Kia ora koutou
What a start to the year! It has been hectic but wonderful.
Every so often we stop and say, “Remember this time last year….” When we look
back, we were like startled deer staring into headlights. Starting a school from scratch with a completely
new group of students, new families, new teaching team, and new facilities was
huge. I remember spending most of the first six weeks of last year with
contractors dealing with building issues.
It certainly feels good to be in our second year and I am
sure this is true for you too. I know that most of us experienced anxiety at
different times last year due to the newness of it all. But guess what….together
we have built a community! And I am really grateful and proud of that community.
I have heard the teachers say many times over the last few weeks….”Our parents
are amazing!”, “Our kids are amazing!” “Our
Board of Trustees is amazing!” And I have certainly heard parents say, “Our
teachers are amazing!” Thanks to so many parents who have made us feel truly
appreciated. My hope for 2013 is that we can continue to grow our mutual
commitment to each other and model the kind of community that genuinely
benefits the education of our children and, through that, the future of our
nation; but also that looks outward to benefiting the education of children in
other parts of the world. We have a bit of a plan about this which I will share
at a later date.
Annual Charter: On
March 1 our Annual Charter went off to the Ministry. It is this piece of work that
had me cloistered in the meeting room surrounded by reams of paper for the last
few weeks. Contained in that document is our blueprint for continuing to grow
and develop our school over 2013 and beyond. This work, overseen by the Board
of Trustees, is about more than just compliance with legislative requirements,
but reflects our genuine desire to continue to grow and develop our school and
our educational approach. Our mission – “to lead the future of learning” - reflects
our desire to be on the cutting edge of education (but certainly not the “bleeding
edge”). However, this is not simply for the sake of being different, but rather
it is because there is worldwide recognition that education needs to deliver
something different if our children are to be prepared for their role as
guardians (kaitiaki) of the world in the future. In this role they will have
some very complex problems to solve (that our generation will have failed to
solve), and thinking very carefully about the education we deliver is our
essential investment into the future of our world. We feel very privileged to
be in a position to explore this and to influence the future of education. From
our Annual Report that makes up a part of the Annual Charter….
“As
a result of this inquiry approach we came to a greater understanding that 21st
century learning is a careful blend of the traditional and innovative
approaches to education. It is not about throwing out the old and taking on
board the new. It is not about a particular way of doing things, but it is
about having a broad toolkit of approaches and of being able to make informed,
wise decisions about which tool is appropriate in each situation. The
thing that is different about 21st century learning is not that the
tools are significantly different, but that the physical, organizational and
pedagogical environment is flexible enough to allow the full range of tools to
be used as needed.“
That last sentence is one of our most important learning from last
year. For years, education has been
bound up in binary thinking – schools have either had this approach or that
approach. Last year many people certainly tried to put us into boxes by telling
us that we do education this way or that way. However, 21st century
learning, and the approach we aspire to, is about “both/and” thinking. It is
about combining narratives that for too long have been separate, and through
that “combining”, to open up and expose new pathways that have previously
remained largely unexplored. This is the very exciting work we are all involved
in! And we are very much looking forward to continuing it over 2013. As we do this
work over 2013 - with and for your children- our commitment to you remains the
same….we will continually think about your child’s learning, we will frequently
collect, collate and analyse student achievement data and we will continually
be responsive to it. Our commitment is to the deep personalisation of your
child’s learning and this requires that we constantly review and reflect on the
impact of what we are doing as teachers. I think we illustrated our commitment
to doing this last year, and we will continue to be responsive this year…only
better.
I have been a bit silent on the blog, so you will hear from me a bit over the next week or so as I try to update you with important initiatives etc.
Lesley, last year there were very few updates to my child's matrices (despite your claim on this blog of weekly updates by teachers). At the time of my parent-teacher conference in term four, two out of three matrices had not been updated since the second term. I can only guess how the "deep personalisation" of her education was managed between her team of teachers in the absence of regular written tracking. I think that the idea is great, but I am hoping to see a commitment to improved execution this year.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to see greater transparency in Amesbury's communications. I understand that the kids missed out on seeing the original Treaty on last week's National Library trip because the Treaty is not currently kept there. The trip was blogged, so why wasn't this mix-up at least mentioned?
Renee, thank you for your comment in response to my BLOG Post. We always welcome (though we do not always enjoy!) feedback which helps us to improve what we do. I have discussed your comment with the teachers in Harakeke Hub and I have looked at the matrices you refer to as well as the revision history and we absolutely do agree that with regard to the updating of the reading and writing matrices we could have done better – and we certainly wish that we had. The maths matrix was updated quite a number of times during the year while reading and writing were updated three times – term 1, term 2 and term 4.
ReplyDeleteHowever, having acknowledged that, I do feel that I need to offer some alternative perspectives to a couple of comments you make. Firstly, I am not aware of having said that the matrices should be updated weekly. Not only would this be impossible in terms of time, but absolutely not necessary. The achievement indicators are, in general, quite big chunks of learning, particularly as students move up the school. Each one is likely to take longer than months or even terms to achieve, especially when the benchmark for success is providing evidence of doing it “independently, consistently, most of the time, across a range of curriculum areas and contexts”. This means that we have to gather quite a range of evidence before we can highlight an indicator. Knowledge in maths is probably more modular and, therefore, is likely to require more frequent highlighting. My expectation at the moment is that, as a minimum, the matrices will be highlighted termly, but that over time, we will update more regularly.
However, what I did notice in the matrices you refer to is the clear identification of gaps in learning and the fact that over the course of the year these were “plugged.” The learning programmes were specifically tailored to ensure that these areas of “gap” were covered and achieved even though they were not at the level the student was generally working at. This is an indicator of personalisation of learning and of effective use of the tool – which you acknowledge has the potential to be very effective.
What I did say in the BLOG Post is that deep personalisation of learning “requires that we constantly review and reflect on the impact of what we are doing as teachers.” Firstly, that statement is aspirational. We aspire to deep personalisation of learning and are working towards it. But it is also essential to understand that personalising learning is hugely complex and the matrices are only one tool of many that we use in that process. Of huge importance in personalising learning are the continual learning conversations that teachers have every day as they reflect on the needs of their students and on the impact of their learning programmes. For example, every Thursday when teachers get together to plan for the next week, all their planning is focused on the learning needs of each student. One of the advantages of team teaching is that each student does not just have one teacher contributing to the discussion about his/her learning but a whole team of teachers. This responsiveness is the most important aspect of personalisation of learning. And I can state quite categorically that these conversations do happen for all students because I hear them around me all the time.
As regards the Treaty of Waitangi visit, I was also hugely disappointed to discover that students had not been able to see the original treaty documents. This was the result of a misunderstanding about where the documents are currently being housed. However, we did not deliberately NOT communicate this error to parents or fail to own up to it. Rather, in the busyness of the week (with camps etc), we simply failed to recognise the need to do so. For this I apologise.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, I was really disappointed that the children did not view these important documents and so I had already planned to ensure that at least year 6 students get to see the original Treaty documents this year. We will make sure the other students have an opportunity to view them at an appropriate time in the future. I certainly do not want any students to leave our school without having viewed these documents that are such a significant part of our history but also central to New Zealand today.
I would welcome further face-to-face discussion of the issues you raise.
Thanks for your reply, Lesley. Last year on the blog (5/11/2012) you stated, "The best way we can help our children is to know what they can do, what they need to be able to do and to identify an appropriate learning pathway. Our matrices do that!" It is reassuring to know that the learning needs of individual students are being discussed regularly between the teachers. However, human minds aren't perfect and I do believe that the tracking and direction that the matrices provide will be very necessary if "deep personalisation" of education is to be more than an aspiration.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that the matrices can be of little use as a teaching tool unless they are frequently updated. You state above that "we will frequently collect, collate and analyse student achievement data and we will continually be responsive to it". However you "expect" (require?) only four updates per matrix per year. In your blog post of 5/11/2012 previously referred to, you stated, "Often they are updated on a rotation basis with maths one week, writing the next and reading after that" - i.e. updates "often" being made weekly in turn. This obviously was not what I experienced at any stage last year. I think it would be fantastic to see it happening all the time. Even if no update could be made in a particular week because insufficient progress had been made (and I fully agree that this is likely to sometimes happen), a note could be made, and the matrix will still have drawn the teacher's attention to the student's current learning needs.
I want to be clear that on the whole, I support what you are doing, in principle. As I stated above, I am hoping to see a commitment to improvement in execution of the matrices. I note that in your reply you have given me an "expectation" of more regular updates over time, rather than a commitment. I presume that means it will not happen this year?