Reflection Time!

Wow.. It really has come down to this! Who would have thought starting in July it would go this fast and that I would really be writing the last blog post of my journey.. and what a journey it has been!

Now in my final assessment I have been asked to reflect on the Registered Teachers Criteria (RTC).

I have chosen the following three criteria I believe I have met well and they are:

Criteria 4: Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of professional personal practice.

Throughout my six years of teaching I have been on a few Professional Development courses or alternatively had people come into school to take with a focus. However this has been my first experience back in a university setting since graduating from my Bachelor of Education in 2009. It has really given me a new lease on teaching and learning. I have always considered myself to be a lifelong learner however as teaching and real life set in it seemed like I was at times just going through the motions of teaching and not really pushing myself to find new information. I feel very appreciative of the teacher that encouraged me to partake in this course and have really learnt about the importance of continuing my professional learning and development not only for myself but for every student that comes into my class (or Innovative Learning Environment).

Criteria 5: Show leadership that contributes to effective teaching and learning.

This course has given me the opportunity to lead where previously I have never had the opportunity.
Through LDC I was really able to reflect on the kind of leadership theories I had and the potential leader that I could be. I really enjoyed and learnt a lot about what kind of leadership I related well to and how different people respond to different leadership strategies. This is one of the things I value the most that will stay with me throughout my teaching career. Also throughout the course I have been able to provide leadership to other colleagues and I am really grateful for this. My new knowledge has been used to help plan for our new ILE and I have truly learnt the value of what it means to be an inspirational leader.


Criteria 7: Promote a collaborative, inclusive, and supportive learning environment.
I really thought before I started this course that I knew what it meant to be collaborative.. But boy was I wrong! From the 21st Century Rubrics to discussions with lecturers collaboration was a lot more that just giving students a group task. It needed fostering and it really needed to go alongside a a supportive environment. I have learnt that you cannot just give students a task and expect that they will be able to 'do it'. They need guidance and support throughout the process and leadership when it doesn't work out so well. I have definitely been a lot more aware of how to be collaborative through this criteria and I finally know what it really means to be collaborative.

Goals for the Future:

I have thought carefully about the two goals that I would like to continue for the future and it is interesting/great timing that my students have just gone through the whole process of SMART goals too!

Goal 1: 
Continue Professional Development and to complete my post graduate diploma.
Plan (I work well on to do lists and bullet points)
-Set up meeting with Post Graduate Co-ordinator.
-Decide on field of study (what I want to continue developing).
- Discuss with Principal how this will help my future in education.
-Enrol in course
-Complete course.


Goal 2:
Continue to engage with my online communities.
Plan
-Find networks that are set up in my areas of interest.
- Talk to other school colleagues and find out good sites/people to follow etc.
-At the beginning of every CRT session engage with at least one of these communities.


I really struggle with intrinsic motivation (probably why I am writing this post a day before it is due!) So having a plan is really important to achieving both goals.
Thank you all so much for such a wonderful and eye opening experience! I am really looking forward to the future!!

Cultural Responsiveness

Through this weeks notes what really resonated with me was the comment that New Zealand was a bi cultural nation within which resides a multi cultural society. It feels like that is what really sums up this country to me but which some people tend to forget.

In my experiences throughout life I have been lucky to have had a range of experiences which have enhanced my indigenous knowledge. Due to family circumstances and connections I have always had Te Reo and Maori Tikanga in my life and feel very blessed to have had this upbringing. My teaching is responsive to the needs and protocol of my Maori students and I continue to learn and develop my practice through these interactions.

My school work hard to be culturally responsive to the bi cultural nature of New Zealand. Through the suggested bullet points I have chosen to merge 2 of the bullet points for how our school positively addresses cultural responsiveness.
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School-wide activities and communication methods:
I believe that our school is pretty amazing at this, which is due to some pretty amazing people in our school community. It all started with a core group of teachers and senior management getting together to discuss how to better engage with our Maori learners and their Whanau. The idea was that the school wanted to have Maori students being successful as Maori. The school then through this developed its Maori whanau group. This group meet regularly throughout the year to help plan school events and at the end of the year we hold a Maori Celebration night which identifies success for all our Maori students and is a special way to send off our Maori Year 6 students. This group also put together some wonderful Matariki celebrations which last year involved an awesome group of Dads being up at dawn to put in a hangi for our students to share - and with near 800 students is no mean feet. The celebrations also included a spectacular performance featuring our students and a visit from a local Kapa Haka group. I look forward to how this group will continue to shape our school and its commitment to the Treaty of Waitangi.

While our school-wide activities are such an asset to our school I think that we still need to be more culturally responsive in our learning experiences. It seems that due to teachers own doubts in their indigenous knowledge they are quite under confident creating learning experiences in the classroom for all students. We need to get better at sharing our knowledge with others and lifting the cultural responsiveness and confidence in others. It is not fair on the students that some have rich experiences with teachers who are creating lessons and plans while others are getting the bare minimum. However it is easy to point the finger at others it is our responsibility as a whole school to develop and support rather than to put down and/or ignore the problem.

Ethical Dilemma

As soon as I saw this weeks activity I immediately went straight to the Code of Ethics for Registered Teachers. It was then I started thinking about some of the 'ethical dilemmas' that I as a teacher have faced and never really thought about reflecting on how to approach the dilemma using the code. I will however now that I have been able to respond to a situation appropriately. I have chosen one situation I found myself in last year which I have chosen to use as part of this task.

Background to Situation:
I had a Year 5/6 classroom who all had internet access at home. Many of them were interested in social media accounts however being under 13 it is against the law for them to have access to an account.

Situation:
While completing independent work I noticed a note being passed around the classroom. I managed to intercept such note and proceeded to read what was being passed around. It turned out to be a Year 5 female students Instagram log on. After doing some research it turned out that the account was in fact the students own personal account (illegal as she was 9) and was completely public.

I was then faced with my ethical dilemma. What to do next with this information. After discussing privacy and social media forums legal expectations with the child it became clear that her mother was aware of the account and was even a 'follower'. It was a hard place to be in so we discussed what policies these pages had in regards to age and that not everyone in Instagram was there to be her friend. She then looked at her followers list and noted that out of the 100 followers she knew 10 of these people personally. We then discussed how to be safe online and she deleted who she did not know and made the account private. For me this came under my commitment to the learner. It was very tempting to just have her delete the entire account and be done with it however I had suspicions that this would just lead to her creating a new public account and starting again.

I also then logged the incident into our cyber safety log (as per school policy) and discussed with our schools cyber safety officer. She suggested speaking to the child's mother about what had been happening and reminding her of the legal fine print of these sites - Commitment to the parent/guardians. She also then spoke to the child again about the seriousness of the situation and the risks that she had put herself in.

I felt comfortable with how the situation had been resolved as I feel that school policies were followed correctly and I did not jeopordise myself in regards to the Code of Ethics. It is important that we are always honest with the people we interact with as teaching professionals and that we minimise harm to ourselves and in this case others.

Social Media

I will admit it. I am a social media addict. I have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and they all sit in an app organiser under "social media" and I probably check it at least five times a day. However before starting this course I really thought teaching/education and social media was a no-no. We are told in our time as Beginning Teachers - make sure everything is private, don't put photos of your students anywhere, no last names on blogs etc etc etc. It seems that from our perspective as schools social media is not our friend. Through this understanding when my nephew started a new school I was horrified that they had a Facebook page, but then I spoke to some people about it and their ideas were that if that was the way that a school could get parents interested in what was happening - why not? If parents were on Facebook and were reminded their child needed something tomorrow at school great! It then got me thinking well why not social media and how could it be used effectively by education establishments?

We have always been restricted in education by how much knowledge is around us. I remember when I was at school we could use the library to find information, an Encarta CD perhaps if you were lucky and your desktop computer could take CDs, and a field trip to somewhere which may or may not be all that helpful. Now the whole world is at our fingertips not only does a platform like google connect you to anywhere or anything you need to find you can use so much more to enhance the learning process. Video conferencing can connect you instantaneously to that expert on Hectors Dolphins in the South Island or a WW1 specialist in London. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter connect through to some amazing people that at the click of your enter button sees a whole world of information come back. A common saying is that life is all about connections, well now connections can be anywhere around the world and accessible at any time of the day! What and exciting time to be a learner/educator.

As previously mentioned it is important that we think about privacy. I have had two recent ethical conversations about the risks of social media and how people feel about their children having access to and being placed on these forums. The first was my friend (a dance teacher) who wanted to take a photo of her class at the end for her company's Facebook page. She checked with the parents that this was okay and one said that she didn't want her child on this page. My friend was a bit shocked by this but was respectful and did not post the photo. My thoughts were I suppose that that is fair enough, it is a parents call but I wonder if it was going on a dance website if this would be the same reaction? The other was on school camp we wanted to connect with our parents and put photos up online somehow that our students could use. Mine and a couple of others was why not Instagram? It is a perfect place for photos that was quick to use. However with questions on privacy we decided to go with a blog. I guess my question through both of these is what is the difference? Is there one between public websites/blogs and that of a social media forum such as Facebook and Instagram?

Another challenge is that of social responsibility and cyber safety. It is important to teach our students that not everyone online is honest and reliable. Talking to our students seems to be the best way to explain this and I think that at all times open and honest conversations about this need to be had frequently.

I have found some really useful places for professional development in all kinds of forums. Some of these are Facebook groups, Google Plus communities, the Virtual Learning Network, teacher blogs. For me their importance has been in the convenience and the fact that like with my students learning they have opened up a world of learning. I can be checking my Facebook page at night and a group has posted a video of some amazing lesson or resource they have used and I will try it the next day.

I believe social media can be a powerful learning tool however while it is still relatively new we are still in a teething period and only once through this will we really know the full extent of its capabilities.

Contemporary Issues in Education

I started this blog post/week thinking about what it meant to be a contemporary issue, and then like most people I know decided to head to google to see what they suggested. I typed into Google "Contemporary Issues facing education NZ" and not a lot came up to be honest, except for the 2012 ERO report. As I read through it again (after it being on our weekly task) I thought about how it was still quite current to our teaching practice even though this report was released 4 years ago. Then I started thinking if we were being made aware of these factors 4 years ago how then is it the same contemporary issue? Why have educators seemingly not made much progress through this issues? So seeings as I was now a little off topic worrying about why education has not made much of a charge in fixing these issues I have decided to pick two of these issues to reflect upon through this post.

Issue 1 - Student centred learning

Before I started on my Mindlab journey I was pretty oblivious to what it meant for student centred learning. I knew a little about what it meant but no one in my short(ish) career had never really been that passionate about it. Long Term plans looked a bit like this..
What are we going to do next year/term? What is something that is happening this year? Oh yeah that sounds good.. How do we fit it in to our curriculum coverage?
While that might be brief and a little straight to the point to save on word counts, I hope you get the point.. WHERE WAS THE STUDENT? It seems that there is no flexibility we are so worried about what we are doing and the context we are forgetting who in fact we are planning for. No mention of authentic tasks or what our students are interested in, and what confuses me more is that that I am sure while going through uni during our curriculum we were taught that this new curriculum was going to be an amazing thing for our schools and students. We were told about how flexible teaching could become, cross curricular links would be second nature, schools could adapt their practices to suit their learners. Yet five years after this (and even in 2016) ERO still see this as an issue.

The question is how would I address this? I think to start with we as educators need to start thinking of our students. What are the amazing things they are capable of doing? What do they enjoy? How do we encourage them to develop into life-long learners? Once we have an idea of our whole student and our goals for them, then we can start changing the way we plan and teach so that it isn't just ticking boxes or highlighting that achievement objective. It is only then that we can create the authentic tasks and real life problem solving that we have learnt about recently. I also believe that we need to start asking these questions when we sit down to look at the term/year ahead. Who are our learners? What are they interested in? How do we put them at the centre of their learning?

Issue 2 - Assessment to Inform Teacher Practice/Student Learning

I am sure I am not alone when I look at summative assessment timelines and shudder slightly. 31 Gloss/Ikan/Probes all due Week 2 Term 2. How am I going to get that done? Rush, rush, rush through each student enter onto (enter educational site here) and file away. Phew glad that was done now I have current data to enter into Term 2 reports. Now that may be a slight exaggeration but it's being honest. Teachers are notorious for complaining that assessments get in the way of teaching (and I would be one of them). However recently through conversations with colleagues I have been quite reflective on the fact that this is what I have been doing and how can I better test in order to actually know more about my students. Again without really thinking about this task I was quite responsive to how I could adapt testing in my classroom in order for myself and my students to get more out of it. I believe that we need to firstly have courage to trust our formative assessments and be prepared to back up why and how we have used it in our classrooms to inform our practice and also to encourage ourselves to think about when we summatively assess our students. If one student you think has made a huge amount of progress test them in Term 1 week 5. If you can't work out why another is not improving test Term 3 week 1. It is time to think wisely about assessment and really work out how we can use it for the betterment of our programmes rather than without purpose. It is then I feel that we will stop making such a fuss and complaining and will be better educators for it.

Professional Connection Map

Connection 1 - Students
The first connection I have on my map is that between myself and my students. As a teacher I have always been aware of this connection as they are the one connection throughout my day/week/month that are never changing.

They are always my first and last thought o

f the professional day and are the reason I am ever changing my practice. They keep me on my toes, reflecting and changing lessons sometimes in the middle of it! If it was not for them a lot of the practice I started with would be the same now. They have taught me about individualising my teaching, meeting the needs of them and really just how different each child I have taught really is! Not one child has been the same and I think that this is a very important lesson to learn.

They continually are surprising me with what they know and how they what they think. What I have also learnt from them is that every day can be a fresh day. They are much less likely to start the next day in the same mindframe as yesterday and are much more forgiving then myself of a lesson that was supposed to be amazing but went terribly, or not getting through the entire plan for the day. To them it is what I put into the day is what they get out of it, and they are much less focused on the failed attempts. This has impacted my practice quite significantly as I am less worried about the structure of my day and more aware of the question are my students learning? How are they learning? and also are we all enjoying the learning that is taking place.

Connection 2 - Colleagues. 
I have a range of colleagues all of which influence my practice and community sometimes in the same way and others differently.

My first set of colleagues I have chosen to identify is that of my Senior team at my school. We have 8 teachers and 1 'walking' team leader who does not have a class. At the moment we are moving planning to move into an ILE which is new and exciting for all of us, with only one person having any experience in this area. They influence my practice through the idea of learning together and the importance of collegiality and support.

This set up also allows me to work in an environment where people have a wide variety of different strengths and weaknesses. It enables us to be the best we can be and leads my community into a very supportive place where we can share our experiences with the same age group and learn from each other. An ILE will also provide this even further as we work in a flexible learning environment where we will see each others practice daily.

The other colleague community which I have been apart of recently is the MindLab community. I have split this community also into sub communities. The first is the wider community that I have been apart of. This was more face to face originally working with others at the Newmarket campus. Here we were able to share our knowledge, talk to other people and learn from what others had tried/were trying. This was amazingly influential on what I was then doing in my class - if one teacher had tried it why shouldn't I? It gave me confidence to know attempting something was okay, and if it failed that was okay too! As long as we continued to share knowledge I was encouraged to keep pushing the boundaries of digital and collaborative practice.

Once leaving the community I was then much more connected to the google community. It was great to see others still pushing what they were doing but over the holidays it seemed that without students I was less encouraged to participate. However being at school I have now been a lot more encouraged to get back on and read what others have been doing, and it has refreshed my sense of wanting to continue to push what I am doing in my class in order to better my own practice.

The other part of the MindLab community is the five colleagues I have been working with that have been attending from my own school. It has been amazing the conversations and reflecting that has happened when we get together! Do we always agree? Definitely not! But wow those conversations are powerful!I am really someone who likes to be challenged on my thoughts and find this an important way in which I am encouraged to learn. It has also been influential to hear others thoughts and opinions a little after the learning has happened as I am able to process my thoughts and then share them. I really hope that when this course has been completed in March this community still encourage me to think critically and evaluate my thoughts and really keep changing my practice to suit the needs of the 21st century learners I have and will continue to teach.

Professional Contexts of Practice

I believe that as a teacher I have not just one community but many that at times sit alone and others times where they can be interlocking and connected. Throughout these communities I take on different roles and positions. I have my classroom community, my professional colleagues community, I am a tutor and associate teacher which all lead my practice in many different ways. I have also since joining Mindlab added a new community to my context including many teachers from many different schools, but more specifically the 5 other teachers at my school on the same postgraduate journey.

Meeting these people has also come in many different forms for example, the Google Plus community (which I had no idea about before this course), the Virtual Learning Network, face to face meetings with team members, PCT's, other associate teachers etc, and through email and research. The internet is an amazing thing and I think now is such a great time to be a teacher with all the support, resources and experiences of others at the tips of our fingers. Our ability to set up communities with other teachers of similar interests or on the same journey as a support system I think is a great asset to our profession!

As a primary school teacher we are often known as a 'Jack (or Jill) of all trades. We are expected to teach all curriculum areas in the 5 weekdays we have with the students. However if I were to think about my specialist areas - I can't get it down to just one. It would be literacy (with particular strengths/interests in writing) and The Arts. Through the Arts I participate in our school's Arts programme - which this year is the production Annie. This will lead to a to be made community which will involve like minded teachers, parents, students and hopefully give us access to our schools wider community. In a broader teaching context this links to strong teaching through the Key Competencies and is not only for our students but also ourselves. My role here is choreographer and assistant director which will have me interacting with my community here on a regular basis.

At this point is time our entire profession are facing big changes in the way we are teaching. Innovative Learning Environments are coming whether we are ready for them or not. Ministry of Education policy are leading all the way with this charge and are investing a large amount of money into the concept of flexible learning spaces which will prepare our students for their future. It is a great question - how would you or your community of practice address them? It seems to me that a lot of teaching professionals are doing it in a myriad of different ways. My community that are working with me through this journey are still trying to work out ways to address the changes that we find ourselves being faced with. We have taken the be prepared approach, which will mean that as soon as our ILE is built we will (hopefully) be ready for it. I am optimistic that we will be but how will we know until we get there! The nerve racking part for me is that we will have 240 students ready to learn who will need us to be ready! So far we have set up online sharing systems such as teacher dashboard, google sites, student blogs, blendspaces, shared pedagogys and expectations which seem to be taking us in the right direction, and I believe that if we keep an open mind and always find ourselves taking risks and trying new things we leave ourselves in pretty good stand to make the most of our ever changing profession!

I am quite happy to be the optimist.

My Respons to Finlay (2008)

I found Finaly's (2008) reading 'Reflecting on Reflective Practice' really insightful from the first words on the page. What especially resonated with me was the main question/idea - what really is reflection? Since the beginning of my journey into education we were always told to reflect, reflect, reflect. I remember being given a short tutorial on the Smyth (1991) model and told 'go'. As an 18 year old about to go into my first practicum I remember feeling pretty anxious about the whole situation. What did it all mean? Would other people read it? How deep did I need to go? I also think that if I am honest with myself (and you the reader) I still feel some apprehension about the whole process!

Another point that I can relate to is that question of  what do we need to reflect on and when? The idea I could see helping me with this question is Dewey's thinking on the problem and having a trial and error approach (1933) and also Schon's (1983) reflection on and reflection in practice. When reflecting I definitely try to use my prior experiences in order to help me in my future practice.

Am I using a model?

At our school we use the computer programme Appraisal Connector. This is to encourage and enable us to be more reflective in our practice. It is set with a space to write our reflection and then align it to the Registered Teacher Criteria. Professional Development was given to teach us a little about the mindset of a reflective practitioner and how to use the programme effectively. However it was just given as a tool and the space for our reflection remained blank until we could put our words down on paper. As previously mentioned my only tool for reflection at this time was the Smyth model given to us in 2007 at the University of Auckland, so with a using what I know approach Smyth got the call up.

Figure 1 http://michellefepuleai.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/reflecting-on-reflective-practice-for.html

However in a one size does in fact not fit all I found this structure quite restricting in what I could do and would often just write the title of each section in bold leave an unthoughtful comment underneath and tick it off my appraisal to do list. It carried on this way for quite a while until I came across Borton's Model (Mindlab 2016). As seen below it has a three W approach. I have found this model incredibly helpful as it has really made me critically think about what I have done, what I am doing and where I am going to take my practice next. I will continue to use this model for now as this is what I have found the most helpful in actually being 'real' with myself and actually being reflective.


Figure 2 http://myreflectivepracticejuanes.weebly.com/burtons-model.html

Finlay, L. (2009) Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved fromhttp://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file/ecms/web-content/Finlay-%282008%29-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf

Mindlab (2016).  Reflection Models.  Retrieved from: https://app.themindlab.com/media/8209/view

Reflection on Learning and Practice

My journey through MindLab started with a bit of a push in the right direction from a keen colleague who thought it would be a great idea to help us in the . Admittedly the scholarship and the chance of furthering my education was also a factor, and while sitting in her classroom during a CRT session she helped me fill in the forms. After I pushed send I felt a little nervous.. would I be accepted? Would I get the scholarship? Was I prepared to going back to assignments and late nights? After much soul searching I had decided that I did in fact really want to start this course, even though I was going in totally blind and had no idea what to expect!

When I finally turned up to the first Monday, nervous even about where to park, what door to use and where I would sit I finally plucked up the confidence to walk in. What met me surpassed my expectations! I always thought technology was my weakness (even mentioning it in interviews) but I had no idea how behind I was or where the world was going.

Throughout my first 24 weeks I have been amazed, shocked, scared, and in awe of what technology is doing and how it will impact our lives (DRIVERLESS CARS?????). My journey has definitely changed the way I look at the world and more specifically the way education needs to continue to change and the need for me as a teacher to keep up.

A survey in week 3 (which I had even forgotten I had participated in) showed responses about where we see ourselves within the Key Competencies. I had responded that my strengths were in Thinking and Managing Self which through reflection I came to the conclusion that if asked again I would respond the same. I still feel that these are my strengths but they have improved further throughout my time at MindLab.

Thinking is probably my biggest area of improvement even though I have used it as my strength. A favourite quote that I have heard quite often recently is "You don't know what you don't know". Changes in this key competency area were especially in the are of reflection. It has always been an important part of being a teacher, how we reflect and what we reflect on, but I now find I am much more inclined to use Driscol's Three W method of critical reflection focusing in a lot more on the what next? Deeper thinking into this model has really affected how I think about my practice.

Participating and Contributing has also been an area of improvement for me. I have always been the teacher at the staff meeting who always thinks they have a really good idea but wasn't quite confident enough to actually say it and hear it coming out of my mouth in a shared forum. After attending the MindLab I have found that I am more willing to share what I know and be called upon by others to help explain processes. When discussing our impending move into and ILE (although I did hear this week this term could be changing again) I feel more confident that in this environment I won't let my voice get lost in the crowd.

One area where my practice has changed has been my thoughts on the difference between group work and collaboration. I now take a lot more time explicitly teaching my students how to work collaboratively rather than just sending them off in a group and expecting collaboration to happen. This has also changed the way in which I also work with my colleagues. It was a big eye opener for me as I actually thought that they were the same thing!

Another area where my practice has changed is thinking about the authenticity of the tasks I set. Questions I ask myself include: Is this relevant to my students lives? Are they going to be interested in what they are learning? What do I know about my students that will help me to create or find authentic tasks? Can my students help me to plan these authentic tasks? I have found that the students are much more engaged in the learning process when they see "the point" of a task rather than setting something "just because".

I think the term lifelong learner, really sums up this course for me, and has really encouraged me to keep pushing boundaries, researching and reflecting on my teaching practice.

First Post!

Hi all,
My name is Imogen Macartney and I am in my sixth year of teaching in a primary school setting. This year I have a Year 5/6 class, but I do have experience in the junior classroom. My teaching approach was to continually learn and now after learning at the Mindlab in Auckland NZ I have been trying to be more collaborative in my approaches. I continue to change my classroom environment to enable my students flexibility to learn in a more innovative learning environment while still being in a single celled classroom.
I am looking forward to sharing my journey with you.