Week 26 – APC – Professional Context

School climate:

The school I am teaching at feels to me as though it has a very positive climate. The strong relationship between staff and students was the first thing I observed when I joined the school community this year. The number of students that stopped to say hello and ask how I was going surprised me. The staff and students have a strong motivation to achieve whether it is in sporting, music or cultural endeavours and there is an expectation that students and staff will work together towards these goals. There is a shared vision. This allows the students a greater range of freedom than I have observed at other schools I have taught at. They are trusted by staff to carry out work independently or in groups within or outside of the classroom environment, they seem motivated to learn and succeed and do so in a way that is both responsible and productive. This is reflected in the physical environment of the school which has changed to incorporate break out spaces, modern classrooms that are much more flexible in design with movable desks, doors that slide open to allow for greater freedom and independence in where and how the students learn.

School culture:

The culture of the school is underpinned by some long held traditions, regular chapel services, clan competitions and activities like generations day reinforce the history of the school and the student’s sense of belonging. Community service and wellbeing programmes reinforce a sense of social responsibility in the wider community and all students have a Personal Development Plan that is made in conjunction with their tutor and families aimed at ensuring that each child has a balance between academic, sporting, cultural and social aspects of their life. The school continues to move forward and acknowledges its diversity and the greater sense of connectedness with the world that our children have with core subjects like Global Living. Which incorporates and acknowledges the greater sense of global responsibility, communication and collaboration that our children may need in the future. 

The values of Respect, Aroha, Endeavour and Enthusiasm, Generosity of Spirit and Integrity are the core values that underpin the school culture. These are unpacked with the staff during staff meetings and form the basis of many of the initiatives around the school (Love week, Clan competitions, Community Service initiatives etc) and are explicitly taught and referred to within the school culture. A holistic view of wellbeing is emphasised and this includes both mental and spiritual wellbeing. My tutor group is currently learning to knit as part of our Wellbeing programme and have decided to knit small hats for premature babies to donate to the hospital as an active way of demonstrating ‘Generosity of Spirit’. As a tutor teacher I am responsible for ensuring that my students develop the skills necessary for wellbeing. The skills identified by Seligman are summarised in the image below:

And the students are taught strategies that support these skills many of which use Carol Dweck’s concept of a growth mindset (2008), for example:

How would you contribute to fostering a positive professional environment in your community of practice?

All teachers have a Performance Develop Plan in which staff set goals for the year, consider their progress against the Professional Teachers Criteria and outline their teaching inquiry. These are shared with teaching colleagues and my faculty and senior management. I have organised with a colleague to have my classroom teaching observed and in return will observe his teaching practice so that we can share ideas and support each other as we carry out an inquiry into teaching practice. Making the time to carry this out and to value and respect each other’s professional learning always seems to be the biggest challenge. It is easy to get caught up in lesson planning and unit plans and put your own professional learning needs and the needs of your colleagues further down the list with the immediacy of the next group of students arriving for class. 

As a department we share resources, reflect on schemes of work and divvy up class trips, marking and other duties. Supporting each other to complete tasks spreads the load, taking the time to dissect lessons, act as a sounding board for ideas, contribute to or facilitate ICE time, department meetings, and staff meetings reinforces that everyone is responsibility for reaching the school goals. 

What changes are occurring in the context of your profession? How would your community of practices address them?

In the 1800s a monk named Gregor Mendel began investigating genetics by counting peas in the abbey garden. He carried out this research on his own. The electron was discovered by J.J Thomson in a lab that contained little more than basic wiring and a vacuum. Today scientists use a 27 kilometre long tunnel and billions of dollars of machinery to search for particles like the searching for new particles like the Higgs boson using a supercollider. The data collected is analysed by a super computer and teams of scientists from across the world. Scientists still investigate the natural world around them but how that collect that data, collaborate and peer review work has changed. The internet allows for more collaboration, greater replication as experimental designs are easily published, replicated and improved upon. There is greater opportunity for peer review and the advancements in technology mean that the scale of data that can be collect is often huge.

The New Zealand Curriculum is trying to address these issues through the Nature of Science strand and the scientific capabilities.

I believe the 21st century skills of collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking underpin these (Partnership for 21st Learning, n.d).

Bull suggested that the key drivers for school science programmes should be nurturing curiosity, encouraging questions, and developing a respect for evidence (2015, p.1). With my junior classes I am try to expose them as much as possible to real scientific research looking at different aspects of scientific research that support the key competencies through programmes like Waterwatch, Engineers Without Borders and digital communities like Zooniverse.

Zooniverse  Example: htps://daily.zooniverse.org/ 

This is a citizen science project where volunteers help scientists and researchers deal with the flood of data that confronts them. In the sea floor activity. Students look through images of the North Atlantic seabed and classify the creatures the find. This related to my content (classification), key competencies (participating and contributing), and science capabilities (gathering data etc). It creates good discussion around data collection and how it is analysed, used digital technology and allows students to be involved in something real.

It is a challenge to find activities that support and integrate the key competencies, nature of science, science capabilities and are ‘real’. I often which that as a community of science teachers that we work together more to collaborate across schools both on the student level and as teachers.

Questions:

What sort of activities do your students engage in to support learning in an ever changing environment?

What skills and attitudes do you think are most important for your students?

References

Dweck, C.S. (2008) Mindset: The Psychology of Success. New York: Random House

Partnership for 21st Learning. (n.d). ‘Preparing Students for a Global Society’ An Educators guide to the “Four C”s.  Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/A-Guide-to-Four-Cs.pdf

Bull, A. capabilities for living and lifelong learning: What’s science got to do with it? New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Wellington

Seligman, M. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. William Heinamann. Sydney. ISBN 978186412971