Games Design Workshop

I've been thinking again about my Games Design Workshop that I ran last year. It raises its head every time I have a break. I recently bought a book called (funnily enough) Games Design Workshop by Tracey Fullerton and am looking at ways to supplement my existing course. It's a great book with heaps of comments from experienced games developers about their favourite games and draws direct links from brainstorming to prototyping to end product.

I think using the workshop as a linking concept would be an excellent way to create a horizontal cross curricula course for the middle school. The maths part is easy with examinations of coordinate geometry and algebra with analysis of games like Pac man, Pong and Tetris, English using storyboarding, physics with acceleration and speed calculations, Sose by incorporating historical elements (Civ or AOE) or urban planning using SimCity. Art, media, music have obvious connections as does potential electronics and robotics courses. It could be a fabulous piece of work.

It could also be adapted to vertical use as an option class focusing on T&E and mathematics for advanced students over a number of years.

This would be something that I would love to create and have at least a one year lead time to work with teachers on creating the work samples and creating meaningful assessment.

Management of teachers

Inspiration is a key element of teaching. Inspiration is contagious and desirable in schools. Maintaining high levels of inspiration is a task that requires knowledge of the teacher, their current capability and their motivation. If the balance is not present the inspiring character burns out, leaves and/or the light goes out.

There are always external factors that contribute to performance requiring emotional support. Ill grandparents, pregnant wives, family members need time and rightly come higher up the priority chain than school needs. As teachers, we must give these things in our spare time, there are no weeks of holidays available to call on in times of need - things just pile up to the next school holidays. I feel for those without partners as they are the primary source of emotional support in most cases.

The ups and downs of professional and academic careers correlate directly to the amount of support available at any point. In teaching, the majority of academic support comes from fellow teachers. If you look carefully at any team you can see those being supported and those supporting. This is a fragile structure, as each teacher needs to be a beacon of light and there is a dwindling supply of these stalwart teachers selflessly providing experience when needed.

We need to understand and monitor the 'expected vs actual' career progression of staff to assist in the creation of a supporting cast of experienced teachers and make the bright lights of our profession brighter and glow for longer. We so often focus on student outcomes but forget to examine why something works and the minor elements that have contributed to their success or failure. When we clearly identify a positive outcome, identify issues and reward contribution, you have an example of leadership at its foremost.

What I find interesting is the poor use of performance management tools in teaching. If I asked senior management of five different schools, 'What inspires (insert name here) on their staff?' I would be surprised to hear answers that related directly to the staff member. I would be even more surprised if they knew that staff member's technical background or desired career path. On the other hand, the top 3 students in year twelve and the professions of last years top five may be more readily recitable. This outlines a key problem in schools today created through central staffing. The lack of coal face staff management and limited experience 'out of school' in true management positions is a key element in the morale issue within our schools. If management does not feel the requirement to understand the needs and wants of staff, providing optimum educational opportunities through inspired leaders for our students will always be a haphazard affair.

Establishing a connection with kids

Being a little fond of gimmicks, I've tried a few measures to connect with the kids. My guitar is a frequent addition during revision periods, I know a bunch of games on Playstation (and have an addiction to Guitar Hero, Singstar and Oblivion) and the Wii (and have another addiction to Mario Kart and the Wii Fit). I play any PC games that aren't FPS (am quite looking forward to Spore). I play a bit of soccer, follow the trials of the local footy teams, play cricket, have been a part of cross country teams, read fantasy fiction, like board games, watch Idol, Scrubs, have watched the first 7 seasons of Buffy, had a V8 commodore, grew up in the area, like modern dance music, remember the 'old school' rap scene first hand, have a history before teaching, can still do a laughable running man in time to music and can mispronouce emo as emu (as sticking your head in the sand is not a subculture). I know what Facebook, mySpace and proxies are.

And talking about all of these works with some kids but the upkeep is a fulltime occupation. The best gimmick I have found is an oldy but a goody.. the 'I'm a big maths dork and I don't have to be cool' line. It's 'like umm, the best thing, EVER!' - I can do whatever I like - dance strange, sing, wear a stupid tie, have green hair, long socks and sandals, anything.. Don't worry - he's just the maths dork.

The best fun of all is during duty sitting with a bunch of popular students. You sit down, they start to freak out and you have a laugh threatening to do this everyday until they improve. It's great and I heartily recommend doing it if you wish to instill a little fear of social decline! If that's not working you can always start talking about who likes who in class.

Entertaining students is not the only path to a great rapport. Another great way is to start a before school maths group for each year group that you teach. This has given us a lot of insight into which students are in the zone and for others given an avenue to ask for more assistance. It also gives whiners no excuse if they fall behind - the morning class is available if they need help!

For those recalcitrants who get sent to my room for faculty isolation, I make sure that the rest of the class has a good time and I refuse to allow the isolated student to engage. When they ask why isn't our class like this - I show them the work that these students get through in a lesson and show how it could be. Many of the younger students assume that more 'familiar' student/teacher rapport that year 11/12 students typically attain is a right, rather than an earned privilege and don't realise that 'respect' is a two way street (although they must be a little slower than normal if it has taken until year 10 to figure it out!).

Peer pressure also works well. If we are doing an activity that the majority enjoys and one student refuses to engage, I'll pack up the whole activity and do board work (copy the following into your book in silence and then complete questions 1-4350). The next time that student is not as quick to use "refusing to participate" as an attention seeking/power play strategy.

Lastly, in upper years I am interested in what their plans are past school. By knowing where students are going can help a lot in establishing relevancy of content. Also knowing their graduation point total (they need to earn 24pts, 'a C average' to graduate) can be a great focal point in the final two terms. The rule is - no work in class, no assistance out of class; no excuses, no extentuating circumstances or whining will change my mind. It's one of the few things I am fixed on as groups of students believing that their issues out of school and their social life ranks the needs of the rest of the class is plainly wrong. Setting work ethic before leaving school is the best lesson we can provide and an equity issue for those that work hard, week in, week out.

Students badmouthing teachers

When you have a great rapport with students they reach a stage where they wish to talk about other teachers. Your response can do a lot to enhance or damage the atmosphere in the school.

Whatever you do, whatever you think, support your fellow teachers. Resist reasoning or justifying your/their position as the student has probably thought about it more than you and could leave believing that they were right and now you agree with them too.

Stopping this sort of conversation dead is usually quite easy. Take the moral high ground. One way is to say, if they didn't care they wouldn't be doing (insert supposed misdemeanor here) they would just let you fail. I usually have a talk about diversity and how students react differently to some teachers than others. Another good strategy is to talk about how in the workforce you rarely get to work with people that you like and have to develop coping strategies. Another is to stick your hands over your ears and say loudly "La La La" until they stop.

A celebration of diversity in teaching staff is important. Having the happy go luck teachers - with a laissez faire mentality, the disciplinarians, the collaborators, the facilitators, the technically focussed, the passionate, the administrator are all important to maintaining a rich and diverse culture within a school. There is always a teacher that students don't like, protecting that staff member can also be a self preservation measure, it just might be you the students target next!

The worst scenario possible usually happens when popular students are underperforming and are being encouraged by caring teachers to raise their standards. The mob that can occur needs to be diffused, detected in early stages and squashed by team leaders. Teachers and more often parents indirectly cause and encourage these issues as typically we judge and discuss actions based on reports by students and when we have only a limited view of the whole picture.

Raising resilience of students such that they can work with a range of people, especially ones they don't like or relate to, is an important skill developed in school. Only by supporting all of our teachers 'publically' and working on issues with team-leaders, peers and managers 'privately', can we adequately support teachers with perceived image issues.

So get to it!

Hardest part of teaching

The hardest part that I find in teaching is about now... I am useless at waiting and I'm sitting here at 3am in the morning thinking about all the things my students need to know prior to sitting their university entrance examinations. All the concepts, skills and content that they need to know whizzing about keeping me awake, new methods of teaching, old ways revisited - all with the potential of being better than what we did this year.

The programme of work is finished for many year 12 courses. Now these students need to study past papers, ask questions, work together to master final concepts before sitting their mock and final exams.

Did they get through enough? Will they be ok? I've been told by many a teacher that we just do a job. Deliver, let them sit exams move onto the next cohort. I'm still pretty skeptical of this view. We're not their friends as some suggest, no doubt in many cases we become fond of them - but the academic bond is far more important than what they think of us, we live through their successes and failures. It's the nature of the job.

I suppose this first set of exams is the hardest, we want the best for their futures. Even at 16 they are still kids and any number of factors can affect their performance on the day. There are heaps of ways for them to succeed outside of this exam, but this one opportunity is a confidence builder and can be the thing that sets them on their academic pathway.

Being an idealist, the early stages of a project is the most interesting as this is the time new ideas flourish and before we get too set in our ways, we are now most open to these new ideas. The longer the idealist lasts, the greater the opportunity to do something great. We have so many opportunities - creating a legacy in the school with all sorts of kids; indigenous, troubled, high performing, from families of low academic success, sporting kids, kids that will pursue social good over money - all needing mentors and pathfinders. The school itself needs subject areas built to attract new students to the ethos of the school and its values.

Sometimes the brush fires outweigh the big picture but the big picture is where we need to keep our focus. The current feeling is that the current pay dispute needs to end and ended quickly so we can start preparing for next year in earnest. Let's hope this is what ultimately happens and a new brighter dawn in education begins.

Allowing a resit for a test

This is often a difficult question. If we are only assessing outcomes, the most accurate assessment of a student's performance is the last assessment for a task - and in this case a resit for an assessment is ok.

If we are assessing the ability to learn then a resit is usually not appropriate as it will not give a fair indication of how long it has taken for a student to learn a topic and a modifier to the raw score is required to retain equity with other students.

I try to take a flexible approach when it comes to resits based on prior knowledge of a student and the subject being studied. If a student is frequently absent on test days then it takes a fair bit of effort to convince me that it is necessary and I also start to enquire as to whether the student has valid test/exam anxiety. If this is the case - off to the counsellor they are sent.

In a normal case, where student results are far below normal I will grant a resit with a two week delay between now and the new test. This means that the student does not miss the start of the next topic doing the test and the student has to actively seek me out in two weeks to do the resit. If they are serious about maintaining their grade - they nag me until I dig out a new test. Most of the time, they just forget and life goes on. We then re-evaluate performance at the end of term exam.

Apologies for broken links!

My apologies to anyone looking to use links to the Curriculum Council website. Although I understand why they would wish to make it harder to find some information given the quality of some of it - I wish they would just alter the interface and leave the core pages in the same place. This is common web practice - and in most cases, just good practice.

Somebody has thought that the tidiness of directories on the CC website is more important than the 45,000 teachers and parents that directly link to frequently used information.

If someone raises that idiodic comment, "go through the search interface to ensure you have the most recent information" they obviously don't use information on a regular basis. Nobody wants to sift through pages of irrelevant search items to find an article frequently referenced.

I've updated the few links that I keep on the blog, though if you find any more broken links I would appreciate if you would leave a comment here and I will endeavour to re-locate the information.

PD Days

Here we go, about to hit another set of PD days. Admin is currently looking for topics to use for in-school PD. Luckily I'm off to an out of school PD, which I am hoping is going to be ok.

So that I'm not all critic and no solutions, I thought about what would I like to have at a PD session.

Firstly I'd like it at the end of term and to be more of a planning session. The last days of term are rife with missing students and kids on holiday. Let's use one of the days when students are generally AWOL for PD rather than one where the kids would be present fresh and keen.

Being the last day of term it would be the best time to reflect on what has been done and what could be done better next term and next year. Review each course and note what has worked and what has not. Do any handover to the teacher for the following year if teaching loads are to change. If we have set performance management goals at the start of the year, let's review them now. I know teachers are tired at this time, but if team lead (and teachers are encouraged to share successes and failures) and line management driven it could be a very effective tool to promote student performance especially if teachers are forewarned at the start of term of this intent.

Secondly I'd like it HoD lead rather than admin lead. Heads of department report on successes and failures and course/staffing changes to line managers such that changes can be implemented and hopefully improvement seen the following year. The success of the department becomes a performance management measureable for HoDs.

Lastly I'd like it to take a long and short view. There needs to be time to address/discuss immediate issues and report on what has been done about past issues. There also needs to be time dedicated to setting medium to long term goals that are meaningful. Managed statistics should be collated of where students are headed - initially teacher based decisions in earlier years leading to student based intentions as students move to year 11/12. For instance from year 8 cohort, 22 identified possible TEE students. Year 9 cohort, 15 of 17 originally bound for TEE in yr 8 + 2 new possible students etc. This could also be used for future proofing/planning for staffing issues. It would also help hone identification of students at an early age, the ability of the school to mentor students through middle years, identify where the system is working/failing and overall measure the performance of the school in converting students from potential to actual university/VET candidates.