A New Metric

While I am keen to keep talking about a new way education might run, I need to take a break and talk about the the ACEL 2012 an inquiring mindset conference I have been attending. Some huge ideas coming out of this event that have yet to fully coalesce but here is a start:

I have been wondering what it is that I will take away from the conference I have been attending for the last few days.  Some great speakers have talked and some amazing ideas have flowed. It has challenged me and made me reflect as a teacher and emerging leader. So many strands to pull together and a lot to think about and implement going forward. I have a lot of work to do.

What I realised though is that actually we all have a lot of work to do. One of the biggest underlying themes was an idea that was delivered on the first day by keynote Daniel Pink – the idea of a new metric. The idea that we are measuring success and achievement without actually measuring the parts that count. It is a hell of an idea. To come up with a yardstick that accurately measures the things we as a community want our students to leave school with - which is significantly more than the reading, writing and maths of previous generations, because having those skills is simply not enough anymore.

I am wondering very hard about what to do with this staggering new piece of information. I am trying to ask the right questions and am, at this stage, struggling to gain coherence. I suspect I need more time to think about it but am thinking that the conference has helped clarify some steps forward. First I think we have to top banging the 21^st century learning drum. Get over it – it’s here and has been for as long as all our students have been at school. No student now knows what it was like to learn in the 20^th century. The skills and ideas that people have anointed 21^st century have been around for significantly longer than the last 12 years too. I think we need to give up on putting them into the futuristic holy grail goal category, and just set them alongside the basic literacy and numeracy skills that our governments seem so intent on testing and measuring.

The next step in developing a new metric is to tell everyone we are going to do it. It follows that if we set such things as problem solving and collaboration alongside the literacy and numeracy then we need to tell our communities that these are the things that are valued as equally as the skills they know (and seem to love). We then need to articulate to the community what these skills are and give some solid reasons why we need to develop them in our students. This I think might be a bit of a chicken and egg debate here as the easiest way to convince people is to show them the numbers, and we can’t show them the numbers very well yet because we don’t have the metric. I don’t believe it to be insurmountable though. In Lee Corckett’s Keynote he showed us quite compellingly data showing the decline in industrial, agricultural and service work over the last hundred years or so and pointed to surveys of businesses that list the 21^st century skills that we need to develop.

I think that the final plank in our goal to develop a measure is to start trying and sharing our results with others. I am a big fan of beta testing. It doesn't have to be right – or even mostly right as long as we state clearly what we are trying to achieve and why we are doing it. If we do this then we can let the collective wisdom of the community help us develop a metric that has meaning and value to all.

I think this is the part where I conclude by highlighting my idea for the measure. The truth is – I haven’t got one yet. I have no idea how it would look.  But I do know how I am going to start. I can do this in my classroom immediately by recognizing the skills of the future are not of the future, they are of the now and need equal footing in my classroom. I can also start having conversations with people about how we measure what everyone says is important. Lastly, I'll beta test - put something out there for my class to look at. See if we can use it, see what needs to be changed and if it doesn't work - try again. 

I'm sure I'll visiting this issue again. For now though I just have to be content that I have the start of an idea and the only way it'll go anywhere is if I do something with it.

Ughh's dead - lets not eat those berries!

I have been debating which end to start with on explaining myself with this plan. Although it seems common sense to start at the early childhood end, I think it is important to remind ourselves of what an education system aims to achieve. If we strip it back to its very basics education is supposed to be a shortcut to better understanding the world we live in. It sounds simplistic, but it’s true. Sure, it has evolved over time to an important plank in a thriving and democratic society that serves many purposes and functions, but at its core it starts with a very simple idea that if we learn from others mistakes we are less likely to make the same ones and are more likely to get to the end goal quicker.

Now, I’m not sure what the forefathers of education thought the end goal was supposed to be but I assume it probably started with something simple like, ‘let’s not get killed today. Ughh got killed yesterday when he ate the fruit off that tree – I’d better not eat it. Perhaps if I tell everyone not to eat that tree, then that’ll be one less thing that kills us!’ It really isn’t that hard to imagine the scene. I can see similar scenes playing out through history with all kinds of events through to our modern 21^st century age. 

So where have I decided unpacking my new grand scheme for education? Well, I think the end is probably the most interesting place. Just to remind you, I have students leaving school a year earlier and spending it abroad before returning to take up tertiary study. I have students working towards whatever end goal assessments they need to straight away. In New Zealand that is NCEA 1-3. 

What is my reasoning for this? It goes back to that original purpose on education – a shortcut to getting ready for the world. I think we are holding a group of students too long in school for no real gain to them or society. I think that we use schools as holding pens for these students because there is nowhere else to put them. I agree completely that schools are great places to hold them, certainly much better than jail and better than the streets but it is completely contrary to the purpose of education. We need to realise that those students who are disengaged from school are largely disengaged because they feel that they are not getting anything from it. The solution is to get them into a place where they are engaged – and quickly! Actually high schools in Auckland are already running hybrid programs like this – some schools have partnered with tertiary institutes to provide training for students that have disengaged, while other high schools regularly extend academic students by offering access to national assessments earlier. Starting earlier means finishing earlier, allowing all to quickly reach their goals – academic or otherwise.

With students now leaving school at the age of 16/17, armed with secondary qualifications we then provide the next, and most important level of the plan. Experience. How many times have you heard people say they wish they paid more attention in school because of the belated realisation that school will help them in their adult life. It is quite common to hear people say that it was not until they left school and worked for a bit that they realised the importance of school. Well, if that’s the case – let’s give it to them! Imagine if everyone got to spend a year trying it out and then making key educational decisions with experience behind them? Models for this also already exists, the idea of a GAP year has been around for a very long time (the Victorians called it ‘a grand tour’). Some Scandinavian countries actually pay their youth a wage to travel! Even the more conservative nations of the world endorse the idea, South Korea for example, continues to have compulsory military training. So too, might I add, do many other nations in the world – including the famously neutral Switzerland. 

I think it would a fantastically brave move to make our 17 year olds take a compulsory year out to reflect on what they have done so far and check that the decisions they have made up to this point are going to work for them before they are allowed into any tertiary study. I think we could use a suite of GAP projects to cater for all the diversity that our country has and I think it would bring a maturity and increased productivity to our entire country.

School in the future

A while back I wondered out loud about what would happen if we stopped schooling earlier and let our charges loose on the world a little earlier than we currently do. I’m half joking when I talk about the idea, but every step of it, I think, has some merits (even if the entirety does not work!). So – let’s put it out there. For the next little while I’ll try and expand on each section and how I think that it wouldn’t be that hard to implement, but for today – let’s put the whole model forward.

Firstly the model starts early with in-home education facilitators to teach parents to recognise cognitive and physical milestones of their babies and teach them how to monitor and extend their learning – I know this kind of exists with the parents as first teachers model but I mean rolling it out in a big way like Plunket. The next layer starts around the age of 2-3 with free and compulsory early childhood education with trained and registered teachers. Next up, primary school - starting one year earlier than our current five years old, but still taking 6 years. When the child hits 10 years old they move to intermediate school which now lasts 3 years. The next level is high school, starting as they do now at the age of around 13/14. Here is where the big changes come. High school now only lasts 3 years, year 1 would be NCEA 1, year 2 NCEA 2 and year 3 NCEA 3 (or equivalent in what-ever system you are working in). The next part, a compulsory year out of school – either in work, traveling or something similar. Finally, on to university, tech, trade school, apprenticeship or whatever you want/need to finish your training. 

So, there’s the model. On the surface it’s probably not that earth shattering. Just give me a bit of time to explain the parts of it out a bit more and then let’s see what you think.

Leading learning

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.”  - H. Ginott

Schools are busy places. It doesn’t matter what role you have, there always seem to be too much to do and no time left to get it done. I don’t think people realise that it is not easy to meaningfully plan, document and assess learning when the largest part of your job involves spending time alongside your students. 

I’m not winging here. There are plenty of tools to stay on top of the work – one colleague introduced me to the 3 folders rule, one folder labelled, ‘not due yet’ the other folder marked, ‘due today’ the final folder marked ‘due yesterday’. Another colleague introduced me to the eat the frog concept – and gave me a plastic frog to remind me about my frogs. That one is too long winded to explain, go and watch this youtube clip to learn more about that, http://youtu.be/0W7GB5Fh2XM . What I’m more interested in is how quickly and easy it is to lose sight of a teacher’s role in the classroom. 

Our first role is to lead learning. To say to our students, ‘Follow me!’ We are, as Ginott points out, “THE decisive element in the classroom.” It means that regardless of the pulls and pressures that are placed on us professional and personally, our first responsibility is to educating the students in our class. Now that part is actually an easy conceptual leap – teachers educate students, nothing new here. The hard part is what and how to teach. This is where the distractions start to come into play – curriculum says teach this, team leaders says teach this, parents want this taught government wants this taught. The number of opinions on what and how to teach is endless and it is very difficult to know where to start and even harder sometimes to know if you are doing a good job. When I started out it made my head spin. Still does some days. 

I think that’s why I like Ginott’s conclusion. It reminds us that at the heart of what we all do, the most important factor in improving our teaching and our students learning is the relationship between the teacher and their class.

Thank you John Proctor

I hope this blog does not turn into the epistle according to kayaker75. I hope to offer my thoughts, but also my practical ideas on teaching and learning in our ever changing world. But for my first post I think I have to sort of outline a philosophy – so here I go!

I wear many hats at the school I work at. Each day I juggle responsibilities as a team leader, digital leader, tutor teacher, associate teacher oh, and I still teach in a classroom.  I love my job to bits. I get up every day excited to go to work and work alongside my colleagues. I stretch that term to include my class, a group of 12 and 13 year olds. I include them because one of our guiding principles is that  we are absolutely a community of learners, including me. The factors that make this all work are complex but the longer I teach I am realising, with increasing clarity, that there are a 5 things that make learning work.

1. All curriculum content can be interesting

At the heart of the whole teaching and learning game is the simplest of things; a group of people sharing thoughts and ideas around a topic that is new. I love hearing the buzz of intellectual excitement that comes from presenting interesting and engaging ideas. This was thoroughly brought home to me recently when I was working with one of my reading groups and we hit the word inflation in a text we were analysing. They were not sure what it meant and asked. I could have responded in a number of ways but chose to say to the group of predominantly boys in front of me, “It’s one of the causes of World War 2.” Ears perked up around the room and the flurry of conversation began in earnest, not just between me and the students but between each other, “My dad is a banker and he says that…” or “I heard from my brother at high school that people in Germany had to buy bread with wheelbarrows of money.” A quick google image search and I was able to bring a picture of this up on my class interactive whiteboard to illustrate his point. Blame boring and bland lessons on whatever you like but if you, as a teacher, are bored chances are your students are too. Find an 'in' and make it work.

2. A genuine willingness to find out things and then share what you found out with others

If you have ever wondered something, gone as far as finding out the answer, and then shared it with someone else, then you have stumbled on the greatest educational secret ever! Everyone wonders, seldom go and find the answer, even less tell others what they found out yet this simple loop is teaching and learning. Acknowledge the importance of this loop in the classroom and you’ve got it made! Any subject any level. I do every day. When I wonder something, my class knows. When I find out the answer, my class knows. When my students do the same thing the whole class knows. We collaborate and we share. This is at the core of  our classroom culture.  

3. It must be our Darwinian imperative to aim for mastery but accept and applaud students’ mistakes

Classrooms are the place to try out what it is like in the real world without all the consequences of the real world. They are Darwinian evolution at work. It makes perfect evolutionary sense to have the experienced give the inexperienced advice before they put themselves in harm’s way. The oldest of classrooms involved partnering someone with experience with someone without. Socrates was the master at this style. Oxford University continues this tradition with its system of dons. Our classrooms are the industrial equivalent. One experienced member guiding a group of less experienced.  Everything we do in the classroom has to relate or even mimic to what happens outside a school and as adults we know that there are very few second chances and we have to always hit the ground running. The beauty of the classroom is that we can have the standard but we can support the mistake. The unique and defining difference in a school.

4. The realisation that ‘education’ is another way to say, ‘make changes’

We actually battle a hard dichotomy here. On one hand we are the institution on the other hand we are teaching our charges to find the new way and buck the institution. The best embodiment of this idea is the teacher who wears two badges on his lapel. One reads, “Trust me I’m in charge.” the other reads, “Question authority.” All teachers started teaching, I’m sure, with a multitude of noble and altruistic reasons but the overwhelming reason for most will somewhere involve the word ‘change’.  The good news is, the system actually agrees with you. They have other names for it and have very difficult measures for it - “students at this age must achieve these nebulous goals and ambitions measured by these diagnostic tools on this day blah blah blah.” It’s hard to believe, but comforting to know that somewhere beneath the bureaucratic heart telling you that you haven’t hit the target for the year is a desire to affect change.

5. 10,000 hours means a lot of practice!

Malcolm Gladwell introduced the 10,000 hours rule in his book, 'The Outliers.' Basically it takes 10,000 hours to reach mastery in a skill/task. Roughly ten years. In New Zealand that equals 75% of the total primary and secondary schooling a child because undertakes. It doesn’t count anything done at home, or early childhood and tertiary education. I’m sure I’ll be back to discuss this point more in the future because there is so much more to discuss but, here is what it means: For teachers it means we are a team, across year levels and schools. For parents it means miracles won’t happen overnight. For students it means get on with it because we are investing over 10,000 hours in you to be the masters of your future.

So…How do I know these things work? I can’t say how my students will turn out and I can’t say that if they are successful it was because of me. That’s kind if the problem isn’t it? Teachers never know if their influence worked. So I dedicate this post to John Proctor, my teacher in form 2 (year 8 in modern parlance) at Dilworth School, Auckland New Zealand. My 10,000 hours started with him.