Ditch Summit - Keeping it Real with Student Relationships

 Ditch Summit - Day 1 with Matt Miller & CJ Reynolds

Building relationships with Students and Whanau means students' engagement in class will skyrocket and managing the students will appear to be a breeze.

Rocket Joypixels Stickerfrom Rocket Stickers

John Maxwell says - No one cares what you know until they know you care.

I have made the mistake of believing 'I care, I tell them everyday!' but was I really showing it.

I know I have done this well in previous settings but with Covid and after had I really done it?

Tips on How:

1. Ask the children - (not from the front of the class), get in get personal, and sit with them

What is cool that old people don't care about?

2. Get to know them as people before you focus on the rules and routines!

Show the students 10 slides of the 10 most important moments in your life.

Make it personal, make yourself vulnerable!

Get the kids to make a set of slides of 10 important moments in their life.

3. Show Students you are listening and that you are interested. 

Go to events, be relevant

4. Turn Up - Go outside and play with students during breaks (don't hide in the class). 

Sit and eat with them.

5. Ask Parents - What do I need to know about your child that I won't find written anywhere?

This could be an email or a phone conversation when you introduce yourself.

E.g. What was their favourite part of class/school (When Why?)

Least favourite activity?

6. Then keep looking for clues.

Relationship leads to Classroom Management

This starts outside the class, as I mentioned earlier get alongside them play, and find out what they like. Once in class don't dive into rules and routines tell them about you. 

My name is and I love my job.

 I want to have the greatest day, week and year with a lot of fun in between.

Greet each student every morning, with a fist pump, or elbow knock.  This tells the students they are seen by you. You might be the first one to acknowledge them for the day. 

Build Rhythm in class (routines but they can fluctuate). Students need consistency to feel safe!

Navigate Conflict Moments

Issues are not the end of the world for them or for us. help them to find their way through. They don't have the life experience to understand that the sun will come up tomorrow. Smile it will pass, and have a safe place for students to go. 

Keep Calm and talk to them. This is what I am seeing, Did I do something to cause this behaviour? Own it as a Teacher if you make a mistake.

If NO, How can we remedy this? Because I'm here for you to succeed. How you think, feel and your education is important.

= Encouraging students to advocate for themselves positively. 

Game Plan - if you have a situation who can you reach out to?

- Who do the students connect with, meet with them to discuss, and prepare for situations. Then go back and discuss more so you can understand what or where you went wrong.

Toolkit - Google Draw Buttons and Headings

 With my focus on Google Sites this term I also noticed that some teachers were unsure how to create interesting Buttons and Headers. Included in the slides are templates and examples for both. 

I also found templates for Google Draw which included a range of graphic organisers I included the link for check out the image to see a few.

GROW Questions to Use during Mentoring

Kia Ora Koutou,

 a few years ago we had Evaluation Associates talking to our school about Mentoring and growing as Mentors. This model was initially developed in the 1980s and is still very effective today.

I found this interesting as a facilitator, when I came across the acronym GROW again. Pulling out this card I thought these are great questions I could use with my mentoring of teachers who want to develop their digital skills and the classroom modelling of digital devices. It made writing the facilitation notes easy, as it was always on hand.

Goals - What do you want? Why is this important? What are you aiming to achieve? What would the ideal look like? What would happen if you did not focus on this? Why is it important? 

Reality - What have I got? What is happening now? How do you know? What evidence are you referring to? What have you tried? What else is worth exploring? How was it last term/year?

Options - What could I do?  What alternatives are there? Which options interest you? What's worth giving a go? Have you thought of...? Is the goal still relevant?

Will commit/Way forward - What are the next steps? What might get in the way? What support /planning is required? Who can help? When will you start? What are the barriers? Enablers? Time frame?

So these are questions you can ask but what might a Coaching Session look like? 

‘Goal’ questions

This first part of the session is about either helping the mentee to set a goal to work towards or reviewing progress towards an already agreed-upon goal. This goal can be a short-term or long-term goal that will be revisited over the course of many sessions, and each mentoring session helps the mentee to decide on actions to take in order to reach their long-term goal. The focus for each mentoring session is also set during the start of that session.

‘Reality’ questions

This part of the session involves discussing and examining the factors relating to achievement or non-achievement of goals. The mentor should use active listening skills to understand the mentee’s perspective by focusing on what the mentee is saying and paraphrasing them to check for understanding. During this part of the session, mentors should focus on offering a challenge (for example, by checking for alternate explanations) and seeking and using evidence to encourage the mentee to view the goal, problem, and actions from many perspectives.

‘Options’ questions

As a result of the reality discussion, the mentor and mentee identify options that the mentee could take to move towards their goals, including any tools, strategies or pedagogies they can use. These ideas can be mind-mapped to aid in the discussion. This part of the discussion is about exploring and critiquing many possibilities, with the mentor providing challenges and offering expertise where appropriate.

‘Way forward’ questions

Decide on an option the mentee will implement and set a goal. Committing to specific actions will help the mentee move towards their goal. Agree on any support the mentor will provide, such as observations, and agree on a time for the next session.

Steps taken from Questions to use during Mentoring Conversations - The Education Hub

This article also has different questions from those on the original card. My next steps are to update my card as I find the questions more informative and constructive. Reading the article again I can hear my Mentor from 2023 Anne and my current Principal asking them each time I had/have a conversation with them. 

LCS - Making Sites and Media Work

 Earlier in the Term, Principals and Lead Teachers had looked at Class Sites and what makes them easy to navigate, as part of the Data Research discussions. Schools are busy and time to share is hard to come by, so I thought rather than having another meeting we could look at this for the Term 4 Staff Meeting and a few schools were very appreciative of this. We also looked at what is the focus for Cybersmart this term and how AI can affect Media.

I was happy for teachers who are not using Class Sites to participate in a different meeting. This meeting gave many an opportunity to investigate other class sites that they may not have the time to do at other times and everyone took something away.

LCS - Sharing the Knowledge

The Term 3 Staff Meeting has come around rather fast. I am glad I started preparing for the Staff Meeting during the holidays after discussions with the Principals during one of our catch-ups. Additionally, as I've been reviewing class and student blogs, I've noticed that when they share photos, they often end up in a list form. As a teacher and blogger, I know there are better ways to present photos. Whether they use Google Draw to create their own collage for sharing or explore other available resources, there are more visually appealing options.

For one school, I was aware that they had been working in Canva, so we explored that and allowed teachers to create so they could share. We also explored alternatives, such as audio recordings and screencasts, as some other schools wanted to adopt a style more akin to podcast or TikTok ideas.

My takeaway from this Staff Meeting was ensuring that there are various options available, and recognising that different people are willing to try different ideas. With less confident teachers, I needed to take a more step-by-step approach.

I also participated in the Manaiakalani Share Online Meeting. This occurs across the network where teachers can discuss an area they have been specializing in or working on as part of an inquiry. Our focus was on writing; thanks to Jacob for leading.

Create Hui with TPNoM

 Kia Ora,

I was asked to help with the Te Purapura Ngātahi o Manaiakalani (TPNoM). 

The first meeting was online. I helped the beginning group create a Toku whare/ Lo’u fale/ My house/home in Google Slides using a range of shapes. 

I am used to creating using shapes in Google Draw. Making a house in Google Slides was intriguing. It was not something I had thought to do before. One thing had to remind my group was to change the colour you had to have the shape highlighted (blue square around the item).

The second opportunity was at Kedgely Intermediate. Being kanohi ki te kanohi (face-to-face) with people again was exciting. This time I was taking the middle group. It was enlightening as I have tried using Mote before, it worked the first time, but not after that, or so I thought.

I love sharing what I know, the opportunity to learn a new trick and share it even better.

Making the Most of Mentoring

 As Mentors in Education, we always want to know if we are doing a quality job and how to do it better. 

Teachers are constantly reflecting, so as a Teacher of Teachers that doesn't stop. 

Through Manaiakalani we have the challenge to monitor what we do and measure the difference we make. 

As a Mentor / Education Programme Leader, I modelled lessons using think-aloud so the teacher I am modelling for understands what I am doing and why.

An example of this is I asked students to discuss the meaning of share, copied and permanent. They turned to the person next to them about these words. At the end of the student discussion and subsequent sharing time. I explained to the teacher and students what a wonderful extended discussion they had participated in, and then explained how 'Extended Discussion' is different from other discussions.

But what more can I do...

The Education Hub has the above article - 

Talks about GROW

Goals

Reality

Option

Way Forward

This process enables powerful questions to help reflect on the situation
and set goals in order to develop solutions giving ownership back to those involved rather than being told what to do. I was given this card a few years ago when we looked at setting GROW Goals.

It is a great card to carry with me to remind me of questions I can ask to help grow my mentorees.

Through the Manaiakalani Programme the BIG aim to empower teachers to use a range of Google Apps to help empower student and learning that is ubiquitous, connected and visible.

I have picked a couple of teachers I am working with to do my class study they are both eager to learn they have different experiences and work with different age groups.

Toolkit - Digging into Mood

Term Two - Digging into Mood

This term the toolkit I am running follows up on PD I did last year with Dr Aaron Wilson and Selena Meiklejohn-Whiu for Year 7 and 8 Teachers. We looked into how authors create Mood and Atmosphere and then applied this knowledge to writing. 

At this stage, I have 16 people excited about being Moody. I look forward to seeing them all.

LCS - Create can Happen Anywhere

 Learn, Create, Share Staff Meetings were organised into 2 groups (depending on when schools could attend).  By having only two meetings I believed it would provide opportunities for schools to work with others in the cluster building relationships. 

This was the first Staff Meeting I was running with Ako Hiko and I thought it was important to reiterate the meaning of Create and where it fits in the Pedagogy of Learn, Create, Share. When I was first starting on this journey it took me a few times to understand the three parts and schools have a staff turnover.

One highlight I thought was where teachers were able to create and then explore. The create task was so tables had treats easily accessible in front of them.

then we looked at where they can find 'Create' resources through the Manaiakalani Online Toolkits Archive and Google Arts. I learnt about Google Arts at the end of 2022 through Summer Learning Journey and thought it was a great resource that needed to be shared.

Research Reflections - Where to from here?

 

Kia Ora Koutou,

Graphs like these want us to be teaching to the North East. So our data is in the top right quadrant.

So when I found out that was a focus for one of my schools Reading the Book 'Teaching to the North East', I wanted to know more. 

Check out My Posts to see how I implement these ideas as a Mentor and Teacher helping to build the digital capacity in classrooms.

Toolkits - Sharing the Love

 Term One - Google Arts and Culture

After the Summer Learning Journey and completing a few of the tasks together, in December 2022. The Google Arts and Culture tasks really sparked my interest with the activities that developed ideas in music and visual arts.

The toolkit was well received and teachers had the opportunity to play with some of the more creative features.

Check out the slides:

LCS - Learning happens all the time!

 Learning happens all the time how can we take advantage of that for Students?

We have just had the Ako Hiko Learn Create Share Staff Meeting with a focus on LEARN.

Phil took us back to the Kaupapa of Ako Hiko and Manaiakalani:

Connected | Rangitamiro, Empowered | Rangitū and our focus for the day

UBIQUITOUS | RANGIWHĀ & VISIBLE | ARIARI 

We watched this clip.

During the second viewing, we had to identify blocks the team made so the returner could succeed. 

With this in mind that the runner is the student and as teachers we are to stop or limit the barriers that hinder learning.

In order to make learning ubiquitous it needs to be rewindable, not just available online, but workable. So not just a list of questions where the book is at school. Maybe include a video on the same topic, and a copy of the book with audio so a student can listen if they prefer.

We had the opportunity to look at Class onAir and how teachers their make lessons rewindable for other teachers and students through their class site. A wonderful opportunity as you can search lessons for age or topic.

And I thought this was something to think on!

Orientation 2023

The January Orientation was completed through a tag team effort this year. Phil led, preparing the slides, while I added tidbits, ideas, and thoughts as they arose. It was a great experience, serving as preparation before taking the lead starting in April, where I conducted the orientation again due to staff changes.

 

My biggest takeaway from participating in the orientation was to ensure a thorough understanding of the speaker notes. Additionally, it is crucial to ensure that the slides are relevant, showcasing the latest events and learning opportunities within the Ako Hiko Clusters.

The second part of the day focused on in-class facilitation. I found this set of slides important, as the teachers with whom Phil and I will be working need to understand the different roles.

The afternoon session focused on creating a class site, and I'm glad there were two of us available to assist the teachers and address their questions. One key takeaway is to remember to duplicate a site you've created to start the following year if you're satisfied with your previous work. This link can then be shared with students, enabling them to access their learning materials quickly. If you make changes each term, it can become confusing for students to locate the information they need.

Building Relationship

More and more teachers are discussing the importance of developing relationships with students and involving whanau (extended family) to ensure everyone is on the same page. This approach is well established in some countries where teachers have the same class for multiple years.

Ten years ago, I had the opportunity, more out of necessity than design, to teach a range of year levels. I started by teaching Year 1 and 2 students in a school. The year following, they needed a teacher for a Year 2/3 class, so I moved up a level and continued teaching the same students. The year after that, I taught a Year 4 class, and eventually, I became the Senior Teacher for Years 5 and 6. As a result, I had the privilege of teaching half of the students for multiple years.

Each year, I would begin by calling the parents to discuss how their children were settling into school after the break and to address any concerns they might have had. As I had taught some of these students for 3 or 4 years, parents were more comfortable engaging with me and discussing their concerns. However, it took time to establish these connections.

More recently, I moved to a different area and level of teaching. To build relationships with the parents and students I was now responsible for, I started by calling them to introduce myself before engaging in more challenging conversations. Unfortunately, this was the same year that we faced the challenges of COVID-19, and students rarely attended school on a regular schedule. This made it more difficult to establish connections with students and their whanau.

As a school, we read 'When the Adults Change, Everything Changes' check out my posts to see what changes I make as a teacher and mentor.