As a school we are preparing for the inevitable that we will be hit with the Omicron variant. It is not a matter of if but a matter of when. Part of preparation is understanding what endemic management is when talking about learning. Covid 19 disease has reached the endemic stage in New Zealand. This means that the  virus continues to exist in our community but is becoming manageable as immunity builds. As a school we have looked back at what worked when we were in pandemic lock down and what we have learned on the journey that we have been on together. The greatest learning is the systems and processes we have in place and that the whole school cannot rely on one person. Everyone has to rise to the challenge and help with the workload. The other important factor is not having all knowledge with one person but sharing and communicating so that if one member goes down, there is someone else who can pick up the baton and carry on.

The new norm involves wearing masks to school and therefore students miss out on facial cues from peers and the teacher. Many of our families have been anxious about their children missing out on normal life experiences. There are ongoing concerns about the increase of using screens for learning  and about growing up in a socially distanced face to face environment. Keep in mind that not all screen time is equal. Not all synchronous learning online is equal. A classic example is a teacher streaming a video during an online lesson. The video lagged.

I continually struggle with some expectations that online learning is synchronous. That teachers pick up their video cameras and live stream a ‘normal’ lesson. How many of you have registered for a training session in real time but not attended. You waited for the video link to become available then fast forward in 1.5 times? Even better if they used youtube as a hosting platform, then the text can be quickly read.

Schools are a stabilising force for our families. In this time of uncertainty our school is there to anchor and support our families. Each day we return home grateful and hoping that no one was sick today.

The greatest impact of moving into the endemic stage is on learning.  Our school returned after the Christmas holidays to what the new normal is becoming. However we cannot return to how we have always done ‘learning’. In some ways we have put into action the learning we have carried out on what learning at home is.

How can we successfully teach online if we have not taken part in being an online learner ourselves. To do this step successfully meant ensuring that our teachers and support staff were equipped with the devices and the digital online tools to support our learners in the new normal. We have a school expectation that our teachers will learn how to use the online tools for learning and be certified in this process. A key strategy was encouraging all our teachers to be online learners themselves. They do this by completing the Hapara Champion Educator training. I believe that the greatest learning space is between the teacher’s ears. If teachers have not experienced being an online learner themselves then they will be continually challenged to provide the online learning for their students. This is evident in sparse workspaces for some classes. They are full of learning activities and omit the purpose and assessment criteria.

I have been watching the word Hybrid Learning brandied around as if it is a new concept. I have read that online learning experience should be as near normal as the face2face learning as possible. However maybe I still have much to learn because I query this even from great business models such as Amazon. Amazon does not have a storefront where you can go and preview items for purchase. I believe that the most effective teachers are those that have a vast knowledge of instructional strategies, technologies, tools, and resources, and can masterfully build meaningful relationships with students in-person and through a screen. We do not need to add the word Hybrid to learning or to teachers to have a ‘new way’ of learning.

The purpose of learning virtually and face2face

Teachers must be clear about the purpose of synchronous and asynchronous learning. 

Are we ready for those who are immunocompromised, uncomfortable or unable to return to in-person learning due to potential COVID-19 risks? Currently we can feel the push for remote teaching as well as traditional brick-and-mortar classroom teaching during endemic management. Can teaching in person face to face and virtually at the same time work?

There are some really good youtube videos to watch from teachers overseas who have successfully managed to do both.

Some of the tips reinforced include

• Focus on running your total class digitally online with a focus on student participation rather than watching the teacher. Therefore shelf those synchronous Zoom/Meet/Team lessons.

• Virtual students watching a teacher in class does not work. No matter how many cameras are used to help. Therefore do not try to replicate that reading or writing lesson for virtual learners.
• Ensure a well set up workspace with learning intentions and assessment criteria using rubrics. Make sure this is easily accessible to the students.
• There needs to be a home site where all spaces link off from so that students and families can find everything they need in one place.
• Leverage all our online tools so there is consistency in how we operate.
• Highlight asynchronous teaching and keep building and developing skills already learnt during previous lockdowns.
• Other teachers have already been through the process so talk to colleagues on social media. Most are willing to share how they managed the process.
• Keep creating those hyperdocs and choice boards that the students can complete entirely on their own.
• Make use of paid tools such as seesaw and reading eggs with lessons and activities already created.
• Make use of other teachers’ lessons and examples on Flipgrid and Book Creator. These can be easily adapted for our classes.
• Make use of collaborative tools to encourage cocreation of learning such as Book Creator, Padlet, Jamboard, Google Apps.

If schools continue to push for synchronous lessons, then we will continue to be challenged with late comers or stopping the lesson to solve access issues for some students.

Remote teaching as well as traditional brick-and-mortar classroom teaching synchronously is extremely difficult to pull off. Speaking from a TeachMeetNZ experience I needed to take my learners through 4x times in order to produce a simple 3 minute video presentation in real time.

The message I read from our overseas colleagues is:

Always start with a whole class activity that is transparent and encourages participation. Use Jamboard or padlet or a shared file so that students can contribute in real time. At the same time this does not have to happen every day. Provide most of the instructions asynchronously. Be cautious about delievery of instructions. For example I have seen pages and pages of written instructions for our families to follow and I have seen a simple video with screenshots. Keep synchronous instructions to a minimum and use these as a check in rather than for learning.

Plan horizontally so that students do not rely on a sequential completion of order of activities and set up the online classroom for virtual and face2face students as asynchronous stations.

Once students have moved through all the stations, then move to an independent activity. Allow stations for peer collaboration. Face2face as well as virtual. The tools are available for coconstruction and collaboration.

Use workspaces to ensure you can jump in and out of students’ folios. Seeing your whole class deck in real time is of vital importance and again Hapara does this so well.

Seesaw and Hapara allow you to give feedback and to send work back for revisiting or if incomplete.

Spend money on high quality instructional programmes especially if your school is at the stage where every student has a 1:1 device. Just a note here and remember to have some way of monitoring activity in real time.

Choose not to spend money on cameras and mics etc as this focusses students on observation. Choose not to spend time on synchronous lessons. Teachers are not at the front. The focus is student participation. They participate via stations of learning. Have students show and explain their learning using digital whiteboards like Jamboard. Flipgrid is fabulous too for the students to explain their learning.

Continue to invest money in teaching teachers to use the technology and encourage them to complete their certification in becoming a more adept user of the technology by building skills in how to use them through certification.

Before the endemic management we were in the pandemic lockdown for home learning. We rolled with the expectations and upskilled at an exponential rate. In those earlier online lessons with teachers I remember the horror of what was expected from them. As the pandemic days stretched into weeks our teachers and students rose to the challenge and I was so proud of what was achieved. 

In this next endemic management stage we cannot return to just face2face learning. Everything is uncertain but what is certain is that learning must continue. I believe we can use this opportunity to finetune what we already do so that we can cater both for our virtual students as well as face2face students. This begins with a well designed workspace.

What am I still wondering

What does this learning workspace look like for our junior learners?

How will our special needs learners cope?

How do we ensure our workspaces are built effectively so that as the students complete tasks that the next level of the workspace opens up?

Where will we host the home page so that all workspaces link to the home page?

What feedback have we had from families reagrding supporting students accessing learning virtually?

What other forms of online professional learning should we consider? Suggest to providers to also come up with stations of activities for participation so that not all learning is attending a Zoom as this focuses on observation.

Question Generator  Link to the online app. (cost and worth every cent because using the app saves me so much time and always helps clarify my thinking)

Define & describe school endemic management (EM)

Where did the term originate?

Key feature of school endemic management?

What steps led to EM?

How would we organise EM?

How does EM affect learning?

What opportunities does EM provide?

Short term outcome for EM?

Practical applications for EM?

Before EM what did we do?

Consequence of EM? 

What is the essence of EM?

What I still do not know??

Whose voice can I not hear?

What possibilities need to be eliminated with EM?

Four weeks have passed since I last posted and already it is May. May is generally an important month for me as I usually associate May the 1st as the date I launched TeachMeetNZ.  It has been a couple of years since I have run a Google Hangout for professional learning. However the skills I developed running online learning for teachers have been invaluable as I have supported our teachers during ‘Lockdown’ acclimatise to leading learning online with each other and with their own learners.

I have observed the thinking that teaching face to face can be shifted to online learning with little thought to the challenges that surface when teaching the upcoming ‘TikTok’ generation. Those of you who have explored TikTok will know the speed that media moves. Trying to replicate any of those skills is a challenge in itself to maintain the learner’s interest.  TikTok media snackers are used to swiping up when they are not interested in what we are trying to teach them. 

Personally the aspects that I struggle with with remote online learning is when video conferencing is used for face to face teaching via ZOOM as there are much more effective ways of ensuring learning happens. I observe our teachers undertaking the challenge and I wonder how many of them have been an online learner themselves? How many of them have sat in ZOOM classes or Google Meets themselves listening to an online teacher in real time? 

Some of the excellent online courses I have undertaken only use real time face to face to make connections or to celebrate with an end product. In one of the courses, I never met my teachers face to face in real time except the option was there if I needed personal support. 

I have never sat on a face to face virtual lesson to learn how to do something. That is what Youtube is for and more recently what Tiktok is for. At least in Youtube I can speed up the video when it starts to drag and in Tiktok I can swipe up when the content does not motivate me. I do feel for the learners having to sit and listen to their teachers ‘teach’ virtually and in real time. Our teachers need a strong understanding of cameras and of online tools for editing in order to do something like this effectively. 

With all the technology available to us, I continually search for ways of having the learner share what they can do. I am particularly interested in any tool that opens up for collaboration. Some of my favourites are FlipGrid, Book Creator, Wevideo, Seesaw and even good old google tools. If teachers need to teach, then create self help videos for the students. At least the learners can speed up the video or slow it down to suit or even revisit for clarification as a reference point. Even better they can choose to sit and watch if they are really that keen.

Probably my greatest challenge with using ZOOM for real time teaching is not recording when the children are on.Teaching in real time takes our teachers and our students into each other’s homes so it’s important to consider privacy. As teachers we must also remember that we are like a guest entering our students’ home. Student safety comes first and how many of our teachers have spent time teaching their students how to blur their backgrounds when in real time.  

When teaching in real time, I think, ‘Is this the best way that our students learn? How much would our students benefit from this type of delivery? Are we not supposed to be leading the balance in using screen time for learning?  Would it not be better to record a lesson using ZOOM, Youtube, Flipgrid, or Wevideo? Then at least there is a recording that can be repurposed across the team, with another class.’ Also teaching videos would cut down some of the instructions I have seen in text form, especially some of the long instructions I have read on Seesaw messages for families. There appears to be an expectation that families would then translate these instructions for their children.

I look at all these upcoming scheduled teaching sessions taking up parent devices and think surely these ‘small group lessons’ would be better prerecorded and the actual scheduled times used for full student social connections, just like we would at school at least once a week. Kind of like a team assembly. Also a great way of checking in with colleagues and ensuring staff well being.   Oh and have a colleague host the session. They can deal with muting mics and letting in any late comers. Then again offer a second opportunity for scheduled check in times and make use of real time chat boards, that can be locked down when not in use. I suggest Padlet. I was super excited when one of our young teachers agreed to trial a real time chat board with her students. I showed her how to lock it down when she was not online. Creating a real time chat board allows other students to see if their question had also been asked.

I would be really interested in hearing from schools using video as prerecorded lessons for learning. What have you noticed and are they successful for supporting learners? 

Leave a comment below.

NOTE: while searching for examples of teachers teaching in real time via video conferencing This very good article from ISTE popped up. 10 strategies for online learning during a coronavirus outbreak 

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Belonging has been our overarching theme at Newmarket School for 2019.

The concept was developed by our student leaders in the curriculum development team.

I wanted to share some exciting developments that happened with the team I worked with this term. 

I had been playing with Book Creator and was impressed with the ease of creating and wondered if I could persuade the team to use it as a platform to develop writing.

I created a writing unit framed using SOLO Taxonomy and the key idea was to have our children write their migrant journey to New Zealand or a close family member. 

When I first approached our teachers with the idea, I suggested that in order for the project to work, they themselves must also create a migrant story about themselves or a family member. They must also use book creator to craft their story so they could experience that challenges their learners might have with the app. I shared my own journey to New Zealand that could be used as a model by both teachers and children. 

Link to my story

I applied for and gained book creator ambassador status and this opened up further ideas for collaboration. 

Another idea was for each teacher to share the code to their class library so that all teachers could learn from each other. This they did.

Teachers used Seesaw to communicate with families. Most of the images came in this way for the children. Some teachers created a page in Google Docs and saved the families links there. That was so the children were then able to access their images. For art the children created patterns from countries that they associate with and this was also included in their books. They also included a reflection on the art process.

All in all, the unit of work was successful. We learned so much about who we all are, belonging, and the diverse cultures that make up our school.

Our families gave us positive feedback because the children came home and asked so many questions that conversations around family photo albums were animated and exciting.

In addition several families needed to contact extended families overseas for further clarification for some information.

When the books were completed, we printed out one paper copy for each child and also shared the digital copies with families in a hidden link via Seesaw. 

As an added bonus, I was also able to cocreate a story book with some of the children about the area that we live in. They created all the images using the new drawing tool. The book is called ‘The Patupaihere of Tāmaki Makaurau’ and retells the story of how the mountains appeared in Auckland.

Where to next: I cannot stress enough the importance of going through the learning yourself first as a teacher. Two parts of the learning included: ‘How to write a recount’ and ‘How to learn to use Book Creator’. In addition, be really clear about driving the learning deeper and I do this using SOLO Taxonomy. Finally remember to leave time to reflect on the process. I can hear Ginny now, “Where is the SOLO Taxonomy rubric?”

Manulauti: “E felelei manu ae e ma’au o latou ofaga” 

Proverb/Saying– Birds migrate to environments where they survive and thrive. 

My book on book creator

My journey to New Zealand begins a little before the day we left. Some of the earlier footage shows me between the age of four years old to 10 years old. There is even a really short clip of me in New Zealand washing dishes with my sisters. I would have been about 4. My story is helped because my father had a movie 8 camera and so the memories of our journey were captured in movie form. 

Our travel story began at Faleolo Airport in Apia Samoa. The year is early 1973.

I was born in Samoa during the year of independence. My father was a New Zealander who travelled to Samoa for overseas experience. He met my mother whose father was Danish and whose mother was Samoan. They fell in love, married and had a family there. They lived together in Samoa for 14 years and had four daughters. I was number three. Kathie was the eldest. Dad nicknamed her ka’avale because her initials spelt Kar. Then Astrid, who was known as Aiskulimi, named by my great grandmother, myself Sonya, named after my godmother and finally Biddy nick named after my paternal grandmother, shortened from her real name of Brigitte. 

My early years in Samoa were idyllic and I often view those early times with rose tinted glasses. I was able to grab some of those moments of sea swimming, of visiting grandparents each weekend, visiting Savaii and always seemed to be surrounded by cousins and extended family. I love Samoa, my culture, my language and my people. My childhood memories of Samoa are like a long summer holiday by the beach. The sun is always shining and the sounds of everyday life and life smells like the umu, ground oven fires, are vivid. The trees and grass are always vividly green and the sea and amazing colour.

My narrative began the year I turned 10 and our family had an enormous adventure. We were moving to New Zealand for good. We would leave behind an extensive extended family with heaps of cousins and we would also leave behind maternal grandparents and childhood friends.

So this day began at the airport. I was there with my mum, dad and three sisters. We had special outfits made for the journey. Us ladies were all dressed identically in pants suit with a white blouse. The three younger ones wore green. My hair was blonde and short. My eyes were grey more than blue. At the airport, all the extended family were there with us. Included in the farewelling family was my great aunty Else who was visiting my Grandpa. She lived in San Francisco. In the video there are snapshots of aunties and uncles and of course the cousins. Unfortunately I had to cut a lot of dad’s movies because of quality.

Memories I have of that day was the weight of wearing shell necklaces. Also being given American dollars and at the time the total of $5.00 seemed like a fortune. The most I had ever held previously was $1.00 Samoan money. 

Conflict

The biggest conflict we had as a family was deciding what was important enough to take with us. I do not remember much of the decision making, but can remember packing and packing and repacking. Mum had to downsize the house contents. I remember the wooden packing boxes, but little else. The treasures I brought with me were my doll collection, my stamp collection, my Langelinie Danish blue plate and my Hans Christian Anderson book of fairy tales. I cannot remember packing clothes but I must have included clothing.

Another conflict was saying goodbye to everyone we knew. Saying goodbye to grandpa and nana was the hardest because they were such a huge part of our lives. 

After saying goodbye to all the family who had come to the airport to farewell us, we flew to Nadi, Fiji. I believe we overnighted there. My main memory of Fiji was being sick with my first migraine and my older sister Astrid taking care of me. She held my hair from my face while I was sick and she massaged the back of my neck. She kept wetting the flannel because I was so hot.

Our next stop was Auckland where we paid a toll to cross the harbour bridge and we stayed with my Uncle Einer and family. Those memories included picking and eating strawberries for the very first time. My aunty Sigrid whipped creme and again this was my first experience. We played and got to know our New Zealand cousins and those early visits remained such an important part of our extended family relationships. This family had a massive pohutukawa tree growing right in their back yard.

Then dad hired a car for the journey south. The car seemed enormous in memory but the video shows not that large. In the car we had our luggage and we all piled in. The memories of that trip included the sounds of the lamp posts whooshing past, like the sound of helicopter blades, We travelled really fast compared to how we would travel on the pot holed roads in Samoa. We saw hundreds and hundreds of sheep. Their noise sticks in my mind and there was a lot of open farmland.

Our next stop was Foxton where we stayed with my Aunty Shirley, my dad’s older sister and her family. We had fish and chips. I had never eaten that before either. 

From Foxton we travelled to Wellington and we must have crossed the ferry but I have no memories of that part of the journey or of travelling down the south island to Christchurch. 

My next memories were of the motel we stayed at while our house was being finalised. We watched Coronation street and I could not understand what the actors were saying because of the strong accents. Coronation street is an English programme.

We visited my paternal grandfather and he took my little sister and me down to feed the ducks on the Avon river. 

Soon we moved into our new home and I remember thinking how small the new house was. There was not much land and the neighbouring houses were really close together. There was the most incredible vegetable garden with several fruit trees growing. The fence supported a massive grape vine with three varieties of grapes. We spent the rest of the summer making friends  with the neighbouring children. They were curious about us and us of them. They all spoke so fast that I was continually challenged to understand them. I had grown up in the Samoan language and all of my previous schooling had been in Samoan. Even though we spoke English when dad was around, my English was not as strong as my Samoan language. Another memory I have is the telephone. In Samoa we had to call the operator but in New Zealand we could dial using a rotary dial phone.

Then school began for the new year and I was placed in standard three. (Year 5). My teacher was Mr Syme. I was the oldest in the class because in Samoa I was the generation that began school at six years old. For the rest of my school life I was always the oldest pupil in the class. 

During my first week at school, I received an absolute growling because I had run on the verandah. I knew I was in trouble because of the teacher yelling at me. I had no idea what he said, but all I knew I was in big trouble. Luckily my own teacher rescued me and explained what I had done wrong and spoke with the growling teacher. I was terrified. My other memory of school was being asked to read aloud in class. I read the word guinea pig as gunner pig and all the children laughed. My second year of school was much better. I had a really nice teacher called Mr Marshall who helped me heaps with my maths. So I think at that time my maths was not the best. He used to read to us everyday and let us draw. He also played softball with us regularly at lunchtime. 

The school seemed so rich with a large swimming pool and we had class lessons every day. My other memory of that pool was ice on the water before we got in. We would swim with the ice if we went in first for the day. The school had flushing toilets and they even had toilet paper. In Samoa we had to take our own toilet paper. The classrooms had windows and the desks were individual. So there was a lot to get used to. One was having lunch at school. Lunchtime at school always felt wrong and really weird because we were not used to that. The school days seemed so long too. In Samoa we began at 8.00am and finished at 1.00pm. I spent many lunchtimes in the library because I felt so odd and the other children would continuously ask me questions. I played softball and was really good at catching long balls. I learnt the violin which was an instrument my oldest sister Kathie played. One of my biggest challenge at school was learning the children’s names. The names were so different to what I had been used to. Names like Carmel, sounding like camel. Robert, Stephen and Nicola  are some names I remember.

The other difference was the school we attended was a state school and in Samoa we had attended a Catholic school. Dad bought us each a second hand bike and I was soon riding to and from school. That first year, Canterbury had heat waves and chickens died on the farms. Then that winter we had snow and got a week off school. I had never seen snow before. I biked to and from school regardless of the weather. I biked when it hailed and I biked when it snowed. The winter season was always so cold. I wove a scarf on the school loom that I wore to keep my nose and ears warm and I made myself some gloves from sheepskin. I have no idea where the sheepskin came from but those gloves saw me right through to high school. In those days we did not wear hats at school. 

Years later I found out that we had moved to New Zealand for two reasons. One was to be closer to my fathers aging parents and the other was so that we could have a good education and go to the local university. 

Dad continued to travel back to Samoa for his work while we stayed in New Zealand with mum. When he returned he always brought island food and letters from Samoa. This was before the internet. On some journey he brought us tape recorded messages and so we could hear our grandparents and cousins voices.

The food was a challenge. I remember eating cauliflower for the first time and at how disgusting it was. The coffee was instant and we were used to bean coffee back in Samoa with heaps of sugar. I missed eating taro and having fresh tree ripened bananas. The store bought bananas took a lot of getting used to, if we could get them. Other than that we were able to buy rice and eat similar food to what we ate in Samoa. We hung out for palusami and ground oven cooked taro when dad came back. 

My father’s father passed away in the second year we were in New Zealand. I am glad we were able to spend some time getting to know him. We all had a good education and a couple of us went to university. 

Before I know it, I have lived in New Zealand for over forty years. The years have flown by and I now love New Zealand and call New Zealand home. But Samoa will always be my first home.

I still visit Samoa when I can and have taken my own sons back for visits. I still speak Samoan and recently learned how to master chop suey like how my grandmother made it. I have learned to make palusami using spinach leaves, but the taste is not quite the same. I learned to love cauliflower when I discovered that it needed serving with cheese sauce.

Sometimes I do wonder about what might have happened if we had remained in Samoa. I wonder what my life would be like now. I wonder if I should have returned and brought my sons up in Samoa when I had the opportunity. I also wonder what I would take if I moved to another country.

Like the bird in my proverb, I already was grown and had all my markings when I left Samoa. Coming to New Zealand to a new environment does not change who I am. What the new environment does is add to my story.

For you reading this:

• Are you a migrant, or a descendent of a migrant?
• What is your story?
• If you write one, can you please share your story with me?