Authentic learning reaps rewards

Last week at our school I had the pleasure of dining at 'Cobham Cuisine' - a student run restaurant organised, set up and run by two Y8 classes.  Staff, parents and students were able to book a table and order and eat a meal which they paid for.


I thoroughly enjoyed the experience as a diner and was super impressed with the obvious engagement and hard work displayed from every child.  Each student had a role to do, based on their strengths and they were working their backsides off to do that job well.  They were communicating, collaborating, creating and working towards a common goal.  They had meticulously planned every detail from creating a CV to apply for their chosen restaurant roles to planning the menu, entertainment, cooking, cleaning, bookings, finances, wait staff, ordering, marketing..... You name it, they thought of it and planned it to ensure the success of their business venture.

One of the fathers of a student is a very successful business owner in Christchurch, with a string of successful restaurants under his leadership.  He was able to come in and mentor the students and even devoted hours of his time to supporting the cooking and delivery of meals to customers on the day.  Being able to tap into the expertise in our community was an important aspect of new learning and established an authentic connection to real world business.

Here is what our teachers and students had to say...

WALT: Create change using business and entrepreneurial flare.

"After the Cobham Cuisine had closed, we gave the students the choice to spend the profits on making a change in a biosphere of their choice or to spend the money on themselves.

The choice was done with an anonymous vote.

The students voted 19 - 9 to spend the money on an environmental cause. We are considering buying two acres of rainforest".

"The learning was fun and authentic, the kids loved it. The parents loved it. Teachers loved it.
Our Food Technology teacher AL was very supportive as always regarding the use of her kitchen and advice."

"The teachers were very easy to work with, really efficient, with a great sense of humour. So good relationships were helpful when catering for 115 guests!"

"Everyone involved loved the restaurant and the entire experience and I would do it all again in a heartbeat. I think we made it a really authentic process and experience for our kids following the CV, application process and letting them do the work, themselves (teacher)."

Finally, I went away from this experience thinking this is absolutely how learning should be.  A real issue to address, real life experiences that connect to our community, authentic tasks that allow student strengths to be developed, access for parents, other students and community members to participate in the end result and most importantly, everyone involved was having an awesome time.  Watch this space - these types of learning experiences are soon to become the overwhelming norm at Cobham!

Whanaungatanga in action!

A new year has arrived.  The summer holidays flew by as they always do for us teachers and before we know it we are back at work.  This time last year was my first day at a new job, at a new school and I remember clearly how awkward the first teacher only day was for us newbies.  The school did things quite differently to what I was used to and because of this and it's sheer size and therefore number of staff and students, it took me quite a long time to settle in and feel like I belonged.  This is not an easy thing to navigate, especially being Māori and coming from a previous job where tikanga Māori took pride of place.  Not having mihimihi meant I did not know who everyone was, where they came from and if we were perhaps connected somehow.  Not having karakia tīmatanga, waiata or karakia whakamutunga before and after hui was also jarring as it felt like we went in cold and separated to hui instead of combined as one and when we finished everyone just went their separate ways.  This is not a criticism of my school, merely pointing out that at this time, these elements of tikanga Māori were not in place, which no doubt was one of the reasons I was hired, and if you have read my earlier posts you will know that many of these things are now highly valued and implemented daily at our school.  But in response to that feeling of isolation from the start of last year, I planned a very different teacher only day this year.

Firstly, I changed the name from teacher only days to staff retreat and the emphasis for our retreat would be whanaungatanga and effective planning for 2016.  I asked the Principal and BoT to support this initiative with some funding, which they kindly did and I promptly went about booking accommodation and a conference venue in Hanmer Springs for 2 days in Jan. An agenda was created early in Term 4 where all staff could add their ideas to and volunteer to take certain sessions or workshops over the 2 days.  Some of the things we worked through was all the day to day running of the school issues like duty, curriculum update and responsibilities, sport/music/cultural responsibilities, planning and appraisal etc.  But excitingly, we also covered some awesome new ideas like collaboratively creating a M.A.T.E's  document (mutually agreed team expectations) for the way we as staff will work together and practiced a process for mihi whakatau for when we welcome manuhiri, in line with Ngāi Tūāhuriri tikanga as mana whenua. We also spent time talking about PB4L (positive behaviour for learning), Teaching as Inquiry and all of our LwDT (learning with digital technologies) initiatives planned for this year.  I might be showing how much of a geek I am but it was awesome stuff! Highly engaging, productive, collaborative and relevant for all staff.

One of the best outcomes for our staff retreat though was the obvious effect it had on building a sense of whānau for us all.  Staff were sharing rooms together, car pooling up to and back from Hanmer, having a drink together, going for walks together, having dinner together, working in groups throughout the 2 day hui and all the time, building a strong sense of whanaungatanga.  We got to know the person behind the teacher - what they liked or disliked eating, how tired they were because of waking babies at home,  that they snore loudly or that they can play the guitar.  We even started our first day playing a game called "Whanaungatanga".

One person stands and starts talking about themselves - where they are from, family members, interests...anything they want.  When someone else can connect to what they are saying, for example if I said I have 3 children and someone sitting down also has 3 children, they stand and yell out "whanaungatanga"!  Then they take over and start talking about themselves until the next person can buzz in with a 'whanaungatanga".  This game was great to hear more about each other, to demonstrate that although we might all lead different lives, we all can connect to each other in some way too and it also was awesome to hear the improved te reo Māori pronunciation!  And do you know what really blew my mind and made my heart sing...when I walked around our school on the first day back for our kids, several of the classes I walked into were playing "whanaungatanga" - ka mau te wehi!

Flippin' professional development for teachers

Who else has sat in a staff meeting, exhausted from a busy day of teaching and found themselves totally tuning out to the so called PD, which usually looks like someone at the front of the staffroom talking to teachers, who are sitting 'listening'.

There is little opportunity for interaction, discussion or challenge and even IF the person at the front has some amazing gold to share, it is still extremely difficult to remain engaged in the learning when you are tired and thinking "I need to mark the kids writing from today, I need to email parents about camp, I need to talk to my team leader about a behaviour issue, I need to get home and pick my kids up, feed them, do homework, cook tea....." - who's with me? I know I'm not alone on this, as evidenced by all the hilarious staff meeting memes out there!

Now I need to raise my hands and plead guilty as in my time as a deputy principal and professional development facilitator, I have OFTEN found myself at the front of the room, staring out at people and wondering if they are hearing or caring about a word I say.  And I am sure we are thinking the exact same thing "There has to be a better way!"

This week I had the privilege of facilitating another Ako Panuku Hui ē, Tāiki ē! hui in Auckland, one of 3 hui I have facilitated this year.  The purpose of this hui was to firstly discuss and analyse the changes in education across Aotearoa and then introduce the following drivers of change - agency, connectedness, ubiquity and collaboration and how these provide opportunities to improve outcomes for tamariki by changing teaching and learning practices.  My co-facilitator Dee Reid and I wanted to model some of these practices throughout the PD hui and set up the two days so that we provided examples and ways of working that fostered these four kaupapa. We created an online Google Site and pre-populated the it with clips, links, resources, examples and questions around each of the 4 kaupapa.

Ako Panuku Hui on PhotoPeach

 On day 1 we began the hui with a open discussion about what is driving change in our own schools and how different people feel about the changes.  Then we introduced one of the key drivers of change at a time e.g. agency and directed all the teachers to the online content.  They had time to read, watch, research, play, learn and reflect and then we came together as a group to share what we had learned, what resonated with us, what challenged our thinking, what examples (if any) we saw of this in our school and what we would now commit to implementing in our classroom to provide opportunities for agency, ubiquity, collaboration and connectedness. As you can see from these pictures, all teachers on day 1 were engaged in the learning (for the entire day!).  They worked their way through the content at their own pace, they contributed their ideas and thoughts online through a shared google doc and face to face through our discussion time.  They had the ability to rewind and share the content with others.  They had time to explore and reflect and relate it to their own practice and most importantly, apply their new learning to their context, as this was the outcome for day 2.

Day 2 gave the teachers time to now create a resource that they could use in their own practice, back at their own school that directly linked to one of the four key drivers of change.  Each teacher had a several of hours to plan, design and create their resource and then had 20 minutes to share their mahi back to the whole group.  This was recorded and shared with everyone so we now had a kete of rauemi (a whole kit of resources) for everyone to access, if they wanted to.

When I asked the teachers how they felt about this style of professional development, they told me it was enjoyable as they could pick and choose things that interested them personally, it met their individual needs, it engaged them, they enjoyed having choice and the time to delve deep, they loved coming away with something practical they could use in the classroom and their professional learning was exponential. I won't lie - it felt really good to see this model was successful in terms of the learning outcomes we hoped to achieve and the engagement level of our participants.  Even better was the extremely small amount of time I stood at the front and talked to everyone aka poured the PD down their tuned out ears :)   This is just one small example of the way we could flip our traditional staff meetings to better engage staff and actually achieve some of the desired outcomes that we hope our PD will provide for our teachers.  If we as educators firmly support and believe that all of our children deserve an education that provides opportunities for student agency, ubiquitous learning, collaboration and connectedness then SURELY our teachers deserve that too?

Let's start a movement and phase out meeting for meetings sake, meetings that are all talk/no action, meetings where we all leave and think what did we achieve today or worse, what difference will that make for any of the kids in my class?   Perhaps we even need to start by phasing out the word meeting!  Let's move towards engaging, targeted professional development that meets the needs of staff, that let's them participate anywhere, anytime, online and face to face, where we connect and collaborate and even better, where we walk away with practical ideas, strategies and resources that we can use in our classrooms tomorrow that will support learning outcomes for our kids.

I know it sounds hard and I don't want to fall into the trap highlighted in the above meme of 'discussing things that must happen but never will' so I hunted this out on www.teachthought.com about "5 Challenges We Overcame Moving to a Flipped Staff Meeting", which could help get us started.  I am positive that with a little commitment and hard work it is achievable...who is with me?