Joanna Malefaki has created an amazingblog challenge, where teachers write to their younger selves, called the #YoungerTeacherSelf blog challenge. I have added the hashtag to our #edblognz site. I found the link on my twitter buddy Vicky Loras blog.

I started teaching the year I was married. I won a position in my local area and in my local parish. A decade later I shifted cities and returned to teaching and my studies as a single mother with my two pre school boys. Here is my letter to my younger teacher and single mother self. 

Dear young me.

Upgrade your teaching diploma to a degree as soon as you can and do it before you become a mother.

You will have an amazing teaching life. Later on you will focus more on the teachers and you will still want to work with children. An opportunity will come where you are asked to teach in a Samoan bilingual unit well before you are ready. Take this chance and put your own children through a Samoan aoga. That way your sons will be bilingual like you.

A chance will come to lead a school so take it. All your studies will pay off as really you are the best person for this position.

Learn to stand up for yourself a lot earlier and focus on teachers who are keen to learn with you. You know instinctively that technology is here to stay so continue to focus on being a change maker in education.

Choose your schools carefully. Do not work in a school that has no infrastructure in place. You will just waste years where you could be learning with your learners. Trust your first impressions of your head teachers. That instinct will prove to be accurate.

Your later years of teaching will bring you much joy. Start blogging a lot earlier for reflection. As fabulous as your class blog is, it really is only fleeting. Personal blogging will clarify your thinking and allow you to develop as a writer. As your personal writing develops so will your teaching of writing.

Do not let your training teachers borrow your hand drawn song charts. You will not get those back. Give your novels away. Lending them is just heart breaking as you will not get them back. Don’t waste your precious money buying teaching books. Soon a phenomena called the internet will make all that expense collect dust. Stop collecting old calendars to create number cards for your students. Soon you can photocopy them. You know that pile of music you did photocopy? Don’t, because copyright laws will come into force and you will end up burning them all.

You will meet some incredible educators all your life. So start collecting those selfies early. Take lots of photos of your class displays. Even if photos are expensive, just do it. It will be great to show what your first classroom looked like. Also write down some of the hilarious and honest things that children say.

As you shift houses for the third time, do not throw out those early teaching plans. They will make a great comparison of what is now expected of teachers today. You can also prove that you had neat handwriting and that yes planning was handwritten every week.

Start learning Chinese earlier and work harder to maintain your Japanese and your French. Another chance will come to teach overseas, take it and take your boys. They will adapt.

Get your life and work balance in order early. Take better care of your physical health because you will face greater challenges that will make taking care of yourself a low priority.

Celebrate your successes and be proud of what you have achieved. Don’t forget to smile and use a gentle voice. Remember to tell your sisters how amazing they are because you can not get to your future life without them.

Alofa atu

Sonya 50+

 “O Manu o le lauamanu e felelei mamao” ‘Birds that fly together go far.’ #edchatNZ

— Sonya (@vanschaijik) August 13, 2015

Each goose flaps its wings creates an uplift for the birds that follow. By flying in this formation whole flock adds 70% greater flying range then if each bird flew alone.

• Educators who share a common sense of direction can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are travelling on the thrust of one another. Making links to this week I had this experience when by talking with Nathaniel Louwrens , we were both on the same track about tracking New Zealand educators blogs. I was watching how the the RSS feeds change as educators update their blogs. When the RSS feed changes a new blogger takes the lead. site. That is what gave me the idea for this reflection. My opening quote came from the #EdchatNZ session that took place this week on Authentic Learning. I thought how amazing the conversation had been and how thinking was deepened with the discussion closely guided by leading questions from Danielle Myburgh.

When a goose flies out of formation it feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It then quickly moves back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird flying in front of it.

• That is what I thought of the carefully challenged devil’s advocate role. Someone who comes in and drags the conversation by challenging the discussion. We can feel the drag in the conversation and then justify why we think the way we do as we move to the speed of keeping up. Stephen Lethbridge was the Devil’s Advocate for the #edchatnz twitter chat.

When the lead goose tires it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies to the point position.

• As educators it is important to take turns sharing the load and take turns leading as we are interdependent on each other. I often see this when I see the same names leading events. A classic one is TeachMeetNZ. I am often grateful when an educator approaches me to host a session. I see this too with the educamp events that take place around New Zealand when different lead educators step up and coordinate an EducampNZ event in their own neighbourhood. We are all interdependent on each other and by taking turns to share the load of leading free professional learning  for educators across New Zealand.

The geese flying in formation honk to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.

• As educators we need to ensure that our honking from behind like on social media is encouraging. But also ensure that our voice can be heard if we think those leading need to hear a change in direction. As we continue to embrace social media for our own professional learning it is important to celebrate what we do here in New Zealand. We have stunning educators and I love seeing and hearing their stories. At the same time I am conscious of not too much enthusiastic praise and remember to include some kind of feedback and to celebrate those educators who are our devil’s advocate. It takes courage and broad shoulders to have a voice of constructive criticism.

When a goose gets sick or wounded and falls, two geese follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with it until it dies or is able to fly again then they catch up with the flock or launch with another formation.

• As educators we can launch a new formation or join with those who are headed the same way we want to travel. We can look out and encourage one of us to step forward in the lead roles and always help each other in times of self doubt by being there to talk through ideas. We can stand beside and support each other  even if we are unsure of new ideas.

I thought about this part as I reflected on my involvement on the EELWebinar. I thought about how I became involved because Tessa Grey believed in the work that I do and encouraged me and motivated my ideas using Google+ hangout. I thought of how Ewan McIntosh did not hesitate to say yes when I asked to use some of the ideas to develop for TeachMeet. I thought of Virginia Kung giving me some analogies to think about for my presentation and how she was willing to help me clarify my own thinking for my presentation. You can check out my slides below.

I also thought about how we take turns at Newmarket School to host others schools visiting. On Friday we had several visitors come in and Wendy Kofoed reminded me of how many of our ideas develop through the generosity of schools we have visited sharing their ideas and systems.

Finally I think about learning on the thrust of one another. By learning in this formation, can we add 70% greater range than if we learnt alone?

I think about how we are all interdependent on each other. I had a conversation with Pete Hall. ‘Leading Teachers to share their practice.’ First I agreed to be the trial teacher for his new initiative and in turn he agreed to step in and present virtually with me at the recent GAFE conference. You can hear the podcast on the POND.

I can really see this learning thrust happening on the EdblogNZ site. I believe that by making the blogs visible teachers have come together and are now flying like geese. Each educator is prepared to move into the leader position by updating their blog.

Reference

Lessons from the geese”, was written in 1972 by Dr Robert F McNeish of Baltimore.

The educator blog list began with a Meme in January of 2014. As the concept took off, I identified who in New Zealand was blogging as an educational practitioner. I had been observing class blogs for a couple of years and identified the odd educator blogging, but the Meme task really helped as edubloggers in New Zealand tagged their educator friends.

One key element was who was being tagged. From there, Helen Prescott set up a doc to eliminate the same educators being spammed and directed traffic to the doc to check out first who has been tagged. We hoped that this would eliminate double ups. From that doc I set up an educator’s spreadsheet list of edubloggers in March 2014.

Then I added all educators I knew who had taken part in a TeachMeetNZ and had reflected on the process. I also identified educators who were commenting on fellow educator blogs. As the list grew, I pulled out principals to see who was blogging and was surprised at the low number. So I gave my own principal the blogging challenge and reminded her about asking our teachers to reflect but where was her reflection. She took on the challenge and with her on board, this made the task easier of encouraging our teachers to reflect on their practice via blogs.

After that the list kind of grew on its own as educators added other educators.

Later on in the year, I was tagged on twitter with Nathaniel @nlouwrens who was aiming to build a list and a fellow tweep knew that there was already a list. That is how the #EdblogNZ hashtag was born. Nathaniel was encouraging educators to use the hashtag so that he could identify who was blogging.

The next stage of the curation happened by chance conversation with Nathaniel for the VLN #eelwebinar. I showed Nathaniel our school staff site and how this has accelerated staff learning just by making what they do visible using RSS feeds. I had ninjaed the staff blog idea from St Andrew’s college staff blog site via my connection with Matt @mattynicoll. The staff rss feed I had seen on @maurieabraham principal’s blog.

I showed Nathaniel what I was doing and he was totally enthusiastic and supportive. He agreed to come on board in this space to help with monitoring. He shared what he was doing with encouraging educators to blog and told me he was working with Alex @ariaporo22 at Ulearn. We all know what a beast sites and blogs can be once created. So by using RSS feeds, we want the space to run itself. That is what this curated site will do.

Where to next, the curated site is live at www.edblognz.blogspot.co.nz and it will be driven by the hashtag. As educators fall off the blogging space they will be replaced by regular bloggers. That is what we three will do. We will monitor who blogs and who falls off. The RSS feed highlights the latest blog by date. The twitter feed alerts us to who is using the hashtag. So if you want your blog featured do remember to use the #edblognz hashtag and do remember to reflect actively and visibly.

Update

The edblognz site has been live for a few hours and already we have had some great discussion on twitter. It is also fabulous to see how others are taking up the challenge to update their posts. I think we need a blog badge and some blogging challenges. Already I can see that the educator list has bloomed and needs a trim. But for now I need to concentrate on my VLN presentation for Wednesday. If you are around, do join the session hosted by Nathaniel. Danielle is also presenting and we are discussion Personalising PLD using social networks.