Pulling down other teachers to get ahead?

There's a facet of Australian society called the Tall Poppy Syndrome, in which successful and/or popular people must be pulled down to be like other people. Bill Clinton calls our Prime Minister one of the smartest leaders in the world? Better make a joke about Kevin Rudd's big head. A scientist helps to find a vaccine which prevents cervical cancer? Report each and every adverse reaction to the vaccine. It's supposed to be related to Australia's equality . . .

The same syndrome seems to be ever present in teaching. Over the last two or three years I've read books by popular teacher-authors such as Nancie Atwell, Rafe Esquith and Ron Clark. I haven't always agreed with everything they've written, but there is a lot there I like. I've tried a lot of their techniques in my classroom - some have been a huge, raging success (Reader's workshop, levels of behaviour), some which have needed to be modified for my students/classroom/state requirements/country, and some have had to be put aside for further reflection/rethought. Most of all I have liked the way that these teachers have made me think, and have made me feel that it's ok to be passionate about teaching (or in Nancie's case in particular, teaching reading).

But I've noticed, whenever I've turned to the internet to learn more, that forums and blogs seem to want to tear down these teachers personally. They complain that they have specialised circumstances which would never work for the rest of us. They complain that these teachers are setting unrealistic or insane expectations which is just unfair. They nitpick every little detail, using the one or two things that don't work for them to dismiss the whole concept altogether. They call them 'super-teachers' (not in a nice way) whose ideas are instantly dismissable by mere mortal teachers 'just wanting to collect their paycheque'

The critics always leave me with a bad taste in my mouth, because at the root of Nancie and Rafe and Ron's work I see an absolute passion for teaching and a belief that education is a pathway worth following. And I can't, for a moment, understand what it so wrong with that. If you don't like part of what they do then adapt it, or exchange it for something that will work for you. Stop blaming them for thing that aren't working for you.

I, personally, see this too(on a different scale :) ). I am blessed, after three terms of work, with a class which lines up neatly, works hard, are considerate and seem to enjoy most learning situations. I get told that this is because they're gifted and therefore well behaved, or because they're not a real class, that I don't have to work hard to get this kind of behaviour, enthusiasm or results. Unsurprisingly, I find these comments difficult. I spent a good 3 or 4 weeks constantly drilling in my expectations of behaviour at the beginning of the year. I expect them to be lined up in two straight lines facing the front, and we will practice if it's not good enough (and we have practiced). I have very high expectations of behaviour, down to requesting students walk quietly up the stairs into our classroom (visitors are always noisier than we are now). And classroom work is aimed at the level of the students, often hands on, and surrounded in the expectation that the students can do well at it (and celebration when they do well).

Don't get me wrong, things definately go pear-shaped from time to time, but because we've built up a good classroom environment, things generally run smoothly. So to be told I've had no part in that, or it can never be recreated with another group, is frankly a little offensive.

Where am I heading with this? Well, the best teachers, as far as I can see, learn from each other, not by pulling other people down. I'd like to be one of those best teachers, so I'm going to keep reading books by Nancie, Rafe, Ron and others like them, because they've given the time to try to offer something to me. The considerate thing would be to take what they offer with an open mind.

Performance Framework vs. Personal Learning

Wow. That sounds a little dry as a title :) I'll try not to be too boring.

Queensland Education has introduced the Developing Performance Framework, which aims to (to quote) "provide all employees of Education Queensland with a process supported by tools and resources that will assist all employees to develop their performance." In our school this means working in small groups with 'facilitators' to develop an understanding of what our job entails, what we need more work in, what professional development we might need and where our future career aspirations lie.

It's been put together with all good intentions - they really want us to be investigating professional development which will assist our learning. But . . . well we had our first meeting last week in our small groups and it kind of bombed.

There are a number of reasons for this - it was a Monday afternoon, just two weeks from holidays and we're all exhausted, could be one. But after a week, I realise that this way of working - sitting in a small office completing a table and talking about 'where we need to improve' - is at complete odds with the work I already do.

Since I've started this blog I've really had my eyes opened to the ways we can use the internet to facilitate our learning. We have total control on here - we undertake our own reflection (with assistance of the people we come across and the questions they ask), we follow the blogs which cover topics which interest us, we follow the links they post to videos and articles and presentations and other websites. There is a world of expertise here, not just the skills we can find in a small group. Furthermore, this is a safe place to admit that you struggle with something, or that you want to learn more about something else.

Since I've been blogging, I've learned about books and ideas I would never come across from the safety of the school. I've explored and questioned ideas which just don't come up, even in the professional reading I undertook. I've discovered that I can get great ideas from a band teacher in the USA or a early literacy blog in Australia. I'm communicating with brilliant minds and loving it.

So, it's no wonder that the Developing Performance Framework felt tired and sluggish - why are we containing ourselves to a small room when there's the whole world out there!

Returning to class - again

So, I've been away at training to learn more about Coolabah Dynamic Assessment, which is, quite honestly, some of the most exciting stuff I've learned about in gifted education in the six years I've been reading and learning about it. But now it's back to school.

After three days away, I'm a bit nervous about what's been happening in my classroom. Will it be an absolute mess? Will the supply teacher have kept up the work while I've been away? Has anything happened that I needed to know about.

There's also the next, big thing I need to prepare for - our school's Poetry in your Pocket day. I need a funky way to announce it to the students and the teachers- and I must get it done by next week. Help!

My Reflections: The Master List

This post will (as I get through it) link you to the different topics I'll be writing about as part as my reflective process.

Where do I need to Improve?

-Teaching spelling and vocabulary
-Classroom organisation
-Teaching science
-Teaching comprehension
-Getting things done
-Not getting bogged down in negative thinking

Where do I do well?

-Writer's workshop
-Teaching maths
-Kinesthetic and visual learning
-Teaching grammar and punctuation
-Gifted and talented teaching
-Getting excited about learning


Image from http://www.4freephotos.com

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A Time for Teaching Reflection

For the first time this school year - about half way through now - I have time to sit back and think about what is working and what is not, as well as what I'm doing well in and where I can improve.

Over the last few weeks, as Qld teachers and schools continue to bear the fallout of the Master's Review and the ensuing comments in the media (many made by those who think they know all about being a teacher) I've been involved with a number of conversations with other teachers, our Head of Curriculum, friends, my husband and other fellow members and random people I catch out in the street (well not so much the randoms), about what teachers and schools need more of to increase student performance.

The regulars are all there - money for resources, better facilities, testing that makes sense, a refill in the lolly jar - but there are some other more serious topics that arise (not that the lolly jar isn't serious).

One that comes up a lot is the kind of in-service/professional development we get as teachers. Earlier this year I, along with all the other Year 4-7 teachers in the state, were shipped off to a 5 day literacy training course. During this time, I learned one new thing I could use in the classroom (from the presenters, anyway. My peers gave me considerably more knowledge.) While this was a worthwhile thing to learn, it wasn't worth 25 hours away from my students.

It's a recurrent theme with professional development. Many times they are someone talking at us, with little thought for the different learning styles or previous knowledge which may already exist. So when someone tells teachers (in the newspaper) that they need more in-service in Grammar (or maths, or science, or whatever we're failing in this week) it gets me a little irritated.

I think this is because I use reflection to work out where I'm doing well and where I could improve. I then build on this with personal reading, watching lectures and listening to pod casts. I search out new ways to teach and try them before reflecting again. Over the four years I've been teaching, I've built up a good understanding of how I teach, what my teaching philosophy is and where I want to go next. None of which will be improved by another 'talk-at-a-large-hemogenous-group' professional development.

I honestly believe that a greater focus on teacher reflection and the chance to shape our own professional development, using the tools we have available (and with the internet we have access to the best minds in the world) will create more professional teachers in Queensland, along with improved results.

In that vein - how do you reflect on the work you do (what ever that work may be) and do you undertake any of your own professional development?


My reflection master list

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In Moderation

There are two types of standardised testing going on in my classroom at the moment. The Year 5s are about to embark on NAPLAN - a three day extravaganza of high stakes testing in literacy and numeracy which leads to whichever of the 7 states/territories (and their teachers) which land near the bottom being beaten up by the media, their bosses and the Premier/Prime Minister.

The Year 6s have just completed QCATS, a literacy test which is more like regular classroom assessment. This year it was a description, an itinerary and a justification. This is low stakes testing, more used as a professional development tool for teachers.

This afternoon we spent two hours with Year 6 teachers from other schools reviewing marked QCAT tests and moderating them so we had a clear understanding of what different marks should look like. We began with those marks which had been rated as an 'A' from each school, moving our way onto the Cs - from this point, Ds and Bs are pretty obvious, as are Es. All marks have to be strictly matching 'Guides to Making Judgements' and we have to justify how we think a piece of work fits into a particular judgement.

For me, this is fairly routine. We moderate before all report cards, so - depending on the group of people you're with - it's a fairly painless procedure. I was with a great group, with a great moderator, so there were no real conflicts in our final decisions. What challenged me today was the amount of literary understanding I had to show to explain why a piece was deserving of a certain grade.

This struck me, particularly as the state newspaper has recently been making a big deal about how primary teachers are not 'experts' with 'higher degrees' in all areas of their curriculum (how many people do you know who have degrees in English, Maths, Social Sciences, Science, all forms of Arts, engineering (technology), and health and physical education . . .) As teachers we become experts through the work we do, through the time we spend researching a topic, through communicating with people who are experts in their field. We become experts in strange fields of knowledge like Antarctica, Fantasy Novels, the Australian Goldrush, Newspaper publication, Australian Government, the Olympic Games. Not to mention pedagogy, child psychology, special needs education, how to make a miniscule budget reach far and wide and how to teach your class when the class next door (without a divider between you and them) are going nutty.

Was today a valuable use of our time. Well the afternoon tea was great, which is usually a good indicator :) Seriously, though, there was a lot of high level, serious professional talk going on. I got to read an amazing piece of writing, written by an 11 year old. And I feel more confident in my own ability to make considered judgements.

But, on the other hand, in a state where the government has not even made us a pay offer, although our old one has expired, it made for a 10 hour day, without a real break today, on 5 hour pay (basically $12.5 an hour not counting work I have to do at home - I made more working in a food court). As with everything, there's good and bad in the mix.

Bring on next week and the end of testing.

(Professional Learning) On Creativity in the School System

I just finished watching my first online lecture, and I've got to say I've never been happier to have wireless! What was I thinking staying on dial up for so very long.

Anyway, the lecture I watched was Do School's Today Kill Creativity by Ken Robinson. Ken Robinson is a world recognised expert on developing innovation and has a particular interest in school. He gave this lecture at a conference on ideas and creativity.

The basic idea was that the education systems we have today were evolved from the industrial times in the 19th century, and therefore have a focus on two things - a) doing things which will get you a traditional job and b) traditional academic achievement leading to eventual university success. This focus means that schools consider mistakes to be the worst things you can possibly make.

Of course, as Ken Robinson says, " . . . if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."

I see this in my school, in the requirements I'm required to meet in my classroom, in the media we are bombarded with. This evening the news was making pronouncements on the 'best' schools, based on their OP scores. This morning we were being told that we're poor teachers because we're not university professors in all 7 areas we're required to teach, that we should specialise, break all knowledge into cute little boxes and never stray from our best areas.

At the moment I'm teetering between QCATs (Queensland Comparative Assessment Tasks) for Year 6s and NAPLAN (National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy) for my Year 5s. While we were practicing the writing task today for NAPLAN (5 minutes planning, 30 minutes writing, 5 minutes editing, write a story about this topic and please stay within the lines) I had to remind one of the students not to spend time drawing an illustration for her text. Even if her picture told the story better than her words, that picture would leave her severely disadvantaged in the tests because of the short time limit, and she would be considered not to be taking the tests 'seriously'. This is despite the fact that our 'Essential Learnings' (curriculum) regards art as a type of text to be studied and created.

So what is creativity and how can we make sure it's there, present in our classrooms?

I suppose creativity is in dance and art and music and drama. But it's also in thought, in encouraging the students to take risks, to approach things in their own way. It's in encouraging students to think and to be prepared to get things wrong from time to time.