A few quick New Years resolutions!

This will be short and sweet.I don't usually make , or keep, New Years resolutions but this year will be different!So hear goes.This year I will pull back from working in schools. Over the years, beginning in the sixties, I have worked with countless people, influenced some but only really worked with a dozen or so like minds - and most of these people a number of years ago. I will just keep up with my reading ,blogging and writing. I still have one major presentation to make late in January and will pick my presentations in the future.I am going to put my energy into my garden which is becoming my latest enthusiasm - I have built several bridges and walkways and planted lots of new plants. I intend to spend an hour a day in my garden.I am...

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The future lies with creative teachers!

The above photos were sent to me by a very creative teacher and are the result of on tern work with a year 3/4 class.I am more convinced than ever that real educational progress depends almost entirely on tapping the originality and innovative thinking of such teachers.Not curriculums developed by distant experts - they need to be kept as simple frameworks for teachers to work within.Not principals - their job is to create the conditions to encourage 'their' teachers to take learning risks and try things out within agreed frameworks . Not all this ridiculous testing and accounting for 'achievement' - measuring never made the pig fatter . And not phonics.Not college of education advisers - they are simply educational mercenaries passing on contracted...

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Posted in: Action Plans and Lessons,Creative teaching,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Time to stop all the standards nonsense - we are teachers not accountants.

This slide is directly from the Finland Ministry of Education.This is from a USA teachers blog called: ( slightly abridged)'Advice to student teachers :Hold fast to your dreams'.I hope you remember what it’s like to be a kid because I think that’s just what we need to "make a difference."It is all about human curiositySometimes my three-year-old son, Max, complains about going to school. And I so passionately preach about how he needs to enjoy it while he can, while the scent of magic still lingers in the air. He creates without boundaries, he discovers without opinion, and he intrinsically cooperates. Most three-year-olds want to be in school. Damien Cooper, formative assessment guru, puts it like this: "Human beings come into this world innately...

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Posted in: Big Picture,change,Leadership,Ministry NZCurric,national standards,Personalized Learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Re -integrating language teaching with reality

In an inquiry based classroom every aspect of language teaching could well relate to the current study - reading to develop understanding, writing thoughts , descriptions and theories, and lots of oral language, drama , poetry. This was once the case in many schools until literacy become so dominant and largely divorced from the rest of the curriculum.The need to express ideas is an evolutionary ability which made posible a wide range of diverse and creative human cultures.It is this need to comprehend and express meaning that should underpin all language experiences in classrooms. Over the past decades the language experience approach, once a feature of New Zealand classrooms, has been reduced to formulaic literacy approaches. International...

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative teaching,Integrated Learning,Ministry NZCurric,national standards,teaching and learning

This thing called mathematics!

Is this work by Escher art or maths? Increasingly once fixed lines between subject areas are becoming blurred.Over the years there have many attempts to develop a more active math programme but for all this far too many students leave school with anything but a positive feeling for the subject. The introduction of the mystery of algebra finishes most of us off.With this in mind one wonders why maths takes up so much time in the primary school day. One reason is tradition - left over from the era of the three Rs. Another is that politicians seem fixated on literacy and numeracy as the key to success. No doubt they are important but they need to be seen as foundation skills to be used in learning contexts. And of course schools simply do what...

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Posted in: inquiry learning,Ministry NZCurric,project based learning,teaching and learning

What is it all about?

Future learner need two attributes to soar into the future - to become the 'confident life long learners' of the New Zealand Curriculum - openness to new experiences and skepticism about whatever is presented to them. And to motivate them to fly they need their gifts and talents developed.As the year winds up teachers and students will be facing up to leaving the communities they have established during the year. It will be both celebration of achievement and a time of sadness. And of course not all students will have committed themselves to being a full part of the class. What will have made made positive learning communities will be based on the mutual respect developed between the teacher and each learner and the shared culture established...

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Posted in: Personalized Learning,teaching and learning

An inquiry based classroom

'How is your inquiry programme going?' seems to be a common question asked by principals these days.Behind such a question seems the idea that inquiry is another programme to include in the school day along with literacy and numeracy.Two things are wrong with this.Firstly inquiry isn't a programme to simply be added to the daily programme rather it is a disposition ( their 'default' way of learning) that children are born with until it is 'flipped' by life experiences and by schooling.Secondly the teachers I have admired over the years see inquiry as the basis for all learning - literacy and numeracy included. Today many teachers ( and schools) have allowed literacy and numeracy to all but 'gobble up' the entire school day. National Standards...

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Posted in: Creative teaching,Creativity,inquiry learning,Integrated Learning,Leadership,Personalized Learning,project based learning,teaching and learning

Why is inquiry learning a problem?

I was visiting local school when a teacher of a year 3/4 class called out to me to come and see her Kowhai Study. It was motivated, she said, by a previous blog I had written. Made my day! Thanks Sheila.Link for an inquiry lesson on flax:(Inquiry learning)(Links to other inquiry blogs)At a social function yesterday I overheard a comment made between a couple of principals and a deputy principal about inquiry learning.'Where are you up to with inquiry learning?' one said.The other explained about having recently had a TOD on the subject taken by a visiting expert and how they were having her back to plan the next terms inquiry units. One school was following Kath Murdock's model.I offered my thoughts saying, 'What was the issue? Inquiry is the...

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Posted in: Big Picture,change,Creative Schools,inquiry learning,Leadership,project based learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

An idea whose time has come; schools and teachers working together

'Developing Teacher Leaders' by Frank Crowther, Stephen Kaagan , Margaret Fergusson and Leone Hann, with a forward by Andy Hargreaves. The book provides evidence of the importance of redefining leadership so as to work in parallel with classroom teachers.The book calls for acknowledging teachers as the key to lasting change and asks for a renaissance of the teaching profession. Hargreaves's preface states that 'educational leadership is at a crossroads'.As the focus is increasingly on student learning then developing the capacity of teachers as leaders is an imperative. Teacher creativity, not imposed standardisation, is central. Teacher creativity needs to be celebrated, recognised and shared.Principals who can share leadership with their...

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative Schools,Leadership,Rants and Raves,School Vision

Who am I ?

Photo from film Boy?The things all teachers should keep in the forefront of their minds is how the classroom experiences they provide contribute their students developing a positive sense of self - a positive learning identity - and positive feelings, or memory, about what they are learning.All to often the demands placed on schools to 'deliver' and 'account' for progress in literacy and numeracy are the priority. A look at how time is apportioned in classrooms indicates schools priorities.The experiences students have at school determine how they see themselves for better or worse. We all have questions in the back of our minds about: Who am I? Where am I going? Am I worth it? Life, and learning, is about developing a positive story of themselves.This...

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Posted in: Big Picture,Personalized Learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

We have lost so much the past 50 years. We need to return leadership back to creative teachers.

As the end of year, and my career in education, draws near time for some reflection. And it not all good and, with National Standards on the horizon, getting worse but it is not the time to meekly comply.The rise and fall, and possible rise again of the leadership of creative teachers.It was in the sixties when creative classroom teachers working within a shared educational philosophy were the real leaders. In contrast to all the structural changes that have happened since the advent of Tomorrow's Schools the role of the teacher has been neglected. There are some, such as Professor Frank Crowther, University of Queensland, who says that, since the 1970s, the professional respect for teachers has diminished. This blog reflects his thoughts....

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Posted in: Big Picture,change,Leadership,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Do not put trust in the Ministry of Mis-education

My greatest inspiration for the ideas I share can be linked back to the wonderful work done by Elwyn Richardson in his small rural Northland school in the 1950s. If any reader does not have a copy of his book 'In The Early World' they ought to get hold of a copy from the NZCER.Elwyn established his classroom as a true community of scientists and artists who , for their curriculum, explored their own personal worlds and their rich local environment. This was very experimental work and he was given protection from inspectorial grading ( the equivalent of today's ERO) to develop his creative philosophy. At the same time, and in the same area, a group of Maori schools worked with the Art Advisers to develop similar ideas.At the heart of these small...

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Posted in: Creative teaching,Creativity,Leadership,Personalized Learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Wounded by School

Kirsten Olsen author of 'Wounded by School'.Today a friend of mine, who works with students the school system is unable to cope with, returned a book I loaned him.There is no doubt, in my mind, that school is not aways a positive experience for all children. This is all the more so when one takes into account the current focus on achievement gaps, accountability demands, National Standards, obsessive testing ,and setting of targets, all concerned with a narrow range of academic abilities to the detriment of other equally important areas of learning. This accountability surveillance culture harms both creative students and teachers. As a result this distortion distracts teachers from the biggest problem schools face the one of disengagement...

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative Schools,Ministry NZCurric,national standards,Personalized Learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Inquiry Learning; an educational agenda for a future era.

Professor Brian Cox ( Chief Science Adviser to the UK Government) doing science on the Jonathon Ross TV Show. Science , according to Cox, is being comfortable with the unknown- a search for questions in answers. Almost the opposite to what current education is all about with the heavy formulaic emphasis on teachers' intentions, criteria and pleasing the teacher through feedback. Conformity rather than creativity.The future requires developing schools as communities of inquiry.1 What is inquiry learning?Inquiry learning is the innate way humans learn from birth unfortunately this 'default' mode is all too often ‘flipped’ by schooling writes Daniel Pink’s in his book 'Drive'.In this respect scientists and artists are people who have not lost...

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative Schools,I,inquiry learning,Integrated Learning,Ministry NZCurric,Personalized Learning,project based learning,teaching and learning