Tag: best practice

How can we approach moving on?

How can we approach moving on?

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Home? Recently I attended a mindfulness retreat at Plum Village whose message was Harmony in the Home, Joy in the World. Home as they defined it, was being in the present moment, aware of our bodies, own emotions, and habit energies.

As an international educator, I have called many places my home. I’ve been lucky to meet and befriend people from a variety of backgrounds and cultures. But I’ve never considered time as the space and place that I actually inhabit. 

By the 2nd semester of my 1st year, I knew that Laos was a temporary post, a stopover until I find my next professional home. Sometimes that happens as an international educator–you arrive at a place and realize that your values and interests don’t match the environment in which you find yourself. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t a “good” place, it’s just not the “right” place for you. Not every school can be your professional home and not every city can meet your personal needs. And sometimes you don’t know that until you transition into the new environment. You have to ask yourself–is this place going to bring out the best in me or the worst in me? How can I make this experience optimal for my personal and professional learning?

And here it is April already. I’m in the final 7 weeks of our school year. And, as I turn my attention and focus on moving on, it’s easy to lose focus as I pivot into my next role. I have to make a conscious decision to not coast out of the school year and remain present for the community in which I serve. I’ve been examining this “process of transitions” guide, recognizing that I am in the “leaving” mode.  Screen Shot 2019-04-23 at 10.53.56 AM.png

I can really relate to it. Having a strong desire to “finish strong” takes effort and intention when I am in the midst of transition. Here are some strategies I am employing to help me put a “bow” on this experience:

Express joy

Oftentimes, people focus on the faults of a place in order to justify why they are leaving. That’s a really ugly and angry mental space to be in. And the truth is, there’s a lot to love when you stop and think about. Furthermore, there’s a lot to laugh at and enjoy. So I am asking myself…

What can I cherish? What quirks and unique things might I miss and should value while I still can experience them? Was there any “must-dos” that I haven’t done which would be a fun way to round off living here?

So now, in the space of time left, my family and I have made a list of the things we’d like to that would help us cope with the anxiety that comes along with moving by finding all the things that are lovable about this place so that we may feel positive about our time spent living here.

Express gratitude

When I consider what brings me the deepest sense of regret, it has always been telling people how absolutely wonderful they are. Even those individuals who I’ve struggled with have been a boon to my personal and professional growth. Heck, I’d say that they were like a nagging piece of dirt from which I had an opportunity to develop a pearl of wisdom from this experience.

Truly, I feel grateful for the growth that was created through the relationships I had during my experience here. Whether I present a person with in-person thank you or through a card or email, it’s important to reflect and show appreciation for the contribution that they made in my life. I’ve created a roster of all those individuals who I need to express my appreciation for and looking for opportunities to share them in the weeks ahead–making it a fun part of my “to do” list.

Express forgiveness

Recently one of our counselors sent us an email entitled: “Leaving well”–what a beautiful notion! In it she informed us:

Times of transition can be challenging for everyone – those leaving, those staying and those arriving. David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken in their book, Third Culture Kids, (available in the VIS Library) talk about the importance of leaving well. To do this they suggest building a RAFT to get from ‘here’ to ‘there’:

R:  Right any wrongs – make peace or resolve any conflicts

A:  Affirmations – let people know how important they have been

F:  Farewells – saying goodbye or see you later to people and favourite places

T:  Thinking and learning about the next place

I found the R in RAFT to be an interesting component to “leaving well”–not because making amends is unusual but that it is listed FIRST. Addressing those areas of tenderness from our past interactions is an act of courage. It requires admitting our own errors in judgment and behavior. However, I can see why it’s a vital component since we don’t want to bring any residue of anger or regret into our next experience. Although these conversations could be awkward, I think they can be really powerful and can have a profound healing effect if we approach it in the spirit of humility and candor.

So who have I “wronged”? And who has “wronged” me? This is something that I also need to look deeply at and address in the weeks to come in a sober and sincere way.

Start Now

So I’ve already made appointments with individuals and put “things to do” on my calendar.

Of course, we don’t need to wait until we are in the process of leaving to cultivate joyful experiences in the community that we live in, as well as communicating our appreciation and amnesty. Anyone can do this any time. Even if you aren’t stepping into your “next”, you can find peace where you are, breathing in and enjoying your “home” with the people around you and places you find yourself in.

Choose Your Own Adventure- Professional Development and the Role of Reading in Creating Teacher Leadership

Choose Your Own Adventure- Professional Development and the Role of Reading in Creating Teacher Leadership

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They say that readers are leaders. I have often thought that this catchy rhyme was just a pithy statement to encourage reading. But we’ve had  Natashya Hays from Erin Kent Consulting at our school, and she submerged us into the current research on reading. Obviously, it made me take a hard look at my own classroom practice, but it made me reflect on Who I am as a reader.

Here’s one thing question that really stuck with me- Can you spare 10 minutes a day? 

10 minutes a day.jpeg

1.2 million words a year? What does that do to a brain? Clearly, that makes for better test scores, but us adults really don’t take tests, do we? That doesn’t motivate us to read, right? However, I firmly believe it has a profound impact on developing our perspective, as each book or article we read shapes our heart and mind. This, in turn, has a compounding effect, in which interest becomes a passion. Clearly, this is the biggest difference between someone like Natashya Hays and other educators because she is a voracious reader of literacy research. Naturally, she becomes more effective and impactful as she takes the words off the page and into practice. She’s wasn’t “born that way”–she cultivated herself to become an expert. Readers ARE leaders, dedicated to a purpose and truly, any of us can become such a proficient teacher.

Needless to say, this has had me reflect on what I have read for professional development so far this year. Although I have picked up and skimmed many books this year, these are the titles that I have genuinely read from back to front:

What’s the best that could happen? by Debbie Miller

Teaching Talk: A Practical Guide to Fostering Student Thinking and Conversation by Kara Pranikoff

The Children You Teach: Using a Developmental Framework in the Classroom by Susan Engel

The Teacher You Want to Be: Essays about Children, Learning and Teaching by Matt Glover

Personalized Learning in a PLC at Work: Student Agency Through the Four Critical Questions by Timothy Stuart and Sascha Heckman

As you can see, it’s a sort of mixed bag of professional ideas and I regret that I haven’t had a lot of professional focus this year with regard to my reading. That, of course, I take personal responsibility for, but it makes me wonder if school leadership shouldn’t be encouraging more professional reading within its walls. Not only books but blogs or articles. Have a think, when was the last time you received an email about some interesting current research that relates to your school’s objectives or just something provocative related to education? Our director, Elsa Donohue, often shares things that have impacted her thinking from conferences that she attends. I love that because it draws me into new ideas that I may not have been exposed to before and inspires professional dialogue at school. But it’s not a common practice that research is shared among our primary team, let alone a book study.

Hmmm….. but is it school leadership’s job to do this? Shouldn’t we, as educators, be taking initiative and “choosing our own adventure” when it comes to professional reading?

That makes me wonder, is it too late to change school culture? Might we have a professional book club after all? And how might we encourage reading to expand our thinking and improve our practice?……

I think the best time to start something like this is NOW. So, I’ve decided to reach out to my colleagues and invite them to attend an organized book club meeting for professional reading. I sent a survey and included this message:

Hi Book Lovers!
I’d appreciate you taking the time to answer a few questions so that I could help organize a professional book club at VIS. Before you complete this survey, I want to frame this by stating this is not mandatory and should be thought of as a casual and social venture. Here are a few rules about this book club:

Rule #1: The book you choose is related to something professionally, either to support teaching content or your developing your professional character.

Rule #2: This is in the spirit of fun and a love of reading. Your participation is completely voluntary and is in no way reflects judgement on you as a professional or is related to your evaluation as an educator.

Rule #3: Conversation stays on the books. Gossip is strictly prohibited.

Rule #4: Even if you don’t finish the book, you are welcome to participate in conversations.

Rule #5: Anything personal or professional at book club, stays at book club. Respect vulnerable and candid conversations.

Rule #6: Be open-minded and kind so that a spirit of fun is maintained.

Rule #7: Teaching professionals outside of VIS are welcomed to join. We honor all educators and are not elitist in any way.

I’m hoping that this gets the ball rolling. So often we wait for school leadership to drop ideas in our laps and direct our professional focus. However, we need to take an agentic approach and enlist others into aspiring to excellence. 10 minutes a day? I think this is absolutely doable, and it makes me think about that book by Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, in which we learned how intelligence and talent can be cultivated through diligent effort, rather than innate ability.

Now, as I peruse through my stack of professional books, I wonder what book I might consider sharing. Will it be…. a more recent book like Visible Learning: Feedback (Volume 2) by John Hattie and Shirley Clarke, or an older but still relevant book like Making Learning Whole by David Perkins; or should it be more specific to content areas such as literacy like Who’s doing the Work? by Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris or expand my depth of understanding with Concept-Based Inquiry in Action: Strategies to Promote Transferable Understanding  by Carla Marschall and Rachael French? Tough choices. I have quite a lot of books to choose from, but I look forward to picking one and connecting with others.

So do you agree–Readers are leaders? Whatcha’ been reading? What are you developing your “leadership” skills in?

A Different Kind of Practice for this PYP Educator

A Different Kind of Practice for this PYP Educator

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As a Primary Years Programme educator, we often refer to ourselves as “practitioners” not teachers. That’s an interesting choice of words, isn’t it? Does it make you wonder what it is that we practice?

As it is the beginning of a new year, we have an opportunity to reflect on the accomplishments of last year and contemplate the goals of the 365 days that lay before us. Considering how I am fresh from a holiday mindfulness meditation retreat at Thai Plum Village, it’s easy for me to focus on who I want to become, not just what I want to do like “get in better shape” in the new year.  In fact, I have been contemplating what it means to be a practitioner and examining what I want to “practice” more in 2019, not just with the students, but with all the human beings that I am in contact with. There are 3 things that I’d like to become more proficient as a “practitioner”.

Practice #1: Patience

My daughter just turned 9 years old on December 27th. Future (6)During her celebration, I always remember how I actually went into labor on December 25th, Christmas Day, but it took her 2 more days to make her entrance. That pretty much sums up my daughter for you. She likes to take her time. She’s cautious. She saunters. She has a mind of her own. And at times I feel frustrated and eager to “get going”–a phrase I use with her often. Naturally, this sort of tug and pull with time can create tension and frustration between us. So it makes me wonder what other relationships do I need to practice more patience in and in what situations does the need for exercising patience arise?

I think of moments in which I lean into my students, stopping to listen to them fully. This is what often is the fodder for a “teachable moment”. But as I ponder these “Teachable Moments”, they don’t have to be miraculous events in a lesson. I think there are numerous opportunities to allow time for understanding to organically emerge through our interactions.  But I watch the clock, thinking about our schedules all the time. Of course, this is just one dimension of developing patience in daily school lives. What if I tried to do less to accomplish more in our inquiries, instead of trying to march through our “standards” and “learning objectives” so I can take a breath and provide more space for them to share and reflect. I know this will take more skillfulness in asking questions and planning provocations, but if I am patient, if I am deeply listening to students, I know that these skills can naturally develop. I don’t have to read the latest and greatest professional books, I can just pay better attention to my learners. They are my best teachers. They are my professional curriculum.

It also seems obvious, but a pregnant pause during a conversation with colleagues would also genuinely help me to be more attentive to the ideas and concerns of others. I don’t have to rush in and share a thought or opinion. I can be patient and listen. I can also be patient when it comes to email replies or tasks to be ticked off my to-do list. There is really no shortage of opportunities to practice patience in my work-life.

Practice #2: Joy

If you were to ever meet me in person, I often say “Happy Monday.”..or Tuesday…or whatever day it is when I am walking to my classroom in the morning. To me, it’s a pleasure and honor to get to do the work that I do; I don’t HAVE TO do it, I GET TO do it. I wasn’t always like this. I remember there was a time in which I taught High School that I dreaded Monday. I had to cultivate happiness and when you are a curmudgeon, it feels like an effort to see what is right in a situation. Sharing a smile is where I began. I would stand in the doorway, greeting my Integrated Science students, smiling and inviting them into class. If they smiled back at me–SCORE!!–I knew that they were ready to learn. It felt like a genuine accomplishment. It lifted my spirits and eventually transformed my experience of working with adolescents.

When I started working with younger students, especially the Early Years, it was really hard to be grumpy. If you come across grouchy, those kids lose interest in building a relationship with you. And I can’t say I blame them. So I learned quickly that I was better off singing a song powerplant.jpegor playing a game to get them to focus while I explained something. But those outward actions don’t hide the frustration and agitation going on inside. I had to learn how to calm down internally–still am, for that matter–so that I can bathe our classroom community in that calming presence.

A few years ago, I came across Brendon Burchard, a life coach who preaches that you have to “Bring the Joy” to wherever you go. I honestly hadn’t considered that phenomena, and developing that level of energy and enthusiasm is a life skill that I think all of us should master. It sure makes life more fun and interesting. Here is a quick video on this concept if you are keen to learn more:

Nevertheless, I have been working on “generating” joy on demand. If you go to a Zen retreat like I did, it becomes very easy to learn how returning to our breath is an opportunity to find happiness in the present moment. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to stop, breath, and tune into the present moment. I practiced it for a whole week, and I intend to continue practicing it. There is joy in simply being alive when you connect to the present moment, slow down and look deeply into the situation. It’s very hard to transcribe this experience to you so that you can see how beneficial this practice is for you. But any opportunity to learn mindfulness is advised and I would recommend You Are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh to be a lovely place to start.

Needless to say, becoming more mindful is an opportunity to practice joy in the classroom. Years ago, when I was forcing myself to smile, I had no idea how I was laying down neurological tracks in my brain for peace in my body.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

Read more: Thich Nhat Hanh

Smiling literally changes us, sending off a cascade of chemical signals that tell our bodies that indeed there is something to be happy about. And I have noticed that my smile turns into laughter: quiet chuckles and boisterous guffaws. I wish to practice more of this joy-on-demand this year, and, more importantly, teach it to students. Who knows, maybe I will lucky enough to articulate well to adults, who have more fixed ideas and stories around joyfulness.

Practice #3: Understanding

This practice might be the hardest for me. I know in the PYP, we talk about developing empathy and perspective in our students, but as an adult, our judgment and self-righteousness are hard to shake off at times. At least for me, if I am being honest.

But I am beginning to appreciate that I often don’t have enough information in order to form an opinion about something or someone. I need to practice understanding, taking time to ask questions and observe a situation more closely before drawing a conclusion. It doesn’t happen in one conversation, in one meeting. It takes time, and, again, deep listening, in order to develop clarity.

Let me give you a current example. I have a student that I am pretty sure has dyslexia. The statistics are that 1 in 5 students have it. Seeing how I have 18 students in my class, there’s a high probability that at least 1 student in my class has it, so I am biased to be looking for this reading difficulty to start with. This student has many of the features of dyslexia, but I should not be quick to label him. I need more time to observe and reflect on how he sees words, writes letters and numbers, and hear sounds. We’ve already started interventions with him, so we have to continue reflecting on his response to these approaches. In other words, I need to truly understand him in order to teach him since he learns differently than average kids–which is really what this label of “dyslexia” really means. But he is not the only student that deserves this. All students do.

So for me, developing understanding goes beyond examining data, it is an appreciation for the motivations and emotions of each student–and for my colleagues for that matter. Understanding the “why” behind the behavior, including my own, is so important in cultivating enriching interactions. Approaching others with curiosity and a “beginner’s mind” can help renew my relationship with them and cultivate a fresh perspective of situations, providing me with greater awareness and opportunities to explore different approaches.

New Year or Same Year?

As I carefully consider how I might approach being a teacher and a PYP practitioner differently, I know that there will be moments of genuine effort involved in order to create a NEW YEAR. Because if I just continue repeating habits and behaviors of the past, the calendar may say that it’s a new year, but in truth, unless I change, it’s the same year all over again. It is my intention to develop myself emotionally, as well as intellectually, as I embark upon a new dimension of my professional practice.

Perhaps you have begun to consider who you want to be as an educator as well. What do you want to practice more of in the year to come–what emotions or attitudes do you want to cultivate? Feel free to share in the comments below so that others can be inspired by the energy of your commitment.

I wish you a genuinely Happy New Year.

May you be well.

May you be safe.

May you be peaceful.

May you be love.

May you be happy.

Math in the #PYP: Can you really “kill 2 birds” with one planner?

Math in the #PYP: Can you really “kill 2 birds” with one planner?

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I’ve been doing a little light reading and exploring the new PYP: From principles into practice digital resource in the PYP resource center. This led me to nose around the Programme standards and practices documentation to see if anything had dramatically changed. I was surprised at how much it had changed in wording, not just swapping section letters for numbers but how some of the ideas have shifted to articulate the “enhancement” of the programme.  Here’s something that stood out to me:

(2014)Standard C3: Teaching and learning

Teaching and learning reflects IB philosophy.

1. Teaching and learning aligns with the requirements of the programme(s). PYP requirements

a. The school ensures that students experience coherence in their learning supported by the five essential elements of the programme regardless of which teacher has responsibility for them at any point in time.

 

(2018) Learning (04)  Standard: Coherent curriculum (0401)

Learning in IB World Schools is based on a coherent curriculum.

Practices: The school plans and implements a coherent curriculum that organizes learning and teaching within and across the years of its IB programme(s). (0401-01)

This led me to question and scan through the standards and practices documentation to examine how “stand alones” are being viewed in the enhancements. Since I wonder how they fit in with this idea of “coherency”, (which was not defined in the glossary of terms, oddly enough) they could be problematic as they might conflict with transdisciplinary learning.

And why do I think this?-because I’ve been struggling with trying to “cover” the math standalone along with the transdisciplinary maths. At schools in which TD (Transdisciplinary) Maths and SA (Stand Alone) Maths are taught simultaneously during a unit of inquiry,  I’m sure many of you PYP educators share my pain and are trying to “fit” it all in while not sacrificing the main UOI.

Oh, I can hear you–

Judy, but TD Maths is supposed to be embedded naturally into our UOIs. We shouldn’t know where one subject begins and where ends in transdisciplinary learning. 

But math is not a noun, it’s really a verb. And unless you write units of inquiry that create the context to do mathematics organically, it hardly lends itself to transdisciplinary learning. Perhaps it is for this reason why our school has created a whole Math Programme of Inquiry (POI) around the strands of Number and Pattern & Function. Christopher Frost wrote a brilliant blog post that articulated his school’s challenge with the PYP planning puzzle: mathematics so I can appreciate why our school has attempted to create a Math POI. However, because we only developed it within those strands, in my opinion, this has further complicated the challenge of integrating math into our units of inquiry.

For example, our last Math UOI  in 1st Grade was:

Patterns and sequences occur in everyday situations.
–Patterns can be found in numbers.
-Types of number patterns
-Patterns can be created and extended.

This was our conceptual rubric for this Unit of Inquiry:

Screen Shot 2018-10-28 at 9.52.48 AM

The lines of inquiry came from the learning outcomes (which we refer to as “learning territories” at our school) from the IB’s Math Scope and Sequence, under “constructing meaning” in Phase 2 in the Pattern & Function strand.  But then this stand-alone wasn’t enough, and we had to then create a TD math focus to go with our How We Express Ourselves unit:

Language can communicate a message and build relationships.
-Different forms of media;
-The way we choose to communicate;
-How we interpret and respond.

So there we were, as a team, staring at this central idea and wondering what would be a natural match, conceptually, with this unit. We could definitely DO data handling as a component of this unit, creating graphs and charts that reflect the 2nd and 3rd lines of inquiry. However, since we were stuck on the CONCEPT (rather than the skills), we ended up focusing on the word LANGUAGE and eventually wrote another conceptual rubric based upon the conceptual understanding (from the Math Scope and Sequence): Numbers are a Naming System (Phase 1, Number), using the learning phases from the Junior Assessment of Mathematics from New Zealand–a standardized assessment that we use across all grade levels.

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Although we felt that we “covered” the learning outcomes or “territories”, we definitely felt dissatisfied with how we approached planning and learning these of concepts. Recently, I read the Hechinger Report, OPINION: How one city got math right, something stuck out at me and made me reflect deeply on our process and purpose of math in the PYP.

The top countries in education have shown that going deeper and having more rigor in middle school are the keys to later success in advanced math. Compared to high-performing countries, American math curricula are a “mile wide and and inch deep.” Students who want to go far in mathematics need a deeper, more rigorous treatment of mathematics…..

Going for depth of understanding in the foundational years, and accelerating only when students have solid backgrounds and have identified their goals, has paid off. This is progress we can’t risk undoing by returning to the failed practices of tracking and early acceleration.

Here are the questions that surfaced after reading that article and reflecting on our context:

  1. Is having TD math and SA math taught during the same unit of inquiry really “best practice”? Are we creating a “mile wide and an inch deep”?
  2. Is focusing on conceptual understandings vs. skills really the best approach to transdisciplanary learning in math?
  3. Do broad conceptual understandings help or hinder the assessment of a math UOI?

Now I’d like to add one more question after reading the Standards and Practices……

4. How can we create coherency, not only by “covering” all the learning expectations for our grade, but create authentic math connections for transdisciplinary learning?

 

Where we are in place and time with Math in How the World Works.

Our new unit began this week. Originally our upcoming Number SA Central Idea was going to be:

Making connections between our experiences with number can help us to develop number sense.

As we were beginning to develop lines of inquiry for our “learning territories”, we decided that this central idea seemed hard to approach and written for the teacher, rather than the learner. (In my opinion, if students find Central Ideas to be goobly-gook, then how on Earth can they make meaningful connections?) We went back to the IB’s Math Scope and Sequence to provide clarity and direction to developing skills.

Will mathematics inform this unit? Do aspects of the transdisciplinary theme initially stand out as being mathematics related? Will mathematical knowledge, concepts and skills be needed to understand the central idea? Will mathematical knowledge, concepts and skills be needed to develop the lines of inquiry within the unit?

When we looked at those questions, our team nodded their heads in agreement–Yes, of course this is a TD Math unit–it’s a scientific thinking unit, for heaven’s sake–the best kind to connect with!

Thus we rewrote the Central Idea and created our lines of inquiry based upon what they might be “doing” with number, recognizing that other math strands might be employed in our How The World Works unit (Central idea: Understanding sound and light can transform experience), thus combining the “Stand Alone” with our “TD Math“. Here is the unit we created:

We collect information and make connections between our experience and numbers.
–use number words and numerals to represent real-life quantities.
-subtitize in real-life situations.
–understand that information about themselves and their surrounding can be collected and recorded
-understand the concept of chance in daily events.

To be honest, I’m not sure if this is the best approach either and I spent a good amount of time cross-referencing pacing calendars and scope and sequences from other national curricula. However, this not only would help us to “kill 2 birds” with one planner, but it also helps us lean towards creating math units that develop the context of discovering vs. “being told” when and how to do math. This is true inquiry, in my mind, whether it is through a SA or a TD Math lens of learning. But when you are trying to squeeze in teaching two maths (TD and SA) during a unit then there is the challenge of approaching problem solving as a rote skill instead of having enough time for students to make decisions based on their math understanding. Documenting and analyzing those student decisions require time in order to evaluate appropriately what our next steps might be and in order to guide them towards a deeper understanding and more flexible thinking. So stay tuned.

If any other schools have been fiddling around with integrating math into units, I’d love to hear some of your stories–indeed anyone reading this blog would!! So please share your approaches in the comments below.  It benefits all of us trying to put “Principles into Practice”.

 

 

What Really IS “Best Practice”

What Really IS “Best Practice”

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It’s Tuesday at 4:45pm and my brain cells begin to take a break. I’m struggling with my energy level, peeved at myself for not drinking a tea earlier so I had a mental boost for this meeting. Because I care. It’s about the counseling program at our school, and I want to be fully present. I think it’s important.

Now it’s 2:30am, and I am awake, a bit annoyed that I have the term “best practice” ruminating in my mind. Why is this the first thought this morning? And how can I make it stop troubling my thoughts?

You see the other day I had a colleague make a remark that for some reason has really gotten under my skin–“oh, it’s really just best practice, right?”. Here’s the thing, I’m really tired of hearing the term “best practice”. It implies some secret sauce, some cookbook, that if all teachers follow, will result in amazing student achievement. I think that’s an overused term to get teachers to comply with certain boundaries of your curriculum. Think about it, if you teach in a highly structured system (Think a national scheme like France’s, in which all French schools have to be on the same page, literally, on the same day), then they have an idea of “best practice”. However, in our PYP school, we are more unstructured, textbookless, with flexible timelines, and no literacy model or math program (ex: Everyday Math) that we all follow. Needless to say, our idea of “best practice” has less to do with teacher compliance and more to do with teacher creativity. Those are very different perspectives on education. And who is right? Which is better?  Who is the “best”?

Rumi-Quotes-10I’m not here to pick a fight but I want to call our attention to how we throw that term around. In fact, I’d like to toss that term on the ground and squash it. I want to bury it. It’s undefinable in our broad views of education. Because of that, I think it’s a “nothing” word like a cliche or overused term that has lost its precision and value.

John Hattie’s idea of “Know Thy Impact” is more meaningful because it really helps schools to define their context and go deeper into the Why with the How they implement their curriculum, no matter how rigid or adaptable the structure is. I feel that we should use a more active term to define the type of work we do with students:  Impactful Practice.

Yet, I think there is a space in which all of us can connect, an area of our schools that we can all agree upon. It’s the one thing we can all consent to- student relationships matter.  john hattie relationship.png

This is where our dichotomous learning approaches merge. No matter what curriculum we use, the pedagogy of the heart is the central feature of all the work we do in schools. It’s the reason why I made a strong commitment to fight off my tiredness and engage in a meeting about our counseling program because we are talking about the hearts of our students. Connecting with them?–Yeah, I want to do that- Every day, for at least 190 days this year!

It’s now 6am and I have transformed this agitation into a clarity of purpose. Perhaps you, dear reader, may feel the same way.  I hope that wherever we are in the world, despite how we teach, that we can all agree upon really digging in and cultivating an intention of “impactful” practice, connecting to and understanding the emotional landscape and perspectives of our students.  Doing this– that’s the only practice that matters. Don’t you agree?

The Role of the #PYP Coordinator: 3 Things that No One Wants to Learn the Hard Way

The Role of the #PYP Coordinator: 3 Things that No One Wants to Learn the Hard Way

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About a month ago, I sat having wonderful discussions with PYP coordinators from all over the world in the Hague about the Enhanced PYP. Aside from curriculum, it got me thinking about other aspects of the leadership role of the Curriculum Coordinator. It’s not an easy position to be in and no 3-Day Workshop or online course can provide adequate training for your school’s special challenges.

As coordinators, we have the responsibility for The 3Cs: Climate, Curriculum, and Culture. It’s hard to say which one of the 3Cs comes first as a priority as they are critical to the success and impact you can make at your school.  You often have to juggle them and it’s hard to keep those balls up in the air but they have to stay in motion. The impact they have on the community can help to create a contagion of positivity and goodwill if done well. Most of our professional development comes from the context of those 3Cs and they take time to develop. And no coordinator can be successful alone–they need a team, and teams develop through relationships.  I think having empathy and coming from the perspective of “the teacher” is particularly important as it relates to developing staff relationships, and there are few things that I wish someone would have advised me on when it came to the role.

People Before Paperwork

We are human beings, not human doings.  You’ve got to consider people over paperwork because people are our job–whether it’s the little people in our classrooms or the big people that make up our staff. paperworkI know we have our checklists of paperwork that we have to stay on top of, but at the end of the day, I’d rather have teachers focused on making sure the kids have engaging, authentic and impactful learning and I have rarely found that paperwork inspires them to create that. This is especially true at PYP schools in which we have to reflect often on our students’ learning so that we can determine the next steps in their inquiries

I had one coordinator who used to come in nearly weekly and, during our meetings, he would put our conversations about learning into the PYP planner or onto our scope and sequence documents so that the ideas were documented (ticked the box) and the teachers could engage in more creative thinking during collaboration time. Also, I had more time to communicate with families, look at data and plan more thoughtful provocations.

Coordinators should always look for opportunities to free up time so that teachers don’t have to be bogged down so much with paperwork and instead shift their focus to making learning impactful.

Professional Relationships: You get people ON the bus when you don’t put people UNDER the bus

A common mistake that coordinators make is that they complain to teachers about the administrators as a bid for connections. Don’t throw administration under the bus in front of teachers. As a new or aspiring leader, choosing to throw someone under the bus is one of the telling signs of your leadership capabilities.

[bctt tweet=”When you blame somebody else for something that you should be taking some responsibility for, you are communicating weakness and not strength” username=”judyimamudeen”] In most situations, you can be a change agent so you should be seeking solutions and not be projecting your frustrations onto the staff.  I know it may help you to “feel” that can connect more with the teacher’s perspective but it’s unprofessional and you will develop a culture of complaint and gossip. Who really wants that?

evalutionAnd it’s poor form to throw teachers under the bus in front of teachers. Trust is so important in your work so if you undermine others, expect staff to lose their confidence in you.

It’s the Law of Karma-what is said aloud, goes aloud. So Watch your mouth! The minute you walk away, that teacher you complained to is wondering “hmmm… I wonder what my coordinator tells others about me?” If you feel that a teacher isn’t working up to their potential, talk TO them directly (not ABOUT them) and in a non-threatening way, and seek out a mentor for them. Also, how you say what you say matters. Under your breath, if you must, repeat the mantra: Stay professional. Stay Professional. Stay Professional.

I’m not going to lie here. I have suffered from bouts of “Insert Foot into Mouth Disease” and, goodness knows, that I have had to go back to a staff member to apologize for saying something in a wrong way.  But, for me, it’s more important to have peace and understanding than lose face. However, I once worked with a vice-principal who NEVER ONCE said an unkind word about anyone. EVER. He had plenty of opportunities to humor me with grievances but he never did. Bless him. I thought of him as a saint. And if he asked me to jump, I was like “How high?” and “Would you like sprinkles with that?” He is still my inspiration today because he was always compassionate, generous, thoughtful and caring.  Now, if we all could aspire to that level of professionalism, imagine what a peaceful and productive school we’d have.

Communication: The Human Touch 

Have you ever played a game but you didn’t know the rules? You read the rule book (if there was one) but you just didn’t get the gist of the game. It was frustrating, wasn’t it? You felt like you could never win.

Often that happens with procedures and policies at school. Admin sends them policy manuals and handbooks (if you have them) and tells them to read it. And through osmosis, they are expected them to “get it” and feel successful in managing the systems and practices of your school community. New teachers need explicit explanations of the rules and norms of this “game” called At Our School We Do….. Sometimes coordinators do this through an induction program that is spread out over time. I know that I have dedicated a period of weeks to this and I found it highly successful. My staff feedback was that it mitigated the overwhelm of their transition and helped develop our personal relationship.

Another coordinator I know has staff meetings “end” early during key times in the year (like the 1st 3-way conference, or report writing time, etc..) so that she can have a Q and A sessions with teachers about expectations and protocols for important events. The staff members who already know these procedures and processes feel happy because they can “be released” to do other work, meanwhile, the teachers (mainly new teachers) who need some support can stay behind and get their needs met as well. Later, she sends a follow-up email documenting the expectations that help these teachers to remember those conversations.

Speaking of Emails vs. Meetings

emailsCall me Old Fashion, but I prefer the personal touch of staff meetings over email any day. I like connecting with colleagues and having a common understanding of the events in our community and our school’s pedagogical approaches. Also, consider the fact that if teachers are more concerned with keeping up with emails, rushing to read them then they are not examining students’ work or reflecting on the discussions they had, then the focus isn’t on improving learning. We want teachers to be spending their cognitive power on making learning for students awesome rather than your 18-bullet email about professional development goals. Let that one sink in a bit. It’s good to have a weekly newsletter to communicate important things but if you find that your staff emails began as a couple of sentences and now is evolving paragraphs, then it needs a face to face. A quick and dirty chat will be more impactful than a back and forth conversation over the internet.

And one last point about “the human touch”-Do you go into classrooms? Or do teachers have to come to you? Are you “The Boss” or are you “a colleague and mentor”? How you present and project yourself weighs heavily on the level of trust and compliance you will develop with your team.  Kindness and connection are vital to the work we do in schools. It’s how you build trust and loyalty.  Talk to you teachers-You don’t have to be charismatic and bubbly but you do have to have sincere enthusiasm for the work they are doing in classrooms. We all need encouragement sometimes and when you say it to their face, it is always more meaningful and authentic than an email blast. It’s great to give them recognition amongst their peers but to take the time to tell them in person is really powerful. Don’t underestimate the value and meaning of your words.

Perhaps you might relate to these challenges. As humans, we are all a bit flawed (except for that saintly vice-principal) and when you are in leadership your flaws are even more obvious. So I am wondering what other ideas and perspectives you might share that would help develop more positive staff relationships as we engage in their role in the curriculum. Tips and tricks welcomed in the comments below!

Lean in, It’s not too late.

Lean in, It’s not too late.

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I don’t want to look at my phone. The chatter of mating frogs is not muted by the buzzing air con. I know it’s too early but my mind is awake even if my body is motionless. I have students on my mind.

may-2018-blog-series-image1You see I made the mistake of reading Two Writing Teachers’ Blog and, as our team worked on our final unit plan and learning overview, it was painfully obvious that time wasn’t on our side. What happened to April? How did May get here? How can we consolidate the great learning, yet still make an impact on the students who need more support?  Oh,  how many more weeks to make a difference?

It’s easy to “slide” out, but I want to lean it, pull up my sleeves and dig into these final moments with the students.  I want to end this year empty–both for me and the kids, knowing that we did our best and gave our all. I’m inspired and renewed that there are educators who are just as insanely committed to making this school year end on a positive note. Perhaps you are too.

 

Kick in the Pants: Slice of Life Challenge

Kick in the Pants: Slice of Life Challenge

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Everyone needs a kick in the pants sometimes. Recently I went on a Writer’s Workshop professional development training in Yangon, Myanmar. Since I’ve been in the Early Years for such a long time, it was fantastic to get a refresher course on this unique philosophy and approach to teaching writing and reading. I love it because it really has a lovely inquiry-based approach to examining texts and using those craft moves in our writing.  But honestly, I took for granted the cornerstone piece of being an effective writing teacher is to be a writer yourself–to read materials from that perspective of a writer (whether for professional or personal reasons)  and dedicate yourself to a life of writing.

slice-of-life_individual.jpgIt was during this time that I was reminded of the blog, Two Writing Teachers, and I immediately fell back in love with all the helpful and insightful posts in there. I noticed that they have a Slice of Life challenge coming up, which is another wonderful nudge to write consistently, if not daily. Being an authentic Writer’s Workshop teacher is probably less about the method and more about a lifestyle of close reading and practicing the craft of writing; so if I am to take this on seriously, then I need to stay committed to developing habits around writing.

So with that in mind, I am accepting this kick in the pants and publicly announcing that I am going to take this challenge personally.  However, since this is my professional blog, I reckon that I will make my “slices of life” come from my classroom.

writing quote.jpg

The truth is that I have been a writer all my life, from the moment I could form my ABCs until this very moment here with you. Now in my 44th year of life, I am finally acknowledging this fact. It’s quite liberating and invigorating really.

And I hope you will join me in this quest to turn what may seem like a mundane task into an exciting turning point in your career, moreover your life. We can hold each other’s hands as we enter into the writing life together.

writing quote.jpg

 

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10 Reasons Why I Can’t Wait to Teach 1st Grade Next Year

10 Reasons Why I Can’t Wait to Teach 1st Grade Next Year

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My school year is winding down–4 more weeks left of school! (but not that I’m counting) And instead of thinking about all the great adventures we will have this summer, all I can think about is how much fun I am going to have to teach 1st grade next year. Teacher Nerd ALERT!next year After bobbing back and forth between the Early Years and 4th grade for the last couple years, I will be happy to settle in 1st grade for a while, where you get the best of the Early Years mindset (unfettered creativity and imagination) and yet starting to gain confidence and competence in Literacy and Numeracy skills, making it possible to go deep with developing their knowledge and thinking skills. Plus their minds aren’t as sullied with “can’ts” as the older grades are, making them so wonderfully teachable. Oh, the joy of learning!-for both me and them.

Here are the 10 things that are keeping me up at night that I am so dang excited to do with 1st graders:

  1. Meditation: Cultivating calm in one’s mind should be a skill taught early in life. If I was being honest, I have been a bit chicken to really make it a part of my classroom routine in a serious way. But I really intend to push myself and introduce mindfulness and meditation in a more intentional way. I think 6-7 years old can manage a brief moment of calm.   
  2. Book Snaps: Although I am not sure about introducing SnapChat to little ones, how I do love this idea by Tara Martin, in which kids take a “snap” of the book they are reading and post the questions, ideas, and quotes from the book as annotations. I think the excitement of posting these “book snaps” are a unique way to cultivate an interest in close reading when you share them in a public forum. Love of close reading–oh yeah, let’s do that!
  3. Podcasting: I dabbled with podcasting before but for the last couple months, I have taken a serious interest in it and have been working on my a personal podcast for a while. Audio content is a whole other art form so this project has really made me think a lot about creativity, word choice, and voice (literally). Which is preciously why I want to do with little kids, and I was inspired by an idea that the music teacher shared with me about read alouds. So I’m hoping to do read alouds of books and their writing and publish it to an authentic audience, all the while nailing fluency in the process.
  4. Blogging: The online world is where most of my digital natives will be probably making their greatest impact as they grow into adults. I’ve always admired the philosophy of the Writer’s Workshop as it develops the mindset of a writer. What could be more authentic and meaningful as a blog, as they articulate their ideas online?
  5. SeeSaw: I have been dying to seriously mess around with digital portfolios. Currently, we use Class Dojo, which is focused more on classroom management, but SeeSaw has oh so much more going on and has a lot more opportunity for engagement and interaction.
  6. Math Workshop: Did I mention that I like the workshop model? Ah, yes, and it works for math too! Workshop + Talk Moves + Math Tools = a deeper exploration of number concepts.
  7. Math as Art: Okay, I’m a math geek, but through a series of serendipitous events, I’ve come to see art as an integral way to show the “beauty” of math. I don’t consider myself arty, at all, but I’m super interested in how we can represent math (and science) in artistic ways.
  8. Number Talks: This is probably one of my favorite things, ever, in developing mathematical mindsets, in which students get to explore a myriad of perspectives as they look at solving a problem.  So, it creates a bank of strategies for mental math and develops mathematical fluency.  If you don’t know about it, check out the video below.

9. Design Thinking: Have you ever found that you thought you knew something but then as you start really working through it and researching it, you realize how absolutely ignorant you are. Well, design thinking has done that to me, and I want to use it more often in my classroom, not as a one-off in a STEM-like unit, but I think it can be superimposed into so many aspects of learning, even writing. I want to launch it early in my class and use it often, whether we are going through the design process or doing design sprints.

10. Writer’s Workshop: Although I am not a die-hard Lucy Calkins fan, I so do love this approach to writing because it creates “authors” with writing that is worth sharing and publishing. They get to study good writing, practice these devices, go through the writing process and get peer feedback. I think it cultivates a practice of deep reading of a text and cultivates a positive mindset about writing, dare I say a buzz about their writing. I want to remix this model a bit, with the use of technology and design-based learning through. So I reckon that this experiment will be the fodder for blogs later.

If you are a 1st-grade teacher, I’m wondering what you really love challenging your students with. What am I missing? What have you done that you think is the bee’s knees? I’d love some insight!!

Nevertheless, it is fun to sit upon the precipice of something and feel the exhilaration of possibility.

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Trandisciplanary Learning

Trandisciplanary Learning

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Transdiciplanary -that sure is a mouthful to say and I think it might take me a lifetime to master but I love the process. I think of it as trying to link as many subject perspectives into a single learning context. A bottle neck of connections. In this case, it was the Central Idea: Humans have values and belief systems that can impact their actions.

As we embarked upon this inquiry, I wanted the students to ponder:

  • How do we know what people believe in? (key concept: form)
  • How do we know if the opinions we have about things are truly accurate (key concept: perspective)

So we began with our literacy link, investigating facts vs. opinions in the books that we had pulled from the library for this unit.  I asked them to do some close reading (and yes, I used the magnifying glasses to illustrate this point), thinking of themselves as “data detectives”digging for clues. Students had to record this information in their journals. Later on we discussed what kind of data was commonly found, and if this was fact or opinion–how can we tell the difference in books, which they recognized as numbers, figures and dates.

After tuning in, I posed them how we might find out what our school community believes in.So now enters the math link, looking at the data management strand of our standards.The students agreed on a survey, in which we spent a couple of lessons developing their understanding of the mathematical principles of collecting and organizing data. We talked about 3 important elements to accuracy in our survey results:

  1. Good survey questions yield accurate data.
  2. We can’t assume answers, we must ask for clarification if we are unsure of their answers.
  3. The larger the survey sample, the more reliable our results.

The students then designed simple, yes/no/maybe questions about various beliefs, which mostly focused on supernatural elements like Do you believe in God?  Do you believe in ghosts?

Students all agreed on a sample size of 30 respondents for their surveys, and started roving the corridors to ask their questions. Afterwards, we analyzed our data, and the students reflected on their results, which then circled back to literacy, in which they had to write these reflections. The students had no idea that they were doing “math” or “literacy” of course. They just knew it was “unit” time, and I think this is the key to what it means to this crazy word that I can hardly spell: TRANSDISCIPLANARY.

 

So now we segue way to how we can communicate our findings to our school community. Many ideas were suggested but we decided to use graphs. I toyed with teaching them the Excel program, but I determined that they really needed to focus more concretely on the math vs the technology–at least for now. So then began a couple serious math lessons on creating pie charts, in which we reviewed fractions and angles before we even began making the pie charts. When we made the pie charts, discussion arose about whether or not we should color them, and if we should use the same colors or different colors. Also, whether certain colors represented certain ideas; for example Yes should be green or yellow.  At the end, the students agreed to let students represent their findings individually, and be open-minded to displaying their results in the way they wanted. I thought this was an interesting discussion, and it was a natural link to what they not only knew about each other socially and culturally but their beliefs about artistry. img_0397

What I loved about this project, which grew out of a couple of questions, was that the students were highly engaged and involved–not in math, not in literacy, not in art–but in LEARNING!  And although this unit is still underway, the thinking hasn’t ended because the project did; it continues on.

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