I Am In The Current ~ The stream is digital.

This year I have had many staff activities early in the school year. Tonight two staff members and I went curling with the staff from another school. In between games I sat with different people. Conversations ranged in topics but I found one especially interesting. Two family men were discussing the realities of being a teacher. Neither of these men were teachers. One worked for a Crown Cooperation and was married to a teacher and the other was a firefighter and the father of two teachers.

Both men made comments that related to how they couldn’t believe the change in the clientele that attend public schools. Both men agreed that they couldn’t be teachers and if they had been they would be fired because they would eventually “lose-it”, which would result in their termination. One reflected back to what it was like when he attend school as a child. He expressed a disbelief regarding the change in the social status of teachers. This prompted the other to state that families have changed and are now quite different. Even parents, he said, often do not support teachers when necessary. He felt that as the husband of a teacher, he had heard of several cases when teachers had to convince not only students but parents. Both men, in my opinion, were looking at a new situation with bias from their past experience. Bias is huge and helps us frame our day to day experiences.

Were they wrong? Were they right? Have things changed? Are schools now attended by unruly, difficult children who lack respect? Is this a common trend in communities here and in other schools? I don’t know. My question for these two men was: do you think integrating community members into our school model as defined in the School Community Council will improve our current system, the health of our communities and families while improving student outcomes? I try, and that really all I can do is try, to look at things as they are. To take them at face value and to try and move forward disregarding how I did things when I was a kid. The jury is still out on the practices of that time and how I turned-out. Sounds silly but I guess it was interesting to hear the conversation.

Dean Shareski was in attendance at the Assessment Conference in Saskatoon where Dr. Hargreaves was the Keynote speaker. Shareski made notes and posted them here. I went for a quick Saturday morning surf and left a short comment. As Shareski suggested to me, I am going to post it here also.

Here is my brief comment (sarcasm):

I was part of the STF Forum on accountability and stayed for the keynote of the Assessment Conference. Dr. Hargreaves was the speaker for both events.

The presentations had similarities, however, each presentation had valuable information that was only included in one and not the other.

Driving home, I spent much time considering his piece on trust and betrayal within accountability, his suggestion to adopt a mentality of responsibility as opposed to accountability and the climate of fear in institutions such as schools.

I have read quite a few John Abbott articles (www.21learn.org) and had recently been at a Dr. Lee Jenkins presentation. I had several questions I wanted to ask Dr. Hargreaves. He was kind enough to give me 20 minutes of his time to answer five questions. What a great discussion!

Within his presentation, I felt, the Powerpoint wavered from being useful tool. There were long periods of time where I had a choice of a bad view of the speaker or a slide that had been up for several minutes depicting an old advertisement for rubber galoshes.

Dr. Hargreaves and John Abbott both consider a viable European school and community model where students have higher success rates then our own. My question is: If this is what we want for ourselves, how are we going to stop the current social trends (working more and less family and community-time or complete exclusion there-from) and the worsening social climate in our local communities, to begin to build a much more inclusive model? This model would have to integrate schools, families and communities to be successful. Are Saskatchewan’s School Community Councils a first step in this direction?

During Dr. Hargreaves keynote the focus was the future and improvement, however emerging technologies and their impact were not considered. It seemed to me as if we were discussing improving and meeting our emerging needs all within the context of a traditional educational system, ignoring the fact that our schools and the practice of education are changing. I did like his thought about embracing our past to then chart our future but what if our past knows nothing of our future? Am I wrong to have this impression?

I really appreciate conversation I have had with colleagues both in person and on-line. I feel the discussion thus-far has been positive and has allowed myself to reflect deeply on several important ideas.

Prior to this presentation I was fortunate to sit-down with Greg Smith and Mike Walters from RPS. Our discussion was fascinating and proved to be a great  warm-up for Dr Hargreaves’ keynote.

Here is a picture of the three of us.

I had another first this week; I had to assess my pre-intern’s lesson for the first time.

My pre-intern is going to be working with my students and myself all year long. She is from the University of Regina Bac Program. It really wasn’t that long ago that I was completing my degree from the same university.

Prior to evaluating my pre-intern, I tried to think back to my pre-internship experience at Campbell Collegiate in Regina. From my reflections I tried to identify things that I needed to know and feedback that was relevant for me at that point in my training. I made a short list and then tried to think of things that I had to learn the hard way.

I had decided that I wanted to use a “plus-delta” chart to help my pre-intern in her reflective process. I had also wanted this reflection to occur immediately after having completed teaching her lesson. My intent for using a plus-delta chart was to show her what she did well and to offer her suggestions for possible modifications to her current practice. The one thing that I wanted to stress is that these delta entries would only be suggestions and that it was up to her to reflect and to make decisions. My goal is to implement the mantra from Princeton School with my pre-intern and in my classroom. It is: Think, Communicate, Collaborate, Make decisions.

I had to assess her using her PDP sheet and I also filled out a plus-delta chart during her lesson. Her lesson was at the end of the day and so she had a chance to complete the form while I performed my supervision duties outside. When I returned we were all set for our post-conference. It was invigorating to offer feedback and to evaluate at this stage in the training.

Ron Holloway, Rick Peace and cpbw

Oct 18th, 2007, the RPSTA Exec sent Rick Peace and myself to the STF Forum on Accountability. I had intended to live blog the Forum, however there was no available wireless Internet connection. Here are a brief exerpt from the session notes that I typed on word that day.

Trust and Accountability- Do these things go together? Or do they work against each other? Does Accountability create trust or destroy it?

What is Accountability? To hold someone to account. The question is to whom and for what? Is it responsibility or accountability? Are they the same thing or are there differences? Responsibility is a deeper form of Accountability. Accountability is a small outcome from a successful and responsible system. It is suggested that responsibility should be our focus.

Recommendation from Dr. Hargreaves- Ethical Leadership (Book).

Suggestive Reading: Four Perspectives on Classroom Assessment Reform

1980s- Three Perspectives on Innovation:

All perspectives are important. They are lenses to observe Assessment.
Technical part of Assessment: Student centered assessment and progress (takes most focus of debate). Cultural side of Assessment: What is the meaning of Assessment? How do we make sense of it? We cannot solve the rubric-based assessment to please everyone. What sense do the teacher and child make of assessment when working together to plan student outcomes? Reviewing data and planning future actions. Data and intuition must work in concert to make sense of condition and data. Do not rush through data. We need base-line data and we must understand the root-causes. Political perspective of Assessment: Who really has the power to negotiate sense in education? Traditional: Teacher has all the power and student has none. Emerging trends: More student-input, transparency, and more power to the pupil to explain and assess learning. Sanitized language for parents to mask realities of learning outcomes of children. School keeps power because information is coded in politically correct comments. Power-with rather then power-over. Postmodern perspective: A post-modern world: We can not distinguish between what is real and simulated. It is hard for life to live up to the simulation and assessment is the same. Assessment cannot be authentic because things are becoming more and more simulated. Are things real or illusion or simulations? What is the relationship between simulated and real? Making the learning look real is a real challenge! Performance and quality of work are quite different and must be distinguished. Assessment as surveillance, is this a reality? Is it effective or is it detrimental?

Recommendation from Dr. Hargreaves: The Lives of Others (Movie)

Trust and Accountability

Trust is??? Mutuality, reciprocity and predictability??? Confidence??? Respect??? The opposite to trust is betrayal.

Where does betrayal stem from and what are the consequences?
Not belonging, expectations, competition in a non-competitive market/area, opinion, support systems, breaking confidentiality, desire for power or control, suspicion, a lack of shared understanding of commitment to relationship, unpredictability, lack of dependence, miscommunication, lack of value, questioning of integrity, motivations, playing to the crowd and hiding in fear.

Consequences?
Betrayal causes fear, leads to consequences that are harmful, reluctance to trust, participate, lack of communication or break-down, inability to work together, lost friendships or working relationships.

Three forms of trust and betrayal- Communication Contract and Competence.

Contract (agreements) Trust- Binding contract for persons regarding mandate or goals. Betrayal occurs when people don’t meet their contract trust or agreements.
Competence Trust- Do you trust you and others competence or ability to become competent over time? Can you be effective or competent? Is there micromanagement because you have no trust? An indicator is keeping staff and expectations for them.
Communication Trust- Lack of clear or constant communication. Most betrayal occurs through small acts of business and lack attention, which causes a feeling of betrayal.

Most perceived Contract and Competence betrayal are actually sources of communication breakdown or of poor quality. We must understand the feelings of betrayal otherwise the outcome will be micromanagement to try and compensate for a feeling of Contract of Competence betrayal. This is particularly true within the realm of accountability.

Dr. Andy Hargreaves and cpbw

Sustainable Leadership- do we have it?

The seven principals of sustainable leadership are: 1) Depth- It matters 2) Endurance- It lasts 3) Breadth- It spreads. Leadership and their qualities will and should spread to all members if they are monumental important leaders. 4) Justice- It does not harm the surrounding environment. We need broad and numerous evidence not snippets on which to base. Evidence will allow us to know strength and weakness and then with networking and resources, the strong support the weak. 5) Diversity- It promotes fairness and cohesion 6) Resourcefulness- It conserves expenditure 7) Conservation- It honors the past in creating the future. Do not destroy the past embrace and chart the future. Do not allow a panic driven climate in schools. Sustainability builds on the past. Happiness and Learning are what creates human renewal and renewable people/ population just as wind and water are renewable energies. Are we harvesting our renewable human energy?

Is our leadership at the provincial, school board, and school level sustainable or is it unsustainable? Do people buy into the system or are they disenfranchised? Do they want to participate? Are their voice heard? Leadership is monumental and excellent leader make the difference! We need to invest in creating great leaders!

Everything in our society is moving from Long-Term focus and range to a direct and confined Short-Term focus. We live and teach as if there is no tomorrow. What are the implications of this mentality?

What are the effects of focusing on literacy? Will literacy rates go up but reading levels for authentic pleasure drop? Is this an acceptable outcome? Will we beat the fun out of focuses?

Collaborating has never been so easy, even when away from home.

Even thought sometimes the little luxuries (wireless Internet connection) aren’t available, great tasks can be tackled and great ideas can be discussed.