The goals have been set for 09-10 but I still haven’t thoroughly looked back at the year that has been. As I mentioned when creating this year’s goals, I inevitably set myself too much to do. I may have achieve some of these goals but they weren’t necessarily focused on. Therefore, for this reflection, I’m going to choose some of the more important goals and skip over the ones that I mostly “just do”.  So here it is; a reflection of some of the goals from last year:

Goals to improve instructional techniques:

Explicitly use genre to teach writing

Using the genre structures has continued to play an important part when I plan writing tasks. One of the biggest challenges with this has been working out which genre an existing task falls into. However, I haven’t made teaching genre explicit with the students I teach. The students are till receiving the benefit of a structured approach to writing but aren’t becoming familiar with the terminology that goes along with this. The quickest way to improve this is to make a department(s) (or whole school!) commitment to; something that is beginning to happen as Language B English integrates First Steps.

Encourage shared writing tasks between subject areas based on the use of Genre

I made one big push for this and it just didn’t work out. The biggest barrier to overcome is getting so many teachers organised – one content teacher plus six English teachers. It is not always easy to convince teachers to stop what they are teaching and do different task for another class. Equally, not all English classes do the same units, so where integration is logical for Language B English, it may not be for Language A English. Although there are many challenges, I am still convinced about the benefits – we must reduce the number of assessed tasks (approximately 96!) that every student is currently receiving.

Goals to improve subject expertise:

Develop a practical understanding of Genre – how can it be used in class? How can it help other teachers?

My understanding of genre has definitely improved especially with all the professional development I have taken on First Steps. One challenge i’m finding with this is that First Steps and TESMC use different terminology when describing genre so it can be at times a little confusing especially when working with other department members. I am convinced that an understanding of genre will help students improve their writing because they will have a clearer idea of what the teacher expects. The challenge here is that all teachers agree and get on board. Again, as we move towards First Steps, this will hopefully improve.

Goals relating to MS/HS school focus:

Develop instructional resources in preparation for middle school tablet program.

Most of the resources that I have worked on to meet this goal have been for the grade 8 support classes which has been a benefit now that grade 8 have tablets. Some of the things we did to meet this goal have been to develop tools such as the Scientific Investigations Wiki, creating powerpoint quizzes, using audacity to show sound waves, encouraging the kids to create digital storybooks, as well as simply organising our teaching notes into OneNote. This has set a good foundation from which we can begin to refine existing tasks and develop new ones that improve teaching and learning.

Assist in the development of the MYP gradebook.

This goal was more out of personal interest as I have wanted to improve my Microsoft Excel skills. I have worked out exactly what I want out of the grade book and have learnt a few new skills to help me achieve the goal. However, I have recently realised that my understanding does not run deep enough and now much of the functionality that Clint has implemented no longer works because of my changes! Given the time this has taken for very little result and the anticipation that a gradebook will be implemented with ISIS, the reporting program being developed at UNIS, I’m going to return to the original gradebook created by Clint.

That’s it; a reflection on the year that has been. Overall, I still don’t think that I have committed enough focus on achieving these goals but I don’t think I don’t better than last year – improvement is always positive. I’m looking forward to doing this again next year and really cracking this focus issue!

Your thoughts?

This is just a short post to link a neat idea posted by Tom Darling. Tom presents a creative way of introducing a new poem to students. Put simply,the popcorn method starts by displaying the poem. Then students jump in and read as much of the poem out loud as they wish – talking turns, cutting each other off and even sitting in silence till someone “picks up the baton”. You can read the full details here.

I would love to hear about other creating ways of introducing new poetry (or any text for that matter!). Please comment and link.

Image: Everything you need to know about popcorn by jmacphoto.com

After reorganising some of my old “usual suspect” feeds mostly covering technology and education, I thought I’d really test the search tools on google reader by searching for some relatively specific stuff that hasn’t yielded very good results in the past. My first search on “middleschool poetry” shouldn’t be too much of stretch given that their must be millions of middleschool teachers teaching poetry everyday. Maybe i’m choosing the wrong search terms but i’m often disappointed by the results. However, the first hit on my reader was an interesting blog by a teacher who posts “a poem a day lessons” based on the book Poetry 180 by Billy Collins. I don’t this feed is going to be a regular read, but i’ve subscribed so that I can routinely keep and eye on the poems that are listed, especially while i’m teaching poetry.

My next search on “jazz flute” usually yields very poor results – there aren’t too many jazz flute players out there and not many of them keep an online profile. Again, the first hit was quite surprising (I actually feel like a bit of a git for not coming across this before!) – a site dedicated to jazz flute technique. I usually find I don’t get anywhere near enough time to practice flute, but i’m hoping that having this feed in my reader might inspire (or remind!) me  to try new things and pull the pipe out more often.

There you have it, two interesting new feeds for me to follow and proof that the google reader search feature works! Whether I keep up with my reading remains to be seen.

For me, thing #5 was about reorganising the reader rather then starting it. I first started using google reader 18 months ago, but as often happens, it eventually became a low priority and I fell out of the routine of checking it. So I have decided to start checking it again and have put some energy into reorganising how I categorise my feeds. Clint Hamada mentioned to me a while ago that, rather organising your reader by topic, it might be useful to organise by frequency of relevant articles.  This way, you can easily check all the feeds that are frequently relevant regardless of tiopic, but then check those feeds that are less relevant only if you have time. I’ll give it a go for a few months and post how it went.

So upon reorganising my reader, I came upon this blog post from an Jonathon Chambers, an educator writing from the Shanghai American School. Essentially the post focuses on the energy the school is putting into creating “flexible and collaborative learning zones” by seeking out flexible and innovative furniture. SAS has recently bought a bunch of Luemmel chairs, as part of their redesign and are looking for similar pieces of furniture to help craft the vision.

At UNIS, I wonder how much thought has been put into creating these kinds of learning spaces. The library has recently been doing some redesigning, adding some pods of couches and soft, moveable stools as well as a laptop bar for use when students are accessing the library catalog but this is about it. However, our classrooms remain largely unchanged – students sitting in desks grouped in pods or as rows with the teacher largely pinned to the front of the classroom by the projector point.

Jonathon also makes the point that “that power sources are a quintessential component of any effective piece of furniture design”.  This a problem that many teachers at UNIS have also noticed. Many of the older laptops don’t come close to lasting a whole day of use. Consequently by lunchtime, middle school classrooms quickly become a maze of charger leads stretching across the floor; operations solution of adding 2 power bars to each room proving to be grossly inadequate.

I think UNIS has done quite a good job of transitioning into 1:1 program, but at the end of the day equal investment needs to be made into creating the environment in which the program can be successful. I would love to see how other schools are managing this problem.

I first came into contact with the term life-long learning when I was studying education at university. It didn’t make much sense back to me then and, like so many other terms used when studying, became a bit of a buzzword – “oh and ’such and such’ a unit will also encourage life-long learning. I expect this was because I was still whole-heartedly engaged in that part of my life when learning is supposed to happen; it was hard to imagine a time when I wouldn’t be learning because it was such a part of my life back then. Now that i’ve been out of university for a few years, the concept makes a little more sense. I’ve realised that without assignment deadlines and classes to attend, I am now responsible for what I learn and how much time I dedicate to my learning.

Upon watch Shelly Paul’s 7 and 1/2 Habits of Highly Effective Lifelong Learners, I have identified areas in which I find challenging, areas which are easy or I am already doing, and areas that are most important.

Of the 7 1/2 steps, the area i find most challenging is goal setting. I am fairly effective at setting goals for myself but regularly fall down in  meeting or achieving those goals. This is often because I manage my time ineffectively and end with a massive goal that are can’t possibly achieve in the time I have left to dedicate to it. In order to improve upon this, I am well aware that I need to develop a clear plan of how I intend to achieve a goal and set small milestones by which I will have parts of my goal achieved. I have set my goals for this academic year so we’ll see if I do a better job this year!

One area I have identified as being easy in the 7 1/2 habits is creating my own learning toolbox. I think I am quite effective at searching for the best tools to achieve a certain job and am regular pouring over forums seeking answers to problems I am unable to solve on my own. Over the past year or so I have found myself more and more drawn to twitter. Despite the criticism I often get when I tell people that I use twitter regularly, I have found it a great way to connect to other educators. In fact, most of the people I follow on twitter are educators so I have found this to be a great resource for answering questions and finding and sharing tools on the web. You can look me up on twitter @stangey.

Of the 7 1/2 habits that i believe is most important, play stands out for me. I believe that play is the most important step in the creative process and it is a step that is often forgotten or glossed over in class. Tim Brown talks about The Powerful Link between Creativity and Play in his TED Talk.  I particularly like his discussion on divergent and convergent thinking whereby any creative task is led with divergent, uninhibited brainstorming and is followed by convergent, focused development of the most effective idea. Creativity is an area I am really interested in and I am currently exploring options on studying this as a masters.

There it is, my thoughts on the 7 1/2 habits – what are your thoughts? Below is the abbreviated 7 1/2 habits from the Voicethread.

1. Begin with the end in mind

2. accept responsibility for your own learning.

3. View problems as challenges

4. Have confidence in yourself as a confident effective learner

5. Create your own learning toolbox

6. Use technology to your advantage

7. Teach and mentor others

7 1/2 – Play

We have been back at school for 3 weeks and I still haven’t clearly outlined the goals for this school year – i’m already racing down the metaphorical path and I have little idea where I want to end up. Interestingly, this activity has been a very formalised process in the past; however, this year our Administration has taken quite a different approach and i’m not sure faculty is really clear about what we are supposed to do. So, even though I have rarely managed to achieve the professional goals i set for myself, i’m going to persist with the old approach.

In order to make my goals clearer, I will use the SMARTER approach to goal setting. SMARTER simply encourages the user to check whether the goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely, Enjoyable, and Resourced. 

So here are my goals for 2009/2010:

1. Implement and trial the EAL Support Framework based on UNIS’s goal to adopt First Steps across the school.

This year I am lucky enough to have a class with no students in it. So to make use of the time, our EAL coordinator is using me as the guinea pig to implement the EAL Support Famework she is developing. The framework is based on First Steps and seeks to identify language intensive areas within the curriculum and seek ways of making these areas more accessible to students who are still learning English. I will need to complete a language analysis for all units in both humanities and science class, then using methods taken from First Steps shape activities to meet the specific needs of those students who are having trouble.

 2. Continue to create technology enriched learning experiences in the classroom

This goal easily covers the Enjoyable category of the SMARTER approach to goal setting for me. To be more specific I intend on developing electronic resources for Grade 6 Language English Class in preparation for Grade 6 learning with tablets next year. Within my support classes, I would like to investigate ways in which the tablet can support a more inquiry based approach to learning.

3. Professional Development

I’m not too sure whether professional development really counts as a goal but as I often don’t actively seek out professional development, I would like to make this a focus for the year. I have already signed up for the K12Learning2.0 online course. Over the next 10 weeks myself and 4 peers will be working through 23 activities that aim to get educators playing with new tools. I also intend to attend the ASB Unplugged conference in Mumbai early next year which focus on 1:1 laptop programs. Finally and dauntingly, I have been threatening to start my masters for 2 years now so I would like to make this happen – sign-up and start atleast 1 unit. I’ll let you know how it goes!

4. Music, Music, MUSIC

My final goal is a personal one. Since coming to Hanoi, music has again become a huge part of my life. This year is looking very exciting with a few more projects starting up. I have again signed up for flute and trumpet lessons and intend to continue these for the duration of the year. My band, The Van Ho Ba is very important to me and despite losing some fantastic players, I intend to keep working to keep this fantastic group in front of audiences. I am excited about a new project working with some drummers, a singer and a dj for a more electronic spin on things – something that I haven’t delved into for a few years now. Finally, I’m very happy that my first ever After School Activity was well recieved by students who are composing music using Audiotool. All in all, plenty going on music wise and the goal is to keep it that way.

So there it is – four goals though they each have several facets. Looking back at the goals I set myself last year, I have to admit that I set too many goals to focus on AGAIN (I seem to have that problem every year). This year i’m trying to keep it simple. My question now is “how do you keep track of your goals?”. Inevitably, I forget about my goals and never get back to them. What do you do to keep your goals visible? Path chosen – i’ll let you know how it goes.

Images

This initial post has been sitting on the tip of my tongue for a few months now. It has been difficult to work out what this blog is about but some recent developments seem to have helped pull the ideas together.

The first and most important to me is the amazing time I have had playing flute and trumpet with my band.  The Van Ho Ba have been blasting their version of funk, jazz, latin fusion about the (few!) stages of Hanoi and it has been exciting watching us all ten of us develop as musicians. Going from a “lapsed musician” to performing infront of substantial crowds (300+ people) has changed the way I think about music and creativity.

It has been 18 months now that the band has been performing to Hanoi crowds. Our crowds have been really enthusiastic about our sound and are always asking about the next gig. This is great but has always led me to wonder why there aren’t others here doing the same thing. Hanoi is a fantastic place to put something artistic together and present it to an engaged audience. We have done it with the band and others have put together other shows with photography and art. Still, I always wonder why there  isn’t more. Where are all those musicians who took class at school? Why aren’t they making music in a place that has audiences screaming for live music? Artists? Photographers?

This has led me back to the work of Ken Robinson. I first read Ken Robinson’s book Out of Our Minds in my last year of university. I was taking my Music Curriculum class and our lecturer really wasn’t interested in anybody who was about music education as they were taught in the past. I remember her telling us to forget what we know about teaching music and to start thinking about what music education should look like. **edit: At the time Music was being taken by an astounding 2% of students in Australia at grade 11/12 level.** She directed us to Out of our Minds. I read the book and found it quite inspiring but didn’t give it the thought it really deserved (I was finishing uni and preparing to head overseas at the time). Later, I collegue shared with me his video on TED. Again I found his ideas engaging but being in my first year of teaching, I didn’t really know what to do with it.

Today, I watch the video and wonder if what I see here in Hanoi is what Ken Robinson is talking about. He asserts that our education system is teaching its students out of creativity and out of taking risks for fear of making mistakes. Has a “not good enough” mentality been created to the point where people are too discouraged to put themselves out there and show what they can do?

This initial post is my first step into exploring this thought. I am very interested in creativity and how it can influence the way people approach a situation or problem. Along the way, I hope to examine my own teaching practice in order to discover how to best encourage creativity in our classrooms.  I’ll be using this blog as a point of reflection on this as well as other related ideas. Check back later for the word on creativity!

Image Credits:

Ripples James Jordan Some Rights Reserved