a sense of pride and recognition; that this has further developed their confidence and self-esteem.

It’s nearly six o’clock before I leave school, exhausted yet content.

Judy Imamudeen

judyimamudeen.com

#PYP : 5 Things You Should See in a Successful Unit of Inquiry

By Judy Imamudeen | February 19, 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

Sometimes I wonder why we spend so much time discussing and deliberating Central Ideas and the nit-picky debates over the conceptual understandings. Why not just copy the sample Programme Of Inquiry that is inside the Making the PYP Happen document or other go-to places to find tried and true units of inquiry? We would be done and dusted, right? But then we would lose the magic of the PYP–the ability to shape our curriculum based on the students’ interests and culture of our schools! That’s the challenge of every school–Who are WE and what defines our community of learning?

Well, as we wrap up our current How the World Works unit, we are reflecting on how much time and energy we put into creating our Central Idea. As teachers, we brainstormed ideas based on scientific concepts that the students need developing and cross-referenced science standards from a variety of sources (like national and independent curriculums other than the PYP Scope and Sequence for Science). We then pitched the ideas to the students with a general interest survey using a Design Thinking approach and then did some pre-packing of the Central Idea. We knew after all of that effort that we had a solid unit of inquiry ahead. What we ended up with was:

Understanding light and sound can transform experience

How animals hear sound and see light

Transformation of Energy

Ways we use the scientific process

Although our central idea was ironically very similar to a unit at NIS, the lines of inquiry and adding the word “transform” made it unique to our students because of what we had been learning about in performing arts and visual art classes. We really wanted to make a strong link to go beyond this being a “science unit” and make it transdisciplinary. This sort of intention really showed in the learning.

In the Enhanced PYP, there is a shift in developing learner agency, and I can appreciate how it might build upon the idea of Action as we reflect our the design of our school’s Programmes of Inquiry.We spent a few lessons on gauging student interest and “pre-packing” the Central Idea of our unit before we even launched it to capture student voice and choice involved.

So really it shouldn’t be a surprise that when we examined whether students were really engaged and invested in their learning, we found several tell-tale signs. This was some of the evidence we saw:

Students challenging each other’s ideas, particularly when they were generating their scientific questions and hypothesis.
Students bringing in outside resources that added to the conceptual understanding of the unit.
Parents reporting that students are reading and researching the concepts at home.
Students wanting to extend their learning, either at home or at school.
Students asking deep questions and a compulsion to test out their conjectures.

These are just 5 things that we observed throughout the unit. I hope others can add to the list because I think identifying what success of a unit is an important component of every school’s Programme of Inquiry. We need to take a look at our Central Ideas and begin to wonder who is this unit for? And will student action naturally and authentically develop? And when you think about it, the word inquiry means “a search for knowledge” and “a request for truth” so student initiative isn’t really the high bar we should expect in learning, but truly the bare minimum of a successfully designed unit. If we touch a nerve and truly spark interest, then a commitment and motivation to learning should ensue. If I was to be truly critical of whether or not we nailed student agency in this unit, I would say that tuning in and shaping units around their needs and interests were only the tip of the iceberg and we need to challenge our team a bit more to develop this feature in our community of learning.

However, I hope sharing this experience will help ignite some deeper thinking and reflection about designing units of inquiry. If you have any more “symptoms” of a successful unit, please share below. The more conversation we can have around this, the stronger our school programmes will become because we put our learners first. Please add your perspective in the comments below.

Judy Imamudeen

judyimamudeen.com

Post Mortem Reflection: Autopsy of a Failed PYP Unit (Sharing the Planet)

By Judy Imamudeen | November 27, 2017 | Comments 6 comments

It doesn’t matter if you have been teaching for 8 months or 18 years, you will experience a bombed lesson from time to time. But a bombed unit-well, that I have yet to experience until now. And it has been the most frustrating 6 weeks of my life, as I have worked relentlessly to cultivate their conceptual understanding. Most teachers don’t share their failures, they only blog or tweet about all the “cool learning” that’s going on but I think it’s equally important to reveal and reflect on our failings. So in an effort to be vulnerable, I humbly submit that this unit has yet to meet its central idea and only narrowly developed its lines of inquiry. And I can’t stop asking why.

Our actions can make a difference to the environment we share.

how we use resources (function)
the impact of people’s actions on the environment (causation)
choices we make to care for our environment (responsibility)

I hold some very strong beliefs when it comes to creating curriculum in the PYP, one of which is having a solid central idea that a teacher can anchor the learning in. If you pulled out the keywords–what would they be? I chose to focus on “actions”, “environment” and “share”. Other key ideas were from the lines of inquiry: resources, impact, and choices. The assessment is really quite simple–we document student action that has occurred over the unit. And herein lies the problem: student action. Students are not taking action because they don’t have enough conceptual understanding to appreciate a need to act. They literally do not see pollution-even if a coke bottle flew out of the sky and bonked them on the head, they wouldn’t notice. Oh, and if that same coke bottle then got buried in the ground, one of the students said it would sprout a Coke Tree. No, I’m not lying–this was an actual prediction during one of our engagements.

At first, this put me in a panic and I went in the wrong direction. I thought, oh my gosh, this future generation, they are either absolutely oblivious or litter and pollution (particularly in Asia) are so endemic that it’s like wallpaper and thus hardly take notice. So we began inquiring into endangered animals and the impact on habitats. We worked through key vocabulary and food chains. The kids put together wonderful ChatterPix presentations which summarized their library research on the animals. But during another provocation when I showed a picture of a turtle that had been deformed due to garbage in the water, I had 3 kids tell me that it looked like that because it was farting, clearly articulating (with a straight face) that gas can make you bloated and you feel bubbles are in your belly. I could see his thinking but I felt deeply concerned and it was at this point that our unit started to take a turn for the worse.

One of the Segel pictures that the students examined. They thought they were just “having a picnic at the beach.”

So then, to make a stronger link about humans and how we use resources, we explored the work of Gregg Segal, which started as a provocation but since the students made no connection between the garbage and the people who were lying in it, we examined our “home” garbage and collected our classroom garbage, including snacks, for a week to analyze. I had also gotten one of our Secondary Art and Design teachers who is an avid photographer on board to help us orchestrate an attempt to do a photoshoot with our students in this garbage. It was going to be awesome, right?! –They were finally going to “get it” so we can move into learning about the 3 R’s–Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Nope–the day before the photoshoot, our cleaners emptied our bins. Deflated, we decided that we would “follow the garbage”, trying to pull together this idea of how individual and collective choices can add up to make a difference in the burden that ecosystems might have to shoulder. So we went down to our school’s dump area and examined our rubbish. Next, we made a day of it and went down to the Vientiane Landfill. Although they were absolutely disgusted by it, they had seemed unchanged. This week we are going to meet people whose “choices” to care for our environment are having a positive impact on our Vientiane community. We are still hopeful that a handful of them will be moved into action but I know now that it’s a foolhardy job to try to assess them on this central idea. We will have to create unit grades based on their academic skills in language and math that have been developed alongside these conceptual understandings.

The moral of the learning debacle boils down to these things:

Doing a bunch of “cool stuff” is not as important to properly pre-assessing basic knowledge and skills. Sometimes we get so preoccupied with launching a unit with instant student engagement, that we forgo necessary assessment which can be documented and examined. I think in heavy science-based units, it’s important to probe into common misconceptions and vocabulary that may be misunderstood. I did some of it, but I missed some big ideas–simple stuff like living vs. non-living because I had assumed it had been “covered” in previous years.
Furthermore, provocations that reveal severe inadequacies in student knowledge means that the unit probably needed to be scrubbed and rewritten immediately instead of trudging through the painful experience of trying to get students to arrive at mastery and develop knowledge that is beyond their experience or developmental appropriateness is asinine.
And the third thing is that the sequence of units matters A LOT. In our case, we were asking that students take their knowledge and apply it by taking action. We should have had a How The World Works Unit beforehand that developed the key information and scientific principles to really appreciate the need to act. Our unit implied that kids should “reduce, reuse, recycle” without understanding why it’s important to do so.
Also, a unit whose central idea demands that students assimilate knowledge and then adapt it to behaviors needs to reconcile with the developmental stage that they are at. Most of the students are at the cognitive stage in which they are transitioning from concrete to abstract thinking and operational thought. This unit would have been better served when most, if not all the kids, were 7 years old because cognitively they would have understood the concept of conservation. This was a second term unit. It was too early in the school year to introduce these ideas.
And of course, the old PYP coordinator in me wondered why I didn’t go back into last year’s POI to see what scientific ideas that they had been exploring when I first saw warning signs. Although I had interviewed past teachers who did the unit, I should have dug deeper into the curriculum that my current classes had been working on in the past years. I needed to research my learners more. I would have seen the gaps and been able to re-route the unit sooner instead of “following the garbage”.

So, I would suggest that educators ask themselves a couple of important questions before embarking on units of inquiry in which student action should be the hallmark of successful learning outcomes:

What previous knowledge and skills should we look for? What was their most recent learning (last grade level’s POI)? What conceptual understandings will students need to understand in order to really apply knowledge? (Go deep on Box #3 on the PYP planner)
What misconceptions do you predict students may come with? How will we know if they have them?
What is the age of the majority of the students? Will they have access cognitively to the concepts and related concepts in the units?
What action is already taking place? What can we expect young children to be doing, feeling and thinking?

I can see now that words like “action” and “choices” are too subjective to be put into a central idea for this Sharing the Planet Theme. They are great in the lines of inquiry, but if you take the stance that you assess the central idea in your summative and formative assessments, then you are setting students up for failure. Although student action is the proof that real learning has occurred, this unit would have been better served with related concepts in the central idea. (Here is a great blog that demonstrates how units can be analyzed in this way.) With that in mind, I would suggest rewriting the unit to look like this, with the related concepts in bold:

Human interaction with living things can have consequences on the environment.

Although this unit is going to be seared into my mind and will haunt me all year, I will remember the lessons learned here when it comes to analyzing my grade level’s units of inquiry. Perhaps this will also help you to reflect and consider how your units are structured and be more critical in your understanding of your learners.

So I ask you, dear reader, what other suggestions would you make regarding this failure? What takeaways did you get from this? Please comment below.

Judy Imamudeen

judyimamudeen.com

Category: Action

A Difficult Habit Worth Developing (#PYPCBookClub)

By Judy Imamudeen | November 6, 2021 | Comments 0 Comment