Bullying

I'm sure there is a plethora of research studies on bullying in schools.

I've seen a bit of bullying lately from the subtle 'I was your buddy yesterday, but today am talking with other friends and am not inclined to include you in this interaction' to the outright nasty comment delivered in a variety of ways, not the least of which is via social media devices.

I've noted that girls can be particularly cruel to one another.  Even a little one of 8 years texting to another "I'm cool and you're not".

A mum said to me today that she agreed girls can be vicious to one another, but she does not observe this in boys. She has both amongst her family and cites a particularly bad year for bullying experienced by her daughter. She changed schools and all was well. I'm not saying the bullying caused the change to another school as I don't know the facts of that matter.

I ask the question : Are boys less prone to bullying than girls?  I just am not on top of the research in this area.

I hold to the view that a school community with a skilfully crafted student/staff wellbeing program will have less bullying.  Can anyone out there substantiate my hypothesis or on the other hand refute it with hard research evidence? In my time as a Principal I was concerned with the wellbeing of all staff and students, but did not have a purposefully crafted wellbeing program.  Such a thing was unheard of in my time. This is not an excuse it just wasn't talked about professionally to any great extent.



May the Force be with you!


GD

Still Learning

In my previous post I lauded teachers and principals for the way they have risen to the challenges of online learning for students as a result of the covid pandemic. I also mentioned that I'd been able to mentor my young grand children as they participated in the online learning from home.

It was a learning experience watching the skills of 8 and 9 year olds year olds in using the iPad, the vehicle for the learning.  Even more exciting was my re-education on how maths is taught today.

I had left the classroom environment before the use of mathematical things such as the number line appeared in the curriculum. I had been clinging to the view that a sound grounding in automatic response to knowing the multiplication tables and the number facts to 19 were a basic grounding to achieving numeracy. Also being effective in bridging tens for addition. I clung to this view even in the context of calculators being available. I was enlightened in seeing my grand children use the number line to carry out complex addition and subtraction. They were learning to tackle theses tasks in a problem solving sort of way rather than just utilising the automatic responses of which I speak.

I also marvelled at their knowledge of 2D and 3D shapes and how they understood faces, edges and vertices. They were even into a more geometric approach to angles within the 360 degree spectrum.

'Look it's nothing new', I hear you say, 'you have just been away form the coalface for too long'. Be that as it may I am beginning to see the STEM influence across the mathematic's curriculum.  I have been converted from a view that the mathematicians had hijacked the school maths syllabus to the detriment of the necessary attainment of functional numeracy.

Despite all of the above revelations I still think it would be easier all round for students if they achieved the automatic responses noted above.  These could be applied within the problem solving approach.  I could see where my grandies laboured at times because they did not know the appropriate tables and number facts.  They were resorting to counting on fingers and saying the appropriate time tables from the beginning until they reached the table needed.  Very laborious despite the new methods they had available.

A constructive blending of the old with the relatively new might be the answer.

Got to say that for my teenage grandchild I was blown away by the idea of using Excel in calculating
surface area variations in 3D shapes.  This for me is STEM truly in action in the contemporary mathematic's approach.

Oh to be young again and experiencing innovative teachers of maths going about the business of opening up such a wide range of career choices through the STEM approach.

Please don't be too hard on me you maths' experts out there.

May the Force be with you!


GD

An Educational Revolution

While universities have been running online learning for some time now Covid19 has meant that for weeks Australian schools have been teaching students online as they maintained isolation measures at home.

I was privileged to mentor my grand children in this online learning and I compliment the teachers on how they adjusted and brought effective learning into the many homes. This was a new thing for these teachers but they met the challenge as I always maintain teachers do.  I think it opened the eyes of many parents just how complex and demanding the teaching job can be. This week my grandies returned to full time attendance at school. I could hear the sighs of relief form many parents whispering across the land.

I take my hat off to the Principals who have been faced with complex decisions during the Covid pandemic.  Traditionally schools have a detailed emergency evacuation and disaster response plan. Now they also have a Covid plan to keep students and staff safe and to respond quickly to a student or staff member testing positive.

I've not written a post for some time owing to the passing of a loved one from my family, but here I am back on deck with maybe a few more tiresome thoughts from a retired Principal.  I say again being a school principal is one of the most rewarding jobs on the planet.

May the Force be with you!

GD

Educator bashing

Been off air for some time but becoming sick of the teacher and school Principal criticism by politicians in Australia.  They just don't get it, that is, how complex it is to run a school and to teach.

It is true that contemporary teachers and Principals are under more pressure than in my days as a teacher and Principal, however even in those days these vital jobs were no walk in the park.

The nub of the criticism is that Australian students are falling behind in the world rankings in literacy, numeracy and science learning. The stats for Australian students on the PISA (Program or International Student Assessment) were viewed negatively, most recently in New South Wales where the Premier of that State expressed concern at the decline in mathematics on the PISA tests (Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February, 2020, p18).

The stats from the Australian annual NAPLAN (National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy) testing are always under eagle eye political scrutiny. The results in recent years have drawn a lot of criticism from politicians.  The irony in my view is that the administration of and coaching for these tests takes up too much teacher and student time that would be better spent on mastering the prescribed curriculum learning outcomes in literacy and numeracy. Australia has an excellent national curriculum K-12 and each state has its variations of this.

I have laboured long and hard in this blog to indicate the strategy to overcome the above deficiencies.  It is based at least in Primary (Elementary) school around mastery in the English language skills and mathematics skills, knowledge and understandings.  At this level of schooling there is no need for rigorous mastery of the prescribed syllabus learning outcomes in the other subject areas except perhaps for Digital Technology and Science.  I wouldn't even require mastery of in science at this level.  I would be contented to be able to say for these non mastery syllabus areas that my graduating students have covered all the required learning outcomes in these non mastery areas and are enthusiastic and ready for the more specialised requirements of Secondary (High) schooling. I would be able to have each graduating student carry detailed records for literacy and numeracy into the hands of the receiving Secondary school teachers.  Throughout the primary school years each student's report would show a special comment section on how they are progressing in attaining in functional literacy and numeracy. Parents want to know this.

Readers there is so much detail in previous posts about all this with the above being a brief recap.

As for School Principals any Principal worth their salt will be regularly assessing how their school community is going against a set of school effectiveness criteria.  Hopefully their training makes them competent  to do this.  Such effective Principals would be confident to open their schools to an external effectiveness audit at any time.  Previous posts cover all this in detail.

Without being a showoff it would be useful for politicians to read the posts in this blog.

Frustrated as ever!

May the Force be with you.

Email the blight of School Principals

I am told and read that one of the major problems for the contemporary school Principal is parents being able to email the school.  A proportion of these parents expect almost instant response and tend to become angry when this is not possible under the weight of all the emails a school receives. It is becoming more frequently reported that Principals experience parental abuse some of which is physical.

I can only imagine the additional burden this is for Principals, who are under other major pressures like the expectation of top level student academic output.  In Australia this latter pressure comes for the politicians when Australian students do not perform well in standardised compulsory academic tests.

Teachers also can be emailed and I am in no doubt are under the same pressures.

Physical abuse of teachers also seems to be on the rise from students and parents.  I recently observed a TV program interviewing teachers now in a poor mental state as a result of student abuse.

I hypothesise that the answer to this is to build a strong and purposeful wellbeing program that embraces within a school community the students, the staff and the parental cohort. I suspect that such a school community culture would push back on parental and student aggressiveness.  Within that climate of wellbeing there would be no room for such aggressiveness. It would become the exception rather than the rule.

I might now expect some comments that I have been out of the Principal game for too long and have become too altruistic.  I defend myself in anticipation by stating firmly that I would establish the wellbeing culture should I once again be in the position of Principal. Every child and every staff member should enter the school gates every day feeling respected and loved as members of their school community.  The same should apply to parents.

I have not touched upon the potential for parents and students to use social media platforms to stir up trouble for school Principals and teachers. I guess such perpetrators would have to be careful what they put out there in what could be classified as the public domain.



May the Force be with you!


GD

Light them up to learning

One of the key jobs of the school Principal as educational leader of their school community is to constantly and enthusiastically create a climate in which the students want to learn and every teacher is enthusiastic and inspirational.

Keeping an eye out for teachers who are losing their edge for whatever reason is vital.  Remedial action needs to be taken by the Principal to re-inspire that teacher.

An outsider coming into a school should feel the vibe of teachers at the top off their game and students filled with a desire to learn. Is it a happy school?

May the Force be with you!


GD

Helen - secondary (high) school Principal on future proofing students

At last I've got to Helen. What I write about her is in a context of my related posts about future proofing students.  Here goes:

Helen – Secondary School Principal

Helen faced a different situation in some ways to John. She knew that there were requirements for secondary school graduation to meet State defined standards and the entry requirements of Universities and the Vocational tertiary education providers.

She was determined to create a teacher in-service opportunity where she would lead a seminar where the pre-reading would be:

·      Best Careers for the Future 51 Jobs;

·      The blog post, What Does a future With No Jobs Look Like;

·      The Executive Briefing by McKinsey Global May 2017; 

·      Fullan Michael, “The nuance of academic achievement” Australian Educational Leader, Vol 41, Term 1, 2019, pp 8-10.

The purpose would be to inform the teaching team of her school and to attempt to draw out implications for implementing the Western Australian version of the Australian National Curriculum(WAANC). Her student population covered the school years 7 to 12. She knew she would have Leopards, Jaguars and Panthers. She had faith in classes being cross set for learning. She worried that in year 10 students would need to make a choice abut the path they would follow for university entrance, for entering the vocational education and job market stream or the general course stream for students who did not want to take up either of the other two pathways.  This latter was like a middle option.

She had heeded the warning in the McKinsey, May 2017, Executive Briefing that “The disruptions to the world of work that digital technologies are likely to bring about could pose significant challenges to policy makers and business leaders, as well as workers.” She had taken note from this Briefing that education systems and learning needed to evolve “…for a changed workplace” and that  “Policy makers working with education providers (traditional and nontraditional)”……had been advised that they “….could do more to improve basic STEM skills through the school systems, put a new emphasis on creativity as well as critical and systems thinking, and foster adaptive and life-long learning.”

During the mid 1980s she had been inspired by the education guru Michael Fullan as she valiantly tried to achieve a better understanding of how to bring about successful change in education.  Lo and behold she had now come across the guru again in an article “The nuance of academic achievement” in the Australian Educational Leader, Vol 41, Term 1 2019, pp 8-10.  Could this assist her introspection about how the WAANC might be implemented in her school in a context of a future partially predicted, but much of which was unknown.

Fullan’s central argument was that we had gone overboard in emphasising academic achievement and had paid scant attention to ‘connectedness’ or being ‘good at life’, wellbeing if you will.  Fullan postulates that the two go together and if they are treated together academic achievement and connectedness will feed off each other and be achieved at a high level.  Helen, like school Principals across Australia, had experience with the compulsory literacy and numeracy testing required annually by all years3,5,7 and 9 students. This was the NAPLAN system.  Politicians at the federal government level seemed for many years to be obsessed with Australia’s poor ranking in literacy and numeracy and science with other OECD countries.

Fullan writes of ‘deep learning’ the key goal of which is to ‘engage the world, change the world’. Fullan writes”

“Our six core learning goals similarly encompass academic and connectedness goals through the 6Cs:character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. The strong pedagogy of our four pillars of learning (partnerships, engaging pedagogy, stimulating learning environments, and leveraging digital), are also in the service of centring on both academic and wellbeing goals.” (p10)

Helen reflected how the McKinsey Briefing revealed elements that resonated in the context of what Fullan proposed:

“Educational systems have not kept pace with the changing nature of work, resulting in many employers saying they cannot find enough workers with the skills they need. In a McKinsey survey of young people and employers in nine countries, 40 percent of employers said lack of skills was the main reason for entry-level job vacancies. Sixty per cent said that new graduates were not adequately prepared for the world of work. There were gaps in technical skills such as STEM subject degrees but also in soft skills such as communication, teamwork, and punctuality.”

Helen was comforted as she reflected on the purposeful student, staff and parent wellbeing programs working effectively across her school community.

Helen wanted to implement the policy of mastery of basic skills and knowledge that were prerequisites for the next step in learning within key subject areas such as: English literacy, mathematical numeracy, digital and design technologies.  It would be heads down and get the job done and all this within the context of the broader life understanding and participating subjects like the Humanities and the Arts, especially the performing Arts.  She had a sense too that some study of ethics would be vital as students faced the exponential rate of change that now existed and would exist into the future. The Western Australian Curriculum (WAANC) for years 11 and 12 had a Philosophy and Ethics offering the difficulty would be to enable every student to partake of this.

The organisation for learning in secondary schools had traditionally been specialist subject teachers working each within their speciality with not much scope for integrated across-subject studies. Helen wanted to make some adjustments within this speciality regime, especially within the STEM fields as the evidence was mounting that practical integrated study with life applications was an effective approach.  The challenge was whether within that structure the mastery principle could still be applied.

Helen reflected on a set of underlying principles and skills that must be evident across the learning program. In no particular order these were:

·      Curiosity – utilising and encouraging this student trait;

·      Enthusiasm – utilising and encouraging this in students and not just for school learning but for life in the wider sense;

·      Critical thinking – developing in students a high level of skill in this vital area

·      Lateral thinking – applauding and encouraging this.

·      Collaboration and teamwork – this would be vital for detailed across-subject integrated practical studies – also there would need to be an awareness creating about the dangers of ‘group think’ and that there is a place for mavericks who think laterally;

·      Creativity – fostering this at every opportunity;

·      Adaptive and lifelong learning – developing this within each student;

·      Communication – so vital for learning and living in general; educating about the dangers of the social media grabs and the power of social media for good and evil;

·      Validity of information – building a caution to always want to prove the validity of each source of information, refusing to accept vague and unproven materials; primary and secondary sources are the specifics of this – the internet can carry a lot of false and invalid information;

·      Digital excellence – digital literacy needed to be leveraged at all costs;

·      Connectedness and being good at life;

·      Ethical awareness – educating how this is an essential measure to be applied throughout life to all sorts of situations;

·      Self awareness – being comfortable in one’s skin – being able to reach a position on the ultimate nature of reality such that one is comfortable and not continually troubled – suggesting that a base for such reality is the loving relationships that one has with close loved ones and friends – it’s also okay to be Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish; Christian, Muslim as long as one avoids fundamentalism to the extent that one wants, even insists, that all others to be like them – fostering the Australian way of a ‘fair go’ for all, and the Australian mateship that defines us as a people;

·      Humour – develop and nurture a sense of humour in students.

Helen wanted desperately to have all her teachers identify positively with the above list with each ensuring that these principles are reflected in their teaching.  This would be a major in-service commitment, a venture not to be hurried. She was not going to be a radical change agent who is seen to want to be rid of the values of the traditional specialist teaching approach rather she wants to adjust for more flexible learning organisational structures.  She knows how thrilling it is to sit at the feet of an inspirational specialist teacher, a guru.

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

I would relish the opportunity to be back as a school Principal educating my staff about the contexts for the future and how our curriculum implementation might take this into account.  

May the Force be with all school Principals who have one of the most important jobs on this planet in whatever country they live.

GD