CORE ED Modern Pathways to raising Maori Achievement

Janelle Riki's Presentation

Our Professional Development today focussed on Maori Achievement and digitally connected kids.

While the URL above is a link to it, most of the presentation was Janelle's spoken words around it. This was a very concise definition of why we should be using MLE's, which is one of the strongest points I took from it. Janelle was a very analytical and well-spoken presenter.

Slide 8 "...to be modern, anything were designing or building must be conceived of and developed for what we know and understand 'just now', drawing on our lessons from the past, an d considering the demands of the future.."

Explaining that our 'modern' spaces are about recognising what we need now and catering for the future made this seem a whole lot less 'catchphrase-y', and more about being realistic with our design, rather than just trying to force the modern practices we are already likely to be using into boxes that were designed for modern practice 50 years ago.

I liked that she started with "don't throw the baby out with the bath water" and took the time to break down how Maori culture and education values went from a traditional village system to victorian education systems, without anything in-between leading them through to this, and that this is likely according to some researchers, to still be impacting on the current state of affairs. I have read other pieces of research along those lines in reference to a number of other issues Maori are faced with, so while not a surprise, Janelle was really concise and confident with the information. Her point being, what can we learn from traditional village education systems that did exist? That students were relationally connected with their "teachers", were being evaluated for their natural strengths and then encouraged to play to those for the betterment of their society. They didn't necessarily 'pass' and 'fail' at what they were being taught, they just tried again and figured out a better way each time. Survival depended on it and it was a system of education that was 'fit for purpose'.

I do continue to wonder why we insist on teaching exam skills, and putting students through these; it isn't real applied learning, it doesn't resonate with you in 15 years time as something that altered your life, because it doesn't allow for you to practice a new skill or break down new information in a way that you will use for real, over again, in real life situations. An exam is almost like bad reality tv, without the captive audience; placing the 'ordinary. And when only 9 % of our Level One students credits came from external exams, I do have to wonder why? Level Two was 14%, Level Three I believe was 8%.

In relation to yesterday's PD on Feedback I then have begun to consider this; It is really easy for most of us to say that internal achievement standards under NCEA are easier. I say it. However, they are all aligned now and technically are not at a lower standard. Our students achieve them more readily, because we are working on them relationally. We are allowing them time to digest through feedback, and following up with that feedback, on the information/skill/problem being assessed and really learn it. It is naturally discursive, unless you sit there and just hand them out a booklet to work through and do your best to ignore getting to know your kids. So are they easier, or are they a more realistic learning processes? In Art, they are smaller chunks of learning, but I don't see them as necessarily easier. I don't think I will call them so again. You get the chance to reinforce the reflection process in class, over and over again if need be. 28 times to create a habit. You can give students the opportunity to critique themselves and each other. An exam paper only gets returned if you ask for it, and you cannot necessarily decipher the why or why not for the outcome. Our folios get returned with no feedback as to why decisions were made, but we know they were present in their process. It gets treated like a big secret we can't know, in case it undermines the sanctity of the 'exam'.

So in relation to the topic at hand, raising Maori achievement, I am not sure where this leaves the New Zealand curriculum or our assessment.

Slide 18, Janelle points out what she believes our students will need to survive their career pathway. Within this she graciously allowed that creativity should have been there and will be next time. While it fits brilliantly with the front end of our curriculum, it doesn't sit nicely with how we end up shoveling our students through as much NCEA as possible and prepping them for exams, from which they then only get 9% of their credits.

Is what we are doing with how many assessments are handled 'fit for purpose' for where we want our students to be at as people when they finally leave? Is what i am doing in our Art department fit for purpose in the same way? I believe it is, but I also think I need to analyse it further to really know.

Feedback

11. Analyse and appropriately use assessment information, which has been gathered formally and informally (from RTC)

i. analyse assessment information to identify progress and ongoing learning needs of ākonga

ii. use assessment information to give regular and ongoing feedback to guide and support further learning

iii. analyse assessment information to reflect on and evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching

iv. communicate assessment and achievement information to relevant members of the learning community

v. foster involvement of whānau in the collection and use of information about the learning of ākonga

So reflecting on Monday's Professional learning, we worked on understanding how to make feedback meaningful. What is useful and going to be cognitive and what is empty. "weak effort..." doesn’t help. It tells the student nothing about how they could master a new skill, improve technique or help to improve the student's general confidence. 

We used a reading from Carol Ann Tomlinson (Educational Leadership VOL. 71 No. 6 March 2014). The reading was broken into three parts and we worked through it as a jigsaw activity, learning from experts from each of the other two groups as well as teaching the other two experts also. It did make it more interesting as a process and was far preferable to sitting and being talked to for yet another hour. 

The youtube link above is Rita Pierson who is/was an American educationalist.  Great messages and she is damn funny. 

The key points of the session were:

1) How to help students understand what feedback is for; traditionally students see it as a test, which equals a grade and therefore discouragement

2) How to use clear KUD's (Knowledge, Understand, Do)

3) Making Room for student differences; allowing for alternative methods of recording evidence based on KUD's

4) Providing instructive feedback; not judgemental, even though it is a judgement (one is looking for negative aspects, one is evaluating) not empty and hard to decipher such as "weak effort" how is a student meant to interpret that? It should also provide learning targets and uses exemplars and allows for follow-up chances to apply the feedback and actually learn.

5) How to make it user friendly; this requires that the teacher understands the learning progression themselves (make an exemplar, know the pitfalls of your tasks) and is cognitive not emotional, challenging but achievable, differentiated,  and provides a "next step' to improve.

6) Assessing persistently; feedback should permeate the lesson, you are assessing confidence and also creating confidence. it should be well-structured and connected forwards and backwards from the last lesson and to the next one. The teacher should be listening for clues of understanding constantly. 

7) Engaging students with formative assessment; you want them to be engaged in the assessment process discursively. Using rubrics and 'next steps’ is important. Use exemplars, use peer assessment which needs to be explicitly taught to them. Students should be able to examine their own learning progression. 

8) Looking for Patterns; plan and group according to students needs. Plan how to move groups forward.

9) Planning instruction around content requirements and student needs; modify teaching and learning plans as required for your students as you move forward. Differentiate according to those needs.

10) Repeating the process; Habitual, ongoing repeated use of feedback and the processes developed around making sure it permeates your lesson. 

This is stuff that we all I know, I think, but sometimes having it put back at you as a well-analysed and thought out structure makes you challenge yourself as to whether you are really and consistently doing it as well as you could. 

Showing a Commitment to the Bi-cultural Partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand

The Treaty of Waitangi

•  Respect for the heritages, languages and cultures of both partners to the Treaty of Waitangi 

How is this relevant in my Art teaching practice;

I do often feel like when I am given a form to tick off for appraisal, that when I get to this section, are they asking me if I can say the Maori students names clearly and reasonably correctly? Who is planning on trying to prove there is more to it in my subject area? It's a little bit frustrating that we are essentially founded on this document as a nation and resultingly, as a culture, yet an acknowledgement of this document is something more like lip service. I am almost certain that people I have held in esteem in the past of my teaching career have all but encouraged this without necessarily meaning to offend. 

I find the wording does allow for that; '...respect for...' sort of allows you to ignore that there are two cultures here, if you don't want to personally allow it into your practice; '...it's not really that relevant to [topic] right now...' but the title of the criteria is to "Show commitment to...". The title is strong, the explanatory note is not. It allows for a weakness in holding us accountable to the Treaty.

This is also not about the fact that the right here and now of New Zealand is a multi-cultural here and now. It is about the founding document of the here and now and honouring this meaningfully. 

"...unlike many other countries, New Zealand does not have a constitution in the form of a single document. It has a collection of common laws, customs and legislation that establish the framework of government. The Treaty was the initial agreement that established British authority. This authority was later transferred to the New Zealand Parliament..." from http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/ 

So now, I think I will leave this particular post as a work in progress, on which I will add further evidence as to how I think this is expressed in my current practice. I don't want to create a separate page for it, as it is only one of several criteria we are expected to meet as professional teachers, and I have not done that for other criteria.

Start of 2015

We need a selfie stick! Today we are working on the best mocktail recipes, and blogs and google sites, in the country heat of Swannanoa, locked inside away from rather large blowflies, dobermanns and the nor'wester when it winds up every now and then.

Intentions for today are for the 'culture vultures' to get more comfortable with each other's blogs, for us to hoepfully facilitate each other's learning on blogs and to then work on. All without vodka...

still working...

So we intended this day to be about working on our blogs and google sites. This was a collaboration of colleagues who all had similar goals. We have succeeded in further up-skilling ourselves in blogger, albeit with frustrations with the technology, and we have nicknamed ourselves the 'culture vultures'. Rhymes well, but I am not sure about the meaning we are mean't to draw from it. Katie maintains it is 'sexy'. ? Don't they eat dead things? All of us are set up for continuing on with this process of gathering supporting information around the registered teachers criteria within our own practice, we have set up our own mini learning community that covers a number of the humanities within the school, and could easily and willingly cater for a more diverse range of representation, though we are just a group of colleagues who are also friends, and we are responding and supporting our own learning needs locally.

We will organise another learning time for google sites following this.