Expectations of low SES students

Low expectation is something that can be easily reinforced. It can be environmental (like praising effort instead of achievement), it can be by omission (such as not making information public that would promote academic behaviour), it can be through antisocial behaviour (such as allowing bullying of academic kids) or peer associated pressures (such as girls not wanting to appear smart).

The challenge for the community, schools, teachers and parents is to prevent these negative re-enforcers.

I ask parents of friends how their students are doing and they have no idea whether they are good enough to attempt university. I get comments like - "they're getting level 'x' whatever that means - the comments from teachers are always very positive!". Parents can help motivate students without accurate information about their student. Our PC reports are doing them a disservice.

I asked lower school students how many of our students make it to university each year. The predominant response was zero to four students. The actual number is between 20 and thirty or nearly 2/5 of the cohort that stays until year 12.

The majority of students, at year 8/9, actually think that university is unobtainable. The scarier fact was in a middle school environment middle school teachers rarely teach upper school classes and can't recognise the students that need to be informed, coached and supported into university pathways.

When I asked yr 10/11 students, "What classroom scores were needed to enter university?", they answered 80+. This is not only an unrealistic target for many students but also plainly wrong, it is far lower for the majority of courses.

When I sat with teachers and we looked at standardised testing scores and sought to identify potential yr 9 students for university pathways, no-one (including me) had any idea what we could call a benchmark score before considering student attitude, school results and work ethic to start the process of identifying university bound students. We will figure it out more accurately over a number of years (if tests are kept standard) because we are interested but what of the teachers that are classroom cohort focused instead. They will rediscover similar information by the end of the year.

I start my masters this week (all going well) and the broad topic I have chosen to investigate is: "What tools are available to identify university bound students, what programmes are available to guide students into university and how effective are they for low socio-economic students?"

If you have any ideas, I would love to hear about them and include them in my research. I look forward to hearing from you!

New Games in 2010

I've been playing a few new games this year that have been great fun.

Twilight Struggle is a great two player game that focuses on the events of the cold war. The US and the USSR fight for influence throughout the world in order to gain supremacy. Each game takes about two hours, so I'm not sure about implementation in the classroom, but we're addicted and have been playing for a couple of hours each night. Twilight Struggle is published every couple of years by GMT games and was about $60 pre-ordered over the web.

Three quick games that are great for the classroom are from Fantasy Flight games Silver Line series - Citadels, Condotierre and Colossal Arena. Citadels is a great game for up to 5 (after five it becomes a bit slow), easy to learn and has a great element of backstab and competition. Condotierre is a game about medieval/crusader Italy, where players fight for control of emerging city states. It has a really dinky board but has some real meat in the gameplay that is accessable to students. Colossal Arena is the surprise of the three as the betting mechanic and card flow develops as the game is played. All three of these games can be taught in minutes and promote consideration of strategy for future games. They have a real magnetic quality. Each can be picked up for under $40 online.

Anyone that has played 500 and #$%hole knows that trick and bluff based paired card games can be engaging, strategic and addictive. Tichu (supposedly played by 600 million chinese players every day) is no exception. It has a weird flow and is seemingly random until new strategies emerge the more it is played. I played it with 500 players that were very critical, but I would love to play this more with people that have a more open mind to exploring this game. A tichu deck can be created from a normal deck (and marking up four special cards mahjong, phoenix, dog and dragon). The rules can be found online.

I had a quick game of Sorry Sliders ($15 at Toys r Us) which is a great little dexterity game. Similar to the ending in ludo, players try to reach the end of their target and other players try to eliminate them. It's a great game for the end of a small class or for kids 7-12 on a rainy day.

I found a great new online store - http://www.unhalfbricking.com/. A weird name but he does have a lot of unusual and hard to get games. Ordering was simple and delivery was fast. I was impressed.

Entering 4th year of teaching

In my first year I focused on improving my teaching practices. I am now comfortable that I can teach in difficult circumstances.

In my second year, I sought to better understand the curriculum and create something to measure my growing understanding against. I now have an understanding of the 8-12 curriculum.

In my third year I attempted to analyse and manipulate the learning environment to promote achievement and success by my students. I now understand how students fit into student pathways and have some ideas on how to increase student efficiency through an active learning environment.

In my fourth year, my plan is to further develop my understanding of effective curriculum and teaching practices used to motivate low socio-economic students throughout secondary school. I've applied to start my masters with the aim to complete it part time over the next couple of years. It's a great excuse to research best practices.

I had originally planned this to be a consolidation year, learning the remainder of the year 12 curriculum (the pointy end) and guiding my students through to year 12 before starting further study. When the opportunity to pursue my masters arose, I had to consider that having my wife at home with Mackenzie would provide a level of support I wouldn't be able to get if she was working.

Yet, this is the biggest risk I have made thus far of overstretching myself again. I do have a tendency to delve actively into research and know that I can attempt to do too much. I need to be ever vigilant (may these not be famous last words!).

I'm excited.

Summer School 2010

Sometimes you stumble upon concepts and ideas in discussion with others. I ramble on but a grain of insight can sometime emerge.

Yesterday it was this statement that stuck - "You have to stay focussed on student outcomes if you are to maintain inspired".

Frustration can set in if you lack time, materials or ability to satisfy the needs of your students no matter your success in other areas.

It follows on from what I was saying about students the other day. Students only stay motivated if they experience competitive (real) success.

Similarly for teachers - if courses that we run do not amount to student success we too become demoralised. Big picture approaches are good where we know systemic/school success will come once a project is developed, but we still need the day to day success at a student level to maintain our enthusiasm, else we risk a jaded and compromised implementation as we focus on finishing the job at hand rather than seeking improvement as we develop an idea (and if you lose focus from the student you lose the opportunity for continual improvement).

When we finally reached the discussion on the summer school focus for this year it was eye opening the changes that we need to make from our successful course last year.

Focus 2010 Summer School
Algebra, Quadratics and linear equations
Bearings and Vectors
Trigonometric Identities and Exact values
Functions, continuity, domains and range
Moving Averages, Residuals and Seasonality

Hi ho, it's back to work I go!