PROFESSIONALLY & PERSONALLY
TeachersMatter The Magazine of Spectrum Education
Fostering intelligent relationships Helping the “powerful” child win The InstructionalRevolution Learning new tricks and building students’ self-esteem Five POSITIVE steps Putting the fun back into the playground NZ$15 / AU$15
Leaders in Developing Teachers
ISSUE 7
karen boyes
Bootcamp Sydney – The bar was raised Learning and growing was easy while everyone was having a great time.
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ith a firm understanding of Dr Art Costa’s 16 Habits of Mind, the question was asked by Gabriele, a participant in the 2009 Habits of Mind Bootcamp challenge, “What is the 17th Habit of Mind?” A Habit of Mind is knowing how to behave intelligently when you don’t know the answer or what to do. The 16 Habits of Mind identified by Costa and Kallick include:
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• Persisting • Managing impulsivity • L i s t e n i n g w i t h u n d e r s t a n d i n g a n d empathy • Thinking flexibly • Thinking about thinking (metacognition) • Striving for accuracy • Questioning and posing problems • Thinking interdependently • Applying past knowledge to new situations • Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision • Gathering data through all senses • Creating, imagining, innovating • Responding with wonderment and awe • Taking responsible risks • Finding humour • Remaining open to continuous learning With six teams vying for the distinction of Winners of the Bootcamp Challenge Sydney 2009, the energy was high and the competition fun. Each team was lead by mentors Graham Watts, Matt Allen, Sandra Brace and me sharing ideas, knowledge and strategies to use and apply the Habits of Mind (HOM) within the classroom. Topics covered included Understanding the HOM, Thinking Maps, a Primary and Secondary focus on HOM, lesson planning, Stages of Development, 21st-century learners and thinkers, Assessment and Rubrics, school culture and using the HOM in the Arts.
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Teams created posters, songs, lesson plans, and skits as well as participating in some personal and team challenges. The quality of what they produced raised the bar for the next bootcamp. The winning team was the Fabulously Flexible Females! Well done. The quality of their planning and resources was particularly outstanding. Chris Nichols, a teacher from Tasmania, had this to say after the bootcamp: “Fair to say we were fairly pumped about what we were going to do upon our return! We put a plan together after school on Monday that involved Shift Happens from YouTube; a humorous report about the ‘out of our comfort zone’ experiences we had; a ‘triple bubble’ with Tiger Woods, Nelson Mandela and a young child riding a bike; a team challenge around persisting, finding humour and taking responsible risks and, finally, a brief exploration of the other 13 habits. Each team also began a display in our staffroom that will be added to as they learn more about the habits... and, yes, we probably did have more fun than we are normally allowed!” Congratulations to all those who survived another bootcamp: What a difference you will make to children’s lives. And back to Grabriele’s question… What do you think the 17th Habit of Mind might be?
1. Bootcamp participants sydney 2009 2. Leadership challenge - thoughtful thinking 3. Thinking maps which HOM does Tiger Woods possess 4. Using the Habits through the Arts 5. Posters created by participants 6. Mentors: Jess Woodmass, Matt Allen, Karen Boyes, Graham Watts, Sandra Brace 7. Sharing ideas 8. Sandra Brace leading HOM songs
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CONTENTS
COVER photo: Lai Leng Yiap
In this issue
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10 2 HOM Bootcamp 10 Using Visualisation And Mental Rehearsal In The Classroom 13
Freaky Facts And Jokes
14 Discipline Is A Liberating Word
Teachers Matter
15 Becoming More Mindful About The Habits Of Mind
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18 Natural Play: A Modest Proposal
26 A New Approach To Homework
20 Sit And Get Won’t Grow Dendrites
28 Five Steps To Create Happy And Powerfully Positive Playtimes
22 The Instructional Revolution 24 Critical And Creative Thinking: Promoting Adult Success Skills
Black-line Masters Photocopyable activities: pages 31,43,64,74 Thinking Challenges
32 Fostering Intelligent Relationships 34 Be Kind To Others! 37 The Wisdom Of Wonder 44 Lessons From South Africa: More Questions Than Answers 46 From Congenial To Collaboratively 48 Optimizing Your Opportunities
MAGAZINE CONTACTS
Subscribe today To receive your own copy of the next issue, send an e-mail to magazine@spectrumeducation.com
Teachers Matter Magazine Team Publisher, Sales and Advertising: Karen Boyes Managing Editor: Kristen De Deyn Kirk Graphic Design: Mary Hester / 2nd Floor Design Printer Spectrum Print, Christchurch
Subscriptions Toll free (NZ) 0800 373 377 Toll free (Australia) 1800 063 272 Thanks to the educators, speakers and authors who contributed interviews, articles, photographs and letters. Teachers Matter magazine is registered with the National Library:
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ISSN 1178-6825 Š Spectrum Education 2009
49 Teach Your Teen Financial Responsibility 51 You Are What You Think
62 Cooking At Home 65 Book Review: How To Live Forever
54 Ageing Backwards
69 Schools Make A Difference When The Going Gets Tough
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70 Plan Of Action
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What Are You Worth?
Figuring Out Teens
58 Boys Need Challenges 60 Integrating Educational Technologies Into Your Classroom
FrESH FROM THE MARKET RECIPES Page 63
73 Turquoise: The Colour For New Times And New Measures 75 How To Finish A Marathon 77
Designing Your Life
All rights reserved. Parts of this publication may be reproduced for use within a school environment. To reproduce any part within another publication (or in any other format) permission from the publisher must be obtained. The opinions expressed in Teachers Matter are those of the contributors and we love them!
All Enquiries Spectrum Education Ltd Street Address: 19 Rondane Place, Lower Hutt, New Zealand Postal Address: PO Box 30818, Lower Hutt, New Zealand Phone: (NZ) +64 4 528 9969 (Australia) 1800 063 272 Fax: (NZ) +64 4 528 0969 (Australia) 1800 068 977 magazine@spectrumeducation.com www.spectrumeducation.com
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editor’s NOTE
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any of you reading this page know exactly what you’re going to find inside: Article after article that will help make you an even better teacher and leader in your school. The experts who work with Karen Boyes, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Spectrum Education, on this magazine generously share their research and knowledge with you several times each year with hopes that something they say will both instruct and inspire you. Whether it’s Dr Art Costa coaching you to look at your thoughts and advising you on how to help your students look at their own, or Maggie Dent teaching you about the power of visualisation to improve performance, or another of our talented educators, the experts in Teachers Matter make you smarter and more motivated to educate your students. Yet Teachers Matter is so much more than a classroom how-to guide: It is a life how-to guide. While you spend many hours in the classroom and many hours preparing to be in the classroom, you are not only a teacher. Maybe you’re also a partner to someone special, a parent, a sibling, a child, a friend, an athlete, an artist – or you hold another wonderful title that is as much a part of your being as “teacher.” We want to give you information to develop those other aspects of your life as well, partially because a well-rounded person can be a better teacher. After all, to be effective in the classroom, fun activities and interesting people must energise you. But mostly, we want to share life-enriching information with you because we know it’s important to never lose sight of the fact that you are a person outside of the classroom. In this issue, rejuvenate yourself with both the how-to-teach articles and the how-toenjoy articles. (Granted, some of the articles blur the lines!). Thelma van der Werff’s article about colour and what the hue of turquoise can do for you is light and fun. In fact, follow her advice, and you could bring more light and fun into your life. Judith Cullen shows you how to embrace better eating habits with a new passion based on an old concept that’s making a comeback: farmers’ markets and fresh ingredients. Her tips and recipes could give you enough energy to follow Rowena Szezseran-McEvoy’s advice on running. She swears it’s possible to run a marathon – or any race of your choosing – with a smile on your face. All you need is a plan. Karen jumps in, too, with advice on a similar sort of planning, planning that can make your life appear to be “lucky” and filled with passionate work, relationships and adventures. Time to stop reading this – and dive into your magnificent life now.
Teachers Matter
Cheers,
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Kristen De Deyn Kirk
CONTRIBUTORS
Dr Cheryl Doig
Karen Boyes
Dr Cheryl Doig is director of Think Beyond. As an educator, her aim is to challenge organisations to think for tomorrow. She can be contacted through www.thinkbeyond.co.nz.
Karen Boyes is a leading authority on effective learning and teaching in Australasia and is founder and CEO of Spectrum Education. A highly skilled, enthusiastic and dynamic presenter with over 18 years experience in the education profession, she works with teachers, parents, students and corporate clients internationally, unleashing their peak performance. www.spectrumeducation.com
David Koutsoukis Adrian Rennie A successful classroom teacher, Adrian is passionate about excellence in teaching. He combines simple yet effective classroom techniques and Art Costa’s Habits Of Mind to create a culture of thinking. www.habits-of-mind.net/
Allison Mooney Allison is a passionate and endearing speaker who infuses a desire in her audience to significantly increase their performance as educators through identifying the behaviours and traits of others. Author of Pressing the Right Buttons, Allison has been twice awarded “Speaker of the Year” by the Auckland Chapter of NZ National Speakers Association. www.personalityplus.co.nz
Dr Arthur Costa Arthur is co-director of the Institute for Intelligent Behaviour and the creator of “Habits of Mind”. Actively concerned that there must be worldwide change in educational systems if they are to meet the needs of a global society, Arthur compels educators to create classrooms that are thoughtful places to learn. www.habits-of-mind.net
Barbara Griffith
Teachers Matter
Barbara has been a primary school teacher for 36 years. She has specialised in the teaching of literacy for more that 20 years and recently retired from a position as a Resource Teacher: Literacy, which she had held for the last 16 years.
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Carol Carter Before starting LifeBound, Carol Carter was an author of education and parenting books and a publishing executive in America for 15 years. Over the past 10 years, she has presented seminars and workshops to faculty and students and has provided corporate coaching to many organizations, including AOL Time Warner, StorageTek and the U.S. Navy. www.lifebound.com
David is an award-winning international speaker and author who helps educators build positive and productive classrooms and schools. He is the author of the Values Education Toolkit resources, the Behaviour Management Toolkit resources, the Daily Dose of Fun series and the Six Kinds of Best Values Education programme. www.dkeducation.com.au
Glenn Capelli An author, songwriter, radio and television presenter and creator of the Dynamic Thinking course for Leadership, Glenn delivers a message of creativity, innovation and thinking smarter. He teaches people how to be a learner and thinker in today’s fast-paced and everchanging world through the use of creative thinking, humour, enthusiasm and attitude. www.glenncapelli.com
Jenny Barrett Jenny is the CEO for Breathe Technology. Her enthusiasm for technology came when thrown in the deep end whilst teaching at a Taiwan high school. Jenny has since undertaken a Master’s of Education (Ed. Technology) and has supported classroom teachers to use educational technology in UK and NZ projects. www.breathetechnology.co.nz
John Shackleton With a sport psychology and sports coaching background, John now shows international business audiences techniques that exercise and improve the biggest, most powerful muscle in the body – the brain. His clients include Coca-Cola, Air New Zealand, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Sony and Renault. www.JohnShack.com
Kevin Mayall Kevin works with individuals and families from around the world. As well as working in a private practice, Kevin is also the creator and founder of www.kevinmayall.com, which provides online coaching tools for teens, families and individuals around the world. www.kevinmayall.com
Maggie Dent From a background in education, palliative care, radio, the funeral industry and being a transpersonal therapist, Maggie owns Esteem Plus, promoting the value of personal and professional resilience. She is an author, publisher and parenting specialist. www.maggiedent.com
Marcia L. Tate Marcia L. Tate, Ph.D., is a national educational consultant and has presented to over 250,000 administrators, teachers, parents, businesses, and community leaders throughout the U.S. Her book, Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Instructional Strategies that Engage the Brain has become a best-seller. In addition, she has written four other books, “Sit and Get” Won’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Professional Learning Strategies That Engage the Adult Brain; Reading and Language Arts Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Literacy Strategies That Engage the Brain; Shouting Won’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Techniques for Managing a Brain-compatible Classroom; and Mathematics Worksheets Won’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Numeracy Strategies That Engage the Brain. www.developingmindsinc.com
Judith Cullen
Margaret MacLean
As a former home economics teacher, Judith now runs cooking classes and co-hosts two annual tours to Italy. Her philosophy is to create interesting and uncomplicated recipes for people to cook using each season’s fresh, flavoursome local ingredients. www.judith-cullen.com
An educator with over 30 years experience in seven countries, Margaret MacLean currently provides professional development services to teachers and school leaders internationally. She focuses on developing collegial relationships, encouraging reflective practice, and rethinking leadership—all in support of increased student achievement. Contact her at margaret.maclean@ruraledu.org.
Mark McKeon Mark Mckeon is the author of three internationally published books on wellbeing and a former AFL footballer, fitness coach and editor of Ultra-Fit Magazine. Learn more at www.markmckeon.com.
Martz Witty Martz Witty is a professional speaker, business developer and chartered accountant. Reach him at martz@martz.co.nz and www.martz. co.nz.
Dr Marvin Marshall Marvin Marshall is the author of Discipline Without Stress, Punishments or Rewards: How Teachers Promote Responsibility & Learning. The book teaches how to live a self-disciplined life, become more responsible, increase effectiveness, and improve relationships. It shares how to teach young people to want to become disciplined — both in behaviour and in putting forth effort in their own learning. The book is now available as an e-book at www.marvinmarshall.com/products.htm.
of six and grandmother of 12.) She mastered her own time challenges and now helps people around the world overcome theirs. She can show you how to transform your time challenges into high productivity and the life balance you desire. Enrol for your free Top Time Tips – practical advice every two weeks and you’ll get your own free report “How to Master Time In Only 90 Seconds”, a simple yet powerful diagnostic tool to help you identify your key areas for action. You’ll find it at www.gettingagrip.com/ttt/index.asp
Rowena Szeszeran-McEvoy Rowena Szeszeran-McEvoy has a 23-year career in the fitness industry and is now serious about the business of education. She is the director of the Australian Institute of Massage and the National College of Business, after having served as the head lecturer in both the business and fitness colleges.
Sharyn Devereux-Blum
Mary Willow has worked for over 30 years in the fields of nursing, midwifery, early childhood education and parent education. In January she opened Plum Garden, a parent education centre in Brooklyn, Wellington. From there she operates Plum Parent Support, a service providing education, support and advice for parents on parenting. Please visit the website, www.PlumParentSupport.com.
Sharyn Devereux-Blum is owner of DevereuxBlum Training and Development Limited, a tertiary education provider working nationally in the emergency management sector. They are considered experts in their field. An NZQA training company on a three-year audit cycle, they offer a wide range of services in Emergency Management, specialising in the development of the 4 R’s, Reduction Readiness Response and Recovery. They have extensive experience in training, coaching, facilitation, and work at the national level on behalf of the Ministry of Emergency Management and Civil Defence. www.emergencymanagement.co.nz or sharyn@emergencymanagement.co.nz
Neill O’Reilly
Dr Spencer Kagan
Neill O’Reilly calls himself a late starter in education, having had a career in banking prior to becoming a teacher in 1991. A product of South Auckland and a survivor of a 10-child Irish Catholic immigrant family, he brings a unique perspective to education. Currently the principal of Windsor School, he is an influential and inspirational leader. www.windor.school.co.nz
Dr. Spencer Kagan is an internationally acclaimed researcher, presenter and author of over 100 books, chapters, and scientific journal articles. He is the principal author of comprehensive books in four fields: cooperative learning, multiple intelligences, classroom discipline, and classroom energizers. www.kaganonline.com
Mary Willow
Ngahihi o te ra Bidois Ngahihi o te ra is from Te Arawa and is an international consultant and speaker. Book him for your training, conference or seminar through his website at www.ngahibidois.com
Robyn Pearce Robyn Pearce, a Certified Speaking Professiona,) is the Time Queen ( plus mother
Stuart Fleming Stuart Fleming is creator of the Money Mindset Mob and an enthusiastic believer in independent teens. A professional speaker, workshop leader and teen money coach, his super-power is seeing the potential in people and situations. Stuart volunteers as National Commissioner for SCOUTS New Zealand. www.MoneyMindsetMob.com
CONTRIBUTORS
Thelma van der Werff As a colour therapist, people often mistake Thelma for an image consultant. This has led her to develop colour therapy for the mainstream, using the clothing colours to influence emotions and behaviour. Learn more at www.colourcomfort.com.
Therese Hoyle Therese Hoyle is author of 101 Playground Games and runs Positive Playtime and whole school social, emotional and behavioural skills programmes nationally and internationally. Therese Hoyle’s new book and CD Rom, 101 Wet Playtime Games and Activities, is filled with exciting ideas and activity worksheets to brighten up any wet play day. It is due for release in September 2009. To order your copy, contact Spectrum Education. www.successpartnership.co.nz
Tricia Kenyon Tricia has been involved in the field of Literacy for 17 years, firstly as a Resource Teacher:Reading, then as a Resource Teacher:Literacy. She is passionate about books and reading, and feels privileged to be in a position where she can share that passion with students, their parents, and fellow teachers.
Wendy Sweet Wendy Sweet is a registered nurse with a degree in physical education from Otago and a post-grad diploma in sports and leisure studies from The University of Waikato, School of Education where she both lectures and is completing her master’s thesis. Wendy runs professional development workshops for the fitness industry, companies and schools. Having set up the Les Mills Personal Training system in the ’90s, she has trained hundreds of personal trainers throughout Australasia and is one of the country’s leading health and wellness education experts. For information on professional development workshops for motivating staff to take responsibility for increasing their personal resilience, contact Wendy at wsweet@xtra.co.nz.
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Maggie dent
Using visualisation and mental rehearsal in the classroom The power to students’ success is inside their heads.
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hen students turn up in your classroom, they bring with them invisible inhibitors to learning. Based on experience, they have formed concepts, deeply held beliefs formed because of an emotionally significant experience. John Joseph says, “An emotionally powerful concept (EPC) is one that creates significant changes in the body, including the brain structures that map the body and influence thinking.” These EPCs are either positive and support learning, or they are negative and create avoidance of learning opportunities. A simple example is a student who comes with the concept that “I am dumb at maths.” We can only behave in accordance with our belief system and so, despite your best attempts to convince a student otherwise, you are up against an invisible inhibitor to learning well in your class.
How can we change these concepts? The slow, tried and true way is for teachers to do what they have always done: to support a student to gradually develop competence and mastery by becoming successful at the task. They cannot keep an “I am dumb at maths” if they have mastered long division.
Teachers Matter
Or you can use creative visualisation or mental rehearsal.
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The key is that the brain sees anything vividly imagined with emotion as real. This means that if you pretend strongly enough, you can overcome the mental resistance that exists within you. The following exercise from Jack Canfield can help you understand the power of visualisation and is excellent to do with students when you want to introduce mental rehearsal in your classroom: 1. Stand with your feet comfortably apart. Keep your feet still during this activity, as it will require you to turn from the waist. I
“ The key is that the brain sees anything vividly imagined with emotion as real. This means that if you pretend strongly enough, you can overcome the mental resistance that exists within you. “ encourage you not to force any movement, just do what feels comfortable for you. 2. Raise your left arm straight out in front of you. Turn slowly to the left leading with your arm, to as far as is comfortable for you. When you get to that point, allow your eyes to observe whatever your hand or fingers are pointing toward. Make a mental note of that point; this is point one. 3. Then, without moving your arm, visually line up a different point that is farther in the direction you were turning toward, at least 30 centimetres farther around. Take a mental picture of this point; this is point two. 4. Slowly untwist as you bring your arm back to the front. Put it by your side. 5. Now close your eyes. Imagine you are repeating the exercise. Imagine lifting your left arm up easily and effortlessly turning slowly to point one. Effortlessly pass that point to line your arm up to the second point that was almost behind you, at point two. It feels easy, your body feels comfortable and you find yourself lined up to a place that is much farther around than you were first able to turn. Imagine bringing your arm back to the front, and slowly to your side. Then imagine it one more time using the same instructions and imagine it feels so easy and effortless that it almost feels like you could turn all the way around. 6. Finally open your eyes and actually do the exercise. Where does your arm now
face? Is it at point one or nearer to point two? Most of you will find you have easily lined up to point two. What does this visualisation exercise show? We can change our performance easily when we change our inner perception. If we can see something with the mind, then the chances are much better that the body will follow. There is an often-quoted experiment with a group of young basketballers. They were divided into three groups. One group practiced every day over a three-month period. Another group did no training while the third group mentally practiced every day. The results showed conclusively that the third group improved almost as much as the first group, without even touching a basketball.
Can you see the implications for kids who are underachieving? Many children have the worst possible vision of themselves. “I am dumb, fat, and useless, no one likes me, I am ugly and no one cares.” Some of these children come from loving families, yet the inner critic, or the ego voice, runs an inner dialogue that criticises; it reinforces negative messages we have heard. With deep relaxation, particularly with positive visualisation, students can quiet the critical voice so that
Maggie dent
photo: Cathy Yeulet
in maths, and they were very surprised by that – as was their maths teacher. Every one of those boys took home the best report they had ever achieved.
the unconscious and conscious minds hear the positive messages. In 1998, I was given a class of low achievers in English. They were all boys. I decided to work at changing both their mental and emotional perceptions of English classes and their inner beliefs and perceptions about how well they would perform at the end of term. We created ‘the Best Report Ever’ visualisation. It involved taking the students into a quiet, relaxed place and imagining taking home their very best report ever - how Mum reacts, how Dad reacts and how proud they feel within themselves. The students enjoyed the activity as they were able to feel positive about themselves, and the body followed the mind. What they didn’t realise was that their inner perceptions of their potential also changed in time. By week four, they had begun handing in better work
“ If we can remind students to vividly imagine the highest possible outcome or vision for themselves, we give them the best opportunity to achieve positive results. “
Dr Gerald Jampolsky, the director of the Centre for Attitudinal Learning in the United States, created an accelerated learning technique for remedial readers at the elementary level. A group of remedial readers used the tape at home every night for a three-month period, and at the end of the time they were re-tested, and they had all increased their reading ages -- some by as much as four years. The best news: They did this without extra tuition or extra work. I have created visualisation similar to Gerald’s on the School Mastery CD 1 called “I Can Read Easily.” The teachers using this CD have noticed instant changes in attitude toward reading and, of course, this is the first step to changing performance. If we can remind students to vividly imagine the highest possible outcome or vision for themselves, we give them the best opportunity to achieve positive results. If they use the guided visualisation at home, before going to sleep, it seems to accelerate the changes because the unconscious is able to embed the new concepts faster and deeper. By empowering students to better manage their mental patterns and thinking loops, we can help turn around the high levels of failure and low achievement that exists in some of our schools. We can give our students the tools for life that allow them to manage their negative feelings and their emotionally destructive patterns, before they get to puberty when everything accelerates and becomes even more unpredictable.
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Freaky Facts
A mole can dig a tunnel over 90m long in
just one night
There are 701 official breeds of dog The tallest tree in the Leonardo da Vinci invented an alarm clock that woke you up by tickling your feet
World, a Redwood, is
112m
More that a thousand new insects are discovered every year
Every person has a unique
tongue print
Girls have more taste buds than boys
There are only 200 family nam es in China for a population of well over a billion
Ombrophobia is the fear of rain had Charles Osborne
the hiccups for
69 years
The Guinness Bo the book most ok of Records holds the reco often stolen fr om public libra rd for being ries
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p cream irs of p the a i p h w 2 and 789 wear eggs ause olfer c e g e h t B e t h ? a le n did t ey be Troub f seve h t o ? Why f e d s o e u car t out Beca is 6 s to ge ean? d r m Why a s h ook fired and are c e was t into H e g ? Why o b sy t is jo ling! t is ea lose h t e k dribb tick! zzles Wha c s s u o y r p A a e d ? re alw ticky sswor did th ater hey a ? Cro and s How W t y n r e ? s g s w g u n ot. e ro Beca you a e a fo t is b any l ? b e t r k e u d l a o n Wha u it wo r with to din zles m then sked t puz e floo a e h t s r e u g Wha v a Bec rs ne s alon long? t run playe l a s l e h a h b W c asket 12 in are b nose y y h m W isn’t , why m u M
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dr marvin marshall
Discipline is a liberating word A happy life is a disciplined life.
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photo: Miodrag Gajic
ost people misunderstand the term “discipline.” A university professor once told me this term is so negative that he never uses it. Instead, he uses the phrase “classroom management.” As with so many educators, the professor mistakenly used these two terms as if they were synonymous. On the contrary, classroom management is about making instruction and learning efficient. This is the teacher’s responsibility. Discipline is about behaviour and is the student’s responsibility.
Teachers Matter 14
The ultimate goal of discipline is selfdiscipline, the kind of self-control that underlies voluntar y compliance with expected standards. This is the discipline of mature character that a civilized society expects of its citizens. John Goodlad said that the first public purpose of schooling is to develop civility. This can only be achieved with self-discipline. In order for a society or classroom to be civil, we need to foster discipline. Yet, according to Richard E. Clark, chair of the division of educational psychology at the University of Southern California, “Discipline is understood in a very limited way by most educators — ‘How do we get these children to behave?’— rather than ‘How do we support the people in our charge as they learn to channel and direct their positive energy in ways that accomplish their goals and those of their community?’” Although we often refer to discipline as punishment, this is only one of many interpretations of the word. In fact, Dr.
photo: Cathy Yeulet
The key to classroom management is to teach a procedure for everything you want your students to do. A major mistake many teachers make is assuming that students know what the teacher wants — without the teacher’s first modeling, then teaching, and then having students practice the procedure. In contrast, the key to discipline is to induce students to influence themselves so that they want to behave responsibly. Lee Salk, the author of eight books on family relationships and a former popular commentator on social change, domestic strife, and changing family patterns, stated in Familyhood: Nurturing the Values that Matter, “What discipline is not is punishment.” He also stated, “Discipline isn’t a dirty word. Far from it! Discipline is the one thing that separates us from chaos and anarchy. It’s the precursor to good behaviour, and it never comes from bad behaviour. People who associate discipline with punishment have a shortsighted view of discipline. With discipline, punishment is unnecessary.” Discipline is derived from the Latin word “disciplina,” which means instruction. The original meaning of the word connotes the self-discipline necessary to master a task. This is the self-discipline of the competitive athlete, the professional musician, the master craftsman, the expert in any field.
T h i s t y p e o f d i s c i p l i n e i s a personal one. It does not come from receiving something or from someone else. External approaches to discipline, such as telling, rewarding, threatening, and punishing, are manipulative and rarely have long-lasting positive effects. In her book, The Caring Teacher’s Guide to Discipline: Helping Young Students Learn SelfControl, Responsibility, and Respect, Marilyn Gootman writes that discipline is teaching self-control, not controlling or managing students. Julie Andrews believes that discipline is liberating. As she put it, “Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.” P l e a s e s e e M a r v i n M a r s h a l l ’s b i o f o r more information.
dr Art Costa
Becoming more mindful about the Habits of Mind Students might slip into automatic mode, but teachers can guide them back into mindfulness.
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uring a visit to a Swedish high school, I asked students what the Habits of Mind mean to them and how they are drawing upon these dispositions. “We don’t really think about them anymore,” several students responded. “The Habits of Mind have become so spontaneous, internalised and ingrained in us that they are automatic.” Is that what we mean by habituating, being so “automatic” that we don’t think about them anymore?
photo: Matt Antonino
We go through most of life on “autopilot.” But living on automatic places us at risk of mindlessly reacting to situations without reflecting on various options. The result can often be knee-jerk reactions that in turn create similar mindless reflexes to others.
Attending to attention Mindfulness is the awareness that emerges through paying attention to how one’s mind is working -- being aware of what is happening as it is happening. In his book The Mindful Brain, Daniel Seigel suggests that how we focus our attention helps shape the mind. When we develop a certain form of attention of our here and now and on the nature of our mind itself, we create mindfulness. When you become mindful, your mind wakes up from automatic; you become aware of the flow of energy, the information, the process and the stimulus that evokes it. We learn to appreciate our mind’s contents and power, and we can better regulate its functions and flow.
Mindfulness enhances the capacity for establishing caring relationships with others because we pay attention to ourselves, how we are responding and how we know others are feeling. We can educate our students to observe their minds at work. Becoming mindful about the Habits of Mind means that we pay attention to the Habits that our mind is drawing upon: labeling them, transferring them from similar previous situations, enjoying their benefits, sequencing their use into an overall strategy, evaluating their effectiveness, applying them elsewhere, and making a conscious commitment to improving them.
“ We can educate our students to observe their minds at work. Becoming mindful about the Habits of Mind means that we pay attention to the Habits that our mind is drawing upon “ 15
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dr art costa
Reflection: A strategy for building mindfulness Reflection is one of the most powerful strategies to promote mindfulness. To be reflective means to mentally wander through where you have been and to try to make some sense out of it. Teachers may use many strategies to invite students’ reflection. A few examples are discussions, interviews, questioning, logs, journals and modeling. Discussions: Students realise that mindfulness is a goal when reflection becomes the topic of discussion. For example, conduct discussions about students’ problem-solving processes. Invite them to share their metacognition, reveal their intentions, detail their strategies for solving a problem, describe their mental maps for monitoring their problem-solving process, and reflect on the strategy to determine its adequacy. During these kinds of rich discussions, students learn how to listen to and explore the implications of each other’s metacognitive strategies. The kind of listening required during such discussions also builds empathy, flexibility, and persistence.
Teachers Matter
Interviews: Teachers may lead students to share reflections about their learning and their growth in the Habits of Mind by making them explicit to someone else. A teacher can interview a student, or students might interview each other. Guide students to look for ways they can apply their learnings to future settings.
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Journals and logs: Students at University Heights School in New York City reflect on the Habits of Mind they have adopted when they present their portfolios to judges. The following excerpt is a journal reflection from one student: “Through ‘Thinking Critically and Questioning,’ we investigate questions, myths, and even proven knowledge. From that we gain intelligence (learning from proof, not opinion) and experiences to find what we believe to be the truth. . . .. Now that I have this strengthened knowledge, I must apply it to my life. But
the success of that assignment can only be judged by me. Only I know what is happiness and beauty in this mind and it will take me an entire lifetime to apply what I have learned to my existence.” Questioning: Well-designed, intentional questions invite students to reveal their insights, understandings, and applications of the Habits of Mind. Following are some examples:
• “ H o w d o y o u k n o w y o u r s t r a t e g y is working?” • “What corrections, alterations in your strategy are you making as you…..?” • “What will you pay attention to while you are solving this problem to let you know your strategy is working?” • “What alternative strategies might you employ if you find your strategy is not working?”
Intention: To commit to improving their use of Habits of Mind
Intention: To employ Habits of Mind more strategically
• “Why is it important to you to………?”
Going to Use: • “What approaches will you employ…?”
• “What goals are you setting for yourself to become more mindful of your own Habits of Mind? • “As you anticipate similar problems in the future, what insights about the Habits of Mind might you carry forth about how to think through such problems?”
Intention: To apply habits of mind in a greater variety and range of situations • “How might you use this Habit of Mind next time? • “As you anticipate similar problems in the future, what insights might you carry forth about how to think them through?” • “What makes you think that strategy will work in this situation?” • “What has worked for you in the past that you might draw upon?”
Intention: To evaluate the effectiveness of using Habits of Mind • “ H o w w e l l d i d y o u r s t r a t e g y w o r k for you?
• “As you approach this problem, what other Habits of Mind will you employ?” • “In what sequence might you use these Habits of Mind?” Are Using: • “As you consider the steps in the skillful problem-solving process, where are you……?” • “What patterns are you noticing in your approach to solving this problem?” • “What questions are you asking yourself? Did use: • “As you reflect on your strategy for using the Habits of Mind, what did it involve?” • “What led you to this decision to…….? • “What questions were you asking yourself?
Intention: To deepen their meaning of the Habits of Mind • “Which Habits of Mind (are you) (will you be) (were you) using? • “How might that Habit of Mind serve you as you are working on this problem…?”
dr art costa
• “What might it sound like or look like if you are using that Habit of Mind?
my resources; how can I draw on my past successes with problems like this; what do I already know about the problem; what resources do I have available or need to generate?”
• “To whom might I turn for help? They might ask how this problem affects others. How might we solve it together and what can I learn from others that would help me become a better problem solver?”
• “How might I approach this problem flexibly? How might I look at the situation in another way; how can I draw upon my repertoire of problem solving strategies?
Some suggestions for helping students develop the internal voice of reflection include:
• “What might you hear yourself saying to yourself about how this Habit of Mind relates to this problem? Modeling: Imitation and emulation are the most basic forms of learning. Teachers, parents, and administrators realise the importance of displaying their reflection on their use of the Habits of Mind. Children must encounter reflective role models. The internal voice of reflection means having an “internal dialogue” about both what and how we are thinking. These Habits of Mind may ser ve as mental disciplines. When confronted with problematic situations, students habitually ask themselves: • “What is the most intelligent thing I can do right now?” • “How might I learn from this; what are
• “How might I illuminate this problem to make it clearer, more precise? Do I need to check out my data sources? How might I break this problem down into its component parts and develop a strategy for understanding and accomplishing each step?” • “What do I know or not know? What questions do I need to ask? What strategies are in my mind now? What am I aware of in terms of my own beliefs, values and goals with this problem? What feelings or emotions am I aware of which might be blocking or enhancing my progress?”
• Writing a letter to themselves detailing what they learned from an experience. • Sending themselves a letter of advice, reminding themselves of what to look out for the next time they do something. • Interviewing themselves. • Making a list of connections they see between their work and others’ work. Include peers’ work along with work that has been studied in the classroom. • Recording the steps they go through to solve a problem. Guide them to comment on how useful those steps were.
The internal compass: Calling up the internal voice
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glenn capelli
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photo: Tatyana Chernyak
Teachers Matter
“ They will try and have you believe that parents and children in natural play together – making and flying kites, reading stories out loud, dancing to music (without being the best in the world), turning stories into plays, building cubby houses, making mud pies – is the best bonding to have.”
glenn capelli
Natural Play: A Modest Proposal Satire may not be dead; here’s an echo of Jonathan Swift on the need for children to have natural play.
It
is with a sense of melancholy that I note how lazy and idle some children have become. Yesterday I noticed a group of 8- to 10-year-olds playing in a park, and the other week there was a young dad down by the river flying a kite with his 4-year-old.
What is going on? These children, and more important these parents, need to realise that time is precious and that the life span of a child to become famous is a short one. No time for frivolity; no time for idle mucking around; there is only a short timeframe for a kid to prove his worth. Current affairs programs are not interested in 15-year-olds on the cusp of making an Under 16s State side; no by 15, a child needs to have been there and done that. Today’s 15-year-old is yesterday’s has been. By 15, they need to have done everything and now be bored and tired with life. By 18, they need to be on Botox. So let me forward a modest proposal – a Training Guide to Parents. Your child has just a small number of years to become famous. Start young. Start before you were even born. Choose your parents well. No slackers, no boozers, no time wasters – choose parents of good stock, good genes and good wallets. Next step, don’t waste your good genes on some one of poor genes. The sperm and egg combination of your future Super Child needs to be exact. Have all DNA testing done before wasting your ova on someone who is over the hill and under the IQ mark. Only good brains need apply themselves to matters of reproduction. Once the idea is conceived, start with Mozart CDs to the womb and daily affirmations. “You are a champion. You are wealthy. You are a match winner.” All affirmations need to be present tense and powerful. Remember you are not just a baby machine; you are
the force for the economic future. The world needs your offspring and you will need your offspring’s royalties. At birth, have a film crew present and music playing. We suggest the theme from Rocky or Tina Turner’s Simply The Best. The choice of song is crucial; do not underestimate this. Your future bank balance may very well depend on whether you run with Beethoven, Bach or Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild. From birth, use flashcards. Flashcards are an important tool in the development of your offspring’s mind and fibre. Ensure the flashcards are in several languages for maximum use of time and future earning potential. Also, have golf clubs (the Tiger Woods Way), tennis rackets (Jelena Dokic), piano (Mozart) and other potential career opportunity items available and ready for action. Some manuals will tell you to not commence training till the offspring is several months old. This is rubbish. Any offspring worth the medicated pain of birth must be willing to repay you with diligence from the word go. Remember when your offspring starts training for greatness straight away, they are several months ahead of the other future losers. Life is a race. A test. A competition. Step up and get stuck in. The rewards will be huge. By the age of three, your child needs to be a super model, a movie star, a combined winner of Idol, Masterchef and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. But be warned, for every 3-year-old super star, there is a 2 ½-year-old coming up behind. It is a rat race, and you want your offspring to be King Rat. There is no time for play, no time for rest, no time for laughter, no time for a kid to be a kid, no time for natural development, no time for time. Make each nanosecond meaningful or else the offspring may just end up being another failure – a child without a show reel, a kid without a truckload of
trophies, some smiling loser oblivious to the fact that fame is everything. Be warned, though, there are some subversives on the planet who will try and tell you that natural play and laughter are part of a child’s development and that natural play is one of the best ways for growing young minds and hearts. Furthermore, they will try and have you believe that parents and children in natural play together – making and flying kites, reading stories out loud, dancing to music (without being the best in the world), turning stories into plays, building cubby houses, making mud pies – is the best bonding to have and the surest way we know of helping a child be an on-going learner throughout a long life of learning. Furthermore, they even suggest that such playfulness is the best foundation for the teamwork of the community that engages children in learning – the community of parents, school and children. They go so far as to say that such stuff helps a child enjoy and prosper in their schooling experience. People, like subversive psychologist Stuart Brown, author of Play, even suggest that natural play shapes the brain, opens the imagination and invigorates the soul. Bah and humbug. Really, I ask you, I exclaim out loud, I put it in exclamation marks (!!), is such invigoration going to help your offspring make millions of dollars? Is it going to make them the youngest Wimbledon Champion ever at the age of 10, a child movie star by 3 or an adult movie star by 11? No, so get it right people! Get on with the job of making the offspring a super star. I mean, after all is said and done, that’s the purpose of parenting, isn’t it? (For a real insight into the nature of natural play, find The Neoteny Song by Glenn and Keith McDonald on iTunes.)
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marcia tate
Sit and get won’t grow dendrites Professional learning strategies that engage the adult brain
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ccording to brain research and learning-style theory, trainers should use 20 strategies when presenting to adult audiences. These strategies facilitate comprehension and retention because they take advantage of the way all brains learn best -- and therefore should also be used with students. These methods cause dendrites, or memory cells, to grow in the brain. They also address all four learning modalities: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile. Use them to make your presentations unforgettable:
photo: Andres Rodriguez
1. Brainstorming and discussion Neuroscientists say that the person who is
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doing the most talking is growing the most brain cells. In the majority of sessions I have experienced, that person is the presenter. It shouldn’t be. You must provide participants with many opportunities to brainstorm ideas and debate controversial issues without fear of reprisal. One person’s idea actually causes another person to search his or her brains for other related ideas. 2. Drawing and artwork How many times have I heard adults make the statement, “I can’t draw!” This is probably because they haven’t had the opportunity to draw anything since they were in the primary
“ Using games, even in a classroom of adult learners, is extremely motivating.” grades. Yet, the amygdala (the seat of emotion in the brain) and the thalamus (the receptor for information from the five senses) are both activated when people are drawing. Have your adult learners draw during training to facilitate retention of information.
3. Field trips Try taking your adult audiences on field trips where they can experience real-world learning because a great deal of information stored in the brain comes from concrete experiences. In fact, two of the world’s greatest teachers, Aristotle and Socrates, instructed through the use of field trips. 4. Games Individuals are motivated by the need for fun. Using games, even in a classroom of adult learners, is extremely motivating. Review content through a good game of Jeopardy! Toss a ball randomly so that participants can provide answers to designated questions. Watch the energy level in your training soar. 5. Graphic organisers, semantic maps, and word webs I never teach anything complicated or confusing without the use of a graphic organiser. Graphic organisers work because they visually represent linear ideas and are beneficial to both left and right hemispheres of the brain. Also referred to as thinking, mind, concept, or semantic maps or even word webs, they provide connections between bits of information and make the learning easier to understand and remember. 6. Humour Opening your training session with a joke not only relaxes you, but also enlivens your participants, reduces their stress, and improves their creativity. In fact, humour and laughter are so good for the brain and body that major comedians live five to 20 years longer than the average human. 7. Manipulatives The connections between the brain and the hands are so complicated that no single theory can explain it. When participants in your training sessions are manipulating cards or even building models, they are using their spatial intelligence and reinforcing content. 8. Metaphors, analogies, and similes When trainers connect two dissimilar items together through the use of a metaphor, analogy, or simile, the brain has a hook or connection for remembering the new information. 9. Mnemonic devices I refer to mnemonic devices as brain short cuts, because they are connected ways for the brain to remember a term or a list of items. Health officials know that the public will never remember Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome so they just call it AIDS. Try having your participants create
their own mnemonic devices for something you want them to remember. 10. Movement One of the strongest memory systems in the brain is procedural memory which involves the use of the body in learning. Things that you learned while your body was moving are long remembered, e.g., driving a car or riding a bike. When participants are moving around the room to meet with a date and discuss your content, they are strengthening their memory for the information. 11. Music, rhythm, rhyme, and rap Allow participants to work in groups or individually to write songs, rhymes, or raps as they reconstruct knowledge learned in your training session and they will thank you. 12. Project-based and problem-based instruction Adult learners who have no projects to apply or problems to solve in the real world following a training session are adults who often leave their learning in the workshop. Always give your participants a project to implement that will help them apply what you taught them. 13. Reciprocal teaching, cooperative learning, and peer coaching Have participants complete an activity or make a list of items individually. Then have them work with a partner or in a group to improve their performance or to add to their list of items. Invariably, the group’s performance will always be superior to any individual performance in the class, thereby, proving that two heads are better than one. Having participants coach one another while applying new skills or learning new content is invaluable for providing ongoing support. 14. Role plays, drama, pantomimes, and charades A heated game of charades is still a favorite pastime for an adult party. Having your participants act out a particular concept or role-play how they would solve a certain problem creates concrete memories in the brains of your adult learners. This strategy places the learning closer to the real world, the reason the brain exists in the first place. 15. Storytelling Watch a speaker or a minister begin to tell a story and notice that everyone is listening. Begin and end your training session with a true story and capture the attention of all learners, especially if the story is emotional. 16. Technology Technological advances have revolutionised every aspect of our lives including how
marcia tate teachers teach and how people learn. Provide experiences that equip participants with the ability to utilise the technology to the fullest extent, including e-mailing a pen pal in another country or researching on the Internet for a project. A word of caution, some teachers utilise technology as their sole source of lesson delivery. Don’t forget the importance of movement and role-play for strengthening procedural memory and developing a healthier, more active student. 17. Visualisation and guided imagery Even the magnificent Blue Angels Fighter Squadron sits in a room and visualises its routine prior to getting into the airplanes. Try having participants visualise what they wish to accomplish and then stand back and watch them accomplish it. 18. Visuals When they say a picture is worth a thousand words, they are not kidding. Showing the brains of your learners what you are teaching is far more memorable than telling them about it. Use charts, graphs, videos, PowerPoint, overheads, and other visuals to make the learning come alive. Be careful not to overdue your PowerPoint with too many slides and a lack of active engagement in between. I have seen audiences disengage when this was the only method of delivery. 19. Work study and action research People learn to do a job by doing the job. That is why internships, practicums, and apprenticeships are invaluable for acquiring on-the-job training. Providing participants with opportunities to try out hypotheses in the name of action research ensures practical application of new content. After all, people create new and very strong neural networks from actual experience, not artificial paper and pencil tasks. 20. Writing When I teach, I provide participants with only a framework or outline of the content on the handouts. Why? Because we create the handouts as we learn. Having participants write in short chunks of information increases memory. Have you ever written a list of groceries only to leave the list at home? Isn’t it funny that you are still able to recall many of the items on your list when you got in the store simply because you wrote the items down ahead of time?
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photo: Cathy Yeulet
dr spencer kagan
The Instructional Revolution Teachers can improve learning and self-esteem with these new techniques.
As
Teachers Matter
the world around them changed, schools didn’t. At least they didn’t change in the most important way they needed to change: How teachers teach. I’ve trained teachers and observed classrooms in over 20 countries, and wherever I go, instructional strategies are remarkably similar. They’re similar to each other and similar to what they were several hundred years ago.
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Traditional instructional strategies Let’s review two of the most commonly used traditional instructional strategies: The way we have students respond to teacher-generated questions, and the way we have students practice a teacherdemonstrated skill.
Answering teacher-generated questions. To check for understanding, to generate active participation, and/or to reinforce a correct response, a traditional way to structure the interaction in a classroom is the familiar Teacher-Student QuestionAnswer. The teacher asks a question of the class and students who know the answer wave their hands, hoping the teacher will call on them. The teacher then calls on one student, and that student gives an answer, hoping for approval from the teacher. Practicing teacher-demonstrated skills. To have students practice a teacherdemonstrated skill, a traditional way to structure the interaction in a classroom is Solo Worksheet Work. The teacher d em o n st r a te s t he sk i l l a n d t he n ha s students work alone applying the skill to new problems, often provided in the form of a worksheet, problems on the board, or problems at the end of a chapter. Often teacher admonish students to work alone,
to “keep their eyes on their own papers.” For feedback and evaluation, students turn in their worksheets; the teacher grades them; and the teacher then passes the corrected and graded worksheets back to students.
Revolutionary alternatives Let’s consider alternative ways to structure the interaction in classrooms and their advantages over the traditional approaches. At my business, we have developed over 200 instructional strategies designed to engage different types of thinking and learning. These innovative strategies, known as Kagan Structures, radically transform the way students and teachers interact. They are fresh, creative, easy-to-implement and enjoyable methods that enliven the classroom and greatly enhance learning. Here are just two of the more than 200 Kagan Structures: RallyRobin and Timed Pair Share.
dr spencer kagan
“ There is a ver y different metacommunication with RallyRobin and Timed Pair Share: We all have ideas of value to share. My job as a teacher is to allow you to express and elaborate your thinking."
Answering teacher-generated questions: RallyRobin. Let’s take an example of a teacher who wants the students to think of adjectives to describe a character in a story. Instead of calling on one student after another, the teacher could use RallyRobin. The teacher would have students form pairs and then say, “Turn to your partner and do a RallyRobin: Take turns naming adjectives to describe the main character.” Advantages of RallyRobin. In the same amount of time that the traditional teacher can call on and respond to at most four students, each giving one answer, the teacher has every student in the class give many answers. Compared to the traditional approach, RallyRobin works miracles for active participation. Would we rather have four students give one answer each, or would we rather have every student in the class think of several answers? If our goal is to have students think of many possible answers to a question, in effect, to generate an oral list, RallyRobin accomplishes the goal far better than does teacher-student question-answer. Younger students might do a RallyRobin to name colors or to create or devise possible alternative endings to a story. Older students might RallyRobin prime numbers, inert elements, possible causes or consequences of an historical event, or literary techniques. Answering teacher-generated questions: Timed Pair Share. No one structure is best for all types of thinking. If our goal is to have students elaborate their thinking in-depth rather than to generate a list of answers, Timed Pair Share works far better than RallyRobin. In Timed Pair Share students in pairs each speak for a predetermined amount of time, usually for a minute. Their partner gives them undivided, uninterrupted attention. Sample content for Timed Pair Share includes: Tell your
partner about the picture you plan to draw. What are three alternative hypotheses that could explain your data, and which do you think is the best? Which adjective do you think best describes the main character and why? Explain what you think were the most important consequences of World War II? What is one literary technique you plan to use in your story and how will you use it? Advantages of Timed Pair Share. During Timed Pair Share, in the same amount of time we might call on and respond to two or three students, each sharing for a minute, we have every student in the class share for a minute. Again, we generate a miracle of active engagement. Because students are talking directly to a partner, they are far less likely to tune out compared to when they are looking at the back of the head of someone responding to the teacher. Through Timed Pair Share, students learn to listen attentively to a peer, acquiring active listening skills such as eye contact and showing interest. The advantages of RallyRobin and Timed Pair Share, however, are not limited to increasing active participation. There are many advantages. By using these active engagement structures, students who do not participate in the traditional classroom become engaged. Many students are too shy, find it too risky, or are too limited in their language fluency so they will not raise their hand to answer in front of the whole class. Those same students are quite comfortable and become fluent interacting with just one other student. In each class, isn’t it always the same handful of students with their hands waving to be called on, and another subset of students who never raise their hands? With RallyRobin, everyone participates, not just the high achievers. How we structure our classrooms communicates values. The meta-communication
from teacher to students with the traditional class structure of calling on those who know is that some know and some do not. Some are better than others. My job as a teacher is to evaluate. There is a very different meta-communication with RallyRobin and Timed Pair Share: We all have ideas of value to share. My job as a teacher is to allow you to express and elaborate your thinking. We are all part of a community of thinkers and learners. Students’ identity and self-esteem improve in classrooms in which teachers use RallyRobin and Timed Pair Share. With the traditional structure, we create winners and losers, some who know and some who do not. Those who don’t raise their hands leave class feeling inferior to those who always know the answer. The message: Some of us are better than others. With RallyRobin and Timed Pair Share there is a different message: We all have important contributions to make. With the interactive structures, we equalise status and students all leave class with a feeling of worth. Students develop social skills during RallyRobin and Timed Pair Share that they do not acquire in the traditional class. Because during RallyRobin and Timed Pair Share students each turn to face a partner, talking directly to them, they hold each other on task. Their level of engagement increases dramatically. Students do not come to school to see us. With interactive structures, students get to do what they most want to do – interact with their peers. Students like school, class, and subject matter more because they are more engaged and because thinking about the content is within an enjoyable context. Another advantage of the interactive structures over the traditional approach is authentic assessment. One reason to have students talk about their thinking is so we can assess their level of thought. With the traditional approach, we hear only from the high achievers or those who think they know the answer, so we sample a highly skewed segment of the class. As students do a RallyRobin or Timed Pair Share, we listen in to a representative sample of the class and obtain a much better understanding of our students’ level of thinking.
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Carol Carter
Critical and creative thinking: Promoting adult success skills Help your students explore the same questions that some of our great leaders faced.
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hen the students of today graduate, they will face a world with incredible challenges in the areas of water, the environment, health, poverty and education. They will be called to deal with new challenges arising from an interdependent global society and from the interconnectivity of a wired world. And for the first time in history, these graduates will face a world where the number of people over 65 will be greater than the number of people under 65, creating a huge financial burden for tomorrow’s working population. However, this world will be rich with opportunity for the students who possess strong thinking and reasoning skills, and who have the ability to create a vision and seek solutions to these formidable problems. The leaders of tomorrow will be called to act in both small and large ways, from organising a grassroots food campaign for the local shelter to mobilising students worldwide to participate in their hunger relief efforts through Twitter or other forms of viral communication. Both creativity and strategic action will be necessary for tomorrow’s graduates to care for our fragile planet, to orchestrate a sustainable future and to work across borders and cultures in collaboration. So how do we prepare today’s students for such challenges? One of the best ways is to illustrate how people have used leadership, strategic action and critical and creative thinking in the past to solve problems. These stories will not only highlight the above concepts, but can also serve as guideposts for students’ personal dreams, ambitions, gifts and talents:
Analyse great thinkers from history Who are the people who have made a difference in the world through innovative thinking and ground-breaking work?
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Florence Nightingale, though most commonly associated with advances in nursing, was truly a mathematical pioneer. Born in Florence, Italy in 1820, she was passionate about maths at a time when it wasn’t proper for women to study maths or to assert themselves or their ideas. She was driven by the question: Why? After completing her studies in mathematics and statistics, she became a nurse and worked for the British government during the Crimean War. Using her critical thinking skills to compile important statistics, she concluded that poor patient hygiene and lack of sanitary conditions contributed to the soldiers dying of infection 10 times more often than from battle wounds. Such thinking was radical at the time. Since the number of soldiers available for fighting was beginning to dwindle, she took on the formidable task of convincing the government to make changes. She created the now infamous coxcomb graph that clearly illustrated her numbers and helped convince the officials to change hospital protocol.
“ Here students can learn to creatively v i e w w h a t ’s available to them, and how problems can be solved with unsuspected resources. From this they might ask, “What lies in your own backyard?”
million contract to grow what most people scrape out of their fish tanks: algae. This unusual crop may one day provide a way out of our dependency on fossil fuels and the environmental destruction they are causing. By taking the time to observe the properties of algae, Isaac discovered they double their mass in a few hours, produce 30 times more oil per acre as sunflowers do, and thrive in sewage, or brackish water. He also observed that single-cell algae consume carbon dioxide and other troubling power plant emissions, and, even better, they emit oxygen during photosynthesis. This makes single cell algae tiny power plants in their own right, power plants that transform toxic emissions into renewable energy.
Examples such as this illustrate for students cross-disciplinary thinking in maths, science and statistics. They also demonstrate personal qualities of courage and perseverance in the face of “holding the questions.” Staying with ambiguity — and patiently collecting more information — is a key part of critical and creative thinking and problem solving that can ultimately be used to persuade others and result in positive change.
Isaac’s idea is simple once you understand algae’s appetites and its astonishing efficiency. Laboratory research at GreenFuel has already demonstrated that single-cell algae could consume carbon dioxide or nitrogen oxides and then be “harvested” in a reusable form. This form, a biomass, could potentially be burned like coal, liquified into oil, or used to make plastics, nutraceuticals or food. Berzin’s observations may one day change energy production throughout the world.
Survey innovations changing the world
Here students can learn to creatively view what’s available to them, and how problems can be solved with unsuspected resources. From this they might ask, “What lies in your own backyard?”
What great innovations are changing the ways we live in the world? Isaac Berzin, founder of Green Fuel Technologies, is a chemical engineer who was raised and educated in Israel. He is reinventing the energy business by discovering natural processes to develop renewable fuels. He recently signed a $92
Witness the movers & shakers Who are the people mobilising the masses to make changes for the greater good?
photo: Nora Ye
Carol Carter
One such example of this type of thinking and leadership is demonstrated by Dr Muhammad Yunus, who imagined a banking system that could lend money to the rural poor in Bangladesh. His idea was for families, especially women, to receive small loans, sometimes as small as $25, so that they could create items for sale in local markets. The proceeds from the sale of these goods helped them improve their means of living while allowing them to pay back their loans. The creative financing idea blossomed into what is now known as the Grameen Bank, meaning “bank of the villages.” The project was extremely successful, giving birth to the concept of micro-credit, lending small sums of money. Such lending has helped millions of people develop the skills and means for earning a living in some of the most impoverished places on earth. Together, the Grameen Bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. This type of example helps students witness how one person’s vision, and ability to pursue the vision until it becomes reality, can mobilise ways of thinking across the globe. Using both critical and creative thinking to generate vision is crucial for students to learn. Stories such as Yunus’ illustrate for students how creative thinking, when applied to areas of finance and global issues, can affect billions of people. What world problems will they ultimately be able to tackle by learning to create vision for themselves and the world around them?
Where is ground-breaking thinking being applied to everyday living? Have you ever watched birds in motion, flying in a “V” formation? For thousands of years, pelicans, gulls, and geese have flown in this formation, taking advantage of aerodynamic benefits that result from flying slightly behind and to the side of the bird immediately ahead of them. In these positions, they get caught in an “up-washed induced flow” that allows them to use less energy. During their migration flights, the birds regularly switch positions in the formation, all taking turns in the lead position that demands more energy. As a result, the formation allows the birds to fly farther and more efficiently than if they were to travel alone. Scientists and engineers from the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center have asked the following questions to help them apply the birds’ efficient flying relationship to aircraft: • How can we use technology to create the same “up-washed induced flow” for airplanes traveling alone? • How can these flying efficiencies save on the fuel costs and lengths of flights? • How can these flying efficiencies be used to benefit commercial aircraft, military aircraft, procedures for refueling in the air, and the formation of flying of satellites? These engineers calculated the aerodynamic benefits from bird formations and experimented with these results by
applying them to real planes flying in real formations. Now they are working to create an autopilot program that can simulate the aerodynamic benefits for planes flying solo. Some of the current studies have shown that such technology could save a commercial airliner flying roundtrip daily from Los Angeles to New York a reduction of more than $500,000 in fuel costs each year, as well as reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 10 percent each year. How can students connect other observations from nature in ways that will help preserve the environment, promote transportation efficiencies or improve other ways in which we live? What scientific principles can be applied to basic observations so that new thought connections can be made and brought to fruition? These stories exemplify ways we can help students understand the value and positive outcomes of creative and critical thinking. The heart of such thinking ultimately lies in the questions students must wrestle with: What can I do? How can I do things differently? What is similar? What is different? What resources are available? What are the costs of inaction? What is possible? When students can dissect the thought processes of great thinkers, they can observe the questions that were faced in each of the given circumstances, and then apply such questions to their own lives.
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Neill O’Reilly
A new approach to homework For students and their families to be truly excited about learning, homework has to be enjoyed.
In
relation to 21st-century learning and the revised curriculum, we should ask ourselves some serious questions about homework: • What is homework? • Why do we have it or not? • Do we, as leaders in the school, allow each teacher to determine best practice for homework? • What does the research tell us about homework? • What is the feedback from teachers, children and parents? • Have we engaged our communities in intelligent dialogue about home learning? • Do we have a consistent, school-wide approach to this critical aspect of learning?
Alfie Kohn, 2006) has failed to prove a link between homework and improved outcomes for learners. With this in mind, it is time to change our “default setting” and schoolwide practice. Background to an alternative approach I began asking questions in 2005 at Clarkville School when I realised the impact of the current homework, the attitude of teachers, children and families toward homework and the research that was indicating that we were getting it wrong. I also had to consider all that our children do beyond the school gates -- activities such as drama, dance, music, cubs, scouts and guides, gymnastics, winter sports, summer sports, athletics and swimming to name a few – as well as time for play, family time and “down time.” School-wide practice and alignment is of
“ Most important, when we consider homework, we must ask ourselves a fundamental question: ‘Does what we send home engender a love of learning for the child and the family?’” the utmost importance, too. I knew of few principals who were happy for teachers to decide whether or not they want to teach the numeracy project. Why then did we turn a blind eye to best practice in homework? After thinking over these issues, we made some significant changes in what we would allow to go home as “home learning” at Clarkville School. A positive alternative Working with the staff, the Board of Trustees, the community, and the children, we developed and introduced the Pathway Awards. The concept is based on some
• Have we considered that homework is a window into the teaching and learning beliefs of our school?
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The Research In 2003 the Ministry of Education published “Quality teachers for Diverse Students in Schooling Best Evidence Synthesis,” which acknowledged that there is no link between homework and improved outcomes for learners in primary schools. John Hattie’s recent research also confirmed this, placing homework 88 th out of 123 in relation to impact on outcomes. Much international research and synthesis of research (See
photo: Elena Elisseeva
Teachers Matter
Most important, when we consider homework, we must ask ourselves a fundamental question: “Does what we send home engender a love of learning for the child and the family?” If it does not, we do the education system, our children and our families a disservice. We run a major risk of disengaging students and families and creating stress in the home.
fundamental principles: • It is optional. • It is learning through doing and then reflecting on the process • It is based on authentic contexts with negotiable challenges and criteria
A concept of learning through doing and thinking about (reflecting) about the learning rather than “pretty presentation.” Each category has a “design-your-own challenge” so that children are encouraged to lead their learning.
• It is relationship based: teacher/ child/ family
Challenges are moderated by staff, children and the community each year, so that the learning is rich, relevant and authentic.
• It needs to be fun, challenging, success-oriented and include all of the “intelligences”
A learning programme based on relationship between the teacher and child, not a set of predetermined success criteria.
• It is optional. (This is not a misprint.) If children do not choose to take up this challenge, it is very unlikely they ever did “homework,” and if they did, we can almost guarantee that it did not engender a love for learning.
Challenges that link to the learning that will take place in the school throughout the year and that also relate to upcoming community, national and international events.
Staff buy-in is critical for the success of this concept. Teachers must be prepared to let go of worksheets, project homework, spelling lists (yes spelling lists; I have yet to see any research to support the practice of memorising words as a way to develop spelling skills), and sending home research tasks, and also be prepared to defend the new practice to unconvinced parents. To do this, I spent considerable time preparing the community for the change, providing the research and then supporting staff if parents wanted homework for their child. We believe so much in this concept that responding to parents’ requests for traditional homework is not an option. A new home learning procedure/ policy The only compulsory homework from our school is reading and learning basic facts. The optional Pathway Awards is based on our school vision, beliefs in the key competencies, positive values and holistic learning. We have six categories: 1. Giving 2. Service in school 3. Physical education and the outdoors 4. Academic excellence 5. Excellence in the arts 6. Future focus Highlights include: The categories have four levels (variously named bronze, silver, gold and platinum or some equivalent) with all of them taking one year to complete. Each level is scaffolded on the previous. Based on the unique character of each school, the community resources and the environment.
Neill O’Reilly michael pohl
A programme that acknowledges that plenty of wonderful learning happens in the home (authentic learning in meaningful contexts), and our task is not to impose school learning on the home but rather to develop life-long learners by seeking out success opportunities for our children that encourage them to love learning. A programme that truly acknowledges the school/ parent/community link that is necessary if we are to take the new curriculum to heart rather than playing lip service to it. A programme that challenges, encourages excellence, and encourages children to serve, give and appreciate all aspects of learning. The programme is specific. At the start of the year, the children know what they need to do to succeed. This is especially important for boys and allows children to lead their learning and plan learning opportunities. The Results The results have been simply staggering. At Clarkville, children will graduate this year with all four medals. The up take has gone from 40 percent in the first year to over 90 percent in 2008. At Windsor we started with 42 percent and our expectation is over 80 percent for 2009. Children who were not “academic” have changed their whole attitude to learning. In the first year, we had five girls completing the platinum challenge; by the second year the number had reached 22 and included 16 boys. We have had children: • Featured on the front page of our local newspaper with their innovations and entrepreneurial skills.
• Write articles for the local paper. • L e a r n i n s t r u m e n t s a n d p e r f or m a t community functions. • Clean up the local community. • Explore the Southern Alps with their families. • Increase their service in school as librarians. • Produce outstanding art. • Establish competitive sports teams for the school. • Participate in 20-hour famine, triathlons, duathlons. • Teach younger children crafts, dance, sport, animation, and much more. One of the major spin offs was the realisation that cups or awards for “effort” were inappropriate and that many awards presented at the end of each year were subjective and unfair. In addition staff began to view senior students (especially boys) in a different way when they saw all that they did, even if they did look unruly and were loud and scruffy from time to time. Summary This concept provides a coherent, schoolwide programme that the school can build on each year. It encourages children to lead their learning, involve their families and community and recognises all the great learning that goes on beyond the gate. Our students, teachers and parents’ feelings of success and pride throughout the year has altered the atmosphere, culture and attitude to learning. Over 30 New Zealand schools have adopted the Pathway Award/PRIDE Challenge. Perhaps one of the most exciting results is in the central North Island where a group of school developed the concept together. The impact has been so significant that businesses, the local council and even the secondary school have gotten on board. The key to the success of this concept is that it is not a pre-packaged programme. We’ve provided the framework, but the success comes from the relationship between the child, teacher and family.
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Therese Hoyle
Five steps to create happy and powerfully positive playtimes Children’s brains also develop outside of the classroom when you give them the right tools. Step 1: Develop a child’s seeking system and brain power through play. Playing games activates a child’s brain, in particular the mammalian, lower brain, which contains a “seeking” system. When seeking is activated in mammals, they explore and investigate their environment with curiosity and motivation. In humans, the seeking system can activate an appetite for life, energy to explore the new and an eagerness to seek out whatever the world has to offer. According to Margot Sunderland, when the seeking system is working in a well coordinated way with the frontal lobes/ upper brain, dopamine gets released, the motivation chemical, which enables us to sustain motivation and sense of purpose and helps us attain our goals.
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photo: Shawn Roberts
Teachers Matter
In infants and toddlers, the seeking system must be activated by stimulation; if not, low levels of arousal will follow your child into adulthood, and result in low levels of energy, drive, and a sense of “is that all there is?” The same system that enables a child to build and create dens and sandcastles is the one that enables the adult to turn a dream into a successful business accomplishment.
Therese michaelHoyle pohl
This seeking system in our brain is like a muscle: The more you use it, the more curious and creative you become. Providing an enriched learning and play environment for a child helps them develop in numerous ways: self-confidence, increased stress adaption, improved social skills, more brain cells in the memory and learning regions. Sunderland states that, “The benefits of creative play are many. Research with both humans and other mammals demonstrates that play can lower stress chemicals, enabling us to deal better with stressful situations.” Research also hints that play actually appears to make children smarter. In one fascinating study, rats were given an enriched environment with climbing tubes, novel food and lots of social interaction. Two months later, the rats had an extra 50,000 brain cells in each side of the hippocampus, one of the key memory centres of the brain. Look today at the opportunities for creative play in your playground and school. Key ideas Provide: • Imaginative play area • Dressing up box • Tea set • Small world play equipment • Sandpit and water play • Games area Older children can develop the seeking system through playing games and imaginative play/drama, outdoor adventures and more. Look at the Forest schools web site, www.forestschools.com, for some great ideas.
Step 2: Rules and responsibilities Since playground injuries are the leading cause of injuries to children aged 5 - 14 in the school environment and 75 percent of school bullying happens in the school playground, rules that keep children physically and emotionally safe are essential.
School rules also provide clarity and consistency to all concerned. In many schools, you will see rules displayed inside the school, but not outside in the playground. We encourage schools to think through with students the rules or values that need to be in place. We then get these written up, designed by a sign writer and put onto Perspex and displayed in various places of the playground. The 4R’s for school and the playground: Some basic rules that we find work well are: • Respect for self • Respect for others • R e s p e c t f o r p r o p e r t y a n d t h e environment. • Responsibility for all your actions • When playing games, I often find that children are good at adapting and creating their own rules, often through common consent.
Step 3: Rewards At playtime, the reward is always that they get to play and have fun. Additional incentives such as the following can be used: “The Great Play Award” (see 101 Playground Games appendix for the certificate) is a special certificate that is given out in assembly to a specific child who has kept the rules/values of the school; alternatively it can be a plaque, or just a sticker. Teachers choose criteria for selection from week to week and ideally choose different children each week. “Star Player,” “Star Child,” “Caught Being Good” slips (see 101 Games appendix for the slips). These are reward systems for you to choose between or you may choose to use them all. When children are seen playing cooperatively, being kind and keeping the rules, they get a paper slip. These incentives can then link back into the teacher’s classroom rewards or children can collect their slips each week and every class can give a certificate to the child or children who
get the most slips. Alternatively the school can give a certificate to the class with the most slips. Many teachers also like to do drum roles. When a child receives a slip, his name is put on it and then it is put into a “drum” box. At the end of the week, the drum roll takes place in a dramatic fashion with someone beating a drum and the box being turned over a few times. Then two to six names are drawn out, and the teacher awards those children a prize.
Step 4: Consequences Consequences vary from school to school. Most schools agree that there needs to be some sort of restorative consequence, such as time for the student to think through how they could have acted and how they could choose to behave differently next time, time to restore relationships that may have broken down. In the first instance with lowlevel incidences, a verbal warning is often all that is needed. However, if the child breaks the rule again, a five to 10-minutes “time out to think” is a good consequence. The child usually has to sit in a solitary place, on a bench, in the hall or classroom away from other children, thinking through which rule they have broken and which rule they need to be keeping, and who they need to apologise to. Children can join in the game or activity once they have had time out and as long as relationships have been restored. You may know some children who are hugely reactive at playtime. Danger stress and anxiety trigger the release of adrenalin and cortisol, which often leads to the fight or flight response. These children do not have the stressregulating brain chemicals to calm themselves and need soothing, calming adults to help regulate the chemicals that have flooded their brains. Positive play experiences and positive social interaction for these children lead to positive emotions and a cocktail of good chemicals, such as opioids and oxytocin, which make them feel calm, content, secure and safe.
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Therese Hoyle
Step 5: Playground Activity Leaders (PALS) PALS consist of a group of children whose job it is to play games in the playground. When considering adopting this system in your school, please give consideration to: • How many PALS you need, given the size of your playground and number of children in your school. • How many times a week would be suitable for them to be out on games duty. • How the PALS would be chosen. • What support will they need. Training the Playground Activity Leaders (PALS) Their role: To encourage and organise games and activities during play times and the lunch break.
Teaching the games Ideally a lear ning support assistant, lunchtime supervisor or a teacher will take responsibility for the PALS, their training and on going support. Step 1: Discuss roles and responsibilities, rules for themselves, playground rules, period of time that they are elected to be a PAL (weekly, half termly or termly). Step 2: Introduce a selection of games and remind children of games they already know. Print out the “Traditional Playground Games” section from the 101 Playground Games CD Rom or download the free version from www.successpartnership.co.nz and give each child a pack of games that they can keep and use as a reference. This will give the PALS 10 playground games to learn and introduce to other children. Step 3: The children plan and organise a game to play with younger children.
Teachers Matter
Step 4: The PALS evaluate how the game went and continue to learn new games.
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A collection of active and engaging games for children by Therese Hoyle available from www.spectrumeducation.com
Step 5: The PALs choose a uniform that distinguishes them in the playground, this may be a baseball cap, bib, or badge. Step 6: A rota is agreed upon. Step 7: The PALs are introduced in assembly to all the school. Step 8: The PALs on their assigned days go out and play games in the playground with the children. Step 9: The PALs contribute to “Playground news” at assemblies. Step 10: The PALS meet weekly with the assigned adults who support them. Ongoing support The PALS need to have a regular time to talk about their experiences, the successes and the challenges with a specified adult. Ideally this meeting is weekly or every two weeks. At the end of their term as a PAL, they receive a certificate to thank them for their contribution and hard work. This is given out in assembly.
Thinking Challenges
Adrian Rennie
What’s the difference between killing a spider and a hedgehog? In 2009 a newspaper article appeared in a paper in Christchurch, New Zealand that told of an incident where two nine year old boys deliberately killed a hedgehog by beating it with sticks. Let’s get thinking about this. Put these creatures in order twice:
worm, fly, polar bear, dog, cat, mouse, hedgehog, spider, elephant, horse, sheep, fish, parrot. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
How popular are they?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Past Knowledge Questions What do you know about animals? How do we use animals? Do you know anything about endangered animals?
How important are they?
Is it ok to kill animals? If we didn’t then we would have a lot of trouble finding things to eat. A lot of animals have lost their lives making our lives (humans) better or easier. Come up with as many different ways that we use animals as you can in a mind map like this: Thinking Flexibly Generate as many different ideas as you can. Think of all the ways we use animals for food, transport, fabrics, skins, bones, companionship, entertainment and research.
How do we use animals?
Persistence Don’t give up. Keep searching for different ideas. Think of every situation that you can remember where you have seen animals used. Think of animals in history, animals in circuses, farms, homes…everywhere!
Discussion questions: Use these questions to stretch your thinking by having a discussion with a partner, group or the class. When is it ok to kill animals? What’s the difference between killing a fly and those boys killing a hedgehog? Does every creature have rights to life? Why should we choose which animals live and die?
Thinking Interdependently Some of the best thinking happens when you share ideas with others. Contribute your ideas to the discussion and really think about the ideas that others share.
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“ Respect this child’s innate need for fairness and justice, and be open and honest with him or he will catch you in your inconsistencies.” photo: Andi Berger
Teachers Matter
Allie Mooney
Allie Mooney
Fostering intelligent relationships How to go from clash to complement.
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principal recently sent me a letter about a new teacher who operates out of the powerful style of influence and expected all students to comply with “teacher giving commands.” Any noncompliance was a direct and clear challenge to her authority. She faced a year 8 student who was bright and also operated out of the powerful style. This was a disaster waiting to happen. The student was not completing work or doing the bare minimum. He would shrug his shoulders if reprimanded and clown around when kept in to complete his work.
The principal noted that my book, Pressing the Right Buttons, assisted him in recognising that both parties were “powerful” personalities, and he recommended some strategies. The teacher agreed and gave the student his own timetable. She pre-marked times for compulsory attendance at the lessons, e.g. drama/PE and some art lessons. There were some compulsor y “one on one” times with the teacher to review work completed, discuss problems and set new tasks. She reviewed learning outcomes with the student for the week. He could choose to do the work she provided or come up with his own activities that showed that he had mastered the concepts and was exploring them at an advanced level. He dictated when he would do them and in what order. After a day or so, the teacher struggled to keep up with the student’s work output. He revelled in the chance to set his own timetable, take ownership of his learning and be treated as an intelligent young student. He was a changed student. It didn’t magically change his ability to speak above monosyllabic grunts at times; however, he didn’t get into “trouble,” and the teacher and all of us learned a valuable lesson in thinking outside the square with students. If success can be equated with the number of NCEA credits achieved, he is now considered successful. I believe that without
this intervention, the last two terms of school for the student, and the teacher, would have been full of stress and frustration and possibly set him up for failure at college. Over my next four articles, I’ll focus on one of the four dominant personalities or, as some call it, style of influence. Not surprisingly, this time I’ll discuss “powerful.” Words that describe them: Adventurous, daring, brave, competitive, opinionated, decisive, focused, quick thinkers, outspoken, restless, commanding, ambitious, goaloriented Strengths: Visionary, see the big picture. Like to achieve. Weaknesses: I don’t like to focus on this and see weaknesses as one’s strengths out of balance. For “powerfuls,” they can be bossy, tyrannical, dictatorial, and impatient. These are strengths defaulted to weaknesses. Powerfuls are the original strong-willed child. Sometimes I believe they have been wrongly diagnosed as ADHD. They have short attention spans because of their ability to grasp things quickly. These children are born to lead. If you don’t give them something appropriate to take control, they will take charge of whatever comes their way – including you, the teacher. They are out to win and will stop at nothing to achieve their end. Powerful children do not give in easily Teaching “powerfuls,” you must brace yourself for a power struggle from day one. Control is the key word here. It follows the child to the grave. Whether it is through leadership or anger, the powerful must be in control. He is full of confidence and pride, and is often bossy and tactless. You have on your hands the greatest potential for future leadership – positive or negative. The challenge is to stand toe to toe with this strong-willed child and break the will, not the spirit. Keep this child busy and give him or her responsibilities. They have a deep need to
be productive. Being a good worker is no problems for powerful types, as long as they feel appreciated. If they aren’t in control of something, they will take it out on friends. They can have poor peer relationships. They need to reason things out sensibly. They have astute, quick minds and will rebel when you lack a logical explanation. He will want to know “why” before doing what he is told. Respect this child’s innate need for fairness and justice, and be open and honest with him or he will catch you in your inconsistencies. They love goals and that is good, but occasional failure is part of life. They should not interpret themselves as stupid when they fail. Points to remember Basic desire To have control Emotional needs Loyalty
Sense of Control
Appreciation
Credit for work
Controls by
Threat of anger
Powerfuls’ greatest need is to be in control. With that need comes impatience-based anger when things are not going their way. Because the Powerful is thinking way ahead of his parents, teachers and friends, most often plotting for control, he will sense when you are most vulnerable and attack. It is important that a Powerful teacher provide healthy areas where the child can exercise control, while at the same time standing firm and immovable when that need for control supersedes the limits of balance for the child’s life and relationships. At the same time, teach this child to be a wise leader. If you’d like a copy of Pressing the Right Buttons, please email me at info@personalityplus.co.nz. I’ll give a free copy to the first three people.
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david koutsoukis
Be kind to others! Building quality relationships and communication skills.
“R
Teachers Matter
elationships are the foundation of all achievement” is a great saying used by my friend Brett Reid, and the first time I heard it I thought, yes, that is so true! When you think about it, successful people in this world build good relationships. For example; successful sales people build good relationships with their customers and sell them lots of stuff, good sporting coaches build good relationships with their players - and get good results, and of course good teachers build good relationships with their students - and achieve good outcomes. I sometimes hear people say “I don’t care what people think about me, that’s just who I am.” If in fact relationships are the foundation of all achievement, I can’t help but think they are doing themselves a disservice and limiting their chance of success in many facets of their life.
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So, how can we encourage our students to build good relationships? Some might say we need to encourage students to apply the “golden rule.” The golden rule of course is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Funnily enough, I don’t agree with this, as I believe that the golden rule is flawed. For example: Some boys love being put into a head lock by their mates and assume that everyone else likes it, too - which of course is not necessarily the case. I actually prefer the “platinum rule” by Dr Tony Alessandra. The “platinum rule” says “Do unto others as they would like to be done unto,” or in other words “Treat others the way they like to be treated.” Many students seem to live by the Billy Connolly version of the famous quote “Before you criticise someone walk a mile in their shoes...” when he adds “…after that who cares, you’re miles away and you’ve got their shoes!” We need to encourage our students to build relationships by empathising with others
and considering different viewpoints. So how do we do this? As we all know, many of our children are tuned into radio station WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). This means that the first thing we need to do is get them to recognise the positive benefits of building relationships for them. We need to reinforce the fact that relationships are the foundation of all achievement, and that if they want to be successful they need to value and work at building good relationships - they don’t “just happen.” At the risk of being cliché, I like to use sayings like “What goes around, comes around“ or “The world is like a mirror, if you smile into it, it will smile back.” (and of course if you frown into it, it will frown back). I also find that students respond to the word “Karma”
because I guess they think it is pretty cool. For younger students I like to explain Karma as “If you are nice to people, good things happen; if you are mean to people, bad things happen.” It would be great, of course, for all kids to be intrinsically or naturally “kind to others,” but empathy and pathos come more naturally to some people than others. This is why I believe we need to give our children a framework that “being kind to others” is in fact “being kind to yourself.” In this article you will find 16 key pointers to focus upon in order to encourage your students to “be kind to others.” You will also find seven strategies to help you articulate these key pointers using a values-based approach. If we can get our children to form the habit of “being kind to others,” it will hopefully become internalised as a positive value that will help them lead a happy and successful life.
Students at Riverton Primary School being kind to others.
david koutsoukis
Key Pointers Seven ways to teach children to “be kind others” Tentogood ‘people skills’ to
How to build quality relationships
Seven ways to teach children to and enhance communication skills ‘be kind to others’ Encourage your students to:
1. Teach children the ‘Six kinds of best’ 1. Value relationships affirmation so they internalise the core values. 2. Respect the rights of others 3. Be polite and use good 2. Articulate what being kindmanners to others means. See the key pointers on the 4. Praise people who do things well opposite page. Put up a poster to 5. Develop good people skills remind students. 6. Work at building 3. Teach lessons on theand keymaintaining pointers relationships from the Values education toolkit books. Free downloads available of at 7. Be tolerant and understanding <www.sixkindsofbest.com>. difference
4. Use ‘Six kinds of points best’ language; for 8. Respect other of view example, if someone is sharing say, 9. Don’t bully or put others down ‘Well done Sam, that’s being kind to others’. Or ifgothey are annoying 10. Seek a fair for all someone else say, ‘Ava, that’s not 11. Manage and resolve conflict being kind to others is it?’
students build 1.help Teach children the “Sixpositive Kinds of Best” relationships affirmation so they internalise the core values. your students to: Encourage
Articulate what being “kind to others” 1. 2.smile means. See the key pointers on the opposite 2. use good manners, like saying page. Put up a poster to remind students. ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ 3. Teach lessons on when the key pointers 3. acknowledge others they meet f rthem o m t by h e looking Va l u e satEthem d u c aand t i o nsaying To o l k i t bo oks. Free downloads available at ‘hello’ www.sixkindsofbest.com. 4. use greetings like ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, 4.‘good Use “Six kinds and of best” language. For morning’ ‘good afternoon’ if someone 5. example, use people’s namesis sharing say, “Well done Sam, that’s being kind to others.” Or if 6. look at people when talking to them they are annoying someone else say, “Ava, 7. that’s listennot being kind to others, is it?” 8. accept differences 5. Catch children being kind to others. Give 9. them respect theam opinions otherssticker or an “I kind toofothers” Better still, get children to praise 10.certificate. give compliments.
12. Cooperate and be a team player
5. Catch children being kind to others. 13. Support include Give them anand ‘I am kindothers to others’ sticker or certificate. Better still, get 14. Value family life children to praise each other when 15. Treat othersexamples the way they need to be they see good of kindness.
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6. Use an individual or class progress 16. Betoprepared forgive examples of chart reinforcetopositive good people skills. 7. Create a ‘Be kind to others’ class Ten good “people skills” to display. help students build positive relationships Encourage your students to: 1. Smile 2. Use good manners like saying “please” and “thank you”
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3. Acknowledge others when they meet them by looking at them and saying “hello”
Articles Lesson plans Worksheets Planning documents
each other when they see good examples of kindness.
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6. Use an children individual‘Six or class progress chart Give your kinds of best’ to reinforce positive examples of good This article is the second in a series of six people skills.
articles based on the ‘Six kinds of best’ 7. Create a “Be kind toprovides others” class display. concept. The concept a simple framework to help teachers and parents articulate what good values are and gives students signposts to point them in the right direction get to 4. Use greetings likewhen hello, they goodbye, ‘crossroad’ moments in their lives—times good morning and good afternoon when they need to make important 5. Use people’s names the ‘Six kinds of decisions. By teaching best’ we are givingwhen our children a simple, 6. Look at people talking to them consistent and meaningful message that 7. Listen helps them remember what they need to 8. doAccept in order to become happy and differences successful individuals. 9. Respect the opinions of others 10. Give compliments
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Sample curriculum: Pre-primary to Year 9 Workbook cover sheets Certificates Colouring-in posters
Free dow nloads at www.sixk indsofbes t.com
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david koutsoukis
Give your children “Six kinds of best” By teaching the “Six kinds of best” we are giving our children a simple, consistent and meaningful message that will help them remember what they need to do in order to become happy and successful individuals. The ‘Six kinds of best’ are: 1. Be kind to yourself 2. Be kind to others 3. Be kind to the environment 4. Be the learning kind 5. Be the achieving kind 6. Be the community kind
For more information on the “Six kinds of best” values education toolkit resources, visit www.sixkindsofbest.com.
Values education toolkit resources By David Koutsoukis
Book 1: ages 4 -6yrs Book 2: ages 6 -8yrs Book 3: ages 8 -10yrs Book 4: ages 10-12yrs Book 5: ages 13-15yrs -
RIC-2773 - ISBN 9781741263565 RIC-2774 - ISBN 9781741263749 RIC-2775 - ISBN 9781741263756 RIC-2776 - ISBN 9781741263763 RIC-2777 - ISBN 9781741263770
$42.95 each
Teachers Matter
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Teacher resource books including values framework, explanatory notes, lesson plans, blackline masters, certificates and many other great ideas for teaching values. RIC-7065 ISBN 9321862008074 (set of six posters) $49.95
Available from Spectrum Education www.spectrumeducation.com
photo: Shawn Roberts
Mary willow
The wisdom of wonder Slow down, step back and see what you students can experience.
H
ow do we educate children to become freethinking adults able to impart purpose and direction to their lives? Let us start by asking what we mean by “free”? In the current climate of materialism portrayed on our screens and billboards, it would seem that freedom means having and doing whatever we desire. We offer this freedom as something grand, but it really pertains to something very small: the fearfilled desire for comfort and security. On a closer look, we can see that such freedom is really quite limited; in fact it is walled off by self-interest. True freedom means being able to go beyond our own gratification and preservation, and become open to and interested in others. This mature freedom means having the courage to meet not only those who make
us feel good, but also those who hurt us. It means seeking to understand them and “work it out.” In a world full of strife, it is these skills of resilience and openness that young adults will need as much as their intellectual powers. Perhaps the most important mandate of education is to teach a child to truly meet the world. This requires the teacher to pay attention to what opens a child’s mind to further enquiry and what closes that mechanism of interest down. Perhaps you thought the only magical education left in the world was at Hogwarts, but right in your classroom, right under your nose, is the most powerful element you could work with: the sense of WONDER. And how do you teach it? You live it! When we gaze at something with a sense of wonder, we drop our resistance and antipathy and just let ourselves be amazed. This can begin with obvious delights, such
as a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, but it can metamorphose into capacities to see things beyond initial impressions: amazed that someone you didn’t like can become your friend; that someone who was always afraid did something brave; that an ugly thing can be extraordinarily beautiful if looked at through “another window.” When children can still experience wonder as they grow into adults, they become strong enough to think for themselves, to not put a peer down just because everyone else is. The tolerance created by wonder gives children the courage to accept things that are difficult and the confidence to stand up for change. The young adult who can still be filled with wonder can focus well, can be respectful of the struggles other people go through and responsive to the neighbour who acts and dresses differently. Wonder keeps the door of curiosity open and develops a willingness to trust.
37
MARY WILLOW
It counteracts boredom and jadedness. It creates flexibility and keeps hearts and minds young, fresh and creative. No problem is too great for the sense of wonder. When teachers practice and model the sense of wonder, they will be amazed to see that their students: • “Stop in their tracks” and become quite still (focus, concentration)
photo: Jennifer Hogan
• Observe with “sharpened” senses ( h e i g h t e n e d s e n s i t i v i t y, d i v e r s e sensory learning) • Drop their resistance (self-regulation, relaxation in learning) • Delay jumping to conclusions (heightened observation, non-judgment, openness -all great precursors to scientific study.) • Formulate questions (enquiry, interest) • Allow the phenomenon to stir them emotionally (awakened artistic sensibilities, imagination -- the precursor to creative thinking) • Experience amazement and joy (positive learning, relationship) • Dwell on a phenomenon and ponder (thinking “outside of the box”) • Retain a sense of myster y about it (the beginning of scientific and philosophical endeavour) • Experience a sense of the universal (tolerance, compassion, identity) • Seek to share something wondrous with others (community, multi-level communication) Wow! All from letting yourself and your students be “blown away”! Wonder, however, relies on one ver y important skill: being able to lead your students to the experience, but then hold back. Delay your verbal instructions, comments and conceptualisations. First let them have an experience!
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“ The tolerance created by wonder gives children the courage to accept things that are difficult and the confidence to stand up for change.” Education, like all modern life, has become fast, verbal, visual and conceptual. Concepts are the end of a process. They can shut down enquiry. We have forgotten the power of the percept, i.e. the observations that precede analysis and conclusion. Perception is a process that is wide open, gathering a myriad of information and maximising the use of all the senses. To support perception, we need to place more emphasis on non-verbal skills in order to let the phenomenon “speak” to the child. Perception is about listening, obser ving and carr ying the question. Perception keeps us in the experience, and wonder empowers perception.
Once the moments of wonder have passed, all manner of responses will be stimulated in the children. At this point, it is good to remember that for an experience to be truly “digested” children need time: time for “breathing in” an experience and then time to take it up into learning. Slow learning can be valued just like slow food. Wonder can only be achieved if there is time to wonder. With the magic wand of time, the great spell of wonder and the power of perception, your students will emerge into adulthood as creative free-thinkers, true wizards and life-long learners.
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Office Use 6 Thinking Hats [A3 laminated poster]
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Marcia Tate
29.95
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Marcia Tate
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Marcia Tate
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Marcia Tate
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Engage the Brain: Games book [English]
Marcia Tate
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Marcia Tate
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Engage the Brain: Graphic Organisers & Other Visual Strategies Book2 [book]
Marcia Tate
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Engage the Brain: Graphic Organisers & Other Visual Strategies Book3 [book]
Marcia Tate
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Engage the Brain: Graphic Organisers & Other Visual Strategies Book5 [book]
Marcia Tate
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Engage the Brain: Graphic Organisers & Other Visual Strategies Book6 [book]
Marcia Tate
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Developing a Thinking Curriculum in your school [book] Different Brains, Different Learners [book]
Engage the Brain: Graphic Organisers & Other Visual Strategies book [English–middle years]
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Engage the Brain: Graphic Organisers & Other Visual Strategies book [Science –middle years]
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English, Performing & Visual Arts & LOTE [book] Enhancing Thought-Full Classroom Dialogue [3 hour dvd ] For Whom the Late Bell Tolls [book] Green Light Classrooms [book] Habits of Mind : Across the Curriculum [book] Habits of Mind : Intelligent Behaviours [manual + cd] Habits of Mind : Introduction [3 hour dvd] Habits of Mind : Practical Ideas [manual + cd] How the Brain Influences Behaviours [book]
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Office Use How the Brain Learns [book, third edition]
David Sousa
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How the Brain Learns Maths [book]
David Sousa
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How the Brain Learns to Read [book]
David Sousa
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How the Gifted Brain Learns [book]
David Sousa
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How the Special Needs Brain Learns [book]
David Sousa
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Spectrum
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Inspirational Printable Posters [51 A4 posters on cd] Infusing Thinking [book]
Michael Pohl
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Just a Little Time Out [cd]
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Just For Kids [2 cd set]
Maggie Dent
50.00
Learning and Leading with the Habits of Mind [book] Learning to Think Thinking to Learn [book] Life is For Living [book] Lift off to Learning [book]
Art Costa
65.00
Michael Pohl
48.00
John Shackleton
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Michael Pohl
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Magic Affirmations [A3 laminated poster]
15.00
Magical Personal Affirmations [A3 laminated poster]
15.00
Maths, Science, Technology [book] Mental Fitness NLK Exercise [handbook + cd] Mindmapping Pens [set of 25 in a handy carry case]
Michael Pohl
38.00
Marion Miller
30.00
Stabilo
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Multiple Intelligence : The Complete M.I. Book [book]
Kagan
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Music for your Mind – In the Zone [cd]
Kagan
35.00
Music for your Mind – Problem Solving [cd]
Kagan
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Music for your Mind – Productive Flow [cd]
Kagan
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Music for your Mind – Projects [cd]
Kagan
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Music for your Mind – Reading & Writing [cd]
Kagan
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Kagan
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My Safe Place [cd]
Music for your Mind - Relaxed Alertness [cd]
Maggie Dent
33.00
Nurturing Kids’ Hearts and Souls [book]
Maggie Dent
33.00
Pocketbook: Accelerated Learning [book] Pocketbook: Leadership [book] Pocketbook: Learning to Learn [book] Pocketbook: Behaviour Management [book]
23.00 23.00
Tom Barwood
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Peter Hook & Andy Vass
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Michelle Elliot
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Anne de A’Echevarria & Ian Patience
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Pocketbook: Stop Bullying [book] Pocketbook: Teaching Thinking [book]
Brin Best Eiona Elsa Dent
Playground Games [book]
Therese Hoyles
145.00
Powerful Thinking [manual + cd with black-line-masters]
Adrian Rennie
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Allison Mooney
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Pressing The Right Buttons [book] Quizzles [book] Rainbow Balance [cd] Reading and English Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites [book] Real Kids in an Unreal World [book] Reflections on Classroom Thinking Strategies [book] Retelling Cube [tool]
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Eric Frangenheim
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Carson-Dellosa
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Saving Our Children From a Chaotic World [book]
Maggie Dent
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School Mastery [cd]
Maggie Dent
33.00
Secret Mountain [cd]
Maggie Dent
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Shouting Won’t Grow Dendrites [book]
Marcia Tate
51.00
Kagan
49.00
Six Kinds of Best - 50 bookmarks
David Koutsoukis
12.95
Six Kinds of Best - Class progress Chart (set of 2)
David Koutsoukis
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Silly Sports & Goofy Games [book]
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David Koutsoukis
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SLAM: Study Less Achieve More [5 dvd series + workbook] Sleepytime [cd]
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Social Education [book]
Smartcard Toolbox [set of 30 cards]
Michael Pohl
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Still Learning to Think Thinking to Learn [book]
Michael Pohl
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Study Pass Year 11 [English, Maths, Science, Economics or Geography]
15.00 each
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Teachers Matter Magazine 1 year sub [4 issues]
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Teaching Complex Thinking [book]
Michael Pohl
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Teaching Thinking Skills in the Primary Years [book]
Michael Pohl
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Ted McCain
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Teaching for Tomorrow [book] Team Building [book] The Brain-Compatible Classroom [book] The Brain’s Behind It [book] The Dramatically Different Classroom [book]
Kagan
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Laura Erlauer
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Alister Smith
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Laitta/Weakland
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Ian Lillico
15.00
The Leadership Brain [book]
David Sousa
58.00
The MIndful Garden of Verses [book]
Marie Ciota
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The MIndful Garden of Verses with student workbook CD [book & CD]
Marie Ciota
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The Great Memory Book [book] The Homework Grid [book]
The Ripple Effect [book]
Tony Ryan
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Art Costa
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The Ultimate Book of Music for Learning [book]
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Tony Ryan
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Tony Ryan
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Spectrum
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Thinking Puzzles [cd] Top Tunes for Teaching [book]
Eric Jensen
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Values Education toolkit posters [6 set – A2 size laminate]
David Koutsoukis
49.95
Values Education toolkit years 4-6 [book]
David Koutsoukis
45.00
Values Education toolkit years 6-8 [book]
David Koutsoukis
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Values Education toolkit years 8-10 [book]
David Koutsoukis
45.00
Values Education toolkit years 10-12 [book]
David Koutsoukis
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Values Education toolkit [CD]
David Koutsoukis
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Values Education toolkit years Lower Secondary [book]
David Koutsoukis
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Lane Clark
95.00
Lane Clark
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Where Assessment Meets Thinking and Learning [book] Where Thinking and Learning Meet [book] Wordtoones [book] Worksheets Don’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Instructional Strategies [book] Win-Win Discipline [book] SETS - Set of all 5 Coaching A3 posters [save $15] - Set of all 6 Music For Your Mind cds [save $25] - Set of all 6 Sousa Brain books [save $51]
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Thinking Challenges
Adrian Rennie
Alcohol has been around for thousands of years. It changes how people think, feel and behave. It is also big business. Big companies make a lot of money from selling it. Many people owe their jobs to alcohol. It is also the cause of many bad things in our society. Make three lists. One of all the good things about alcohol and another of all the bad things. The third list should be of things that could be both good and bad.
GOOD
both
Past Knowledge What do you know about alcohol? Have you seen people drink it? Have you seen people drink too much of it?
bad
After all that good thinking about alcohol, do some extra deep thinking. Write the two biggest reasons why alcohol should be banned: Alcohol SHOULD be banned because __________________________________
_____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________.
Thinking About Thinking Being able to see both sides of an issue is a great thinking skill.
Alcohol SHOULD be banned because __________________________________
_____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________. Alcohol should NOT be banned because _________________________________
_____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________.
Alcohol should NOT be banned because _________________________________
_____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________.
Thinking And Communicating With Clarity And Precision Make sure your reasons are clear and easy to understand. They need to make sense to the reader. Think your reasons through before writing them well.
Should alcohol be banned? Would it make a difference? Would people just find a way to get it illegally anyway? What is your opinion? Tick a box‌
43
cheryl doig
Rata teacher Anney works alongside teachers from The Ark
Lessons from South Africa: More questions than answers Exploring a new country and its teachers is an opportunity to challenge what you think you know.
Teachers Matter
In
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July this year, the Rata Teachers’ Support Group sent people to work in South Africa and Ghana, and I was part of the team working in Cape Town. The mission, to teach teachers to teach, focussed on one small ripple of the Cape Town existence, the Ark City of Hope, a shelter for over 1,000 homeless people with a school of about 200 Grade 1 to 9 students. While I had talked to those who had been to the Ark in previous years, nothing could have prepared me for the actual experience. It is always challenging being immersed in a new environment, moving out of your comfort zone, and having to think deeply about who you are and what you want to do with your life. The experience has reinforced my view that thinking, especially
metacognition (thinking about one’s own thinking) is one of the most powerful capabilities needed by leaders of the future. We must build the capability of others to think and this means challenging the status quo. Here are several examples of my thinking in action, based in my time in South Africa:
Assumption 1: Untrained teachers lack the skills to teach What I observed: Most of the teachers in The Ark had matriculated, but only two had teaching qualifications. What I saw were teachers
“It is always challenging being immersed in a new environment, moving out of your comfort zone, and having to think deeply about who you are and what you want to do with your life.”
cheryl doig
who were willing to try new ideas, who interacted in conversations about teaching and learning and who had taken ideas from last year and developed them further. On our first day at The Ark, one junior school teacher proudly presented her portfolio of work showing what had been achieved in the last year. She had made changes to her practice based on the feedback she received the previous year. What I came to believe: I don’t think we can generalise that higher qualifications means you know more or can teach better. The ongoing modelling, dialogue and thinking in the learning organisation is crucial as well. Wonderings: Should we be moving beyond such a narrow view of what a teacher is and who has the “power” to teach, given the ubiquitous nature of 21st-century learning? How can school leaders develop coherent learning organisations that really encourage the continual growth of the adults who support learning? What would happen if students were the teachers more often?
Assumption 2: A library is a good thing What I observed: The books in the library were well dusted and orderly, but many were above the students’ reading level and did not provide authentic contexts for the wide range of children. People had donated books, but What Katy did Next and Rich Dad, Poor Dad did not seem to be of much relevance for these students, even if the books were in good condition. There were many sets of encyclopaedias from the 1950s and 60s. What I came to believe: When people donate resources to schools they do so with the best of intentions, but within the framework of what they think might be useful, not what might best meet the needs of the students. The reading books the Rata teachers bought in Cape Town provided local content and were based on experiences the children were familiar with. It is better to buy appropriate resources than donate well-intentioned hand me downs.
Students thinking about some new maths processes
Wonderings: Is it worse to have no resources, or resources that are inappropriate? Is a library a library just by virtue of having books? How can students be more involved in selecting the resources for their learning? What resources are important for 21st-century learning and why?
“ I don’t think we can generalise that higher qualifications means you know more or can teach better. The ongoing modelling, dialogue and thinking in the learning organisation is crucial as well. ”
Summary: • Educators must build the capacity of students to think for themselves. This is a global need. • As leaders, we must develop our personal capacity to think in order to lead ourselves and others. • Metacognitive processing is an important component of thinking, challenging our own assumptions and beliefs. • Listening and talking are important skills for exploring the viewpoints of others. • Comfort zones do little to stretch thinking. If we are unaware of our own thinking processes, we are not open to changing our thinking and are instead quite satisfied to continue down our well-entrenched neural highways. The brain is constantly changing, pruning and forming new connections. Experiencing new ideas, getting outside our comfort zones and having our paradigms challenged help us to grow as leaders and as learners. Openness is the first step. My thanks to the amazing teachers, monitors, adults and children from The Ark and to the Rata Teachers Support members from New Zealand. You have truly influenced my thinking.
45
Margaret MacleAn
From congenial to collaborative With the right protocols, teachers can truly work together to improve their school
As
the teaching principal of a small rural Vermont school, I believed the staff worked collaboratively. We got along well and developed friendships; we worked together constructively; and sometimes team-taught or planned activities together. We had few disagreements, and our small school was generally a happy workplace. In 1999 we began to work with the National School Reform Faculty (NSRF), and we realised we were congenial rather than collaborative. We discovered our congeniality was a deterrent to collaboration for improved student learning. We had no way of asking each other difficult questions; we did not want to rock the smoothly sailing ship or jeopardise relationships by raising controversial issues. Begun in the fall of 1995 at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, the NSRF offers professional development to educators looking to extend adult professional collaboration. The program: • Provides a structure for school people to work together in “critical friendship,” looking closely at one another’s practice and helping to improve and adapt it
Teachers Matter
• Trains a facilitator/coach chosen by the participants to help them learn to work together most effectively
46
• Begins with work on individual practice, then builds toward an understanding of whole-school/district culture and organization • Provides on-going consultation and support for leaders • Offers advanced learning opportunities for facilitators/coaches, school and district leaders, and school faculty The NSRF program helps schools create what Stanford University’s Milbrey McLaughlin
calls “learning communities,” in which practitioners collaborate to deepen their knowledge of subject matter, examine their teaching practice with a critical eye, and consider issues of whole-school change that support improved classroom practice. The program emphasises making one’s practice public, continuously assessing teaching in relation to student learning, and routinely adapting teaching practices and school structures to meet the changing needs of today’s students. Skilled facilitators/coaches help teachers and administrators create and/or sustain learning communities where they can develop shared norms and values, engage in reflective dialogue, give each other feedback on their work, and hold each other accountable. NSRF practitioners apply these principles in a variety of ways, including: regular faculty meetings, classroom practices, parent conferences, strategic planning sessions, inquiry groups, study groups and Critical Friends Groups (CFG’s). A Critical Friends Group, the most common example, generally consists of six to 10 teachers and/ or administrators who commit to working together on a long-term basis with a focus on improving practice and increasing student learning. CFG members gather for at least one two- to three-hour meeting each month. Our work with NSRF and the regular monthly CFG gave the staff the skills and tools to structure productive conversations w i t h e a c h o t h e r. T h e s t r u c t u r e s a n d protocols we used created a place where we could ask those difficult questions. Learning strong facilitative skills and using protocols effectively was a key part of the work.
What are protocols? A protocol consists of agreed-upon guidelines for a conversation, and it is the existence of this structure that permits a
certain kind of conversation to occur, the kind of conversation that people are not in the habit of having. Protocols are vehicles for building the skills and culture necessary for collaborative work. Thus, using protocols often allows groups to build trust by actually doing substantive work together.
Why use a protocol? A protocol creates a structure that makes it safe to ask challenging questions; it also ensures that there is some equity and parity in terms of how each person’s issue is attended to. The presenter has the opportunity to not only reflect on and describe an issue or a dilemma, but also to have interesting questions asked of him or her, and to gain differing perspectives and new insights. Protocols build in a space for listening, and often give people a license to listen, without having to continually respond. In schools, time is of the essence, and time is the one resource that no one seems to have enough of. Protocols make the most of the time people do have. Have you ever been to a meeting where you have a burning issue you want to discuss, and what happens is that everyone “dumps” his or her issue, and feeds off each other? You walk away from the meeting feeling unsatisfied, not really having anything of significance that will help you with your issue. A protocol guards against this.
Two examples of protocols: The first is used by a group to discuss a text read by the group and focus the discussion on implications for the text in their school. It is called Three Levels of Text Purpose - to deepen understanding of a text and explore implications for participants’ work.
photo: HONGQI ZHANG
Margaret MacleAn
Facilitation Choose a text relevant to current work going on in your school. Stick to the time limits. Each round takes up to five minutes per person in a group. The group can be up to eight participants. Total time no more than 45 minutes. Emphasize the need to watch airtime during the brief “group response” segment. Keep process on track especially paying attention to Level 3 if speaker does not address this level in depth Roles Facilitator/timekeeper (who also participates); participants Process 1. Sit in a circle and identify a facilitator/timekeeper 2. If participants have not done so ahead of time, have them read the text and identify passages (and a couple of back-ups) that they feel may have important implications for their work. 3. A round consists of: • One person using up to three minutes to: LEVEL 1: Read aloud the passage she/he has selected LEVEL 2: Say what she/he thinks about the passage (interpretation, connection to past experiences, etc.) LEVEL 3: Say what she/he sees as the implications for his/her work. • The group responding (for a total of up to two minutes) to what has been said. 4. After all rounds have been completed, debrief the process. The second example is a way for teachers to
share classroom success with colleagues and is called Success Analysis: Roles A timekeeper/facilitator The facilitator’s role is to help the group to keep focused on how this practice is different from what you would typically do. The analysis of what makes this practice so successful is the purpose of the protocol. “Best Practice” is defined as a process that proved to be highly effective in achieving the intended outcome. Process 1. Reflect on and write a short description of the one “Best Practice” of your work within the last year.
“ We had no way of asking each other difficult questions; we did not want to rock the smoothly sailing ship or jeopardise relationship by raising controversial issues. ”
Note what it is about the practice that made it so successful. Be sure to answer the question, “What made this work different from other experiences?” (10 minutes)
by clarifying questions and the group discussion analyzing how this practice differs from other practices. (Each round takes about 30 minutes for groups of three.)
2. In mixed groups of three, the first person shares his or her “Best Practice” and why it was so successful. (10 minutes)
8. Debrief the protocol as a whole group. Possible questions: What worked well? How might we apply what we learned to other work? How might students use this process to reflect on their work? What adaptations to this protocol might improve the process? (five minutes)
3. The rest of the group asks clarifying questions about the details of the “best practice.” (five minutes) 4. The group does an analysis of what they heard about the presenter’s success and offers additional insights about how this practice is different than other practices. Probing questions are appropriate and the presenter’s participation in the conversation is encouraged. (10-15 minutes) 5. The presenter responds to the group’s analysis of what made this experience so successful. (three minutes) 6 . Ta k e a m o m e n t t o c e l e b r a t e t h e presenter’s success. 7. Each of the other members of the group takes turns sharing his or her “Best Practice” and what made it is so successful, followed
Working with NSRF, learning the skills and tools needed to successfully structure conversations to zero-in on student learning has substantially changed our practice as teachers. We are more effective and efficient when it comes to tackling the issues that arise, and we have productive ways to take on the challenges we face together. When collaboration, reflection and inquiry become the norm in a school, they are truly powerful tools for improvement. If you would like to find out more about the work of NSRF, please email Margaret at Margaret. maclen@ruraledu.org or visit the NSRF website at http://www.nsrfharmony.org
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Ngahihi o te ra Bidois
Optimizing your opportunities You should always be ready for what might be just around the corner.
I have had the privilege of working with and developing many leaders, and one of their defining skills is the ability to recognise such opportunities of a lifetime and seize them in the lifetime of the opportunity. They will work obscene hours and commit incredible personal and professional resources to the situation because they recognise the potential of the outcome. They become strictly focused on the opportunity and keep their eyes on the prize.
Teachers Matter
Every leader has a story that includes an opportunity that made a positive difference. So let’s take a minute to reflect on your story. Where are you now? What opportunity enabled you get to this place or position? How did you recognise that opportunity? Did someone tell you about it? Did you read about it or were you involved in a process that lead to you being where you are now? Once you knew the opportunity was very real and achievable, then how did you seize a hold of it? What major decisions did you have to make? Who did you consult or consider?
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When I am working with leaders, I encourage them to think seriously about these questions because their next opportunity of a lifetime, and yours, too, might be just around the corner. So if your next opportunity of a lifetime was just around the corner, then how would you recognise it? How would you know the time was right for you to seize it, and are you willing to commit everything you can to achieve it?
“ Every leader has a story that includes an opportunity that made a positive difference.” We often set goals that have timeframes of perhaps three years or five years. Perhaps you planned to be a principal at a rural school in three years. What would you do if the opportunity to achieve your recently established three-year goal turned up tomorrow? Would you be prepared to at least consider it? Would you move quickly to seize the opportunity? Perhaps you would decide to wait out the three years and hope it comes back again. I have found that opportunity, like time, waits for no one. Your inability to process your decision quickly will quickly become someone else’s decision. One of our Maori proverbs says, “Kia hiwa ra! Kia hiwa ra! kia hiwa ra i tenei tuku! Kia hiwa ra i tera tuku! Kia hiwa ra! Kia hiwa ra!” Be alert! Be watchful! Be alert on this rampart! Be alert on that rampart! Be watchful! Be alert! May I encourage you to be watchful and alert, because your next opportunity of a lifetime may just be closer than you think.
illustration: Boguslaw Mazur
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eonard Ravenhill said, “Opportunities of a lifetime must be seized in the lifetime of the opportunity.” This is certainly true in the area of leadership, as lifetime opportunities are not an everyday occurrence and sometimes not an annual event either. Such opportunities can turn a bad year into the best year ever, a bad relationship into a lifelong friendship, or a mediocre leader into a legend.
stuart fleming
Teach your teen financial responsibility Get your children to talk about money and plan for their needs by shutting down their ATM.
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he best thing about an ATM, or money machine, is the convenience. Not only are they outside most banks, but they’ve sprung up in hundreds of other places, too: petrol stations, shopping malls, corner stores. They’re everywhere! Day or night, Monday through Sunday, you can get cash at a moment’s notice. No planning or advance notification is required. Put in your card, make the withdrawal, cash in your pocket. Too easy! Are your children treating you like a money machine? Do they expect the ATM to be open 24/7, with easy access to cash from your purse or wallet? Do they bombard you with requests for money? Are you able to account for how much you are spending on them, and what they are using that money for? Your responsibility as a parent (and teacher!) is to give your children responsibility. Depending on their age, it might be time to give them some more financial responsibility.
Closing the ATM Step 1: Stop filling your money machine with easy cash
What emptying your money machine does mean is that firstly you, and then your child, will asses your thoughts and behaviours regarding money.
photo: 123rf.com
If you had easy access to a pot of money that kept refilling, wouldn’t you keep taking from it? That is what your kids are doing. The first step is to put a sign on your money machine console that reads “Temporarily Out of Order.” Let them know that ready-cash is no longer a certainty. It doesn’t mean you will never again give your child any money! (Although wouldn’t it be fun to watch them fend for themselves? I’m kidding!)
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stuart fleming
A bit of brain-power might be required here. As the parent, you need to be clear on what you want to achieve. Are you working out how much regular pocket money to give your kids? Or do you now want to only pay for the basics, with your teenager earning or saving the difference for their preferred namebrand item? What would your ideal financial platform look like? Picture how your children treat and manage their money as independent young adults. Part of clarifying your desired outcome is answering this important question: Should your child receive money for doing regular household chores? I believe that as a family member, children should have responsibilities (suitable for their age) to help with the smooth running of the household. These regular tasks shouldn’t have a monetary value. Agree or disagree, you must be able to explain your reasoning when your little angel cries, “But it’s not fair!”
Closing the ATM Step 3: Create a bank strategy
Teachers Matter
Pretend you’re the bank manager. It’s an important role. You set policies and procedures so your money is safe and secure, not threatened by light-fingered opportunists. You have a system for recording withdrawals and deposits, and calculating account balances. Ultimately, you decide how you spend your money.
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Ask your teenager what support they need from the bank (that’s you!) to manage their money. Do they need help formatting an income and expenses spreadsheet? Are they ready for a highinterest bank account for their savings? Do they need advice on avoiding creditcard interest? Discuss what their financial goals are. Don’t criticise or judge their responses, instead encourage them to think big, and to take responsibility for achieving their own dreams.
Closing the ATM Step 4: Ignore the other money machines How influenced are you by what other parents do? Do you feel the need to spend on your children to “keep up”? Most likely, your teenager will be skilled at using the “but everyone is wearing them!” line, or claiming they will be judged, bullied or excluded without the latest gadget or toy. As manager of your bank account, be clear on your spending policy. One mother was nervous at the prospect of spending hundreds of dollars on her 13-yearo l d s o n ’s b i r t h d a y. She’d asked what other parents at his school had spent, but couldn’t really afford that level. When she realised the choice was hers and hers alone, she reduced his present list to a couple of thoughtful, memorable gifts, which he really appreciated and will always cherish. Don’t be a financial sheep, following the crowd. Be a responsible m o n e y manager and pass that responsibility onto your teen.
photo: Edyta Pawlowska
Closing the ATM Step 2: Set the intention
“ Do they expect the ATM to be open 24/7, with easy access to cash from your purse or wallet? Do they bombard you with requests for money?”
martz witty
You are what you think
As scary as this may sound it is fundamentally true.
There is an inextricable link between our thoughts and our beliefs. (Relax; this isn’t going to be an essay on organised religion.) Beliefs are ever powerful. They have a greater effect on a person’s success or failure than anything else. Our beliefs are verbalised into our thoughts, which become our actions, which create our being, our existence. So it all starts with our beliefs. I have attended a belief management course with Avatar many times, and the results have been astounding. So much so that I chose to become a licensed Avatar Master. It all starts with taking an inventory of your beliefs. There isn’t time or space in this article to get right into it, but a brief overview may well open your perspectives to how you can better change and manage your own beliefs to ensure every success. By listing things you believe in predetermined groups such as self, relationships, money, government, work, ability, health, family and the future (to name but a few), you’ll have an inventory of beliefs, a crude but personal list of things you believe. The trick is to not think too much about them, just get them on paper as they arrive in your head. Go with your first thoughts and don’t over-analyse. Any belief will normally fall into one of two categories; they will be helpful or impeding. Not everything is as black and white as this, but you will be amazed how they fall into these two distinct camps easily. Even at this basic level, this exercise is a widening of awareness of which beliefs are working for you and which are working against you. It gets even more exciting when you review every belief on a certainty of knowledge. Do you categorically know a belief to be true or do you merely believe it to be true? What
“ The great news is that we can self-modify our beliefs.”
is your conviction around each belief that individually plays a part in your total being? You can modify your conviction. Doing so is essential if you find yourself with an impeding belief that you have a high conviction to be true. An example might be “boys don’t pay as much attention as girls.” This is going to create some major challenges if you are teaching boys. How do you know it to be true? Normally past experiences will play a significant part in your conviction levels. Thank goodness there are opposing viewpoints that can be offered to alter your own perspectives. You need to apply greater conviction to those beliefs that work for you and play down the impeding ones, or better yet, destroy them all together. Although that’s another course to go to.
into it, I perceived this was an indoctrinated belief, not a deliberate one. Where did it stem from? Well, from my dear old dad in the pulpit saying money was evil and it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom. (You probably have heard the story.) Thank goodness we can change our beliefs and, therefore, our being.
There’s another classification we need to apply to all our beliefs to gain further insight: Are they deliberate or are they indoctrinated? For myself I found it fascinating that a root issue behind my former lavish spending habits and inability to save was a belief that was “Money is evil.” As a chartered accountant and business developer with a young family, clearly this was an impeding belief. I didn’t have a great conviction that the belief was true (thankfully) and when I delved
photo: iofoto
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he human brain is a marvelous tool that can work for and against us. Our thoughts can be positive, negative, helpful, harmful, deliberate or simply present without an understanding why they are there.
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john shackleton
What are you worth? Re-think your goals and watch your success soar.
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wenty years ago when I was working for a training company back in the UK, I would stand in front of a group shaking in my boots. I was delivering customer care training to service engineers, and I was worried about what these people would think about my training session and me. Although I’d been studying sports psychology for a couple of years, at that stage I’d not fully realised how important our self beliefs were. I thought that the answer to my problem as a trainer was to get through the first hour of the course without giving the audience time to interrupt or question what I was saying. Falsely I thought that if they couldn’t interrupt or ask questions, they would be forced to agree with me and that was my job — to prove that I was right and they were wrong. In short, I’d decided that my self worth as a trainer was to be determined by how well I could win them over to my side.
Teachers Matter
I also developed a rather nasty habit of using “put down” humour to shut up people, and I’d attack them before they had a chance to attack me, something I did as a schoolteacher to develop discipline.
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Obviously this led to some interesting conversations with some of the more extroverted audience members, and I’d often come away from the two-day course feeling bruised and battered, having had a long mental battle with some of them. I was measuring my self worth by how well I was able to convert these people to the material I was delivering, and if just one person out of the 15 didn’t like what I was saying, then I would regard myself as a failure. After a couple of months of this approach, my self-esteem had taken a big drop and I was having trouble with almost every group I was working with.
Fortunately for me, a colleague of mine (who was also into sports psychology) sat in on a course I was running. At the first break, he asked me how I intended to measure my success, and I told him about my desire to “convert them all to the true path and make sure they could see the error of their ways!” I realised how impossible it was to achieve and how I was setting myself u p f o r f a i l u r e . We c h a t t e d for 15 minutes on how this approach would affect my self esteem, and I started to realise how much I’d been damaging myself.
“ How do you measure your self-worth? Do you give yourself a hard time because you’ve set yourself “success targets” that are unachievable, as mine were? ”
We quickly decided on a change of tack: I’d measure my success as a trainer by how well people understood the material, not how much they agreed with it. This new approach meant that if people wanted to discuss the content then they were moving toward a better understanding, which meant I was successful. At the end of the day, I would not be looking for them to agree with me; I’d be focusing on their comprehension and my own self worth would be dependent on how well they understood the material. Wo w, w h a t a t u r n a r o u n d ! A l m o s t immediately, the results were fantastic. I was now presenting in a totally different way, trying to stimulate discussion and even arguments from my audience as this would prove that they understood the material better. With this new success measurement in place, my self-worth increased dramatically, and I stopped attacking the people who didn’t agree with me. I started to believe I really was a good trainer. As we all know, actions follow
beliefs and that one change resulted in the best course I’d ever run, with not only great audience understanding but also 100 percent agreement. How do you measure your self-worth? Do you give yourself a hard time because you’ve set yourself “success targets” that are unachievable, as mine were? If your self-worth is dependent on targets that aren’t under your own control, then you’re setting yourself up for failure and running the risk of damaging your self-esteem. You need to ensure that you’re measuring your own self worth in such a way that you win every time, even when you lose. You’ll know that you’ve achieved this when you can walk away from a failure with greater self-esteem than when you started, knowing that at least you’ve learned what not to do next time.
john shackleton
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Mark Mckeon
Ageing backwards Take care of yourself, and you’ll turn back the clock.
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o one has ever told me they regretted taking holidays. Get away for a while and schedule at least a week each term break without preparation, study or report writing. Have you seen the movie called The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? It’s about a man who is born old and slowly grows young. Well, maybe it’s more than just fiction. We know that lots of people age too quickly, fast forwarding through their lives, some even missing an entire decade. If you can see yourself changing faster than the students you teach, it’s time to make some changes.
photo: Suprijono Suharjoto
Ageing poorly creates two big problems. The first is that you wake up one day and 10 years has gone by. One minute you’re welcoming a new batch of preppies (or year 7s), next thing you know they’re having driving lessons.
Teachers Matter
The second problem is more than time just going fast; it’s much worse, it’s losing the time all together. Too many people are literally missing a decade or more of skeletal ageing. Please explain?
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Well, your chronological age is simply your age. If you were born 50 years ago, guess what? Your chronological age is 50. Your skeletal age or your physiological age is different. It’s literally how well you are doing. Not all 10-year-old cars are in the same condition. The same goes for 30-, 40and 50-year old teachers. Contemporary health evaluations provide each subject with a skeletal age/ chronological age comparison; “Congratulations, Mr Jones, your chronological age is 55, but your skeletal age is only 46. You are 9 years younger than you actually are.” This sort of differential is not unusual with subjects over the age of 40 having 15 and sometimes even 20 years differential between their skeletal and actual ages.
It stands to reason that people who live poorly from a health point of view will also age more quickly. They go from a chronological age of 39 to a skeletal age of 50. On their 40th birthday, their body is 50 years old. Teachers are especially susceptible because you are constantly under pressure. “Sorry, Mr Jones, your birth certificate says you are 40, but you are actually 50.” To put it crudely, if natural causes rule the day, they are likely to die 10 years earlier than they should. They’ll be “old” 10 years before they were due and will lose all the fantastic benefit staying young provides along the way. Imagine losing 10 years! It hurts just to write about it.
I recently took part in a health testing program. The practitioners used vascular function and pulse wave analysis investigations, along with other tests to check out our arteries and allocate everyone a skeletal age. They also provided us with percentage chance of developing heart disease within the next 10 years. Fortunately, most of our scores were low (it’s like a golf scores, the lower the better), but the chap sitting next to me was told that his skeletal age was eight years above his chronological age of 46 and that he had an 80 percent chance of developing heart disease within the next 10 years.
Mark Mckeon
You said what? 80 percent? Correct. His hands were shaking, actually trembling as he tried to hold onto his booklet and absorb the news. He was ageing poorly, and he’d just had his future read. Fortunately, the happy ending to the story is that he was immediately referred to a cardiologist; he underwent the surgery he already needed; and now his coronary arteries are once again clear.
How to age slowly The good news is that if you do the right things, you can slow your rate of ageing and, in some cases, you can even reverse it. I have seen people age a physical year and reduce their skeletal age by two to three years, all at the same time. Imagine turning 40 and a year later being 37, or 35? It can be done. The surprise, at least to me, is that it’s not just all about exercise, nutrition and managing stress. Ageing slowly is much more holistic and much more accessible than that. I have 10 tips to help you age well. These are drawn from a variety of sources, including CSIRO longevity statistics and a 30-year longitudinal study of ageing well conducted by psychologist George Vaillant: 1. Have some people who love you... If you have a life partner, congratulations; the relationship helps you live longer. If you have a close family, congratulations, that helps, too. The crucial thing is to stay connected, to have people around you that are interested in you. Reach out to people; they keep you young. 2.Have some passion s … i n t e r e s t s , hobbies, sports. Everyone knows the stories about people who retire from a busy work life, don’t have any personal interests and fade away too quickly. Being passionate about things is a common trait in people who stay young. The form it takes is
“ The surprise, at least to me, is that it’s not just all about exercise, nutrition and managing stress. Ageing slowly is much more holistic and much mor”
secondary to your passion for it. Invest some time in pursuing your passions, and if you don’t have any, do the things you dislike the least. Get out there! 3. Take holidays… It’s when you renew, refresh, recharge. It’s when you purge your body of adrenaline, sleep more, forget about work and have fun with family and friends. No one has ever told me they regretted taking holidays. Get away for a while and schedule at least a week each term break without preparation, study or report writing. 4. Stay optimistic…When you wake at 3 a.m., don’t groan and think, “Oh, I have to get up in only three hours.” Instead think, “You beauty; I’ve still got another three hours before I have to get up!” The greatest predictor of success in life is optimism. Fake it if you have to, but be optimistic.
5. Stay active…Exercise your body every 48 hours. Thirty minutes minimum; moderate level of exertion; vary what you do and avoid things with high-injury risks. You know the drill. Never let your habit slide, but if it is, start again tomorrow. 6. Eat well…Allow yourself only one bad food choice per day. This will limit your fat intake; high-fat intake is still our worst enemy. 7. Sleep for five uninterrupted hours…. We make a huge amount of human growth hormone (HGH) with extended, continuous sleep and HGH delays the ageing process. It’s what renews every cell in your body. It really is the body’s anti-ageing agent. Five continuous hours is better than eight hours of broken sleep. Switch off, relax and sleep …and no snoozing on the couch; this disturbs sleep later in the night. 8. Stretch…Our muscles and joints lose elasticity as we age, but you can half this impact if you stretch whatever feels tight for 30 minutes daily. Stretching in front of the TV works fine. 9. One new challenge per year. Keep learning; keep growing; stay interested and interesting. 10. Have good genes: If you do, celebrate, thank your parents, and relish what you’ve been given. If you don’t, re-read 1-9 and take action! Either way, never smoke or take drugs of any kind. I’d love to write more, but I’m going for a swim (5) with one of my sons (1). Had salad sandwiches for lunch (6), looking forward to checking out the planets tonight (2), stretching between viewings (8) and I know I’ll have a good sleep (4 and 7). By the way, just back from a trip to China (3), and now I am starting to learn computer programming (9). Lucky me.
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Kevin Mayall
Figuring out teens
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eenagers get called all sorts of names, and quite often those names are an accurate reflection of their behaviour. Yet, my experience has shown me there’s plenty going on that’s good, but often negative characteristics mask the good that’s inside. Is it possible to understand what’s in our teens’ heads? Just how do we get the best out of them? Is just passing on the National curriculum enough? How do we successfully transition our teens into life -- and keep our sanity? Teaching teens would be infinitely easier if we were able to draw out and inspire teens into leading purposeful lives. Teens want you to understand four key area to help them through their transition. You will note that curriculum is not one of them:
Teachers Matter
Role models
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Adults all have heroes they look up to or admire. Teens do as well. Be the hero they look to. Try this. Write down five amazing things you would like to achieve personally in your own life. Write a best-selling book? Learn Latin dancing? Travel through the Greek Islands? Now actually do one of these, and see the effect that you will have on the teens you teach. A teacher told me her dream was to take a walking tour through New York. I challenged her to achieve her dream, and she did so in under a year. It took planning, saving, and a few other hurdles to get there. She was able to inspire her students to succeed in their own dreams. Your positive energy and excitement will be infectious. You’ll be able to pass on the tools and strategies needed to help your teens with their own dreams.
Self ownership Teens hate being told what to do. So your teaching style needs to adjust so when delivering content you get the teen to figure
“stuff” out for themselves and practice doing what they’re learning. Andrew Churches on page 23 in issue 6 of Teachers Matter gives great evidence to support this. Average retention rises to 75 percent and above using this method of teaching. This is an important part in their problem-solving development not only in school but also in the working world. Teens are looking for someone to show them “how” in the first instance so they can then have a go at doing it for themselves. This is especially true for boys. Boys learn best by being shoulder to shoulder: Show me once and then let me do it for myself. A teen learning to use his own initiative is a must, and this brings a sense of achievement that is important in the development of self-confidence. This confidence then flows through into their self-esteem and heightens their ability to be a positive influence on those around them and makes them infinitely more pleasant to be around.
Humour There’s enough negativity around that is often amplified by teen hormones. Humour and fun are infectious. Pass it around. If you are having fun in your own life, and you have the ability to laugh, you will have teens on your side. Teens love humour and prefer parents and teachers to laugh a lot. Even as adults, we prefer to be around positive fun people. It’s sad to see most teens believe that adults are boring.
“ Teens love humour and prefer parents and teachers to laugh a lot. ”
photo: Yuri Arcurs
Be the best you can be and so will the teens you care about.
Believing in them Teens are just trying to figure things out; it’s a scary and uncertain time for them. Having someone believing in them is a huge help. I have previously written about the damage “dream takers” can do, so when a teen comes to you for help or an idea, seize the opportunity to start a thorough discussion with each sentence you say starting with Who What When and How. This teaches them to actually think outside the box and create solutions for themselves and demonstrates you are taking an active interest in them. You don’t have to have the answers for them; in fact it’s more helpful not to have the answers. What’s important is to help them find their own tools so they can do it themselves. We can open the door, but they have to walk through it on their own free will. Your teens may not take that opportunity the first or even second time. Keep opening the door and inviting them through. Eventually they will come through, because on the other side is their positive future for them. You will have teens who are empowered and will be on your side.
photo: Mandy Godbehear
Kevin Mayall
“ Your positive energy and excitement will be infectious. You’ll be able to pass on the tools and strategies needed to help your teens with their own dreams. ”
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photo: Ruth Black
Robyn Pearce
Boys need challenges
A new book and experience say that what our boys need is true competition.
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chance conversation about kayaking with my friend, George, opened my eyes to a distinction about males.
“Does your wife kayak with you, George?,” I’d asked. “No, and I’ve not encouraged her,” he replied, to my surprise.
Teachers Matter
“I’ve been teaching kayaking for many years,” he expanded. “It’s really made me appreciate the differences between male and female.”
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“What I’ve learned is that when you teach a group of girls or women to do something with a high-risk factor, with few exceptions, their underlying motivation is to learn how to manage it safely. For instance, most don’t enjoy having to tip out under the water and wait 20 seconds before kicking loose from their kayak and rising to the surface. I’ve noticed that almost all females are motivated away from risk and toward safety and security.”
‘The majority of males, on the other hand, are motivated toward challenge and away from comfort and security. It’s an innate testosterone drive, not something that’s educated into them.” I’ve thought a lot about George’s comments since then. It seems to me that our job as both teachers and parents of boys is to grow responsible, mature young men. Perhaps if
we are at least aware of the basic need of boys to push boundaries, we’ll enjoy raising them even more. Most teachers of primary school children are women. Do we unconsciously try to restrict our boys in our desire to keep them safe? Do we unconsciously try to make them behave in ways that are comfortable and socially acceptable to women? Looking back, I’m
“ Isn’t it critical to provide healthy opportunities for our boys to flex their muscles, prove their manliness, and learn to handle competition and frustration?”
Robyn Pearce
“ Heaven forbid that a young adult might feel ‘dumb’ when they don’t get good enough grades. But here’s the rub. In the adult world, you’re a responsible worker, or you lose your job.”
With the luxury of hindsight, perhaps my own boys were lucky there were so many of them, and my ineffectual attempts to soften and civilise family activities were watered down! Adventurous lives are a signature tune in our family, including two army officers, one detective, and a high-achieving farmer who also keeps pushing boundaries. The fifth son is intellectually handicapped. Two other things have added to my thinking about this area - one a book and an experience one of my families has just had: Boys Adrift: The five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men by Leonard Sax M.D., Ph.D. is a must read. You’ll find practical and useful insights into what current trends in education are doing to many boys; the impact of video games on their behaviour; reasons for the rapid increase in ADHD and what can be done about it; how plastics are affecting male hormone levels; and much more. Just one of the points Dr Sax develops is that some schools (at least in America) have all but eliminated a lot of opportunities for kids to experience true competition in their physical education programmes. The rationale seems to be that if a child doesn’t win at whatever they’re competing in, that his or her self-esteem might be damaged, so therefore it’s better that no one be a “loser.” (That would be a female perspective, wouldn’t it?) But if we agree with George’s comment, isn’t it critical to provide healthy opportunities for our boys to flex their muscles, prove their manliness, and learn to handle competition and frustration? Certainly Dr Sax believes so as well. We also see this “softening of potential hurt” on an academic level. Look at the modern exam systems. Heaven forbid that a young adult might feel “dumb” when they don’t get
good enough grades. But here’s the rub. In the adult world, you’re a responsible worker, or you lose your job. If you’re a commission agent, you have to make sales, or you don’t eat. If you’re in finance, the accounts are either correct, or they’re not. If you run your own business, you either succeed, or you don’t. Real life isn’t one of half measures. If we don’t give our kids the chance to learn that when we’re there to support them, we do them great harm. The real world doesn’t soft-soap failure and incompetence. Another area Dr Sax discusses is the trend towards “zero tolerance to violence,” which in some schools means students are punished for writing violent stories, and small children are penalised for turning sticks or pieces of paper into guns. I would have thought that was something that could only happen in America, but our own family has just had a brush with the same kind of thinking.
Four of my grandchildren recently lived on the army base at Puckapunyal, Victoria. Their dad made them a wooden toy gun each; after all, guns are part of their normal life, just as they are in many farming families. Out in the scrub, playing with their mates, their home-made wooden guns were the envy of all their buddies. This was reported back to Dad, the “arms manufacturer.” “Well,” said Mum and Dad, “if you want to make a bit of pocket money, we’ll help you make some for sale. Ask your friends if they’ll pay $11.50 for a gun like yours.” (Teaching the boys responsibility and commitment was the real focus: the product was just a vehicle.) And so began an entrepreneurial business for the then 8- and 10-year-old. Orders came flooding in, and the boys designed different models, sandpapered, painted, and orders, deliveries and money. The first stall at the local on-base market generated the lads $147. Excited by their business success, the boys decided to apply for a stall at a nearby town’s Saturday market. However, that plan was knocked back when the woman on the end of the phone said, very heatedly, “No way can your children sell wooden guns at our market. We don’t allow anything that encourages violence.” I was telling the story to an experienced kindergarten teacher. She gave a wry laugh.
photo: Leah-Anne Thompson
sure I did. The rough-house rumbles in the lounge, the farting, belching and peeing competitions … Does any other woman join me in memories of bewildered frustration and thoughts of “which planet did these kids come from?”
“You can’t stop boys playing with guns. They’re hard-wired that way. Many times I’ve seen children brought up by pacifist parents, who’ve completely protected their children from any violent influences, pick up a stick and turn it into a gun. How on earth do we think we can change a millennia of male protector/hunter/provider instincts?” Let’s work with nature, not against it. Our boys will be happy, well-adjusted, and resilient. And happy kids equal happy and effective teachers and happy parents. In my book, that’s a successful outcome.
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Jenny Barrett
Integrating educational technologies into your classroom Take advantage of the fact that students seem to learn fast when videos are involved.
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his issue we look at how to ensure that you’re making the most of your video camera, potentially one of the most powerful teaching and learning tools in your arsenal. As Jim Stinson states: “I think video in education is much like the uncharted country that they (Lewis and Clark) explored: vast, varied and sometimes dauntingly difficult but rich with possibilities beyond imagination.” Indeed using video in the classroom can be challenging. Some of my most tiring days teaching and training have involved video projects. However, they are also without a shadow of a doubt one of the most rewarding and inclusive classroom activities that you can be involved with as a teacher. Try these four different ways to use video in the classroom:
Video as a subject
Teachers Matter
First of all, we have video as a subject in itself. You hear much discussion of our 21stcentury learners being “digital natives” and ourselves “digital immigrants.” This is a broad sweeping statement and in many areas our students still need facilitators, and video is certainly one of them. Being able to pick up a video and record with it is only the beginning of the story. There is all the richness of media literacy to explore. George Lucas, director of Star Wars, describes the educational need as follows:
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“When people talk to me about the digital divide, I think of it not being so much about who has access to what technology as who knows how to create and express themselves in this new language of the screen. If students aren’t taught the language of sound and images, shouldn’t they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read or write?” As well as being able to make videos, 21stcentury children need to be able to watch, direct and script videos, thinking about
issues such as: • Who is this message intended for? • Who wants to reach this audience, and why? • From whose perspective is this story told? • Whose voices are heard, and whose are absent? • What strategies does this message use to get my attention and make me feel included? This can begin at a very early age; just use some of the toy advertising around Christmas time for the junior and middle syndicates. The extension activity could be actually creating an advertisement for something like the Fair Go competition in which students are encouraged to create an advertisement for something no one would ever want to buy. An activity that works well for seniors is to use a controversial sporting incident (e.g. Tana Umaga’s tackle on Brian O’Driscoll in the last Lion’s Tour of New Zealand) and watch the TV coverage that played in New Zealand and compare it to the TV coverage in Ireland/UK. As an extension activity, have the students film a school sporting event from the two different team perspectives and compare the final product.
Video as a skill The second way in which video should be approached in the classroom is as a skill in itself. How do we make video? You can divide this into four stages: scripting, making, editing and showing. A useful site developed to teach children these four stages is called “Kidsvid” and is accessible at http:// kidsvid.altec.org/index.html The key to successfully teaching video as a skill is to set achievable goals and to scaffold these skills step by step.
“ If students aren’t taught the language of sound and images, shouldn’t they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read or write?””
Storyboarding Scaffolding storyboarding comes naturally to a teacher; it has to be at a level of literacy that is appropriate to the individual or group of students. Smaller children can sketch their storyboards; older students can write their scripts and onscreen directions. Students who struggle with literacy can record audio instructions and script. The teacher can make or use storyboarding templates that can provide as much or as little guidance as you wish. Making Having a variety of equipment available can help with scaffolding such that the juniors use Digital Blue cameras designed specifically for children to remove the issue of zooming. Maybe junior video projects can all be filmed in one location with the camera resting on a table or in conjunction with a tripod to remove the stability issue. This means that the teacher can organise the setting to ensure that audio and lighting problems are already resolved. As students move up the school, they can take over more of the production side and start to think about where the best location would be, how they are going to filter out background noise and move onto more “grown-up” equipment that has more features.
Jenny Barrett
Editing Similarly with editing, students can move from platform to platform, starting with Digital Blue software and moving onto iMovie or Moviemaker and then onto the serious video editing programmes such as Pinnacle or Vegas. As a teacher, make sure that you use the wonderful online resources to help you understand how the software works before or alongside the students. For iMove HD, access the online tutorials at http://www.apple.com/support/ilife/ tutorials/imovie/. For Moviemaker, there is the how-to centre, http://www.microsoft. com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/ default.mspx, and for Digital Blue, a fantastic American teacher has made stepby-step, how-to videos and posted them on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/ jrbelementary. Also ensure that students tackle the editing requirements in stages, too. Decide what they actually need as part of the final product and stick to that. Just as students can spend 30 minutes deciding what border to have in Word, they can spend twice that choosing their transitions between scenes – and is that always time well spent? Showing This is all about your audience and how you are going to let them access the video. The more genuine the audience the better, and
competitions are wonderfully motivating. Some that you could consider are: the abovementioned Fair Go advertisement or the MADE awards, a nationwide competiton run by Selwyn Ridge and Tahatai Coast Schools. The MADE (Media and Digital Excellence) awards are now open to primary and intermediate schools nationwide. The competition has three age groups Years 0-3, Years 4-6 and Years 7-8 and six categories: 30-second issue-based commercial, music video, creative storytelling, documentary, still digital photography and manipulated digital image.
Video as a learning tool The third way in which you can integrate video into the classroom is as a learning tool. Perhaps its most common use is as an output for an inquiry or topic such as the creation of a documentary on mini-beasts or as a news report on road safety issues. Many literacy activities can utilise video, such as video footage to accompany a poem or a recount. It can also be an alternative way of contributing or recording achievement if you have a student who struggles with literacy or ESOL. Students can collate footage of real situations to contextualise numeracy, for example video someone calculating the area for a carpet. More junior students can create visual rubrics of how to behave in
certain situations such as how to leave the classroom and many things can be videoed for inclusion in eportfolios.
Video as a recording device Finally, there is the thing that the video was actually designed for – recording stuff! Use your video on field trips and have a designated documentary or news team who can produce a few minutes-long news report for the rest of the school and parents. Remember to get them to plan and familiarise themselves with the equipment prior to departure. Regularly create learning resources for other teachers and students by videoing speakers who come to the school. Create some short “how to’s” and share them with the world on Teacher Tube. These can be as simple as how to draw a graph. If you need to demonstrate something in class that may be too messy or dangerous to do with all 30 children, have a small group of students direct and produce a video of the experiment. Have students act out things that are difficult to deal with such as bullying. Lastly, video any important announcements that you want the students to take in. For some reason, it seems to sink in far easier via video.
by Educators for Educators Become a more effective educator by embracing technology in your learning environment. Web 2.0, Video, IWBs, Eportfolios and much more!
Request professional development with Breathe Technology today. Phone: 07 927 2260 Fax: 07 927 2264 Email: info@breathetechnology.co.nz
www.breathetechnology.co.nz
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Judith Cullen
Cooking at home Head to the market for inspiration.
We could be like the Italians. The Italians have been shopping at markets for thousands of years, and their markets are open six to seven days a week. (I host two tours to Italy each year and travel throughout many of its regions.) Many people live in small houses with little storage space, so they buy food daily at its freshest. The quality of food in Italy is never compromised, and the markets’ noises, smells and colours are exciting and infectious, an essential part of daily life there. You can recreate that excitement here. The market experience of shopping with a big bag or trolley in your hand can change our thought processes of “What’s for dinner” because you have already made your decision. Each week you can choose from your region’s finest produce sold in the growing season, which makes the food cheaper, fresher and more flavourful.
W Teachers Matter
hat happened to home cooking, a baking frenzy or the huge pot of soup that lasted the week? Have we lost the desire to prepare food in advance? Do we lack the skills? Do our friends and families not like the taste? Is it cheaper and easier to eat out or get takeaways?
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All these factors can be part of why we d o n ’t c o o k m u c h a t h o m e a n y m o r e . H o w e v e r, I k n o w t h e r e a r e m e n a n d women who are passionate about not only cooking but buying fresh, seasonal produce from their region. There has been a fabulous renaissance all over New Zealand and Australia of farmers’ markets and a renewed interest in gardening.
Many people in apartment-type living treat the market as their vegetable garden and orchard. Let yourself be tempted with something you may not have tried before, like celeriac, dicon, kohlrabi or Jerusalem artichokes. Food shopping changes continually throughout our lives and consequently planning and preparing meals may change from cooking for families and friends to cooking for one or two. Your priorities may move from bulk items for hungry teenagers to some good bottles of wine. But never overlook the enjoyment of serving home-cooked, healthy food to appreciative family members and friends
“ There has been a fabulous renaissance all over New Zealand and Australia of farmers’ markets and a renewed interest in gardening. ”
who are lucky enough to sample your ever-changing menus from your pick of fresh and healthy market foods. Cooking at home is more than great fun; it is satisfying and healthy and just as social as eating out without the potential disappointment of a bad experience. Cooking is my love – why not make it yours?
judith cullen
Strawberry Flan with Cream Patisserie Short Crust Pastry 2 cups................... flour 125 grams............ butter ¼ cup.......................icing sugar 1........................... egg yolk 1-2 tablespoons.... water
Venison Slices with Pearl Couscous Salad and Coriander Hummus 500 grams ....... venison (denver leg) ½ cup ............. polenta Cut the venison into two and roll in polenta. Heat 2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil. Pan-fry venison until golden. Transfer to an oven and bake at 180 C for 8-10 minutes. Rest for 5 minutes before slicing. Pearl Couscous Salad 2 cups............... pearl couscous – Moghrabiah 2 ripe tomatoes – seeded and finely chopped ½ cup............... kalamata olives, pitted quartered ½ cup............... chopped parsley I packet............ pita bread Vinaigrette 1/3 cup............. olive oil 2 tablespoons... lemon juice 2 tablespoons... balsamic vinegar Cook the pearl couscous in a saucepan of boiling salted water until tender. Drain and run under cold water to cool. Leave to drain. In a bowl combine couscous, tomatoes, olives, parsley and vinaigrette. Transfer to a serving dish and serve with slices of venison (or lamb, beef, chicken or fish) Topped with hummus and basil pesto. Or fill pita bread pockets with couscous salad and pan-fried fresh tuna and top with Hummus and Basil Pesto
Put flour, icing sugar and butter in food processor. Pulse to combine. Add egg yolk and water - 1 tablespoon at a time until a firm dough is formed. Roll out pastry to fit 28-39cm flan dish. Chill for 10-15 minutes. Bake blind in a hot oven until golden brown – 8-10 minutes
Basil Pesto 2 cups...............basil leaves 2 cloves.............garlic 4 tablespoons...pinenuts ½ teaspoon.......salt 1cup..................olive oil 1/3 cup.............parmesan cheese – grated
Cream Patisserie 2 cups................. milk ½ cup................. caster sugar 3......................... eggs 6 tablespoons..... flour 2 tablespoons..... cornflour zest and juice of an orange
Combine the basil, garlic and pinenuts in a food processor. Blend until smooth. Add salt, olive oil and parmesan cheese and pulse to combine. Transfer to a jar and store in the refrigerator.
Bring milk to the boil. In a bowl combine eggs, flours and sugar, whisk until combined. Slowly add the hot milk to the egg mixture whisking briskly. Transfer custard back to the saucepan. Slowly bring back to the boil, stirring constantly until thickened. Stir in the orange zest and juice. Transfer crème patisserie to a bowl. Cover and cool.
Hummus 2 cups...............cooked chickpeas 2 cloves.............garlic ½ teaspoon.......salt zest and juice of a lemon ¼ cup..................olive oil freshly ground black pepper In a food processor place the chickpeas, garlic, salt, lemon zest and juice. Process until well blended. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil. If the hummus is still too thick add 3-4 tablespoons of boiling water. Season.
2 punnets........... strawberries hulled and halved ½ cup................. red currant jelly To assemble Spoon crème patisserie into the cooled pastry case. Place strawberries and on top of the crème patisserie in concentric circles. Brush with warm, melted red currant jelly to glaze. Alternatives Make individual flans in patty tins. Use an oblong flan tin or cake tin.
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Thinking Challenges
Adrian Rennie Creating, Imagining and Innovating This challenge is all about creating something new by combining two things. Take a clock and build it into some other object. Make it thoughtful and unique. Imagine the finished clock before you start and the steps needed to get there.
Teachers Matter
Bicycle Clock
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Cutlery Clock
Some of the best ideas and inventions today come from combining old technology to make something new. Combine a clock and something of your choice to come up with a new design of time piece that is creative and innovative. Use the practise clock faces below to sketch your ideas. Choose the very best or most interesting one to draw beautifully on to a presentation page.
Pizza Clock
Soccer Player Clock
Soccer Ball Clock
Barbara Griffith and Tricia Kenyon
Title: How To Live Forever Author & Illustrator Colin Thompson Publisher: Random House Children’s Books ISBN 978 0 099 46181 4
How To Live Forever This book, sophisticated in both storyline and illustrations, is suitable for older students. “I have always believed in the magic of childhood and think that if you get your life right that magic should never end. I feel that if a children’s book cannot be enjoyed properly by adults, there is something wrong with either the book or the adult reading it. This, of course, is just a smart way of saying I don’t want to grow up.”
--Colin Thompson, 2008
In
a library with a thousand rooms are copies of every book ever written, but one book is missing, a mysterious book called How to Live Forever, which is supposed to hold the key to eternal life. Why it is missing, and how can it be found? Peter sets out on a complex journey through the library to find the missing book. Only the Ancient Child holds the key to this and to a thought-provoking truth. This is an excellent example of a sophisticated picture book and would be more appropriate for older primary and secondary students.
Exploring the cover • Focus on several observations you could make about the cover and show how they link to the title.
World knowledge What world knowledge (in its broadest sense) would help the reader to fully understand this text? Create a web; for example:
World Knowledge Needed
• What do you think the text will be about and what clues from the cover support your predictions?
Audience Why did Colin Thompson create this text and who is the intended audience? What makes you say that?
Play on words Metaphors Allusions
Book titles
Wisdom Immortality
Spatial awareness Colour, lines
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Barbara Griffith and Tricia Kenyon
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Barbara Griffith and Tricia Kenyon
Exploring the Book Titles • Select one section of a shelf and identify the theme of the books for that section. Look at other shelves. • Select a title of a book from the page, then, using another source, locate and identify the correct title. Bookshelf Titles
Correct Titles:
Lord of the Pies
Lord of the Flies
The Lizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz
Discussing immortality When Peter met the old men, he couldn’t understand why they hadn’t read the book; they obviously had chosen not to. With your knowledge of the storyline, think about; • Why did the old men choose not to read the book? • Would the Ancient Child have read the book if he knew what was going to happen? • Would you have made the same decision as Peter. Why or why not?
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Barbara Griffith and Tricia Kenyon
Evaluating Peter’s decision Explore the plusses and minuses of Peter’s decision Plus
Minus
He can grow old with his family.
He’d outlive his family
The Postcard
Exploring the illustrations
If Peter sent a postcard to a friend telling them about his search for the missing book, what would it be like?
Select a double-page layout and look at it carefully and focus on:
• Create a postcard with his writings on one side and an illustration on the other, in the style of the book.
Poem
• Story setting • Light / shadow • Colour • Use of lines and shapes • Size / perspective
Teachers Matter
Create a poem titled “If I could live forever”
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Thinking further If this book was developed into a movie or a novel, what changes and additions would be needed to the storyline, characters, setting, etc. to make it successful?
Sharyn Devereux-Blum
Schools make a difference when the going gets tough Parents rely on schools to stay open and protect their children when disaster strikes.
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indings by David Johnston from Massy University, who completed research on “School Closures during Disasters: Impacts on Children,” and Tom Wilson from Canterbury University, who completed research on “Rural Families and Disasters: Stories from Canterbury, Iceland and Patagonia,” show that schools play a vital role in communities struck by a disaster. When schools stay open, children do not suffer any long-term problems. In 2003 in Te Anau, a primary school arranged activities for the children for the morning while teachers tidied up the classrooms. In the afternoon they played sports. The staff focused on coping, and their dedication had a lasting effect on the students and also greatly helped the parents.
In addition to thinking about whether a school should close, leaders must develop a plan for dismissal during an emergency. Children must understand that there will be a time lag before someone arrives to collect them. With the likelihood of telecommunication outages, there will be a time delay before communication with loved ones. There might also be a delay before caregivers find a safe route to get to the school. School leaders who understand this can reassure children. Leaders might even consider waiting to dismiss children. Caregivers tell us that they will come to get their children even through dangerous, hazardous areas after an earthquake. Yet, only 26 percent of caregivers say they would do so if they trust that the school has a well-designed preparedness plan, compared to 65 percent of parents who would do so because they don’t think their school has a good plan. By making sure the school is safe, and that caregivers understand this prior to an emergency or disaster, all benefit and we become a resilient community.
photo: Edyta Linek
In 2004, a different school closed for a week following floods due to a loss of toilet water throughout the town. The school closure had a big impact on working parents who had to make other arrangements or take leave.
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wendy sweet
Plan of action
At a time when off-seasons have virtually become extinct, helping young athletes make the most out of year-round planning can be critical to their on-going health.
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inter sports? Summer sports? Spring sports? Autumn sports? Suddenly what used to be a distinct summer sports versus winter sports programme is filled year round. The sportsmad kids in your classroom are now at different practices or training sessions four to five times a week – and you notice a dropoff in their concentration as well as their motivation. You (along with the parents or caregivers) can provide sporting kids with the necessary information to ensure they don’t suffer from fatigue, injury and burnout. In sport and athletic terms, this is known as “Developing the Training Plan.”
Step 1 – PLANNING Identify the sports or activities they are involved in and what sport(s) are more important to them? What will be their “priority” sport for the term or year?
Teachers Matter
With the enormous choice in activities for kids, they are sometimes tempted to take on sporting activities that are just for fun on top of their main sport. This is cool, but these other activities also use up energy, time, and motivation. Talk to both the child and his/her parents/caregivers to see how they might plan the fun activities into the year, for example, between training seasons, in school holidays or limit them to one day a week.
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Step 2 – IT’S ALL A MATTER OF BALANCE What are the physical demands of the sports or activities and how well is the child suited to them? Most team sports demand a number of fitness components with some components having greater priority – endurance, strength, speed, agility and flexibility. Power is another component that may be
“ Depending on the demands of the sport, it takes muscle groups up to 72 hours to recover. Performance improvement comes from recovery and adaptation, not the training session. ” integrated into the sport as well. Each of these components has different training requirements, and different emphasis depending on the sport or activity. I trust that most kids gravitate towards sports and activities that suit their genetic make-up. Most coaches and sport teachers also realise this, nudging sporting kids and teens towards a “best-fit” sporting code or position in a team. With this in mind, the main competitive sport chosen each term should also suit the child in terms of their fitness capabilities and motivation. As sporting kids head into their teens and competition literally heats-up, it is also important for teachers, parents or caregivers to understand the training demands of the sport, so that they can assist teens to manage increasing levels of fatigue.
I had a call recently from a parent whose teenager was involved in intense sporting activities. This teen’s primary winter sport was rugby (forward position). His other sports though were water polo and squad swimming, as well as roller hockey, which was more a fun activity with his mates. This boy trained from Tuesday through to Friday with rugby games on Saturday. He had rugby training on Tuesday and Thursday after school, followed by water polo. Squad swimming was two mornings a week and two evenings with roller hockey for fun on a Friday. The teen had a long history of participating in most of these activities, and was coping well, but the mother was concerned that it was all a bit much as his schoolwork (particularly homework) had become secondary to his sports. In analysing all of these sports, the greatest issue of concern was the demand these sports placed on his upper-body muscle groups, both in training and competition. Not wanting to give up any of the sports, recovery between sessions became the most important factor. The teen and his parents weren’t emphasising his after-school and between-sport nutrition and hydration enough. His water intake during the day whilst he was in class did not match his losses. He had chronic dehydration, making him increasingly tired during the day. He also needed extra rest and sleep on Sunday and Monday, his only non-sporting days. He needed to complete homework on these days, too. In this case, where team practices were set, along with game days, it is too difficult to change training days to suit t h e n e e d f o r r e c o v e r y. S o m e t i m e s i n individual sports, though, changes can be discussed with the coach, especially if an important competition for another sport is on the horizon.
wendy sweet
Step 3: KNOW THE LOAD/UNLOAD CYCLE – Recovery is the key to success.
Depending on the demands of the sport, it takes muscle groups up to 72 hours to recover. Performance improvement comes from recovery and adaptation, not the training session. This is known as the Load/ Unload Cycle. As competitions get closer and training intensity increases, the week needs to be structured. This is something that the sporting teen needs to discuss with his or her coach. An example of an imbalanced load-unload regime is when a hard training session as a forward in rugby, using a lot of upper body muscle strength, is followed by an intense water polo match. Then next morning, the child has an intense session in the pool with interval repeats of butterfly. Performance will suffer and the kids will be fatigued throughout the school day with concentration suffering. Often nutrition and hydration intakes are not enough to replace all of the energy used in training. Encourage kids to communicate with their various coaches about any intense training sessions that have gone on in their other sports. Encourage them also to drink water throughout the school d a y. Wo r k i n g t o g e t h e r i s t h e k e y t o minimising the risk of overuse injuries and accumulated fatigue.
photo: Galina Barskaya
Heavier, intense training needs to be followed by lighter training. This is the rule of training prescription. If kids and teens are not getting fitter with training, they’re probably getting tired. Fatigue is accumulative, causing performance levels to fluctuate.
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WENDY SWEET
“ You (along with the parents or caregivers) can provide sporting kids with the necessary information to ensure they don’t suffer from fatigue, injury and burnout. ”
Teachers Matter
Professional athletes set up their pre-season and in-season training plan around a system of building and recovering. Three weeks of more intense structured training may be followed by one week easier recovery training. This is hard for the school child, who is involved in a number of sports throughout each week and the term. The best thing for the parent/ caregiver and coach to do is to monitor the weekly recovery sessions. This way fatigue can be managed, especially leading up to games or competitions.
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Rest days mean rest. Monitor rest days with your sports kid; it’s not a rest day on the Sunday if they are off doing more intense physical activity. A bout of skateboarding or fun activity is cool, but the objective is to be fresh and well-recovered for the following week. If they stick with this approach during the season, they won’t be as tired at the start of the week.
Step 4: ENERGY REQUIREMENTS – EAT, EAT, EAT Food is the basis of building energy. Teen athletes need to eat – little and often! The amount of food/ fluid intake during the day will set them up for a great afternoon or evening training sessions if done correctly. Encourage them to eat all of their lunch, and to bring extra snacks for after school, prior to their sports training. Multiple training sessions, i.e. more than one sport after school, is the hardest to manage nutritionally, as they often don’t feel like eating between activities. This is a time when they will benefit from fluid carbohydrate replacement, bars or easily digested fruits, between training sessions on the same day. The later evening meal will also become hugely important for early morning training sessions. Remember, too, that for teens, the greatest energy demands come when there is either a growth spurt or a menstruation. It’s really important that girls especially keep nutritional intake and fluid intake higher during menstruation, especially if they’re involved in heavier, intense training sessions. It’s well known in sport health management that teenage girls who participate in a number of sports run the risk of lowering their stored iron, becoming fatigued and eventually anaemic. You’ll notice them in class. They want to lay their head down and go to sleep.
STRUCTURING THE YEAR – PERIODISATION Depending on the child’s sport, the coach should have a season training plan in place, specific to the needs of the sport. If the child has a number of sports and coaches, it would help to get a copy of it and become familiar with training loads and competition planning. If the child is tapering for a competition in one sport and “loading” for another sport, it’s obviously going to defeat the taper structure. As a general guide, athletic kids in your classes should plan their year just like athletes. Term time can be utilised to focus on the specific fitness aspects of their sport or sports. They can then use holidays to do longer duration aerobic or cardiovascular fitness conditioning. In an athlete’s training year, this would be achieved in the “pre-season.” Tell parents that school holidays are a great time for their athletic child to recover from one sport and transition into the new sport or sporting season. With a sensible, structured approach to a child’s sporting year, and in liaison with coaches and or parents, athletic, competitive kids in your class can be well assisted into longer-term sporting success.
Thelma Van Der Werff
Turquoise: The colour for new times and new measures
With a mixture of trust and peace, this colour can help you grow.
When we understand the power of colour and acknowledge that not only is this wonderful tool natural but also incredibly strong and effective, we can positively change our thoughts and feelings. All colours have amazing properties that can support us with all aspects of our lives. With our colour choices, we can create the strength to deal with daily challenges and bring about happiness and inner peace. We give ourselves the ability to work through problems and traumas and accept guidance and direction. We a r e l i v i n g i n a c h a l l e n g i n g b u t exciting new time. To make it through, it is so important that we learn to value and listen to our own intuition. We need to trust the “inner teacher” and follow “what feels right.” Turquoise, a combination of blue and green, is the colour that can support us through change and adjustment. Blue is a colour that represents trust, communication skills and self control. The colour green represents our heart’s desire, healing, peace and har mony. The combined colours of blue and green creates turquoise, bringing a powerful tool to help us with creativity, spontaneity, intuition, playfulness, and mental flexibility. It is no coincidence that turquoise is a colour associated with happiness. Think of turquoise and you might think of dolphins, those playful, gentle and intelligent creatures. Turquoise is synonymous with the New Age. Because it is “non traditional,” the diverse properties associated with the
colour can give us the clarity to change and adjust to our new environment and all the inherent challenges that this fastmoving time is bringing. The colour will also bring tranquility, which is important to help us support change. Through the use of turquoise, businesses can learn to be more proactive in creating new ideas to deal with the recession. A down-tur n in the economy does not necessarily have to herald doom and gloom, nor the need to be competitive. Instead we should focus on the excitement of brain storming to create new ideas and projects that will move us ahead.
“ Turquoise, a combination of blue and green, is the colour that can support us through change and adjustment.”
Turquoise is also a colour of communication and computer science. We all need to learn to use technology and to feel comfortable with its presence. The New Age is creating a more youthful and spontaneous “older” generation. Have you noticed that today 50- and 60-year-olds are no longer deemed old? We all accept that we are reaching “maturity” several decades later than previous generations. We are acknowledging that life is not only about working hard, but also having fun. Using turquoise in your home, office or clothes brings happiness, spontaneity and trust of intuition into your life. Be colourful; be you!
photo: Michael Pettigrew
C
olour is a universal language, a language that we are often forget that we use every day. From the moment we wake, colour surrounds us, and without realizing it, our subconscious taps into its amazing powers. We start the day communicating our deepest thoughts and feelings through the colours of our clothes.
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Thinking Challenges
Adrian Rennie
Life has a way of challenging us with many problems. Every day we have to choose between right and wrong. But who is to say what is right and wrong? Here are some troublesome problems for you to wrestle with. Record your answers with reasons on the blank lines.
Thinking About Thinking Many people just react to situations instead of really thinking hard about them. Ask yourself why you are reacting the way you are. Be aware of what’s going on in your head.
In the supermarket, you accidentally knock over a pile of cereal boxes. No one sees you. Do you stop and tidy them up? Do you just walk away?
_______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ Friends are visiting you. Right after they leave you find a $20 note where they were sitting. Do you return it?
_______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ You are visiting friends. You accidentally leave a tap on and cause a flood. Do you offer to pay for the damages?
_______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ Your teacher has a big blob of food stuck to his chin. Do you tell him?
_____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ Your best friend has got terrible bad breath. Do you tell her?
_____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________
Thinking Interdependently Wait a minute. Others will have some good ideas about these problems. Maybe you could spend some time solving these tough situations with a thinking buddy.
Waiting at a bus stop in a rain storm you notice a blind person trying to cross the street. You are in a hurry. Do you stop to help him?
_______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ A homeless person asks you for $1. You think they will probably spend it on alcohol. Do you give it to him?
_______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________
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You pick up the phone to make a call and hear two people talking. It’s a crossed line. Do you listen in?
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_____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ There is a long line at the movies. A friend near the front lets you take a spot in front of them causing many behind to start complaining. What do you do?
_____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________
Managing Impulsivity Stop and think! There is more than one way to solve these problems. Think of several alternatives and then ask yourself, “What’s the most intelligent thing to do in this situation?”
illustration: ristos Georghiou
Rowena Szeszeran-McEvoy
How to finish a marathon
What to do when you want to finish any run — with a smile on your face.
Y
ou can argue, protest, disagree, make excuses, give alternatives and even pretend that running is not the fastest way to get fit and burn fat, but you would be wrong. I rarely make absolute statements unless I am chatting about the proven facts, and this is one of those rare times! Running burns more calories than any other exercise, and it increases your heart rate, lung capacity and fitness level quicker than any other exercise. So yes, it is the fastest way to get fit and burn fat. However, please do not misunderstand; the fastest fat-burning exercise may not be the best exercise for you. The only way to determine that would be to ask the following questions: • What exercise/s do you love to do? • What exercise/s can you, have you, will you stick to long-term? • What, if any, physical challenges do you have that may affect your exercise choice? If you don’t like to run, if you won’t stick with running, if you have tried it and hated it, if you have injuries, feet, knee or back challenges or you simply do not want to run, then running is the worst exercise for you and please don’t read on.
However, if you would like to run and you don’t know how to get started, you must read on. If you would like to burn fat fast and get fit really quick and if you would like to get involved in an exercise program that makes you feel fantastic, gives you energy, vitality and a sense of well-being and achievement, then running may well be the best exercise for you. And if you want to run a marathon, you can. And you can finish it with a smile on your face. Here’s how:
STEP ONE • Get fitted for, and invest in, a quality pair of running shoes. • Dress in loose fitting, comfortable clothes that give you room to move, keep you cool and don’t have seams, buttons or zippers that may cause chaffing. • Pick an environment/place that you will enjoy seeing, looking at and being in that is flat -- a park, the beach, around your neighbourhood. If you want to avoid the weather, pick a gym or health club where you will feel comfortable, that has good quality treadmill and that doesn’t require a degree in rocket science to operate. If you want to exercise in the absolute convenience of your own home, invest in a good quality treadmill and set it up in
an airy, light, cool area where you won’t be interrupted by the phone, kids, dog or visitors. Get started: • Walk for five to seven minutes and that will be enough if this is your first exercise session for a long time or ever. Do this every day for a week or two. • After two weeks, walk for five to seven minutes, then start a slow jog. The second you feel puffed or uncomfortable, stop and walk. • When you are completely recovered and not puffing at all, start the slow jog again. The very second you feel puffed or uncomfortable, stop and walk again. • Repeat this simple, easy process three to four times or until you have had enough for today. If you are just starting to exercise, seven to 10 minutes is fantastic and you should be proud of your achievements. • Repeat this great session every day with the only goal to stick with it, no matter what, for seven to 10 days. • Always walk/jog/run with a smile on your face. Your brain releases natural p a i n k i l l e r s w h e n y o u s m i l e . D o n ’t question it. Just do it, it works.
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Rowena Szeszeran-McEvoy • Book in with a MAX fitness professional and strength train every week for just 30 minutes or less. Your only goal is to make every muscle in your body stronger.
STEP 2: • Now start timing the time you spend slow jogging vs. the time you are walking and slowly increase the slow jogging time and decrease the walking time. This may take two to three weeks. Please celebrate your achievements every day. • When your walk time is 10 seconds or less, start to increase the speed of your slow jog. • As before, jog fast until you are puffed but now instead of stopping to walk, slow down to a slow jog. Of course, you should stop and walk if you feel you need to. • Never miss a strength-training session; train every week for just 30 minutes or less. Keep getting stronger. The only reason to have a week off is if you stop getting stronger. You must measure the weight, not how many times you do it. The gym is for getting stronger; running is for getting fitter and for being a better runner, never mix them up.
• Always run with a smile on your face; your brain releases natural painkillers when you smile. Yes, I’m repeating this advice. Don’t question it. Just do it. It works.
“ if you would like to get involved in an exercise program that makes you feel fantastic, gives you energy, vitality and a sense of well-being and achievement, then running may well be the best exercise for you.”
• Never miss a strength training session, every week for just 30 minutes or less. Keep getting stronger. The only reason to have a week off is if you stop getting stronger.
Now for the Fun Run, ½ Marathon or the Marathon • Set yourself a goal: Enter the run with the only goal being to finish. • Enter and pay for your entry. • See yourself running over the finish line and every time you run, visualise it again and again. • Every time you run, aim to get faster.
STEP 3: • Interval your fast jog, slow jog, and walk if you want; now select your goal by what you enjoy the most… • Get faster for each interval of jogging so it becomes a run or a sprint. • Keep going for longer for each interval of jogging, running or sprinting. • Aim to jog/run for a certain time without stopping to walk.
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• Aim to sprint as fast you as you can; then stop and walk and do as many of those in a certain timeframe.
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• Look for some hills to run and repeat your whole program with the addition of an incline. • Go to the beach and aim to achieve your program in the soft sand. • Run on a treadmill and aim to beat it every time, whether by time or distance • Vary, change, do a different one of the above every day, or for one week, then change or even one for a month, then change.
• Every time you lift weights, aim to get stronger. • Regardless of the length of the run, even the 42.2km marathon, you can walk that far so you will finish. • The week before your competition, run slowly and interval with very slow jogging. • No lifting weights this week. • All clear “wees” this week. You must keep drinking water until your wee is clear, and if it is even slightly yellow, drink more. • Yo u c a n o n l y s t o r e 5 0 0 g r a m s o f carbohydrate and you will need it all for your run so from three to four days before your run until the day of the race, eat whole-grain/brown bread, cereal, rice and pasta every meal. • The day and night before your run and the morning of your run eat regularly. Eat light snacks of cereal, bread, rice and bananas. • Have a small, strong coffee or a small glass of cola before your run. It helps to save your carbohydrates, and burn fat quicker. You will need your carbohydrate for your burst
at the end of your run. • Have your IPod/MP3 player filled with your favourite, upbeat, fast songs that inspire you and record them in the live version. The clapping will inspire you when you are running. Have more songs that the longest time it will take you to run! • Always go to the toilet before your run, even if you don’t feel like it. • Drink at every drink stop or better, have a “pit crew” along the way with your favourite drink. No diet drinks; you will need the energy. • Run the whole race with a huge smile on your face. Remember, your brain releases natural painkillers when you smile and you will be an inspiration for the people running and the people watching. • What to think about: Say your goals to yourself; say your favourite quotes over and over; and repeat your positive affirmations: “I am fit, strong and healthy; I am a marathon runner; when the going gets tough the tough get going; I am tough; pain is just weakness leaving my body.” • Be proud of yourself when you finish your race -- and you will. (I have run 10 full marathons in four hours or faster with this exact plan.) • Keep moving after the finish line. • Have a drink and continue to drink until your wee is clear. • Have a hot shower/bath as soon as possible. • Have a massage and celebrate your achievement. • Pick the date for your next run and enter. Happy running!
the last word: Karen Boyes
Designing your life Luck doesn’t just happen; you have to plan it.
R
ecently my family had a wonderful holiday in Rarotonga. Upon our return and sharing our experiences, many people have commented “You are so lucky,” to which I have replied, “Yes, I am. For the past seven years I’ve been designing my life to be lucky.” As a busy working and family person, it is extremely important to take time each year to design your luck and your year. I believe the old adage, “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail” is true.
Yearly vision boards
Over the past seven years, I have learned a great deal from mentors, friends, speakers, books and CDs. Here is some of the luck my family has created: What you focus on is what you get Each New Year’s Eve, my husband and I sit down at our kitchen table and reflect on the year that has passed. We discuss our successes, our children’s growth, what we can improve on and then plan what our perfect year will be. With magazines, scissors and glue sticks, we create a vision board of our next year. Some goals are bigger than the one year, and some are short-term goals. We always include goals about our relationship, children, health and well-being, financial, home and career. This big poster hangs in our family room where we see it each day. On New Year’s Day, our children also make their own charts of what they want to do, get and be in the next year. Even at the age of two, our daughter understood this powerful concept. It is also an activity that each of the Spectrum team members do on the first day back of the year. We display our posters proudly in the office and discuss them frequently. National Wagging Day Sally Synnott, the founder of the children’s clothing store Pumpkin Patch, taught me about National Wagging Day. Each year we plan one day of the year, usually in the height of busyness, to wag. It is a day for
the family to connect. This year our National Boyes Family Day included sleeping in and breakfast in bed, yes with kids in our big bed, going to the zoo, playing at the park, playing a family game of battleships, baking a chocolate cake and eating it. The funniest part of the day for me was when the kids protested in the morning and said, “I want to go to school!,” and I told them they couldn’t. A big change from some other mornings in our house. Monthly family time out Each month we give one of our children a sum of money to plan a family outing. They must come within budget and cannot do what we did last month. They need to plan, organise and arrange it all. Sometimes the activity costs money, sometimes it doesn’t.
Ideas so far include tenpin bowling, family picnic at the beach, movies, family bike ride, a walk in the bush, laser strike, and visiting the wildlife park.
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PROFESSIONALLY & PERSONALLY
karen boyes
TeachersMatter The Magazine of Spectrum Education
The planning and thought that goes into these days is amazing. In fact, it is a hot topic of conversation at most dinner times, and is a wonderful time for us to connect as a family. Extended family account Again, I got this idea from a seminar I was at several years ago. Each of the adults in our extended family have not received birthday or Christmas presents for the past three years, except maybe for a $2 shop gift or some homemade cookies. Instead we all put money into a family bank account. This money is for extended family outings – hot air ballooning, going to stage shows, overseas holidays, which is how our entire family was able to travel to Rarotonga without having to find any extra money. It was all paid for from the family account. Not luck – planned. Dinner time rituals For many years, we have upheld the old tradition of dinner together at the dining table. We discuss our “favourite parts of the day” each night, and still our children say their favourite part of the day is “having a family tea.” With the challenges many parents are having with mobile phones at the table, we have been modelling not answering the phone during these sit-down family times. That’s why we have an answer phone. I know we will still have similar challenges when our children are older, and we are hopeful that our modelling will pay off. We also sit down each morning for breakfast, which is just a 10- minute check in with each other and a very precious time for all of us. David Koutsoukis talks about going “APE” – Accumulating Positive Encounters. This is what we plan for each year: creating positive memories that our children will remember and maybe recreate in their homes one day. In what ways could you design your own “luck”?
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co-coNstrUctiNg leArNiNg
KEEPING THINKING FRONT AND CENTRE
The Success-o-meter sets goals for learning
BUILDING RESILIENCE IN CHILDREN
Students need to think about
how they are thinking.
The little things are the big things
the DebAte hAs eNDeD
THE ULTIMATE FRAMEWORK FOR LEARNING AND LIFE
SUPERTEACHERS
You can mix phonics and whole-language
Being a hero to your students
Identify key areas for an effective, fulfilling and sustainable teaching career.
FiND YoUr WAY Take technology — and learning — into the great outdoors
IS THERE A TIGER IN YOUR CLASSROOM?
HAUORA HOMEWORK
Managing the stress of flight-or-fight
Breaking patterns of resistance toward homework.
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For lasting change to occur, you need to both think your way into new behaviours and behave your way into new thinking. Paul and Layne
photo illustration: mary hester
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Two days of inspiration and focus in 2010 Leading International Speakers • Top Workshop Speakers • Helping Educators Focus on Personal as Well as Professional Development• 20 Specialist Workshops Replace your Teacher-only days with this conference! Sydney 20th and 21st January 2010 Christchurch : 27th & 28th January 2010 Speakers include Glenn Capelli, Rich Allen, David Koutsoukis, Carol Carter and Allison Mooney. check out our website at www.spectrumeducation.com for more details
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