Reflecting on the practicing teacher criteria 2021

To have spent so many months working from home in a job that usually involves so much face to face time, has made 2021 feel like a bit of an odd year for msot Auckland based teachers. So many of my usual patterns and routines as a teacher was disturbed, and so many plans were disrupted. And while supporting student learning from home is certainly not the norm, it doesn't change the professional responsibilities we hold. In fact, as I reflected on the practicing teacher criteria for 2021, I was reminded once again of just how flexible we need to be if we are to support our learners effectively in such uncertain, and somewhat volatile times. 

What follows is a brief reflection about how I attempted to address the practising teacher criteria in 2021. I have included some examples of my practice, as well as a brief reflection on some of my next steps for 2022. 

Ghostbusters! - Dealing with ghosting students in lockdown (and the classroom).

We are back in lockdown thanks to COVID and the delta variant. As the days pass while teaching remotely, it becomes increasingly apparent that some students struggle to engage in lockdown more than others. And some of them try their best to ghost you. As always, it is often these disengaged students that are the most vulnerable and at risk. So how do we get them engaged again? 

What became overwhelmingly clear as I sifted through the research, teacher, and student feedback is that good practice is good practice - regardless of whether you are teaching in person or remotely. All of the recommended practices, strategies, tools, etc. reflect the key messages from the OECD's The Nature of Learning report. (If you haven't read this yet, do so urgently. It provides a really great summary of research to inspire good teaching practice.)

Of particular relevance are the 8 basics of student motivation that this report summarises:

This post is a list of ideas, recommendations, and best practices compiled from teacher feedback on Twitter, reports from ERO (New Zealand Education Review Office), the Education Hub, as well as a student survey done at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. 

How do you know if you have a ghost?

The Responding to the Covid-19 crisis: Supporting Auckland NCEA students report clearly identifies that the longer a student is disengaged, the harder it is to reengage them. Hence, it is important to reach out to disengaged students as early as possible. Additionally, focussing on the relationship first appears to be a key aspect of getting our ghosts engaged, and keeping them engaged

• Setting up tasks that 'self mark' so that it is easy to track disengagement with minimal effort eg. Google Quiz through Google Classroom, Quizizz, Playposit, Education Perfect, Pear Deck. 
• Using the assignment function through Google Classroom to make it easy to see when students have turned in work or turned work in late. 
• Using the grade book function in learning management systems (eg. Google Classroom) to track overall engagement. 
• Doing a roll in synchronous video calls. 

How do you stop them from being ghosts in the first place?

As with so many other things in education, relationships are at the heart of the matter. Hence, we need to think about how we might maintain our focus on relationships, with students and between students. This is also great for helping students to manage their well-being in lockdown as the absence of their peers can have a detrimental effect on their mental health.  Some ways to do this include:

• Smaller group asynchronous video calls rather than large group calls.
• Personal emails to check in with students. 
• Collaborative tasks that require students to reach out to their peers. 
• Pastoral group meetups for fun. eg. quiz, pictionary, etc. 
• Private comments through Google Classroom as reminders.
• Email telling them I am thinking about them and miss them in class will often do the trick, especially with higher year levels. 
• Email whanau. Call whanau if still nothing. 
• Organising a one on one video call to check in and help problem solve any issues acting as obstacles in proceeding with learning. 
• Organising small group synchronous video calls specifically for students who are struggling. 
• Connecting students who need extra support with a counsellor, teacher aide to help as appropriate.
• Support students with building self-regulating skills. Eg. helping them to fill in a daily planner, teaching them productivity tools eg. single-tasking, quick writes, kanban, etc. 
• Don't give up. Keep emailing and calling, keep getting in touch to check how the student is doing. 

How do you set ghost busting tasks?

During a lockdown, it is much easier for students to opt-out of tasks that are boring, busy work, too hard, etc. Hence, the quality of the work tends to have a much bigger impact on student engagement than when we are in their faces at school actively nagging them. The research and student voice is really clear about the kinds of tasks that help to keep students engaged and as a result, motivated. As a result, we should focus on designing tasks that are:

• Set tasks that are clearly linked and matched to the intended learning outcomes that students know and value - aka. moving beyond low-level tasks and “busy work” to tasks that students feel are important and meaningful. 
• Scaffold. Scaffold. Scaffold. Students don't have access to the teacher or peers in the same way as at school so making sure that the tasks is broken down in a way that is easy for them to make sense of is key. 
• Shorter instructions, which broke tasks into chunks, tended to be more effective in scaffolding students through the learning.
• Ramping up the difficulty level in tasks as you go along to ensure that all students feel a measure of success when completing tasks. (SOLO works really well for this - see example)
• Using Universal Design for Learning practices eg. 
• Supplementing written instructions for tasks with short video explanations.
• Offering personal 60 second video lessons for question messaged in the private chats.
• Mixing up the type of tasks eg. hands-on.
• Reduce the fear of failure such as by using gamification eg. Kahoot.
• Providing students with a degree of choice over how they completed a task typically led to greater engagement in the learning and a higher probability of the task being completed. 

How do you help the students manage themselves in order to avoid ghosting?

Despite 'managing self' being one of the key competencies of our New Zealand curriculum, lockdown really highlights our short fall in helping students develop self-regulation skills. There are a number of ways that we can help students improve their self-management, and as a result, improve their engagement and motivation during lockdown and at school. Additionally, maintaining high expectations and holding students accountable for meeting these expectations is also critical for maintaining students’ motivation and engagement and facilitating learning. 

• Ensuring flexibility in when students can do work. Too many set times reduces engagement and opportunities for self-management. 
• Setting realistic amounts of work. Don't fall into the planning fallacy (a prediction phenomenon, all too familiar to many, wherein people underestimate the time it will take to complete a future task, despite knowledge that previous tasks have generally taken longer than planned.)
• Set work at the start of the week so that students can plan out how they will do their learning for the week. 
• Setting tasks that are truly independent as parents and caregivers are not always able to support.
• Don't overload students with too much information or communication - keep it simple and concise with a clear and easy option for following up if they have questions.
• Make videos for students to watch in their own time. 
• Must do/Should do/Could do tasks to ensure that workload can match student context, but also to provide a sense of agency. 
• Setting deadlines and time limits of tasks, and following up with students who have not met these. 
• Supporting students to complete a daily planner to help them identify deadlines and prioritise their efforts (see student example from Hobsonville Point Secondary). 
• Providing regular formative assessment and feedback that was connected to the expectations set by the teacher was crucial for motivation and engagement as well as for ongoing learning.
• Students who established some form of routine or daily structure were more likely to stay up-to-date with work and to maintain their engagement. eg. daily small group check-in, daily planner. 
• Use coaching conversations (eg GROW coaching) to help students problem solve and self determine their next steps. 

Hopefully, there are some helpful ideas in here to help with your ghosts. If you have more ideas of things that have worked for you. Please leave them in the comments too!

Further reading

• Responding to the Covid-19 crisis: Supporting Auckland NCEA students (ERO)
• Learning from lockdown (Education Hub)
• The Nature of Learning (OECD)

Culturing culturally responsive pedagogy

Honouring New Zealand's bicultural partnership is important, but how do you find a way to include it authentically in the senior science classroom? I am sure that many science teachers would agree that it can be difficult to do this, and make their way through all the content and assessments. I know that I have certainly struggled! Many of us make small efforts, we might include a few token te reo words in our lessons like "e tū" and "tumeke". If you're lucky, you might see the Māori names for tripod or bunsen burners up around the room. But usually we get straight back to talking about old white men, Darwin, Newton, Rutherford, Mendel and Mendeleev.

Of course for many of us, our classrooms have become increasingly diverse too. In just one of my classes this year, I have students from China, Korea, Japan, Samoa, Phillipines, Indonesia, Samoa and Australia. There are also students born in New Zealand however many of their parents were born in other countries, so they bring cultural mixes like Italian, English, German and Turkish to the mix too. So while I am trying to honour New Zealand's bicultural partnership, I am also trying to accommodate a huge variety of cultural diversity in the classroom. And then, we haven't even talked about diversity and learning needs yet!

The challenge is of course not easily solved. While many schools have International days with cultural performances and students in their national costumes, this is not enough to help our young people feel that their cultures are valued at school. We have to shift from accommodating and tolerating cultural diversity (if we even do that...), to making this a critical resource for success in academic contexts. How else can you show that cultural knowledge matters?

Now, I am no expert where culturally responsive pedagogy is concerned. But, I have been thinking really hard about how I can design academic courses that create the space for students to leverage their cultural knowledge to improve their academic success. I have also thought carefully about "demonstrating a commitment to tangata whenuatanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership in the learning environment" (from the new Practicing Teacher Criteria). I have thought about this carefully not because I am obliged to as a professional, but because I believe it is necessary if I truly wish to see success for all my students.

So after all this thinking, what have I actually come up with? Well... A fermented food shared lunch. Let me explain...

I am teaching a microbiology course this semester. We kicked off the year by asking each student to write a report on a fermented food from a cultural heritage they identify with (task sheet). In a fortnight's time, they would then have to bring the food to our class fermented foods shared lunch.
Many students were really unsure about the cultural aspect on day one, so I encouraged them to talk to their families. A number of students called their grandparents to talk about their cultural heritages, while others called an aunt, uncle or parent. And incase you are wondering, yes I did let them make phone calls in class. Some students even arranged to go and visit grandparents so that they can learn how to make their fermented food.

Rewena bread -  traditional Māori sourdough potato bread (and absolutely DELICIOUS).

On the day of the shared lunch, each student had to make a name tag to accompany their food. This included details about country of origin, microbes used to produce the food, and allergy information (see template). They also had a task sheet to fill in as they tried the wild assortment of food we had.

We really had quite the selection!

The task sheet required them to try at least five foods, and to describe each one (see task sheet here). Finally, the students had to pair up with someone who focussed on a different microbe than the one their food was made from, and then had to complete a compare and contrast thinking map (see the template on the second part of the task sheet).

I asked a student what she thought about my rather crazy fermented foods party idea after our lunch. Her response: "I understood more about my culture and it made me understand more about my class". Others commented that they had "connected" with their culture.

As for me... I was really excited to see students using their cultural knowledge to access the science knowledge and vica versa. I was excited that students were not just learning from me, but that the knowledge from their families had a place in our classroom too. Of course, I am a huge foodie so I was excited about all the new foods I got to try too, but more importantly, we all got to share a little bit of our cultures with each other too.

While today may have been full of warm fuzzies as we talked about our families and food, there is an important question now circling in head. What next? Because a few thoughtfully designed lessons at the start of year is not enough to be culturally responsive.