Where to start? Extend What you Value!

I always remember reading in one of Fullan's leadership article "Visions That Blind" the statement,  "Extend what you value".

Fullan quotes Shein, (1985) observation "The process of developing collaborative work cultures is complex. It requires great sophistication for school leaders: to express their own values without being imposing; to draw out other peoples values and concerns; to manage conflict and problem solving; to give direction and to be open at the same time".

I often think we feel locked into organisational systems in terms of the way that we do things, and that these ways often go back to how schools were organised in the 1960s or back in even further. We need to rethink last years  organisational structures in our schools to align with what we want to happen today, to drive our vision around personalizing learning to a reality.

In the article above Fullan expresses the need  to have recruitment action to allow for the development of leading collaborative culture in schools. He contends that teacher professional development based on collaboratively developing the school vision is required in the short and long term. This will allow the development of a collective understanding of the learning vision of the school. The areas of focus he suggests are:

• collaborative inquiry
• reflective practice
• growing technical expertise
• restructuring 

A key organisational event that ticked the boxes above that we employed was to create a new leadership position where the school leader, with prestige of salary and release from classroom teaching would lead professional learning and e-learning (blended learning) throughout the school. Effectively this school leader would map the professional learning, curriculum and ICT use in the school. This was an unusual move for a school in New Zealand of under 400 students at the time. It was pivotal to the first restructure of our infrastructure to support strengthening collaboration and personalising learning and coherence around our vision development. 

We decided a good place to start was to define what we want in terms of teaching and learning. What would that look like if it was in place in every learning area of our school. 

This professional learning collaborative inquiry is ongoing.  The model involves collaborative inquiry, reflective practice, growing technical expertise and restructuring. This professional learning model has developed a strong sense of purposeful teaching and learning practice which has led to new ways of organising teaching and learning. This has supported the process of redesigning old spaces, structures and practices that support our vision of "Engage, Enrich and Empower".

This infrastructure change and inquiry based professional learning is a strong transition component for readiness to move into our new buildings in the future. It also led to other innovative organisational and physical changes that support  transition and coherence of our school vision. These I will explore in the next few posts. I look forward to your thoughts.

  

Organizational culture and leadership: A dynamic view, by Edgar H. Schein. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1985,

Professional Learning Design 2014

I often get asked what does our professional learning at Freemans Bay School look like?

I thought it would be useful to map out what we do for our professional learning and our thinking about why we do what we do.

To support our vision  to "Engage, Enrich, Empower our learners we need to have a professional learning programme that mirrors how learning happens in the classroom. The focus of our learning is based on the inquiry process, future focused learning and strengthening personalising learning for teachers. We are always tweaking what we do - but this is the current outline:

• Cycle of Inquiry and Target Groups 

At risk students, including Maori and Pasifika students are identified each year. Teachers develop an action plan to meet the these learners needs. They are our most at risk students and as teachers, we have an obligation to do our best to accelerated their progress so they can be the best they can be.

Each whanau (teacher team)  creates a data wall with photographs eg Padlet.

At risk student progress / action plans are discussed regularly at whanau meetings.

Reflections on this work is recorded on the teacher action plans and forms part of regular team and across school discussions.

The Black Boxes of teacher and student learning frame our professional discussions as we are interested in what changes have been made in teacher practice as part of the cycle of inquiry and what difference this has made to student learning. As for things to change - teachers have to try new things to hook - especially disengaged students - into learning.

This diagram is taken from "Teacher Professional Learning and Development, Best Evidence Synthesis" Timperley, Wilson, Barrar, Fung, 2007  www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/series/2515/15341

• Professional Learning Groups: 

The professional learning groups are based on future focused / blended / e-learning   to improve student engagement and learning outcomes in a pedagogy that  The PLGs are small groups of teachers from across whanau. (teams) 

This year  GAFE is being introduced to explore how these can support learning and working in our school. This work also ensures that the pedagogy is appropriate for meeting the needs of students in their ever changing world.

The teacher goals and action plans for the PLGs are recorded online on KnowledgeNET our LMS and are reviewed annually..

•  Leadership Development

The Board of Trustees supports teachers extending their university qualifications through Post Graduate studies. This ensures that our leadership team is bringing up to date theory to practice to encourage changes in teacher practice and improved student outcomes. This includes sharing of best practice, collaboration, observations, mentoring and coaching. The leadership team teachers are released regularly for observations and coaching. They encourage their teams to participate in teacher talk to encourage best practice in teaching and learning. The focus on continuing university study is part of our philosophy of being a community of learners and ensuring that our decisions around what we do are based on the latest research around learning.

Ultimately we would like all teachers to have the opportunity to observe and have 'Teacher Talk" converstions with peers. However in a primary school context it is difficult to resource this - unless the teachers themselves can find ways to do this eg CRT time, team sharing students etc.

• Learning Walks

Myself as principal and Deputy Principalscomplete learning walks across the school as well, usually once or twice a term.The purpose of these is to ensure teaching and learning reflects the school vision. To protect and drive the school vision. The leadership team have all completed post grad papers and other professional development around coaching/ mentoring / learning conversations. This work gives our leadership team the opportunity to grow their leadership around teaching and learning.

• E-Learning PD workshops 

The e-learning team has regular staff workshops to support teachers tin the use of a range of technologies used in the school. These workshops are skills based and are about introducing ict skills, practising and developing new ways of personalising learning for students.

• Teacher Reflections

All  staff to complete their on line reflections in KnowledgeNET. This includes reflecting and sharing their learning goals and action plans, reflections on their learning experiences, professional readings as well as providing evidence for RTC attestation.

Students also share their learning goals and reflections on KnowledgeNET. Both processes mirror each other. We want our teachers to be learning the same way our students are learning and visa versa.

Action Learning:

This year we have a focus on Action Learning Inquiry learning. This is driven by a desire to have our learning more personalised and intergrated. Each term teams review  their action programme and plan collaboratively the next terms action learning unit. There are workshops to review and share practice.

Kiwi Sport

As part of our commitment to kiwi sport, we have some kiwi sport skills professional development. These are a lot of fun and good for team building across the whole staff.

Mathematics:

In term three we will commence whole school Pasifika Maths. This PD is informed by  (Quality Teaching for Diverse (All) Learners in Schooling: Best Evidence Synthesis 2003).  This will challenge our thinking in terms of culturally appropriate  pedagogy and give teachers new ideas to trial with their teaching. 

Our professional learning for teachers is aligned with our beliefs about teaching and learning to give traction to our vision of "Empower, Enrich and Engage" all learners in our school.

PERSONALISED LEARNING AT FREEMANS BAY SCHOOL

This year our teachers have more autonomy over their own learning though our teacher professional development programme.

In terms of 'future focused learning" our teachers first task was to consider  different ways that  a range of teachers provide a  personalised learning environment in their classrooms. They looked at a range of online video clips to consider what personalised learning in a classroom looks like, sounds like and feels like.

This clip of Simon Breakspear was a good place to start.

Simon Breakspear: Personalisation as the way forward from EDtalks on Vimeo.

The next step was for our teachers to consider the learning needs of their students and to decide on an area to develop. They are working with other teachers who wish to strengthen in a similar area. They collaboratively developed an action plan to work on over the next six months  in these small professional learning groups. (PLGs).

In developing and implementing the action plan teachers  followed these steps:

Describe what you want to happen and describe how you will know it has happened.
What steps will you take to make this happen?
Map out the times that you expect this to happen
As you complete each step - reflect and record on your online log.

It has taken quite a few weeks to set these PLGs up and to get the action plans started.

This week teachers will be checking in with their PLG  and  will be discussing what changes they have made to their classroom practice to strengthen personalising learning for their students.