Why mentor?

Today my stint as a mentor teacher came to an end.  It was awesome to see someone grow in both confidence and their practice and it wasn't until I had a conversation with a colleague that they pointed out that this growth was for me as well.  Personally I think I should have waited another year before offering to be a mentor however as my colleague discussed with me, the insight into my current practice was invaluable for not only the remainder of the year, but my continued teaching practice.

As I reflected, I found this blog post that helped me articulate how the experience had helped me grow as both an individual and a teacher.

I learned that I am a bit of a control freak!  I am one of those 'details' type of people who will often get entrenched in the daily grind to stop to ask those 'why' type questions that open up to the blue sky/ocean way of thinking.  I have noticed that this has come back a bit more this year where I default to the "yes but..." type responses when listening to others and need to remind myself to continue to listen with purpose.

Having another adult teach alongside me helped me understand the importance of relationships with the kids.  Through discussion, I found myself learning more about the kids as we analysed why  some lessons did or did not work for particular learners and while observing lessons, it was able to give me more insights into how I could adapt my practice to better suit the needs of the kids I am working with.

I learned to make learning more fun again - again me getting caught up in the details and with Term 2 having a lot of focus on assessment, I wasn't enjoying how I was planning or some of the outputs from my planning and I can bet the kids were feeling the same way too!  Observing lessons where the kids got to be creative or try new things has inspired me to continue to push this inquisitive nature of my practice as well as realising that it is ok for me to learn alongside the kids more so.  Stay tuned for how Term 3 is going to turn out - I am looking forward to it!

So thank you to AUT for allowing me the opportunity to test out the mentor role - I got a lot out of the experience!

Mentor or Coach - What's The Difference?

Having a strong mentor can really set up you up for success as a teacher.  I was fortunate to have one in my first two years of teaching, especially being able to teach alongside them in my first year of teaching.  Being able to observe teaching in practice as well as reflect while in the moment enabled me to feel more confident within my second year of teaching, especially when we worked in different areas of the school.

My mentor inspired me to take the opportunity to apply to be an AUT mentor this year and while I am in a different year level, I think continuing to learn alongside the kids allows my practice to be more transparent to someone who is observing me.

One thing I have struggled with so far is what is the difference between being a mentor and being a coach.  As with any new learning, I try to understand the definition first to help me then work out my next steps.

Mentor - an experienced and trusted adviser, a wise and trusted counselor or teacher, an influential senior sponsor or supporter.
Coach - a person who trains an athlete or a team of athletes, a private tutor who prepares a student for an examination, a person who instructs an actor or singer.

From that, my baseline understanding is that you can be coached for an end result (ie, finishing your teaching qualifications), however a mentor is someone who works alongside you rather than instructing you on your next step.

The word trust really stands out for me and this is something that I have been working with being open about my practice.  The conversations have been great as it helps me reflect on why I chose to teach something in a different way and I am finding it beneficial having another set of eyes in the space to pick up on things that I might have missed.

Next Steps: Continue to have these reflective conversations about our practice, shift more of the control over and observe.

Show Me Your Working (Understanding) - My Hunch

Having changed year levels this year, developing my pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has become a priority for myself.

This year I am team teaching in numeracy with a group of learners operating between Level 2 and Level 3 of the New Zealand Curriculum for numeracy.  This is a natural follow on for the numeracy that I was teaching in previous years and I am grateful for this foundation as I look forward to challenge myself in this space.

As the learners are operating at a higher level, my first noticing goes to how we are struggling as a group to articulate our numerical thinking when asked to explain how we came to a conclusion or got a specific answer.  My first instinct was to explore if there were particular vocabulary gaps within our group, however, what I am noticing more is a) a general lack of confidence with articulation of numerical thinking and b) a reluctance to do this in group settings aka 'the fear of getting it wrong in front of others'.

Fortunately for me, a lot of schools in our clusters are looking into this area and documenting through the use of their blogs, especially Pt England School, so it has been awesome to read and see how some of the teachers are developing these skills within their own numeracy programs.

I have also found the app Flipgrid helpful in developing the learners confidence in taking risks in articulating their strategies.  Learners are able to record themselves on their own device and listen back to themselves before posting the video to an online forum where other members of the group can listen and respond to the videos.  This has also served as a great link with our cybersmart curriculum.

Next Steps: Continue to look for opportunities to build these communication skills within our numeracy program.  I also need to see if the team will let me pay for a Flipgrid membership as the free version only allows you to activate one grid at a time.

I am also going to connect with some of my colleagues at Pt England to see how they are finding their PD and what are their learnings so far.

2018 - New Year, New Me?

Like our learners, it is the first official day of school tomorrow and there is a sense of trepidation in the air as I go through preparations for this week.  

During our teacher only days last week, I was noticing how often I was using the word 'new' - new year levels, new team, new hub ... but does that mean I am needing to change along with these?  I agree that there will be some adaptation and learning involved but I think that reason that I was noting all the different elements was due to the fact that my support network at school has changed as well as  no longer having a mentor teacher.  This means starting afresh with a new team so remembering to communicate and be open in order build factors like trust in our team is fundamental in this initial set up period.  I am teaching in a four teacher team with 104 learners so last week was discussion about how we will use the space.  What I am noticing from the four of us already is the sense of adaptability when we discuss about observing how the learners are reacting to the space and being flexible to tweak or update based on these observations and discussion.

I am excited to see the learners this week as I have taught a majority of the Year 4s (as Year 2 and 3s) and Year 5s (as Year 3s) so am looking forward to seeing how the break has treated them as well as looking forward to exploring new content alongside them.  The Year 6s will be a new entity to me however the first couple of days, we as teachers are sharing our identities as a lead in to our Term One concept so during this time it will give me opportunity to both reflect as well as observe.

I am excited to continue blogging this year as I enjoyed the reflective element it brings to my practice and will help draw out some of the wonderings I am currently having throughout 2018.  So new year, new me?  Lets wait and see!

Co-constructing Success Criteria for Blog Posts

As part of the Cybersmart learning this term, our hub have tried a two prong approach to building learners' capacity in using the digital aspects of their learning.  These were:

• Working with our Year 2 learners and some learners that identified that they needed to consolidate their knowledge of Explain Everything.  This is something that we will need to return to for all learners as Explain Everything has had an update recently - check out Karen Belt's blog post that explains some of the upgrades.
• The remainder of our Year 3 learners have been learning more about creating a smart footprint in preparation for next term's focus on building smart relationships in Term 3.

We introduced the learners to how they could email a blog post to the blog and had some great discussions about what we would need to consider before we upload a draft post to our hub blog.  As a result, the learners asked if we could build some success criteria to help them remember what is important before uploading blog posts.  Here is what we came up with:

I am looking forward to seeing learners take advantage of the email to blog function next term!  Stay tuned to see how this takes off.

Changing Spaces 2017

This year I decided to take a risk and present at Changing Spaces - I attended the day last year and supported but watched all my colleagues speak about their practice and how we operate in an ILE and thought that this would be a great goal for my second year.

I was fortunate to attend the keynote by Chrissie Butler where she challenged us to take a mental walk around our schools and their environments as she spoke.  She spoke of us as educators as developing an acute sensitivity to individual differences in order to drive design decisions.  This means that we should be looking for a framework to support the deliberate design for variability.  As a teacher, I should be providing options for recruiting interest, optimising individual choice and selecting options to help minimise distractions.

She really challenged me in my thinking of how am I using our environment to do so and as I was frantically tidying up tables and chairs after our presentation, I stopped and thought about some of the following points in her presentation:

• What defines the bicultural space?  How are the learners' individual stories being represented?  Are there spaces for everyone to make connections?  Does it feel like a safe environment to meet the needs of the whole person?
• This safety extends to both gender and sexualities - Chrissie challenged us to stop speaking in the binary and more as a 'we'.  This also links with being a community.
• Equitable access for all - she shared a great quote from Timoti Harris: 'Steps will naturally exclude some, a ramp allows all to enter'.  Again I have started to look at our space with a new lens and will continue to observe throughout the first few weeks of this term.
• Sensitivity to sensory needs - it was great to be reminded of this as I feel that I have become accustomed to the background noise in the hubs.  For some learners, this is a major distraction so how can we use the space more effectively to support them with their learning?  It also made me more mindful of the learners that use the noise to slip into the background.  Are there ways that I can connect with these learners in a way that enables them to feel comfortable but also makes me more aware of their needs when teaching?

This final quote from the presentation really stuck out for me - 'Nothing for me without me.'  I do centre my practice around using student voice however as I was putting the tables and chairs back into the spaces that they sat for Term One, I had to walk away.  This notion is key as I am not the only individual in the space and our learners needs to feel that they have a voice in the design of their space.  So instead of finishing the task, I just made sure things were back in an orderly fashion where we could use some time next week to look at the design and see if we can improve on anything for Term Two.  I am looking forward to the learners' input and feedback as I know they will have some great insight into how they want this to look like!

After the keynote, Latai and I were able to share with a group about our journeys so far as beginning teachers in an ILE.  This was the 2.0 version of a presentation we gave last year at the University of Auckland We asked the group to share with us the reasons why they chose to attend our session and it was a mix of those who were also new to teaching or those who had or were transitioning into an ILE setting.  Feedback from the previous year was that people appreciated the stories that teachers told about real life situations so one of the main activities we ran was giving groups scenarios that they discussed and brought back to the wider group to share.  These scenarios were examples from our first year and after everyone shared, we gave our insights based on our experiences.

I was grateful for the opportunity to present as I do need the practice of public speaking however co presenting takes a bit of the nerves away and this was a good example of how hub teams work together to complement each others' abilities as well as the generating and sharing of collective insights.  

Connecting with the Community

Tonight was "Meet The Teacher" night so I was feeling a bit nervous as I would be presenting to parents at two sessions.  Luckily I was presenting as part of a group and the team were awesome at setting me up for success with the information that I was presenting.

We had a pretty impressive turn out, especially in the second session and it was great to have dialogues with individual families as they moved around the hub.  I think part of my nervousness was down to my perception that I am a beginning teacher and I may have not the appropriate experience to answer queries at this stage.  However the majority of the questions that came my way was more about who I am as an individual, my background and how am I connecting with the learners and the school.

Our families have a huge amount of pride in the school and it was evident to see when they spoke of their child's achievements so far.  It was also beneficial for me to listen to some of the questions that came from families in relation to the use of devices in the learning spaces.  There is some natural concern that the devices will be the focus while the students are in the classroom so I need to be conscious to remind myself that it is another tool in the space and how it complements my pedagogy.

It was really awesome to see that families stayed afterwards to enjoy a picnic as well as the waterslide (very popular and the kids were so patient while waiting in line!) and other games and activities we had put out for everyone.

While it was a long day, I was glad that I was able to make these connections with the community and look forward to growing them during my time at the school.

First Week Down.

I have heard stories about people "surviving" their first weeks however with the speed of which this week has moved, I can see how some may begin to explain their experience as surviving by way of meeting their basic needs in order to move onto the next task.

As mentioned before, I am teaching at Stonefields School near Mount Wellington in a Year 2/3 Hub.  This is an open space in which we have 71 learners between the teaching team.  I am fortunate to be in a team with four other teachers so as a beginning teacher, I am in a great space to develop my own practice by observation and working with the others to reflect and build on my skills.

The first weeks focus has been connecting with our learners and getting to know them as we develop a programme for the year.  This is the second year in which some of these learners will be using an iPad for their learning however with all the Year 2s moving into the space, we need to ensure that we are giving them the skills to use the devices as an effective tool for their learning.  These are some of the skills that I will be learning through the Digital Immersion Fridays with the MDTA cohort.

So how was my first week?

Apart from the speed where the hours quickly sped away from me, I thoroughly enjoyed my first week teaching!

Honestly, I find making connections with all my learners a bit daunting however it is a good challenge to set myself for my first year.  I am going to start by concentrating on my Guardian, numeracy and literacy groups as these will be the learners that I will be interacting with on a regular basis.

A lot of the activities this week were spent on getting the learners to interact and collaborate with each other - I need to begin to look at these activities and use them in my planning to help build those skills when the groups are learning.  I also need to remember to look for ways to collaborate with my team - look for opportunities to team teach where our strengths and passions can complement each others.