Finished Desired Realities

Found it quite hard to go back to my realities a week later - learning for me, I should have carried on whilst my thoughts were fresh! Despite this my image is finished as are my 3 Great Steps.

Step 1;
Go on a "Personal Writing Inquiry" I need to learn how to help my learners;

• Asking for internal support from experts
• Make the progressions portable
• Read, read and read!
• Follow my chosen 3 on their writing journey and use the learnings to help all

Step 2;

Be "an Architect of Opportunities";

• Differentiate the learning
• Use the environment
• Be adaptable to needs
• Observe and ask
• Let it go (accept and become more comfortable with adaptations)

Step 3:

Relationships - build, maintain and grow through;

• Respecting all (children, mentors, students)
• Listening and asking
• Getting and giving feedback
• Observing
• Read, read and read!

Current and desired realities

The whole staff PL meeting was all about using our goals from last year and developing our current and desired realities using the Patti Dobrowolski visual goal setting.
As with last year I found it hard to start but Patti's point that by starting to visualise things, you can see more clearly, worked for me. I started writing a list of where I am with regards to my goals and then from that came my metaphor and image.
It's still a work in progress but it links with my FA2 goal about behaviour management, and my growing understanding of whole brain thinking.

FA2

Following PL from Kevin Knight in January, a real focus for me is to make sure I have children at FA2 (or FA1, but they are only 5!) before giving instructions.

According to Kevin this means that the children are very attentive - quiet and still, some fidgeting, no talking, only 1 or 2 continue to work, children are attending. With 5 year olds I will aim to have none working as they are not developmentally able to be doing and properly listening - that will come!

One of my relationship goals for the year is around behaviour management and if I can nail FA2 then I think other elements of my practice will become easier.

So, how will I do this? Here is my game plan;

• Tell my mentor group what my goal is
• Practice with them

• get them to be noisy (FA6 or FA7!)
• call them to attention – using the 5 pattern clap we agreed on as a group of mentors
• practice the different techniques Kevin talked about;
• Sweep
• Praise
• Quiet voice
• Stance (body language), plus non verbal cues – wait with hands on head / shoulders etc so it is easy to see who is listening and focused
• Wait
• Tactical ignore (making it clear to all that I was ignoring the behaviour)
• State the obvious – in a neutral manner (so be careful about body language)
• Neutral prompt “NJ what should you be doing?”

Then I will need to be consistent in my actions and as Muireann said I just need to give it time so I will have to be careful that I don’t get impatient and lapse back into talking over them.

I’m going to monitor how I’m doing over the next couple of weeks and I have asked Muireann (and I will ask the other team members) to give me feedback based on this one (rather large) goal.

4 minutes of me

A task we were set, to introduce ourselves to the whole team, was to talk for no more than 4 minutes about;

where you are from?

where you have taught/lead? 

What, in the last 5 years, has influenced your beliefs about teaching and learning and the impact this has had on your practice?

I decided to start mine with a mini mihi. Couple of reasons why I did this. Firstly, something I think is important in learning is to feel safe enough to enable you to take risks, and secondly, Te Reo Maori is something that interests me and is an area of learning I want to develop further for myself and my learners.

I was very nervous, spoke way too quickly but I think it showed my beliefs  as I took a risk - many in the room were much better at speaking Maori than I am, but they appreciated my effort.

Influences on my teaching were primarily in the room as I have learnt so much more from being on the job and surrounded by amazingly inspirational mentors, rather than through the GradDip.

So much I didn't say, but I was proud of my mihi and as nerve wracking as it was I'm very glad I did it!

Oh so Blue!

Analysis of the Herrmann Whole Brain Model shows me as very blue – logical and analytical, and whilst this isn’t a surprise, I didn’t think my blue side would dominate quite as much as it does. 

Before our results were given to us we had to pick words that described us and at the end of the game we had to have 3 words that best described us and one that didn't. These were mine:

Ben asked if Rob would agree with these words, and he did! I was also asked what would I be like without the red "Enthusiastic" and my response was "boring" so I can see that all four quadrants build us up to be who we are.

I have to keep reminding myself that this is simply a preference and doesn’t mean that I’m not any of the other quadrants. I do have several concerns - that I will;

• pigeon-holed as “the blue, logical one”
• Meaning my other sides aren’t valued or heard
• discount my own red/yellow think as “not as good” as others in the team have higher scores in those quadrants
• favour those children most similar to me
• not value myself as a teacher and learner as teachers are traditionally much more red than I am

What this analysis has done is underlined for me why I have to spend more time and energy building relationships, that I have to give more credit to my emotions rather than bottle them, and air my ideas as I do have some good ones!

It is up to me to make sure my concerns don’t hold any weight and these concerns are all are linked in some way to relationships, which is one of my goals – either relationships with children, their parents or the mentoring team. So it is on my radar as an area in which I want to develop this year – perhaps if I do the test again in the future my blue side won’t be quite as dominant!

As a team we are very well balanced which is fantastic as it means that when designing for learning we will ensure that all children are also catered for.

A new year, a new beginning!

My first ever day 1 of term 1. Amazing – so good to have children. PD was fantastic and putting some of what we talked about into practice is great. Loving having to have to think not just do, loving the adaptability I’ve found from somewhere – didn’t stick rigidily to a plan when it didn’t suit the kids. Such a difference in groups of children some who have done 2 terms and others none. All in all a great day!

Week 1

An exhausting week! Fantastic to re-affirm the relationships established from last year and to start building deeper ones with other children I didn’t mentor very much last year. Some real characters in my mentor group and I hope by spending the time now establishing routines and setting expectations that they will soon understand how things will work!

Itching to get started with “real learning” which is silly as building relationships and routines is learning for them and the “real learning” can’t actually happen until these things are set up. Plan for week 2 is to start easing them into the WoRM subjects which is quite exciting. Have to keep reminding myself that most children have only been at school for 2 terms and so don’t have the skills (yet) of some of those who have gone to Coronet.

Must also focus on learning parents’ names and contacting them for the good their children do.

Love the learning centres but do feel that we need to structure them more although a couple of readings on the benefits of play based learning keep popping up in my head and I probably discount much of the learning as it doesn’t seem structured, they can’t be learning…hmm, must get over this!!

What is equitable may not be equal

As a parent of 2 children I battle with equality all the time. Making sure I spend equal amounts of time, energy (and money) with, and on, both children. Coming in to teaching I felt that children deserve equal amounts of my time and energy and so I would be torn when that small group of children were given all my attention, whilst the larger group got minimal.
I am beginning to realise that actually, the amount of time and energy I spend on a child should be based on their needs rather than some sort of tally, clocking in system that I have in my head.
This is hard for me, and whilst I do it, what I need to do is get rid of the guilt over the lack of attention some children may get from me. At the end of the day, over the course of a year, the tally chart in my head will probably look very similar for most children, with the odd outlier on either side - a bit of a bell curve. If I'm supporting the needs of those who demand more of me, and I design the learning to suit them, then in theory all children should benefit and be better of for it.
Here's hoping for a guilt free year!