Building Schools for Key Competencies

Three events have jolted my brain into action. A tweet from the seemingly ever pondering Cheryl (it's the photo). A visit from friends at Torbay School and a session with the ever popular Julia Atkin on building Key Competencies in your school.

Lets start with the fact that many schools are prefabs, crappy old buildings, toilet blocks jammed in cloak bays (cloak bays? never seen a cloak at school!), and disconnected learning spaces. So yes, some schools are fortunate to have new blocks, purpose built spaces bla bla bla. I dont think this automatically banishes you to a default mindset of "we cant do it". The KC's : managing self, relating to others, thinking, participating and contributing. So how do you physically set up a school that supports the KC's? How do you build a school on the KC's?

There are many ways to get the job done and this is one theory, its nothing new, and it's only a suggestion that works for us, it doesn't mean it will work for everyone.

Its the old chestnut - vertical forms - I look at it from a few perspectives. I believe that kids learn heaps of stuff when the teacher isn't around, those social skills, standing up for yourself, real role models from their peers. I might think this, but Nuthall did the research (see earlier post) teachers cant always control what kids learn. So if the learning, the values, the KCs are practiced and learnt when the teachers aren't there then maybe we should try to set up the school so that when we aren't there kids of differing ages (role models) are present. When teachers are present (we do the KC's too) we can direct and model the KC's, we can focus on them, have them as goals, but when its just kids we have no say as to what happens.

So vertical forms, multi level teams, small schools within a school, call them whatever you want, they work. Imagine the kid who is pissing around at a lunchtime and kids follow this behaviour, having kids of more maturity about when the 5 year olds are eating dirt, fighting over a toy, whatever. Role models are everything. How many 5 year olds are amazing role models? If you physically have classrooms of all levels together around the school you may be starting to encourage the positive role models, it's the KC's implementation on a real level. Having the kids work together when directed by the teacher, organising real interactivity between learners of all ages, going on trips together, sharing learning together will spill over into the playground if it's genuine. If your school is set up to make real collaboration work amongst kids then you are getting there.

Hows this: Mrs Podgorani was at pak n save and a mum came to her and thanked her for the way Little Podgorani (year5 at the time) was a great friend and genuine buddy for her 5 year old who had just started at school. The young 5 year old had gone home and talked about her friend at school, how they were mates, how her friend was helping her with her learning and playing with her in the playground. When two of your schools mums are talking at the supermarket about the success of the vertical forms then you've cracked it.

Recently I met a guy who said "yeah I do buddy reading", my mental model of that was one of a cold cup of sick. I know buddy reading can be great, but it can be rubbish too. So if it's setting up structures that support the learning community for our kids then I'm all over it.

So if you're in a Julia Atkin workshop, stuck at a table of teachers who do buddy reading and palm that off as vertical forms and role modelling, or reading twitter and looking at future schools discussions, or talking with kind hearted visitors about why you do things, then try to make connections. I want to draw a symbol like Prince and call it Extended Abstract.

Perhaps its easier to see rather than explain, but think vertical forms done well, on steroids, and working for kids.

Wonderful teachers might not be so wonderful

How do you know what kids actually learn? Teachers know what they are teaching, but what learning actually takes place? My mate Pezza has really gone deep on these questions and has looked at research that really has made a difference. I have read a few really interesting pieces and he has had great success tracking down the experts. Dr Graham Nutthall certainly was a man ahead of his time, and I keep coming back to what he said in an interview with Kim Hill. I suppose research can be difficult to read, but imagine listening to a radio host (who asks good questions) asking the researcher and getting the good oil. Interesting stuff.

So what can we learn :

Teachers hardly ever know what’s going on with their students.

How little the teacher impacts on the average student even though the teacher thinks he or she is doing a very good job.

In fact, we find out that a substantial amount of what teachers teach, or attempt to teach, is already known by a significant number of kids in the class. Up to 50%.

Hill: So when you talk to children or even adults ... People often say I had a fantastic teacher. Does that mean that teacher is fantastic? Is that the best kind of reference a teacher can get? Is that meaningful?

Nuttall: I think it’s meaningful within our cultural expectations of what good teachers are about; the teacher had a sense of humour, explained things clearly to us, he really cared about me, and a whole lot of things like that which motivates kids and makes them feel good. And those are the kinds of teachers which they will remember. The older generation will remember teachers who were pretty tough on them but made them work hard. But things like working hard and explaining things clearly and so on are all surface features. You could have in fact learned very little from these wonderful teachers.

I have put the whole interview here it may take 30 minutes to read but worth the effort.

Mac Vs PC

So you want some evidence as to the durability of a mac ?

A Principal friend of mine lost everything in a house fire, EVERYTHING, luckily the kids/family got out.

The house just melted in front of them. The brigade got the hoses going but it was way too late.

However two pieces of technology survived. The flames, heat, water and smoke damage stopped everything from ticking, well almost everything.

Uncle Steve would be proud.

The macbook ticks along nicely thank you, oh the other piece of technology that is still going great is her iphone.

Get them all on Board - a pun - ha

So the Podgorani has been on tour. We have been working hard at building a future direction for the school that is owned by all. The hard thing is that teachers are all opinionated bastards, and general know it alls. Add to that the way they like to do things (insert my way or the highway) and it could have been a recipe for disaster. However the Podgorani has a staff of gems, yes we still have opinion, debate and occasional over reaction but who hasn't? So after getting all thirty staff through the 6 chosen schools we looked long and hard at the way things are done, what we were scared of, what made sense and what we saw as a need for us.

The ideas ran wild and the wish list continues to grow out of hand.

How to prioritize what works for us is always a real challenge.

However the real genius of the staff inquiry was taking the Board of Trustees on the same tour. The discussions and observations from the BOT were on very similar levels to the staff, their ideas, contributions and buy-in is just magnificent.

It's hard to describe but while having a debrief session over a quiet beer our Principal friend Dr Cox arrived. He joined the discussion, he was sitting next to a trustee. I watched Dr Cox, he was listening to the trustee describe a moment that he'd observed in a school during the day. Inference is often a bit of a guess, but the look on Dr Cox's face was saying : shit this guy knows his stuff, what a great trustee, what a brilliant idea from the Podgorani, he really has his BOT paddling the same waka. Yes that was inference, but those were the exact things I was thinking and I know Dr Cox was on the same level. This was confirmed when he text me later. Being called clever may have been an exaggeration but the idea was a gem, as for the rugby, lets no go there.

Some ideas to help it work:

Give your BOT an opportunity to contribute.

Take them on an overnighter, you can get the informal discussions working.

Make sure they get an opportunity to see your own school too.

Visit a range of deciles, include a private school.

Choose Principals not schools.

Are you a visitor in your own school?

Visitors to school can sometimes be a distraction followed by an annoying loss of time. This can easily be the perception, but often it is far from the truth. We have become so accustomed to our friendly visitors that the staff, children, school office, leadership team actually enjoy sharing, looking, watching and asking all sorts of questions. What I have realised is that it keeps me listening to staff, finding out what is happening with kids learning, watching children, gathering information about the way they learn, interacting, talking, everything actually. It has really helped me get to know so many kids.

I had a great moment the other day when a teacher came to me in the staffroom to explain a moment that happened in their class which related to some practice she is working on. The visitors coming through the school have enabled me to use them as a vehicle to continually see and talk about learning but more importantly for teachers to share their practice with outsiders. How many times have you walked into a classroom as a Principal and wanted to ask what are you doing? whats this guy up to? and any other question you want without feeling like you are threatening or digging for info.

I am always out talking to kids, but visitors give you some formality. The Board of Trustees of our school are on a learning curve to see if we can write an amazing charter in conjunction with staff and our community. We are visiting seven schools in Christchurch, for a good look around. Before we travelled I made them come on a "visitors tour" of our school. Luckily Shirley Temples cousin, Teresea from Palmerston North, was visiting that day with ex colleague Mary. So the BOT got a visit of their own school, with the whole Principal spiel, and the dig around go anywhere tour. My BOT were just so full of praise, they say they learnt so much, it was genuine. Has your BOT toured your school?

Have they been through all the rooms?

Have they seen and heard your vision in action?

Do you need visitors to get out and talk to kids, teachers?

Just take the time to be in rooms !

Just take time to talk with parents !

Just take time to talk to kids !

Now we are visitors. I am trying to behave like a good visitor. We are on tour. Must remember a good gift. Food is always appreciated.

I wanted to share this very quick answer from our parent survey. It warms your heart, well it warmed mine as much as Israel Daggs try.

iPads early days - here are a few tips

iPads have a big place but how do we go about getting them in classes and working well. There are always the early adopters, some hit the headlines a month or two back, how they had ipads in their school. I had the whole (jealous) and cynical, "I bet they are stuffing up the image and snycing and app store stuff". So now we have a set of iPads, here is what I have discovered:

- each ipad takes about 7 minutes to get up and running

- have one main image ipad, he/she will be your friend, love it, care for it, ours is called Cardy.

- you can connect as many ipads as you like to one itunes library/set of apps

- after initially restoring from a backup of the first ipad it was easy to do the next one and so on

- when you plug in an ipad that has been restored it automatically backs up, you don't really want this because you want to restore from that one main image, and backups are all called the same thing as all your ipads are named the same because you restored them from one image. easy fix, ring Ash

- plug in your main image ipad (Cardy) and it backs up and syncs any changes. click on the name of the ipad and change its name to something you wont forget, ours is called ipadCardiganBayMaster, a mouthful but hang in there. Now after renaming, right click on the ipad in the left window of itunes and scroll down to backup. the backup will appear in the itunes preferences~devices window and it will have that big long random name (easy to find).

- Now when you plug in a different ipad you can let it backup or interrupt the back up, and just restore from your master which you have named so aptly.

- each sync/restore only takes a matter of minutes (7max)

- now use your computer that you sync from, to be your download center, or use your master ipad to download onto, as it will sync, backup and be the one you will restore from each time.

- the other ipads will be clones of one master, my plan is to hand the master to a person who has a handle on how ipads work, let them be the boss of the apps, pages, etc.

- there are some app issues with bought apps and putting them on more than one ipad, at the moment we are sticking to free apps, but a bought app will go across multiple ipads. I dont know if app sellers would be happy knowing one app can go on many machines. Will investigate the iTunes terms.

So far so good with the set up now how good will they be in the classrooms. at the moment the teachers are getting first go. They gotta know that these aren't a gimmick, and we must have educational apps. Teachers get their ipads tomorrow, should be a fun morning.

oh other tips- name the ipads, we have gone for horses, Cardigan Bay, Veandercross, Rough Habit etc engrave them "stolen from >>>> Primary School". Kids will remember names, not numbers. label the chargers and ipod cable too. love those label makers.

UPDATE :

New discoveries :

All the ipads are running well but I have new apps and a software update, but the master has the same name as all of the restored ipads. So UPDATE your master sync it, and get your new apps on it. BUT before you disconnect and restore the other ones, change the name of your master so you dont get confused. Every time your master is synced and backed up change its name. Remember to right click on your master and choose backup after renaming.

UPDATE UPDATE:

New Discoveries :

When you are looking to update and run a new set of apps, you must put your master in first. Every ipad you have has the same image and name, therefore if you plug in some plonker ipad that has had apps downloaded on it these apps will sync and back up. If you then put in your master then the apps from the other ipad will sync onto you master, something you dont want.

If you put in an ipad that isnt your master before syncing and renaming (see update above) then before it syncs and backs-up swipe on the ipad screen when it tries to sync, that is the fast easy way to stop the sync. If you click in itunes and try to cancel syncs it will beach ball and basically piss you off. Swipe to stop sync, its a good tip believe me.

NZConnected Zest Practice

NZConnected conference day two.

I had a great day on day 2 where I sat in on Tony Ryan for most of the day. Let me first say that if you have heard Tony talk about thinkers keys then hold onto your hat. Tony is not a one trick pony. Most Aussies are loud beer swilling uncultured rugby league followers (all australian readers exempt and your families, as well as my aunty Shirley in Sydney). No, Tony has a kindness built into his persona, he appeals on many levels to your common sense, he has perfected the power of the pause, he doesn't have to fill the silence with words. And he doesn't talk shit.

Tony gave a great keynote on “zest practice” which was his play on “best practice”. Tony had many observations on motivation in the classroom and the power of proactive dialogue (always talking from a positive mindset). Always praise effort.

He had a few messages that resonated with me.

1. If you have a child at school ask yourself this. How good is the feeling you have when you know your son/daughter has a passionate teacher who does a great job. Now turn that on yourself as a principal and teacher - Do your parents sit at home and feel great about you as a teacher/principal.

2. Luck isn't always a factor, it happens to those who make it happen. We get lots of visitors and I will often say, "we are lucky, our kids are great". Often the reply is "yeah you guys are so lucky". The reality though is kids are great everywhere and it comes down to hard work and a few laughs, luck isn't a factor.

3. Video your practice. It can be personal and private. While on sabbatical 2 years ago I went for a golf lesson. We walked outside with clubs ready to go. The guy gave me no tips, he just said play a few shots, he videoed from behind, the side, and did a close-up of the grip. We walked inside, he put it on the TV. My first reaction was "Oh My God" I need to do this and that and this. You are an expert teacher, listen to yourself, watch yourself, watch your movements, listen to the class. This is a no brainer, do it for a short time frame, 30 minutes or so therefore you don't bore yourself to death.

4. Zest practice. Every moment you model an inspired teacher you are modeling an inspired school. The sky is your limit.

5. What Tony did real well was give teachers thinking tools to use with kids, fast simple and full of common sense. All sorts of discussion tools, inquiry tools and more, You should have attended. Brilliant.

A list of books, videos and things to google from NZC and my notes;

Bounce, Matthew Syed - great book even I have read this, the penny will drop - easy to read and makes absolute sense.

Models of the worlds we live in - John Holt

Julia Atkin EPS educational positioning system

TED - Elizabeth Gilbert

TED - Daniel Pink autonomy mastery purpose.

Fierce Conversations - Susan Scott

How to talk to so kids can learn - Adelle Faber

Learning Talk - Hyerle

The ripple effect - Tony Ryan

follow him on twitter @aussietony