Connected Learning

Jarrod Lamshed

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The Single Sex Debate

I recently read this article by Lise Eliot titled “Should Single Sex Schooling Be Eliminated?”. It was an interesting read. The article was written in response to a debate (see video below) but was approached in a very one sided way. The article put forward arguments against single sex education, stating that there is no evidence to support benefits for academic outcomes, brain and cognitive development or even social development.

My initial response was to just yell things about this being ridiculous (ok.. maybe a little more colourful version of this) or to argue against each point individually. Not being a neuroscientist or even a researcher of any real depth I figure that my opinions don’t really bring anything credible to that conversation. All I can do is speak from my experiences at the classroom face of single sex education.

Over the last seven years I have worked to establish and develop a single gender program at our school. Starting with some initial small trials, the success of the program has seen us expand so that we now have a single sex class option, for both boys and girls, for students from year 2 through to year 7. Being involved in this process has been a highlight of my teaching. I totally and wholly believe in this program and feel lucky to be involved in something that has made a big difference in the way our school runs.

Our single sex classes are designed around the work of Michael Gurian, a gender education expert from the USA and also the work of Ian Lillico, an Australian expert in boys education. Among his extensive work, Ian Lillico has developed 52 recommendations for boys in schools. These recommendations are at the heart of our single sex classes.

We have based our program on data and research, but as one speaker in this debate said:

“When looking at enough data, advocates of either side can find vindication in the research.”

and she is right. When looking at the research you will find academic opinions on both sides of the discussion. The research isn’t enough to definitively state that single sex classes do or do not work. I think debate is healthy. As educators, it’s not ok to be so single minded about your practice that you aren’t willing to at least consider other opinions. We learn best by having our ideas challenged. In this vein, the hour long debate was worth watching. It challenged my thinking and made me consider what was being said and how that related to my classroom. The statement that bothered me however was this:

“It is a well-proven finding in social psychology that segregation of boys and girls in schools promotes and even exacerbates stereotyping and prejudice.”

I couldn’t disagree more. A big part of our single sex program at Hackham East is about challenging stereotypes. We explicitly look at what the stereotypes are and spend dedicated time challenging these. We work intensively with our boys to identify how boys and men are seen by society. We look at which parts of this are positive and which parts are not. We then take this information and look at what we can do to challenge the negatives and nurture a more positive view of boys in our local and wider community as well as the ideas that they have about themselves as young men.

The implication of this article is that single sex classes somehow promote the ‘boof head’ behaviours of boys rather than combatting it. Although I can only speak for our school I strongly disagree with this assumption. Our girls classes also look at stereotypes and challenge these on a daily basis.

Time and time again, we see the results of this around our school. In our school’s AFL football team we have 5 girls, all of whom are from our single sex girls class. Only two students from our school have ever been involved in the dance troupe for our local music festival. Both of them boys and both from our single sex boys classes. Our boys take on nurturing roles with our new reception students and in the past have worked closely with residents at our local nursing home that don’t get regular visitors. Our single sex boys class runs an annual charity event in an effort to play a positive part in the community. In this event where students shave their heads to raise money only a few girls are involved and, you guessed it, they are from our single sex girls classes. There are many more examples of this and will be many more examples created in the future.

“The argument that “boys will be boys” carries the ‘anti-male’ implication that we should expect bad behaviour from boys and men. The assumption is that they are somehow not capable of acting appropriately or treating girls and women with respect.”

Jackson Katz

In the end, the idea that “Single Sex Schooling Should Be Eliminated” is ridiculous. I firmly believe that they benefit students in many ways and should continue to an option that is available for parents to consider when choosing their child’s education.

The full debate:

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The REAL Game Changer

In his latest post titled “The biggest ‘Game Changer’ in Education“, George Couros wrote:

The real game changer isn’t something external; it is internal. It is the way we think and grow. It is moving from that “fixed” mindset about teaching and learning, and moving to the “growth” mindset. It is thinking differently about education and understanding that all of us as people need different things to succeed. To some students, the “Flipped” model is hugely beneficial, while to some others, gaming is going to push their learning to a new level. Some learn better in isolation, while others excel in collaboration. There is no single “thing” that is a game changer. If there was, we would have figured it out and adopted it by now. We have to stop looking for standardized solutions to try and personalize learning. Our mindset towards teaching and learning has to be open to many approaches, not any single one.

This paragraph really resonates with me. The willingness to approach teaching with a growth mindset is essential. In my opinion, teachers who are completely ‘fixed’ in their teaching and unwilling to continue their own learning journey, have no place in a classroom. Although harsh sounding, I don’t think that this is a particularly radical view. I think that most of us understand that a teachers willingness to grow and try new things is a requirement of the job. I think the next question is how do we decide which ‘new thing’ to take on? As George discusses, it’s not a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Different kids have different learning needs.

As teachers, the biggest challenge for us is finding what it is that switches each of our students on to learning. There’s no magic trick needed to work this out. The answer doesn’t rely on new technologies or even connecting with other educators online. It comes down to, first and foremost, connecting with your students. It is vitally important that teachers take the time to develop real relationships with their students. I use the word ‘real’ because so often we don’t take the time to get to know what really makes kids tick.

Building relationships with kids can be tough. There are always those kids that you connect with immediately, but the relationships with the ones you don’t instantly connect with are just as important (if not more). Time taken to go and watch a sporting match or violin concert outside of school is well worth it. Taking some time out of the day to talk to your students about what interests THEM is an easy thing to do and helps to strengthen your relationships. When you’ve established these real connections, you’ll have a much better understanding of how to make learning accessible for each individual learner in your class and that’s when you’ll know which ‘game changer’ to tackle.

I’m not trying to be simplistic and am not saying that attending a Saturday morning footy game will fix all of your problems, but in the reality of over crowded curriculums and heavy workloads it’s easy to neglect the basics. If we don’t have the relationships.. we don’t have effective classrooms.

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Size Does Matter

1001100_606954929349910_214370949_nI have a class of 32 year 6/7 boys. It’s a lot. I’m not complaining, but it’s a lot.

This week, because of an inter school cricket tournament, I had 16 of my 32 kids out of the classroom and as you would expect, it made a difference. With half the class away we suspended our usual routine and worked on negotiated projects. With less kids in the class, I was able to talk to each group about their ideas and work with them to make links to the National Curriculum.

Over the course of the day the boys worked with enthusiasm and passion for what they were doing. I was able to spend the day having learning conversations and asking questions in a way that i just can’t physically manage when the whole class is on deck. We had students exploring family history, working on Raspberry Pi projects, creating World War II re-enactments with clay animation, exploring the Gold Rush with Minecraft, designing games and investigating the differences between copper and fibre internet roll outs. It was a good day of learning.

It’s interesting (and a little scary) to hear our would be Education Minister Christopher Pyne talk so confidently about the ‘fact’ that class sizes are ‘not that important’. I can’t say that I agree. Even having a few less kids in the classroom would improve learning. It’s a simple maths equation. Less kids = more time for me to spend with every student. Pretty simple.

I’m not that unrealistic that I think I can ever work with only 16 kids, but I do have a hope that my class of 32 is not what I should expect EVERY year. With more kids in classes and less money for kids who need support, this ‘it doesn’t matter’ attitude scares me. Education can’t be all about the budget. We need to be looking at it from the needs of our kids and the need is that they have a teacher who has time to teach. I guess we will see what happens.

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Moving on…

Today was a strange day.

Among the usual ups and downs of a school day I told my class that this would be my last year at Hackham East Primary School. Yesterday I got the official call that I have won a position as a Senior Leader at Woodend Primary School. This is an exciting opportunity to take on a new challenge in an area that I am passionate about. Part of my new role is to help establish a connected learning environment. My job will be to help  build a culture of connected learning among staff and to introduce new  learning technologies and pedagogies to around 700 students across the school. It is a challenge that I’m looking forward to and one that I feel is the right ‘next step’ for me.

Telling my students that I would be leaving at the end of the year was a hard thing to do. My year 6 students had assumed that they would continue in my class for year 7 and I know that they felt at least some sense of being ‘left behind’. It’s not a feeling that I liked, but I know that there is never an ‘ideal’ time to make this type of move. After some questions and discussion, by the end of the day we were back to business as usual and I am looking forward to the rest of our busy year ahead with a great bunch of boys.

My time at Hackham East has been fantastic. It has been the place that I have learned everything I know about being a teacher. I have been lucky enough to work with a great team of staff and students that have allowed my to take risks in my teaching and to introduce programs that I felt were important.

One of these programs is our school’s single sex program. I flagged the idea for this program along with Rebecca Hepworth, another teacher at our school and it has been by far the highlight of my teaching life. This program has given me the opportunity to work with some fantastic young men and build relationships with them and their families that I wouldn’t have done in a ‘normal’ classroom. I have had the chance to teach boys in ways that suit their learning and a chance to challenge stereotypes and gender roles. I feel lucky to have had this opportunity and I will miss it very much.

I am looking forward to the rest of my year and am grateful for the opportunities that I have been given.

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Boys will be Boys

The argument that “boys will be boys” carries the ‘anti-male’ implication that we should expect bad behaviour from boys and men. The assumption is that they are somehow not capable of acting appropriately or treating girls and women with respect.

Jackson Katz

Every now and then, I come across a quote that really resinates with me. The quote above is one of those. As a teacher of an all boys class, I believe that this is really important. Over many years, I have heard many adults brush away poor behaviour with the “boys will be boys” excuse.

A big focus of our boys program is around challenging stereotypes. We work intensively with our boys to identify how boys and men are seen by society. We look at which parts of this are positive and which parts are not. We then take this information and look at what we can do to challenge the negatives and nurture a more positive view of boys in our local and wider community.

We have had a great deal of success with this, but excuses like the one mentioned above can quickly unravel the work that we do. We need to work harder to educate our community and look at why we just accept undesirable behaviour from men and boys.

The acceptance of ‘man’ behaviours is hard to change with constant reinforcement in the media and our everyday lives. Not so long ago, I spent some time at the local footy club and I quickly made the decision that my daughter would only be spending time here over my dead body! The overt leering and sexualised comments directed at the girls and young women at the club was terrible. The worst part of this was that it seemed to be accepted by everyone, including the female patrons.

I guess it’s not really surprising. In the last few months, we have heard many of our male politicians and media personalities speak in a completely derogatory and demeaning manner towards our (now former) female Prime Minister. It happens so often that it’s just become acceptable.

As a man and a father I am completely horrified by this. The images and role modelling that my son receives while he is out and about scares me. Just about everything he sees, tells him that this behaviour is ok. These images are not of the man I want him to grow up to be. As for my daughter, anyone using ‘boys will be boys’ to excuse poor behaviour directed at her will not be met with my acceptance or good humour.

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Investigating with Pi


cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Clive Darra

Today a group of students started investigating a Raspberry Pi (above). They were given no structure and no instructions apart from ‘see if you can work this out’. They weren’t even told what it was called. Within a short time, they had identified it and had worked out a vague idea of what it does. 30 mins in and they had worked out that they needed a screen, keyboard and mouse and were quickly able to source these (with a bit of negotiating) from the ‘surplus’ pile in the school library. Within an hour they had set it up, found a ‘how to’ video online and installed an operating system on the ‘Pi’. As we moved on to other learning this afternoon they boys were discussing who was going to set up an Edmodo space so they could share resources that they hope to find from home tonight. Another student in the group suggested setting up a Google Hangout for collaboration. Great discussions. Great learning.

Although they have barely begun, the learning in this task has been fantastic. The problem solving alone has been worthwhile. The group hit a snag this afternoon and without an ‘expert’ on hand the kids have had to discuss and plan ways to solve the problem without being ‘rescued’ by anyone.

‘Letting go of the reigns’ can be a hard thing for teachers to do. The idea of not being the expert is scary, but certainly opens up some great learning opportunities for students. Without a teacher expert to rely on the kids need to think deeper about problem solving, they need to be organised and they need to be creative in the way they learn. I look forward to seeing where the journey takes them.

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Challenging Stereotypes

disability workshopA big part of our boys program focusses on challenging stereotypes and building empathy. This week we have the opportunity to attend two workshop sessions to support our learning in these areas.

On Wednesday my class was involved in a ‘disability awareness’ program. Students had the opportunity to participate in a range of activities designed to give them some insight into what it is like for people with disabilities to perform simple school task. It was interesting to see which students rose to the challenge and which students didn’t cope well at all. All students came away with a greater understanding of the challenges faced by students with disabilities in our school.

Today, the boys attended a session run by the Australian Ballet Company. After a lot of groans leading up to the event, the boys were exposed to a challenging and exhausting dance workshop followed by a performance. It was a fantastic opportunity for the boys to experience something that is not generally promoted as acceptable for them. It was even better to see them participating well and enjoying themselves.

Challenging these stereotypes is vitally important for boys. If their experiences are limited to the footy field and traditional ‘man’ activities they are also limiting their opportunities for the future.

ballet workshop

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A Stroke of Genius

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This week we have begun ‘Genius Projects’ in our class. Inspired by the work of many other classrooms around the world, these projects allow students to explore their passions learn in creative ways. It allows students to be involved in learning in real life contexts. After our first session today I saw a class of boys that were more ‘switched on’ than I have seen all year.

Our ‘Genius Time’ happens for a 100 minute block on a Friday for 4 weeks. The first 3 weeks are for students to plan and create along (along with some independent time at home) and the final session is for presentations and sharing. Before our sessions start, each student submits a proposal for their project at a meeting with me and we look together at how their project supports their learning across the curriculum.

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The projects underway are varied and unique to the interests of each child. One boy spent time learning guitar chords in preparation to perform a song, another small group of kids were turning a narrative into a movie and were experimenting with creating a realistic black eye. Another pair of students were creating recipes, shopping lists and budgets in preparation for their ‘restaurant’ opening where they plan to serve a three course meal to a group of parents and teachers. It was a fantastic sight to see.

 
For more information about ‘Genius Time’ have a look here.

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Kids Teaching Teachers

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Today I had an opportunity to do one of my favourite things as a teacher. I had a chance to present to a group of fellow educators with a team of students. Watching my students teach the teachers always gives me a huge buzz. It is fantastic to watch them speak so well about how they learn and about what works for them.

Today we presented to teachers at Wirreanda High School. My presenting team consisted of Matt and Ben, two students from my class, as well of two students who were in my class last year, Jaiden and Trent. Jaiden and Trent have clearly settled into high school well and it was great to see them given this opportunity to to be heard.

The boys talked openly and honestly to the teachers about the type of learning that they are (or were) doing at Primary School. They talked through their use of mobile technologies to support creative learning and their use of student blogs as Learning Portfolios. My former students asked their current teachers for opportunities to use their blogs and to open up the learning to include some of the opportunities that they had in the past. It was fantastic to watch.

It was great to see the responsiveness of staff at Wirreanda, with discussion happening after the session. Wirreanda, like our school, has taken big steps toward making positive change. At a recent open night, I saw the introduction of flexible learning spaces and spoke to teachers that were excited about the things happening at this school. It says a lot that students felt comfortable speaking their mind to a room full of their teachers. It’s easy to come away feeling like good things are happening here, so much so that my son will be attending Wirreanda when he begins high school in 2014.

I appreciated the opportunity for us to share our learning and look forward to strengthening the relationship between our schools in the future.

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Capturing the Moment

This term, I’ve been feeling flat. A feeling of being over committed, and frustrated with time restraints has been a little overwhelming. A ‘not so inspiring’ professional development session last Monday certainly didn’t help. With this on top of all the usual frustrations of a teacher’s life I have not been at my enthusiastic best.  This is not to say that everything has been bad. I am working with a great team of teachers on some innovative and exciting stuff, it’s just been lost in the ‘muddle’ for the last few weeks.

With this lacklustre state of mind I wandered off to my first CEGSA (Computers in Education Group of South Australia) committee meeting on Thursday night and went through the motions of beginning my newest commitment. I can’t say I was feeling enthusiastic at the thought of an after hours meeting, but I had committed so I went along and joined the conversation. After the committee meeting I had the opportunity to attend a ‘spotlight’ session with George Couros. It was the beginning of the rejuvenating process.

George’s session, titled ‘What to Look for in Today’s Classroom’ was energising. As the session progressed and the tweeting began, I began to feel the fog lift. I began to refocus on the exciting parts of the job and recommit to my ongoing list of goals. By the end of the session I had re-established some important connections with people but had also re-established a connection with my job.

Thursday’s session was followed by a full day ‘master class’ with George. At this event I attended as a support person. My role was to support participants as they worked with George to set up their own online professional portfolios linked with the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Even though I was there as a troubleshooter, the learning for me was huge and once again I came out inspired with a new list of goals for my teaching and learning as well as that of my students.

 


Now,  I have seen George present on several occasions before (maybe not quite to the extent of a stalker), and each time there is a feeling of excitement in the room. Over both sessions this week, it was clear that this would be no different. I had many conversations with participants at both sessions who ‘got it’. Comments about the quality of the PD sessions were overwhelmingly positive. All of the people I spoke to felt that this was the best and most relevant training session that they had been to in a long time. As I did, people had come away with a drive to take action and make positive change in their classroom and school. 

This week, twitter has been alive with conversation about George’s sessions. Apart from the usual discussion from classroom teachers it has been great to see the discussion from our leaders in DECD head office. It is obvious from the conversation they also ‘get it’ as is evident in this post by Karen Butler of the Digital Learning team in DECD.

All too often, the positivity generated by good professional learning fizzles out because of a focus change in the school or from the department. The ongoing positive change that is being generated here needs to be harnessed. It’s time to capture the moment and give access to this learning to as many people in our schools and department as we can.  There is a movement beginning and with ongoing support and co-operation from supporting organisations like DECD and CEGSA, there is no reason that this learning can’t be ongoing and long lasting.

The learning that George is bringing to us creates connections. Connections that are essential to ongoing improvement and learning in our classrooms and our department. As a new member of the CEGSA committee I feel like I am now part of a group that can work to support this important learning and help to effect much needed change in our schools. Working together, with all parties involved, it’s time to ride the wave and create the movement and change that we need. It provides us a chance to open up learning in our schools and look at new ways to move forward and prepare our students for the skills they need now.

After a rejuvenating week, I’m looking forward to the challenge and to seeing what can be achieved. I hope that others are also inspired and are ready to join me in the conversation.

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