So I give up! I made it halfway! The 100 days of learning still continue but the documentation through daily blogging has fizzled out. I have my notes, scribbled all around, with the hope that I will some day document my learning experiences but realistically speaking that is a long long way off! So I have decided to go with the flow and update whenever I can. Blogging...like religion and social media, is created by us humans to better our lives and should not be dictating our lives in exchange. Quite certain about that!
In the last few weeks, some of the mini lessons that I have enjoyed are to do with Maths and the Arts. The more I re-discover Maths, I am convinced about Maths being a part of the Arts. I have watched a number of videos, tried to find patterns in things around me and listened to Mathsartists. I loved this TED talk on the Magic of Fibonacci numbers . I would love to return back to the classroom to share my new-found love with children. Will definitely try it if I can with the senior grades if I get a chance/time.
One of the things that I am happy about was the way we followed up with the Maths workshop at school. Some staff were kind enough to share their experiences in the staff meeting and we managed to pull together lessons from different year levels. It was good to see how teachers were using their experiences and learning to run inquiry lessons in Year 1, 3 and 4. The good part about the sharing was that it inspired more staff to share their work. I am happy receiving emails now where staff members are keen to share their work with the rest. This bodes well for a positive school culture.
I often examine and re-examine my role at work. I enjoy leadership but I am still growing and finding my balance. I am conscious that I am moving from a managerial view of leadership to that of leading and capacity building. Read an intensely thought provoking blog post re curriculum design by Grant Wiggins, who never fails to amaze me with his astute observations. His blog post on Curriculum leaders not managers raises a number of questions and throws the reader into an uncomfortable position.
I have now looked at a number of models PBL, Inquiry-based curriculum, Genius Hour (http://www.geniushour.com/), iTime, etc. and I have done a number of class visits as well as self-reflections. For any of these models to be successful, the teachers HAVE to learn to read and understand the curriculum and be comfortable in letting it go! A well- written curriculum is vital for the new staff but it needs much more than classroom management and curriculum delivery to develop successful learning engagements for children.
Empathetic relationships with children and their families, hunger for learning and 'listening' to/reading the current contexts, in my view are three very important factors for successful teaching and learning.
I have not heard of and cannot imagine a successful classroom where the teacher leaves the children as soon as she/he comes out of the classroom. Most often than not a teacher's students are 'my children'. Every year teachers talk of how good this batch is and how we'll never have a batch this good again! And yet, every year we get connected to the new bunch and take pride in their success and feel hurt at their failures. Empathetic relations are important to understand children's contexts and the hurdles as well as possibilities in their learning journeys. The weekend recounts, the little stories during class conversations, the show and tell sessions, the text to self connections during guided reading, the characters they build in narrative writing, the way they talk to their friends, adults, the way they respond on stage, to questions, to open-floor opportunities, all help in building the stories of the children in class. Parent-teacher meetings, emails, communication and meeting parents in a social context helps complete the picture. The important role of the educator then, is not to judge the context but build on and through it.
Hunger for learning... I cannot repeat this enough. The hungry teacher is effective! Teachers are greedy beings, usually! A new resource probably generates equal excitement in the teacher as a pay rise! Ok, now I am exaggerating but just a little. All teachers love collecting teaching resources. But then there are those that are on a constant lookout for research, for new developments and new strategies as well. They regularly read, upgrade, up-skill and are on a constant lookout for what works well in other classes. They modify, better and apply their learning in their own classrooms as they sift through myriads of information they find on the net, in their colleagues' rooms, in staffroom conversations, in journals and magazines and believe it or not even through staff meetings! They can be viewed as over competitive, energy-driven and in Indian lingo called 'enthu-cutlets'! What I find fascinating about these teachers is that their enthusiasm for learning gets modelled in their teaching. It transfers into their students subliminally. When a student shares a new information the sense of wonderment and curiosity is as evident in the teacher as the other students. This helps build a culture of learning. Students are bound to thrive in such classroom cultures.
Last but not the least important is the listening to or reading the context. The knowledge component of the written curriculum has a lag, simply because the world is changing too rapidly! It is important to read/listen to the context. While the basic understanding of the skills in language and maths including reading, writing and maths operations remain important, the once considered essential components of the disciplines are rapidly changing. Being aware of those changes is equally important as being aware of the written curriculum. And how does one do that?
For one.... develop the hunger for learning! More to come..thoughts galore in my head!
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