Writing Big Ideas in planning units of work Incorporating LCS and SOLO

Embedding stuff that we want to use because we know it makes pedagogical sense, is easily said, but how do we do it cohesively?

1) Present a format that all departments can easily use to write units of work and/or schemes for the year in a predefined course.

2) Present a way of thinking and writing 'Big ideas' and then 'specific learning outcomes', followed by essential questions and a success criteria within, that allows teachers to easily digest and re-invent their own content and teaching methods as embedded within your chosen pedagogies.

How do we write nice clear Big Ideas for our students? When we break it up it's your overall Learning Outcome, the one that holds it all together and directs your 'why' (Sinek). It's 1) a noun or thing, 2) a measurement system like blooms (but why not SOLO? - http://pamhook.com/), 3) a verb that makes the noun or thing observable and therefore measurable and 4) any additional criteria that can be added to show the success for the student. I initially pulled something similar to this out of my very, very old lesson and unit planning booklet from 1999 at Christchurch College of Education, but found it more carefully explained and elaborated upon here: https://teachonline.asu.edu/2012/07/writing-measurable-learning-objectives/ 

From there, explicitly identifying LCS within the learning sequence in reference to SOLO could, in fact, come together nicely for us all.

If I play with this for myself, I often rely on "the role of the artist in understanding Pasifika patterns as a narrative..." as it feels broad enough to cover everything! But it is not very detail orientated, nor does it reference any pedagogy we are currently trying to use. If I apply this model it looks more like:

With SOLO referenced as a measurement:
The role of the Artist in using and extending a narrative with Samoan patterns in planning a painting.

With LCS referenced, specifically C:
The role of the artist in creating and extending a narrative with Samoan patterns in planning a painting

with LCS referenced, specifically L and C:
The role of the artist in activating your own understanding in creating and extending a narrative for the purposes of planning a painting using traditional Samoan patterns with a narrative

With reference to LCS:
The role of the artist; activating your own understanding of Samoan patterns in creating and extending a narrative through planning a painting for the purposes of exhibiting and explaining your story to others.

The role of the artist; - SOLO steps 1 and 2 Pre-structural and uni-structural
activating your own understanding of Samoan patterns  SOLO step 3- multi-structural
narrative through planning a painting  SOLO step 4 relational
understanding extending, Exhibiting and Explaining SOLO step 5 extend ideas

Activating - Learn

Creating, Understanding,  Extending, Through planning a painting - Create
Exhibiting and Explaining - Share new understandings

The role of the artist; activating your own understanding of Samoan patterns in creating and extending a narrative through planning a painting for the purposes of exhibiting and explaining your story to others.

From here devising your success criteria, or specific learning outcomes, flow forward nicely. the wording needs attention, but the idea of how I get there appears to work and is there. 

Reflecting on PBL Developments with Business & Enterprise Kete in Year 9.

How have things gone in year 9 Art this year so far? Probably ok, but man it was disjointed. I have finished with Teaching 9 TN and Cindy has finished up teaching 9 Ca. We take on 9 mn and 9 hy for terms three and four.

We finished the term with the Business and Enterprise kete for years' 7 - 9 and a market day on the netball courts. It was overwhelmingly successful, with most student business making a profit over a loss, and all student businesses having learnt some lessons about the harshness that can be business.

We are in a world where our young people can seem so entitled - how do you get the latest iphone worth more than a good second hand car, without actually paying for it upfront? Pretty easily it seems - and the pressure is on for parents to provide their children with these things because of that sickening feeling that they will be the odd ones out, the rejected child and less likely to survive the hostility that can be adolesence.

From within this very world, Janine Morrell-Gunn from Whitebait Productions and Matt Brown from 'My Father's Barber' lectured every single Year 9 on how realistically hard, full of failure and fear it was to get a business up and running.  There were still pockets of 'this is what I want to do, so you should want it and buy it because I said so'. That is entitlement, without actually putting the work in, knowing whether your market even exists, or if it is just a vanity project. BUT, these pockets were remarkably small. Most students put thought into their product, and went beyond this is what I want to do because I like it, into how will I encourage others to like it too, or should I consider something else instead of, or as well as? That is business. Know your market and work to that, not against it or ignorant of it. At the end of the day Art sells too and is just as marketable as any other product.

Back to my point. The disjointed nature of this was somewhat down to me. I wasn't sure how I fitted in with this and in fact I was disappointed that we didn't shut the whole curriculum down and whole heartedly attack it with our own expertise as leverage. So we did our thing for term one, then tried to teach around the kete in relation to business and enterprise.

However it wasn't just a 'me' problem, it is a 'new thing' problem, 'unfamiliarity' problem, 'time-based' problem, 'how does our hierarchy/systems work with this' problem too. There were meetings to try and keep things together. I'm not sure we were reporting back or updating progress from any of us in our 'siloes' that we are desperately trying to break down. We did our own thing because we hadn't resolved how we all fitted together. Room to breathe please. We were still doing the traditional job we have been employed by the school and MOE to do; subject specialist teachers. Gotta start somewhere though.

We were only teaching the Visual Arts aspect of this to two of the four Year 9 classes due to our timetable. There was clear crossover between DTE and Visual Arts, but the other two year 9 classes that we didn't teach, were not doing DTE this semester, only one of the two classes Visual Arts had, was currently doing DTE. More disjointedness.

For whatever reason DTE only gets one hour a week, but were trying to do the same thing in terms of advertising and visual language, but there was no room to breathe to even correlate that. I note that although jingles were written with groups through Music, no where were they able to use these to market their wares on the day of the market, adding to my sense of disjointedness between subject specialists and the process itself.

Planning in relation to how we may or may not fit in with the Arts kete (undecided from beyond me) for Visual Arts will take this stuff into account. As will an expectation that we are either in it full on or not at all and doing our own thing. In the mean time, until we are at a point where we can shut the curriculum down and go for it, we still have our traditional jobs to do, for us, teaching Visual Arts according to the curriculum and reporting back to whānau on the strands within that subject.

The Development of a Collaborative PBL environment in Visual Arts reflective documentation part one

Collaboration is about doing stuff together. A partnership. It is an expectation that students will work this way in PBL environments and likewise staff will have to also.

We have been working on how we manage our senior courses. For the last two years, instead of Level one Art, Level 2/3 Painting, level 2/3 Design and level 2/3 Photography, I asked if we could change things up. We always bang students in the back of level 2/3 Design when they cannot fit into level one Art. Likewise, designers end up in Painting classes when they cannot fit in Design. It's considered a nuisance, something in Art departments that we are meant to fight against as it hampers the growth, the validity, realness, ultimate truth that our course is far-far superior than our senior managers see our courses as, and our ...egos I think if we are honest.

2015 numbers rolled in, as they always do around October. We had 39 students listed for Year 11 Art. We were asked to cull at least 10 of those. 10 is not such an accidental 'I had no other option' number sitting there. Whereas in Photography we had 15 students. Enough for a legitimate class. Likewise in Paint and Design. Really good numbers.

I knew full well that there was an Art teaching colleague at another school on the west coast 'doing it tough' in the opinion of some of the bigger school Art depts here in chch. She had only one senior Art class, one of her students had down's syndrome and she had written up what she was doing for her students for TKI as a planning resource for smaller departments. It was all about going with the mixed discipline/level approach and embracing it, leaving things open for students to come back and complete level one over two years and it all focused on concept as the driver, over a whole class approach.

Little nagging thought in my head: We always taught our level 2/3 students from that position anyway. Why would it be different for level one?

When we went to Tamaki College for Manaiakalani professional development, we saw this cool thing in English where they didn't teach academic, vocational and communication English from level one upwards. They took the labels of smartness/dumbness away and had theme based classes. What do you really care about? What makes you think, be passionate, have a voice? That is how you chose your English class. That is also where you start an Art concept from. Then I have that lightbulb moment, followed by that slight guilt moment of how I may have been disadvantaging students for a very long time, culminating in the 'I'm changing the world' moment. In my Art room at least.

So again, why was I making it so different in Level one? Because the standards don't quite align to level 2 and 3. So I sorta used that as a justification. But that doesn't actually matter, there are always ways around things.

I was making it different because it was easier than altering my mind set, I still had that fear that I was going to upset traditionalists in my field (they don't even know my name, so I'm not sure why I cared) and if I am honest there is still the 'You're from Hornby? Oh...' thing going on for me. I don't want to make things too different here at Hornby and therefore have our students not able to do as well as 'theirs'... forgetting the fact that the will, drive and passion of the student is what will eventually cause success, not whether I cared about whether they were going to be the kid in the second-hand jumper getting teased about hand-me-downs.

Yes, content, technique, skills are all really important, but first and foremost is the 'catch'. Fostering will, determination and passion for learning something is what we must do first. And sometimes the only thing we may end up doing. But eventually that will come back in on that same person and the light will be re-ignited.

My proposal was to intentionally mix the 4 lines of Art up into being a mish mash of everything and then going for it.

That year had been a mare for Cindy with 5 level one Art students sitting in the back of her level 2/3 Design class. The designers did well - 100% pass rate in the external in the end. The year 11 students all passed too, but they were all hard on her - 'you only care about the designers' followed by 'why do you spend time with the babies? WE are more important!' from the designers.  There was a total non acceptance and division between the two groups. But there was this really interesting student in the class who had come to us from alternative education. He only did level one. He struggled in a lot of relationships with a lot of teachers and only met his dad that year. He had moved from the North Island and everything was just weird here. Wickedly talented, creative and interesting, when he was on top of things personally, not so much of any of those when things were going wrong personally. He worked in the same kind of way as you would at Art school. Independently and interdependently. Coming up with new trains of thought, discussing these out loud with others, bouncing ideas back and forth and taking everyone's opinions really seriously and always, in his own little space of what did look like a fine arts studio in the end, down the back. He worked like a senior painter. Cindy just had to keep up with him to make sure he as ticking the boxes for the internal standards along the way as well.

Level one pass rate external folio for 2016 - 92%

This bit of data is important because of the school results for level one in 2016 as well as the fact that level one students do not understand how they get assessed in Visual Arts at this level. It is the second year we had run our programme this way. 2015 was not shabby either at around (don't quote me) 85%. We do not have time to make that clear and real in junior Art. 2 hours a week for half a year does not allow us to capture their passion for Art as well as school them all on entering into NCEA as competitive, geared up, understanding how they are likely to do in NCEA, machines. Its enough to ascertain that they have readily developed skills that stand them in good stead already and passion.

What it looks like:

We keep lines 1, 2, 3 and 4 of our 6-line patterned timetable open for Art at all three levels. Students are well-schooled into understanding that they are responsible for their concept, and have mostly begun developing this in year 10 if they are coming into Year 11 Art. Anyone who wants to come into year 11 without year 10 Art gets a sit down chat with me about what I expect with their own direction.

The first two weeks of the new year are spent on brainstorming what students care about, reading through books on art and learning about artists that catch their interest. Discussions with the teacher and with each others (levels 2 and 3 help a lot in guidance here) help formulate the direction a student wants to take. We discuss, question, and develop a plan.

We use our google site to unite them as a class with a tracking sheet for each class loaded onto the page for each class. For each course, there is a course outline digitally presented with a hyperlink to the folder containing the assessment schedules for each standard they can earn. It is up to the student to make sure they are ticking things off...We also use teaching blogs to then differentiate subject and level specific resources, help and guidance. But most is on a more individual level. All students are using a blog to document their work. Some are still reluctant, but the more it comes through the junior school, the less foreign it is to them. Their use of a blog allows us as teachers to pursue their progress beyond a class time. I'm marking and giving formative feedback essentially, just online.

We frequently demand that students prepare a timetable of their week for us on the whiteboard at the start of the week. Telling us what they are doing, not the other way round.

In that, there must be outcomes - a piece of work for 1.2, a research paragraph for Art History, a blog post. If their outcomes are unreasonable, they rewrite them and take some responsibility. If they don't meet them they have to replan their next week to sort it out. It is their credits in the end. if we do this right, they should care more about them.

Because we approach our classes willingly as mixed level and discipline, it alters our mindset about how we feel about teaching them and how we approach it. It is a placebo effect.

The flaws/areas to work on:

- Communication between the two Art teachers - we both have different skill sets that we could be using together more for the benefit of the students.

- This model is threatening to some people. Some students do want to be told what to do. We try and adjust approaches for them, but that is quite a lot of work in this environment.

- Art History standards are way better for research skills in Art than any of the research standards in practical art. We need to offer these more at levels 2 and 3, not just level 1. That does lend to addressing literacy standards more for us too.

- Communication with the deans as to how full the lines are - one ended up with 37, another with 33, one with 24 and one with 11 at the start of this year. That needed to be addressed.

Blogging; why, what, how (Sinek)

The above is the Hornby High staff feedback on why Blogger helps our students learn, followed by the presentation on how are students are blogging, and developing our next steps into 'what' we will be doing to not only teach them this way, but in fact just keep up with them.

2017 Inquiry Update

Professional accountability in amongst self-perpetuated chaos. That might be a slight exaggeration. But, the decision to split up teachers whilst we had mixed the levels and disciplines of our classes is from an outsiders perspective, just confusing. And it leaves us teachers open to lose track of students and not spread attention equally and effectively.

The inquiry question is: Can teacher collaboration improve student achievement in senior art? 

The use of google sheets to track the students and keep ourselves in check. However, it is not us two yet collaborating. it effectively tracks our thoughts as we check through with each student and hopefully provides clear feedback for students. But, we are not yet collaborating in the true sense of the word.

I like how we are using it, as it has changed since we started with it.

There are some barriers to doing that effectively:

- Cindy is part time, though at 16 hours, her life should not revolve around being at school when I feel like talking about this!
- Four of her hours a week are on the other side of the school, jokingly referred to as Siberia (rebuild logistics), timeliness to classes following a Siberian lesson is costing us.
- Home time for both of us is precious and necessary due to our own circumstances (We don't live at school, nor will we be planning to take this up to solve the issue).
- After school time is stretched across a lot of demands - staff meetings, task forces, learning team meetings...
- I annoyingly use the Art room office as a Dean's office because there isn't space for me elsewhere while the rebuild is on.
- I get caught up with the pastoral side of my job more than I should if I'm balancing things fairly.
- We never will have a timetabled non-contact together... when I'm teaching Cindy is not and vice versa.

There are some solutions to these barriers also (and I am open to others too):

- Working online more effectively. We have done this before, timetabled ourselves to be online at the same time so we can discuss how something is working through 'chat'. but there will be other ways to maximise the actual collaboration that may not require online at the same time.
- Using lunch hours to discuss students progress more frequently... oh fun.
- Being careful to divide my time between my roles and sticking to those time separations. Setting it up in a more timetabled manner.

2017 Inquiry

Our Inquiry for Visual Arts this year is a joint one, focussing on how best to spread the load of specialty skills across as many senior students as possible.

Can Teacher Collaboration Improve Student Achievement in Senior Art Classes?

Our progress so far has been to set up the google sheets to track at least the first 6 weeks of each class in the senior school for Art. I would expect these to develop and grow based on how we use them.

There is the intention that these are used to make sure no student is left behind in being given feedback and kept up to speed.

We have also organised to split up the line 3 and 4 classes and share the teaching across those lines. We do have differing styles and expectations so it may take a little time to adjust to this. however, if students are truly working to their own goals and are there for the right reasons, this should come together.

At this point in time we have one over subscribed class of 37, one of 33, one of 13 and one of 22. Because we chose to mix our levels, there was a lack of communication between the three levels in general about numbers, so this is an issue that needs clarifying.

By the end of 2017, I want to be able to say we gave every senior student the best possible chance with teacher expertise available to direct their own learning. I want every student to be able to direct their own learning, rather than lean on the teacher or dismiss their own chances because the right teacher is not there.

My notes from a research paper on leadership for learning

These are my notes from an article that I chose to summarise for my study group on developing a positive professional development culture in a school. We are all researching and developing our own PLD experience (using MKO for mine) and this in particular resonated with me in regards to how success or the lack of, can happen. The term 'paraprofessionals' was new for me. I like how that goes such a long way to explain how we place value in these roles and how that can ultimately determine our success. 

MIT Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher's Scholarship 2016

This is something I applied for in 2015 as something to address in imbalance that exists in getting talented, priority learner Art students through into NCEA with as much confidence in the written/analytical strands of the curriculum, as well as handling the visual/technique based strands.

I want to create an online exemplar forum of student work that is live and demonstrates the curriculum at the junior levels as low mid and high. we are moving to reporting to our community along these lines, as a lot of schools already do, and even using NCEA terminology of Achieved, Merit and Excellence within each level. Years' 9 and 10 are my target group at the moment.

Writing and literacy is a major focus for our school and this inquiry I have planned addresses that focus in Art as well as working at making digital learning opportunities ubiquitous and moving critique and self-assessment into the modification and redefinition phase of SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition)

Rough Breakdown Of the Visual Arts Curriculum:

PK - Practical knowledge - at ALL curriculum levels this is technique/technical based learning in Art
DI - Developing ideas - likewise all levels, it is about formulating ideas to make your own art works happen and showing thought in doing so.
UC - Understanding Context - that art works are viewed and/or made
CI - Communicating and interpreting about your own and other's art works

The top two do in fact require a very good level of literacy at all levels to generally excel at them, however, you can to a certain extent do really well without this, as thinking can be so very visual too. But I feel it hinders not having that literacy.

The bottom two strands are most easily assessable (but I wonder if that means not necessarily understandable) with good literacy.

The order I have listed these strands is how they were initially released when the Visual Arts curriculum was released in the year 2000. However, when it was revised in 2008, the order was changed to have UC, PK, DI and CI as the order. While that may seem like not terribly important, it was a way of trying to get teachers to focus on making sure students understood the context of what they were studying. Hence making the emphasis a little more important that the students have higher levels of literacy, in order to truly manage the higher levels of the curriculum (NCEA).

Each year, there are students in our classes who are highly skilled visually, but are sitting much lower than you would want, with literacy. It is at every level. There are students who despite this, have been known at achieve University Entrance level in their chosen field of Art and I could rattle off a few dozen names from memory (not doing that on the public web though!). Equally there are just as many who don't make that level and it often appears, or can be explained by literacy levels.

There has been a clearer distinction for me lately - students who have participated in critique, even with low literacy levels, manage to eventually get to the level required, even though their language skills were less evident. Though this is often at the expense of the teacher's time and other teaching opportunities. More frequently, we have good examples of student learning and end achievement in the senior levels from students who not only participated in the group critiques, but also blogged about their work, in their own language, were more likely to succeed. I am not giving numbers here. My numbers are too low to use as statistics with any real integrity. I had 1 photography student at level 3 in 2015. So that is 100% pass rate. Really, that is not a good way to report statistics. My 3 painters gave me stats of 66% merit endorsement, 33% achieved grades and in total, obviously 100% pass rate. So clearly, I am amazing. Or the numbers are just too low to read as statistics. Those stats also don't show the students I lose leading up to level 3, and those the school itself loses before I could even possibly get them into a level 3 class. Again, lies and statistics.

That throws up the other issue that I am using this to also track and hopefully positively impact retention into NCEA courses here at Hornby High School as well as provide a real resource that other teachers can key into, students can access ubiquitously and use at their own pace to measure, target and improve their own learning. They will also be able to take their own work and share it as a valid, real, teaching and learning resource.

Assemblage - Manaakitanga; Collaborative Consideration, Collective Control.

These photos are the result of students working on the same drawing at different times and adding their own ideas to them. We had five proposals as a base. Each of the three classes worked on these equally. Time limits in class were set and students had to really think about how they perceived shelter from a spiritual, emotional, as well as physical sense.

 

Students voted for their favourite drawing and had to justify why they made that choice and consider how they would eventually make the structure. The first and largest image above is their choice - number 4. It wasn't mine and I struggled with not putting  a case forward for one I liked personally! That would have undermined the intention of it being their collaboration. It was their decision and they felt that 4 reflected their understanding and intention in discussing shelter. The difficult aspect of this is that this is not a three-dimensional drawing. It is a flat design, with texture, space and form that needs to be made three-dimensionally. In studying Anthony Caro, there is a realisation that he is not just a sculptor, but he is also a proficient abstract painter. And in fact, he is often really just painting with metal and space. Unlike Aycock, the student's other Artist model to consider in assemblage practice, he does not however, plan anything, or draw anything of his sculpted pieces. He only makes from the materials he has and the idea he has, often based on lengthy discussion and debate with his Artist wife. I have not got her name on hand. 

From there students have been working on creating it our assemblage. The first part of this, was how do we make a floor happen?  Anisha suggested her dad may be able to give us some old wooden palettes. Framing up a floor with 2 x 4, would have been a long, technical process and would have used a lot more material than we had budgeted for. So we asked Anisha if he would let us have some and the next day he delivered us 6 palettes, that our photography class nailed together as a floor. I was a little stunned when he drove up with these. Brilliant community here at Hornby. He also provided some nails from an old nail gun, but when you use those without a nail gun, someone has to sit there and break the wire that bonds them all together like machine-gun bullets... sore, sore fingers.

 

 

 
 

  Nikita and Bevan to the left, and additionally Shavaughnm Mich and Brianna below in the shortest video ever below (I  need a new phone...)

  The painters who werent too shy to be photographed; Niomi (Photographer), Estelle, Ana and    Quaid.

So who did what; The painting class took on the making of the uprights for the frame. The designers and then the painters took it on from there. Due to time constrictions across term one, we have struggled to finish what we have started, but the plans seem to be progressing as to how we manage the roof. Three v-shapes that likely have a proper building name, have been made by students with left over bits from a children's swing, one made solely by Danica, which was pretty impressive. There has not been one of our current students, who has not involved themselves in some way. We do not have real building knowledge here, we are in fact making what we have work, to be what we need visually. Mr Rees and Mr Rozka have been really helpful when we come over to them asking for all sorts of their gear and advice on how to do things that we had not even considered.

Our plan from here is to glue and drill screws in for the roof, as this seems sturdier and that is what we need as we go upwards. We have worked hard to make plaited flax ropes for bindings around corners and tying things on or down as we need to, but we need a lot more. Matua Mike Murray was brilliant in showing our design class how to carefully and respectfully cut the flax for this, with a Karakia and only the grandparent leaves. The cross feature and the wire features are still needed. Sheets for walls seems to be popular as we can use a staple gun to get them up and they will provide good imagery to draw, paint and photograph for folios, which is half the purpose of this structure; that it becomes their visual grounding, starting point and muse for the rest of the year. So, we have to re-set deadlines as we lost more class time than we initially anticipated and certain tasks too longer than we wanted as well.

 

  Miss Botherway, Mrs Cairns, Logan                                                               and Jacob

Additonally, Teresa, Shavaughn and Anisha pictured here with the boys (Design class).

There are numbers of incidents of working together and being collaborative, and it is often on the spur of the moment that it happens. That sense of helping each other out has been increasing and is happening in a natural way often. However, there are times when the teacher still has to get things started before it happens. I wonder if this is a confidence thing? But still not happening is the students owning it and working on it during their own time. There have been some small incidents of it happening with the small photography class, but it was short lived, with interruptions in learning slowing this down. So there is not really the sense of collective control that we wanted. Time and personalities across three classes have disrupted this. Students are working on how they make this structure meaningful in their folio work for the remainder of the year and already there are the calls to not start certain aspects of their personal practical work until 'we finish it'.

In starting this assemblage standard, to cover Manaakitanga as one of our cultural conventions, I find that other aspects of what has now been defined as our 6 successful teacher criteria (but for me was initially relative to how the Treaty of Waitangi is, or is not validated in teaching inquiry) are necessary in making this a success. Kotahitanga is most specifically what I am considering now. I have already begun using it as a learning outcome for term two of the year 10 programme, now I see that it is a natural progression for this programme also - creating unity, while celebrating individuality - this is my understanding of Kotahitanga based on discussions with our HOD Te Reo Māori, Matua Corey Kamariera. I need to think this out much further, as to how to apply it here meaningfully. I need to think about a lot of things further, as the two main concepts in studying Caro and Aycock need to be something students draw from during the course of their work this year too. I'm making a list.

In terms of completion of this assemblage, we have revised our expectations and are working towards completion, but with student collective control, not teacher-run timetabling and deadlining. Cindy and I are very proud of what our classes have achieved so far, but well aware of the work required still...

Developing Resilience continued...

Last year, I started thinking about how resilience could be addressed in a more explicit manner in my classes. As one of our school values, it is obviously something we as staff here feel is needed to be boosted. I heard something on the radio on the way to school the other morning about how 'Human Resources' teams in big companies assess potential employees' "RQ" or resilience quotient. I don't know if that is true! Half way through writing I just did an internet search and there is definitions and a website on which you can test your Resilience Quotient. There are PDF forms and online forms you can use to be tested.

I have become a little more sensitised to this, having an intern (student teacher) from NZGSE with me this term. She has noted, strikingly in her opinion, how quickly a high proportion of students give up, rate themselves as rubbish, and are not resilient. This is something that though I'm aware of, I think it has become something I take for granted - my awareness of it, that is. I know it, I don't fully accept and I do actively work on it, like it is just something to work on, as that is what it is for me. And it is for everyone who teaches here. It is why we have resilience as an explicit value. It worries me that I could become so used to it, that I don't take the time to care about raising it up in my classroom.

So last year, in SK we did the mono-prints, and I wouldn't let them throw them out, even if they hated them. For the last 3 years, my first project with year 10 students has been all about not hiding your mistakes, but making something more of them - "beauty in your mistakes" was one year, and this year it has been our learning outcome of  'making your mistakes your intentions'. Going with the flow, and adapting an attitude of  'oh dear, the ink went there, how do I make that work for me?'

1.2 - Level one: At Year 11 we have been making sure they don't have enough time to even acknowledge them in the learning process; Nicole (intern) and I were both first year fine arts doing similar programmes. Life drawing was a pretty normal part of this. You do 3 hours of drawing in one session, once a week. For me, it was a compulsory aspect that you had to pass to graduate onto level two. So, your first half hour is warm up drawings 30 second poses, followed by 2 minute poses, then something like 10 minutes, leading up to 30 mins or an hour or more, depending on how your teacher felt at the time. Always you would start with 30 seconds. So did we. We took the chairs away (locked them out the back), encouraged gestural drawing and set a timer:

 

These are a few of the more finished ones so far. We gave them more time on this, but at a certain level, they are losing some of the fluency they were achieving.

 

 

Students created a good 10 - 20 pages of drawing each, and because they were drawing so fast and changing papers without reflecting on them, looking for flaws, they had no choice but to develop a sense of fluency that they would have been too scared to do, if we had let them just meander their way through the three lessons that they did this for. It does mean a lot of unfinished drawings, but we are hoping that there is still enough honest evidence of fluency (excellence) or control (merit) in most, as there is definitely enough base recording information (achieved). I'm really proud of these drawings and of how seriously this lovely class have been taking themselves. We even had one of our students, who messed up with her  personal management (taking time off class, knowing she should not have) asking if she could work through the 30 second drawings by herself to catch up. While it's harder to be successful without the classroom momentum, it showed she was doing something resilient. Progress!

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.