The real way to learn anything is to go out and experience it and let your curiosity lead you.(Ted, the man with the yellow hat)

1 Modern schools
Here are twenty words to sum up what modern schools should be about. While you can quibble with them I think they sum things up rather well!

2 Curiosity
This is a corner stone of our English programmes. Leadership Freak does a great blogpost on this.

3 Inquiry learning
A great mind/shift article on things to keep in mind when moving into inquiry methods.

4 Staff meetings
Some great advice here about making staff meetings more relevant and engaging (its solution focused stance got me).

5 Leader's responsibilities
This is cool list of the five ultimate responsibilities that leaders have.

Alright, hold tight, I'm a highway star (Deep Purple)

A recent story about Finland did the rounds at school. Seems they've boldly done away with subjects! Yahoo! This is something I thought may have eventuated in NZ when we moved to standards based assessment with NCEA. But, no.

I thought about Finland and NZ's NCEA when I read a recent post on mind/shift. It was written by Thom Markham. During his post he asked this great question:
Are we making 21^st century competencies the centerpiece of instruction? 

The inquiry method places 21st century competencies bang in the middle. As Mr Markham says:

Inquiry isn’t designed to teach information; it’s designed to set up the conditions under which students become more skillful. That’s why it’s inherently student-centered. Successful inquiry requires skillful competencies, which are a deep amalgam of habits, personality, and an experiential knowledge base.  

The NZ curriculum set out a number of skillful competencies, five in fact:

• thinking
• using language, symbols, and texts
• managing self
• relating to others
• participating and contributing

that suit perfectly the inquiry method.

To me this equals Synchronicity Part... um, I forget what number we're up to, but it must be a lot!

Suddenly subjects DON'T matter. Skillful competencies do.

Your witness...

I don't want to come back down from this cloud (Bush)

As you read in my previous post: I'm convinced that a peculiar hybrid of UDL/inquiry/ blended/ personalised learning is right for senior English classes right now! My next few posts will be using that premise as a basis. Hang in there - it might get bumpy!

• I'm always interested in what people think makes 'a good teacher'. This may appear to be a detour from that first sentence but bear with me.
• Recently I came across some University of Birmingham research that set out to specifically explore the most important character strengths, or virtues, needed for good teaching, and what character strengths, or virtues, were held by today’s teachers.
• It would be good to compare the findings with the views of New Zealand teachers. I suspect there would be a high correlation.
• Anyway, let's cut to the chase! What did they find out?
• There was widespread agreement on the personal qualities that are needed to be a good teacher.
• The six most important character strengths for good teachers were:

1. Fairness (78% of teachers )
2. Creativity (68%)
3. A love of learning (61%)
4. Humour (53%)
5. Perseverance (45%)
6. Leadership (40%)

• Sidebar #1: However, in describing their own character strengths they reported kindness (49%) and honesty (50%) in place of leadership and perseverance in those top six.

Sidebar #2: 37% of experienced teachers claimed that they do not feel that they have sufficient time to do their job to a standard they believe is right.

So what's this got to do with my UDL/ inquiry/ blended/ personalised learning hybrid?

In a word - compatability!

Think back twenty, ten, or even five years - would that list be different? I think so. Then, the teacher was the knowledge holder so students wanted  teachers to teach to the exam, have good subject knowledge, and ensure students understood things before advancing (yes this is stuff from an actual list from 20 years ago).

Check that Birmingham list again. That's right! It's different.  If good teaching now involves those things, and I believe it does, then it's imperative we embrace systems that are more compatible to those good teacher attributes and allow students to work to their individual strengths in their own time.  

To be continued...

Try to see it once my way - everything zen (Bush)

Inquiry learning is on my mind lately. Mainly because I've adopted it as an educational philosophy that is right for now.

So it will be my focus for the next few posts. 

First - a refresher. 

Inquiry learning is not new, but it has come back into fashion because of a new emphasis on the power of students’ innate curiosity to drive learning. 

Inquiry-based learning asks students to discover knowledge on their own with guidance from me. 

Rather than receiving information up front through the teacher, students are choosing what standards they will work on, researching what they need, thinking about what they'll do, asking their own follow-ups and getting help from me along the way.

It can be messy. It can be frustrating (shouldn't I be doing what I used to do - teach them content?). It can be stressful for the student (just teach me the content).

So why do I love it so much? Easy - it gets rid of those industrial model classrooms (please - desks in rows? 60 minute periods? Let go of your control and move away from the dark side).

It's a high trust model and it puts the burden of responsibility for completing tasks and meeting deadlines on the shoulders of students. 

I've seen the future of teaching when that happens and it can be joyous!  

Without an umbrella we're soaked to the skin (Neil Sedaka)

I have a piece of paper attached to my bulletin board at school that I came across when doing some post grad diploma work a few years ago (wow - I just added them up - 14 actually!)

It's basically a summary of Inquiry methods like action research (wait! Stay with me!) but it came from Nissan and it's called The Nissan Way (bottom right corner on each picture).

The cycle is split into four sections and the cycle continues (like Spring Summer Autumn Winter...Spring): Plan > Do > Check > Action >... Plan > 

They called it a cycle of continuous improvement and I like that idea. 

I also like the simplicity on offer here. Less is more.

I was encouraged this morning in a staff meeting to think that that bunch of bananas I posted about recently is maybe (maybe...maybe) more within reach than I thought.

Next term we are working on some individual inquiries for the first five weeks during our Friday morning PD time. Guess what mine will be?

My thoughts on vertical vs horizontal tutor groups and vertical learning are things that have been on my mind recently as you know. So naturally I want to focus on this more next term.

I've done the kind of surface research on these things and my thinking about the organisational culture within the school will get some more freedom to roam next term.

I'm keen to actually formulate my thoughts in the form of The Nissan Way model

but at this stage it will have to be limited to the plan stage (as seen in the above Action Research diagram).

If you don't dig the jive you better scat (Joe Montgomery in Cool Cat)

I have just finished the School Improvement Plan (aka SIP) for Ali bin Abi Taleb for this year.

I didn't write it all. I compiled a lot of it.

It runs to 22 pages.

Yikes!

22 pages! The cynics among you will have a field day.

But it's actually a really good document. It details our action plans for the year as a school and for the individual subjects.

The trick of course will be to monitor the progress and adapt as we go.

Cognition has turned me into something of a data analysis junkie. I actually enjoy sifting through the screeds of data we collect to determine where the gold is.

School improvement depends on pertinent data analysis, then an action plan, then revision and reviews (that progress thing), then more action plans.

From what I've read the Inquiry process (summarised in that last sentence) is the way to go. So that's the way I'm going.