Now I'll be writing about my work as a teacher and educational researcher here!
I was recently reading some of Carol Dweck's work on mindsets and how the messages we give and, in particular, the way we praise children can affect their behaviour and, specifically, their resilience in the face of challenge or adversity. Perhaps that was what drew my attention to this article in the Huffington Post about how children born in the 1980's onwards (in mostly developed nations) have been brought up expecting instant gratification, with short attention spans and a lack of intrinsic motivation and that this is backfiring in the form of depression and apathy and an inability to innovate and survive. I found his outline of where things went wrong particularly interesting:
The author suggests we need to let our kids fail, rein in their dreams, teach them to accept consequences and take responsibility hand in hand with autonomy and look beyond 'me'. In a world where self-esteem has come to be valued as the golden panacea (if a child has self-esteem then all will be well), excessive praise has been seen as the tool to achieve that and give your child everything. If you can just make them believe that they are good enough (or often - better than everyone else). But in doing so we have missed several important questions - good enough for what? and what is self-esteem without esteem for and from others? Coming back to Dweck...her (and others' research) demonstrates the damage that telling our kids they are special can do. While praise is important, the type of praise and the way it is given matter immensely. Chapter 1 in Nurture Shock summarises the research on this - for praise to be effective it needs to be:
The chapter highlights the importance of praising effort and improvement, placing success in their hands, rather than intelligence and high achievement, which suggests you are either successful or not, effort implies that you are not naturally successful and therefore it is all out of your hands. Furthermore, failure needs to be addressed honestly but compassionately. After reading the article and the book chapter I concluded along similar lines: we need to stop mollycuddling our children by promising them they can have or be anything they want; we need to stop throwing them images of life as constantly made up of fun, fame and fortune; we need to stop telling them they are special for no specific reason. In 2007, in his book The Global Achievement Gap, Tony Wagner outlined seven skills that students need to master in order to flourish in the 21st century.
1. Critical thinking and problem solving 2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence 3. Agility and adaptability 4. Initiative and entrepreneurship 5. Effective oral and written communication 6. Accessing and analysing information 7. Curiosity and imagination Since then, the economy has collapsed and unemployment has soared. He realised that in such a context, where employment does not exist in the same way anymore, the skills he had outlined were not enough. Arguing that the economy is based on a model that is unsustainable – environmentally, economically or spiritually, he started to look for what more was needed. And he found the answer it in innovation. Producing more better ideas that respond to more and different problems. However, he argues, the culture of schooling as we have grown up with is radically at odds with the culture of learning that produces innovators - in 5 essential respects. 1. Celebrating individual achievement – innovation is a team sport 2. Specialisation – subject areas – innovation is inter/ transdisciplinary and about problem based learning 3. Risk aversion and penalising failure – students and teachers discouraged from risk taking. Innovation is about taking risks and learning from mistakes. 4. Passive consumption – innovation is about active creation. 5. Rely on extrinsic rewards for motivation – innovation about intrinsic motivation – making a difference in the world. Pattern in behaviour of those creating innovation in young people: PLAY TO PASSION TO PURPOSE.
So what does this mean for our work as educators. What can each one of us do?
Above all, we need think about where and how we are encouraging the play, the passion and the purpose in everything we do with young people. Yesterday, I was reading an article by, Christopher Day, whose work I admire a lot, about teacher quality and how it relates not only to their knowledge and skills, but to their sense of identity and the passion they bring to their work. Effective teachers don't only know their subject but have a deep sense of self and an ability to understand the emotions of themselves and others. His point was that education policy and teacher training largely ignores these factors, but to be truly effective and sustain that effectiveness over time, teachers need to be able to understand, create and maintain a positive sense of personal and professional identity.
Then, this morning, this blog entry turned up in my inbox. I couldn't have expressed it better myself (although I really should try, given that it is so important to know the answer to the question - what kind of teacher are you? "What kind of teacher are you?" A parent whose child will be in my class this year asked me that a few days ago. It was an honest question, and one I've answered before, but this time I was thrown for a bit of a loop. Blame it on lack of coffee or too many things on the schedule for the day, but afterwards I felt my answer sounded like gibberish. So, with a few hours distance and another caffeinated soda, here's the answer I wish I had given: I am a Responsive Classroom teacher. I believe every child can succeed in academics and behavior, but I do not assume that they already know how. I teach in ways that help them develop cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control. I guide students to learn to self-monitor their behaviors, and to understand that their actions, words, and choices affect others as well as themselves. Our classroom community is built gradually on trust, with a common language, through rules that we create together, and by practicing procedures until they become nearly automatic. I use logical consequences and other responses to misbehavior to help students learn to self-regulate. I am a Responsive Classroom teacher. I believe the words I use—my teacher language—can be a valuable tool for conveying to children and parents that each child is unique, important, and able to make progress. I believe the way I communicate can support or poison a classroom, and that my students are listening, ALL the time. So I speak to students in ways that help them reflect on how they are doing with all sorts of choices, both academic and social. I also use teacher language to reinforce when they are doing things correctly, to remind when things are getting off course or might be tricky, and to stop and redirect misbehaviors before situations get out of control. I am a Responsive Classroom teacher. I use the resources, materials, and educational standards I have to work with to engage my students in real learning. I believe that children want to learn, and that it's motivating when classmates and the teacher are excited about learning, too. Whether we are practicing spelling words, reading to a partner, finding ways to make 10, or hypothesizing about why apple slices weigh less each day we leave them out in the air, I strive to make learning meaningful for the children I teach. I am a Responsive Classroom teacher. I use the power of an approach to teaching that builds positive community, results in effective management, and leads to engaging academics, so that my students can achieve their hopes and dreams—for first grade and beyond. If I had a pound for every time someone had responded to me telling them I am a teacher by saying 'oh nice life, finish at three and long holidays', I could probably afford to give up teaching. I used to try and correct them by explaining the reality of my experience as a teacher (especially in my first year of teaching - the long hours, the never ending marking, the meetings, the stress, the fear each day that you weren't quite well enough prepared to make this the day count for all those kids you were responsible for, the feeling of failure at the end of the day that you had failed to engage everyone, the knowledge that you were several weeks behind on marking already and there would be another load created the next day). While teaching has undoubtedly caused me anxiety and stress over the years, I have never been able to leave it, for the belief that is the most worthwhile thing I could ever find to do on this planet, and I have even learned to relax and enjoy it most of the time.
Learning to switch off has been a key part of that - in the last two years, I have taken up running, meditating, singing and acting. Committing to activities that mean you can't be worrying about how to help Jimmy write better, or how to help Bethan stop acting out and start learning, etc is the only really way to stop thinking about what you do. I don't claim to be an expert, but even as a novice in the philosophy of mindfulness, I can see how the strategies inherent to leading a mindful life might help children cope with the multi-tasking that is demanded of them in life today. We need to be talking to children about how to deal with these distractions/ stimulations in their lives so they remain positive opportunities rather than harm invasions.
In a multi-media frenetic era, it can become increasingly difficult to focus. I know this from my own studying. While the internet and online journals provide access to a wealth of information, I find I have some days where all I do is download more articles to read or open more tabs, without ever actually stopping to read the information I am accessing. Even when I do read them, I find it hard to concentrate as I am thinking of all the other things I want to read too. The ability to focus is sometimes one that aludes me.
Yet as an educator, I know the importance of teaching children how to prioritise. Children are living in homes where there are televisions in several rooms (including bedrooms), everyone has mobile phones, laptops/ tablets (with gaming) abound and internet (with its social networking) is 24/7. Yet the costs of multi-tasking are great, as research shows. First, tasks take longer to complete. Second, working on several tasks at once causes mental fatigue and third, learning is impaired by multi-tasking, due to reduced processing and storage. Learning Tony Wagner argues that the real challenge in schools today is not just to get more students to pass more tests, but to create new knowledge about how to improve the level of instruction for all students. He outlines 7 key principles, which should be implemented as a package to be truly effective.
...how do you know what learning is taking place?
Recently, our school has been focusing on becoming more learning aware. How? Well, we’ve started in three ways. First, we discussed what learning is – a harder question that it might seem. But without a clear idea of this, or at least an engagement with it in our own minds, how can teachers know what they are trying to do on a daily basis? We also thought about the benefits of making children more aware of what they were learning and, more importantly, why. These included improved levels of engagement, enhanced metacognitive skills, developing a sense of responsibility and independence and helping them find purpose, without which, let’s face it, why would any of us do anything. Next we developed 6 essential questions which we could use in the classrooms to engage children in the process of thinking about their learning (actually we came up with over 20, but agreed on 6 that would be used in ALL classrooms so that they became second nature to the children). And we brainstormed ideas for how these questions could become part of our daily practice...plenary balls; posters; lucky dips; conversation etc. Our second step for making learning more explicit was to look at our displays. Displays matter. Why? For students, they are a visible recognition of their learning – their work is worthy of a larger audience. For the wider school community, displays in and out the classroom send a powerful message about school culture and the value it places on learning. Finally, learning displays can drive on the learning process, by providing learners with reminders of what they’ve already learnt and by getting them to engage with it, which provide different ways of challenging students. Successful and meaningful display reflects the ethos of a school, and an exciting, learning-focused environment makes for excited learners. An environment that mirrors respect and care makes learners feel cared for and respected by the place in which they learn. This positively impacts on how well students learn, how happy they are as they learn and the respect and care with which they treat their school; the same applies to staff. . If we care about our school environment and our classrooms, it shows we care about our students, our colleagues and our schools. While there are many lovely displays in our school and this is something that has improved a lot in the last year, when we reflected on how well they highlight learning, we realised we could make some improvements, like using more learner-centred that draws attention to the learning that has taken place; including questions to the displays that help engage the learners in prior or further learning; to make an effort to refer to displays in teaching; and to keep changing them (even in small ways) so that students keep noticing them. Finally, we decided to trial learning journals. This is a fledgling idea right now. While a common practise in many schools, our school has not used them before and neither have most of our teachers. The goals are to build in dedicated time to the timetable, during which children have the opportunity to reflect, share, question and evaluate their learning, in order to make encourage a sense of responsibility, independence and motivation around their learning, while also encouraging creativity and building clear communications skills. While some teachers were concerned that such skills would be beyond the children we teach, especially as it is not Khmer culture to engage in this type of reflection at home, most teacher were excited. And if there’s one thing about me they know, it’s that I have the highest expectations of what our students (and our teachers) can achieve, and I will not give up on those until I have tried and tried and tried again. Watch this space. Our staff training this month looked at ways in which we could make our classrooms more learning focused, where the focus is on what the children learn, not on what the teacher teaches.
We began by asking ourselves 4 key questions:
We then chose three strategies, drawn from research into effective schooling, to use in our classrooms. First we collaboratively developed 6 key questions about learning that we could use in the classroom to get the children thinking more about their own learning. We brainstormed times and ways we could integrate these questions into daily classroom practice, such as plenary balls, picking questions from a hat, issuing questions at the door as student left the class, etc. Next, we thought about how we could make our displays more learning-focused. While our school has developed the quality and quantity of displays over the last year, there is often little reflection of how the displays link to children’s learning. We agreed we could remedy this by adding descriptions/ captions to the displays that highlighted the learning that had taken place; using questions to engage children in the displays and continue their learning and we even discussed where we should place the displays so that they engaged the children at the right times without distracting them at others. Finally, we planned the introduction of learning journals, which we will use to help children engage with and reflect on their learning. At our next training in a month, we will discuss how each of these is going and if there need to be any changes made. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2014
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