Taking a step back to take a step forward

I believe that every once in a while it is so important to step back, and think about everything but teaching, in order to improve your teaching. This weekend I have done just that. I have had a weekend of laughs and shared many special moments with some of my best friends.  In my opinion, it is this that has allowed me to be sitting on a Sunday night, when I could be reading a book, wanting to reflect on my term goals and on the progress of my class as a whole after having only been back at school for two weeks.

Individual goals:

To back myself and not question my ability as a teacher.

I believe that I am well on track towards achieving this goal. I think that having my tutor teacher back at school has really boosted my confidence in this regard as I know I have someone at school whose job it is to "have my back" and who I can trust to provide me with honest, constructive feedback in a way that will help me to develop as a teacher.  In addition to this, I am planning on starting my Masters next year and I know that to work full time and do my masters I will have to trust in my ability as a competent and confident teacher.  What better time to do that than the present.  In conversation with my principal the other day a couple of things became evident. The first was that she truly does believe that I am a capable and effective teacher. If she, as an experienced professional, believes this than who am I to question it. The second is a reflection that I am sure will surface at a later date.

Reflect on children's targets with them - and develop my student's confidence in leading conferencing discussions.

Each week I have a half an hour block set aside where the students have the opportunity to reflect back on whether or not they are achieving their goals in writing.  During this time, the students are required to discuss their goals with other students, find evidence of achieving their goals in their written work and reflect on what new goals they wish to set, if appropriate.  I have found that having time set aside to reflect specifically on these goals has led to the students being more aware of their learning goals during the week and during guided teaching sessions also.  I have found that as a result of the student's sharing where their learning is with their peers, they have become more confident leading discussions about their positives in their learning and their next steps with myself also.

Full class reflection:

As a beginning teacher I am continually reflecting on where each student is at in their learning journey, the special needs of any extension or remedial students and when 'testing' occurs, the abilities and next steps for my whole class within a specific subject, or area of a subject.  Rarely do I sit down and analyse the overall changes that my whole class have made on their learning journey over the past two terms.

Management have just asked us for a class description that both analyses our class goals for the first two terms and requires us to make new goals for the whole class to achieve over the next two terms in reading, writing and mathematics. I have completed the analysis of my class's achievements and areas to continue working on and I have found it so rewarding to sit down and be able to see visible movement across all the 'main' curriculum areas for my whole class.  As a result of this I am also looking forward to creating new goals or focus areas for each of these subjects that I wish to encourage my students to strive towards over the next four months. I have high expectations of my students and because of this they reach my expectations, which leaves me feeling filled with anticipation, excitement and wonder about what the next four months may hold for us.

What a wonderful career to be in, where each day leaves you looking forward to the next, and where there is so much room for hope, excitement and growth.

Student Voice

In order to maintain an open growth mindset I have asked ten of my students to provide me with honest reflections about their experiences of being in my class.  They were asked to answer the following five statements and questions:

1. The way that my teacher helps me the most is...
2. One thing that challenged me most was... I overcame it by....
3. I enjoy being part of Room 3 because...
4. The thing I am most proud of this year is...
5. One piece of advice I would give to my teacher is...

Below are videos of these students reflections.  Please enjoy and leave a comment to let me know your thoughts.

Student Reflection on being in Room 3 - 2014

What goes around comes back around

One of my goals for this term was to begin to more confidently share the knowledge that I have around teaching and learning and specific subjects with my peers and colleagues.  I am the type of person who is very goal driven and once I had set this goal I was determined to achieve it. Luckily for me the opportunity presented itself nearly straight away - perhaps opportunities had been presenting themselves the entire time and I was not ready to receive them yet... Who knows!?

At our school we have community once a week, which is a style of assembly that is based around a different class each week doing performances.  Being from a drama background, and being in Year 6, I straight away nominated my class for this opportunity.  When talking with another PRT, I found out that she was not confident in this area and so I offered to help her create her class community item also and encouraged her to put her class down to present this term.  We have since spent a lot of time working on choreography, choosing songs and deciding on the theme. It has increased my confidence in myself as a professional knowing that I am able to help other teachers.  I have also had opportunities to do this with our drama unit that we are doing at the moment. 

Through working towards my goal I am feeling a constant sense of growth and achievement and I am thriving off this.  I have such a positive feeling about this term and I am thoroughly enjoying working towards ticking off Year 1 of my provisional registration

Rekindling my passion for Research

Whilst at university I was the type of student who loved reading, and loved reading about teaching.  I think having an Aunty who was a teacher, and that I have always looked up to, inspired this love of literature - discussions with her whilst she was doing her Masters during my first year of university allowed me the opportunity to realise both the breadth and depth of knowledge that other people have and how easy it is to pick up a book and help others to help you.

Over the past couple of terms I have been getting my head around teaching full time but now I am looking forward to re-establishing a reading routine.  I have searched for and read two articles tonight that have captivated me and will share my learning from them below.

 

Article One

Smith, P. (2002). A reflection on reflection. Primary Voices K - 6, 10(4), 31 - 34.

• Learning communities boost reflection - By getting together and sharing ideas openly and honestly and being able to trust that idealistic aspirations will be treated seriously, we are more open to share our positives and our negatives, and therefore receive a range of opinions and support about how to make changes that will benefit our students.
• Questioning practice leads to growth - This is something that I strive to do as openly and as honestly as I can and I am lucky to have a supportive tutor teacher who helps me answer my questions I have about my practice but also questions me about a range of other aspects of my practice.
• Increasing the frequency of reflection increases the accuracy - When we take the time to sit down and write reflections that identify the positives, negatives and any queries we may have we are forced to reconsider our practices in a constructive light.  By doing this frequently we are afforded the opportunity to recognise patterns in our practice and either reinforce or change these patterns to best meet the needs of our students.
• To engage in critical reflection it is absolutely vital that we take on the role of learner once again - In order to grow as teachers we need to allow ourselves to be learners and recognise that we are always learning and that every colleague has something to teach us.  By recognising that we are always learning it is easier to be more critical about ourselves and to accept constructive criticism from others as instead of failure it becomes an opportunity to grow as a learner and increase future successes.

Article Two

Macfarlane, A. (2000). Listening to culture. Maori principles and practices applied to support classroom management. SET: Research Information for Teachers, 2, 23 - 28.

Behaviour is often defined and understood within a cultural context and yet many Maori students live in cultural and community contexts that differ from those of the school they attend.  As a result of this it is very important that students and teachers work together to make a clearly defined culture within their classroom that belongs to all students and that all students feel comfortable operating within. 

Macfarlane suggests the following ways to do this:

• Huakina Mai (Opening Doorways) - The teacher needs to know the students and the students need to know the teachers expectations and feel that they know the teacher. Rules need to be put in place to protect the rights of the whole group.
• Kotahitanga (Unity) - In relation to behaviour management it is of importance that students, teachers and whanau members together negotiate rules and behaviour management strategies.
• Awhinatia (The helping process - Interventions) - The way that Maori (and all) students feel about themselves affects their ability to engage in social interaction with their teachers and peers.  It is important that feedback is culturally responsive and incorporates both aspects of Maori language and references to the cultural framework that Maori culture is based around.  Comments such as "Whakatikanga tou waka (steady your canoe) can be more appropriate and more effective in changing inappropriate behaviours than feedback that does not acknowledge students cultural identity.

Experience is Everything

One of the biggest struggles that the extension children in my class make often, and that I am continually attempting to change, is the fear of failing. 

These children have so much knowledge and potential, and have succeeded so many times before, that failure and making mistakes are new concepts for them - concepts that they are only coming across by beginning to face the realities of the world outside of their bubble.

Something that I will be showing them this term is an image that I stumbled across that highlights the difference between knowledge and experience.  Knowledge is great to have, but unless it is applied, and children are provided with the opportunities to engage in experiences around their knowledge, it will often take a back seat and not be useful in their everyday lives.  With experience, as shown in this picture, children will be able to, and know how to, apply their knowledge in ways that are beneficial to their learning and growth.

My aim is to provide these children with the opportunity to make mistakes in my classroom, to let them transition from being filled with knowledge to being filled with knowledge and having had experiences to apply their knowledge in a place where they feel safe.  

Managing Maths

At times I forget that I am a beginning teacher and expect myself to have everything perfect all of the time.  As someone who has high expectations of myself it is frustrating when I can see what I want to do and what others are doing but am still getting my head around how to put what I want to be doing into action. 

Maths is an area that I feel I should be able to teach easily because I have the content knowledge and it is a logical subject.  However, whilst Maths is logical as a learner, trying to control four maths groups number rotations, strand rotations, and set appropriate interactive work on the computers has proved slightly more challenging.  I aimed to break down what it was that was challenging me about Maths and at the start of Term 2 I set myself two goals: 1 - I would make sure that I always had appropriate equipment out for the groups that I was teaching that would allow for easy transitions between using materials and imaging and 2 - that I would get my head around the way that strand is taught at the school that I am teaching at.

Number 1 seemed to be fairly easy to sort, the materials when sourced were at the appropriate level for my children and seemed to really help my children grasp difficult concepts easily.  Number 2 was slightly more tricky but I have managed to now set up a programme that involves weekly check ins and exploration of the strand topics that I am teaching and allows me an opportunity to discover which children are struggling in which areas and why they are doing so.

However, when I got to the end of last term, I taught a unit of maths that still made my head swim.  Maths that should have looked like this:

Quickly began to look like this:

I could not for the life of me figure out why - I knew the content, I was planning weekly, I knew the teaching style that best suited my students, I was using appropriate materials and doing everything agreed upon by myself and my tutor teacher.  My tutor teacher was away during this time and so I sought the advice of a trusted colleague who has enormous amounts of experience within the mathematical field.  She was able to help me ensure that my unit looked and was manageable again but I still was not able to place my finger on the problem.

A couple of days ago, I was looking at the long term planning for Term 3 and it struck me - and became exceedingly obvious.  While I was weekly planning for maths as I did for every other subject I was doing this from a framework of making educated predictions about where the children would be.  I had no long term plan for maths.  This term we are recovering two topics that we taught in Term One and so I have created long term plans for Maths for these topics. These are not incredibly detailed and they are certainly not long and extensive but they provide me with a framework upon which to base my weekly planning for maths.

Here's hoping that these long term plans will allow me to breathe and continue to focus on exactly how I am teaching maths rather than worrying about what I am teaching and whether the lessons that I am teaching are covering what they need to and whether or not they flow well together. 

I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders! Wooo - Sometimes all it takes for things to make sense is a moment to step away from it all and breathe!

There is a Time

For everything there is a time, there is a reason and there is a season. I have believed this in my life for a long time but now I am beginning to see that this is true in teaching also.

Over the last term there have been a number of moments that have led me to question how things work, why things work and what I can do to make sure that everything runs as efficiently and as effectively as possible. These moments have ranged from interactions with students to interactions with other staff members to seeds of thought that have been planted in team planning days and have been expanded upon since then.

Interactions with students:
When I think about the students at the school that I teach at I see students who are well catered for and well looked after and told that they are pretty good at most of the things that they do. These children as a consequence of this have started to expect that pretty good is excellent and that they should be recognised for being pretty good. Don't get me wrong, being pretty good at something is an achievement in itself but if pretty good becomes good enough then these students may soon find themselves struggling in a world where they have every opportunity to succeed to an extremely high level if they are not happy with pretty good and continue to push themselves to achieve personal excellence and be the best they can be. Thinking about this led me to reflect on a poem that a friend of mine who teaches Year 8s has recently shared with me. The poem goes like this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QnkKIwF7d9Y

I am going to share this poem with my students this term during circle time and have them reflect on what they believe is pretty good and whether or not they should settle for pretty good. I know that my expectations of myself and of my students are that excellence will be achieved and am hoping that by showing my students this poem that they will realise that their goals are too for excellence and not for pretty good.

Interactions with colleagues:
During the past term whilst my tutor teacher has been away I have needed to receive the support that she would normally provide me with from a number of different teachers. The interactions with different teachers from around the school have varied so much with some being extremely positive and leaving me feel empowered and as though I am on the right track and with others leaving me questioning what I am doing. My students, being with me 6 hours a day, have observed me during and after each I these interactions and recognise instantly what impact these different interactions have had on me as a teacher. When my students have picked up really positive vibes I notice that all my students become easily excitable and are really engaged in what they are going to be learning. However, when the students don't notice extremely positive vibes they are more likely to play up and make a big deal out of something that is not necessarily a problem at all. Watching how these children pick up on these interactions without me saying anything to them has lead me to question whether or not or to what extent relationships between staff members impact relationships between students. I know that at university it was drummed into me that modelling is one of the most effective ways of teaching and I cannot help but think that these relationships, whether negative or positive and effecting the relationships that we see occurring between our students in the classroom and the playground. Having studied both teaching and health and physical education in depth I am extremely interested in the total wellbeing of our students and am aware that social and emotional well being play directly into a students ability to learn in any given situation. I am doing my Masters next year and would be extremely interested to investigate how the relationships between staff members influence the types of relationships that occur between students and in turn how this affects a students ability to focus, concentrate and learn.

Playing to my strengths:
I am so excited for our afternoon programmes this term as I feel that they really allow me to play to my strengths. The programmes that we are doing are a drama programme, a chemistry programme and an outdoor winter sports programme. I feel like with all of these programmes I will be able to share my depth of knowledge around these areas both with other teachers and with my students. Having a drama degree, a sports degree and having completed year 13 chemistry has left me feeling confident that I will be able to teach all of these areas effectively and efficiently.

There is a time, there is a reason and there is a season for everything. For success and for learning and for helping others and for being helped. I am looking forward to a term that I cannot wait to get back into when I still have a week of holiday left. Woohoo.