The Way We Have Approached (and Evolved) Catering for NCEA

As an area school we are in a great position to personalise learning.We have small numbers of learners. We know our learners really well. We will have learnt with them and from them for 10 years by the time they hit a need to demonstrate their learning through qualifications. 

We develop programmes based around inquiry for the first 10 years of their learning, with lots based on personal interest, and some based on teacher guided concepts.

If we believe this is the best way for our learners to learn then why would we change that and let NZQA requirements dictate the way we do things.?

So from the start we have tried not to let NCEA dictate to us the way we organise the learning for our senior learners. 

Inquiries have been developed underneath the umbrella of a theme each term. Classes at Year 11-13  had to be an integrated inquiry and offer at least two learning areas, they had to cater for any students from Years 11-13 that wanted to take them. Learners opted into 3 or 4 classes for the term from a selection of 10-12.  Classes were advertised out at the end of each term, with an indication of the standards that would be likely to be covered in them. The classes followed a pattern of an immersion into the theme, and then real depth learning for 5-6 weeks followed by, in the last 3-4 weeks of the term, an introduction of the standards and working towards completing them.

Ultimately our learners were more engaged and taking more ownership of their learning than when we began as a school. And the achievement results steadily increased as well.

But when we reviewed our programmes last year we felt there were some key parts of learning that were thriving in the rest of the school but wasn't quite hitting it at Year 11-13. And we were focused on dissecting the engagement in learning rather than achievement results of NCEA standards.

• It wasn't personalised- learners selected their classes each term, and there was differentiation of what was being offered in class but it wasn't personalised to each learner.
• It wasn't always integrated learning- a teacher taking two or more learning areas sometimes ended up making some basic links but teaching those areas side by side rather than through each other. And it wasn't always real inquiry learning either.
• It didn't allow teachers to plan and teach as collaboratively as the rest of the school was doing.
• And it wasn't really centred on learners needs and/or passions. While there was some attempt to get student voice into those class offerings, this was still very much on a  group basis. And we often found that our learners lacked a bit of life experience to develop a real passion into things they could get a real flow into inquiring into.

While we are happy with what we've achieved in the last few years it was time to shake things up a bit further this year.

What are we doing differently?

What you value is what you measure-  I wrote about this at the end of last year. You can read this blogpost here.  We are using some of the lessons we learnt with our Year 6-10 learners in 2014 and developing ways to use this with our Year 11-13 learners.

We have introduced daily passion experience classes to widen students areas of interest and passion- (to be explored further in another post) These classes will focus on widening comfort zones and deep learning without any reference to credits , although learners will document their learning in an ongoing portfolio. Later on  some of the learning done in these classes may inspire personalised learning towards credits- to be negotiated between teachers and learners individually back in the learning community.

We will be continuing to use the inquiry approach we developed as a school last year which has been documented here and here.  

Back in the learning communities there will be some teacher directed inquiries based around our learning muscles which learners will be able to opt into and out of. These will be developed and delivered  by two teachers working together with deliberate cross curriculum pairings. And these pairings will change regularly as we develop further inquiries. 

At the experimenting stage independent learning and workshops will be available to any learners for Years 8-13. When they hit the engage part of their inquiry and individually meet with a teacher to construct a big question to explore further, some links will be made to possible standards that learners can work towards and the support that they will need for this- including any acts of deliberate teaching, incorporated into their explore plan. This will be shared on an electronic forum for all six teachers working with this learning community. Then they can also add their suggestions to this learners explore plan.

When they have explored the learning through the questions they write, and move to the establish and explain stage of their inquiry is when we will look at the requirements of any achievement standard in depth, look with the learner at their portfolio of learning and construct specific steps to be able to meet the criteria of the standard. 

At the same time Year 8-10 learners are following the same pattern, without having to look at the standard, but also creating a rich portfolio of their learning which will be regularly discussed with them and as a teaching team. If there are learners working at an appropriate level in Year 10 in particular, this learning may go into a process (that we are still figuring out) wherein it can be used for NCEA the following year.

Learners are  creating their own timetables each day based on a mixture of the teacher directed inquiries and their self  directed inquiries. An overall learning community timetable for the week allows them to schedule when they are required to be at a workshop with a teacher, and also gives them the freedom to book in for small group and individual meetings and session with a teacher. This also allows teachers the time to roam and support individual learners, as well as take workshops focused around deliberate acts of teaching. We set up our staffing to have two staff members skilled in facilitating inquiry learning and personalised programmes released from teaching in order to provide intensive coaching of other staff on a daily basis.

We know things will change as we go, and we are small enough to be really flexible and allow this. We have approximately 80-90 learners in this community with 6 teachers and electronic systems and a 1-1 device rollout allows us to have a close and detailed idea what each learner is working towards on any day. I am sure there will be stumbles and issues along the way and we will have to evolve systems and procedures and meet challenges. But for our learners, right now, this is the way we are trying to ensure that while they leave school with qualifications, more importantly they leave school with passion for being lifelong learners.

We are determined to focus on learning not achievement. A prior blogpost about this can be found here.

Claire Amos from Hobsonville Point Secondary School wrote about the fact that "Too often in schools assessment is the the tail that wags the curriculum design dog."   You can find her blogpost here. 

There is much in these draft ideas of how HPSS is going to approach NCEA when their learners get to Year 11 that is food for thought and will definitely be an influence for us at Te Karaka Area School going forward.

One Word 2015

The start of the year always brings renewed vigour around goal setting. We all set goals and then the blur of day to day work takes over and I’ve found again and again that by the time you get round to asking staff to reflect on their goals four or five weeks into the year, many often have to go and look up their goals to tell you what they were. Ive tried various strategies over my years of leadership to help staff make their goals become a living thing but with varied success. I was wondering how to do this for 2015 when my twitter reading brought me awareness of and interest in the #oneword2015 movement.

So I started thinking about what my successes last year were and what were the things I felt I didn't succeed so much with. And over the course of a week I came to the decision that my word for 2015 would be SHARE. 

• I will share the load- ask others for help, delegate tasks to others and give them the time and support to do those tasks.
• I will share leadership- we have constructed a really distributed leadership model of school wide teams for the year and  my job as the educational leader in the school is to coach the leaders of those teams so that  we have real sustainability.
• I will share my story as an educator and our story as a school with the wider education world.
• I will share my reading. I do a huge amount of professional reading but I don't always take the time to review that reading and consider the implications or pass that on to others.
• I will share my learning- I am going to finish my degree and I am going to really commit to learning Te Reo. And by sharing that learning it will make me more accountable to commit to the time that learning will require.

The process of reflecting on my last year-both the successes and the things I wanted to work on  and narrowing it down to one word was really powerful so now I’ve asked my staff to do the same thing.

We are currently spending a couple of days on one of the local maraes- reconnecting as a staff whanau as we do each year.

In between team meetings and planning sessions staff have been reflecting on their successes from last year and what they want to work on next. They have been talking about it with each other and documenting it in a way that suits them. And then they have been making a physical artefact to be a physical reminder of their word for the year.

  

Sally with stickers

       

Andrew planning

Steve thinking

Huia creating

  

Im going to integrate this word into their performance agreement and performance management for the year. On  Friday each week when we meet at 3pm to reflect on things from the last week, I’m going to ask them to centre their reflection on their #oneword2015.

Some of the finished words at the end of the day

Im going to put a photo of each staff member and their #oneword2015 artefact on the wall in the staff learning space so we are all aware of each others word and can help each other hold ourselves accountable to it.

An arrangement of the words once everyone had presented and explained their word to rest of us.

 "My goal is not to be better than anyone else but better than I used to be." 

Dr Wayne Dwyer

Leading in a Different Way

When I was a baby teacher a syndicate leader was the person that organised you, checked on you, turned out the unit plan you all followed and stuck up for and fought for their team at management meetings. Anything to get the better resources or better timetable slots or the best non contact times or whatever was big currency in the school of the moment. When I became a team leader in my sixth year of teaching that is exactly what I was told my job was. But that was nearly 20 years ago and thankfully many schools do not have the same thinking any more.

 This is not what we want or need from our senior or middle leaders in education and schools today. Firstly we want leaders of learning not organisational or administrating managers. We do not need our leaders to organise resources and we definitely do not want our leaders to do the planning for their teams and hand it over to them As Cheryl Doig stated in a ULearn presentation I attended a few years ago:  “Doing the thinking for other people is not just a waste of our own time it also gets in the way of other people working out the right answers.”

 At TKAS, even though we are a relatively small school we are lucky to have an excellent full-time Office Manager/Leadership PA who takes full responsibility for finance, administration, property and generic personnel tasks. As a Principal while I maintain an overall responsibility for oversight of these important tasks, I do not complete any of them on a day to day o even week to week basis. I have worked alongside our highly skilled office manager and given her the skills, experience and confidence to do these tasks. This allows me to lead learning and focus on that full time.

 This year while we are teaching within learning communities loosely based on ages we are also intending to be flexible with this. For example our Year 2-5 students will be learning in one community for their inquiry and skills based learning and our Year 6-13 students in another community. However for the passion experiences part of our programme (to be explained in a future blogpost) the Year 6-7 learners will work alongside the Year 2-5 learners to begin with. We see this becoming more and more flexible and individualised as the year goes on. We also want to see our immersion and mainstream learners mix things up together as well, as we believe both groups of learners will benefit from this.

To make this work we need to plan together. Accordingly we have not nominated any leaders to be leading our learning communities and we will plan all together as a teaching team of 16 once a week. Teacher aides, and other support staff are always invited to attend our planning sessions too.

 There is a lot of writing and discussion these days about distributed leadership and flattened leadership structures. But as with curriculum reforms often this results in “tweaking” with current structures rather than completely throwing out the current system and starting again. So this year we have thrown out our previous leadership structures and are trying something new.

 Our leaders are going to lead cross school teams based on the things we have identified as integral to our learning programme being implemented as rigorously as possible. Teams such as Futures Focus, Inquiry learning, Passion Experiences, Restorative Practice and Whanau Engagement have been formed and contain members from across the school. These are the teams our team leaders will lead, and other teachers and support staff will be part of. This means there will be a constant cross pollination throughout the school for everyone. Everyone will be responsible for the learning and achievement of all learners, there will not be an overall responsibility placed on one person.

We have a coordination team of six leaders who have been learning community leaders in the past who will meet for a day once every three weeks. (We are only timetabling three weeks ahead at a time- again the focus of an upcoming blogpost.) This team will monitor the personalisation of our programmes and look at things like achievement results across the school. The entire team will look at SEA and 6 year net results as well as NCEA results. We will operate as a team without specific responsibilities for areas of the school. We will all be responsible for knowing about the learning of all learners.

 We then have another set of identified teachers who are supporting leaders and are being grown into their leadership roles. Upcoming leaders are identified by their attitudes and skills relative to the philosophies of the school- not their years of service. This has always been a strongly stated philosophy of appointment in our four years of being a school. We have had in the past and again do have this year some teachers at or near the beginning of their teaching careers who are being given opportunities to develop as leaders because they understand, subscribe to and support everything we aim for as a school, and something valuable to offer the leadership of our school.

 We are aiming for sustainability of practice. We are a small isolated school and we don't want to be caught out when we have staff leave as they inevitably will. We are working to build internal secession so the philosophy and vision of the school is held to with integrity regardless of individual staff members. We don't want to fall into silos of syndicates or departments that become competitive with each other for resources or successes.

 Stoll and Fink (1996) identified the key elements of an effective culture which positively influence school improvement.
 Shared goals – we know where we are going 
Responsibility for success – we must succeed
 Collegiality – we are working on this together
Continuous improvement – we can get better
Lifelong learning – learning is for everyone
Risk taking – we learn by trying something new 
Support – there’s always someone there to help 
Mutual respect – everyone has something to offer 
Openness – we can discuss our differences 
Celebration and humour – we feel good about ourselves

These are the things we hope to see this year partly hrough implementing a truly distributed flattened leadership structure where as an entire team we all take responsibility for the success of all learners.

It is both exciting and scary because no-one can rely on what they have done before as a leader, or what their leaders before them have done.

We are forging our own pathway, but together as a team.

The Value of Sharing our Journeys

Im still on holiday, and Im trying desperately to cling on to that for another week but twitter won’t quite let me. Yes, I could turn it off, but then this small voice in my head says I might miss something so I cant quite bring myself to do it.

Three things I've read in the last few days have had a real effect on me.

The first, interestingly was an article in a women magazine about Antonia Prebble and impostor syndrome. I haven't read such a magazine for ages, but was sitting in an airport lounge and they were there so I picked one up. I love watching programmes with Antonia Prebble in them and to read about her explaining how she always felt that someone would come along and tel her that what she was doing wasn't really that great struck a nerve. I spent a lot of my earlier years of teaching justifying what I was doing in a classroom to management and leaders who were suspicious of my quest to provide personalised programmes and to integrate real world knowledge with classroom learning, way before those things became more acceptable practice. And I think that suspicion I lived with has followed me into leadership. I have real conviction in what we are doing in our classrooms and our school, but Ive always lived with that small nagging doubt that maybe someone would come along and tell me I was completely wrong.

The second and third things that I read were blogposts from some of my edu-heroes. Ive been admiring-mostly from afar- the work that Hobsonville Point Secondary School has been doing over the last two years- mostly by following their blogging and tweeting and a post from Claire Amos, followed by one from Sally Hart really got me thinking this week.

Claire wrote about building a plane while trying to fly it. 

http://www.teachingandelearning.com/2015/01/reflections-and-resolutions.html?spref=tw

I know that feeling so well. Four years ago, we too started a new school with a difference. We had a full roll from Day 1. We had to meet the needs of 5 years olds and we had to cater for senior students and NCEA qualifications from Day 1. We really were also flying the plane and building it at the same time. As a leader, it was both exciting and terrifying to not have all those procedures and practices defined. Some people classified us as disorganised. We never were. We’ve always had a vision and been working towards that, and we didn't have, or actually want, the power of long held traditions and “thats the way we do things” to fall back on when things went wrong, which meant we had to be reactive and truly personalise our response to situations when things did happen.

Sally wrote about what the school valued. It was so exciting to read this post about what they celebrated with their students at the end of the year.

http://sallyhart72.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/celebrating-success-what-do-we-value/

I think the language we use to describe things in schools has a lot of power. I’ve often been referred to as a “hippy” because of that belief. Four years ago when I said we weren't holding a prize giving but a Celebration of Annual Achievements, I got a fair amount of flak. When we refused to do things like top of class awards and instead gave awards focused on school values, when we chose the things that we thought were especially important to our school philosophy- Contribution to leadership, Excellence in digital literacy, Excellence in independent learning  for our major awards rather than the traditional awards, we got a fair amount of feedback indicating some of our colleagues out in edu-land thought we weren't really a “real school.” When we decided to give a supreme award- based on a number of criteria- quality learning but also values and contribution to the school and we did that for every year group rather than a school dux award, we found a lot of people again thought that was because we couldn't rather than chose not to. 

So to read about a school I have such respect for doing something very similar was really affirming. I guess that impostor syndrome thing has sat in the background of my mind, alongside dealing with that continual feedback you do get back from others about you not being “real” when you don't do things the way schools always have. To know you are not alone in the quest to search for different ways to do things that meet the needs of learners in the world they now live in, reduces the power of those quiet "impostor voices" in your mind.

Reading these posts this week has reminded me of the power of non geographic learning communities and the value they hold for us all. Im really glad I didn't turn off twitter and miss them. 

The power of networks like twitter and in reading blogs from other educators is well documented but for those of us working and teaching and leading in remote corners of the country the ability to share in the learning that comes from other bigger schools in bigger centres is vital to our continuing to grow and challenge ourselves.

It’s also reminded me that perhaps continuing to tell the story of our journey as a school has value alongside the stories of schools like Hobsonville, and the others doing such exciting groundbreaking learning throughout New Zealand. 

So, Claire, I’m going to join you in your quest and write a blog post each week in an attempt to clarify some of my thinking and share the next step of our journey with others.

Hopefully, just like I have gained so much from reading blogposts from the staff at Hobsonville Point Secondary School someone out there may also be interested in following along with the next steps in our journey.

The Most Important Muscles of Them All - Learning Muscles

We took some huge risks this year.

Daring greatly is not about winning or losing. It’s about courage. Brene Brown Daring Greatly. 

If we want our learners to have courage and take risks in their learning then we need to have courage and take even greater risks in our teaching. And as leaders we need to give people permission to take these risks.

Twelve months ago Jono wrote:

“I like the idea of learning muscles. It tells me that we can get better at these things if we 'work out' with them. We're basing our classroom around these learning muscles next year. We're trying to gear our kids up for the 21st century that they are going to go into and we want them to go in with confidence.” Jono Broom December 2013.

Learning Muscles- curiosity, courage, investigation, experimentation, imagination, reasoning, sociability and reflection. We added stickability and empathy.

So on the first day this year we said to our Middle Years kids (50 learners ranging in age from 9 through to 15) “This is our curriculum for the year. If you leave here at the end of the year better in some, or all, of these ten things then we will all- both us and you-have done our jobs.”

We have not “taught” reading, writing, maths or any other “subject” all year.

Whenever our learners set goals they were in relation to the learning muscles. When they reflected on the learning they had been doing they reflected on their learning muscles rather than the “content specific,” or “process skills” they had been learning or practicing.

We have freed our learners up to “inquire.” They have inquired into things we suggested, and more and more they have inquired into things they were developing passions and interests around. (See inquiry posts-linked below- for more detailed information on this.)

When reflections and evaluations of learning (theirs and/or ours)  identified the need for direct instruction in a specific skill, or development of some content knowledge then we provided this.

Student accountability developed.  Student involvement in and responsibility for their learning increased. Then student engagement started becoming evident. Student achievement using measures such as standardised assessments was skyrocketing by the time we were half way through the year.

But most importantly these learners ended the year with so much more confidence than they started the year with. Most of them contributed to a video book for a teacher leaving- these were the same students who lacked confidence and refused to be recorded on video at all in February when I tried to take some initial impressions of them and their ideas about learning. 

Another teacher who taught a  lot of the same students in 2013 and had been away all year visited on the second to last day. He couldn’t get over the difference in these learners confidence and general bearing. The way they interacted with each other and with adults. The way they held themselves and had a belief in themselves and each other.

Our end of year reports were learning stories based around the learning muscles.

They spent the last morning at school for the year reflecting and clearly articulating the learning muscles they had developed significantly this year.

These learners wanted to be at school. They were still at school in the last week this year working on their inquiries. A Year 10 boy got so far through his inquiry and realised he needed some more understanding to be able to do what he wanted to do. So 24 hours before school was due to close there he was with a teacher re-forming his inquiry questions. He can just come back to school and continue with this next year. 

Learning isn't restricted to neat and tidy 3 week units, or even 10 week themes any more. Learning is truly ongoing and on its way to becoming life long for these learners.

We’ve had such great success with the learning muscles as a trial in our Middle Years Learning Community (Years 6-10)  this year that we are going to be focusing on them school wide next year. We’ve incorporated them into the Mason Durie Tapa Wha model and these two concepts have become our graduate profile. 

How we do this with our foundation class students, who often come to school with the behaviours and knowledge more like three years olds than five year olds, and how we do this in our early years- where we know some of the basics of reading and writing are so necessary and how we do this through NCEA are some of our ongoing inquiries for the year. We have our initial plans for how we are going to do it and I’m sure they will be modified and change as the year progresses just as ours did this year.  

The learning muscles  are the most important thing we will measure our students progress in, from when they start school at 5 through to when they leave us at 18. We will assess reading, writing and maths as we go, and we will be continually evaluating and reflecting on what skills and concepts a learners needs help developing. But we will always remember that our aim is to help each learner to progress their learning in an ongoing quest to become a well rounded  lifelong learner. And we believe the learning muscles are the key to this. 

As has been said for many years- what you value is what you measure. 

We are determined to make the learning muscles the things we measure the most as a school- because they are the thing we want to value the most. Follow our journey as we strive to keep ourselves honest to this vision.

Useful Links:

My Story of Change- Jono Broom (the original post that started the learning muscles journey.)

http://tkaslessons.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/my-story-of-change-jono-broom.html

Inquiry Learning

Web of Inquiry- Jono Broom

http://tkaslessons.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/the-web-of-inquiry.html

The Link In The Chain-Jono Broom

http://tkaslessons.blogspot.co.nz/2014/11/the-link-in-chain-jono-broom.html

Self Directed Learning

Give Your Learners True Control- Karyn Gray

http://tkaslessons.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/give-your-learners-true-control.html

Do We Need a Bell to Signal Learning?- Karyn Gray

http://tkaslessons.blogspot.co.nz/2014/11/question-everything-that-we-used-to.html

Curriculum Change

Throw off the Shackles and Turn the Curriculum Upside Down-Jono Broom

http://tkaslessons.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/throw-off-shackles-and-turn-curriculum.html

Loving Monday Mornings Now

Monday mornings used to be really difficult. Students came to school after 2 or 3 days away from the routines and expectations, and often agitated about weekend events. Getting a learning focus established used to be a big part of our job on a Monday. But this has gradually evaporated and all of a sudden this week I realised we no longer treat Mondays as any different day to prepare for than any other.

It was a beautiful sun soaked Monday November morning in Te Karaka earlier this week. Sitting in our Middle Years Learning Community this is what I saw:

8.30am A teacher is uploading apps onto iPads while having a conversation with learners about computers and iPads. Other students are talking with other adults and each other about their weekends. Other adults- teachers and teacher aides are poring over the school forum looking at the messages about what was happening today- both in the school and in their learning community.

8.45am- when learning officially starts for the day I saw a group of Year 9-10 boys open their iPads and find the google site that lists the days workshops and suggested learning experiences for students to choose from. I hear one 15 year old say to another I just need to have  a look at the site and see which adult I need to go and work with to plan my day today. Off they all started to move to whichever adult they had been allocated to plan with for the day.

8.45-9.15 Groups of 8-10 learners are working with an adult to plan their day and write goals of what they want to achieve each period. These learners are Year 6 through to Year 10. 5 minutes into the block 12 Year 4-5 students also arrive to work in this space on their individualised inquiries for the first half of the day.

9.15-9.45 some groups of learners turn up to the middle space (we have four different learning spaces that all open onto each other) for scheduled workshops and adults come and work with those groups. 
One group is working on creating a display of a reflection about an activity from a recent camp. Another group is busy tweeting for the current gigatown competition. Some students and a teacher from the immersion class have joined in this workshop so that they can go back and pass it on to the rest of their class.

Another classroom adult is roaming around students working individually checking they have understood feedback on some recent writing about camp that has been added to each learners documents on google drive.

There are students out on the verandah writing lyrics and trying them out on a guitar.
Others are completing a piece of art.
Other are investigating their individual inquiry questions.
Some are completing a photography follow up task using camp photos.
Some are on an online forum checking the learning tasks outlines.
Others are on the forum checking the feedback that has been given to them on previous learning tasks. 

A parent turns up because her 10 year son was reluctant to come to school this morning and asks for an older boy who has a good connection with her son to go and talk to him. He goes off and soon comes back with the younger learner and helps set him up for the day.  

There is another parent who has come in to support her child in a restorative meeting at morning tea time. She s joining in with learners in their workshops and wandering around seeing the learning that three of her children- who are all learners in this community- are doing.

9.45-10.15 Workshops change over- some students move in for scheduled workshops, others move off and find a space to carry on with their independent learning.

Everyone knows what they are doing, everyone has a goal to meet and everyone is focused, but collaborating and enjoying their learning. 

A couple of Year 12 students come to see a teacher to ask if they can talk to them about an incident from last week and quietly arrange a more suitable time to come back.

10.15 a short piece of music plays and everyone gets up and puts their technology away without being asked and returns to the group they were in at 8.45am for planning their day. Learners pair up and share with each other what their goal was and how well they met it, using a number rating system and backing up their rating with explanations. Adults check in with each student about how effective their learning has been for the last 90 minutes and what their priority is for the next block of learning, and as they finish each group heads outside for a learning break.

What’s Different?
There have been over 60 learners in this space this morning. At no time have all the students been sat down and told to listen to instructions or demands. But all knew what to do. Instructions are available for all in written form online- some check these before they even leave home in the morning. And these are supported by an adult 1-1 as necessary

Most of the learning they were completing was self selected- individualised inquiries that have been negotiated with adults in various ways.

No bell rang to start or finish anything. This is because are actively facilitating the art of self regulation. 

There is an age range of 7 years. Year 4 students- some still only 9- were working alongside Year 10 students- many of whom are turned 15.

Technology supports and assists learning- it would be difficult without it, but its there to support, not drive the learning.

There is real engagement. These learners are controlling and leading their own learning.

Do We Need a Bell to Signal Learning?

Did a bit of a social experiment this afternoon. Don’t really like to use the word experiment when referring to our learners, but a respected colleague has been encouraging me to do just that all year- saying if we are not experimenting then how can we be innovating.

So today I suggested a wee experiment.

We have not used bells all year. When we started three years ago we used a bell to indicate the start of school, the end of morning tea and the end of lunchtime.  This year we went to no bells at all. We talk about a language of learning. We hear kids reminding each other when its time for learning to start again, and we hear duty teachers gently reminding learners its time to head back to their learning. We consider this a much more brain friendly, calmer way for students to return to their learning than the sharp disruption of a bell which can actually foster feelings of fight or flight or other destructive feelings- things we don't want to set our learners up for before they even start the learning.

Today 5 minutes before the end of lunchtime the adults in our middle years all happened to gather in the community space together preparing for the afternoon learning. We sat having a bit of a chat about kids and the learning that we were seeing. And I suggested we see what happened if we didn’t remind the students it was learning time. We left the outside door to the classroom remained shut. 

By 1.05pm when the learning is meant to start we watched students who were out playing games on the court directly in front of the community turn and look, see the door closed, and continue playing for another minute, continually turning and watching for the door to open. Individuals and small groups of students started to gather on the verandah outside the door. No duty teachers were in sight reminding students about it being learning time and the adults inside kept “chatting.” 

Over five minutes larger numbers of students kept looking with puzzle at the door and then returned to playing.

About seven minutes after learning time should have started I casually got up and opened one door, returning to the circle of adults sitting on the couch and ottomans in the middle of the large space. Learners started roaming through the door, a few making comments on their way past about their learning starting a but late this afternoon. 

We have 45 learners aged between 10 and 15 who all work together in this learning community. 

Within three minutes every one of them was inside the learning community and within five minutes all were actively engaged in their learning for the afternoon. There were students who had gone and selected their piece of incomplete art work and set themselves up with pastels to complete it. There were a group of learners who came and got their inquiry folders and music gear and were outside on some beanbags singing and composing for the band that is their self selected inquiry at the moment. There were other students finishing some assigned writing tasks, and others working on some teacher directed inquiry tasks. Other students were researching their own inquiries previously negotiated with teachers. Another group were working in a team finishing a video presentation. 

At no stage was any signal given- apart from a door being opened- or any adult speak to any student and ask them to come inside or ask them to get on with their learning. 

In my experience often teachers think they have true self directed learning happen, but it all falls apart as soon as the teacher stops quietly directing from the side. Take a class where the teacher says the kids can operate by themselves completely and take that teacher out for the day and see what happens.

This little experiment  showed me that we have truly moved way down the continuum of self directed learning. 

These kids were not easy to manage or engage at the beginning of the year. But this was the vision we had and slowly we have moved students towards it. What is happening now would not be happening without the strategic steps we have taken on the way. It couldn't have happened in one step. But it is real self directed learning. And it is real engagement. And its very exciting to be part of a team that has worked very hard, alongside these learners to give them the skills and the space to take the lead in their own learning. 

As a team we started off the year by reading the book Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. I love many quotes from this book but this one has always stood out:

“We want to show up, we want to learn, and we want to inspire. We are hardwired for connection, curiosity, and engagement. We crave purpose, and we have a deep desire to create and contribute. We want to take risks, embrace our vulnerabilities, and be courageous. When learning and working are dehumanised—when you no longer see us and no longer encourage our daring, or when you only see what we produce or how we perform—we disengage and turn away from the very things that the world needs from us: our talent, our ideas, and our passion. What we ask is that you engage with us, show up beside us, and learn from us. Feedback is a function of respect; when you don’t have honest conversations with us about our strengths and our opportunities for growth, we question our contributions and your commitment. Above all else, we ask that you show up, let yourself be seen, and be courageous. Dare Greatly with us.”

Wandering, Exploring, Reflecting, Refining

."Not all those who wander are lost." 
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
When you try to innovate, when you do something that is different you have to wander a little bit. You have to experiment. You have to expect it to include failures, and you have to expect it to take time. 
We said good bye to Term 3 last week and I've had a bit of time to reflect on the last three terms. I've been teaching full time in our Middle Years learning community this year. And we've certainly wandered. We've tried new things, refined some, discarded others.
We've been wondering for a while how do we prove it's working? What is IT? What is success?
Is it success as it would be judged in a traditional environment? What does that look like? 
Is it achievement? How do you measure that? Some test scores on a few standardised tests that represent a very small portion of what it is we hope these learners are developing.
Is it engagement? I've had the privilege of participating in some amazing PLD this year and one thing that has stuck with me was a comment made about confusing compliance with engagement.
I think that many schools, classes and teachers have compliant children in them and teachers are mistaking that compliance for engagement. Just because a student doesn't cause trouble and hands in everything they are asked to does not mean they are engaged. Just because classrooms look structured and/or there is a quietness or a "busy"ness does not mean real learning is happening. 
What do we know is different for our learners than from 9 months ago?
We have done a series of standardised assessments over the last few weeks. They show some tremendous growth in nearly every young person we have the comparative data for from last November. Some are still below where they should be for their age. But many of those same students they have shown two or three years growth over the last nine months. A few have shown four or five years growth. 
We know that engagement is a lot higher than it was six months ago, and tremendously more than it was two-three years ago. We feel that and see it every day.
We haven't got it all right and we haven't got it right all the time. But we have courage to wander, to get lost a little and to constantly search for what will make it better. We have built a strong capacity for reflection. And a measure of the strength of this is the openness with which it occurs.All teachers, the trainee teachers, the teacher aides all contribute a lot to ongoing reflections on an electronic forum. That strong reflection allows us to wander, to innovate, to try new ideas and then to reflect and refine on these ideas.

The data shows a lot, the feel in the classroom shows a lot more. The genuine joy the learners show in learning naturally with other students within a significant age difference. The genuine joyful but purposefully learning focused relationships between adults and students in the community. 

Our students aren't quiet nor are they always compliant. Sometimes they come to school carrying personal burdens or big questions from things they have witnessed. And sometimes that means a whole lot of other things have to be done to help them so they can focus on learning. They don't always wear their uniforms correctly or remember not to swear at school. Compared to compliant kids in a traditional setting some may not like what they see in our community because it doesn't fit into their image of how school should look. We've deliberately wandered far away from that.
But these learners are engaged. They can plan their own timetables every day, including writing specific goals for each period. They can hold each other accountable for whether they met those goals or not. They know where to go to, and who to go to, if they have problems. They have moved great distances over the course of the year. It may not be easy to define or to measure. But there is success. There is joy and laughter in the learning that is happening
They have control of their learning which emulates real life every day, and they can articulate how this learning ties back to the NZ curriculum.