Week 32 - PRACTICE - Changes in Practice

WOW, what a journey, 32 weeks learning, coaching, support and exploring. A journey that I have travelled with 5 other colleagues and closely worked alongside 2 of these colleagues. This postgraduate programme has provided us with multiple opportunities to trial, discuss and reflect on our new knowledge and thinking.

While my learning has developed many of the twelve  New Zealand, Ministry of Education criteria for Practising Teacher Criteria this reflection will focus on only two, criteria 4 and 7.

“Criteria 4: Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of professional personal practice”  and “Criteria 7: Promote a collaborative, inclusive, and supportive learning environment” have been evident throughout the entire 32 weeks and was a catalyst for my involvement in this programme. Our Community of Learning (COL) is committed to providing the staff of all ten schools with opportunities to grow professional learning and development and to do this is a collaborative, inclusive way in order to lift best practice. As I reflect on my involvement in this programme, I think about the level of my commitment not only to myself and my own continually learning but my commitment to help and support others in completing this programme. As a Deputy Principal in our school, I believe that it is my professional responsibility to support ongoing learning and development for our staff. It is my responsibility that staff feel valued and respected for who they are and what they bring to our school. It is my responsibility to support staff in embracing new ways of thinking and questioning old ways of thinking. It is my responsibility to ensure that problems are understood and that solutions are found.  Our involvement in this programme has provided me with all of the above. Opportunities to trial and explore together, to question, think and reflect and to be able to encourage and lend on were all parts of this journey. As a result of these opportunities my ongoing professional learning and development changed to being open to other viewpoints, asking for help from others, working with others and taking a back seat, relying and trusting other people. This has truly promoted a collaborative, inclusive, and supportive learning environment with our group.

Growth is a funny concept, you think you are growing in one area and before you know it you recognise growth in many parts of your life.  Being committed to ongoing professional learning and development through our involvement in this postgraduate programme has provided me with a collaborative, inclusive and supportive learning environment. Learning is an amazing concept that continues to grow beyond its expectations.

Reference List:

Ministry of Education (nd). Practising teacher Criteria and e-learning . Retrieved from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Professional-learning/

Week 31 - PRACTICE - Professional Context - Crossing Boundaries

Mapping my interdisciplinary connections:

Interdisciplinary connections in education are the relationships we have within and between subjects, people and resources. An interdisciplinary approach is where subjects are woven together and taught through integration rather than in isolation. Many advocate that this approach can weaken the delivery of what is taught and provide confusion (Jones. 2009). The advantages of an interdisciplinary approach are many but the development of connections and relationships between subjects, people and resources providing children with multiple opportunities to experience and learn (Jones. 2009). Education is moving beyond  individual silos between a wider community.

My DP and SENCO roles mean that I co-ordinate the support our children and their families with special needs and these needs have become more and more complex over time. When I first started this position, there was a definite course of action between the types of support delivered. Support was totally based around achievement and academic progression. The students that were generally supported were students with high learning needs, ORS students, HHN students and or HLN students. For these students I predominately worked alongside the RTLB service and Special Education agency. These relationships were built on teachers capabilities, building knowledge and understandings for staff and also provided our students with multiple resources, access to people support, teacher aides, therapy of different kinds, and to access support tools such as assistive technologies. However, family connections were minimal and only extended to parental consent this meant that there was a missing piece to support and meet the needs of our children.

Families and children need to be at the forefront of support and we will need to take an interdisciplinary approach to supporting our students and this includes their families. This approach will also support the thinking around developing Cultural Responsiveness and a Relational Pedagogy (CRRP) (Cowie. Otrel-Cass. Glynn & Kara. 2011). CRRP develops building on relationships of care and connectedness, power is shared, culture counts, sense-making, shared decision-making and developing a common vision (Cowie. Otrel-Cass. Glynn & Kara. 2011). These contexts are mirrored in the support agencies of SWIs and The Children’s Team. These agencies support the children, their families and the school through a multi levelled approach and have access to many different services that a family and school could need in order to support their children.

Developing a Cultural Responsiveness and a Relational Pedagogy  in the area of special need educational co-ordinator through developing strong relationship with The Children’s Team and SWIs will be my new focus interdisciplinary approach (Cowie. Otrel-Cass. Glynn & Kara. 2011). An approach that looks at the strength of partnership and weaving together rather than of silos and isolation.  

Reference list:

Cowie, B., Otrel-Cass, K., Glynn, T., & Kara, H., et al.(2011).Culturally responsive pedagogy and assessment in primary science classrooms: Whakamana tamariki. Wellington: Teaching Learning Research Initiative. Retrieved from http://www.tlri.org.nz/sites/default/files/projects/9268_cowie-summaryreport.pdf

Jones, C.(2009). Interdisciplinary approach - Advantages, disadvantages, and the future benefits of interdisciplinary studies. ESSAI7 (26), 76-81. Retrieved from http://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=essai

Source: Thomas McDonagh Group. ( 2011, May 13). Interdisciplinarity and Innovation Education.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDdNzftkIpA

Week 30 - PRACTICE - Professional Online Social Networks

The 21st century teacher understands that we must continually learn in order to meet the needs of our students. Access to social networks have enabled teachers to become connected educators (Office of Ed Tech. 2013). Online social networks provide access for teachers to connect to colleagues, students and parents. Hallway conversations now go far beyond the hallway of a school, they have become the hallway to the world.

Since starting my career as an educator in 2005 we have had access to the use of laptops through our Government supporting the TELA laptop scheme (Melhuish. 2013). This tool has grown from a resource that was slim, storage folder, holding your diary, your planning and assessment to a tool that provides opportunities to grow as a learner, that stimulates communication and conversation (Melhuish. 2013).   

Wenger (2000), identifies Communities of Practice as key in educators embracing ‘teachers as learners’ and online social networks are a community of practice that supports the communication between people with a common focus and similar goals.  I belong to many different communities of practice including professional online social networks from facebook and blogging to google plus. These always have a focus and tend to be for a specific professional purpose, a need for communication and listening to others or a need to share and gather others ideas and information.

My use of social media in my teaching practice is delivered through two separate avenues, a tool for professional development and a communication tool. I use my professional blog in two ways, firstly to communicate with parents and share the learning of my students and secondly as a way to document appraisal evidence. Parents, grandparents and families can see what their children have been learning and celebrate in their success. Parents will often comment about how proud they are of their achievements. My blog also acts as a storage facility of evidence that supports me meeting my registration requirements. Upon reflection to expand the use of my blog within my practice I need to be more culturally responsive by power sharing and provide my students with opportunities to write posts and add comments. Potentially there could be a lot of challenges such as disappointment around children not getting comments, responding to other people's ideas, technical problems and children provide appropriate feedback to others.

I also use online social networks such as facebook and google plus within my teaching practice. Both of these tools are predominantly used as ways of connecting to other colleagues and/or other professionals. I use facebook to provide me with access to a shared knowledge or thinking or to deepen my knowledge or understanding of something and this is delivered through our ‘Awesome Teachers’ facebook page. It is a tool that allows me with a space to communicate directly with teachers at Allandale School and within our COL. I also belong to numerous teaching facebook pages and this allows me to stay connected to world views within the realm of education. Google Plus is a newer social network for me and I mainly use this for sharing information and having conversations around my study. To build on the use of this tool within my practice I could introduce it within a classroom setting. Having a classroom facebook or google plus account could have huge benefits including clear communication and expectations and more opportunities for children to access learning in a one on one situation. Some of the challenges we could face would be privacy and safety of our students and balancing learning time and family time for both the teachers and children.

Online social networks are a tool of the time and educators need to embrace its capability within a learning environment. This needs to be delivered in a thoughtful and deliberate way to ensure that all children and families are safe and that the interactions are of benefit. Online social networks provide educators and learners with opportunities to explore the world from within the four walls of their classrooms.

 

Reference list:

Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrieved on 05 May, 2015 from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/han…

Source:Office of Ed Tech. (2013, Sep 18). Connected Educators. [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=216&v=K4Vd4JP_DB8

Source: Tvoparents. (2013, May 21). Using Social Media in the Classroom.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno

Wenger, E. (2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.

Week 29 Practice - Influence of Law and Ethics

Teachers in New Zealand schools and classrooms face moral and ethical dilemmas everyday and the 21st Century teacher needs to think of cultural, social and ethical pluralism to resolve these dilemmas (Hall. 2001). Once upon of time ethics for teachers were black and white and seen through one lens however now there are multiple shades of grey to consider and the individual child needs to be in the forefront of thinking.  

The digital world is becoming embedded in our schools and classrooms. It is a way of linking to anywhere in the world and also within our own communities. Texting, messaging, websites and facebook have all become tools of the trade for teachers. Teachers use these tools to provide children access to the world and under careful guidance, the world access to our children. Lines of communication between teachers and our students’ families are also important and teachers lives are becoming more and more accessible to our parents and this leads me into my ethical dilemma.

Easy access to technology has created an ethical divide between a teacher's personal life and professional life, when it comes to being accessible to our students and their parents. Relationships are an important tool of my pedagogy. I believe that the better relationships I have with staff, children and their families the better I can do my job. This job is no longer a 9.00 to 3.00 contact job, teachers get texts and phone calls from students and their parents  at all times of night and day.

I have decided that my personal cell phone number would not be given out to parents because I was contactable at school. I was religious at doing this for the first 11 years of teaching and as a result never received phone calls from students and or their parents at home. While I have staff members as my friends on facebook I also was deliberate in not friending parents. Two years ago I decided to give parents who needed access to me my cell phone number and this year I accepted a friend request from a parent. The combination of parents having access to both of these has provided me with an ethical dilemma, building strong relationships between parents and myself and allowing parents to encroach into my personal life.  

After receiving, what I deemed as inappropriate texts from a parent and while I was not prepared to change my cell phone number. I did decide that I needed to sever ties between my professional life and personal life and defriend them from my personal facebook. While making this decision I had many ethical questions beginning with…

• What are the requirements of being a teacher?
• What was our school’s policies and procedures on this subject?
• Would this damage the relationships I had built with my parents?
• How would this decision impact on my students?
• Was this fair on my family?
• Would there be other consequences that I was unaware of?

I followed through with my decision and defriended people that blurred the lines between my personal and professional life. The outcome of this was a parent messaging me asking “why I had defriended them and questioning if they had done something”. My response was I needed to separate my professional and personal lives.

As identified in the Facilitator’s Guide (2012), a teacher’s “(e) RESPONSIBILITY TO THE STUDENT’S FAMILY (1) The professional educator in full recognition of the public trust vested in the profession, shall: (A) Respect the dignity of each family, its culture, customs, and beliefs; (B) Promote, respond, and maintain appropriate communications with the family, staff and   administration; (C) Consider the family’s concerns and perspectives on issues involving its children; and (D) Encourage participation of the family in the educational process”. While my actions and decisions to remedy my actions did not warrant as unprofessional conduct as they did not violate the above codes my decision could be seen by some as not strengthening relationships between parents and myself.  

Teaching is a minefield of ethical dilemmas and  teachers need to think of cultural, social and ethical pluralism and all stakeholders in order to resolve these dilemmas.

Reference list:

Connecticut’s Teacher Education and Mentoring Program. (2012). Ethical and Professional Dilemmas for Educators: Facilitator’s Guide. Retrieved from http://www.ctteam.org/df/resources/Module5_Manual....

Hall, A. (2001). What ought I to do, all things considered? An approach to the exploration of ethical problems by teachers. Paper presented at the IIPE Conference, Brisbane. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Developing-leaders/What-Ought-I-to-Do-All-Things-Considered-An-Approach-to-the-Exploration-of-Ethical-Problems-by-Teachers