Educating for the present and the future

Early in January 2018 I penned a post about STEM subjects.  I've been reading some stuff and want to expand on this area.

One can think of a time in history when schooling was very classical and for the so called upper stratum of society.  Gradually schooling came to be seen as a preparation for life inclusive of preparing for paid work that enabled one to satisfy the primary and secondary needs ( ......a bit of Maslow if my memory serves me.)

Technology was always there in various forms, but deductive reasoning tended over the eras to hold us back.  Once inductive reasoning became dominant we surged.  The industrial revolution was a big change.  Eventually came electricity, anaesthetics, the telephone, combustion engines, cars, radios, aeroplanes, teletype machines and then in rapid succession:  plastics, TV, computers, antibiotics, the internet, smart phones and more recently carbon fibre and robotics. I'm sure to have missed something but you get my drift.

As my readers know I became a teacher and eventually a school Principal, hence this blog.  I can recall in the 1970s much talk of students being educated for jobs that at the time did not exist. However there was no sense of urgency as we were only then becoming caught up in the exponential advancement of modern technologies.

The very urgent catch cry today is that we are educating our young for jobs that are yet to come into existence or have arrived but will become rapidly more sophisticated.

Today I listened to a talk to the National Press Club of Australia with the topic being about a report: "Australia 2030 Prosperity Through Innovation"(I suggest you Google this.).  The speaker noted that the report found that education (schooling) was a basis for innovation yet he indicated that Australia is falling behind comparable countries in science, maths and literacy.  He stressed that this needed to be addressed. I have done so at length in previous posts with my underlying theme being a 'no gaps' approach to learning.  This means in core subjects like maths and literacy ensuring that students do not move on to the new learning until they have mastered the prerequisites for it.  I know of a few others who are of the same view, but worry that schools having to meet the demands of government sponsored compulsory testing in science, maths and literacy are under pressure not to be able to set up a 'no gaps' approach.  Enough of this : see the previous posts for further very detailed information. You will see stuff about NAPLAN testing.  Its not all bad news as the speaker had a lot to say about STEM subjects and recognised that schools are on to this including learning experiences in computer coding.

The speaker indicated that Australia needs to work hard to catch up to comparable countries as an innovator.  He was optimistic and provided several case studies of Australian innovation including the just nominated Australian of the Year, Professor Michelle Simmons, who is leading a world class team to develop a quantum computer, which would cut down the time for solving various problems by a huge amount.  He also indicated areas for improvement other than schools if Australia is to catch up.

We can return to the time when the horse and cart were replaced by the car.  Now we see big companies like Rio Tinto using a fleet of driverless ore trucks in their iron ore mines in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.  Someone thousands of kms away a few persons controls the trucks.
They have just announced that they have over ten years moved one billion tons of ore with this autonomous haulage system (Harvey Ben, "Rio's driverless trucks reach one billion milestone", The West Australian, 30 January 2018, p42)

We have seen for years robots doing a lot of the assembly line jobs for car manufacture.

My big concern is that we may see a new literacy deficit looming in the computer IT area in schools.  Can we assume that all kids will master the intricacies of coding?

Burgess writes (Burgess Melanie, "Strong jobs growth in STEM, tech", The West Australian, 31 January, 2018. p19) that research from Seek job finder site shows increasing advertised positions in jobs like:

• Maths, stats and information sciences;
• Environmental, earth and geo sciences;
• Biotechnology and genetics.

In the information and communications industry the jobs increased for computer operators, software engineers and cyber security professionals.

The above information was tempered by the fact that mining and trades were the top-performing industries in the job market.

Thus one can see from the above areas where the jobs growth has arrived.  The relatively new Australian National Curriculum fortunately has Digital and Design Technology sections containing learning experiences for students.

Other areas where humans just have to get about finding solutions are in food and water supplies for a growing world population.  Maybe, dare I say it, the World just has to ask how many people can it support?

Imagine a world where humans are required to work less and less owing to technological advancements yet each person is living a lot longer because of medical advancements.  Imagine being a teacher when thinking students confront you with this issue.

You are probably exhausted reading my all too shallow statement about the future.  I am of the view that as a school Principal I would need to be on top of all this information if I am to truly lead a modern school community.  I would also need to bring my staff members along with me.  Teachers have regularly been criticised as persons who move from school to teacher training then back into schools without developing a broad knowledge of the wider world of work.  At least the contemporary teacher is well versed in the world of computing and understands its value.  However many teachers fear science and maths as it was not to their liking at school.  The speaker mentioned above indicated that many teachers of school mathematics have no formal training in that area.  As long as I have been an educator we have been short of maths teachers.  If we are to meet the demands of the future we may have to pay trained maths teachers a higher rate to join the teaching vocation.  The Local Hero in the Australian of the Year Awards for 2018 is I am pleased to say a very innovative maths teacher who now has a world wide web and You Tube audience.

Finally I observe that is has never been easy to convince secondary school students that they are learning this or that in readiness for the world of work whatever that will be for them.  Teenagers tend to want more immediate and observable goals.  It requires splendid teachers to convince their charges that what they are learning now will benefit them in the future.

While being up to date as best we can about the future we as school community leaders need to be sure that our students are happy and safe in the present.  As they grow and develop they have many questions and often some of these become issues.  The wellbeing of our students day by day is paramount.

As I noted in my previous post on STEM subjects I would want my school community to have a very strong and compulsory ethics program that runs the ethical ruler over some of the issues of the here and now and of the future.  We are still managing to kill each other in the hundreds of thousands in all sorts of hideous ways.  We still have millions of people dying of hunger.  We still have the fundamentalist intolerance of various religions and races and all the consequences of the hatreds that they breed.  We still pollute our Earth with reckless abandon and the developed nations utilise the majority of the resources available.

Oh boy I am weary just thinking about all of the above but I cannot resile from what it means for me and you as school Principals.  We have to be on top of it all.


May the Force be with you!


GD

Feeling safe at school

In this blog I've written a lot about student wellbeing and in my list of school effectiveness criteria it is number 1 (see previous posts in this blog).

In my local newspaper today there are the the details of a comprehensive report tapping into whether students of non government and government schools in Western Australia feel safe.  While it is reported that most do there are still worrying numbers who don't.

Every student when they enter the school gates each day should feel safe and respected.  It must be part of the School Development Plan (see other posts in this blog) that the wellbeing of students be regularly measured and the results acted upon immediately if there are students who feel unsafe and not respected.  With a nation-wide emphasis on student wellbeing in school there are devices for such measurement out there in internet land.  I am sure also that graduate Schools of Education in Australian universities would be only too happy to devote time to assisting schools to research the wellbeing of the students.

Across Australia students are returning to school for the commencement of the 2018 academic year.  Principals will be giving a special focus to students new to their school such as the little ones up to those entering their first secondary (high) school year.

Student wellbeing has its frontline in the classrooms and effective Principals will be educating their teachers to recognise this responsibility daily and giving them tools to ensure wellbeing.  This attitude needs to be part of the school culture where 'culture' is defined as the way things happen around this community.

A special thought is given to Principals who are having their first day in the job.  How exciting and challenging.  I am reminded of the story of the person saying to their partner that they had butterflies in the stomach and felt too ill and unable to go to school.  The partner replied:  "My dear you have to go as you are the school Principal."



May the Force be with you!


GD

Faith in the Principal

My children are through school long ago.  Now their children, my grandchildren are in the hands of two Principals, three grandies in a school in one state and one grandie in a school in another state.

I have to trust these Principals and having been a Principal myself I guess I am super sensitive to how the schools look after my grandies academically and as whole persons, particularly their wellbeing.

I have an older grandie now in young adulthood.  He struggled at school with some form of difference in how he processed information delivered to him.  I was by his side constantly assisting where I could and when he would let me, without pressure from me.  His school must have felt at times that I was a bit of a thorn in their side but all I wanted was for him to have optimum opportunities.  In the main the school utilised me as home backup.  There were many occasions when I looked at the written output in various subjects and had a sinking feeling that the school was not supervising the output closely enough.  This became very evident in the final high school graduating year as my grandee and I worked hard in a tutoring situation in maths.  I used to be appalled at what he was allowed to present in his maths file and it suggested to me that a teacher had decided that at this age the student should accept full responsibility for their learning.  That is all very well for a competent, confident student, but not for one who had the information-processing problems of my grandee.  Anyhow there was a happy ending to the maths when the teacher, having marked my grandees final input in year 12, rang me and said that I could sit down with a congratulatory drink as the lad had passed his maths.

In his all-boys school there was a bit of an attitude that boys needed to act like men.  When a child is in year 4 he is still boy and not a man.  My grandee suffered some fairly concentrated bullying because he was not a quick learner and I felt the school let the bullies get away with it.  The ultimate irony was when one of the bullies received a citizenship award.  At one stage he was harassed by another student to the point where he pushed the other student away.  Being fairly tall by this time his hand contacted the other student's face.  I was summoned to the school to meet with the Deputy Principal who rather aggressively told me should there be another event like this my grandee would probably have to leave the school.  I held my cool, while seething underneath, and explained that this was the only occasion my grandie had done anything like this in his now several years at the school.  The Deputy was smart enough to see where I was at and conceded my point.

Enough with the anecdotes but you can see how much one has to trust a Principal when one hands over one's loved ones.  The Principal of my grandie's large K-12 school was too far removed from my grandson's plight and in my view had not set up satisfactory feedback contacts to those who he had delegated to look after my loved one.  I believe that every Principal, no matter how large the school,  should let his staff know that he needs to be briefed about students who are struggling in whatever way and that it should not be let go until it becomes a serious issue.

As Principals we do not own our students in the sense that the parent does and we must always respect this and act accordingly.  We have such a massive trust placed in us and part of our brief is to live up to this honour that has been bestowed upon us as the leaders of school communities.

May the Force be with you!

GD

Contentious issues for the Principal

January 26th each year is Australia Day.  It commemorates the landing in 1788 of the First Fleet of convicts sent from England to settle what was to be New South Wales and of course later Australia.  Governor Arthur Phillip was in charge off this first white settlement.  By the way no matter what I say below Governor Phillip made a very sincere effort to understand and live peacefully with the indigenous inhabitants.

For the indigenous Aboriginal peoples who had inhabited the Great South Land for thousands of years it was to prove a disastrous landing.  It soon began the unravelling of their ancient culture and they were over the years pushed off their lands without recourse to any form of treaty.  The current indigenous population of Australia (2% of there population) is divided about whether the celebration of Australia day is appropriate or whether it was an invasion of their tribal territories.  Many non indigenous Australians sympathise with their indigenous brothers and sisters over this matter including yours truly GD.

Raging in Australia at this very time is a debate about whether to change the date of Australia Day and have it another time when it can be a day embraced by all Australians who are a now very multicultural population.  The indigenous Australians were the first migration thousands of years ago as they crossed from SE Asia over what was then a land bridge to get to the mainland.  Since then there have been wave after wave of migrations.  Australia is of course now an island continent.

Personally I would change the date.  However if I was back as a school Principal in a school that contained non indigenous and indigenous students I would have to remain impartial and ensure that the teachers presented a balanced view of the arguments.  We as a school community could not of course take a fixed position one way or the other.  On the 26th January it is currently a holiday and Australia Day ceremonies are usually held by local government authorities.  It  also occurs at a time when the schools across Australia are still on the long summer vacation.  Phew, dodged a bullet with not having to celebrate Australia Day at school as it now stands. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had an Australia Day on a date during the school year when we could truly celebrate together what it means to be part of our wonderful country, a date other than the 26th January.

I must tell this anecdote about the time as a Superintendent of Schools I was inspecting a non government Christian school to establish whether it was efficient.  The Principal and I were chatting about the creation story and somehow Aboriginal persons' views of Creation came into the conversation. I sincerely remarked to the Principal that at some stage it had occurred to me that we could bring together the Bible and the beliefs of the Aborigines with a slight adjustment to to John Ch1 V1 "In the beginning was the Dreaming and the Dreaming was with God, and the Dreaming was God."  Our Aborigines have what they call the Dreamtime and it is very spiritual.  The Principal of the school quickly but kindly corrected me by indicating that I was on the wrong track as the Aborigines worship the created and not the Creator.  I dropped the subject. I was in no sense trying to be smart.  Perhaps I had been insensitive but that was not my intention.  Such rigid views worry me but our federal government funds non government Christian Schools which are entitled to hold the positions I described.

Just read an historical account of how the Indigenous Indians of North America were pushed off their lands as the USA came into being.  I guess many have issues with the day known as Thanksgiving.

Do you have any comments about such matters?


May the Force be with you!


GD

The School budget

I am assuming that you as the Principal have control of the whole budget and how it is spent. You will have other persons to include in the decisions about spending such as members of the School Board. It is vital that the teachers be part of the consultations about how the budget is spent even though they may not have the final say.  The students, if old enough, can also be consulted where deemed appropriate.

The two main spending streams are recurrent and capital costs.  The most expensive recurrent item will be salaries.  As part of medium and long term planning there are likely to be capital expenditures on say buildings.

Every cent that is spent needs to pass the the test of how it is likely to improve the learning of the students.  This is not just academic learning but refers to the development of the whole student.  Student wellbeing is vital.

There needs to be built into the School Development Plan evaluation measures that are applied to ascertain the effectiveness of the spending. (See earlier posts in this blog re-The School Development Plan.)

You may be Principal of a large school that has a bursar type accounting person who keeps a close eye on budget recording and auditing.  You will need to spend regular time with the Bursar keeping up with budget detail,  The smaller the school you as the Principal will have a very hands on situation with day by day budget management.

Balancing the important budget tasks with being the educational leader of the school community is all part of apportioning your time in being an effective Principal.  It is not an easy job but is so challenging and rewarding.

May the Force be with you!


GD

Principals promoting sound teaching methods

Back after a break in the north west iron ore country of Western Australia.  You've got to see that vast red earth land.  It even rained while we were there courtesy of a summer low pressure trough that was the remnants of one of the cyclones that we have each year in what we call the Top End.  The local paper "The Pilbara Times" carried an article about the Karratha High School pointing out that the number of students in 2017 obtaining a university entrance score in their final year was dropping.  Bit tough when you know that some of the students would have moved schools a lot in their lives as the breadwinner in their family was a worker who followed the vagaries of the mining industry.  Also there would be many indigenous students who don't have a good record of school attendance.  Karratha is one of the iron ore hubs of the north west with big ore trains and big ore carrier ships.

I find this criticism a bit tough as I said above.  The Principal and teachers would be busting themselves to do the best that they can for their students.  I would like to have seen in the article other markers of success relating to educating the whole student.  I also acknowledge the constant work of indigenous community leaders in ensuring improved school attendance from their youngsters.

****************************

Now to best practice teaching methods.  The Principal as the educational leader in the school has to be seen to be deeply involved in encouraging best practice teaching methods.  The menu needs to include a variety of approaches.  'Discovery learning' has been the super food of schooling for a long time and I am an advocate of it, but there is a place for 'explicit' teaching.  By this I do not refer to 'direct instruction' which has a very special psychologically constructed base.  Although there is a place for this and I have seen it work in certain situations.

By 'explicit' teaching I refer to the teacher presenting a new process or concept, by being active on their feet, keeping the students focussed as they hear the teacher explanation and then reveal their knowledge through skilful teacher questioning and in the case of a math's process doing some examples that the teacher marks over the shoulder.  It is not learning by rote as the explanation of the teacher seeks to reach student understanding of what is occurring.  The enthusiasm of the teacher is paramount in this process as it is always.

Some rote learning is also needed.  I am still in the camp that wants rote learning of multiplication tables and number facts as a grounding for functional numeracy. Oh dear some will now write me off as an educational dinosaur.  Hopefully rote learning can also be built on understanding the underlying mathematical relationships.  Sometimes however a student can do a process successfully and yet not reach true understanding until some future time.

I don't think things have changed in chemistry to the extent that one still just has to learn by heart the outcome of the interaction of certain chemicals.  For example the reaction of various concentrations of nitric acid (HNO3) on copper (Cu) results in the production of different gases dependent on the concentration of the acid.

If as often happens a teacher in your school comes up with innovative teaching methods that result in innovative learning experiences for the students it is appropriate to give that teacher a leadership role in spreading the good news.  This is 'distributive leadership' in action.  The climate in the school is not to be that this teacher is better than this one, it is about the whole cadre of teachers being always on the lookout and open to new and more effective ways.


May the Force be with you as 2018 gets under way!

GD

What next?

I'm about to take a week's break from posting.

In general I am not sure whether I will continue this blog.  I have covered a plethora of topics about being a school Principal however more post topics may present themselves through my thinking or as prompts from what is happening in schools across Australia.

I seem to have a small band of faithful readers mainly from the USA.  I trust that you have found the posts so far to be helpful?

One thing I am not going to do if I decide to stop posting is to just leave the blog sitting there for posterity.  I see so many of such blogs that have died on the vine.  They remind me of a graveyard.

So far I have found it to be fun and it helps me to overcome the 'relevance deprivation syndrome' of being a retiree.

Interested Principals watch this space, and continue to revel in having the best job going.


May the force be with you!


GD

PS: Its morning and I have already thought of the topic for my next post.

Chat to you in about 7 days.

GD

Difficult decisions

Sometimes as a Principal you are faced with tough calls.

I was Principal of a remote K-12 rural school.  It was at least 4 hours drive to the major capital city of Perth.  Before I became Principal my predecessor at the end of each term had let the young teachers on the last day go before normal finishing time so that they could make a head start to Perth for their vacations.  I felt this was troublesome on two counts. The first was that they were eager to get away and make the long and drive on narrow rural roads and I felt they may hurry too much.  The second was that they could be travelling in school time and if they had an accident they may not have been covered by workers' compensation insurance.

Before making a decision I contacted the Principal of a smaller rural school some kms up the road.  I asked what he was doing about this and he and I after some discussion decided not to let the teachers go early as had been the way of the past.  We wanted to be consistent across both our schools and he had the complication of a teacher on his staff who came daily from my town.  He was a strong Principal who would not have just agreed because I was in a sense his senior. It was a very unpopular decision, but there you are.

What would you have done?

Again as Principal of that K-12 school I was asked by the Lions Club (like Rotary) if they could have a big occasion in the school grounds.  I knew that there would be much alcohol consumed and also again considered the insurance claims if someone at the event were hurt.  I did not want to be responsible for the school grounds being used for an occasion where alcohol would be consumed in what could be large quantities. I said no to the request, explaining my concerns to those who had made the request.  This also was an unpopular decision.

What would you have done?

As a member of that rural community I was heavily involved in sport outside school and my wife and I, with the help of the school staff, put on one or two events (dinners) at the local sports club.  These were well patronised and everyone loved it. It was a great and giving community and if I ever needed something for the school the Parents and Citizens Association members were there to assist in spades.  I think it is fair to say that without bragging I gave my all to that community and they appreciated it in so many ways.  I offer this context to indicate that even if one is giving and participating it does not absolve one from the hard decisions.

Another big event was the annual school concert which was  smash hit with the local hall filled to capacity.  One of the year 12 performers one year decided to be a bit risqué adding to the script without consulting we the staff.  It was harmless, and knowing the quality of this young man the audience responded cheerfully.  Next day I received a reprimand from a visitor, who was a school Principal from the state of Victoria, and unbeknownst to me had been in the audience.  I took it on the chin but decided to tap into my community and phoned one of the most conservative parents who had been in the audience.  He felt it was all in good fun.  One never knows what each day will bring.

A further event was the passing over by the year 12s of the baton to the year 11s at an annual school ball.  These were also wonderful evenings.  We knew that some of the kids would try to smuggle in alcohol laced drinks and had people at the door checking this.  The students did try as predicted, bless their cotton socks. We however decided to allow a toast with wine at a crucial part of the dinner and had parent backing to do this.  It might seem a bit hypocritical given my rejection of the Lion's request however it was one small glass per senior student.

Would you have allowed this?

And so it goes on.  Being a Principal can be full of surprises and the distribution of tough love.  There are small lonely moments when one makes a tough decision.


May the Force be with you!



GD

STEM in your school

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is all the rage across Australian schools in an effort to focus student learning in these more complex disciplines.  Our Federal government is right behind this push.  These are seen as the super foods of the education diet.

Before commenting I want to emphasise that Ethics might be the leaven in the STEM lump. On observation we don't seem to have a world in 2018 whereby humans have learned too much about preserving the planet Earth and ceasing to eradicate disgustingly large numbers of each other with the most hideous weapons.  Enough of that, but as school Principals I urge you to consider Ethics as part of your inspiration to your students.  Again I am probably teaching you how to suck eggs.  Apologies if this is the case.

I am all for STEM and the rigour that is its basis.  Unfortunately one hears too little of the innovative teachers of Science who electrify their students with the wonder of it all.  Science just seems too hard for many students and they avoid it like the plague as soon as they have the choice.  This is a challenge for Principals as the educational leaders of their school communities.  Inspire your teachers of Science to get into innovative mode.

The same can be said for Mathematics. Students again shy away from the harder maths courses and the shortage of teachers of Mathematics continues to plague education systems.  It all starts at Primary (elementary) school level with generalist teachers who have learned to love maths and thus to have their students catch their enthusiasm.  I suspect that at this level such teachers are fewer rather than the majority, still smarting from their lack of confidence in their maths prowess.  I lay a lot of the blame at the feet of the maths experts who make input to school syllabus construction.  I watched purer forms of mathematics tend to take over what had been a focus on numeracy in the early years of schooling.  I saw my own children suffer because they were not required to learn their multiplication tables off by heart, and now I see the same in my grandchildren. I wasn't inspired about maths as a student of long ago, but gradually came to see the wonder of it all.  Perhaps Principals need a video of Professor Brian Cox tailored for various levels of schooling and in which the revered professor demonstrates how vital maths is as a core study in our world and universe.  At least let the motivation of a Brian Cox loose on the secondary (high) school students.  Again Principals need to lead the charge in ensuring their school communities are in awe of the wonder of mathematics.

Technology and Engineering as such are relatively new in schools, but are areas in which students seem much less difficult to motivate.  My 6 year old grand daughter is almost obsessive about robots and all things associated with them.  We all know how expert all kids are on tablets, computers and mobile phones.  Their curriculums are now into 'coding' such that a new literacy is alive.  Its all good stuff and as Principals you probably have to spend time keeping check on what students do with mobile phones, tablets and computers in terms of what they might view that they shouldn't, and in terms of what they might post that they shouldn't.  I suspect that schools are in a much better position than parents to monitor social media.

I conclude this post by reiterating my cry for Ethics as the leaven for STEM.

If there is anything you wish aired and discussed on this blog don't hesitate to let me know.


May the Force be with you!



GD