Digital Technologies – 2018 Opportunities

NOTE: Although this blog had been mostly ignored, I have been writing for our school and staff blogs. I will begin duplicating some of these posts here, mostly for my own records. This is one of those posts.
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Over the last several years, we’ve have worked hard to redesign our digital infrastructure to be something that is current and suitable for today’s learners. We have rebuilt our school network and server setup, tripled the amount of wireless infrastructure in the school (wireless access points) and have changed our structure for ICT support. We have completely changed the way we filter content so that we aren’t continually asked for proxy information on devices and so that we can access anything we need. We have also changed over to a new internet setup to allow for better internet speeds, this being particularly important with a large increase in uptake for our BYOD program. All of this means that we are now working with a stable and well supported digital infrastructure for our now mostly wireless world.  This is important! There is nothing more frustrating than feeling like you are ready to take the plunge with something new and have the technology let you down.

Now that we have this established, we are ready to take the next steps in our development around the use of Digital Technologies at Woodend. Many people are well underway. We have a consistent approach to digital communications, people are working on implementing SeeSaw for digital student portfolios that families can interact with. People are coding with students, blogging,  and many classes are collaborating in new ways with G-Suite (Google Apps for Education).

There are many things we can ‘tweak’ in our classrooms, so that we are better addressing digital learning. Although simple, they will take a willingness to try something different. Sometimes these ‘tweaks’ can have big results and can better engage students in their learning. A simple example of this is a teacher of a junior primary class that decided to use Instagram to document and record plant growth for a science topic. Students photographed and wrote observations for this digital format (after drafting in books) meaning that they were engaging parents in their learning, interacting with other classrooms doing similar learning tasks and also learning about similar things. Changing to a digital format didn’t take away from the science learning, but added an opportunity to talk about ‘digital footprint’ and have conversations about what is ok and not ok to post online. Here is the Instagram account. This example and many others of innovation in the classroom can be found in George Couros’s book, The Innovator’s Mindset. I have several copies in my office if anyone would like to read it.

We certainly aren’t saying that book work is bad. We know it’s important and will remain so. We are living in an ever-changing world and often, school is the last place to make use of some great technologies. Our junior primary students have all been born into a world of mobile devices, with most of them knowing how to do at least some things before they come to school.

We’ll never keep up, and don’t need to ‘school to death’ everything that they use, but there is always room for some improvement and rethinking our practice, just as there has always been.

During the year, we have some opportunities to develop our digital technologies work. Many of us are heading to EduTech in Sydney, we have a school membership for EdTechSA who offer many PD opportunities throughout the year and I have an increased ability to work with teachers to plan and to support this work in classrooms. I will be offering some specific PD on different topics and encourage you to consider them, even if your first reaction is ‘not for me’. If you have other ideas that you would like support to explore, I would also love to hear from you.

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A simple example of how being willing to try something new can make a huge difference (grab the tissues).

Noticing the ‘good stuff’

It’s easy to notice the things that people do that bother us. We don’t even have to try. When someone behaves in a way you don’t like, it draws your attention and drives you crazy. It’s easy to let this stuff take over your day and quickly become a bit of a grump! On top of this, we are bombarded with bad news stories on TV and radio and every time we go online we are greeted with something horrific that someone has done somewhere in the world. It’s different than when I grew up. The only news bulletin I ever saw was at 6pm each day and I’m sure that my parents were able to shield me from the really bad stuff by turning off the one screen we had. With the amazing benefit of the instant information we have today comes the downside of not being able to restrict the flow of ‘bad news’ to our children as well as we could before. This isn’t the end of the world… but it’s something to think about.

With this in mind, it’s really important to teach our kids to notice the ‘good stuff’. We try and make this a part of everyday in our classroom. Making the time to pause and notice someone doing something good takes a conscious effort! Like everyone else, I more naturally notice the student repeatedly tapping their pen on the table before I notice the student quietly getting on with their work. By making the effort to stop and publicly notice the positive it slowly becomes part of the culture in our classroom. Doing this at home is even more tricky! In our house it feels like we are ALWAYS rushing off to something and always running late. At these times I still fall into the role of cranky dad… but I’m trying!

This is particularly important for our boys. When you look at statistics around our boys and young men, it’s not great news. Suicide rates are incredibly high for boys and men aged 14 – 35 compared to women and we have all seen data around domestic violence that says that our young men are becoming perpetrators. As a parent of a son AND a daughter I find this slightly terrifying! There’s not a simple answer to these problems but it’s a conversation that we need to keep having.

In our class we attempt to promote a positive outlook in lots of different ways. We try to promote our failures and mistakes as something we do publicly and without shame. This helps to break down the stigma around ‘messing things up’ and creates a willingness for our boys to ask for help and support when they feel like they need it. Another way we do this is by making regular times to formally and genuinely acknowledge people for the good things they do. This doesn’t mean only things like ‘getting a good mark in a test’ but also for trying to improve at something or showing courage and persistence in a tricky situation. As a teacher, this is a pleasure to see!

Our boys have agreed to show you a snapshot of these acknowledgements in the video below.

 

One Punch

Someone punched my son today. I’m not going to over dramatise and call it a ‘king hit’ or a ‘cowards punch’ but nonetheless my son was hit by another human being.

A student in his class thought (wrongly according to witnesses) that my son had been throwing bits of eraser at him during a science lesson. After school, this child waited for my son and punched him. He was punched in the head and knocked to the ground. A friend who tried to intervene was punched in the face, also knocked to the ground with injuries to his mouth. Obviously, this was a pretty ugly situation, but the school handled it really well. Even though it happened after school, they gathered what information they could and let me know straight away so I could contact my child and make sure he was ok…. He was. We went home and iced his injuries to be left with a nasty bump on his head and, it looks like, a black eye by morning.

This is where the story turns. Once we were home my son’s phone took on a life of it’s own. Messages from his friends came in thick and fast. “Are you ok?” was met equally as often with “You took that punch like a boss!” (What ever that means… I must ask my boss tomorrow). It wasn’t long before his sore head faded and he was almost basking in his new celebrity status. As the texts went on his mates and various other acquaintances caught up in the frenzy started vowing retribution toward his attacker with messages like “next time I’ll fight for you” and “He better watch his back!”. I kept an eye on the messages coming in, but stayed out of it, curious to see where things went. Thankfully my son responded to his friends with calls to be calm… let the teachers handle it, doing something dumb will just make it worse. Phew.

For me, the aftermath of the punch was more worrying than the physical attack itself. Without my son’s cool head, things could have really turned nasty. This one event could very well have escalated and had the potential to go on indefinitely. This really worries me. We are in a place where our boys and young men’s first response to violence is to meet it with more violence. I don’t know how we combat this. All that we get from ‘an eye for an eye’ approach is a lot of people missing an eye. No real resolution, and a cycle of violence bound to repeat itself.

Recently I saw a statistic (admittedly I haven’t fact checked) that 13 women have been killed in the last 7 weeks by a current or former male partner. This pattern of violence in our boys becomes violence in our men. It’s something that needs much more discussion. We seem to be going around in circles and the situation stays the same. This isn’t new information. We just aren’t doing anything about it.

Before my current teaching role, I helped to establish a successful program for boys at my school. In this program we explicitly addressed male stereotypes and identified issues of significance for boys. We addressed violence and worked really hard to change this behaviour in the young men we worked with. We weren’t successful with every child, but we certainly had a lot of success. These programs are hard to maintain. Money becomes an issue and these programs are cut back and eventually seem to disappear altogether. Instead, we need to see these programs expand. Funding to offer these programs and explicitly target violence with boys from primary school and into high school are vital. If we want to reduce this type of horrible statistic we need to start supporting proactive rather than reactive approaches. I’m not holding my breath, but if nothing changes… nothing changes.

 

Man Up

Today is ‘White Ribbon Day’. A day designed to remind us that domestic violence is a problem. It bothers me that we need reminding. Domestic violence and, in particular, violence against women is on the rise. This is a huge problem. What’s worse is that we never hear about it in the ‘news’. Maybe it’s not sensational enough. As a father (and a man), this is a topic that has been important to me for a long time. Through my work with boys in schools and kids in foster care, this has been equally as important to me. Earlier this year I wrote this post and figured that it was apt today. I’ve edited it slightly and reposted below.

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I worry about my kids. Everyday there are stories on the news that terrify me. Terrorism, extreme violence, child abusers on the loose… you could just about be forgiven for locking your kids up tight and throwing away the key in the name of safety.

I worry about my kids. My son has started high school this year and, if I believe the news, there’s a good chance that he will be bashed, kidnapped or abused because I dare to let him catch the bus to school on his own.

I worry about my kids. The news tells me that even if he miraculously makes it to school alive there’s a strong likelihood that he will be bullied to the point of inflicting self harm AND will probably receive a less than acceptable education along the way (I saw the terrible NAPLAN results on TV).

I worry about my kids. Even if they somehow make it through all of this, the job market is terrible (I know because it was on the news) and they will probably be unemployed and live a miserable existence… that is if they don’t go out for a night with their friends and get ‘king hit’ by a drunk and end up in hospital.. or dead. I worry about my kids.

Earlier this year I read a blog post on the Mamma Mia website titled ‘Charlie Pickering Wants to Talk to You About Priorities’. In his post, Pickering talks about the priorities of media outlets when selecting which stories to focus on and which to ignore. He highlights the sensationalist nature of stories like those I mentioned and puts them into some perspective. He confirms that in reality these things don’t really happen that often and that it’s probably ok to relax a little. Later in the post, Pickering pointed out sexual violence against women as an example of a story that doesn’t get enough attention in the media.

At about this point in the article, something started to happen. More and more often, I read something that brings on an extreme response from within. This happens particularly with things that I feel relate to my kids or my work. This issue touched on both and I haven’t really been able to let it go since.

Violence against women is touted as a women’s issue. It’s seen to be ‘very bad’ but beyond that, it’s not really talked about often enough. Pickering says in his blog post that around 70 women in Australia die each year at the hands of someone they trust. Let that sink in… Not from random crazy people on the street, but from people they trust and usually a man. His data says that one in three women over the age of 15 will be the victim of physical or sexual violence at the hands of a trusted male during their lifetime… one in three. THIS is something that I SHOULD be worrying about.

A quick google search shows that it’s not just we Australian’s with this problem. Almost half of women over the age of 18 in Canada have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of men. In the USA around 235,000 women were raped or sexually abused last year and that’s just those that were reported. A survey from France shows that just over 76% of all victims there were attacked by men that they knew and trusted. The list goes on. THIS is something that we ALL need to be worried about.

Sexual violence is not a ‘Women’s Issue’. As Jackson Katz says in his TED Talk below, women are the victims here, but the perpetrators are men. Katz presents the view that rather than being a ‘women’s issue’ that sexual violence is actually a ‘men’s issue’.

 

 

In my opinion, Katz is on the right track. But, rather than a ‘men’s issue’, I think that this is an issue for our BOYS. Once men are men there has been a lot of learning done along the way. This learning has been very effective and is very hard to undo. If we want to truly change what’s happening here we need to get to our son’s early. Nobody thinks that their son is going to grow up to be a rapist or to commit violence against women but, looking at the statistics, many people’s sons are doing just this. As parent of a son and a daughter… THIS is terrifying.

So where are we going wrong? Where does the violence come from? In general, nobody sets out to train their boys to be violent, surely? I think we are all guilty of it anyway. Stereotypes are alive and well and, as much as we are aware of this, we all still fall into the trap of ‘dolls for girls’ and ‘trucks for boys’. This in itself probably isn’t going to cause our sons to become perpetrators but we throw in some ‘Man up’, ‘Don’t be a wimp’, ‘punch him back’ and the ever classy ‘don’t be a pussy’ & ‘grow some balls’. Now we are starting to develop boys that feel the need to be ‘tough’. ‘Tough’ often comes with ‘aggressive’.

As they grow up there is ongoing pressure to ‘be a man’. ‘No crying’ and ‘suck it up’ get added to pile and we are really starting to do some damage. We watch movies with our sons and nearly all of them show him that he needs to be in charge and save they day. Most of the time he will be rewarded by ‘getting the girl’ who, by the way, is too weak to save herself and really NEEDS the man to tell her what to do. Each of these on their own seem harmless, but combined they send a dangerous message to our sons. Watch:

 

 

So what do we do about it? Big question. I certainly don’t have the answer except that we need to start early.

We need to talk to our sons and the boys around us about this stuff. We need to point out that the guys in movies are not realistic. We need to find movies that show a different type of guy to mix in with the usual stuff we watch. We need to teach boys how to be sensitive and think of others. We need to model to them the right way to treat those around them, including (and especially) women. We need to show them that emotions are not only ok but vitally important. We need to let them choose the doll or the pink t-shirt if that’s what they want. In all of this we need to be explicit, and not just assume that they’ll ‘pick it up’.

We need redefine the words ‘MAN UP’.

I worry for my daughter. I worry for my son. Something needs to change and it starts with all of us.

 

’10 responses to Man UP’ – *Course language at the beginning*