Changes in my practice

                           

                     



Reflection
I am not a natural scholar. Study, research and professional reading does not come easy to me. Therefore, in Week 2 when we had to read 'Towards Reconceptualising Leadership', I honestly nearly had a heart attack. The memory of those long nights I spent at varsity wading through books and articles when everyone else was out, came flooding back to me. 'Oh My God', I remembered - 'that's right, I'm not good at this!'
Abject terror set in when I failed one of the papers - I think I am the only person to have actually done this. The Lit Review - never again thanks. My take home advice for anyone thinking about doing Mindlab - do it Summer. Winter can be quite long and depressing when you are up to your eyeballs in reading and assignments.

HOWEVER

Now that we are at the end of this journey, I cannot believe how valuable the Mindlab has been. Mindlab is hands down the best PD I have ever done. It has ignited a fire in me for professional growth. I have really enjoyed most of the topics and I am already applying them to my classroom practice (gamification, interdisciplinary teaching, followership, flipped classroom to name just a few), and many of the readings I keep with me for reference (Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching (Bolstad et al 2012), Innovating Pedagogy (2016), Tātaiako (MoE ,2011) also just a few).
Without a doubt, the most valuable learning I am taking from the course is the 21st century skills. I call them my C skills - Collaboration, Creativity, Critical Thinking, and being Connected. I wrote my Lit Review about the 21st century skills and I have shared the ITL 21cld rubrics with our staff. I also appreciate the World Economic Forum's 21st century skills graphic that includes character traits.

In this week's reading, Osterman and Kottkamp (1993) comment that the reflective practice approach to professional development, such as we have been undertaking in Mindlab, will facilitate behavioural change via self awareness. I completely agree with their assertion that our process has been collaborative and holistic, and we are action learners. They compare our journey to that of traditional PD, where learners are passive consumers of standardised knowledge. How many times have we all attending PD and left full of great ideas, but no action follows?

Beyond all else is the collegiality that has come out of this course. What a fantastic group of people to ride this wave with.

So thank you themindlab by Unitec, it has been a rollercoaster ride and my teaching practice has been changed forever.

Changes 

Criteria 9: Respond effectively to the diverse and cultural experiences and the varied strengths, interests, and needs of individuals and groups of ākonga.
I really connected with the cultural responsiveness reflections we did in Week 28. The Geneva Gay video was a stand out for me. While I am culturally respectful, I have some way to go to become truly  culturally responsive. I am committed to working harder to honour the tātaiako competencies in Ka Hikatia. Although these competencies have been developed to guide our Māori learners, as Professor Bishop says "What is good for Māori is good for everyone."

Criteria 6: Conceptualise, plan, and implement an appropriate learning programme.
Many of my blogs and assignments have referred to the new build ILE I am lucky enough to be teaching in with two colleagues next year, using an integrated curriculum. I have done a lot research into STEAM versus STEM curriculum, and our team is dedicated to including Arts and PE in our new curriculum to motivate and engage our Maori learners. I really enjoyed last week's supplementary video on the TIP curriculum being delivered in Los Angeles. I am so excited to be involved in the evolution of this curriculum at grass roots level. 

Dreaming
I haven't considered a next step in my professional learning beyond applying the layers of Mindlab learning in my practice and sharing it with our staff.
I would like to learn more about my own leadership and followership styles, and see how I can be a better leader and follower.

But for now, I had better start my reports.

Osterman, K. & Kottkamp, R.(1993). Reflective Practice for Educators.California.Cornwin Press, Inc. Retrieved on 7th May, 2015 from http://www.itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/files.

Ministry of Education (nd). Practising teacher Criteria and e-learning . Retrieved from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Professional-learning/

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEFUSA_NewVisionforEducation_Report2015.pdf

https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Tataiako.pdf

http://proxima.iet.open.ac.uk/public/innovating_pedagogy_2016.pdf

As a primary school teacher, I felt it only appropriate to draw a large, gaudy, multi-coloured map to show my interpersonal and professional interdisciplinary connections. It would have been even better if I'd had a huge piece of paper and whiteboard markers - yes, whiteboard markers, because no-one ever remembers the  vivids, so we suck every bit of ink out of the poor old whiteboard markers - and then ideally I would have blu tacked the map onto a window when I'm done.
After all, this is how we roll at primary. We love to arrow our connections and talk about who's going to do what. We like to leave it up for a while and let it percolate. When mind mapping we will even alter the size and thickness of our arrows to show the strength and importance of those connections. My map shows my interpersonal as well as interdisciplinary connections, for two good reasons: Firstly, at primary level we are in the fortunate position of almost always teaching in an interdisciplinary fashion. Professionally, we share ideas, expertise, resources, offer advice - 'buddy up'. The content of our programmes reflects a desire to marry ideas, to build knowledge bridges and strengthen concepts. Having discussed these notions with our secondary colleagues, it is clear they are frustrated by the inability to integrate their subject areas. The motivation to do so is strong, but the practicalities  of planning and in particular, assessment, make it nearly impossible; Secondly, the whakatauki 'He tangata, he tangata, he tangata - 'tis people,'tis people, 'tis people' is so important in schools. I don't see myself as just Me. I'm a collection of mes, as evidenced in my graphic, but I'd be nobody without my people. I value every connection I have within this wonderful web of  people. I would like to think I am valued also.

From my interdisciplinary map, I am choosing my ILE CoP group to expand upon my near future plan. As I reported on in my first blog, we are a group of 3 experienced teachers coming together in a new build ILE next year. We will be delivering an integrated curriculum. STEAM has been our main driver. Although we will have our own guardian classes, our 90 students will be flexibly grouped across all learning experiences.

The power of interdisciplinary programmes such as STEAM are well documented. In Week 2 of our Mindlab journey we were introduced to the 21CLD rubrics. We learned that for students to truly construct knowledge, they should have learning goals in more than one academic subject and in real life problems. I found the TIP curriculum, as documented in this Road to Success clip really motivating. The idea that when students view real life problems within a multi faceted programme, they are more able to transfer knowledge and view problems from a variety of perspectives, is a powerful reason why we have chosen to implement such a curriculum. Dr Deana McDonagh refers to this widening of perspectives as a broadening of one's empathic horizon by cross pollination of the ideas we form when studying a theme across different disciplines - stretching our rubber band of understanding.

Our plan for an interdisciplinary curriculum has been developing for the last few months and we meet regularly to tease out our ideas and make sure our pedagogy is strong, so that the benefits for our learners are authentic and sound. Our first step was to identify our own 'superpowers' and discuss how we saw our strengths fitting into our team curriculum. The interests and needs of our students stand side by side in this process, but of course we won't know what they are until early next year, so we wait with excitement now to start our new journey.