3 out of 4 learning terms completed : gathering feedback to go forward

A recent article in eSchool News captures the potential of learning spaces that enable holistic development for all learners. "We have a responsibility to foster each student’s inherent genius and draw out his or her natural brilliance while maximising emotional growth."

Our Engaging Learning Spaces (ELS) for 2015  are a move away from traditional classrooms to more fully address our learning goal : To engage every learner in deep learning for success. 

We are about to finish our third term with ELS. As a staff, we are teaching inside an authentic, living inquiry. We are continually reflecting, discussing and implementing small changes and improvements along the way. As we prepare for Term 4 and for 2016, we remain open to further feedback from students and parents to ensure we maintain a balanced approach to our ELS's. 

We have already received feedback from over one hundred educators visiting our ELS's this year. The most recent group of principals from Otago Southland shared their thoughts via "post it" notes. 

Students
This week, I will be gathering feedback from students. I will be involving the voice of our learners. What is it like to be a learner in this hub ? What's going well to engage you in learning and what could be improved ?

Parents
Parents are invited to email their responses to the following questions directly to jjackson@stjoseph.school.nz

1. What has worked well to engage your child in their learning this year ?

2. What's not going well ? Keep in mind the benefits of being solution focused. If you believe something is not going well, support your feedback with a suggested solution for improvement.

3. Any further comments

Staff have already begun to complete a similar document with their own feedback. We will be supporting this with achievement data.

All feedback, will be collated, shared and contribute to our next steps going forward.

An earlier blog entitled :
Are you willing to create disturbance and be disturbed yourself ? shared a message from a visiting professor. "We can all benefit from the ability to challenge and be challenged. We need to be willing to disturb and be disturbed - to make people stop and think aloud, talk and innovate at all levels. We can use difference to challenge and stimulate reflection that can grow practice for all learners."

Peace of mind with an external review around the corner - 5 easy steps

External reviews can cause undue worry and stress for a school community no matter how well prepared they may be. How can we as leaders, create a supportive climate and ensure peace of mind for our staff ?

In a Catholic school, we have two external reviews every three to four years. One is the mandated government education review that enables school trustees, leaders and teachers to identify the strengths and weaknesses of current performance. We had our last one of these in 2013 and will be next reviewed in 2017-2018. You can read that report here. The other important review is the External Review of Catholic Special Character and Development. We have these every three years and we are due for one next week. You can read an earlier post on the Catholic review process by going to this link.

Challenge and be challenged
As leaders, I believe that we should always be looking at ways to challenge ourselves, have a growth mindset and "move out of our comfort zones". External reviews are an ideal opportunity to ensure that we haven't remained doing the "same old, same old" as we were doing during the previous review. However, waiting until the external review happens isn't good enough. Our system of continual internal self-reviews ensures that we remain at the "top of our game" and don't ever sit back and believe that we are "the best that we can be". Active leaders know that we can always keep growing and learning and must be authentic role models for our colleagues.

Importance of having a national Catholic voice
It is thanks to an enthusiastic and supportive team of staff, in particular our Assistant and Deputy Principals who step up when I am away, that I can accept new and challenging learning opportunities. Most recently, I was able to participate in the New Zealand Catholic Primary Principal's  Executive Meeting in Wellington. The Executive Committee is made up of two representatives from each of the six Catholic dioceses: Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. The meeting took place at the New Zealand Principal Federation (NZPF) offices over two and a half days. During that time, guest speakers included Denise Torrey (NZPF president), Sir Br Pat Lynch (CEO Catholic Education Office), Chris Duthie-Jung (The Catholic Institute) and Lorraine Kerr (NZSTA school trustees association president). The opportunity enabled me to reflect on the important role we play as leaders of Catholic schools, especially in ensuring there is a Catholic voice at all levels of the country. It is quite clear that greater consistency of practice in Catholic schools across New Zealand is a must - national Catholic review indicators are an excellent starting point.

Flip the process and write our own report
Keeping that in mind, our external Catholic review is an optimal time to share, showcase and review our excellent practice. We want the experience to be a valuable and positive one for all concerned and we want to be open to new learning, next steps and recommendations. We don't want to finish the review and then say, "I forgot to mention or share this..with the review team." 
Recent reflections have led me to the potential of writing our own review report. That way we can take ownership of the process and therefore experience a reassuring "peace of mind". We can write our own report and present it to the review team either before they arrive or when they arrive. (I am open to suggestions and advice - before or when they arrive ?)

5 easy steps to follow
1. Prepare a template for the final report based on the review format from a past review. It could look something like this.
2. Gather feedback from staff, board, students and parishioners. This can be done collaboratively on a google document or on large sheets of paper. 
3. Agree on recommendations as a result of this collaborative process. Be open, honest and challenging. Present your version of the report to the external review team and encourage them to refer to it during the review.
4. At the formal welcome for the review team, give the students and staff a chance to share and celebrate their roles in relation to the report. 
5. Ensure that the board of trustees share their reflections utilising the different 
dimensions of the report as a planned presentation. 

We have taken ownership of the process and believe that we are as prepared as we can be. 
The outcome is peace of mind for all concerned .

Schools and Communities Creating a Better Future - 5 global trends

Schools and Communities Creating a Better Future was the title of the recent learning session held here at St Joseph's school. This was facilitated by the inspiring duo - Mary Wootton and Brian Annan (links to early blogs that include them).  

Our staff sang a welcome waiata led by Paul Cartlidge and Leanne Brookes and fifty staff from the North Otago education sector (primary, secondary, RTLB & RTLit)  joined in. Special thanks to the North Otago Primary Principal's Association for sponsoring a scrumptious and well received afternoon tea. Thanks to the St Joe's Year 7 and 8 students who helped to set up for this event.

St Joe's staff lead the waiata to welcome Mary and Brian

This is an the overview of the session:

Infinity - where the learning never ends (learn more by going to the link).

Future focused learning, Learning Maps, Identifying school change priorities, Identifying student change priorities to grow agency,Engaging family/whanau in learning relationships.

Here are a few highlights of the session:

Future focused learning: Brian asked us to discuss this at our tables and to agree on one "big ticket item" of what future focused learning could look like for our learners.

He shared visuals that captured the shift away from adult controlled learning - past focused learning to student-adult negotiated learning.

Why can't 17 year olds assess themselves against a rubric of self-created standards ?

Five global trends : We need schools to shift their thinking around these global trends. Have conversations around these with learners and families and plan how we will shift into the future. We can either be forward thinking and action this ourselves or wait for it to happen. We need to step into the future with confidence. 
1.Schools to ecologies (not just classroom equals school but learning outside the boundaries of the school walls) 
2. Individuals to connected (connectedness to the outside world) 
3.Competition to collaboration (we learn and achieve more by working with each other) 
4.Passive to interactive (this has moved from active to interactive, then you are also collaborative) 
5.Needy to appreciative ( pld in the past was needs analysis, we need to take responsibility and appreciate learners and their families capabilities).

Passive to interactive - We had to place ourselves on a human continuum and share why we were in that place. We need to move towards the right end of the continuum. Brian suggested this would also be an engaging and thought provoking activity to do with students and parents.

 Continuum - passive, active, interactive teaching & learning environments

Brian explores the continuum in relation to future focussed learning and learner agency

Activate, collaborate, innovate : We discussed a visual that was divided into four quadrants with aspirations to be in the top left quadrant "innovate to improve". The greatest challenge is to become interactive around learning with families, community and the environment and change something in terms of industry and business. 
Brian and Mary's Infinity business offers support services for schools to work towards success in all four quadrants.

Infinity Learning Maps : These are a perfect place to start with our students, staff and families. They allow for open and jargon free conversations and can be used as an evaluative tool to learner agency. You can read more about a learning map workshop at the National Networking Hui on this blog.
Mary explained that learning maps offer a child's perception on their learning. Learning maps can be looked at within a certain school context for authentic purposes. They can be used to understand the current learning situation and then revisited again in a few months time. The learner can take a photo of their map and make a two minute video clip explaining it. This gives an informative picture over time around the learners and their thinking around learning. Research around learning maps by Jean Annan has proven that student, teacher, leader and parent practice make huge shifts. 
Brian and Mary are able to offer support in the form of workshops and seminars for teachers, leaders, students and families in the learning map process and in relation to addressing global trends and future focused learning.

Mary shares the power of  learning maps

Brian and Mary very kindly left me with a copy of their presentation to share. If you are interested in it, please email me -  jjackson@stjoseph.school.nz 

Are you actioning these 5 global trends? If so, how ?

Awe-inspiring #growthmindset staff & students @stjoesoamaru

This is a mid year reflective post to publicly acknowledge our staff. This year, between all of us we are studying the following whilst teaching full time:

• Masters Educational Leadership papers through The Catholic Institute (TCI) and Australian Catholic University (ACU)
• Religious Education diploma and post grad papers through TCI
• Primary Maths papers through Open Polytechnic
• Applied practice (digital & collaborative) post grad papers through Unitec MindLab
• Middle Leadership through Centre of Educational Leadership and Administration

This year, during the school holidays our staff have been working on their assignments, preparing for the new term and attending extra courses and workshops at:

• Numeracy Symposium
• Sir Paul Callaghan Science Academy
• National Networking Hui (learning from here shared on this blogpost)
• Dominican Education Convention

Our staff have an enthusiastic approach to personal learning that can only benefit all learners at our school. They are passionate about their own learning. It is this passion that will motivate and engage our students to achieve in their learning.

Image from blogpost about motivational drivers for learning

To top this off , I received an email from some of our Year 8 students in the holidays. They had been collaborating together on a task that I set at the end of the term based around our school values and wanted to share it with me. The task was as a result of an active reflection June 2015 : Be proactive and nip things "in the bud"
This is an example of self-motivated senior student learners at work, taking the initiative to drive their own learning just like our staff.
Here is the video from the girls.

We are all looking forward to starting a new term as we continue to apply a growth mindset to our relationships and our learning as we reach for the stars as life long learners in the Catholic faith.