Clive and I (Clare) are still in Australia where we are having a great time. On Friday, July 17th I was reading an article in The Sydney Morning Herald by Eryk Bagshaw about funding for schools. Australia has a significant number of private (independent) schools – approximately 35% of pupils attend private schools. From my Canadian perspective this number is staggering! Having so many children in private schools impacts on the viability of public schools. Unlike Canada private schools in Australia receive government funding – substantial funding. Eryk Bagshaw reports that by 2020 the average public school student could receiver $100 less a year in state and government funding than a similar independent school student. Just wondering why private schools are receiving any funding let alone more funding than public schools.
Category Archives: schooling
Voices Into Action
My (Clare) friend David Booth introduced me to an amazing program, Voices into Action, which helps students develop their 
social awareness.
Voices into Action is an online resource dedicated to providing students with access to information on issues regarding human rights, prejudice, and hatred. Designed by curriculum experts, this program utilizes a wide variety of media to present compelling information on a history of human suffering, stemming from social injustice that is still a problem today. This site will give you the knowledge and tools to speak out, and to go even further by turning your voice into action!
I have looked through some of the resources and they are fantastic – discussion questions, videos, news analysis, case studies, in-person interviews ….. There are 6 units available: human rights; genocide, understanding prejudice and discrimination, immigration; and personal action. All teachers I am confident will find these resources so useful. Here is the link: http://www.voicesintoaction.ca/Home
FYI – Larry Swartz my dear friend is one of the Project Managers of Voices into Action. From my experience any project that Larry works on is outstanding!
School Board Proposes Multi-language Immersion Program
The Toronto Catholic District School Board has plans to establish a multi-language specialty school. The proposed immersion program, being considered for north Scarborough as early as this fall, would offer instruction in French, Spanish, German, and Mandarin. Michael Del Grande, chair of the TCDSB noted “my view is we’re not preparing our students for the world stage, we barely do a passing job with French, and we’re a bilingual country! So we’re asking parents if they’d like to educate their children in the languages of some of the largest economies in the world.” What do you think about this type of immersion program? Should other languages be included in the program?
Link to the Toronto Star article: http://www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/education/2015/04/28/multi-language-elementary-school-proposed-by-toronto-catholic-board.html
Embracing the Backchannel
The backchannel is the conversation that goes on alongside the primary activity, presentation, or discussion in your classroom. Victor Yngve first used the phrase “back channel” in 1970, in a linguistic context, referring to how people communicate back and forth alongside a conversation. I (Cathy) have recently started using TodaysMeet as a backchannel chat platform to help me redirect the constant distractions or backchannel discussions in the classroom, especially, the digital ones. Have you ever been frustrated by the frequent use of digital devices (i.e. digital phones, computers, tablets) in your classroom that are not related to your lesson? This tool may help. I use TodaysMeet to help me harness the backchannel and redirect it onto a platform that can enable new activities and discussions. My students are invited, through a link, into a “room” much like a chat room. I then project this “room” onto my screen for all to see. As I progress through my lesson, questions and comments about the lesson are posted by the students through their own computers or other devices.
Below are a list of benefits from using backchannel tools in your classroom.
- Shy/introverted students are given a place to ask questions and contribute to conversations.
- Students who process information by asking a lot of questions can ask an unlimited amount of questions without dominating the classroom conversation. Everyone can see their questions and you can choose when to address their questions.
- Gauge students’ interest in and or prior knowledge of a topic.
- Extend your classroom conversations beyond the time in your school’s schedule. If you have started a backchannel during a classroom conversation and it’s going well you don’t have to worry about running out of time because you can have students continue the dialogue later in the day.
- Gauge the effectiveness of an activity in real time, by having students share questions and comments during an activity
- Conduct formative assessment by asking students about their understanding of a topic and gauging the responses
From : http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/06/5-benefits-of-using-backchannels in.html#.VRAQv-E01q8
Other backchannel platforms include: Socrative, Padlet, and BluePulse. And, yes, tweeting on the same hash tag, during an event, is also a form of backchannelling. To obtain a comprehensive guide on harnessing the backchannel, follow the URL below: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/09/backchannels.html#.VRAXx-E01q8
But we already DO this at the Laboratory School: Learning from Leaders
Building on Clive’s post from yesterday I (yiola) want to extend the discussion on inquiry- based pedagogy and its many high-level thinking practices. Question posing, experiential learning, researching, sharing, collaborating, exploring, imagining, experimenting — these are but some of the qualities you will find in inquiry-based classrooms. Problem-based and play-based (some use the terms interchangeably) do too. And, these are the practices that I see being used daily at the Laboratory School here in downtown Toronto. It is good practice. Students are empowered, responsible, creative thinkers. They are also happy when they learn. It is good to read then that the Finnish system is moving away from the subject oriented traditions of schooling into a more “topic” based or what we call “inquiry time” approach to learning. It is what we’ve been doing at the laboratory school for a very long time.
Here is an article the speaks to Finland’s transition:
What I find interesting is that the countries out outperform the groundbreaking work of the Nordic country are countries I presume have a very different pedagogy. China — a country whose system is very subject driven, standardized, and competitive in nature. Yes?
I find it interesting to contrast the 2 systems and to consider what the long-term projections will be for the students who exit out of each system.
I see students from our Laboratory school entering high school as creative, capable, high-level thinking individuals. Data shows that in the long term, the Laboratory school graduates go into creative and high performing fields in the arts, academia, public service and corporate sectors.
The article shares:
Welcome to Siltamaki primary school in Helsinki – a school with 240 seven- to 12-year-olds – which has embraced Finland’s new learning style. Its principal, Anne-Mari Jaatinen, explains the school’s philosophy: “We want the pupils to learn in a safe, happy, relaxed and inspired atmosphere.”
We come across children playing chess in a corridor and a game being played whereby children rush around the corridors collecting information about different parts of Africa. Ms Jaatinen describes what is going on as “joyful learning”. She wants more collaboration and communication between pupils to allow them to develop their creative thinking skills.
This is the work of the Laboratory School and more. I look forward to hearing more about Finland’s transitions, the upcoming PISA rankings and to sharing in greater detail just how the Laboratory School here in Toronto is very much a leader in Inquiry-based teaching and learning.
Who Poses the Questions in Teaching?
In Ontario at present, “inquiry learning” or “problem-based learning” (including “play-based learning”) is widely advocated. However, while many proponents of the approach maintain that all the questions guiding inquiry should come from the students, I (Clive) beg to differ. Although generally in agreement with the approach, I think a balance is needed: teachers should pose questions too.
For example, the students in the course Reflective Professional Development I am teaching this term seem to love the questions we are pursuing; e.g., how much do teachers learn informally, how can informal learning be enhanced, how can formal PD be more effective? I don’t have to push the students at all – in small groups, whole-class discussion, and individual writing they go to work on the questions in quite a refreshing way. However, many of the questions we discuss came from me: they are inherent in the structure of the course and the readings I recommend.
So there has to be a balance. The classroom should be a setting for co-learning or “co-constructivist” learning. Teachers should suggest many of the questions, but also do the following:
- Let a question go if there is no “uptake” from the students
- Respect the additional questions and sub-questions students raise
- Allow the students a lot of air-time so they can identify questions and express their views about them
- Encourage the students to pursue their own questions in their assignments
Over time, with this approach, we will get a better sense of which questions are interesting and fruitful, and which ones we should pose next time we teach the course, while again looking for new questions from the students.
How educators understand poverty: One teacher’s perspective
More and more, poverty awareness is coming up in my teacher education classes. Perhaps this is because I (Yiola) am gaining more confidence about how to frame, discuss, and process the issues associated with teaching poverty awareness. Or perhaps it is because students are seeing issues of poverty play out in their placements and are comfortable to raise questions in our class. Whatever the cause for the awareness I am glad this discourse has made its way into my classes.
Ultimately the questions lead to, what can teachers do? I teach two levels of teacher education courses this year: I teach at the Masters level and I am also teaching a first year undergraduate teacher education course. I can safely say that most student teachers care about poverty awareness and I can also safely say most student teachers do not know what to do about it.
Then a student in my Masters level course shared this link with us:
The video is of one teacher beautifully expressing the trials and tribulations of one student in her class. It is a very sad story. It is depressing. But it is much more than that. The narrative presents a perspecitve that all teachers must have; an understanding that poverty makes life hard… BUT… this is not the fault of the child. The teacher’s acknowledgement that her student is smart and capable and kind is central to this discourse. Many scholars acknowledge that teachers must hold affirming views of their students. And, I sense that most students teachers shrug this concept off as “yah yah, of course. That is obvious. Of course I will like all my students.” but to move beyond the circumstances and consequences of poverty to see that a child who is experiencing that plight IS capable, smart and kind is not so obvious.
When we viewed the video in class many of us were near tears. I questioned whether this was a good thing or not. It is important to raise awareness but such awareness cannot just hang out there in agony and leave students feeling despair. Awareness must move beyond understanding to the “what can I do? As a teacher what am I going to do?”. Here the video stops short but our discussions continued. Student teachers began to blend theory with their placement practice to try to make sense of how they could possible make “carrying the one” manageable so students living in poverty can make gains in their learning and their lives. This is no easy feat. We set out some steps for our work as teachers: The first step is teacher awareness, the next step is having students know they are cared for and believed in, and the step after that to critically assess our own practices so our methods are accessible, manageable, and achievable so students feel success. Each of these steps require intense reflection, listening, thinking, studying and experience. I haven’t touched on levels of community or institutional activism and that is with intention. In my experience, student teachers need to understand that work for themselves first.
To have student teachers think and teach in these ways is activism. Some student teachers are there in their understanding and are leaders… most are not. My goal is to support student teachers’ learning and further their understandings of the social determinants of educational success so they have the knowledge and skills to deal with issues in their classroom.
The video I share above is powerful. There are thoughtful, powerful descriptions in her narrative about her student(s), their families, and schooling that help illustrate just what it means to be a student living in poverty.
“Unschooling” education
A recent article in the Toronto Star focused on a family that is committed to “unschooling” their two boys. The two children featured in the article, aged ten and thirteen, do not attend a formal school and receive little direct instruction at home. The unschooling approach has been described as an “extreme approach to homeschooling,” it is focused on self-directed learning where children are deeply immersed in their surrounding community. The boys’ father, Ben Hewitt, discussed the approach to education he and his wife Penny have implemented with their sons. Hewitt noted that as a society “we base a lot of our assumptions about education on what children are supposed to be getting from a standardized curriculum, rather than what they are actually getting… But for me, calculus and physics are not required to be a functioning member of society.” What do you think about the “unschooling” approach?
To read more about the Hewitt family and unschooling see the Star article: http://www.thestar.com/life/parent/2015/03/01/why-one-family-practices-unschooling.html
Literacy Pilot Program at First Nations’ Schools
Former Prime Minister Paul Martin recommends a four-year literacy pilot program implemented at two First Nations’ elementary schools should be put into place across Canada. Martin suggested the reading and writing program, implemented at Walpole Island and Kettle and Stony Point First nations in Ontario, improved students literacy performance. The program, designed by Julia O’Sullivan dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, required schools to carry out a mandatory reading and writing period for every student during the first 90 minutes of each day. Kettle and Stony Point First Nation chief Thomas Bressette drew attention to the underfunding of First Nations schools. Bressette noted “there needs to be a period of catch-up time because our people have been looked down on and set back because of underfunding, not because we’re ignorant and we’re dumb and uneducated and incapable of learning, but because of the circumstances.”
Link to the news article: http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/literacy-pilot-project-leads-to-improvements-at-first-nations-schools-1.2251422
Debating the Common Core
The Washington Post calls attention to the ongoing debate over the Common Core Standards by featuring a letter writing exchange between two school Principals who express their differing views on the standards. The first letter is written by Carol Burris, Principal of South Side High School in New York, who was once a strong supporter of the Common Core but is now a critic of the standards. Burris noted, “I do not think it is a good idea to homogenize standards as untried as the Common Core, across our nation. What we teach our children is far too important to submit to a national experiment. Practicing educators, child development experts and parents should be deeply engaged in the process of standard setting in our states. Standards should be debated, reviewed and refined.” A response will be written by Jayne Ellspermann Principal of West Port High School in Ocala, Florida. See the link provided to read this informative exchange:
Literacy Teaching and Teacher Education 