Tag: Approaches to Learning

Above and Beyond: 3 Things that Teachers Must Do to Get “Good” at the #PYP

Above and Beyond: 3 Things that Teachers Must Do to Get “Good” at the #PYP

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As a PYP Coordinator, I am involved in the recruitment of teachers and their subsequent professional development. I’m always designing and redesigning the “induction” of new teachers into the PYP, reconsidering what it is that teachers need to get “good” at in order to become successful in understanding and delivering our framework.. You see, I think becoming a PYP educator requires you to have basic teaching skills as the basis of your pedagogical prowess on top of other frames of thinking around how students learn best. You have to go above and beyond certain professional requirements in order to be effective in using the PYP framework. 

Being the nerd that I am, I brainstormed a list of key teaching capabilities that I think make up the tool-kit of a PYP practitioner based upon the 2020 Programme standards and practices and this graphic from page 43 of Learning and Teaching:

Just in this graphic alone, there are 20 practices that PYP teachers need to develop competency in. But where do we begin to support the transition of thinking and planning like a PYP teacher?  After reflecting on this list, I think there are 3 main skills that teachers need to get good at in order to become proficient practitioners: 

  1. unpacking standards/curriculum and developing questions to explore, 
  2. creating learning opportunities that foster content knowledge, and 
  3. listening for learning. 

Although each of these areas deserves its own blog post, I will summarize what these foundational competencies mean to me. 

Competency #1: Turn Objectives into Questions

I am starting with this because it is the most pragmatic skill to develop and encapsulates 2 main aspects of our framework: concept-based learning and inquiry. That being said, it isn’t  necessarily easy to wrap your head around this but it is the heart of what we do when we develop students who thirst for understanding the curiosities of our world. 

Whether we are looking at a “boxed” curriculum or examining our content standards, we have to be thinking about the questions that live in them. Writing these questions down and then prioritizing them helps us to create a scope and sequence for the learning. We then use these questions as the basis of our daily or weekly learning objectives.

Let’s look at an example from the Common Core Grade 3 English Language Arts Reading Standards:

Phonics and Word Recognition:

Although I believe there are many ways to develop teacher questions, I always like to model how we can teach using Key Concepts by using them as the basis of brainstorming teacher questions:

Key Concept Key Question Teacher Question
Form What is it like? What is a prefix? What is a suffix?
Function How does it work? How do readers decode multi-syllabic words?
Change How is it transforming? What happens to the meaning of a word when we change the prefix? 
Connection How is it linked to other things? How can identifying the base word help us decipher the meaning of a word?
Causation Why is it as it is? Why does Latin form the basis of our language? 
Perspective What are the points of view? How are English words spelled differently in different English-speaking countries?
Responsibility What are our obligations? What are some ways we can remember irregular spellings of words?

As you can see, this is NOT an exhaustive list of possible questions from those standards, but it helps to start the generative process and cultivates a lot of discussion into what students need to be able to know, understand and do to acheive mastery in this standard (phonics and word analysis). 

Competency #2: Teach Learning rather than Content

One can say that the Approaches to Learning (AtLs) are when we put the Learner Profile in action. So targeting this skill in our teaching craft is a vital component of our PYP practice.

Personally I think philosophically everyone agrees that we have to teach students HOW to learn, but putting the Approaches to Learning into practice feels a bit like roller skating on a dirt road at first. Moreover, this can be a really big shift for some teachers, especially for teachers in the intermediate grade levels who feel committed to covering the content in a discipline. So practitioners have to develop an understanding that the content becomes the context for learning HOW to learn, rather than merely acquiring knowledge.

We can use the example above with the 3rd grade ELA standards, extending this exercise in creating teacher questions with exploring what AtL is the focus/ could be the focus as we learn this. As we begin to ponder the AtLs, it also supports the practice of “split screen thinking”–that a lesson’s objective is a combination of the disciplinary knowledge/skill and development of the attributes of a learner. 

Answering the question, what AtL is the focus/ could be the focus as we learn this? really depends on the goals of the unit of inquiry and what feels authentic during the learning engagements. Determing whether or not to target Social Skills, Thinking skills, Communication Skills, Self-Management Skills or Research Skills is also great fodder for a robust planning meeting. 

Using the previous teacher question chart, here’s what this might look like:

Key Concept Key Question Teacher Question What AtL can be developed?
Form What is it like? What is a prefix? What is a suffix? Communication Skills: Students can define and give examples of prefixes and suffixes. 
Function How does it work? How do readers decode multi-syllabic words? Thinking Skills: Students can use word attack strategies to read and spell words.
Change How is it transforming? What happens to the meaning of a word when we change the prefix?  Thinking Skills: Students can analyze parts of words to understanding the meaning of a word.
Connection How is it linked to other things? How can identifying the base word help us decipher the meaning of a word? Social Skills: Students can work in partnerships to examine words and identify the base word’s meaning. 
Causation Why is it as it is? Why does Latin form the basis of our language?  Research Skills: Students can take notes and share their understanding of Latin’s influence on the English language.
Perspective What are the points of view? How are English words spelled differently in different English speaking countries? Social Skills: Students can work in groups to generate a list of words that are spelled differently.
Responsibility What are our obligations? What are some ways we can remember irregular spellings of words? Self-management skills:

Students can come up with 3 ways that we can remember irregular spellings.

I’d also like to add that is excercise is a great scaffold for developing PYP assessment practices. When we consider which AtLs will be the focus, then it makes creating learning goals and success criteria more straightforward for teachers. 

Competency #3: Listen More than Speak:

They say that you have to learn to walk before you can run. Well, this skill is in this same line of thinking: You can’t develop a penchant for student agency until you can be student-centered in your approach to learning, and you can’t be student-centered unless you value their voice during classroom learning. 

I think developing this practice requires intention and being honest in answering this question after learning engagement:

What do we know about our learners that we didn’t know BEFORE this learning engagement?

Not only does answering this question help us to build our listening muscles, but is an essential component of teacher reflection and how we approach assessment in the PYP. We need to cultivate the skill of listening for learning in order to unearth possible misconceptions and analyze what needs to be the next step in the progression of conceptual understanding. If teachers dominate “air time” then we can’t make informed decisions. In my opinion, this is a precursor skill to documenting learning and helps PYP practitioners create structures to make thinking visible in the classroom. 

In summary, I think if you want to get good at the PYP you have to develop your competencies to Question, Support, and Listen for learning.

I’m curious, if you are a seasoned PYP practitioner, what do think are the first steps and entry points for new-to-PYP or early-career PYP teachers? Share and add to this discussion!
Creating Machines or Mathematicians? How Might We Use the Learner Profile as a Math Planning guide in the #PYP

Creating Machines or Mathematicians? How Might We Use the Learner Profile as a Math Planning guide in the #PYP

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How would you finish this sentence? Math is…..

  • practical, a part of every day life
  • happening all around me.
  • fascinating
  • a language
  • a mindset
  • an opportunity to build relationships
  • a form of creative expression

These are just a few of the ideas that pop into my head as I reflect on what Math means to me. But I wouldn’t say that I felt that way all my life. There was a time when I wouldn’t answered it as boring or hard. It really wasn’t until I studied Calculus that I realized that the journey to getting an answer was actually where “math” happened. The solution wasn’t as rewarding as the struggle. And puzzling over a challenge can be fun. 

But no one has to wait until high school or college to experience joy when doing math. I feel strongly that we have an obligation to use our PYP framework to intentionally develop mathematcians. Lately I have been thinking, reading and reflecting on how to support New-to-the-PYP teachers in shifting their practices. More than I care to admit, I’ve heard these fledgling PYP teachers retort, “It’s okay to ‘do the PYP’ for Unit of Inquiry time but for literacy and math? Nah?!”

I fight to keep a straight face when I hear them say things like that, while inside my heart goes

The PYP isn’t some jargon-filled, philosophical mumbo-jumbo, it’s designed on best practices. I know that the framework is a lot to take in for newbies, and, as a PYP coordinator, I must be patient. They are learners. And I am a learner too….and sometimes I am learning how to get teachers to not only “drink the kool-aide” before they can serve it to others. 

But I digress…..

Examining the research and approaches to rich math learning experiences, it’s obvious to me that our PYP standards and practices are grounded in not only what is joyful but what is powerful in math learning. Take a look at this chart–doesn’t it just scream our Approaches to Learning?! 

From the book, Everything You Need for Mathematics Coaching: Tools, Plans, and a Process That Works for Any Instructional Leader, Grades K–12

I love how this chart clearly articulates what competant mathematics do and how teachers can create the culture and opportunites for engaging in learning to solve problems through math. For teachers who struggle without a textbook or scripted curriculum, transforming their practice takes a lot of support and compassion. I think we all can acknowledge that most teachers who fear to stray off the pacing guide or curriculum resource is really just trying to do their best to ensure that students get the knowledge and skills they need to succeed. They are not trying to be defiant or stubborn, they are just don’t feel competant enough in their own decision-making abilities to support learners. To call them robots or machines because they can’t teach without a script would be cruel. Chances are they never had an authentic experience in which they embodied the spirt and curiousity of a true mathematician. Whether you are in leadership or just a peer, we have a duty to encourage them to take baby steps and take risks. 

The Learner Profile isnt just for the Students

Since we are in the throes of our IB Review Cycle, I’ve been reflecting on the new standards and practices. In particular, I’ve been thinking about the Learning standard practice:

Approaches to teaching 4: Teachers promote effective relationships and purposeful collaboration to create a positive and dynamic learning community. (0403-04)

Approaches to teaching 4.1: Teachers collaborate to ensure a holistic and coherent learning experience for students in accordance with programme documentation. (0403-04-0100)

Approaches to teaching 4.2: Students collaborate with teachers and peers to plan, demonstrate, and assess their own learning. (0403-04-0200)

The “PYP” isn’t something we do during our Unit of Inquiry time, it’s how we approach EVERY aspect of learning content to ensure a holistic and coherent learning experience for students. Moreover, it’s not something that the students do. EVERYONE DOES it!! Teachers promote….a positive and dynamic learning community. To think that teachers work outside of the jargon is to miss the point. We provide students with an everyday example of living the Learner Profile. But do we use it when we are reflecting on our planning?

As a PYP practicioner, do you ever ask yourself…..

How am I using the Approaches to Learning (Atls) to do math?

Who are the students becoming as I create opportunities to develop the Learner Profile in the context of solving problems using math?

Those questions need to be asked on a daily basis, as an individual teacher and within our teaching teams. When we live and breathe the values and philosophy, it’s easy to communicate it to other members in our learning community. 

Since I am working on supporting teachers who still learning how to shift their mindset and approach to designing learning experiences through the lens of the PYP, I’ve been thinking about how I might try to kill 2 birds with one stone:

#1: Elevate the implementation of our IB Standards and Practices

#2: Use the Learner Profile as a filter/checklist as we plan.

After a lesson, we might reflect, how did I create…

Risk-taking today?

Open-mindedness today?

Thinkers today?

Communicators today? 

etc…

Circling back to the “baby steps” a novice PYP practicioner might take could include embracing one or more of our Learner Profiles as we approach planning math, whether it is a stand-alone unit or transdisciplanary.  For example, perhaps they want to set a goal and become more of an INQUIRER in their math practices. I can help them then paint a picture and start to describe what kind of evidence they might see, hear or feel in the classroom environment to demonstrate that they are achieving this professional goal. Moreover, when I come into the classroom and see the teacher honoring the kids questions about math on a Wonder Wall, I need to acknowledge and provide accolades for their effort to shift their practice. Change isn’t easy and becoming a competant PYP teacher requires intention and a desire to be a creative educator. And, at the end of the day, I want them to experience the joy of engaging in math, not as a machine, but as a real mathematician–even if they have to live vicariously through the students.

I’m curious, can you think of other ways might we help support the development of PYP teachers through explicitly developing who we are as educators through naming and noticing the Learner Profile?  Please share in the comments below! 

New Year? 4 “Essentials” We Need for Education

New Year? 4 “Essentials” We Need for Education

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On the last day of 2020, I am struggling to meet my goal of publishing my 200th blog post. I have 77 partial posts in the queue but it has been so hard to string my thoughts together during this year that it felt impossible to complete any one of them.  There are just so many things that I feel befuddled by and have been contemplating and processing. I know that I am not alone. We all have had to put one foot in front of the other, but wondering if we are going in the right direction with so much uncertainty. 

In the past month, here in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, the courts have been arguing if education is an “essential service”, as people seek to define what education is and get approval for reopening schools. Since March of 2020, schools have been closed in our area, and to get a ruling on this is an important precedent. 

That is an interesting topic to debate: is school an “essential service” to our society? And if it is, to whom? To businesses? To our governments? To the families? To the students themselves? 

Are schools factories? Do we mean to provide nationalistic pride and values? Or are we glorified baby sitters? Or instead, are we levers and fulcrums to opening up an individual’s potential and creativity? 

What IS our “essential service”? 

My 11-year old daughter told me it is to “learn” (not to “teach”, interestingly) and I think that no matter the stakeholder, they might agree with her. But to learn WHAT (content, skills, values) is exactly where definitions would diverge and split into self-interests. 

Throughout this year, I have had 4 concepts that I have been grappling with, going right into the heart of this idea about “essential service”. 

Power and Influence

I cannot speak for every country, but it is widely accepted that the purpose of public education in America was to spread Christianity and its values. Later “progressives” recognized that education was the key to democracy and hence “standards” were created in order to provide a fairly educated mass of citizens in order to make informed decisions. However, content knowledge was curated by those in power, and morals reflected those interests so that the narrative continued to benefit those of influence. It has only really been until Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement that we are opening up to new conversations around how information is shared and differing perspectives have been censored. 

White supremacy isn’t just a bunch of white-hooded men spewing hate speech, it has been a prerogative of so many power dynamics today and has hurt so many people; from the emotionally wounded parents of the Sandy Hook mass shooting massacre (because we value guns over our children) to the Chinese factory workers who live under polluted skies in order to manufacture consumer goods for the western economies. To deny that this willful greed isn’t at the heart of all this violence and environmental degradation is to deny reality itself. Thus, as educators, we cannot be merely sympathetic but actively engaged in raising our sociopolitical consciousness in order to involve our students in lively discussions about why things are the way they are and encourage students to see themselves as agents of social change and transformation. 

I believe that post-pandemic, providing learning experiences that challenge students to question structures, beliefs, and norms of power and influence is an “essential service”, in order for the history of inequity and oppression to not become our global future. 

Standards

You can’t expect standards from over 20 years ago to remain relevant and meaningful for today. We have to really be looking carefully at our national standards and be asking bigger questions. Even the Common Core standards are a decade old–think about how much has changed in this year alone!–isn’t it time to re-examine the whole concept of a “standard” and if we are trying to use these “standards” to create “widgets” or compassionate humans? I’ve written before about the Post Pandemic: “New Normals” Worth Developing and looking at what we want students to achieve at certain ages needs to go beyond simple knowledge and skills. Benchmarks need to include our hearts along with our heads ad hands.

Recently I heard Jan Mills speak at the IB Global Conference about the initiative in the PYP to reform our scope and sequence documents. As I leaned in to listen, I felt a spark of energy for this project, not only because it called attention that curriculum documents need a constant revisiting but also because she spoke about learning progressions based on the Approaches to Learning (Atls), in which knowledge alone no longer takes the center stage. 

In my mind, this is an important transition into not just focusing on what students know and can do, but to really grasp what it means to be thinking and communicating through the lens of a mathematician or writer or historian, or musician. I think this could be an exciting change in how learning happens in our classrooms.

I believe that post-pandemic, providing an expanded definition of “standards” is an “essential service”, in order for students to grow into creative thinkers and compassionate humans. 

Truth (and Media)

There was a time in which we believed that facts were facts. Information was reported and information could also be censored. However, now we talk about “disinformation”. Where did this concept come from?

During all my binge-watching on Netflix, I came across The Social Dilemma. If you haven’t seen it, you really should. In my mind, it is a call to arms to us educators. 

I have never before felt so adamant about ensuring that our students can actually understand what is real and not real information. Moreover, they have to understand the algorithms that create these personalized realities and the echo chambers that exist within them. Students need to recognize when they have limited their access to alternative viewpoints and sources of information.

I believe that post-pandemic, providing authentic and relevant digital literacy is an “essential service” in order for our digital natives to become discriminating consumers and competent with discerning information.

Technology

There is really so much I want to say about this. Over the course of my years, I have grown weary of reading books about how technology is rotting our intellect and dissipating our attention. Technology is not at fault, just like a car cannot be blamed for more accidents just because it replaced the horse and buggy. It’s always been the misuse of something, not the thing itself, that is the culprit. This is the year in which we have finally learned how to embrace it as a necessity and begin to appreciate that not all screen time can be considered equal. 

This is completely accurate when it has come to online and distance learning. Teachers who attempted to replicate their traditional methods realized how ineffective it was with boredom and student disengagement becoming so glaringly obvious, not to mention the worry of low student achievement and critical parents providing their opinions.

So any teacher who still debates whether technology should be infused into our lessons and is recalcitrant to use blended learning structures in this classroom after this pandemic, cannot remain in education. Pining for the “good ole days” of traditional teaching would be an absolute affront to all the professional development that has transpired over the last year. Moreover, we have to improve our methodology and effectiveness in order to release control of learning to our students.

I believe that post-pandemic, improving our use of technology in instruction is an “essential service”, in order to democratize our classrooms and engage digital natives at higher levels of learning. 

So, there you have it–my 4 “essentials” that I think we need to change. Although I know that my list is actually longer and will continue to grow, as I move into 2021, I wonder if this will truly be a “new year” for us in education. I pray that it’s not just another go at the ideas and approaches to learning pre-pandemic (likely circa 2000). If we, as educators, are a genuine “essential service” to our society, then let’s embrace innovation and be committed to developing the personal best, not only from our students but of our humanity. 
Designing for Humans: Thinking Beyond a Checklist for the Enhanced #PYP Planner

Designing for Humans: Thinking Beyond a Checklist for the Enhanced #PYP Planner

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This past year we trialed a new PYP planner, and the intentions were good with letting the students’ responses to our provocations direct and lead the unit, but we ended up having a planner that was so complex that it became cumbersome to actually fully complete. It was christened “The Big Book”, which should have clued us in that this was an exercise in paperwork. Clearly, it’s back to the drawing board.

So what are “The Basics” that have to be on the planner? As I see it, there need to be 12 components that are fundamental to the planning document:

  1. Transdisciplinary Theme
  2. Central Idea
  3. Lines of Inquiry
  4. Key Concepts
  5. Learner Profile
  6. Approaches to Learning (ATL)
  7. Questions
  8. Provocations/Engagement Activities
  9. Resources
  10. Assessment
  11. Action
  12. Reflection

As I began to wonder what is the “special sauce” that would move a planning document beyond “the basics” and make this planner “enhanced”, I decided that I needed to go back and listen to the webinar that addressed this aspect of the enhancement.

My big takeaways from the webinar were:

  • The document takes us through a PROCESS of CO-CONSTRUCTING learning.
  • It encourages COLLABORATION with staff.
  • It fosters REFLECTION.
  • It not only documents STUDENT AGENCY but reminds us that this is central to the learning. Teachers need to consider the WHO just as much, perhaps more so than the WHAT.
  • It influences the ROLE OF THE TEACHER and how they inspire ACTION in students to support SELF-MANAGEMENT skills.

While I considered the ideas shared, I was thinking “What would be the purpose of even re-designing the PYP planner?” I mean, they have given us a “refreshed” and updated example that we may use and other schools have already created other templates that could be integrated into our school. Truly, there is no immediate demand that schools HAVE to create their own planner.  But now schools have the liberty to design their own, yet it isn’t a mandate. So, if schools were to embark on creating their own, it would only be for the sole purpose of improving their collaborative planning at their school in an effort to increase student agency.

Agency is about listening.

Sonya terBorg

As I contemplate the benefit of redesigning the PYP planner, I wouldn’t dare create a copy and paste version of the templates shared. Not because they aren’t wonderful, but because they aren’t unique to the needs of my school.–which would be the purpose of even embarking on this journey. I remember thinking that students should learn the way I taught- they should adjust to me. I could not have been more wrong. A great teacher adjust to the learner, not the other way around (7)In my past school’s pilot of the re-designed planner, it was a hard copy only. This worked well for our initial planning session, but on-going additions to the planner weren’t possible unless you were to have the hard-copy in your possession. And because it was a “big book” it took up a lot of space on one’s desk area, which became problematic since we had 6 Units of Inquiry plus 6 stand-alone Math planners. You might imagine the frustration of all those paperwork piles in one’s workspace, which created a disdain for planning since it meant that one teacher had this A3 sized booklet taking up a lot of real estate on their desk. This was an unintended consequence of going “retro” with our planning. I wouldn’t recommend this. So, with this in mind, if the planner isn’t digital, with equal-access available to all teachers, then it’s set up to fail. That’s like putting square wheels on a bike–it is taking us nowhere with collaboration.

With this in mind, I would utilize Design Thinking, focusing on human-centered design principles of really understanding what would be the needs of the users of this planning document. Also, since human-centered design considers the interaction along with the actual “product”, the experience is of vital importance. Here is the overview of the process:

designhc
Designed by Dalberg

Framing the Context: Understanding our Users and Their Problems

Human-Focused Design optimizes for human motivation in a system as opposed to optimizing for pure functional efficiency within the system. -Yu-Kai Chou-

What is the challenge: Let’s be honest, the main reason why teachers don’t appreciate using the PYP planner is that it seems like a time-consuming document that doesn’t seem to support their day-to-day planning of the unit of inquiry.

So how might we design a planner that is collaborative, compelling and ultimately results in better learning outcomes and increased student agency?

Hmm…..

In the first phase of design, Planning, we have to consider the audience for this document. Teachers, right? So, when we consider feasibility, we should ask ourselves what might be the biggest barrier that we will need to overcome in order for this document to work?

I’m rather practical so as a teacher, I would say TIME poses the biggest challenge to collaboration.

Thus, when we create this document we need to think about the amount of time it might take to fill out this document, especially since we might imagine that the initial planning will involve multiple teachers who represent a variety of subject areas. Trying to get all those educators in a room can seem like putting the planets in alignment. So, if we UNDERSTAND these teachers, then we must take into consideration that this document will most likely require at least 40 minutes of time to begin the planning process, with opportunities to plug into the document to give feedback and feedforward into the learning (at least another 30 minutes of individual or grade level teacher time). Lastly, there will need a final block of at least 40 minutes for teachers to get together to reflect on how students responded to this unit of inquiry. So, with that in mind, the document, from start to finish, needs to be completed in 3 planning periods; 2 of which will include multiple voices and perspectives in the room, and at least 1 planning period in which teachers or a grade level team get together to discuss how the unit is progressing and what direction it might need to take. So let’s just say, this collaborative document takes at least 2 1/2 hours to complete, give or take 1/2 hour.

Then, as we peel the layers of the onion, we know that the 2nd biggest challenge will be ensuring that this document is truly collaborative, with the opportunity for multiple voices to be present, particularly our subject area specialists, who often feel marginalized during planning.

Furthermore, this document must create a holistic process of learning about our students, so we can create learning opportunities for our students, in that we can examine what learning came from our students. It has to fuel conversation and inspiration among teachers to develop student-directed inquiries and motivate student-led action. Moreover, it should get teachers discussing how they can access the larger community, whether local or global, to tap into resources that expand the learning outside the 4 walls of the classroom.

Lastly, when teachers engage with this document, I would want them to feel excited and anticipating the best that could happen during this unit of inquiry. I wouldn’t want this to feel like “ticking a box” but instead designing learning that changes lives. (Because, truly, that is what we are doing, every day. How cool is our job, right?!)

Learning Phase: Perspective and Use by Teachers

I know that this planner has to contain the “Basics” but I’d think about the teachers first and not the “boxes” that it needs to tick. Already I’ve made some assumptions, such as identifying some barriers and challenges to using the planner. However, those are inferences and my own biased opinions. I have yet to tap into the perspectives of the teachers directly at my school, which might produce different ideas. I must put on my researcher hat and use some of the methods of Human-Centered Design to get an accurate picture of the challenge and its possible solutions.

empathymapdesignFrom a design point of view, I might start from one of the PYP planner templates shared, observing teachers “in the wild”, using the document during the collaborative planning process.  I would record reactions with the Empathy Map to evaluate their experience with the planner. Since I’m not just considering the physical experience with the document, I need to collate the responses of the emotional experience of the teachers when deciding how to help craft a new one. Remember, I’m not trying to devise a fancy planner, I want the planner to actually get teachers to have rich discussions that connect and extend the learning of students so that students can ultimately become self-motivated and feel a great urgency to take action. I’d need to be a fly on the wall, leaning in to listen and notice how planning is being “enhanced”.

Brainstorming Ideas

First of all, this is not me, alone, on my laptop or with a pad of paper and pen in hand, ready to sketch out ideas. It takes a team to cleave through the data and create mock-ups that will ultimately result in a prototype document. Every one of those template planners on shared on IB’s PYP resource page took a team of dedicated individuals to shape and mold the prototypes that we see today. And I use the word “prototype” very intentionally because no doubt these planners will evolve as those teams reflect on what works and what doesn’t work with its use. Just as our teachers have spent time reflecting and evaluating the “big book” planner that was created at my past school, all schools need to stand back and be critical of their work so that it can be refined and improved upon.

So when brainstorming ideas, it will require a group of diverse and interested educators who will not only ensure it contains “The Basics” of PYP principles but develops our teachers understanding of our student learning and improve collaboration among teachers. That’s a big ask. Needless to say, where we go from here is To Be Continued…….

If any brave and like-minded individuals want to share how their school is approaching this project, I’d be keen to hear more. Please post in the comments below so everyone can benefit from your learning and experimentation. 

Why Classrooms Must Have Daily Habits of Mental Hygeine

Why Classrooms Must Have Daily Habits of Mental Hygeine

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I think most of us can barely remember a time in which computers and the internet weren’t a part of our lives. We would have to go to libraries and read encyclopedias to gain knowledge on a topic. When internet search engines first appeared, information was at the tip of our fingertips, and I believe most of us have witnessed how the internet has become the go-to place for fact finding, replacing book learning at an alarming rate. However, for our digital natives, they don’t really know where the information ends and an opinion begins, as I have written about in Critical Consumption, however, there is a value of expressing an opinion as a source of identity and purpose for our students. In particular, how constructing less myopic viewpoints and developing broader perspectives are a becoming a necessity as we evolve in the workforce, of which education is supposed to prepare students for.

Listening to all the voices around them, streams of opinion. not information overload but opinion overload–-that’s what social media has brought us. Everyone has a point of view and everyone gets a vote in my life.

Greg McKweon, author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

If you can harken back to a time in which the main influences on our children were limited to mostlythe listener our families and close-knit members of our community, primarily in schools, churches, and other organizations that families participated in. In the past, they just had to manage the pressure and influences of a smaller group of people, but now that has really expanded to include so many ideas of pop culture. Nowadays the World Wide Web has the opportunity to expose students to a variety of ideas and theories, particularly on social media, in which ideas are narrowed into sound bites and memes; it’s easy for kids to get swept away by the flood of emotion and beliefs. I think it’s not so much finding our voice but hearing our voice in the midst of the deluge of ideologies and our culture’s status quo. They are being drawn into belonging to the larger world in which students might find themselves acting in ways in ways that are not really true to their nature. In other words, they don’t have the coping mechanisms to deal with this onslaught of energy and emotion that is bombarding them, in the physical world and in the virtual world that they experience in their on-screen life. So we must help them to calm their minds and begin to trust their intuition, instead of impulsive reactions. But in order to do that, students must begin to develop habits of mental hygiene, in which they are clearing up the debris left behind from an experience (on or off-screen) or a conversation with a teacher, family member or friend, and the resulting feeling from that interaction.

Mindfulness in schools is one of those movements that are empowering students to create that space in their thoughts and in their emotions which can really make a positive impact over time. It is like “brushing one’s teeth” for the mind, and there have been several documentaries made about the transformation of students when they engage in this practice. Some schools are replacing detention with meditation and dramatic shifts are taking place in the culture of those schools. It’s like an emotional reset button and a powerful tool to use in our classroom. The 15 minutes you spend on watching this video below will really help you recognize why mindfulness is so vital and critical to bringing into our classrooms.

As someone who practices mindfulness and can speak first hand to its benefits, I know that it takes courage and effort to bring it into schools. There are a lot of myths about it, however, it is becoming less fringe and more mainstream in our cultures.

There are 5 main areas in which our attention can be focused upon which will yield the neurological benefits of mindfulness practice. You can do one or more of these in a session with students, and it can take anywhere from 2-20 minutes, depending on age and your willingness to develop these habits with students.

Concentrating on:

  1. Our breath: where we are breathing and the quality of that breath.
  2. Sensations in body parts: scanning our body, finding areas of tension and relaxation.
  3. Sensations of our emotion: where our emotion arises from and how does it make us feel.
  4. Thoughts:  our thought based on time, so is the thought that we are thinking on from a moment in the past or a possibility of what will happen in the future.
  5. Attention to details: noticing and appreciating smells, sounds, and sights.

Full disclosure here: I’d like to tell you that I fully implement daily meditation practice with my students, but I only do it half-heartedly for a myriad of reasons, least being the amount of interruption that I get from having my classroom be a hallway for others.  (Yes, my classroom is a hallway.) However, I do try to incorporate mindful acts in our day with brief moments of focus on our bodies, minds, and thoughts. I usually do 3 belly breaths, a mindful stretch when we line up, and a reflective question of the day. Sometimes we go on “listening walks”, and lately we’ve been trying to look more closely at nature in order to find patterns.  I’d like to do more, but that is where I am at in my journey to create mindfulness in my classroom. I do make attempts at carving out mindful moments in my day in a variety of ways, and I think this is a good first step.

As an IB educator, there is a desire to develop mindfulness and wellbeing in our students. As the Primary Years Programme (PYP) begins to embrace the ATLs (Approaches to Learning) that we see in Middle Years Programme (MYP), I know that more schools will begin integrating mindfulness into their school communities. Next year, I’ve been thinking about how I might do a proper routine incorporating mindfulness so I can make an earnest effort in this movement. I’ve been thinking about making a simple tool like a spinner that shows our emotions and having students rate how they feel before we begin our exercise and how we feel afterward by moving the hand of the spinner. Focusing in on our current state of emotion and evaluating where we are at the beginning of this journey and where we end up at the end of the practice is so important because it cultivates self-reflection and provides personal feedback of our experience.

I don’t know how others might have experimented with mindfulness and meditation in their classrooms, but I’d love to hear stories and share experiences. I know that these skills are actually as important, if not more important, than academic skills that we teach our students. And I think if more of us shared our struggles, then that could increase the willingness of other educators to try to create “an oasis of calm” and a culture of compassion in our schools and in the lives of our students.

I encourage you to leave a comment.  I’d love to hear how you teach “mental hygiene” to students.  Also feel free to connect with me @judyimamudeen or through this website.

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Homework Vs. Deep Work

Homework Vs. Deep Work

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We had an open house this week, and as I sat down to answer parent questions about our Primary Years Programme, I opened up my Powerpoint, prepared to refer to my laundry list of all the ways the International Baccalaureate is wonderful. But then questions came and my presentation took care of itself. I began to get a clear picture of how truly different we are and how rigid so many schools are in China. One mother pined for her 3rd-grade son’s happiness and felt awful that she had to battle him daily to do 2 hours or more of homework a night. Having 2 hours or more of homework?–a parent’s free time also gets demolished as I’m sure they have to sit there with their student to complete the worksheets. You can imagine that both parties suffer burnout and do not enjoy these nightly sessions. So parents feel equally imprisoned by the idea of doing homework, as what they see as a necessary evil.

Yet, this is endemic of living in Asia–so many of the countries here, with their large populations and competitive job markets, staunchly value education as the only means to have a decent life. School is life for young people, and it is also very normal that children, beginning in Kindergarten, get tutors or attend “academy”–a night school that teachers next year’s math or other content knowledge.

Ever since this meeting, my mind is wandering, thinking about my own child.  I love my little person and I want her to come home eager to tell me her tales of school that day. I don’t want to berate her about doing homework.  So earlier this year, I had her think about creating a homework schedule, which obviously has a fair amount of parent input (my daughter never would put in IXL willingly). You can see the final schedule in this post, which amusingly you can notice that the weekend is “Hannah’s to do list”–meaning that mom and dad leave her to her own devices.

However, I am starting to rethink this concept of homework, which is essentially practicing what the skills that they are in the midst of learning that week. I do think this is important and of value, but I’d also like to cultivate her interests, which lately has been coding and Minecrafting. I’m a big fan of Cal Newport and his treatise on Deep Work which can be summarized here (although I recommend you read the book since there are more nuggets inside). cal newport

In particular,  Cal recommends that one “drains the shallows” and create focused, uninterrupted attention on developing a skill, working on a project or task that is challenging and demands ideation to promote innovation in your area of interest. When looking over one’s schedule, it is vital to quantify the depth of every activity–is it moving you towards a goal or achievement? Is it really helping you to cultivate depth of knowledge and expertise? Once you evaluate your schedule, then you recreate it and reallocate your time to doing this “deep work”. The end goal of these accumulated hours is to bring into fruition new and better ways of doing something, solving a problem or producing a product which will have an overall greater benefit on humanity.

With this idea in mind, I asked my daughter if she had to get rid of something on her schedule, what would it be, draining the shallows, sort of speaking. She told me that she’d get rid of the writing on Tuesday. When I probed to know why she told me that she didn’t like writing, she told me that she likes to draw and she never gets to do that in her writing prompts. She’s in 1st grade, the year when drawings are replaced with words to convey ideas, but I could appreciate her struggle with the transition. (Through this conversation, I gleaned some insights and it gave me an idea for next year to try when I teach 1st grade, as I motivate students into using better word choice rather than pictures to describe their ideas.) I told her to redo her schedule and she readily replaced writing with coding. As you look at her schedule below, it was obvious to me that her interests are emerging.

 

Although I’d like her schedule to be refined to maybe 1 or 2 focused items a day, it is a first step towards managing one’s time and developing readiness for “deep work”.
It got me thinking if all students were to be asked to do this task–creating their own after school schedule, what would it be? How could we instill within our students a desire to pursue their interests?–to redirect their attention to work that is meaningful to them. This idea of time management is one of the Transdisciplinary Skills or Approaches to Learning (ATL) that we seek to create in our IB learners. So as much as I want students to practice skills that they are in the midst of developing, I also want them hungry to learn so that they independently and organically augment their abilities. This is a key distinction of learning in the IB. So, I am just wondering if we were to tweak the idea of homework and teach parents to be partners in their student’s passions if that would make for more fulfilled families, overall. Perhaps introducing this concept of “deep work”, reframing homework in a new light, could not only shift the dynamics of home learning but could also inspire greater student selected inquiries into their passions.

 

I’m definitely interested in anyone else’s experiences with transforming homework into a joy rather than a drudgery. Please connect with me @judyimamudeen or leave comments below.

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