Chasing the Horizon

Looking at the changes in my practice it is difficult to identify one change as I seem to of been in a flux. I have actively embraced the BYOD environment but often seem blinded by the digital tools and this year feel I should have placed a higher value on relationship building in the classroom. The theme though I want to focus on in this blog is from Our standards: Learning-focused culture - Develop a culture that is focused on learning, and is characterised by respect, inclusion, empathy, collaboration and safety. I will look at this through using Rolfes model of reflection.

What was one key change in my practice that supported this standard? Well, one key change was developing the agile manifesto and trying to use it in the classroom to gather student voice and change my practice. This was facilitated through a weekly sprint celebration where we looked at the work completed in class and asked them what they liked about the week what they learned and what it lacked.

Now what had spurned me to develop this in my practice? I will use the experimental model (Osterman & Kottkamp, 2015) to analyse this change. I had noticed that the students in my where working with the knowledge I had given them but struggling to construct anything with the concepts, though they collaborated on tasks they often didn’t make the most of their time in class and complained about not having enough time to complete tasks. Having been interested in the agile manifesto while studying at Mindlab I had an idea of making progress more visible through Kanban boards. I was also aware of the linear nature of Google classroom and how many students didn’t complete the tasks there. I thought that possibly using a more visible way of looking at students progress would help both them and me in tracking their progress.

To actively experiment with this idea I used the awesome software offered by Monday.com. All the students signed up and we used this to manage our projects. At the end of the week, we would have a Socratic seminar. This would involve the students looking at one piece of reading and then critically analysing the piece with rules around how to discuss this. Afterwards, we would have a celebration and reward the most productive team. As part of this, the students would feedback on the week what they liked, what they learned and what it lacked. Then each student would talk in a sharing circle the feedback was genuine and honest.

There were issues though! Regardless of what we had done in the other 3 hours that week, the students all seemed to feedback just on what they had learnt through the discussion that day. One team started to dominate the most successful team and the others didn’t get a look in at the celebration. The students also continuously stated that they didn’t enjoy the Socratic seminars. Firstly they didn’t like the fact that they didn’t get the reading before the day, then when this was provided they didn’t like the content of the reading. The students also wanted all the students to speak or it to be more like a debate. I was reluctant to abandon the Socratic setup, so not truly adaptive to the student's voice.

Now what? Well in my future practice I definitely can see room for developing these ideas. I believe that these changes helped to develop the learning environment in the classroom. Having all the students able to share their voice developed a culture where we could all share in a respectful way and each students voice had equal value. I was responsive to the needs. The biggest issue for me was having the correct software in front of the students to manage their learning. Having this visual progress was helpful for them and me. I definitely would like to further develop this for the classroom as we attempt to help the student manage more project-based work. I also would like to increase my own collaboration with other subject specialists to develop the students learning programmes and bring them more in line with the 21st-century skills. Mindlab has been a cognitive journey and I look forward to how I will continue to journey through this learning to help prepare my students for everything.

References:

https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf

Osterman, K. & Kottkamp, R.(1993). Reflective Practice for Educators.California.Corwin Press, Inc. Retrieved from hhttp://www.itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/files/RefPract/Osterman_Kottkamp_extract.pdf

https://www.oecd.org/education/school/Flyer-The-Future-of-Education-and-Skills-Education-2030.pdf

https://my.cumbria.ac.uk/media/MyCumbria/Documents/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf

http://agilemanifesto.org/

https://pixabay.com/en/sailor-signal-launch-jet-night-680412/

https://pixabay.com/en/success-planning-strategy-draw-pen-620300/

https://pixabay.com/en/man-manager-portrait-thinker-3391887/