Wordle clouds as a way of looking at my freewriting

Not all of the reflective freewriting is up to sharing on this blog – some of it is just intuitive rambling to start me thinking. This kind of writing indeed helps me identify my knowledge in a specific area and helps me generate the questions I need as I dive back into the literature.

I have been using the 750 words web site to give me motivation to write every day. It seems to be working and I may reflect in detail on the influence of that tool in the near future. Meanwhile, if I’m not posting some of what I am writing I will present the wordle cloud as a record of what I’ve been thinking about.

I often use Wordle clouds as a way of looking at a text from a different perspective – somehow breaking it up and jumbling the text like that and emphasizing terms and concepts which are high frequency gives me an additional way in to my thoughts.

Question of the day: Why qualitative research?

 

Incredible Teacher Narrative

The course at Z is going extremely well. I feel as though the 26 teachers participating are involved and eager to try to change things in their writing instruction and that many are thinking about their own learning and really taking ideas and thoughts back to their classrooms.

Last week we had a virtual session and the task I gave was to write a professional narrative connected to the teaching of writing and/or writing with students. Beforehand we discussed the rational of the task and I even brought an example from last year’s group. Many of the participants in this group are not too computer confident and I was worried that they wouldn’t manage finding the virtual campus, posting their stories and responding to others. All in all my worries were unwarranted and most of the teachers wrote and posted narratives. At the moment they are reading and responding to other stories.

The night before this week’s session, I was busy collecting the stories (for future use…) and responding. I respond to each and every narrative and try to be involved in the responses too. Many of my responses at this stage are questions which will help in the revision process to come.

One story made my heart race and brought tears to my eyes. I read it again and again before I wrote a detailed response. Immediately I wrote an email to the teacher author and asked her permission to bring her narrative to the group session. She readily agreed.

O wrote that at our last session she wasn’t able to concentrate – not in my lecture, not on the PowerPoint presentation that went with it and not on the workshop we did together. She said that concentrating on the writing process wasn’t possible for her. O told that that morning she had been on a hike with her class and that at one stage an eight year old boy fell off a cliff. He was extremely lucky that he wasn’t killed and that he was only injured fairly lightly. She told of her experience, of the phone call from the principal telling her that the incident was already reported on the Internet, of the terror, the helplessness and the frustration of not being able to protect her student.

O went home after our session and didn’t sleep all night. She was terrified of walking into the classroom the next morning and facing this reality. The injured child was in hospital and she had a whole classroom of traumatized children to deal with. After hours of deliberation, O remembered what we had been talking about in the course session and decided, at 4 am when she finally got out of bed, to devote the day to writing with her pupils. She decided to spend the day writing with her students to different audiences with different goals.

Lacking confidence, O entered the classroom and after a brief discussion, explained to the pupils what they could do. Some wrote to their injured friend in hospital, some wrote to the people responsible for the hiking trail, some wrote thank you letters to the parents who helped on the hike and helped deal with the complex situation and some wrote rules for behavior on trips outside school. During the writing time, O was free to move between the pupils and talk privately to each and every one of them. She could hear how they were coping and how they were feeling.

The pupils wrote and wrote. O was surprised that even her weakest students, those that usually refrain from writing, were creating important texts. She wrote that she sensed that the act of writing was helping these children process the experience and regain confidence and control. She admitted that the classroom interactions, the writing and the activity helped her regain her self confidence as a teacher. The pupils were so involved in this process that they asked to continue the next day, they had discovered that they enjoyed writing for real purposes and for real audiences. They had experienced writing as a means of sincere self expression.

A few days later O decided to tell this story as her narrative about writing. She told her story bravely and as a result received a lot of positive and supportive feedback from the other teachers. This event has changed the way O sees writing instruction and has changed the way many of her pupils view writing tasks.

One of the questions I asked O was whether she had told her principal about the way she decided to cope in the classroom. She replied that she hadn’t . I suggested she show the principal (if not all the other staff) her narrative – they can all learn from it as we did in the group.

Since reading  O’s story she is with me all the time. I am thinking about her terrifying experience, about her coming to my course after such a traumatic event and not telling anyone and about how she used writing to help her students recover.

Apart from receiving a lot of satisfaction that the materials we discuss in the course are making a real difference in the professional lives of teachers and their pupils, I was excited to see the process of writing itself encouraging the creation of new texts. O described how the writing done by her pupils encouraged her and stimulated her to write and I told her that her narrative had stimulated me to write a narrative of my own. I have no doubt that the writing of many teachers in the course will be enriched by the sharing of O’s story.

In a reflective discussion in her classroom, O told her pupils that she too had written a story after the traumatic event. Her pupils were very curious to hear that their teacher enjoyed the benefits of  writing too.

I still have a lot of thinking to do about the links between O’s story and the learning in our course and about professional narratives being links in a chain, a chain which strengthens and supports both writers and readers.

I am waiting to read the responses on the online forum, to see O’s text revised and to see the influence of O’s story on other narratives being created by teachers in the group.

amud

The location of the hike.

Picture: http://tiyulim.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-post_19.html

Coffee Shop Thoughts

coffee_240700_l

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

Teachers and lack of time

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.

Inquiry into Effective Strategies for Teacher Professional Learning – Victoria

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.  

Inquiry into Effective Strategies for Teacher Professional Learning – Victoria

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.