thesisthoughts

Yesterday on the way to Z I had time to stop at a coffee shop for a break. I knew I would have time to do some work so I brought a book on teaching writing and my notebook for free writing. When my sandwich and coffee arrived I had to decide what I would do. I decided to free write on a topic worrying me at the moment and as a result made a decision which turned out to be an important one.

I wrote:

“I have been thinking a lot about cutting the course down from 60 hours to 30 hours. I can see myself making a lot of mistakes. At the moment it is irrelevant that I don’t agree with the cut in hours or that I am frustrated that I had no say in the matter. What is relevant now is how I choose to use those 30 hours available to me and I how I make them significant enough for the teachers to come back for more.

I must be wary of trying to pack too much into too little time. What I can see happening is me racing through the “material” and not letting the teachers talk, collaborate on and process what is being learned. Slow down should be my message to myself. Giving the teachers time to discuss what they have been doing in the classroom since the last session is not a waste of time – it is reflection, it is socially processing the new knowledge.

If each teacher presents her peers with a short oral narrative on something she is doing in her classroom or reflects aloud on questions she is dealing with, these must be seen as real learning activities.

I believe that in this way, the teacher participants will be more active in their learning, they will be taking responsibility for putting new knowledge into practice. They will possibly be made more aware of their learning.

last year at K there were a few teachers who complained that the course was too theoretical. They weren’t actively involved and didn’t understand that the activities and strategies presented could and should be explored in the classroom. If I had given 10 minutes at the beginning of each session for discussion in small groups, they would have heard what their peers were experiencing.”

When I finished my free writing (and my snack), I made a decision to change the timetable for the session.  I really had planned too much. After the session I was convinced that I had made the right decision. The discussions and the writing exercises really were essential.

This decision will mean that that there will be topics I don’t touch this year but tht is realistic when I remember that I only have 30 hours…

 Image: http://www.everystockphoto.com/photo.php?imageId=240700

Yesterday I opened course number 2 for the present school year, close to home, at A. I heard, ahead of time, that they had closed the enrollment (at 30) because there were too many teachers but in fact there were only 26 in the group. I was so worried that there would be a large group that I planned the session a bit differently.

My main problem in planning the opening session was that I knew that a few of the teachers had been present when I did a session for DK last year in her course at the same centre. When I stood in for her and did some introductory activities and a lecture on writing, I knew I would have a problem if the same teachers enrolled in my course. On the one hand I knew the taste of the course would encourage them to enrol but on the other hand, I wouldn’t be able to return to the introductory activities.

The group is very different to that in Z in that many of these teachers have been in contact with me in the past. At least 3 have studied in my courses on inclusion and four are from my school. At least 10 others teach at schools in which my professional learning colleagues work.

I haven’t had time to read their questionnaires yet but it will be interesting. I particularly want to read why they chose this course.

When I arrived at the centre I saw something that worried me greatly. There were teachers standing in a line and the receptionist was handing them a big folder (binder) of pages advertising courses and the teachers were choosing according to categories like “Oh, for this one I don’t need to use a computer” or “Great, this one finishes by…”. Is that how educators should be choosing their professional learning? Is that what happens when teachers are coerced into taking two 30 hr courses in a year? I want to hope that nobody chose my course for those kinds of reasons.

When we got to the stage when I asked the teachers to try out “looping” there was all over agreement and cooperation. Maybe the timer I brought did the trick? I asked them to free write on the topic of “Difficulties in Teaching Writing”, a topic they can all relate to. I put the clock on for three minutes and asked them to write quietly without stopping. Then I asked them to stop, to circle the 5 most important words they had written. I then gave them another three minutes on the clock to continue writing, this time concentrating on those five central terms. Apart from the teacher who corrected maths exams throughout the whole session (3 hours!), they were all quiet and did quite a bit of writing.

This wider participation may have been due to several reasons:

• The teachers were trying out a strategy to be used in the classroom
• I wrote on the program for the course that teachers would be expected to write
• It is that kind of group…

I told them that the discussion on how they felt during the writing and how they reacted to the task would be in the virtual campus so I better set up the discussion group quickly. There is no doubt that I will find the 30 hour time limit frustrating. I need to be careful that it isn’t always the collaborative work and the discussions that I skip.

This week I have my second session at Z – I had a few email responses which were very positive.

I have just finished reading one of the second hand books I bought from Better World Books.

15 minutes free writing:

I was surprised to find this book in the catalogue and even more surprised when I began reading it. This narrative was written ten years ago but very much reflects the type of work I am doing and the type of texts I am producing. 

Miller Power works (worked?) with students learning to be teachers and writing teachers and taught them methodology through writing. Her course was based on the students reflecting and writing narratives and on the author responding at length to the stories which appeared in journals and assignments.

I quickly connected to Miller Power’s style and chose to read this book without pencil in hand, something I rarely do. There was something about the name of the book and the opening texts which signalled to me that this short book would be read and reread by me.

There are a variety of texts in the book, many written by students.

Some of the important messages for me at this stage are:

• Somebody else wrote of her experiences teaching writing teachers to write. There are many more texts out there waiting for me to discover them.
• It is extremely interesting to read narratives of someone else’s work, somewhere else in a different context. Many details are different but many of the dilemmas, difficulties and triumphs are similar.
• Jumping to conclusions about students or teachers is a terrible mistake. listening is the only real way to avoid it. (It relates to my conclusion that I must spend much more time and effort getting to know the teachers and for them to gain trust in each other, early on in the course).
• Very often personal narratives which seem unrelated at first glance, turn out to be very relevant to teaching writing.
• The view that writing is a born trait is more common than I thought it was.
• A short course, CAN make a difference, though not always.
• Our own experiences can and should be utilized in our teaching.

I promise there will be more…

Miller Power, B. (1997). Long roads, short distances: Teaching writing and writing teachers.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

“… To foster such discussions, professional development leaders must help teachers to establish trust, develop communication norms that enable critical dialogue, and maintain a balance between respecting individual community members and critically analyzing issues in their teaching (Frykholm, 1998; Seago, 2004).  

This week I ran a workshop for my group at K. I was pleasantly surprised beforehand that so many of the participants did writing activities in their classrooms and sent me examples of student texts.

After thanking those that made the effort to send me material for the workshop, I explained that our aim is to learn from the students’ writing and to experience examining texts looking through “positive glasses” and not through the “groan, spelling mistake, terrible writing…” glasses. Our aim was to look at what the students KNOW about writing, rather than point out heir problems. I asked the teachers to treat the work of their colleagues with sensitivity and respect.

The workshop wasn’t bad and I had plenty of positive feedback from the participants but after reading the article by Borko, yesterday, I understood something that is starkly missing in the course – a real feeling of being a learning community. I can’t really blame the size of the group or the participants because in N the same situation exists (though less so).

I must spend a lot of time and energy at the beginning of the course forming a group, gaining trust from the teachers, hearing far more from them about what happens in their classrooms. I must also think hard to determine ways that the online section of the course (which incidentally has more discussion between the teachers themselves on their practice – through the use of teaching narratives) can help foster trust and security within the group.

I am worried that one of the teachers felt badly about the way questions were asked and the way others saw the work of her students. I have made a note to talk to her. I read here yesterday that if teachers come to a course sure that their practice is perfect, no learning will take place. It is my responsibility to help those teachers on their road to questioning and learning.

I used to give one teacher 15 minutes or so of each meeting to present something she does in her classroom. This was always popular with the participants but the time given was really was only to share ideas. I never dared use the time for the teacher to raise dilemmas or share difficulties or for the participants and I to critically evaluate the ideas or practices for the benefit of everyone’s learning.

This is an area which definitely deserves more thought and discussion.

That’s it for now…

Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain [Electronic version]. Educational Researcher, 33(3), 3-15.

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.