Thursday, March 11, 2021

All students deserve to find success

In our careers we have moments of epiphany.  That moment where you realise that you need to refocus what you are doing or take what you know and apply it in different ways.  Sometimes it's about remembering a concept that you had learned that you had forgotten, sometimes it's synthesized from your learning and in moments of genius it's inspiration and something truly new.

At the moment I'm coming to grips with the idea that school is an experience that every child has once.  A formative experience that has the potential to impact for many years to come.  An experience that is more than content, more than pedagogy, more than social skills, striving for excellence, resilience and a whole heap of other stuff that we fill it with.

It's about a young life finding their way in the world.

How this young person defines themselves is based on their experiences, for the majority of their time from 4 years old to 18 years old in our care.  

Most of the what we teach them is irrelevant 12 years later.  Typing, how to play a sport, woodwork, sewing, calculus, grammar, spelling, greek history, water cycle - 90% of what we teach will not be used again to the detail level it is taught.  The meta learning is important but most is forgotten 25 seconds after assessment.

What is not forgotten is the Dance concert, the kind teacher that noticed them and made a fuss, the excursion to the beach, the carnival where the team won, first love, being bullied, farting on the mat - experiences that helped form young minds.  

This is our biggest job - ensuring that the experiences are positive ones and that we are there to pick them up kindly when they are not positive.  Sometimes we are so focused on "high care, high expectations" we have forgotten what makes school a positive experience for children - experiences to remember.

If a child has positive and formative experiences that make the child an empathic and productive citizen, they have found success. All children deserve to find this success and we need to focus on making this happen.  Measuring this and increasing the quality of experiences to my mind is a better metric of success than any median ATAR score or measures of school attainment.

Sunday, March 7, 2021

Where to for low ability students?

There are those children that can cope with whatever you throw at them.  They've known some conflict in the home, have played some team sport, know empathy and are generally well rounded kids.  When faced with a situation where they might fail, they're willing to give it a go.  They have a modicum of ability and do ok.

There are a growing group that know they lack the ability to reach the Year Level achievement standard and can't understand the Year level syllabus content.  They cry, run, distrupt others, are scared, get angry and a host of other emotions that seem well outside what one would expect from a good student.  These children can be labeled without resilience and disruptive.  They face 12 years of behaviour management, feeling like failures and may suffer a range of mental health issues.

I'm not sure resilience is the problem - it's a symptom of a system that tries to get kids to fit a model, rather than the social requirement of schools fitting the needs of the student.  As legislation continues to increase the scope of schools, schools are buckling under the financial strain it causes to provide this level of service.

In today's enlightened world we don't just go, "toughen up princess" without looking a little deeper.  Why are students acting this way and how can we help them reach a point where they can continue learning?

It's up to us as educators to gain trust of the student and find a way to help them.

How do we walk the fine line of childhood reticence to do work that is not fun and where students are at risk from emotional breakdown?  We're not Psychologists, Social Workers, Doctors, Nurses, Psychiatrists, their parents - yet as teachers we often have to interpret vague instructions by all of these , teach for six hours a day and balance the best advice available of how to assist a child learn, often with a group of similar other students requiring similar attention in the class.

The basic answer is that it is hard and is part of the experience teachers are now expected to have.  The ability to differentiate pedagogy and content for students is a requirement of teaching and not something we can just say - "I don't do that".  It's defined into the job via the AITSL standards and legislation.

It's impossible to get Professional Development to satisfy all cases faced with (Autism cases in particular are individual and we just have to examine each case as we go and do our best).  It's not an limitless budget, compromises need to be made.

The next challenge in education isn't meeting the needs of high performing students, it is working with the students that feel like they don't belong and providing them with meaningful pathways to employment.  This is a complex question that has been made more difficult with Covid and automation shutting down service industries that would normally use manual labour.  It's an issue that needs to be addressed.

Saturday, March 6, 2021

Finding a positive mindset

Often in teaching things are not done the way you would like.  Things were done differently in the past and now you are being asked to change.  The changes appear to be worse than what was done before.

You can do a few things, some that are positive, will help you adjust and develop a positive mindest:

- seek to understand the change

- look for the positive in the change

- identify where you can learn new skills

- assist in the analysis of the changes

- discuss the changes openly in a constructive manner

- examine ways to make the change work for you

- be willing to give the change a chance

- understand it is not always the implementer that has instigated the change

- you may not be able to be told all of the reasons for the change


There are things that you can do that can cause you distress and potentially affect your career:

- lose perspective (make it out to be bigger than it is)

- whiteant the person making the change (be positive to the person but negative out of earshot)

- actively seek allies to create groundswell to undermine the change (seek to change the opinions of others to oppose the change)

- encourage others to speak up against the change (this is especially poor when senior members encourage younger members but do not speak up themselves for fear of being seen as overly negative)

- passively resist the change (say that you will but not do it)

- be overly negative about the change (discuss it as a failure before it has had a chance to succeed)

- personalise attacks and be adversarial (attack the person rather than consider the change)

- be the squeaky wheel (that is known for complaining)

- be the rebel (that is known for obstructing change)


It is tempting to fall into negative habits. It's hard when changes make your job harder (and easier for others) and it can taint your whole outlook on teaching if you are not careful.  

Ultimately it is not possible to provide an optimal environment with the perfect amount of personel available, optimal class sizes and all of the resources required to do the job all of the time.  It is a compromise between available resources, wants and needs.  Things that work may not be sustainable in the holistic balance that is the delivery of education in a school.

Where a school has a bloated upper school offering, small class sizes and is well resourced, it indicates that there are some hard times ahead.  Unfortunately with increased scrutiny on schools, this cannot be sustained any more under the one-line budget.

Monday, March 1, 2021

ICT Products for schools

ICT vendors have cottoned onto Voluntary contributions.  Government schools can charge up to $235 per year in voluntary charges.  This is an easy target for IT vendors as it is something that parents will pay for and a low number of students use it compared to the number that it is paid for.

The usual sales pitch goes like this:

Free trial - with no obligation.  There is a hidden cost as implementation has a cost in training, set up experimentation and teaching to students.

Teachers use trial, some parents use trial.  

Price is given for the whole school (knowing that a small proportion will use the tool).  Thus the price sounds small, but on a usage basis can be upward of $50 per student, subsidised by parents that are not using it.  In many cases senior school is included in the per capita price, but very little is offered to that student group (and they are excluded from voluntary contributions) making it something covered by the school.  

It is also a sop to parents that want OLNA support, but with very little evidence of success assisting disengaged students that need the support but won't use ICT.

Removing it after the trial causes conflict with teachers that are invested in it.  

I'm not saying it is not effective for some - it is just that the cost is hidden in an average charge for all students including a vast majority not using them.

Evidence such as Hattie's meta analysis does not support ICT solutions either as effective.

Students forced to use it quickly dislike it as it is often poorly targeted practice work.  I'd like to think home time is for finishing work not completed in class, intervention work targeted by the teacher, revision and study, together with extra curricular activities.  There is no space for poorly targeted practice.

Trying to pay for a targeted solution (eg only for the kids that need and will use it) results in vendors jacking up the price, often 200% the cost of the whole school solution, verifying to some degree the deceptive business model (paying for something with parent monies that are not appropriate for the students the product is bought for.)

Mathspace and Mathsonline use this approach and Mangahigh may use this approach but I have not been in contact with them for some time (I did like their adaptive tests but am still waiting to see a good, reliable, valid adaptive test written to complement the classroom syllabus).  Mathletics used a similar marketing approach to Mathspace and Mathsonline, but has a smaller footprint in high school and may not insist on schoolwide deployment with dwindling market share.

The worst thing is when effectiveness is not evaluated - when it is just a marketing sop to parents to show the school is ICT ready.  As an IT person, it is crazy to see this amount of money being thrown around like confetti.  After all, the cost of delivery is nil after the product is designed and the development is not rocket science.  It's a market crying for a no cost, syllabus based solution.

Maybe if I get annoyed enough I'll sit and write one.  The technology is now freely available, it just needs to be put in a market ready format.