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.
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.
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.
Okay so this post is really old, I had started writing it but never finished it, so i guess it gives me an opportunity to reflect on this and see if it actually occurred or not.
(previously written)
I have decided that in this half of the year I really want to ensure I have a balance between committing my time to many school activities like school camps, Japan trip and Geography field trip as well as developing myself professionally, so i joined the kapa haka group. I have wanted to learn the school haka for a long time now and never really had the confidence to put myself out there and try it, the same old feelings of being out of your comfort zone and mucking up in front of the kids, especially with something like performing the hake (a culturally sensitive activity which i know means a lot to our Maori students). Below on the right are the words to the haka, while on the left are the words to the waiata. Both have been written by Matua, with relevance to the community and the students of Hornby High, hence where the discomfort and nerves come when performing it.
(now)
Unfortunately I was unable to continue with Kapa Haka in term 4 as the importance of the students getting their work completed before leaving had to be priority, however, i really enjoyed the opportunity to challenge my speaking of another language, and doing it side by side with our students and at times with them as my teacher. I loved seeing the confidence of our senior kids as they thrived in this environment, envious that i didn't see that same enthusiasm applied in all areas of their school life. It makes me wonder how much more can i do to allow these kids to trust me, to allow them to see that we are trying to help them and get the best out of them, for their benefit, I have know for years that our kids are happy to not try and fail, rather than taking that risk and failing anyway. What will build resilience in our students so that they see what we see in them..
Anyway back to the balance of lifestyles of work vs self, i still see this as important, but i think i care too much about student success that i continue to put my welfare to a side and focus on them. This year saw the last of my mentee kids leave hornby and will see me for the first time in 8 years without a student to mentor, its a weird feeling but perhaps a sign that 2017 is a year to focus on myself a little bit, swing that balance a little bit back in my favour, especially as the school goes through both curriculum, staff and building changes over the next few years.
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Tuesday 3rd
Had a go at doing expert groups with my childcare class today because I thought it would get them communicating a little more and the activity forces them to work co-cooperatively with each other. However i felt like it was an epic fail. the students were so reluctant to participate that they individually read the article and wrote their own notes, then when they had to report to others they just gave them the sheet to copy.
A positive about this activity though was the third part , where they had to go into pairs and one reported - filling the gap, while the one person had the sheet of words that best filled the gaps. working together they had to finish this sheet using the knowledge they received during the expert activity. they fact they were able to complete this showed they took in the information they had read about but was not able to share it confidently.
In reflection it is certainly an activity i will try again as it allows the students to take ownership of their learning, confidence in sharing ideas and the ability to write notes in a format that allows them to understand it
Staff Meeting on Monday (30th) was a co construction activity that involved the staff answering a survey on examples of what they see as the 12 teaching criteria. It was interesting having the opportunity to actually reflect on how am i showing this, what am i doing in my class to demonstrate this. If you click on the words form then you will see some of my answers
November 14th
Today has been a difficult day at school due to the 7.5 earthquake that struck at 12am this morning. Most of the staff have looked pretty shattered coming to school, but having that normality and a sense of routine is important for our community and our students. NCEA exams are continuing as normal, which is hard for the students, as like us many of them will have little sleep last night. One thing we learnt from the 2011 earthquakes is that ensuring the our students feel a sense of being cared for is important, hence the relational side to teaching is extremely important in these events. Also its important that as a teacher today you are flexible, as well as understanding of students moods and unpredictability.
A week a go today we had a staff meeting that was apart of our Uru Manuka Program. The main focus they have decided on for the school at this stage is to establish our use of blogger. We had to set up a picture that we could install on our sites that would assist our kids with producing a worthwhile and meaning full blog that will give good constructive feedback. Below is what i designed for both my hospo and home ec students
I believe that using these steps the students should be able to understand the requirements that are need for them to met the criteria for each assessment.
Friday, August 19, 2016
Saturday 20th August
So I finally have time to sit back and reflect on a busy few weeks to the start of term three. I even had to take a day off school this week because I was physically exhausted from a busy weekend ( which I'll get to) and my health was fairly poor.
After spending week one getting back into the swing of things after Japan, the school ball was next on the agenda. It was really nice to be a part of this group of young students, because so much was run by and organized by them. It was a fab evening and I've included some photos below of the evening with staff and my mentee
The next event was leadership camp, this is certainly a camp that I enjoy going on. The students are more mature and gave generally come to camp for the right reason. The are wanting to give back to the school, they are ready to take on responsibility around the school and they are starting to appreciate things that have been done for them over the previous three or four years. This year for me was a lot different as I was unable to get current hospo kids to help me out. So I posted it out on Facebook if anyone was interested. What happened next blew me away and words can not explain the appreciation I felt, but three former student all who had been taught by me and we're now working in the hospitality industry offered to give up their days off to come help me. It has left me speechless but at the same time reinstalled my faith in the fact that, as teachers we may not get that instant gratification that we often want from our students, but that at times those special moments come later in life. These three students arrived, took over the kitchen and just got stuff done they truly are amazing.
Another thing about this year's camp was that it was the first time all form teachers and dean's of the year group were present throughout. We decided it would be cool to take class photos to remember this time together. I really enjoyed being able to get away and re establish that relationship with my form class which had changed since their junior years where u saw them so regularly. I had a core group of kids who I class as my originals, as my class has had so many changes and coming and goings over the past four years. It's so nice to see these guys grow and mature and stepping up into these leadership roles. I can't wait until their final year next year to see what they can achieve.
On a personal development I have started attending the kapa haka lessons to learn the school haka. It was a really special moment because when this group performs it always gives me chills. But to finally be apart of it and see these kids thriving on this environment and seeing them excel as teachers and helping me as the learner was very refreshing. I look forward to attending more of these and my first performance of the full haka
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.
