PLG Log 5

This morning for PLG we were able to look at the teacher habits of mind: Open-mindedness, Critical Reflection, Persistence On-going learning and Caring. We used these as a basis with a critical friend to look at our inquiry, and use of student voice.

So this Log is a combination of my thoughts from this.

Student Voice & My Inquiry:

I am starting a new iteration of my inquiry this week – so with that will come lots of student voice. I want to tap into the style of teaching I used with my year 10s for my novel study, and approach the visual text study in the same way. As such I will need to look again at how they learn best, what they know, and how to enhance their learning. I am making assumptions again – I assume that they will still learn best though the use of discussion, so I will am already brainstorming some ways that I can use discussion. I am hoping to combine this with a strategy that I learnt last week, to use popplet in order to make this happen!

Year 13 Student Voice:

I have just set myself up with all my senior classes to do a big student voice reflection on how the year has gone and what they feel they need to do more work on. This is particularly important as we start to prepare for the exams. I will probably use google forms for this. As it gives me easy to access information. My other obvious option would be to use pen and paper, but I always struggle to collate this information in a meaningful way.

Year 11 Student Voice

My year 11s are far less reflective, and have had fewer opportunities this year to offer me their student voice. This is something I would like to correct. Particularly as they are a lower ability class, their student voice would be helpful to remind me how they learn best. Again with them we are starting to prep for exams, so student voice on how to best do that I am sure will help me!

Teacher Habits of Mind:

I like it when we work with these, as it helps me to focus in on what I think I do well and what I don’t do well. This year I think I have nailed the critical-reflection habit. I use evidence about teaching and learning, but also evaluate it’s quality. I think, particularly with my year 10s I have shown an awareness of what works in one situation does not work in another!

And just like that… it’s time to go and teach!

 

Mrs K

Judgement & Perfection

After I wrote last weeks post, one of my friends and colleagues, Sarah, made the comment below.

I think the biggest hurdle to that open door approach is ensuring the focus is on the team and not judgement or criticism of the individual. Feeling safe when it’s not going well. It doesn’t have to be perfect. The overachiever in me has a hard time with that because I’m really critical of myself.

I have thought about it all week. The idea of judgement in the classroom. Do we do it? Do we do it intentionally? I honestly think that most of the judgement we perceive comes from ourselves.

As Sarah said, I too am really critical of myself. No matter how amazing my lesson is (and they are often not!), I still have a list of things that I could do better, things I would have done differently. I think thought that this is the nature of teaching. Certainly the nature of inquiry and reflection. That we constantly are thinking about how we could do things differently.

However, when I am fortunate enough to be in other people’s classrooms I do not look at their lessons with the same critical lens. I have almost no judgement. Perhaps this is a skill, because I have been fortunate enough to be in a lot of classrooms over the last couple of years. Even when filling in an observation sheet I can use evidence to point out things that worked or things that didn’t. My favorite part though is that I get to talk to the teacher about it, and always leave thinking about the lesson positives.

I feel that this goes beyond just classroom experience as well.  My daughter is 5, and at a smallish country school. They are lucky enough to still have a pool at school. One day during summer she came home and told me “We did not get to swim today because the sad face on the board did not go away”.  I smiled at her, and asked what the class had been doing. She informed me they had been very talkative. I gave her some appropriate response about the need to do what the teacher tells you etc. But in my head all I thought of was “Poor Mrs A! Nothing worse than a class not behaving, so you don’t get to do the activity that they wanted to do”. I did not judge her, in fact I admired her for sticking to her guns.  At no point did I wonder how the class had not been able to behave, etc etc. I simply felt sorry for her.

This week I have been very lucky, a colleague is in one of my classes teaching a couple of poems to them. His style is so different to my own! Like almost we are polar opposites in the classroom. I am a control freak, and extremely organised. He has a very clear idea of what he wants to do, but lets the class lead them to the right spot. Watching the lessons with him has been amazing, I could not replicate what he does if I tried. But it has taught me many things.

I think the biggest hurdle to that open door approach is ensuring the focus is on the team and not judgement or criticism of the individual. Feeling safe when it’s not going well

I feel that in a classroom situation, when things are not going well, is when we most need to welcome others into our classroom. The cycle of despair that we feel when we things are not going well is hard to combat. It enhances the feeling of isolation. Yet I understand that self critic that prevents us from asking for help.

I think the first steps are for you yourself to get out of the classroom, and into others. Watch other peoples lessons, the more you watch the more you will see – sometimes they will work, sometimes they will not, you will see strategies that teachers implement. One day I arrived in class, and moved all the desks with a year 11 class. The first thing the teacher who shares my class said to me was “guess they did no work yesterday huh?”. I saw this not as a judgmental comment, but rather as an acknowledgement that that is what we do. She was able to recognize what had happened because she had been there.

In my mission to change just one thing about teaching – it starts with that teacher who is feeling like things are not going well spending more and more time in other people’s classrooms. In my mind this could lead in turn to them inviting others in.

Judgement and perfection are funny things. But we apply them far more to ourselves than to others!

Mrs K.