The Beauty of Story

This data visualisation using Facebook friends gives us a new look at the world: not only informing us in terms of where the political and friendship boundaries are closely aligned but where they are not in existence. A fabulous learning hook! Imagine the questions we could pose ….

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8999217.stm

I love this story of a 90 year old blogger; with time on her hands she tells her stories for the world to read. Fabulous.

And, I love that I could use the ‘send to blog’ feature from Diigo to post this directly to my blog. Very cool.

Speaking again of creativity, thanks to Ewan McIntosh for pointing to this fabulous animation of one of Ken Robinson’s wonderful talks. Must view.

In my neighbourhood a chalkboard on the footpath serves as a source of witty phrases, sometimes literary quotes, sometimes motivational, desk calendar-like phrases. Initially created by the local book store, it it now updated by the local hairdresser. Last week’s quote caught my attention: If you wish your staff to be creative, you need to give them time to play. Hard to argue with that! Clearly our schools need to continue to address this challenge if we wish to see our rich technology resources applied in creative and meaningful ways for student learning.

As serendipity so often strikes, this morning’s post from Dan Pink urges consideration of ‘mini genius grants’, be they grants of time or money, in order to allow staff to pursue creative ideas in the workplace. Before we construct our school timetables for the next academic year, and find ourselves locked into the inevitable gridlock for another twelve months, can we have the critical conversations that will enable our teachers to pursue innovation in their classroom practice and contribute to whole school growth?

Among other issues of teaching and learning, Mick Waters, former head of curriculum at the QCA in United Kingdom, reminds us of the importance of the labels we use in our teaching. If our students believe they are no longer “any good at maths”, for instance, was there a time when they were? Are they past their “best before date”?

Waters also argues that whilst teaching is essential to student learning, what also matters is leadership at all levels of the school, the curriculum, the student’s disposition to learn and the teaching. All four elements are important.

From my last posting to the MIS Leadership Updates ….

As I close out my four years at MIS, I find myself mentally drawing together the threads of our work, much like tightening a drawstring bag to enclose the precious contents. For me, those precious contents represent my own personal learnings, learnings I intend taking with me as I move on to play out of town (Perkins, 2009).

Let me share just four of those with you now:

1. Professional development or professional learning
What is absolutely clear is we have taken on a new understanding of teacher learning in our school. We have moved from relying on professional development – where learning comes to us, sometimes willingly, sometimes not – think carrots and sticks – to a stance on teacher learning which asks us to reach out, to seek to learn, to grow, to be curious and to be both independent and collaborative in our learning. Like so many international schools, the focus had previously been on sending our teachers to exotic locations for their professional development experiences. The result was often a clear memory of the destination, but not such a clear transfer of the experience into classroom practice. This reality is not peculiar to international schools; much has been written on the frequent disconnect between one-off events and evidence of change in classroom practice. (Reeves, 2010) What is peculiar, though, is the lure of the exotic locations so common in the international school context. It should be noted, here, that we have not so much reduced staff participation in these external workshops and conferences; rather, we have worked to set these experiences as catalyst opportunities for further learning in-house, tying back directly to our academic priorities, rather than being the primary source of teacher learning.

2. Understanding education at its core
What has also crystallised for me during my time at MIS, is the distinct belief that our frame for educating our students must be drawn directly from the educational research base, rather than only from externally developed curricular frameworks. These frameworks, whilst important to our work as a school, must be understood in terms of how they can support, rather than replace, what we must understand and can collaboratively construct as educators. We must probe the minds of leading educators, synthesise emerging practice and, together, continue to strengthen and enrich the work of our school; making the game worth playing. (Perkins, 2009)

3. Teacher reflection in action
We now see many examples of our teachers taking on the shared responsibility for investigating and reflecting on their own and others’ classroom practice; learning from the team (Perkins, 2009). This is essential work in our profession: our teachers must be enabled to reflect on practice and be allowed the autonomy to make change. In considering the most recent work of Dan Pink (2010) on motivation, it is a compelling argument to see the need for our teachers to be actively engaged in the construction and evaluation of their teaching practice as a positive avenue to personal fulfilment.

4. Seeing the whole
We know in our design of learning experiences for our students that we must make overt the connections between new learning and prior learning (Bransford, 1999).  That is our responsibility as educators so our students see the bigger picture and the reason for current learning; to play the whole game (Perkins, 2009).

So too, for teacher learning. It is essential that we continue to place all opportunities presented for teacher learning into the larger frame of our work as a school and that we draw the connections between initiatives or learnings directly. For instance, we have placed focus on how we deliver learnings to our students that are appropriately challenging: meeting students just where they are and pushing their individual learning growth along a chosen pathway. This work ties to connecting new knowledge to old, to revising our language philosophy, to our choice of Dan Pink for the Stephan Engelhorn lecture and to our offering the Teaching ESL Students in Mainstream Classes workshops on campus. As we strive to construct relevant and engaging learning experiences for our students we need, as a faculty, to see these essential understandings as a whole, not as singular elements. We must avoid what Perkins refers to as elementitis: week after week, even year after year of focusing on elements with very little of the whole game played (Perkins, 2009, 5).

Indeed, David Perkins, in his most recent work, Making Learning Whole, argues eloquently for seven principles to guide us in our learning journeys with students:
1. Play the whole game
2. Make the game worth playing
3. Work on the hard parts
4. Play out of town
5. Uncover the hidden game
6. Learn from the team … and the other teams
7. Learn the game of learning (Perkins, 2009)

These seven principles apply equally well to our teacher learning journeys.

And to continue with the game playing analogy, adding a World Cup theme: whoever may win in South Africa will not do so by virtue of how many football workshops attended or the chosen exotic destination. The winners in South Africa will be those who practiced the hardest: who worked on the hard parts. That is what will matter most in Johannesburg on July 11, 2010 and that is what matters most in our classrooms: practice at classroom practice ~ work on the hard parts; play out of town; learn from the team… and the other teams.

I have been blessed to have this this life-enriching experience in Germany. Both my personal and professional learnings have flourished; it is time now to return to my home and to my family: a different educator, a different person.

Bransford, J. et al. (1999) How People Learn, National Academy Press, Washington, DC.
Perkins, D. (2009) Making Learning Whole, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, CA.
Reeves, D. (2010) Transforming Professional Development Into Student Results, ASCD, Arlington, VA.