Peer feedback and teaching

 Some rights reserved by Ken Whytock

Just came back from a google pd thing.  It was just okay, well just okay for me, I think some other people really enjoyed it.   Too often in PD we just lecture, and it's pretty boring for everyone (especially someone who spent all weekend sitting and listening).  How can we leverage real time feedback with our peers.

As I present more and more I think this question is going to be at the forefront of my mind.  How are people truly engaged in what I am saying? How do I gather evidence of this? How can adults learn in a more productive way through PD?

Launching our Enviroed

A group of us here have been working on reading this book for a book club.  We've started chapter one, and it talks about some of the barriers to growing, but also to the opportunity for success.  We need to make learning real, and meaningful for our students.  The authors suggest that one of the best ways to do this when making something is to actually release it to the public. 

As always I think back to how does that work for environmental education.  What does that mean for people who don't have a product? 

So I thought that instead of launching a thing, we launch our place.  We need to get our community involved in our place, and how we grow with it, and for it.  By bringing in parents, grandparents and people throughout the community we are sharing our learning and wondering in a more real way, something that transcends the classroom. 

I've been thinking a lot about intergenerational learning in an international school.  Can we show different gardens from around the world, have people walk through their gardens on skype or something and talk about them, why they grow what they grow, how they do it, what their soil is like, how to know when to harvest. 

Bringing people together is so important, with the Launch mindset we need to somehow launch our learning space, and our ideas, get feedback from the community and work on building our community, rather than building a product. 

Shaping our class

 Some rights reserved by Matt Stratton

I was just talking to one of my colleagues about this lately.  How can we shape our classroom, and our classroom culture differently.  

I was mentioning Lakoff, and how metaphors help shape our reality.  Today reading Creating Cultures of Thinking I came across the same idea.  Often we refer to school as work, especially for students.  How does this shape how they go about their day? 

I remember Sir Ken Robinson talking about teachers as gardeners. 

How powerful can we be if we start changing our metaphors? How do we start this? 

When we think about vision of a school and the places we want to go, we don't often address how we shape our school through language.   When we think about brands and story telling and the whole image of school, we as teachers need to start shaping it through our daily interactions, the metaphors we create and the language we use. 

I'm not sure gardening is the best metaphor (although it fits nicely with my environmental beliefs) but the idea that growth is always possible and that there are seasons of better growth really resonates with me (actually now I wonder if this is something we have to differentiate as well). 

Unity and standards: What are we aiming for?

        Some rights reserved by Chris Devers

Thanks again to the Place Being Resonance book I've been stuck in a world of wondering.  I apologize in advance. I know at times I am not clear in my writing, and this thought isn't fully formed, so it might not make the most sense. 

While reading it talked about what our destruction of the world looks like, and it looks like progress, parts look like sustainable development, parts look like social justice.  It looks like we are supposed to be doing the things we are doing because that's how people develop.  In order for humans to be unified (economically, socially, etc.) other things have to (and do) suffer.  So, when we are looking at unity, we are often just taking an anthropocentric view of what we need (and people would argue why wouldn't we think of humans first) and we forget about what our system (The Earth) needs. While we are going for unity, I'm not really sure we know who we are unifying with, and who (or what I suppose) we are excluding. 

It's really difficult for anyone to step back from themselves, deconstruct what they think, challenge the dominant culture and make a difference.  Where do those ideas even come from? So how can we expect people to actually protect our planet when we don't even know what we don't know. 

While I was pondering this, I started thinking about school, and how we are trying to hit standards and go through curriculums, and just race through to show progress.  My mind kind of paused for a second, what and who are we progressing and for what end?  Place Being and Resonance wants us to challenge how we teach, why are we moving towards more data? What is growth? Who benefits from our current system of education, and who suffers? I think deep down we know the answers to these questions, but it is difficult to challenge a system that wants to engage and enlighten our learners.  When we have public school systems that want to bring up literacy are we focusing too much on a specific type of reading? So much was flying through my head. 

I'm not really sure where to take it from there.  I know I have to listen more (not just to humans, but I need to be aware of the voices not being heard or acknowledged).  I know I have to slow things down and encourage actual thinking, and actual listening in my students.  I know I have to encourage students to be aware of a multi-vocal, eco-centric (as in not just anthropocentric) view of our planet. 

I guess the real question is how can we see the system we are in and try to fight for that system, while being aware of the multi-faceted aspects of our world.  How we can honestly unify through diversity? 

Checking out the back end

 Some rights reserved by Umang Dutt

Orientation week is always interesting when you have been at the same school for awhile. You get a sense of what people will be stressed out about, you kind of understand what might help them, but for the most part you just are there to respond to specific stresses and develop and manage relationships. 

This week has been reconnecting with some team leaders and admin and has been really good. I've worked with some of my new teachers which has been great and I've been diving into the backend of our learning management system. 

So far it's alright, making some sites, working on my.cis and trying to get things sorted for the upcoming year. It's interesting to see how (well a limited how because I'm not into code or anything yet) something works.  It is great when working with teachers and having to break things down, it really reinforces some good teaching practice.  You have to respond to a knowledge gap, fill things in at their level and try to support them as they make sense of a new world.  Also it's interesting to work with some higher level people and say, well here is how I'd work through it.  I don't fully know your answer, but here's how I would find out.  I think I'm going to adapt this with more of my students this academic year. 

It's also interesting to see a lot of technostress, some teachers are so stressed out about not understanding.  Not knowing is such a huge part of my world, so it's strange why people would be stressed out about it.

Diving into a new year

 Some rights reserved by AdamCohn

I'm pretty excited about this new year.  A lot of things will be going on.  Some of my grade three teachers will be going one to one with ipads, really going to focus on cognitive coaching with (so far) six teachers (I'm hoping to build on that) and bringing a new fishbowl type model of PD to school. 

All of this goes towards a more personalized style of development.  At times I wonder about how beneficial or damaging personalized learning can be.  I guess it's important not to totally enable enable a learner to dictate everything, but rather create situations where as individuals they can succeed.  Specifically I'm thinking about teachers, and how we need to engage them where they need it most, without offering overly involved amounts of people. 

Hopefully our fishbowl model will address these issues, smaller groups focused on things they need to know (school directed) but build up relationships so we can work on what the teachers want to know and hopefully add in some cognitive coaching as well. 

I start seeing new teachers next week, looking forward to seeing the new teachers and reuniting with the old.  

How do we create wonder?

Pancho wondering

In part of Place * Being * Resonance it discusses the power of technology.  The worry presented is that when we use technology we attack a problem from one point of view, and using one solution in mind.  Regardless of the multitude of options technologically we are still thinking from a technological standpoint, and therefore think about an anthropocentric solution. 

How can we as teachers use technology to enhance education without limiting our options?  The more I think about it the more I wonder if this is what the Redefinition aspect of SAMR could be all about.  How can we really redefine our thinking regardless of the tools we use? 

Derby posits that we must always be open to other ways of thinking and listening to other ways of being without being focused solely on humans and how we interact with the world.  We need to listen to language that isn't always our own (maybe coding) and learn to create, and use metaphor to embody other living things. 

Anyway, I wonder about the power of ipads in situations like this, we can use them to create (always movies or books) that can use examples of this other-mindedness. One of my goals this year is to really try for this.  Capture images (although there is some argument that just looking at images negates the importance of actually being outdoors) create stories that bring about other points of view.  I want my students to really strive to be open-minded and other-minded, and I think using the iPad can help. 

The base of this (I think) is to wonder, actually wonder, critically wonder, Derby would say ironically wonder I think, but really question what we are thinking and why we are thinking it, and wonder about what other voices are being missed.  As always going outside and actually seeing other things is the first step.