Well-a, beat the drum and hold the phone, the sun came out today (John Fogerty)

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My students are about to start two weeks of study-break before they return to school for two weeks and then head off on exam leave.

If they are looking for an effective study tool for those external exams they should look at doing some successive practice.

A Mind/Shift article I have bookmarked from 5 years ago, outlines the advantages of successive practice (when students practice via techniques like doing practice essays until they can get their answers correct and then repeat that process every few days, by doing that they encode the information much better).

As the article points out: 

successive practice is the norm for many activities students are passionate about like sports or music. “Most of your students use successive relearning for almost everything they enjoy doing outside of classroom studies,” he said. For example, a student learning to play an instrument will regularly practice a piece until it sounds good and then practice again a few days later. After the first practice session some notes or phrasing are forgotten, but when they are relearned during the next practice session they are encoded even more strongly.

Don't ask. Act!

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Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you (Witold Marian Gombrowicz).

Without wanting to overthink it, here's the story about who I am and what actions delineate and define me as a teacher/ Principal in 6 steps.

Step 1 - having a fortunate birth. Given the odds it's a fluke that I ended up with parents who sustained my growth. Their example was exemplary and made me value relationships, the need for integrity, the importance of routines and good habits, loyalty, honesty, righteousness and much more.

Step 2 - Royal Oak Primary and Mrs Alexander gave me excellent early examples of how important reading and writing were to my self-development.

Step 3 - Corporeal punishment. At Manukau Intermediate I was given the strap on my hand by Mrs Kay and the injustice of that moment seared itself into my consciousness.

Step 4 - Mt Albert Grammar School and inspirational teachers like Warwick Gibbs and Barry Gough. But also confronting my weaknesses, failures, and liabilities and the subsequent encouragement from the school to pursue my goals beyond school.

Step 5 - Dogged pursuit of a goal (wanting to be a teacher, becoming a prefect, captaining the school's first XI, going to university, gaining an MA degree, getting into teaching)

Step 6 - allowing the universe to guide my decisions (a.k.a. fluking it part 2 - such as landing the exact right job to fluke the time, 1983, and place, New Plymouth, for me to meet my wife).

Booyah! That's who I am as a teacher and a leader.

I'm changing everything, Oh, everything around me (Marmalade)

 

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Stop. Walk away. Let go. Stop thinking. Move on...Bingo.

Sometimes Google won't do because the answer is within.

For instance it can be a fragment of a thought like 'what was the name of that Teacher Aide we had here three years ago?' Google doesn't know. Going through the alphabet sometimes works to jog the memory, but other times the answer won't come. 

Stop. Walk away. Do something else....and, Bam. The answer has floated to the surface.

I can't begin to calculate how many times I've used that technique when an answer won't come. 

It's like the brain goes into a loop and a distraction frees up the loop. And the answer comes.

This time and space strategy works for all aspects of learning too, and is a key thing to use when you get stuck in the learning pit (of despair).

Heart's Ease

 

The NZ Ensign was positioned at half-mast at school on Friday as a sign of respect and a mark of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II. 

In accordance to custom, it will remain that way up to and including the day of the funeral.

Where did this tradition come from?

By all accounts, it started in the early 1600s, when the captain of Heart’s Ease, a British ship, died during the journey to Canada. On its return to London, the ship’s crew had lowered the flag to honour their departed captain. 

That started the tradition of flying a flag at half-mast at exactly one flag’s width lower on days of mourning to make room for an invisible flag on top that represented their loss.

Respect, right there (one of our 5 core values you'll remember).

Roll up, roll up for the mystery tour. Roll up - and that's an invitation (The Beatles)

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Over the years, I've heard quite a lot of rhetoric around metacognition and the 'Learning To Learn' phrase.

Sometimes the detail is missing from that rhetoric. And sometimes metacognition is made to sound more complicated than it really is.

Basically, we are talking about a skill that considers how you know what you know.

There are some simple questions you can ask yourself:

• Do I really get this idea? 
• Could I explain it to a friend? 
• What are my goals? 
• Do I need more background knowledge? 
• Do I need more practice?

Students come unstuck when they don’t stop to ask themselves if they really get a skill or concept. 

I know I was particularly bereft of this skill as a student - particularly in mathematics and chemistry - subjects I definitely did not 'get'. Instead of asking those questions and slowing down my processes I moved on quickly to the next thing I didn't get. Teachers need to shoulder some blame here as well - rather than assist in the process, they are often keen to move on to the next piece of content, leaving some behind to flounder.

The good news? Everyone can ask those questions and change their thinking. As teachers, thinking about thinking is something we can model and teach. And move away from a content driven approach.

Try to realise it's all within yourself. No one else can make you change (The Beatles)

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According to social scientist David Livermore in his book The Cultural Intelligence Difference - “The number one predictor of your success in today’s borderless world is not your IQ, not your resume (CV), and not even your expertise. It’s your Cultural Intelligence (or CQ).”

I've lived and worked in The Middle East, China, England and New Zealand so I have a gut feel my CQ is relatively quite high.

But let's test that out with CQ's questions that assess four distinct components. 

The first is “CQ Drive” – the motivation to learn about other cultures. I think Jacky's and my inclination to head for places as an adventure ticks that box. I have loved living in those places and experiencing things more fully, rather than as a tourist who visits for a few days.

Which leads us to “CQ Knowledge”- an understanding of some of the general cultural differences you may face. We learnt as we went and had some enlightening experiences, particularly in Al Ain (UAE) and Doha (Qatar). The Arabic world is fascinating and we have a lot to learn from it.

“CQ Strategy”, examines how you make sense of those difficult confrontations and learn from them and we were definitely up for this in China and the Middle East. When living in countries like China and the Middle East I was a guest and not a citizen so the lessons I took from my experiences were tempered by that. 

Finally, “CQ Action" involves your behavioural flexibility – whether you are able to adapt your conduct like a cultural chameleon. And that box, based on the CQ strategy comments, is ticked as well.

So - as I first thought, my CQ is looking peachy keen, if I do say so myself.