Connected Learning

Jarrod Lamshed

Feb
9

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New Beginnings

Category: 1. Know students & how they learn, 4. Create and maintain supportive & safe learning environments, 7. Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/ carers and the community Tags: , , , , , , Leave a Comment

“And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that never were”

Rainer Maria Wilke

The beginning of each school year comes with a mix of excitement and trepidation. For the most part we prepare ourselves to step into a class of kids that, for the most part, we don’t know very well. We don’t know what connects them to their learning, we don’t know who our classroom leaders are and we don’t know which of these kids are most likely to send furniture flying across the room…. but it’s exciting finding all of this out.

In our classroom, the new year is a time for new beginnings. If things have gone badly for you in the past, we put that aside and start fresh. To me, this is very important. As we work toward creating a team of learners from 31 individuals, each child needs to know that they are not being judged by the poor choices of the past. This can be a difficult thing to do (especially when faced with the variety of opinions voiced in the staffroom) but it is vitally important.

If kids feel that we have written them off and have low expectations for them, then they will live up to those low expectations. Set the bar high, and for the most part (with the right support) they will strive to meet these goals.

This year also brings a new beginning for our staff team at Hackham East. With three new members of the school leadership team and three new teachers to our school, it is a great opportunity to develop new professional relationships and connections that we can learn from as teachers.

New beginnings, however, don’t mean that we cast aside the connections of the past. After requests from former students, we are working toward including ‘old scholars’ in this year’s Kapa Haka group. Keeping these connections is very powerful. Several former students are also working toward setting up a charity event at their high schools that they began at Hackham East. I am looking forward to supporting them with this. This year I’m looking forward to exploring our new connections at Wirreanda High School as we work together to better support the learning and wellbeing of our students as they transition to the next stage of their learning.

Two weeks in, I’m feeling positive and am looking forward to the year ahead.

Nov
6

By

Judging Professional Development

Category: 3. Plan and implement for effective teaching & learning, 6. Engage in professional learning, 7. Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/ carers and the community Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

We all know that Professional Development sessions can go either way. They can be inspiring, or they can be a complete waste of time. For me, the success (or lack of) comes down to my engagement, the engagement of those around me, the quality of the conversation in the room and the change of practice that comes after the session ends.

Today, Hackham East Primary hosted a full day session with George Couros. George is an educator from Canada who spoke to us about the importance of being connected educators and helping our students to become connected learners. It was a presentation that made sense.

I have seen George present twice before and even still, I gained a whole lot of new ideas. Among the revisiting, I came away with new knowledge to help me turn my professional blog into a professional portfolio. I came away prepared to lead my students in changing their individual blogs into individual learning portfolios. These are simple but important things that I hadn’t made a connection with before this session.

Those around me were having similar breakthroughs. At times the room went completely silent while people were busy signing up for twitter accounts and signing up for their own class and personal blogs. Feedback from some in attendance showed a transformation from ‘doubter’ to ‘convert’. That in itself is not an easy feat. To see people making change to their practice already is a great thing to see.

On top of all of this ‘intended’ learning were some outcomes that I didn’t expect. During the afternoon session I made a comment on Twitter about the needs of year 7 students to be able to continue blogging on their current blogs as they move to high school. This was met with a response from our local high school leadership about meeting to look at ways to make this happen. Tweeting about connecting with parents on social media, opened up a range of links from other educators around the world about how they are managing this.

The final unintended outcome was more personal. My daughter, Alyssa, recently started blogging and through the support of George, has been inspired to keep at it much longer than I expected. Because of the support he has shown (and possibly a mutual love of Justin Bieber), Alyssa has felt a strong connection to him. Today she was able to meet him in person for the first time, and has been glowing ever since. For her, this was an important opportunity and I thank George for making it a special time for her, by giving up a lot of his precious break time to talk with her and for including her in his presentation.

I look forward to seeing change unfold in our school as people reflect on the days learning. I highly recommend attending a workshop if you get the opportunity.

Oct
31

By

Important Connections

Category: 1. Know students & how they learn, 4. Create and maintain supportive & safe learning environments, 7. Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/ carers and the community Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

As we move towards the end of our school year here in Australia, we prepare ourselves for change. We start thinking about which classroom we will be given next year, which kids we will have in next years class and whether we’ll be stuck with the crappy old desks that nobody wants (or whether we can palm them off to the ‘yet to be placed’ teacher). We tend to fall into the trap of thinking about our own needs and can sometimes place this self preservation over the needs of our students.

In our schools we are often guilty of looking at student learning in one year chunks. As teachers, this is time we generally have out students for so it makes sense. For our students, their time with us is just one small step in a much larger learning journey. As teachers, we need to get better at passing on data and other information about our students. Without good handover of information students can feel like the first term of their new school year is wasted while yet another teacher tries to work out where they are at. This handover of information is even worse when it comes to the transition from primary school to high school.

This afternoon saw the first steps of change take place for this transition process in our school community. At the invitation of Wirreanda High School (our local high school), Principals and year 7 teachers from our local area were invited to an afternoon tea meeting to discuss the transition process. This provided an opportunity for discussion. We talked about the concerns our students have about moving to high school, and about ideas for making this process better. Most importantly, we were able to make connections.

As we move forward in the process of improving transition, these connections will be the most important tool we have. Putting faces to names (or twitter handles) gives us someone to contact to pass on important information about students that will help them on their path forward. Hopefully it also allows for high schools to feel comfortable contacting primary schools to support them in working with students even after they leave us.

I would like to acknowledge the staff at Wirreanda for taking this step and look forward to strengthening the new connections that were made today.

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