Task ten: Where I am, where I'm going

I'll start at the end. I've signed on at Unitec to complete a Masters in Applied Practice, and am currently waiting to hear back about a Study Support Grant for 2016. I have a few ideas in mind at this time about a thesis, but I'm considering how to examine the effectiveness of my school's personalised learning program. I've spoken to the program head at Unitec about further study at the conclusion of a Masters as well. After years of thinking about it, Mindlab has opened the door to further study for me and has given me the confidence to pursue my own learning. It's helped me explore where my real interests lie within education, and think about where my career is going. 

This has been the result of 32 weeks where I've had to reflect on my values, practice, pedagogy and ambitions. It's been a struggle at times to step back and honestly critique myself within the wider teaching context, and more than once I've found myself complaining at change with the poisonous phrase "But this is how we've always done it!" Overcoming that internalised resistance to change and trying radically new ways of teaching, e.g. the flipped learning that made up the core of my DCL assessments, has opened me up to new opportunities.

My DCL assessments allowed me to develop in criteria 6 and 8, and critically evaluate the challenged and rewards that come with flipped learning. 

"Miss, I've been able to take photos!"

Whilst I felt that employing flipped learning wholesale in my teaching was too difficult, I have continued to use the model in some areas of teaching and have found it to be a powerful tool in my teaching arsenal.

My LDC assessments gave me the opportunity to consider my own role as a changemaker within the school and whanau community, and has encouraged me to step up into leading learning contexts. I am on the inquiry framework working group, overhauling our school's system for next year, and the Mindlab course has given me lots of ideas and tools for how to move this process forward. Design thinking in particular has been of great help in this work, which relates to criteria 1, 4, 5, 7, and 12. 

My coursework hit a rough spot just after the conclusion of the Mindlab-based learning, where I had an accident that prevented me from writing anything and badly affected my grades. I considered asking for a deferment on my R&C assessments and the lit review in particular caused me some sleepless nights! Finding the reserves within myself to complete all my assessments within the extended timeframe and to have received such a good grade for my lit review was a validation that I can overcome personal adversity and not lose momentum in my studies. It was also the development of my ideas for this course that sealed my decision to continue and complete my Masters, something I had been considering for years but had lacked a clear idea about where to go with is. 

KDEC students taking part in a practical assessment. Mindlab has helped me restructure assessments to include everyone, without needing to create a different assessment as has been the school's expectation.

APC was a great opportunity to reflect on my professional values, practice and commitment to the wellbeing of my students and other teachers (Criteria 2, 3, 9, 10). When considering the questions around biculturalism it was reassuring to see how my values and praxis work to uphold the tenets of the Treaty and that I am on the right path of supporting and raising the achievement of my Maori, Pasifika, students of colour and disabled learners. 

I finish my Mindlab course a better teacher, a better learner, and ready to move my career forwards to better the experience of my students. It's been a privilege to do this course.  

Task Nine: Bicultural Literacy

Naku te rourou nau te rourou ka ora ai te iwi

With your basket and my basket the people will live

I arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand in January 2009 with a vague understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi, a smattering of poorly-pronounced te reo Maori and a job offer at a school in Manurewa. I made a lot of mistakes, had to unlearn a lot and I am forever grateful for the incredibly patient people who taught me the difference between the multicultural environment I had come from and the bicultural/multicultural environment I had entered. In the first few years, I struggled with questions like:

• Why is te reo Maori given precedence when the majority of our students are Samoan? 
• Why are Indian Fijian students excluded from certain opportunities and offers open to Maori and other Pasifika students?
• How does biculturalism relate to multiculturalism?

Keen to unpack my own prejudices and learn more about Maori education, I joined the school's Kahui Kaiako Maori (KKM) group, working towards improving Maori education within the school. I helped create resources for fellow immigrant teachers grappling with teaching in a Maori context, presented at meetings with overseas teachers and officials, and began a process of decolonising my pedagogy to be more responsive to the needs of my learners. I started to understand the importance of indigenous rights, something that I had not had to consider in the UK, and that the kaupapa of Maori education could be applied for the benefit of all my students in a way the principles of colonial education did not. 

Looking out over Manukau Harbour

I began to critique the language and cultural norms I used in class, and adopt ones that were more inclusive. I asked students to share their cultures and languages within the class, and made a point of standing aside and giving the platform to non-white voices where possible. I discussed the concept of white privilege with older students, which led to some fascinating conversations and ideas from learners about how they viewed their place in the world. 

Once, after such a conversation, my Y10 class were completing a careers survey. A couple of students called me over and pointed out that all the photos on the site had white people doing the jobs, with a few exceptions of Maori carrying out traditional crafts. The class discussed how to approach this, and with help from their English teacher, wrote to Careers NZ. They responded very positively and a representative came to the school to discuss their concerns and they took some photos of our very diverse students to add to their photo bank for future use. Giving them the vocabulary and confidence to challenge what they saw as an a lack of representation was very powerful, and gave them agency to make positive change.

Year 8 at Ihumatao

Currently, my Year 8 have just finished looking at materials science, within the context of buildings and the local construction of the new Ormiston Town Centre. Seeing an opportunity to develop this, we investigated the Special Housing Area proposal for Ihumatao, and the group of local rangatahi who oppose the build. The students learned about the confiscation of the land in the 19th Century, the importance of the site as a waahi tapu, and the arguments for and against new housing. This led to the students learning relevant words in te reo and some understanding about Maori culture that they had not come across before. This mahi culminated in both classes visiting the Otuataua stonefields and being given a tour by park rangers. It made their work in class much more relevant and real, and they came away with greater understanding of the Maori's struggles to have their claims and rights recognised than if it had been taught out of this context.

I've come a long way since my arrival, and I still have a long way to go, but it's been an incredibly rewarding journey. 

Task Five: Professional Connections

Science as a subject touches the lives of every single person in ways both subtle and overt. Neil Degrasse Tyson has described scientific illiteracy as a "tragedy of our times" and the need to instil a level of understanding about the scientific process and the issues facing us as a species is an ongoing challenge. Science is a subject that therefore links into most other subjects found within the school curriculum, a large number of employment sectors, and other areas such as community and politics. The diagram below shows the connections made between my own practice as a science teacher and other communities. 

Full diagram here

As I've discussed in earlier entries, I am lucky that my school's vision for education makes finding connections between subjects a core part of our planning and teaching. Looking at the left hand side of the diagram, I have already taught extensively with teachers in every subject specialism listed. Within social studies and maths especially, there has been a lot of cross-curricular inquiry carried out that has linked to authentic, relevant contexts. These links to other subjects within the school are very positive and satisfying as they allow teachers to develop their skills in new areas and to deepen their understanding of the relevance of their subject to a wider context. 

Staying on the left, there are links to be further developed between my practice as a junior college teacher and how the subject is taught to other age levels. There is a primary school on the same site as my college, and a senior college a few minutes' walk away, but at present there is little opportunity for planning and curriculum development between these schools. There has been some crossover, for example the conservation day below, but we have very little knowledge of what Science is being taught in the primary school, or what the senior college is focusing on that we could support at the junior level. There's a lot of potential to create contexts that span several year groups and schools, but there is a need to make professional development time available for teachers to meet and plan before this can happen.

Waicare Day with Y5 students, 2013

On the right side are the employment sectors that science teaching links to. Aside from STEM, the links to media, communications, health, politics and conservation are emerging as being increasingly relevant to all our learners no matter where they are headed in their professional lives. The links that I am developing with environmental, conservation and political communities are particularly interesting. As part of our joint English/Science work on sustainability and the Outlook for Someday competition, a group asked if they could interview the environmental campaigner Michael Tavares on tree conservation. He agreed to come in and give a seminar to the whole year group on the importance of activism, being informed about local and wider issues, and what can be achieved through campaigning and raising awareness.

Michael Tavares discusses the need to be an informed citizen

The response students have had to links like this has been explored in my previous post but these connections have helped to reinforce the message that they have power and influence within and outside the classroom, and the difference that can be made through positive actions. It's important to build on the current links being made within the school, and develop links outside it, so that the students can see the relevance of their learning outside of the classroom.

Task Four: My Community of Practice

As a biologist and ecologist, community is a word that has meaning both related to and developed alongside the sociological one. An ecological community comprises of the different populations of organisms that inhabit the same habitat, and interact. Whilst at a species level I am related to all the teachers across the country and the world, my community lives in a more localised habitat. My educational habitat could be seen as being my school, my professional community is my whanau within that school, and I represent a population of science teachers within that community.

My whanau within my school serves as a model ecosystem. Coast whanau has two senior leaders, eight teachers, a whanau admin assistant,  around 200 students and teaching assistants for our deaf students and a blind student.

The teaching community within my whanau strive to ensure the connectedness of our practice. We meet weekly to plan our inquiry learning schemes and to discuss connect our subjects. We attempt to ensure that as much of our subject teaching as possible is not separated from each other and that we break the barriers found in traditional learning environments. For instance, the maths teachers had decided to teach geometry to year 8 by having them design and build a model of a community centre for our area. I took this idea into my lessons by teaching them materials science, looking at reactivity series of metals, metal and non-metal properties, even making and smashing concrete samples to investigate the importance of proportion when mixing concrete. This folded into the maths work by getting students to consider what buildings are made of, and why we use these materials. Their global studies teacher looked at how communities can incorporate their cultural diversity and kaupapa into public buildings. By showing students how these subjects can be woven together, they created absolutely beautiful work and referenced their learning in other subjects in a way we don't normally see without this level of collaboration.

Students add the finishing touches to their buildings

This learning reflects the vision of our school, which is that learning should be authentic and relevant to the lives of our students. Our community's values of connections within learning helps to create this authenticity. My year 8s, now that their projects are finished, are looking at the controversy of the Ihumatao special housing area in Auckland, as an example of when the differing needs of a community come into conflict. This case study has led to my learners researching the history of the Maori land wars and consequent confiscation of land, debating the relative merits of slowing or halting immigration to Auckland and writing letters in support of or opposing the plans, using their persuasive writing skills learned in English.

My personal practice aligns with this core community value of authenticity and relevance, as I strive to ensure our learners are aware of the environmental and social concerns that surround their community, their learning, and their role as scientifically literate citizens.

Y7 students talking about their action as part of reduce, reuse, recycle

By linking individual subjects together, and from there to a wider context, and empowering students to address the challenges that arise from this context, our community of practice respects and promotes the kaupapa of the school.

It also relates to the wider core values and vision of the National Curriculum, the document that connects all the habitats and populations of teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand. By having a group of practitioners, all with different subject skills, who are working together to create contextual learning that enables students to engage with their world, we are helping prepare our students for whatever challenges they may face outside the classroom.