Work/life balance???

At the start of this year I had an idea. Nothing amazing, but it sounded like a great idea all the same. The idea? Not to do school work in the weekends. Awesome I thought, I'll get all my work done during the week so that I can have my weekends free and get rid of that nagging guilt and panic feeling I get on Sunday evenings. Totally doable, after all some of my co-workers seem to make this look easy and my husband thought this was equally a great idea.

So 11 weeks down, how's it all going for me? Well, not so flash but one could argue that I haven't really set myself up for success on this occasion. The old saying 'doing what you've always done and expecting a different outcome' is definitely alive and well here!

After speaking with a specialist about a minor health issue, her advice (one of many) was to lower my stress levels and strive for a better work/life balance. "But how?", my 'poor example for a work/life balance' mother asked when I spoke about it with her. How do you get a balance for a job that is never done? How do you maintain a professional standard, while not answering emails at 9.30 at night? How do you manage your extra work responsibilities while leaving work before 5pm every day? Of course every time I work in the evenings or on weekends it is my choosing and my want to provide the best for the students I teach. I also don't always see this as an issue and the perfectionist in me is alive and well but it has got me thinking again about my idea from the beginning of the year and the way I 'sell' the 'learn, create, share' learning philosophy with others. No ones going to want to try using a multimodel approach to teaching reading if they think it will take them longer to plan than their current programme!

I started watching a series very long winded video about an American couple (created for learning) who discuss this very idea of work/life balance. In a nutshell these are the ideas that I found the most useful, not necessarily rocket science but food for thought.

• Make the decision to arrive and leave on time every day (with a few exceptions of course). What time will work best for me, my colleagues and provide the time to complete what I need to get done?
• Where are the pressures/expectations coming from? Or more importantly what unspoken pressures have I instilled upon myself? For example, the idea that I should work in the evenings or I have to get everything looking good on our class site.
• Make to-do list and actually use them. I envision that for this to be most effective, I would need a longer term to-do list and then to-do list broken down into aims for before and after school. I also like the idea of completing a to-do list for the following morning before you leave for the day.
• Watch out for 'water cooler' talk. As much as I love to catch up with my colleagues I know that an hour can very easily slip by and I will have been unproductive. I get caught in the whole 'came to the staff room to get a drink and ending up sitting and gossiping!
• What can I trade. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I like things to look good, but I know that this is effects my time management. Sometimes I like to ask myself "will this have an effect on the children's learning?" Chances are that the pretty background on my slideshow will not have any effect and therefore doesn't really need to be done when time is short!
• Use any spare moment effectively. Refer to to-do list and make the most of the opportunity.
• Do similar tasks at the same time eg set aside time to respond to emails 
• Work at work. Sounds simple but it is drawing a line in the sand and saying when enough is enough. 

As  I said not necessarily rocket science but it has got me thinking about some things I need to make better attempts at in order to get a better work/life balance.

Meet Des and Troy.

Mark Maddren taught me a new wee saying today that was quite appealing to children was using Des and Troy when walking around with their chromebook. Des and Troy refer to your arm and more importantly how they should be used to support a chromebook while being carried. As part of the Kara of Care the children are expected to carry their chromebook with a closed lid and to use the crock of their elbow to support a corner of their device while crossing their other arm across the rest of the chromebook. Definitely my new favourite saying for the next few weeks to get our children back into this habit.

This year I am lucky enough to have support from Mark Maddren as part of the Manaiakalani Outreach programme. Today was our first session working with the children and the main focus was to introduce the children to the Kawa of Care.

The task for the session was to read critically the expectations for looking after their Chromebooks and how to use them correctly as a tool for their learning. The children needed to go through and highlight the different points using a three coloured code for order of importance. It was a great opportunity for the children to begin expressing their critical thinking and giving reasoning for their

decisions. After re-colour coding the children were required to select what they believe to be the three most important aspects of the Kawa of Care and create a DLO (Digital Learning Object) to explain their understanding of the expectation.

Mark and I spoke briefly about giving times limits on creation tasks and encouraging children to use Google Drawing and creating their own image as opposed to simply finding an image on line. These fits in nicely with two points I have been thinking about recently when dreaming up create activities for my reading lessons. In order for the task to be worthwhile I want it to be something the children will actually complete in a timely fashion, as well as, being meaningful and fit in with some of the higher levels of the SAMR model.  A task that is not given to the children for the sake of creating but enhances and/or affirms their learning. I believe it is also making sure that the tasks doesn't take more time than the learning is worth or at the expense of other learning.

An example last week was trying to come up for a meaningful create activity about an article a group of children will read about motocross. For a similar activity in the past I got the children to design their own track but I wasn't entirely happy with the meaningfulness of this task. Simon (my work husband) suggested that the children make a track using dough and then make a video explaining why they have included different aspects of the track. By filming and explaining their creation the task itself is more meaningful and enters the transformation zone of the SAMR model. Plus at a guess the children will find this highly engaging!

New Year, new me???

I must say since I last posted there has definitely been no shortage of ideas for post.... getting them written down has been another story! 2016 was a massive year of learning for me in two areas in particular literacy and the affordances of learning through digital technology.

For the first time in almost 10 years I began studying again towards my Masters. The three papers I completed where all focused on Literacy. Although a tad stressful at times, I really enjoyed focusing on one of my teaching passions and have been excited to implement my new knowledge, knowledge that I could have written many great posts about!

Last year was my school's second year as part of the Manaiakalani Outreach programme. Learn, create, share and the affordance of digital technology has been an amazing gift for us, a wonderful challenge and we have already seen great gains in our students achievement.

My goal this year is to get back into writing on my blog and using this as a way to record evidence towards my registered teacher criteria. And look at that, first post done!

Pearls of wisdom from ULearn 2015

3 days, 6 workshops, 2 guest speakers, great food, even better company and a bombardment of information! That is how I would briefly describe my fantastic time at the Core ULearn15 conference. Below is a reflection of what I have learnt, questions I now have and how I would like to implement this learning in the classroom.

Day 1
Guest speaker: Grant Lichtman

• Teachers don't need to provide/transfer knowledge anymore, thats what the internet is for!
• The world is not divided into subject areas.
• We need to teach our students how to embrace failure
• As teachers we cannot be innovative without taking risks
• There is a feeling that we must make a choice between choice, innovation and experiences, and standardised testing. How can we get a balance?
• Change in schools is uncomfortable, not hard; get comfortable with discomfort.
• Lead from where you are, teachers in the classroom can make change, not just school leadership

Questions

• How could we get away from teaching 'subject areas' while still providing our students with the basic skills such as learning to read? All very well doing integration but how many books are available at a suitable reading level for our struggling readers. How can this be done without causing an overload of prep time from the teacher?
• How do we get a balance between creating, real word experiences and our requirements such as National Standards? 

Now what...

• Have more discussions with my students about their learning process eg, what did you learn about how you learn best? What happened when this didn't work? What will you do next time?
• Carry on implementing new ideas and take more risks of my own

Workshop 1 - GAFE in an ILE, PDQ!

Presenters - Diana Wilkes and Caroline Bush from Ormiston Primary

• Not just about preparing children for their future, aims is to create learners that are successful in our time.
• Four levels of independence when learning
• Power of Narrative assessment, making these more important than reports - 3 narratives per term, per child
• Using twitter as part of planning and evidence of learning
• Children find evidence in regards to learning progressions and put this on their blogs with links made by teacher to National Standards

Questions

• Could following our learners assist in developing good learning relationships? Not having to get to know a new group of students each year.
• What is the point of end of year written reports? Would using learning stories be more beneficial and meaningful to parents?
• How can we engage our parents more? Would be great to see more parents commenting on our blog

Now what...

• Think more about the idea of best reporting methods, discussion with Gary and Simon
• Organise another techy breaky for Term 4
• Look at ways Ormiston school organise their planning
• Explore 4 levels of independence and how this could be incorporated into literacy

Workshop 2 - Agency and ownership: Why the how?

Steve Mouldey, Hobsonville Point High School

• Curiosity enables student to find their own learning path
• Questioning is the number one thing to assist in own learning and engagement
• teaching children to use a critical eye to refine questions
• The what are you learning is more important than simply the content
• Seperate inquiry away from research
• The choice - co-design continuum - teacher controlled - student choice - student voice - co-design
• Feedback quality may have more impact on student achievement than any other factor
• Rose, bud, thorn feedback model

Questions

• What are the concept skills that we want our students to develop?
• How can we use student voice more in our planning?

Now what...

• Set up a wondering wall and curiosity table in the classroom
• Work on developing question skills in the classroom, use question scaffold as a tool
• Make self and peer assessment a key concept in Term 4

The last piece of the puzzle...from a large collection of puzzles!

My latest motivation at the gym has been to watch Ted Talks while pedaling madly on the exercycle. If you don't know about this resource yet, I strongly encourage you to check it out here. Today I watched a talk which hit close to home for me on a personal level. It was one of those, 'oh yeah, I get it! It all makes sense!' moments. This year has been filled with these moments in my professional life. My first post is a perfect example. It reminded me of putting all the pieces of a puzzle together; you can see a lot of the picture already but it's not until you stand back and look at the final finished puzzle you get to see the true picture. It's having a fair idea about something already and then having that moment when it all comes together.

Tomorrow I'm and traveling to Auckland with two colleagues for the 2015 U Learn conference. My hope is I will have lots of 'puzzles' coming together over the next three days. One of the workshops I have signed up for is title: 'Creativity in education is no longer an option, it's an absolute necessity'. I'm particularly keen for this workshop as it has been influenced by Sir Ken Robinson. Creativity is a key component of our learning model, 'learn, create, share'. One of the messages that has stood out for me from his talk  'changing education paradigms ' is that as teachers, we are preparing children for jobs that don't exist yet.

So, why are we so focused on teaching literacy and numeracy? Don't get me wrong, until someone can convince me otherwise I want my students to leave our school literate and numerate but what other skills do they need for their future? What's is going to be important for them to be a successful member of society and to reach their full potential? We are so lucky in New Zealand that we have a curriculum that has a vision which matches this and that education is not just about the 8 learning areas.

Recently I watched another Ted Talk by Sir Ken Robinson called, 'Do schools kill creativity?' This talk spoke volumes to me and was another one of those 'of course...' moments. What struck me while I drank in his word, is that in the background I could see the year, 2006! How did I not know more about this before now? and why wasn't this seen as more important in our education system?! 

I will admit I have definitely had moments where I have worried about not giving enough focus on literacy and numeracy but over the past few years it has become clear to me that skills such as creativity are equally as important. This is one of the skills that will prepare our students for reaching their full potential.

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to work with some fellow teachers on promoting learning stories in Primary Schools. My principal, Gary, is a strong believer in the power of learning stories.

Unfortunately, learning stories are something that can full off my radar at times and promoting learning stories with staff can be a challenge with our already jam-packed schedules.  I don't want to the straw that broke anyone's back!

This week I am preparing a presentation to our support staff on Learning Stories and encouraging them to use these with the students they work with. It's got me thinking about to explain really simply what learning stories are and how to write them without feeling overwhelmed.

Kate's words of wisdom about Learning Stories.

It's a story
Hence the name, a learning story is a story about a child's learning. It is a story that is written to them, So make it simple and personal.

A picture is worth a thousand words.
Photos are powerful. Include at least one if not more in every story. If you don't happen to take a photo in the moment you can always stage one. "Can you show me how you were working on your story so I can take a picture..."

Sooner rather than later
My aim is to complete a learning story and send it home as soon after the event as possible. It is after all, a celebration of a child learning and a form of feedback. I have been known to quickly jot down some notes on my Iphone as soon I see a learning story opportunity. Another way is to write the learning story with the child(ren) involved. It is about them so why not have them a part of the writing of one?

There is no rule on numbers
Learning stories are not just for individual children. They can be easily written for groups and even the whole class. The story itself can be the same and then personal comments specific to the individual can be added.

Learning stories for all
The beauty of a learning story is that everyone is worthy of having one written about them. Learning stories are about recognises successes big or small. It is simply about keeping your eyes open for moments of brilliance, for that particular child! Brilliance for some children might be making it to school on time, sharing a piece of equipment, being helpful, mastering a new maths strategy or going up a reading level.

Notice, recognise and respond
The first section is simply writing down what you noticed? Think in terms of writing a story with a beginning (setting the scene), middle (what happened) and an ending (rounding off). Then you want to recognise what has happened. Why was this an important moment? How does this link to our school values or the key competencies? Finally respond to what you saw, what might be the child(ren)'s next step? What would you like to see the child do in the future?

Include space for a comments
What better opportunity for student voice? After all the story is about them. After I have written their learning story I share it with them and ask them for their own opinion.
Child comment - How does the child feel about what you have noticed? What were they thinking during this time? What will they do in the future?
Learning Stories are a lovely way to share something positive with parents about their child and in return getting a positive response from them
Parent comment - You might like to prompt a comment by asking a question. “How do you feel about what ___ has done?” “Does ____ do this at home to?” The aim is for the comment to be positive!