All teachers are learners – All learners are teachers

As many of you know I have predominantly been working in the middle years.  As part of my growth as an Early Years teacher and literacy leader, I invite feedback on my work program each week.  Usually I will have a literacy, numeracy and play and say workprogram but for the first week I have a basic outline due to planning week disruptions.  I am coaching other teams literacy planning and then having my own teams day on the Friday,

Apologies for the images this time.  Still getting all software onto my mac.  I would love feedback on my first week activities for my prep/one class.  I also aim to review and reflect on this at the end of the week.

Well back to the classroom for me.  Last week we had our three professional learning days before the students got back.  Despite my annoyance with the then Minister Kosky’s decision to dictate when teachers can get together and learn as a school I found the days a great support to me as a teacher returning back after 18 months.  Our three days were split up into numeracy, literacy and staff development.  My aim for my blog this year is to not always be a rant blog but to be a reflective place where I seek feedback from the online community and grow as an early years teacher.  With this in mind here is my brain dump from the 3 day Professional Learning days.

Day One: Frame up- Early Years Numeracy Interview and Scaffolding Numeracy Assessment

• Feedback is the single most important determinant in student learning – This made me reflect on how I will give constructive meaningful positive feedback in the prep classroom.
• Numeracy interview a great tool to not only assess but support planning and learning in the Early Years.
• Support resources in the numeracy domain are wonderful.  Too often we are searching for resources and we forget about great ones in front of our noses.

Day Two: Literacy Comprehension Resources – Run by Mark Barrett

Conditions for learning – Successful conditions for learning

• Immersion – You are surrounded by an environment that was rich
• Demonstration – Repeated opportunities to observe the process
• Engagement – You are fully engaged in the process of learning.  You believe you can do it.  It is purposeful and you can see a reason behind it.
• Expectation – Your teacher believed you were going to be successful.
• Use – Sufficient time and opportunity to practice and use our learning.
• Approximation – You felt safe when trying out your new abilities.
• Response – Positive encouraging.  Knowledgeable and timely feedback free of negative judgments.

Gradual release of responsibility from teacher to the student.

Importance of ‘just right’ texts.  95-96% accuracy with understandings.

Teaching does not mean learning!!

David Hornsby’s site is a great support: www.literacyeducators.com.au

Six Comprehension Strategies

• Prediction/Prior Knowledge
• Questions and questioning
• Think Aloud
• Text Structure and Features
• Visualisation
• Summarisation

Day Three – Staff Wellbeing

• You are responsible for your own wellbeing
• Train your mind like you train your body
• Strengthen your awareness muscles
• Accept the unchangeable
• Change the changeable
• Avoid the unacceptable.

After the three days I am now geared up for my class tomorrow!

Swings

When I look back at the last 18 months I have to say it has been a wide wonderful ride.  18 months ago I left teaching to pursue some time in the private sector and work for a IWB/software company.  Over my time in the private sector I have had some amazing experiences, I met the love of my life via twitter, got to travel to many places I would not have dreamed to go to and got to meet the most amazing people in a multitude of settings.

I would not swap any of my time at all, it has been bumpy but I have to say it shook me out of my comfort zone and made me appreciate life and friends more than ever before.  I also came to realise that I work to live and not live to work and part of this realisation led me back to teaching.  Work is not difficult if you love it and it inspires you.  Whilst I have enjoyed my role out of schools I have not LOVED it ! It did not make me want to jump out of bed every morning.

This is because I love teaching more than any job before in my life.  I love working with students and assisting them to achieve their full potential everyday.  I do not think there is anything more rewarding to me than this and as much as the money and the rewards of the private sector are wonderful it is not the same as having your own grade.  So in about October I slowly made the decision to find a school and a position that I wanted to apply for and to try and get back into leadership and the profession that I loved.

I looked high and low, my criteria for a good school had changed over time.  This time I no longer wanted to work at a school where I could be promoted quickly up the bureaucratic ladder, I did not want a MacDonald sized mega school and I did not want to be out of the classroom 100% of the time. The other major criteria which may shock some people is that I no longer wanted a leadership position in ICT and elearning.  I am of the belief that the days of the elearning manager are dead and that modern literate leaders are needed in the core areas of literacy and numeracy.

I wanted a job in a small primary school in the community in which I lived in leading literacy.  I was lucky enough to find a school which ticked all these boxes and I decided to apply and give it my best shot.  My application was a culmination of various people such as Annabel Astbury, Valerie Khoo and Bill Dennis who all helped me in proof reading and via moral support throughout the process.  Well all of their help came to fruition and I got the job that I dreamed of.  Thanks to all !

Now the school I am going to is not perfect and I am not going in with rose coloured glasses.  I have a grade prep/one for the first time ever and for the majority of my students English will be their third language.  I am positive this will be a hard road, much harder than private sector life but it will be immensely rewarding and once again I will feel like I am making a real difference in my profession.

The other wonderful part of this decision is that I will be back in a supportive community where I can give as much as I get back.  I look forward to sharing my journey with you all as a returning leader with a new found focus and love for literacy in all its wonderful forms.

I have not written on my blog for awhile and really felt the need to express what is in my head !

So here I am writing about my experiences in the Melbourne twitter community.

I have been on twitter since early 2007.  Up until last year I used it as a communication tool for education.  However thanks to a few people I decided to start using twitter as a means of changing and reflecting on myself.  About a year ago I was in a horrible relationship and to be honest I used twitter to meet new people.  I already had wonderful friends that were on twitter such as @middleclassgirl, @jokay, @deangroom, @alupton and @kerryank, I assumed that everyone would be as lovely as these people.  I started to chat to an @andrewsayer who made me laugh so much.  One night I organised to meet this man with @middleclassgirl by my side I started my online adventures.  That was an interesting night to say the least but it gave me a little bit courage to meet others.  So from that about a month passed and I was talking to @andrewsayer at least twice a day when he invited me to a @mtub (www.mutb.org) I had never been to anything by myself before and was nervous as hell.  However from my experiences with the online world I thought that it would be as friendly as my other experiences had been.

So I dressed up and arrived one Friday night to a Pirate mtub.  I got there early (very characteristic of me) and I felt like I had walked into a closed club everyone knew each other, one person invited me to sit down @mcornetto and I began to chat and relax.  There were a few people there who refused to introduce themselves and just stuck to themselves.  Then I met the lovely Cheng who was new to all of this as well.  I have to mention Fiz who took me for a walk and actually got to know some things about me !   The night progressed and I will admit I fell in love with @andrewsayer.  That caused a little bit of grief because he was “old twitter crew” and here I was some new thing hanging around.  My arrival caused tears from one girl who had a crush on Sayer (yes I have the DM’s and facebook messages to prove that) and it caused me to make a few enemies straight away.

See I think the community is wonderful as long as no one steps on toes but I came in fell in love and stepped on toes. I was subjected to backstabbing, emails and sms’s about me.  I did however ignore it as I was interested in Andrew. By ignoring it I would go home and cry about it whilst still seeking acceptance.

So I started dating him and began hanging with his “friends” from the twittersphere, I was an outsider, they would pull him away and ask why he was with “her” Now this was not the rule but it did feel like it was.  I felt like I had to be nice to gain their acceptance when on reflection I was never going to be liked by these people.  I tried and tried and went against my own morals to be liked by these people and never was. I was even forced to be nice to ex conquests of andrew’s who made it very clear that I was not liked.

So I got bitter ! I am not proud of that but I did.  I began to not give a stuff about them and became one of them, I had my own loud mouthed friends and it became a bit of a sided mtub where groups would hang.  Instead of worrying about the tweets mocking the new people attending I mocked the other.  I became one of the Mean girls.  Again although it felt like 99% of the time and people but it was really about 10%. However I made sure we were at every mtub and mistakenly thought of my followers as friends !

These people were not my or Andrew’s friends they were vultures !

My tweets in that time changed I was arrogant and attracting followers.  In reflection it was not people who liked me, it was people who liked to hear about me.  I was this months entertainment.  I became increasingly disillusioned with the online world as I watched people hide behind fake names to insult others.  Never ever have I been approached face to face with any criticism in this world, I only dealt with keyboard bravado.

So fast forward to this year.  I was secure in my relationship with Andrew and realized that I am me.  In about April I stopped attending mtubs and spent more time with people I loved.  This did not stop certain trolls from constantly having sideways digs at things I wrote.  For awhile I pretended that it did not affect me when in fact it did.  Side digs constantly hurt.  People hide behind the excuse “well I did not mention you by name” when it is obvious you are having a go.  What their motives are to be a bitch I am not sure.  I began to get really hurt by constant digs and as much as others tried to tell me to ignore it and harden up it did not stop the pain.

As a human we love acceptance and I think that for certain people in the Melbourne twittersphere they felt that they would gain more acceptance in the group if they picked on that chick that stole andrewsayer away and made him less fun in their eyes.  However in some twisted sort of humour instead of ignoring me they would follow me and bait me and up until now I took that bait and became a weekly spectacle on twitter as I was teased and would lose it.  I used to see this happen when I was teaching but I now know that meanness does not know age limits.

This week I hit breaking point, I had been thinking about deleting my account for about 2 months and I watched others delete their accounts and was wondering if I could do it.  Then I did and the bullies won.  I cried all night that I let them push me away from a medium where I loved 90% of my interaction.  I then spoke to friends the next day and thought.  In particular Annabel and Kerry who reflected on my changing nature and how I have grown.

I then grew up !  I restored my account and refused to worry about validation and acceptance off twitter anymore.  I blocked all the negative influences I was seeing and got rid of the shit stirrers who loved to watch me lose it from their digs.  Andrew and I decided we would sit down and evaluate who we allow into our online lives together.

I do not use twitter like I used to.  In all honesty I used to use it to gain validation from a sea of nameless faces, I was a bit of a junky ! I enjoyed the kind words and lashed out at the horrible ones.  The first thing I would do in the morning was check what the masses were saying and the last thing I would do at night was say goodnight to the sea of nameless faces.   I have grown up a bit ! I am not great with words and this was sent to me and it sums up my online world thoughts:

“I personally subscribe to one ideal, in the real world and on the Internet:

99% of people that you meet/converse with are not worth the time or trouble.

The other 1% are people that you connect with, they can be honest with you (without being hurtful) and these are the ones that you hang onto, becuase these are the friends that will be there for life.

Friends who are there for life do not need to talk to you every day, they are the ones who are there for you when you most need them!”

I am lucky to have met some wonderful people and still look forward to meeting others over time but I now realise that true friends, those 1% are the ones I should be worrying about, not the 99% of noise that I have been focusing on. I find it ridiculous now that I worried about people not liking me who never took the time to get to know me.  A drunken meeting at an mtub does not constitute “knowing” a person or even having the right to judge such person.

My actions have not always been fantastic but then neither have my intentions at least I am brave enough to admit when I have been a bitch ! I ask anyone out there who has had an online shot at anyone then justified to themselves by “it was not my intention” to really have a hard look at yourself. I no longer subscribe to my fix of affirmation from an online world, I write what I write and if you want to meet me then message me and I would love to get to know you.  If you do not like me my advice is stop being a keyboard bully and just walk away.

A huge thanks to my friends who behind the scenes give me support and love me for who I am and have taken the time to get to know me and not rely on others perceptions.

Well again my blog is the neglected youngest child in my flock.  I have to say I really struggle to write a blog about education when I can have conversations and also have a life.

As many people know I am an avid twitter user however not for education primarily.  I use twitter to broaden my PLN outside of education.  I do tweet about mundane aspects of my life and I love it.  Twitter for me is about connections and conversations which broaden my thinking.  I hardly follow any educators on twitter and I think that is why I love it.  If I want to talk about education I have forums for it but my whole online identity is not about my work and neither it should be.  I think one big thing about twitter that people struggle to understand is that you can build your social network to be however you like it.  That is what is wonderful about it.  I could think of nothing worse (no offence educators) than only following school based thoughts, links and yet another *experts* social rhetoric on how education works.

NECC was fantastic to clarify my thoughts about the world of education.  I got to meet so many people whose blogs I read and love.  Through these discussions and meetings I began to understand the most edubloggers are in the business of educational sales.  I could not believe how many people were organising work schedules, book deals or keynote sessions.  My favourite quote from the conference was:

“There is as much sales upstairs in the sessions as there is on the trade show floor”

This made me think about our conferences and what Australians go and speak.  I have to say that besides only one person I could think of that for the most part presenters in Australia are presenting whilst working in classrooms and do so asking for nothing in return.  These teachers are not looking for the next consultancy junket, book deal or keynote invite.  They are working for their kids and are happy to present and share information for the purpose of a better educational system.  This made me quite proud.

After NECC I think that in any session I will look at what are the underlying sales messages from the session.  This is a very hard thing to do in a non trade session but I think it is a worthwhile activity.  As many know I work for a vendor and I am upfront about what I am selling but I have to question how many “big names” both in USA and AUS are into sales not of product but of themselves.  I would love people to be upfront and proud of their personal sales messages just as the vendors are forced too !

The amazing part of NECC was getting beyond all of the glitz, trade shows, personal sales and to get to the people.  The conversations I had and the connections made were truly wonderful.  I hope that on my behalf I managed to show a few people that you can still be intelligent with an interest in education whilst having fun and not taking yourself or your job too seriously. I hope that a few people understood my philosophy of “I work to live, not live to work” and that by having interests outside of education can be a truly wonderful thing.

So my learning’s from NECC in a nutshell were:

• Online discussions are wonderful but are still no substitute for live face to face conversations
• Everyone needs to be aware and upfront about what “products” they are selling.  Selling yourself is a product never forget that !
• Educators could learn a lot from people outside of education but life is quite safe in the echo chamber.
• I learnt more talking to homeless people in Central Park than I did at any presentation and I love that that is ‘OK’
• Conversations allow people to see the “real you” and online personas struggle to do this.
• I knew this already thanks to Sue Waters but “You can only be one person online” I choose to be me mundane at all and I will never apologise for it.
• Aussies are doing extremely well in regards to education and we should be very proud !

I would love to hear others views on this !

Well as you are know I am rather active on twitter.  To the point of mania.  I tweet all day and night, and I love it, some people mock my twittering but hey there is a solution it is called the unfollow button.

However my blog has fallen by the wayside because to be honest it is a pain in the butt crafting a blog post when I can tell people what I think multiple times a day 140 characters at a time.  I love the people I communicate with on twitter and have some amazing friendships and one pretty special relationship as a result of it.  I have a special place for the educators I follow and follow me on twitter as they understand that my life is not all about education and that it is ok as an educator to have a life and tell others about that life.  Too often teachers are pigeonholed into only blogging about education or only talking about teaching.  I have to mention Stephen Heppell at this stage because I feel that our knowledge of his sailing and other pursuits increases my engagement of his educational writings.   His writing makes me relate because he is a real person ! He is not Super educator who always has the right answer when it comes to learning.  I do not want the right answer all the time but I do want to engage with people are holistic in their love for life and education.

So back to twitter,

I am a little bit like that high school student that sits in your class incessantly chatting, flickring and texting yet unable to write an essay.  On twitter this is accepted yet in the classroom it is not.  I have become even more like that unmotivated student lately where I grudgingly write this blog post as a means of trying once again to get teachers to understand that there are multiple ways of expressing oneself and that we need to look outside our comfort zone as teachers.

Literacy as we all know is ever changing and we are already seeing the advent of twitter in the marketing sphere with companies jumping on board faster than you can use the buzzwords social media and marketing maven.
How about asking students to critically analyse a celebrity’s tweetstream or to follow a company’s journey on twitter ?  Students are very adept at analysising effective usage of media so instead of mocking or banning a child like me in your class why don’t embrace them?

I would also like to thank all of the educational twitterers who have been part of my journey as an edutweet since April 2007. You know who you are as you put up with all of my non edu tweets and understand that just like it was all education previously I am finding a balance.  I have had this discussion many times with many mentors re online personas and I have to say I live by the advice Sue Waters gave me which is “You can only be one person online”

Now instead of questioning the relevance of twiter, flickr etc in our schools let’s begin looking at the application.  Surely in 2009 we need to get past long winded blogposts about why we need to embed ICT and begin to look at the application of ICT.

Can I first start this blog post with a disclaimer to my allegiances.

I have always throughout my life voted for the Australian Labor Party (sometimes preferences through Greens).  I grew up in a staunchly unionised household where both parents instilled left wing ideology at the rapid rate throughout my childhood.  I am now 28 years of age and a product of my parents I became a teacher and was of course active with the AEU in Victoria.

I recently left teaching a profession which I loved for other opportunities.  Opportunities I was not to experience under the current public school system in Victoria.

Recent media has proven something I knew for quite a long time.

To put it bluntly Victorian Schools are being ripped off by the Brumby Government.  Victoria is the bottom of the class for educational funding.  Now not only are we at the bottom of every state and territory, our government has also cut funding to education over the past 12 months.  I cannot help but get really angry about this because as a voter I need to cast my mind back to when I was a student.  I remember the amazing campaigns to kick Jeff Kennett out of Spring Street by the AEU.  If I remember correctly the AEU actually took a lot of credit for the demise of the state Liberal government.  So can you imagine my annoyance when I see funding and contract teaching rates have slipped back to the Kennett era status and nobody seems to be saying anything about it.

So schools are struggling for funding in Victoria, we are the only state where Internet is charged to schools and yet 10,000 netbooks have been delivered this week.

I applaud such a trial but one has to wonder where the money for the new wireless networks, software and internet charges will come from for these netbooks?  I doubt it will come from ever dwindling state funds.  On a scarier note I think the funds will come from fees and charges to parents across the state.  Fees and charges which are not being paid in other states and Victorians keep blindly paying them because we keep assumming that education funding will be better under a Labor government.

I remember working with a first year graduate at a public school in Melbourne.  They asked me for an AEU form and I said I will be able to find you one.  Another staff member asked this teacher “why are you joining the union?”  His response was:

“I am joining the union as that is what you are meant to do as a teacher, I am also changing my vote to ALP because a labor party looks after teachers”

I am worried that it is this commonplace generalisation about the ALP supporting teachers which has left Victorian Students and Schools the lowest funded in the country.

Come on Victoria, smell the cheese and start speaking out about poor conditions for Victorian Schools.

I have to admit that for the first time in my voting life I am considering putting Labor last in the next State Election as I am tired of the neglect.

Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/larlo/2258759062/

Trust image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/xxsnuffxx/69503051/

I have been spending a bit of time lately pondering what I would want in a teacher when starting up a school.  I have seen many posts about “essential skills” for teachers.  The discussions on blogs centre around what technological and pedagogical skills you need as a 21st century teacher.

Whilst I agree with all comments and skillsets required for such a super teacher I cannot help but feel that we are missing trust.

Over the last 6 months working in schools and training teachers.  I have met so many teachers who are lacking trust and as a result students are lacking optimal learning.

They are lacking trust in:

• Their school system to provide support and vision
• Their school leadership to drive systemic change
• In themselves to be able to achieve innovative educational outcomes
• In their students to be able achieve regardless of their background

I am starting to think that this element of trust is somehow being pushed to the back of the needs skillset for our teachers.  I am feeling that as a result of this educators are losing their autonomy to make education decisions which are best for our students.  I work with so many teachers who feel that they cannot trial new ideas or work with students on unstructured projects because leadership will not be happy.

I am keen to start the discussion on what other elements of a teacher you feel are needed.

Do you think trust is missing in education at the moment?

If you believe trust is an important element in education, how to do work to build it?

How can we build systemwide trust?

Well I always knew one day I would catch some bad habit off John Pearce so I unlike Chris Betcher stayed away from the phising attack on twitter when poor Mr Pearce’s account was hacked.  On a more positive note I have been tagged in the 7 things meme.  Apologies for my tardiness both in this meme and in my blog.  Rest assured I am well rested and ready to rant in 2009 about all things educational and sometimes non educational.

So here are the 7 things you may not know about me.

1) I can play the viola.  I learnt through Secondary School and played pretty well too.  I felt special because it was the only instrument at the school on the Alto Clef.  I am also pretty handy at transposing of music as well.

2) I didn’t always want to be a teacher, I wanted to be a vet.  I have an absolute love of animals and that was my chosen vocation until I did work experience and realised that animals get put down.

3) I have an amazing love for show tunes and musicals.  It is not unheard for me to dance around the house to the soundtracks of many musicals….

4) I speak Indonesian as a result of some study and far too much time spent in Bali.  Bali is a bit like my second home.

5) The first movie I cried in was Milo and Otis.

6) I found the love of my life on twitter of all places.  This from the girl who made fun of twitter being blocked in DEECD schools because it was a dating site.

7) I sometimes stop blogging because I feel that I don’t have much to contribute amoungst all the voices that are out there.  I once looked at closing my blog for that reason.  Now I blog for me and when I want.

Now nearly everyone I know has been tagged in this so I thought I would tag some twitter peeps instead.  So I am tagging:

• Annabel @middleclassgirl
• Stephanie @tephdee
• Kerry @kerryank
• Griff @griffmiester
• Tania @taniasheko
• Penny @pennyryder
• Robyn @Robynclarke

Firstly apologies for the lack of blogging, contrary to popular opinion I have not retired my ranting about education.  I did however have a hiatus on getting angry.  This was until my philosophy of education and student learning was under threat by the Rudd proposal to filter Australia’s Internet.

As a teacher I have always believed that it was never our job to decide knowledge and ‘feed’ it to students.  I have and will always believe that through appropropriate and impartial modelling and facilitation we work with students to enable them to disseminate and critical acquire and construct knowledge.

So we are now looking down the barrel of a filtered internet where the government will decide what we can or cannot look at.  This would put our country alongside Iran, China and North Korea in regards to Internet Filtering.

The excuse for this filtering our Government is giving us ???

Well of course it is to protect the children.

Now I think child pornography is abhorrent but I do not see a filtering of our internet as the solution to this.  In fact it could worsen the issue, whereby police and governmental agencies take money out of investigating child pornography rings because funds are diverted to a filter.

So what does this mean for education you may ask?

In my view it means that the government is teaching students that if there is something they shouldn’t see on the internet then it will be filtered from them.  It is teaching students to become passive users of technology and their learning.

As teachers we see Internet Censorship already affecting our teaching practices everyday.  Web 2.0 tools such as nings, twitter, youtube and wikis are blocked in many schools around the country.  Yet our Prime Minister says we are in the middle of an “Education Revolution”

How so I ask?

Is it revolutionary to ?

• Provide laptops to schools with no supporting funds to run them
• Slow down our Internet through mandatory filters at the ISP level
• Block web 2.0 tools in schools so that students in Australia cannot collaborate with schools across the world.
• Encourage parents to put their faith in their child’s internet safety onto a filter

I have seen a lot of discussion about this issue throughout the twittersphere but am yet to see a lot of discussion in the educational blogosphere and I encourage all teachers to visit http://nocleanfeed.com/ and take action by writing to Senator Stephen Conroy and expressing your concerns regarding this invasive plan to restrict our critical thinking and encourage passive use of the internet.

This is one of the most serious things I have ranted on about in recent times and I urge you to comment, blog, write letters and take action on this before it is too late and your responses are filtered.

Thanks to Brownwen Clune for her great video and image sourced from http://www.flickr.com/photos/renelemerle/2986442532/