Category: blog

Last Day of Term and Stuff

Today is the last day of Term One and I am sitting in my office thinking.  There is a lot of stuff that I could be doing, or reading, or replying to, or leading.  But today I am going to have a little bit of “it’s all about me” time.  I have blogged about this before, feeling guilty about taking time during the school day to self-review, but I am happily over that (and because I know I will be in school most of the Easter break to catch up anyway).

So as most of you know I have been rather busy creating my first ever Strategic Plan, you can read about some of the troubles with that here.  But other than that small hiccup, I have really enjoying the process and now understand the importance of a strong school direction.  Honestly, I have never bothered to read a Strategic Plan before, I could never see the relevance to me as a classroom teacher, and as I had such a fantastic management team around me, I could just get on with the job with being the best teacher and learner I could be.

Now that I have switched to the ‘dark side’ 😉 I can really appreciate the hard work that goes into this process, even those awful surveys I hated filling out.  It is a real art, coming up with a valid community consultation process, which accurately gages the needs and values of a community without letting the ‘haters’ use it as a subversive means to undermine you (not that I get that here at all, I am very luck in that respect).

As I am in the unique position of having only, don’t laugh now, six families and one teacher to survey I decided to do this a little differently.  I wanted to find out three things – the values, the attitudes and the skills my community believe is important for their children to have by the time they leave as a Year Eight.  To do this I used a ‘Role on the Wall’, an old school reading activity commonly used with guided reading groups.  Basically you draw a hollow person, and the kids brainstorm the characters attributes.  On the inside of the character you brainstorm their personality and beliefs etc, while on the outside you brainstorm their physical characteristics.  For my consultation I asked the community to complete the brainstorm below and I am pleased to say that I received a 100% return rate, yep that’s right 7 out 7 😉

Community Consultation 2011

Ok, so getting 100% wasn’t so hard, but the information I received from the community (I was able to survey the kids too) has been invaluable to me while I flesh out the Strategic Plan.  The BOT also really enjoyed going through the information, collating the data (I just typed it out, verbatim, then cut it up so the BOT could sort it and stick it to the three headings Values, Attitudes and Skills) and discussing what really was important to them as well.  In the end we came up with ten fantastic values and attitudes which will help set the direction of the school.

Creativity; Self-Motivation; Individuality; Courage; Respect; Integrity; Enquiring Mind; Community Minded; Responsibility; Being the Best We Can Be.

I do realise, that this kind of method would be impossible for a larger school, but using this with staff, or a BOT maybe a really valuable process to work through.  One BOT member commented that it was really nice not being told which values they could choose from and they they felt like they could have more ownership of the process.  This made me feel great, I mean isn’t this exactly what our wonderful NZC is all about? 🙂

Good Advice from the Auditor-General

My buddy, the Auditor-General (not really my buddy, just exaggerating) sent out a “summary of a recent report that our Office has done on analysis of variance reports”.  This caught my eye as it mentioned school charters, and as you all know I have been having some discussion lately, with the MOE, about Charters …

Basically, the report has a lovely little check list for Boards and Principals to use when setting Strategic Goals and Annual Targets.  I won’t go into detail, as it is a really easy read – you can see the summary here.  Personally I like it and I will be using it as one of my resources while we develop our new Charter.  What I like the most about this little report is that it emphasizes the importance of “specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely” strategic goals.  And that, annual targets should relate strongly to these goals.

Therefore, I’m inferring that the Auditor-General would think it a good thing, for me to not rush the process of setting strategic goals.

So I’m not.

Google Is Kinda Awesome.

So I was super excited when Google Wave came out of the Google Super Empire, but then I quickly decided it kinda sucked.  It was this whole other Wavy World, that didn’t really work with all of my other online stuff.  Who can be bothered with another thing to check?  It would seem that my views were shared as Google Wave’s plug was pulled, and they are no longer developing this technology due to its unpopularity.

I did however really like the discussion concept found in Google Wave, and what do you know, Google took out the good Wavy Bits and just chucked them in to Google Docs! Wicked.  I haven’t managed to have a play with it yet (I was at my local NZEI Area Council Meeting all day) but here is the promotional Youtube, which is kinda lame but you get the message.

A Brief History of Technology

So it’s late, and I am tired but here is my daily post for the day.  I saw this video on Andrew Churches website, and I thought I might share it we you guys.  I think that whenever I am too busy or late to write a proper post, I might just share a Youtube that I find interesting or relevant to eLearning.

Here’s my pondering: I think that maybe it is more than accessing information, it is how you synthesize information to create new content … I should really consider this a bit more but I am tired and I need to go to bed.  Good night 🙂

Ministry, Charters, Threats, Oh My!

Letters, Letters, Letters
Letters, Letters, Letters

So last year, at some time or another, I received an email (as did every other school in NZ) that explained that the MOE wanted our Charters in on the 31st of January, 2011.  I found this very odd, so I had a look on twitter where other, much more experience principals than I, said;  Nope don’t bother you don’t have to legally until the end of the year (Dec, 2011).

Fine I thought.  I am re-doing the Strategic Plan next year and it won’t be ready anyway … forgotten.

Then we got a ‘Pack‘ from the MOE, with a helpful guide for BOTs for writing a Charter using the National Standards, with another reminder about the 31st January date.  I though bollocks to that and chucked it out (not sure if I am going to get into trouble for that) as I thought if I really do need it, I am sure there is a copy on-line.

After that I got a few more reminders but then it was the end of the year, I went on a much needed holiday for two weeks came back after New Years and completely forgot about the whole thing, until I got another letter from the MOE.  This letter basically said, Don’t worry guys, we’re sweet, we’re hip, we’re cool, you can have until the end of February to send us your Charters.

Well that’s not going to happen, I thought.  I won’t of finished my Community Consultation by then, so that letter went on the bin.

Next I got emails from NZPF and NZEI asking if I had sent my charter in yet.  Of course I responded, Nope not on your Nelly!

Now for the life of me, I can’t remember where or when, but a couple of weeks after that, I got an email saying that only 3% of schools had complied with the MOE request to have the Charters in by the 31st Jan date.  And today, the NZEI said that from their survey only 2.8% had complied.  Phew, all good for me!

So back tracking a little bit, a few days after the NZPF and NZEI emails (I’m a bit hazy on the dates, but it was before the end of Feb), my area’s MOE minder rang and asked if she could visit my school.

Not a Road You Take By Mistake
Not a Road You Take By Mistake

I said sure, doors always open, don’t turn the wrong way or you will end up in Napier … but on that particular day I will be teaching.

She said, well not so good I need to sit down with you to talk about your Charter, so never mind maybe next time.

That’s fine and dandy by me, says I.

So I was kind of hoping that she had forgotten about me, but low and behold, Thursday morning last week I received another phone call.  Can I come out at lunch time next Tuesday? she asks.

Yep, most welcome, I reply, but I am on my own and you will need to talk to me while I am on lunch duty.

Mmmm Chuck Tailors
Mmmm Chuck Tailors

So the date was set, the meeting was imminent, which brings us back to today (of course I made sure I was dressed professionally – 3/4 jeans, a t-shirt and my favourite Chuck Tailors).

My kids greeted her (they are very good at that, so proud) and we sat down for our chat.

She proceeded to inquiry about my Charter, and was I aware that it was over due?

I replied, that I thought that it wasn’t actually due until the end of the year and it wouldn’t be ready until the 1st July, as I was in the middle of re doing the Strategic Plan.

She then explained, that no I was wrong, the ministry had changed things, and if I didn’t take action soon then we would be non-compliant and a letter would be sent to the BOT saying so.

This got me a little worried (I wouldn’t want to get my BOT in trouble), but I stuck to my guns and said that’s fine, but I am not going to rush this process, I want to do it right and won’t 90% of the schools be getting a non-compliance letter anyway?

She then said, Yes they will, but why don’t you just extend or review your last years strategic plan and then have the new one next year?

I said, No, the current plan is out of date and does not fit with the current group of children, the teachers, the families or me, I need to do this properly for my students sake, I don’t want to hang in limbo with a half done Charter, and no true direction for the school.  I want to do this right.

Then she said, (by the way we were both very polite the entire time), well the Minister is concerned and non compliance is not acceptable, and she is trying to work through this, but she may choose to “sack your whole board”. . .

Hmmm – WTF

So, being the calm person that I am, I changed the topic, offered her a cup of tea and moved us outside so I could watch the kids.  We chatted politely about how wonderful country kids are, and then she was on her way (and I didn’t accidentally send her to Napier, aren’t I nice?)

Of course, straight after school I rang the NZPF Helpline, and left my name and number.  Not ten minutes later Mr Peter Witana rang back, confirmed my suspicions that, No, legally I do not have to have my Charter in until the end of 2011 and there is no way they can fire the Board for this.

Have you noticed yet, the only part of this little tale that I have quoted directly?

I think I am a bit pissed about those words.

Attributes (Gratefully from):

Letters, Letters, Letters – earth911.com

Not a Road You Take By Mistake – volvoadventures.com

Mmmm Chuck Tailors – protipoftheday.blogspot.com

Why?

Knocked Me For Six
Knocked Me For Six

So I took my senior students to a science road show in town the other day, which was being hosted by my old high school.  I attended this school from Form One to Form Seven (Year 9 – 13) with one year spent away at boarding school in Form 3.  I wasn’t the most high functioning teenager around, well actually I was a little s#!t who was very bord, overly distracted by boyfriends and had a bit too much to say.  However, I am pretty sure that I wasn’t that bad …

So, I was a wee bit excited about showing my students my old school (I know it is silly, but ho hum).  We went into the hall where the road show was set up, and standing by the door was my old Form Two (Year 10) teacher.  Who was by the way one of my favourite teachers, he’s a really nice guy and still is.

I went up to him and said, hi it’s Marama Te Pou, do you remember me?  He said, yes of course he did, and he asked about my brother (whom he taught as well), my parents, what I was doing, etc etc.  He was really nice, and I really enjoyed talking to him.  Then just before I left, he chuckled and said “You know, you are the last person I thought I would see back here.”

Well, that kind of knocked me for six, I really didn’t know what to say and then all of a sudden the kids were back and we had to go.  I never got to ask him what he meant?  Actually, I am not sure that I would have the guts to ask him what he meant.  I don’t think he meant anything bad by it, but it really made me ask a lot of questions of myself.  I mean I am a Principal of a Primary School.  What was or is it about me that made me not fit into a school?

If I am really honest with myself, I have to admit that I really didn’t enjoy high school.  But it still disturbs me that I have left this negative impression?  I don’t know really, I just thought I would share.

Plus I am trying to start a blogging habit … Mum tells me it takes three months to establish a habit.  We will see.

A Rubric for Adding Posts to Student Blogs

A View From The Mokai Range
A View From The Mokai Range

Hi Everyone (though with my slack posting of late, I doubt that I will have much everybody left 😉

I am quite tired, so this isn’t going to be one of my traditional sprawling tales.  We had our annual Pukeokahu School Horse Trek over the weekend, and I spent the weekend serving up 6am breakfasts, peeling various vegetables, feeding hungry trekkers and sleeping poorly in a smelly shearers bed (it was actually a wonderful weekend and I had a fantastic time, especially driving around the Mokai Range and maybe the party on Saturday Night 8-).

Anyway, so I just wanted to share the rubric my students and I created during the first three weeks of school this year.   My goal was for my students to create an easy to use tools which would allow them to self assess their posts on their ePortfolios in a way that they would be able to make improvements with less and less input from me.

We began by brainstorming (in small groups, then compiled as a class) what makes a fantastic blog post, after which we put the brainstormed points in to five headings, Interesting, Tools, Attributions, Punctuation and Spelling, Categories.  That night, I made up the blank rubric and entered the points into the Expert column.  The next day I modelled filling in one square per column, I then gave my three pairs of students two heading each to fill in.  Finally, we all came together and shared and debated the final wording, while I typed it in on my laptop.  This is our finished product:

Post Rubric

I must say that, this rubric was created by kids which had a good six months of blogging behind them through the Student Blogging Challenge.  So far the kids have used it for two posts, and they are not using it independently yet.  I need to constantly remind them to check back to the Rubric, and I am always saying that they need to strive for at least an Advanced level.  However, apart from my nagging, kids do actually enjoy using it.  They find it easy to use and relavant to their ‘Real World Wide Audience’s’ needs and are beginning to remind each other to use it.

So that’s it really, I just wanted to share this with you as you might find it useful.  But if you do decide to use a rubric to help your kids blogging, you must remember that the only way the kids will take ownership of the rubric and find it enjoyable is if you help the kids create the rubric themselves.

Attributes:

Photo by Tristin at Pukeokahu Schools Flickr Album:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pukeokahuschool/5506905651/in/set-72157626093421921/

Never Make Assumptions

My Teaching Was Rubbish

I think that I am a pretty good teacher, and I do my best to always cater for my students individual needs.  But last Monday afternoon, I was nowhere near the top of my teaching game.  I made an assumption about my students, and the resulting lesson was rubbish.  Let me explain …

Just before the holidays, I had joined my students up to the Student Blogging Challenge.  This is a fantastic challenge run twice a year by the fantastic Miss W.  Students and classes from across the globe join up to the challenge run over ten weeks.  Personally I can’t think of a better way for kids to learn about global literacy.

Anyway, unfortunately, when the challenged kicked off, our whole school was in Auckland on our school camp and then for two weeks after that we had school holidays which means that we were three weeks behind on the challenge.  That’s ok, I said to myself, we are already half-way through the year and we had already completed many of the tasks required in the first two weeks.

My Chickens Arent So Pretty
My Chickens Aren't So Pretty

Now just as a side note for those of you who don’t know anything about my school: I am the Principal of a Sole Charge Isolated Rural School – translation: I have ten students ranging from New Entrant (kindergarten) to Year Eight (13 years old).  I am the ‘sole’ full time teacher.  We are very lucky because our Board of Trustees employs an additional teacher to teach literacy to the junior students in the morning from 9am – 10.30am.  As there are only three juniors, they are getting a pretty good deal.  After 10.30am I am on my own with all ten students, therefore I must teach Numeracy (maths) and other subjects to all age levels.  I also get one and a half days in the week in my office to manage the school in the Principals role.  My school is part of an isolated community, which means we are over 27 kilometres away from the nearest town/shop/MacDonalds/Library/petrol station/decent coffee (sigh).  But that’s ok, my community is fantastic and I get to keep chickens 🙂

What Was I Thinking?
What Was I Thinking?

So on Monday afternoon, after half a day in the office, I needed to take my three juniors for Maths.  I said to the senior students that the student blogging challenge had started, we were a little bit behind, can you please go on to the challenge website, read the post about challenge one and complete the five tasks (just to let you know I have some very capable readers, reading well above their age).  Can you spot my fatal mistake yet?  If you follow my twitter account, you may remember my tweet about it.

Yes, I had assumed that my students could read and comprehend a blog post.

They can write posts, insert photos, add comments, colour/bold/centre text, stick in annoying widgets, change their theme, add pages, and embed sound gadgets, Youtube movies and Flickr slideshows.  But they didn’t actually understand how to read a blog post, unassisted.  Now that I think back, when ever I had asked them to make a comment on the school blog I had always discussed it with them and written the requirements on the board.  They had never actually gone in cold turkey!

Arg! Can you imagine the chorus of seven eager voices all chiming “I don’t get, Marama!” with three squirming junior kiddy winkles in front of me fighting over who got to hand out the counters. Double Arg!!  Mayhem!

Now here is a piece of advice for any new teachers out there … sometimes your class will be a total mere, usually in the afternoon, and there is nothing you can do about it.  Don’t worry this is normal, but I can here you asking – “but what can I do about?”  Well sometimes all you can do is cut your losses.  In my situation, I could feel my eyeballs bulging and my palms sweeting so I knew that I was past the point of no return.  I called the school to attention, and explained that if they managed to pack up the classroom in 3 minutes we would go outside for a game.  Five minutes later we were all (myself included) charging up and down the field in a fantastic game of Farmer Farmer.

Me Pleased As Punch!
Me Pleased As Punch!

Now here’s the clincher, the fine line between me being a good teacher and a crap teacher.  While I was tearing around on the field sabotaging the older children so that the younger ones could score, I was analysing exactly what went wrong and how I was going to allow my students to achieve next time.  So today during literacy with my students, instead of using a journal for guided reading, we used the student blogging challenge post and we read it off the computer screen.  And now I am pretty proud to say that it was some of the best teaching I had done in a while 😀

I really believe in this life long learning business.  As an experienced teacher, sometimes you can get complacent and you do start making assumptions about your students because you think you know them so well.  But the reality is that the moment you start taking your students for granted, it is the moment you start doing them a mis-service. Though we are only human, and I am proud to say that I learnt my lesson and made it good.

All images were sourced and used under Creative Commons Licence.

Thanks to:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mecookie/

http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/TM1179

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Question_mark_3d.png

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevenlaw/

Self Review: The Guilt Post

I know…, you know …, we all known, that self-review is essential for good practice.  True self-review should be the combination of both formal and informal review tools.  These tools may include personal reflections, professional conversations, mentoring, professional appraisal, journals and learning circles.  Personally I enjoy engaging in self-review through reflecting and sharing my practice in a professional blog. My blog is where I engage in my own professional form of ‘just-in-time’ learning; it is here where my self-review with make an immediate impact on my practice. What I am having trouble with at the moment is wondering whether it is appropriate for me to engage in this medium during school time.

The Background:  I am the Principal of a Sole Charge Rural School.  This means that for 0.7 (three and a half days) of my week I am a normal classroom teacher, well as normal as you can get with eleven students, (grin) and for the other 0.3 (one and a half days) I am in the office doing management and leadership tasks.  I do not do any planning or classroom prep. during my 0.3 release, this is all done after the kids have left for the day or in the weekends (like any normal teacher).

The Requirements: As a part of my involvement with the First Time Principals Programme, and as specified in my job description, I am required to engage in self-review.  In fact, I have been advised by my mentor and my appraiser to keep a professional journal.  I would like to use this blog as my professional journal; I can easily keep any sensitive posts private or password protect them (save the trees!)

The Question: Is it appropriate for me to set aside time from my 0.3 release to reflect in my professional journal (this blog)?  Or should I be engaging in this reflection outside of school time, in my own time?

The Guilt: The reality is that I just haven’t done it at home because I am just so tired when I finally get there.  I would like to do it during my release time but I don’t know if this is ok?  Can I justify this as a good use of leadership and management time? Shouldn’t I be using my time for the benefit of the students learning?  But what about me, should I also be making sure that I am the best possible leader I can be? (and not burn out with the effort).

The Ideal: What I really want is to know that it’s ok for me to add regular self-review entries to this blog, which is all about my experiences as a 21st Century Learner and Educator, during my release time and not allow my professional life to invade my personal one.  I want to stop feeling guilty.