IOTY nomination 2011

The IOTY has been won by Julia Gillard before, but she continues to make a fool of herself to draw headlines away from real problems, by creating new ones.

Her latest brainwave is to reward teachers that improve NAPLAN scores.  Hey, I'm all for taking money from the government for doing nothing.  Let's see how it will work.

Year 7 teacher gets a bunch of students that have fallen behind.  He works hard with them but he has no hope of preparing these kids for massive improvement before the test.  They are tested in May 2011 and perform miserably compared to their 2009 Year 5 NAPLAN scores.  Sorry.. no bonus for you.   Regardless, with the support of a great administration he continues to work with his kids and they improve dramatically.

The next year the year 8 teacher is good too and the kids continue to improve in 2012.  Sorry... no bonus for you. We don't test NAPLAN in year 8.

One year nine teacher focuses on teaching the kids how to solve NAPLAN problems.  These kids do very well at NAPLAN in May.  Job well done, the teacher plays guitar the rest of the year, the kids learn very little and the teacher gets a nice fat bonus.  Upper school?  That's someone else's problem.

Another year nine teacher for similar kids focuses on what year 10 students need to understand and provides a sequenced course.  Her NAPLAN scores are not as good but are a more accurate representation of the level of the students.  No bonus for you.  She is invited to find a new job next year as she is under performing despite being popular with kids, parents and upper school teachers.

Upper school teachers get jacked off with the system and start applying for middle school roles.  Teachers in the upper school become less skilled and results suffer.  Nobody really cares because school performance is measured primarily through the 10 months of NAPLAN teaching rather than over the whole 5 years.

Of course this is based on gross speculation, but considering her past performance and lack of ability to heed advice or public opinion, a more than likely scenario.

Julia Gillard, you truly deserve to be renominated as Idiot of the Year for 2011.  You are an idiot.

Marble run

Spending time with my daughter has been fun and inspiring. Today we were playing with her marble run. Best $40 I've spent for some time.. She fed the run for at least half an hour. I'm guessing she likes the feeling of starting something that continues for some time without any real effort.

Teaching is like that sometimes.. The summer school started three years ago and I was unable to participate this year, yet it continued. Similarly I am now working with the maths academy kids trying to set something that will grow into a lasting benefit to the school. The programmes we wrote are still being used and adapted. I think the knack is to take ownership until it is working and then gradually step back, keeping an eye and maintaining the vision of the project. If you don't do this you are not really contributing to the school, just your own resumes... The project will die as soon as you leave.

Hopefully the same will occur with the Naplan analysis that we are doing this year.

Similarly, starting things and expecting others to finish it is a common path to failure. A lack of adequate committment and management results in underdeveloped projects with resentment by the participants - those thrown into the breach. Worst of all are the managers that take credit when the project succeeds despite the odds through someone else taking ownership.

Russ.

Emergent vs Divergent curriculum

Early learning in Australia has a great focus on Emergent learning.  I know little of this idea but I see clear parallels between it and failed OBE approaches.  Yet those that go back three years in my writing know that I actually support the ideals of OBE, just not its implementation in WA.

If (as I suspect) emergent learning focuses on letting students travel in directions best suited to their current status as a learner, I would draw notice again to the frailties of this model.

• In general, it is very difficult for any but a highly skilled practitioner to maintain an individual focus on a classroom of children - especially in the first five years of being a teacher.  The skills to diagnose, resource, devise, integrate and execute multiple programmes in a room is near impossible for a learner teacher.  It is a sure path to burnout and disenchantment with the profession.
• Students resist learning in lieu of fun.  If left to their own devices they will not learn optimally.  Pacing a course at the speed requested by a student will ultimately fail the student.  A highly motivated student is a challenged student, not necessarily an 100% happy one.

I would be a poor educator if I didn't offer an alternative, especially for our practicum and graduate teachers.  I call it a divergent curriculum and again I don't doubt it has been suggested before, though it hasn't been brought to my attention.  If we want more teachers that can embrace the best of OBE or Emergent curriculums, then I would suggest this approach.

• Create a baseline syllabus that dictates 80% of the course, when, what and how it should be taught for all teachers under 5 years of experience.  Have these teachers mentored, assisted and monitored by experienced teachers (5 years+) regularly.
• In the remaining 20% allow for remediation and extension. 
• The teacher must return to the syllabus each time a new topic is encountered.
• Experienced teachers that embrace emergent or variant curriculums are reduced to .8, have increased pay, given EA support and set high performance metrics in order to renew courses.  If courses do not meet metrics teachers return to the syllabus.
• Results are centrally coordinated and used to justify changes to the syllabus or suggested alternate programmes for special needs areas or developing teachers.

Thus the curriculum is only allowed to diverge by 20% unless the experienced teacher judges that more is necessary.  The load for curriculum design in the early years of teaching is reduced and by the end of five years the 20% "focus" becomes the resource for when syllabus restrictions are released.  Only teachers with experience to create emergent or purely outcomes based curriculum are allowed to do so (as they have a thorough understanding of what needs to be taught and a baseline for how long it takes to teach it) and it is closely monitored.

If we want to draw a line in the sand of where teacher pay rates should increase, it should be here.  Some might be cynical and say choosing five is because I am five years out.. but being more cynical, even if this idea was embraced, it would take another five years to implement and gain momentum.  I have no idea what I will be doing by then :-)

Learning as a parent

I have a two year old and she is too often my teacher. I learn more about myself through our interactions than through hours of teaching. At the moment she is going through a "wake up at four" phase, waking up screaming (thus the 5am blog). Normally, I'm tired and half awake so I bring her in with us. Being on holidays, I sat with her and after much screaming of "big bed" she let me give her a cuddle and said "scared daddy". So I sat with her on the chair in her room, closed the cupboard door and she fell asleep in my arms.

I wonder how many times a student has felt scared of a new Maths topic and I have gone into autopilot and shortcut the issue by providing a question specific solution that does not generalise for the elementary problem. Rather than giving the answer, I should allow a student to elucidate what the issue is and then provide abstract tools to prevent it happening again. Time notwithstanding, I think this is what maths should be more about.