Developing Scholarship as our new normal.

I keep threatening this idea that all of our senior students will complete scholarship pages as normal practice. The reality of making sense of this exam in Visual Arts is in fact, exhausting. At least I found it so.

For the second time in the time I have been at Hornby High School, we had a student submit a scholarship work book for painting. The work was beautiful, but the pages were regenerated based on work she had done to fit the exam. So she entered it blind.

The focus was on her completing the folio with an excellence (you cannot be considered for scholarship unless you first attain excellence in the field you are submitting for). And she did that. But missed out on the scholarship. The most beautiful Excellence board I have seen though maybe I am biased, as she was also one of the most beautiful people to know as well. 

Why are we doing this?

Three good reasons why;

1) If it is normal, it is achievable. High expectations allow for higher achievement, you get what you expect and that is in line with Carol C. Dweck's mindset theories too

2) Again being fed up with the idea that we can't because of the stigma of being in the wrong area of a not that big city anyway... my blood boils over that one. 

3) The tools we have with GaFE and digital learning, the support of Manaiakalani in developing resources, lends us to be able to support learners to achieve this exam with more surety. So why on earth wouldn't we? If we were encouraged to have low expectations of our learners and ourselves, I suppose we may not... that is to to be our pathway though. 

So the development of such a plan for our learners here begins. 

Steps in the process:

- Reaching out to other schools who already offer a scholarship programme without offering a scholarship class (I feel that defeats the whole purpose of what a scholarship is, though I do understand that many schools see this as a highly competitive thing that adds a special kudos to their wider community)

- Breaking down Scholarship into meaningful chunks of understanding and clearly relating them to how our students learn throughout the year, so they can be completed in real time alongside real work.

- Making sure all resources and supports are ubiquitous and accessible online

- Using SAMR appropriately to support online development. 

Now onto do the work. 

I'm starting with moving our site into the new google sites platform, within that, it may well just be easier to develop scholarship resources, as we are starting afresh somewhat. As e-learning is a role I already have, making the switch to the new platform is in my best interests.

Hornby High School Kapahaka

"It's just an excuse to get out of class..."

Not a student, but a former teacher. The prospect of students coming out of a timetabled class for Kapahaka practice.

"I don't think it is fair that they miss one of our classes and we lose that time, they are usually the most behind"

It is not the most accurate quote, but it is a sentiment expressed often when, as a dean a few years ago, I was the space between the rock and the hard place in soothing fears and hurts over the school attempting to get some traction in setting up Kapahaka as a culture here. Unsuccessfully, I might add. In both respects.

The key word here being 'they'.  Us and them, you and me, management vs school vs students vs Māori students. When fear is a factor, the 'other' becomes a significant stumbling block, ignorance outweighs compassion and common sense. All we end up seeing and being, is a part of a divisive and negative culture.

So I joined the Kapahaka practice. It is the most surreal thing to watch students who in the grounds, and in some classes, are at times sorta, kinda wicked hard work, not always particularly open to you as a teacher, be the star of the show. Take control Ms Tongotongo and direct your senior girls to stand with, and help teach the new girls (and women teachers), dictate the volume output with your command and your own voice, amp it up, control the 'pause', teach 15 new students the first section of the school haka in 7 minutes, thank you very much.

Back inside the auditorium we all go, back with the boys, standing together. A male and a female lead again control the volume, determine the pace, and within 15 minutes we all know those first few lines well and the roof is being raised off, like a lid of a soda bottle shaken up by the pressure of our voices. We went from 40% to 110% input in stages, as directed and maintained by our student leaders.

There are benefits to all staff being in this room at this moment. We see confidence where we didn't know it existed, a sense of togetherness demonstrated by the students, the collective consciousness as a real thing. Manaakitanga, Kawanatanga even, there as real tangible elements. Taking this and translating it into the classroom means more than just being there at the practice as a teacher. I want to explore this more, I'm hoping that some of what we do is already doing this. At the end of the year, I want to compare how my new senior class structure compares to this style of education and whether results have in fact been affected, or even whether I care about those results or something more.

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.