thesisthoughts

Freewriting 4 -

Well, it is already Tuesday morning and I am up early ready to reflect on my last meeting at K.

As soon as I arrived, two teachers waited for me and extremely politely apologised for their rude behaviour last time. They admitted that although the materials are interesting, they allowed themselves to disconnect and to make lots of noise. The remarked that they were aware of my frustration towards the end of the lesson. Of course I thanked them but told them that I had already decided to make the lessons far more practical and more active. I explained that I am well aware of the difficulty in coming to a four hour lesson, straight after an exhausting day at school.

Before I began, another of their colleagues from school asked to have a few words with all of the participants. From her look I could see that it wasn’t going to be pleasant. In the end we had the discussion she was waiting for before the break and didn’t open the meeting with it.

The first hour or so of the meeting I did differently – I involved the teachers more and lowered my expectations for the material we would cover. There was a friendly, interested atmposphere in the room. Another thing I did was to tell them my expectations more explicitly: “I expect you to take this rubric as an example and go back to school with it. Find a group of teachers and experience building something similar, for your own students, according to your own needs…”

The discussion that teacher wanted to lead was that the course is boring, that she (and all the others, of course) is interested in practical easy solutions to the problems that she faces in the everyday classroom. Theory doesn’t interest her, she wants to learn very simply and quickly what to do in class that will change her students’ attitude and achievement levels in writing.

Of course there are no simple answers and recipes in teaching writing. Writing, in itself, is a complex process. She spoke the whole time in “the royal we” and I was happy that at least a few others took the opportunity to tell her that they see it differently.

“I haven’t received anything I can take back to my classroom in all the meetings we’ve had” she remarked. Others talked about the value of the course, what they have learned, what they HAVE done in their classrooms and the following results.

I explained that maybe I should have given a “try this in your classroom this week” list at the end of each session. I gave several examples of practices which could (and should) already have been tried in the classroom). I understand that my underlying understanding that the teachers are intelligent and motivated and will certainly sift through the experiences, simulations, models and activities, in order to decide what is suitable for their own classrooms. In reality, at least one of the participants was waiting all this time for me to hand out a recipe book or maybe a hand-full of worksheets. I don’t work that way…

Another issue that needs thinking here is what happens when a teacher holds such narrow understandings of learning?

Freewriting 3 -

Yesterday I took a full day in the middle of the week to attend to my studies and to get on with the reading GP suggested. I got up early, got the kids on the go ad then quietly sat down with a hot cup of coffee at the computer. I waited weeks (or probably months) for an opportunity like that.

Often, even when I have a day off or I finish early (which doesn’t happen now that principals and deputy principals have moved into a 40  hour week) I am so snowed in by school tasks that I don’t get to the tasks which are really important to me. One of the thoughts I have been having about teachers and their chronic lack of time is that teachers never “clear the desk”. Teachers never reach a stage that they know they have completed all the tasks awaiting them and that everything is completed. I remember the feeling from the days when our kibbutz school was open all 60 days of the summer break and I used to spend most of them there, in my classroom, preparing the new schoool year. Even then, when the first of September arrived, I had the sense that I was not ready for the new school year. Crazy, isn’t it?

Those “never finished”‘ “always on the run”, “can’t do the same thing twice”, “must rethink that activity” aspects of teaching are what keep it challenging. The pace keeps you lively and involved but…

Why isn’t there more time for reflection, personal learning and reflection? Why do I have to “steal” time in order to devote a bit more to my professional learning?

Out of the three days holiday we had for Purim, one day was devoted to my own professional learning group – Leaders of Professional development in Literacy. We have been meeting together and learning in a formal framework for the past six years. The seconfd day was devoted to professional feedback meetrings with the teachers at school. This year the principal and I are doing the meetings together. It’s going very well but is extremely demanding. As I said, the last day was devoted to reading and summarizing the Victorian report – Inquiry into Professional Leasrning, Feb 2009.

I’m off to get dressed soon and going to school for “Healthy Eating Day” – today’s message is the importance of eaing breakfast. It will be great but… I would prefer to “steal” another day for my studies.

Freewriting 2 – 15 minutes of thinking

Today I’m going to have another go at writing in general about my thoughts on the report before I begin pulling it apart and analyzing it section by section.

There were many points in the report which pleasantly surprised me and many that sound fine in the framework of a government report but it is obvious that when they reach the field they will be completely different. It will be interesting to see how many of the internal conflicts will be resolved. An example of one of these conflicts is the recognition that there are a great variety of PL options and the importance of teacher choice and autonomy on one hand, and the need for control, documentation and quality control on the other. Another is the time and energy which are recommended for investment in PL and the fact that there are no effective practical suggestions for lightening teachers work load in order to make PL an integral part of a teacher’s work load.

The question addressing the connection of teacher learning to measurable student outcomes remains unclear. The committee realises that it is not always possible to evaluate PL by evaluating student achievement levels and also the fact that not all PD aims at changing student achievement levels – behavior management studies are an example of this.

I cannot understand the internal Australian politics – why on earth does each state need a separate policy and separate frameworks for determining teacher advancement and development? I wonder what happens when teachers move interstate? How does this report interact with others I have read recently?

I am interested in the learning opportunities made possible by university – school partnerships and am sorry that there are no such initiatives in my area in Israel – they probably exist in the large cities.

I was happy to see that online options for PL are gradually becoming viable.

The report is long and very detailed and I am interested to see what effect it will have.  

OK, I’m off for 15 minutes of freewriting.

Today I want to discuss the beginning of the Victorian government inquiry into PL for teachers. The report is very long and I have only read the first 40 or 50 pages.

Some of the things I have noticed in the first part of the document are:

• The committee is made up of men only
• All committee members are politicians and not educators
• Education systems overseas which were investigated are: Finland, Scotland and Ontario, Canada.
• The report values professional development for teachers
• The report recognises that the paths to professional learning are varied.
• The report accepts the use of the term PL instead of PD and defines both terms. The report describes PD as activities and frameworks in which PL for educators can occur.
• As far as I can see now, the report is aiming to put PD activities and PL into measurable packages and to achieve some level of control over the learning teachers are doing.
• This control relates to quantity (something which is already accepted practice in Victoria – 100 hours), who is authorised to provide PL , ways in which educators record their PL, etc.
• Probably the two most worrying points I have read up to now are

1. The link being made between teacher learning and student outcomes.
2. The discussion of quality teachers instead of quality teaching, as discussed in the article by Parr.

I think it will be important for me to continue reading the report and read others like it.

As far as I know there is no such report here in Israel and I don’t even know how to look for one. Maybe through the Department of Hadracha. I will check.

The report is very new, dated February 2009 and I am happy that GP recommended it to me. As he said when I was preparing my proposal for application, the international setting is very important.

Here in Israel, as in Austarlia and all over the world it seems, everyone is examining Finland as a result of their high results on the Pisa examinations. I wonder how relevant the comparison is.

I heard about this new report, Writing in the 21st Century, by Kathleen Blake Yancey,  from Yankel on his blog and am very grateful for the link. The paper traces perceptions of writing and theories of teaching writing (Yancey uses the term ‘composition’) through  the 20th century and into the 21st century.

One of the main points she raises is that writing has never been respected or emphasized in society (and education) like reading. An interesting reason for this is presented. Yancey suggests that this is connected to the use of reading to convey messages (social, religious, political…). Reading is associated with control, writing can be used for self control.

Another interesting point is the place reserved for reading in the family and the community. Reading is associated with warm memories of story reading, church gatherings etc and memories of writing are more likely to be associated with difficulty or loneliness. The historical connection between writing and the labour of text production is also discussed.

The place of writing in testing  and the role of testing in the teaching of writing are explored.

I like the way each part of the report concludes with a remark about writing outside school. Despite what happened (or didn’t happen) in writing classrooms, people continued to compose. The same is true today. One of the challenges facing us  as teachers is to learn from our students what they are doing with writing outside the classroom in social contexts a) in order to learn from them about what interests them and motivates them to write and b) to force us to search for writing projects which are based in social contexts and are relevant and exciting.

New models of teaching writing must see writing as an intellectual activity done in social contexts. If we use the technologies available to us and believe in ourselves as teachers and our pupils as developing writers, the sky is the limit. The author uses a term coined by Deborah Brandt, “self-sponsored writing”. I wonder how we can give this writing more attention in the classroom in order to encourage it, applaud it and allow it to motivate our students in their “school sponsored writing”.

As I experiment with blogging in the classroom, I am convinced that that has the potential to form part of a new curriculum which takes into account that writing has changed, is changing and that many of our students are actually writers.

An article called: PD Pet Peeves: Teachers Misbehaving, appeared this week in Teacher Magazine. The author, John Norton, is a member of the Teacher Leaders Network, a national program of the Center for Teaching Quality. 

The article discusses the behavior of teachers in PD contexts and the author explores the reasons teachers are often rude and disruptive when they attend workshops and lectures.

I have also recently discussed the frustration I feel when running a workshop or seminar and there is so much talking going on that time is wasted and I can’t do what I planned with the teachers.

Another problem is that occasionally teachers attack me (or others providing PL frameworks) and blame us for all the problems in schools and in the Education Department. I have no control over the large number of pupils in classes or the demands placed on teachers but they see me as responsible.

If I look closely at the “noise”, it is usually participants continuing to discuss an idea I presented. The problem is that they prefer to tell their neighbors what they are thinking than share with the whole group. Occasionally angry responses emerge when teachers don’t believe that what I am presenting can be achieved in the classroom. This always bothers me as I try to bring examples which are classroom tried and tested. In my last meeting at K, one of the teachers became agitated when I pointed out that in the National Literacy Curriculum, it says that teachers should believe that  all pupils are capable of becoming proficient writers. “That is totally unrealistic” she remarked.

Here is one answer to the question Why so many teachers behave badly in learning situations:

“… As to why, Nancy suggested that “teachers have been conditioned to understand that they are the most important person in the room–to talk over kids, to ‘grab the microphone,’ to speak without thinking. It’s the way we work. We’re in charge of the interaction, all day long, so it’s not surprising that we are not silent or intimidated when we become the ‘class.’ But I agree with those who say that old-fashioned courtesy trumps anybody’s desire to be entertained or catch up on conversation.”…”

Maybe that’s part of it?

It is clear to me that I must constantly reflect on my practice to explore why teachers are uninvolved or irritated while attending my sessions. While I won’t take all the blame personally, the way I have planned the meeting may be part of the problem.