Professional Relationships

Children do not come first.

Sonya Van Schaijik PTC 04 , ,

npsThis week at Newmarket School we had camp and swimming and new children and I thought about our fabulous teachers at NPS. This post is a shout out for them and for all teachers.

I believe if we take care of our teachers then they will take care of our children.

I often hear and read about children being incredibly important and they are placed at the center of everything. They are highlighted in school documentation as being the heart of our schools. 

Don’t get me wrong, I believe our children are the heart of our schools too.

However we appear to miss something when we neglect to mention the place of our teachers. If our children are the heart of our schools then our teachers are the blood that pumps that heart.

One of my old principals used to say “Take care of our teachers and they will take care of our children.” Or she would say, “Our teachers are our greatest resource.” She also said,  “Without our fabulous teachers I would not have a fabulous school.”  

Sometimes too when I read documentation I want to change the word student or children for learner because I also believe that all teachers are learners too and if we use the word learner than this embraces our teachers too. 

Yes I know support staff, parents and whānau, but that is another post.

What do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts.

 

GAFESummit 2015 reflection

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Recently I attended the GAFESummit North Island sessions held at Albany Senior College. Last year we had 6 teachers attend the summit from Newmarket School and when we returned we moved very quickly as a school. As a staff we embraced Google Apps for Education and all planning became collaborative as we moved into the transparent environment. Each team had folders and a site.

But the changes really took place this year as team leaders took control of their team sites and team blogs. Each team member had full ownership rights to both. I watched with pride as the learning spaces evolved and the speed at which information was shared with both teachers and their students.

 

Then this year, I had three teachers and myself accepted to present at the 2015 Gafesummit. As their mentor, I felt huge pride at the process each teacher underwent to prepare and then present in front of their peers. They had fabulous feedback via Twitter. I was away for the week leading up to the summit and the team got together in my absence and practiced a run through. They gave each other feedback. The experience enabled them to tweak their session and step through what they wanted to share. The practice session also enabled them to share ideas and identify how they could make their presentations even better.

 

I have been at Newmarket now for nearly 6 years and I have seen the growth in professional learning blossom as our school leaders and teachers move into making their own learning visible.

 

Myself and the management team have recently returned from an international conference and the trip confirmed that we are well on the way with what we are doing with our teachers and to continue encouraging and developing them as leaders in education.

 

I have identified that we need to provide further opportunities for collaboration outside our school. Each teacher has a Twitter account, they are all on the VLN and they all have their pond account activated. As they continue to make connections with educators outside our school I know that this will continue to have an impact on their practise and thus affecting the learning for their students.

 

I know that the educators who presented at this years GAFESummit have been changed by the experience. They were ready for the challenge and will return to school buzzing with more ideas. They will identify what they need to do next and their enthusiasm will generate the next group to step up

 

Some of my takeaways from the sessions include

  • Do not be a complacent expert but a restless learner
  • How do we find the adjacent possible in our classroom?
  • Disrupt Boredom

 

Myself I shared the TeachMeetNZ project and also took an advanced youtube session. I use youtube to mentor teachers and as a platform for them to share their learning.

Here are the teachers’ reflections who presented at GAFESummit

Here are the slides to my session ‘GAFE 2015 TeachMeetNZ’.

Here is my video introduction for my advanced youtube session.

Science

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Science has been dominating my time this past few months and it has been exciting.

@mattynicoll approached me to lead the 24th of February #ScichatNZ and of course I said yes. I know Matt because we were both on the steering committee for #edchatnz and he is one of the teachers joining the #TeachMeetNZ meets #Science session.

I enjoy teaching science and learning through the Nature of Science. For those of you interested in learning how to run a twitter chat, I use the #GlobalClassroom training shared with me from @mgraffin. He is an Australian Science passionate teacher that I have met on twitter. I set up a google Doc and divided the hour up with questions. You can see the one I set up for #SciChatNZ here. Matt was fabulous is supporting me by giving me the topic. During the hour chat, I have learnt too from @ussieEDchat the importance of using a graphic for questions as this helps hold the chat together. So I created a presentation of the questions here . I exported the presentation as jpgs and tidied up the images leading up to the session.

The session was storified by @NZScienceLearn so do go back and revisit the session. I was grateful for the #SciChatnz team who rallied around me and helped ensure that the twitter chat flowed. In fact it didn’t just flow, it stormed and we trended on twitter.

One of the important lessons I learnt from @julielindsay is about keeping a record of the sharing. So I like to see some kind of an archive of chat history. This is something that the #SciChatNZ team do very well.

The other big Science collaborative project I was involved in was with Cath @NZScienceLearn. We had been coordinating a #TeachMeetNZ meets Science Session for the 21st of March. You can read more about that here.  We had a team of 8 science educators joining us and they are well known in the science education community partly because of their twitter activity and their involvement in various science projects such as #scichatnz and Science fellowship.

As part of my collaboration with Cath I was interviewed by Melissa @NZScienceTeachr on behalf of the New Zealand Association of Science Educators. You can read that interview here.

My goal this year is to understand how social media works and so I had investigated how everything linked across platforms and how traffic was driven. I observed the TeachMeetNZ youtube channel with interest. Through the work of @abfromz and @BartVerswijvel I stumbled across Thunderclap. I activated a thunderclap to help broadcast the science session and also so I could see how it drove traffic. I set up tickets in Eventbrite and I could see the huge integrations that this site had with Facebook, Twitter and instagram. In addition, I activated my Mailchimp account that had been dormant for a while. I used the TeachMeetNZ meets Science session to play with many of the tools.

Science at Newmarket School has many links. In particular the work we did with @S_Heeps. I had @BelindaHitchman join me from School in the TeachMeetNZ session. In addition we had @Doctor_Harves join us at school for a visit.

My SOLOtaxonomy thinking hat is excited because I believe that my work with TeachMeetNZ is moving into relational thinking. I am having other educators put their hand up to host a session. Yes I can already see where it needs to go for extended abstract thinking here in New Zealand. But I need a few more strong Google + educators with a working understanding of youtube.

Hey Tony, thanks for sharing a viewer’s perspective. The fun is in the connecting and collaborating sessions. Thanks too with your support in Pond, Google + and Twitter.

The term is nearly over

Sonya Van Schaijik PTC 01, PTC 04 , , , , , , ,

Reflection near the end of term allows me to sort out my thoughts and helps me make sense of the speed that sometimes happens in my thinking. This post is a way of sifting through how I am thinking.

 

Science

Science at Newmarket School has many links. The school has recently completed a science contract under the guidance of Susan Heeps. Last year Virginia Kung and her work with science was featured under the Future Focused Learning site.

During the recent #TeachMeetNZ meets #Science session Belinda Hitchman @BelindaHitchman from Newmarket School shared her work that was carried out in regards to using coding. She explained the links between understanding coding and understanding science. Recently I led a #scichatnz live twitter chat. You can read about the how the session was developed on a post on the Scichatnz blog.

The TeachMeetNZ meets Science session was a collaborative process between myself and Catherine Battersby from the Science Learning Hub. However what began as a duo chatting face to face soon became a full group of science educators making connections on twitter and google +, creating a presentation to share in a google hangout, learning and supporting each other with the tools, celebrating during and after the event and then sharing via a reflective blog post for the education community. As part of my collaboration with Cath I was interviewed by Melissa @NZScienceTeachr on behalf of the New Zealand Association of Science Educators. You can read that interview here.

Using Social Media for learning

My goal this year is to understand how social media works and so I have been investigating how everything links across platforms and how traffic is driven. I observed the TeachMeetNZ youtube channel with interest and was particularly interested in the way the channel took a spike during each session and then how this was sustained over a period of time after each event.. Through my online involvement  I stumbled across Thunderclap which is a social media tool that allows broadcasting across several social media sites at the same time. A thunderclap was activated to help broadcast the TeachMeetNZ Science session and also  to see how traffic was driven. In addition I set up tickets in Eventbrite and could identify the integrations that this site has with Facebook, Twitter and instagram. In addition, I have reactivated my Mailchimp account that has been dormant for a while as this allowed access to subscribers to events.

I used the TeachMeetNZ meets Science session to play with many of the social media tools.

 

TeachMeetNZ goal

Recently I had a discussion with Julie Lindsay and she asked me what my goals were for TeachMeetNZ. My  goal for TeachMeetNZ is for the process to continue to evolve. I have identified that my work with teachers and the site is moving into relation thinking using SOLOtaxonomy because each year I have had a teacher take on the task of hosting an event. Therefore other educators are making the link of the importance of teachers sharing their practice. A few other educators have indicated a willingness to host a session. So far I have had Tim Gander hosted a TeachMeetNZ meets PE, Steve Mouldey hosted TeachMeetNZ meets Geography and now Cath Battersby hosted TeachmeetNZ meets Science. Coming up there is a session for Samoan teachers and a session for Maori teachers. In October Matt Esterman has agreed to cohost with me again as we run a second ‘Across the Ditch’ TeachMeetNZ where we combine TeachMeetNZ with TMSydney.

The real goal of TeachMeetNZ is about educators making learning to network and make connections with each other outside their school bubble and having fun learning collaboratively.

 

Youtube as a vehicle for sharing continues to evolve and for the next topic focussed TeachMeetNZ  I recommend a drop in presenter numbers and having a larger support team. For example having a separate time keeper then enables me to move silently in the background and concentrate on cameras and sound. In addition having the twitter broadcaster join the hangout and even have a live blogger record the event in progress. It does take time to train a team, however the event quality is worth it. For the next subject specific TeachMeetNZ these recommendations will be put to the host because ultimately the session is for a teacher to practice reciprocity and help with coordinating and running the session.

 

Leaving a legacy

TeachMeetNZ is about teachers leaving a legacy for the education community. This can be in the way of twitter microblogging and being curated using storify, it is in the youtube clips, the slides that are made available to the community via the wiki, it is in the reflective blog posts that eventuate about the sessions and the process.

Where to Next: 

Currently  TeachMeetNZ educators create their own presentations on something they are passionate about. Each session is about bringing a group of educators together to make connections with each other online and to share their learning.

Using all of my own learning frameworks, I have identified that my next big step using youtube is all about collaboration. I am planning for teachers to work together and create an artefact like I learnt how when becoming FlatConnection Certified. Through the work I do with Pam Hook, I have identified networking to learn as thinking relationally because teachers working collaboratively together strengthens their understanding about making links with each other and with a topic.

If an artefact is co-created  then abstract thinking is extended. This was highlighted in the edbookNZ project that happened during Connected Educators month. The educators taking part informed me that they had more fun learning with each other during the process.

 

Teachers collaborating and networking to learn

So the edbooknz collaborative site is ready and I have put my hand up to organise and coordinate this during Connected Educator month in October. I will use all my learning around social media and educators to drive this years #edbooknz project. It will be wiki based so all learning will be public. This will drive extended abstract thinking because many educators come together, make links and cocreate a product in live time and with a realtime audience.

 

Final Question

Will you say yes to this collaborative opportunity? Will you allow your learning to be on display in real time? If you are keen to be one of the team leaders, then let me know.

Educampwelly

Sonya Van Schaijik Professional Learning, PTC 01 , ,

Yesterday I attended #educampwelly at St Mary’s college in Wellington.

I took time out from a hectic schedule to show my support for Philippa who I knew was one of the organisers.

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Teachmeetnz : @Juliet_Revell @timoslimo @hunch_box @AKeenReader @vanschaijik @heymrshay @taratj

Philippa is one amazing educator who is moving fast in ‘edusphere’. Last year she presented with me on a TeachMeetNZ session and later on we were both on the steering committee for edchatnz, then she was was selected to be a Coreefellow 2015 intake. Now she is part of the Mindlab team and is sharing her passion about Design thinking and learning. That is her in the middle of the #TeachMeetNZ photo that I always try and gather at events.

However as an experienced teacher sometimes we attend events to offer support but can come away with so much more. That was me.

First of all I was able to visit St Mary’s College and having been a Director of Religious studies for most of my teaching career, I was able to see the visual evidence of the special character of the school. I loved the way that the main organiser Paula opened the session for the day as all catholic schools open special events with a prayer. I especially loved that she proudly did so in Te Reo. She delegated the blessing of the meal to another delegate.

The second highlight was catching up with the fabulous #TeachMeetNZ educators. I always watch how they are getting on and have a real sense of pride in seeing them. I was able to chat with the upcoming presenters such as @Jackbillie35 and @steve_katene and find out more about them and their interests and tag a new presenter for an upcoming session.

The third highlight was having a chat with Tim about the Pond developments and hear him mentor a new ICT Lead teacher in ensuring that systems are in place before purchasing devices. This reminded me how much I still need to mentor staff at my school about pedagogy before the tool and continue to encourage them to share their practice outside of our school bubble.

A further highlight was leading a SOLOtaxonomy session. Totally off the cuff and totally exciting because we had recently had Pam Hook work at our school and we revisited the why and the how of SOLOtaxonomy. Therefore I was able to share with the interested delegates some of what I had recently heard from Pam. I think that my mentor Ginny would have been proud because I even showed them how to create a rubric using the generator from Pam’s site. However on reflection, I did not start with a rubric. I did use the hand signals to indicate a shift in thinking. I also used the hand signals to identify teachers whose thinking was strong and encouraged them to lead a discussion at their tables because the group was so big.

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I attended other sessions too and took away much in the discussion. I was able to make connections with heaps of new educators, introduced a couple onto twitter, and unfortunately could not attend everything. So I do look forward to reading other blogs about the educampwelly event. For example here is Leanne’s reflection. @fivefoot3

Finally you have no idea how excited I was to meet Drew @phatnesian and Victoria @vtofilau. They are other Samoan educators who also attended on the day. We chatted in Samoan and generally basked in the glow of finding each other as I know from research how few and far we are in the education system.

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To finish up with I love freebies. As educators we often spend on our own professional development and it was such a fabulous gesture of Coreeducation Wellington team to sponsor our lanyards. This helped us put a twitter handle to a face. They were there too and helped with registration and helped problem solve the WIFI.

To the N4L team who put on the pizzas for us hungry people. This enabled us to stay back and chat because during the packed day there were so many exciting sessions that just having the opportunity to chat and catch up with each other is also such an important part of educamps. Thank you too for this. You remember what it is like as teachers to attend events and knew exactly what you would do if you had the chance to support.

Now Fiona, educamp mama you were not here physically but you were here on our lips, in our minds and in the odd tweet you were tagged in and responded to.

So for all of the delegates who attended, have you fulfilled the criteria for earning your digital badge? To help you, here is the twitter list from the day. Have you joined the educamp group on google +? Here is the link.

Have you taken time out to say thanks to the amazing welly_ed team who put together this fabulous event for us? What are your plans regards running your own collaborative event? eg: I have one coming up #TeachMeetNZ meets #Science hosted by Cath.

Lastly have you recorded your reflection of the day and have shared it in a public way?