Start With The End In Mind

Jan 31st

Being back at school over the last two days has brought about a bag of mixed emotions of excitement, disappointment, wonder and nerves as we head into another academic year. Of course after hearing the NCEA results from last year you always sit back and reflect and look at what you did well, what were the disasters, and what are the new things you want to try to an engage, grab and get the attention of the students that sit in front of you daily. I have set myself some work ons this year. These work ons are things that I want to try, experiment, challenge and take risks with to see if they get better academic success.

Firstly I had to change my mind set about how I was going to approach this year. I have certainly felt over the years that I am often stressing myself trying to get students to achieve so that they pass and get the credits. Therefore I have put the following quote up in my room, in eye line with where I can see it everyday so that it's there to remind me if required. To me this quote stands for two things: 1) Students need to take more ownership of their learning, they can not expect a teacher to stand in front of them daily and shovel in (filling the vessel) the information hoping that they retain it and remember it for when its next required, 2) This means that I can not just stand up in front of a class and expect my ways I have been doing things to continue to work, i need to make changes so that number one comes naturally (light the fire) hopefully, fingers crossed.

Previously i mentioned the word 'success' these days how we measure success can be so widely measured. Of course there is the obvious, GRADES, however are they the end denominator? These days our schools have so many different factors that can affect the learning of our students, and some of these can not always within our control. Therefore i am also redefining how i see success, grades are good but they are not the be all and end all of it all. Students engagement, application of work and being able to show understanding will be just as important to me.

I have also set my form class a statement in which i would like them to think of during this year "Start with the end in mind". With my crew being Year 13 i really want them to think from the beginning, why am i here???? is it cause i'm trying to get UE, is it cause i need to get the last of my L2 credits for my course or apprenticeship, am i wanting to travel or work. Every action needs to have a purpose.

A focus for each year group are as follows
Yr9 try out my Tellagarmi app to assist with reflection and getting them talk about their final dishes more using are high level of terminology
Year 10's i'm trying Learning through Inquiry for the first time which i'm a little nervous about
Year 11's using my TAI approach of writing templates to see if i gain a higher level of work from students as the year progresses.
Hospo i want to get them ready in the first term to tackle some catering of events within the school, TOD, Board Meetings, Arts Evenings as well as the traditional Camps.

Home Economics Without Borders

Jan 11- 13 HEIA ( Home Economics in Australia) National Conference

So while many of my colleagues are still enjoying themselves on their Summer holidays, I was tripping off to Melbourne ( poor me) to attend the HEIA national conference. This is my first national conference and I wasn't sure what I was in for.

First session was with three note speakers that talked to us about Domestic Violence - the hidden borders. Clementine Ford a well known feminist in Australia, who has appeared on numerous tv shows and written a book on "Fight like a Girl", AFL player Luke Ablett who now spends his time speaking to professional sportsmen about domestic abuse and Dr Debbie Ollis. I found this session really interesting especially when Clementine Ford spoke, she is so strongly opinionated, not all I agreed with, but many made me think about how I have addressed students, boys especially, in my class. She talked about how we react to comments such as "your crying like a girl", "what are you a girl" or "toughen up" and "it's okay Miss i'm just joking" after a sexist joke is made. By allowing these comments to be made, are we allowing the first signs of abuse towards women to be installed into our society and by ignoring it or laughing it off are we encouraging it to continue.

Second session on day one i was really excited about - Engaging and shaping 21st Century minds. In this session we were introduced to a wide range of different technological tools that we can use in the classroom. Some I had seen before, but there were others that I wanted to try or have a second attempt at. A quote the speaker mentioned that resonated with me that shows the shift in education was
"Kindling the fire rather than filling the vessel"
this reflects how education today is all about getting the students on board, use them to create the ideas and direction of the lessons, rather than them just coping endless amounts of notes of the board in which the notes are never reread or used effectively. She gave us these four attributes and skills list which reinforced some of the ideas about a 21st Century Learner.

 I have set myself a goal of redoing a couple of my units early on this year and instead of using just powerpoint i want to try and use Prezi again and see if i can actually get past the first part of it, before giving up, Its not enough anymore to just put key points on a slide and think that's going to grasp the students attention, I know when I am being talked to I find things that are consistently changing in front of me, maintain my attention more. On the left you will see an an example of my aviator who you can customize so that it is to your liking, as well as editing the background so that it has one of the students practical pictures instead. Then by simply either talking into a mic or writing a wee script you can reflect on you practical. I thought this was a nifty idea and am hoping this could be quiet a good reflection tool for my junior classes.

A couple of other options I will experiment this year will be Sway - a presentation application that can embed pictures as it has no copy right regulations, You can use as a way to reinforce what u have just covered in Kahoots or notes and Inscrutable which are tutorial videos good to use when you are not always available to get around every kid or don't know something then they can find and watch the tutorial

Session three - A Matter of Taste was with Dr Gei Liam from Danko University. He focused on how we rely on our senses to give us our flavor of our food and put to rest the myth that our tongue has different parts on it that tastes bitter, sweet, sour etc. He demonstrated simple little experiments we can do in our classes to show how the link between smell and taste is significant.

Something that i didn't know was that embryo fluid starts to take on the flavours of the foods that you eat quiet regularly such as garlic, carrots chilli, therefore when born you will find that the child has a stronger liking towards those foods more often than not because they are used to having them in the womb. The third key point i took from this session was the idea of Sensory Branding - you link certain products with other parts of your sensors such as when you walk into Star bucks you smell the coffee.

The last session for the day was with Joanna McMillan about Empowering the next generation for better Health. She went through what she saw as the six main features for better health: Sleep, Activity, Exercise, Drink, Food, Stress

She also talked about her dinner wheel as you see below that is generally 3/4 plant based foods: 1 Plants, 2 Proteins, 3 Smart Grains and 4 Good Fats

Joanna talked a lot about cultural background and environments having a big effect on a persons food choice which wasn't surprising. It was interesting to hear other teachers from around Australia talk about the same issues that we experience all the time at Hornby as well.









Over the following two days I went to numerous other speakers about how to implement a Kitchen Garden into your school, which will be beneficial for when the rebuild is complete to creating a cafe culture in our class rooms which will be useful for the hospitality classes. 









We had two other key note speakers that I found interesting: one was on the obesity epidemic and talking about how communities and individuals need to put pressure on the government to make changes to our advertising of foods, globalization of food. She showed us a great advertisement campaign by coke with the names on the bottle campaign, coke noted that there was an increase of 7% in people now drinking coke, see the video to the left it blows ya mind.





The second speaker we had on the last day was Dr Joel Gilmore who had me in fits of laughter the whole 60minute presentation, he was all about the use of science in the kitchen and looking at the myths of temperature and time of cooking different foods, focusing especially on eggs and steak I've included videos below cause they best show his humor and give you an idea of what he was doing.


My other goal I want to work on is getting the Hospo class more actively involved in the school culture - having their work on display more often and working on a couple of mini projects across subjects (catering arts evenings could be a good start as well as a couple of staff meetings or TOD. I have certainly been re energized by this conference and the passion that many of these staff show in their teaching.