Buenos dias good senor, I've never been down here before (John Hanlon)

Photo by Sebastian Dumitru
on Unsplash

Back to school for the start of Term 3 this week and we'll resume the quest to improve our results and engage students.

It's actually harder than you think to do both those things.

I was reading an interesting article about this and it seems 
there is often a tradeoff between "good teaching" where students learn stuff and "good teaching" that engages students.

Researchers found that teachers who were good at raising test scores tended to receive low student evaluations. Teachers with great student evaluations tended not to raise test scores all that much.

Basically: the teachers and the teaching practices that can increase test scores often are not the same as those that improve student-reported engagement. Doing both is rare!

That's a dilly of a pickle is it not?

The researchers did find a small number (6 out of 53) teachers who managed both to have high engagement ratings and improved test scores.

Here's what those 6 did differently:

• These teachers often had students working together collaboratively in pairs or groups, using tactile objects to solve problems or play games.  
• These doubly “good” teachers had another thing in common: they maintained orderly classrooms with thoughtful, efficient routines.
• They had a good sense of pacing and understood the limits of children’s attention spans.

I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye, I turned to look but it was gone (Pink Floyd)

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Life as a student is hard, man!

Our school had a crazily great genius idea last year: to start off this year with teachers becoming students for three days and attending a digital conference.

With assembly, lessons, study periods, angst of being late...the whole bowl of wax.

Yes, we've replicated the pressure, the digital confusion, the joy, the highs, the lows, the what-have-you-got-next? and what-do-we-need-for-class? conversations, in short - the difficulty of being students again, to a brilliant degree.

Funny watching staff reacting to this new state of affairs after 6 weeks holiday. Me included. Flash backs to Mt Albert Grammar have been a feature. And I've been exhausted doing that and trying to gear up for the real students' return next week, as well as interviewing for vacant positions. Phew!

Suffice to say we have new found respect and sympathy for our students who do this every day!

A great start to the year!

Advice for the young at heart (Tears For Fears)

Distractions can come in all shapes and sizes.

I get distracted very easily.

This week I've been distracted by a new laptop (with a bigger screen) and getting it looking like I want it to - including making adjustments to my blogs.

Amidst all those distractions I did manage to find these gems for you (you're welcome):

1 The interweb is a huge distraction
And it's making us dumber!

2 Ways to beat distraction
Yes - really. Want the energy and ability to stay focused? Read this! Exhausting but fun!

3 Now - keep your students engaged
Okay - once you are zen calm and focused you can help your students stay engaged.

4 Bad behaviour
Distractions can lead to anger and anger can lead to hate (apologies to Yoda). This article provides food for thought on the stuff behind that bad behaviour you're coping with in the classroom.

5 Just saying
Love this Edutopia list of things we should NEVER say in a classroom. Been guilty of a few of these in my younger, less emotionally intelligent years.

I usually played such things as rough-neck and thug (Captain Beefheart)

Roughing it in Eskdale with the Year 11's Part 1

Two words: school camp. 

Some love 'em (like me), some folks don't. It's all good.

Roughing it in Eskdale Part 2

This first week for the term, at our school, is all about a gentle start - just seniors and a load of non classroom activities - camps (Year 11 and 13), trips to universities, and visiting speakers is the order of the day.

The start of a school year is always different in each school. Some schools stagger the start with different year groups, some get everybody in. Some launch into classes straight away, some don't.

Each one is valid.

The point is we've started the year and the next 10 weeks at school will be vibrant, exciting, frustrating, rewarding, challenging and full to the brim of potential!!

So - let's get into it via:

1 Tube map education
Say what? What does the London Underground have to do with education? I like this analogy.

2 Engagement
I'm keen to immediately engage my students. I'm always thinking of ways to do this and always looking for the disengaged. Get 'em on board early and life is a lot easier for the next 10 weeks.

3 Try something new
It's a new year - fresh starts for students and time to retire some old texts and embrace some fresh ideas. Everyone needs a reminder about this!

4 Blended learning
Time also for a reminder about establishing a good classroom culture for blended learning.

5 Wildly audacious goals
This is the best time of the year coz we can all have wildly audacious goals!

He was a famous trumpet man from out Chicago way, he had a boogie style that no one else could play (The Andrew Sisters)

1 Getting negative feedback
Loved this article from Leadership Freak about receiving feedback. He's a wise old owl!

2 This
I get updates from This in my mailbox. I recommend it, you might like This too!

3 London tube map

I'm leaving London this week and heading back to NZ. The London tube map is a work of art, but what does it have to do with education? So read this short piece.

4 Student engagement
A mind/shift article on student engagement? Yes please!

5 Stop teaching
Finally this week - a piece that suggests we should stop teaching and start learning. Alrighty then! Timely one for me as I head back to work next week.

What if the water and wishes appear? (Bob Mould)

I've spent a lot of the last week thinking about our senior English courses for next year.

It became time to finally move from the theoretical to the practical and actually design the courses with my colleagues.

We ended up introducing a potential student inquiry/thematic aspect to the year's programme (and deliberately separated internal NCEA standards and external standards so that all the internally assessed work is done early in the first half of the year).

I like our aim for these courses: 

This course aims to cater to student diversity, creativity, collaboration, and to foster and reward student curiosity. A student driven inquiry in Terms 1 and 2 may be used to include the internal standards.  

With that in mind I have now turned my attention to creating a framework to help students engage their creativity and curiosity. I found this cool diagram via Twitter:

It's that first column- posing real questions, that I'll be working on next week at school using, as a starting point, a powerpoint that a colleague is designing to help students understand the possibilities on offer. 

My excitement and own creative juices are flowing!

The highest branch on the apple tree it was my favorite place to be (Crowded House)

In 2007 I saw graphic evidence showing the sharp drop in engagement of NZ students from primary to secondary school . Generally Year 10 continues the drop and then there is a steady improvement until Year 13 but even that is still below the high engagement figures from primary years.

I’ve been considering that graph in student engagement ever since and wondering why it is that students become more and more disaffected. 

What we ultimately end up with is a load of disaffected students in our secondary schools. I recently found  a helpful definition of all these terms.

Engagement versus disaffection in school refers to the intensity and emotional quality of children’s involvement in initiating and carrying out learning activities…Children who are engaged show sustained behavioural involvement in learning activities accompanied by a positive emotional tone.  They select tasks at the border of their competencies, initiate action when given the opportunity, and exert intense effort and concentration in the implementation of learning tasks; they show generally positive emotions during ongoing action, including enthusiasm, optimism, curiosity, and interest. 

The opposite of engagement is disaffection.  Disaffected children are passive, do not try hard, and give up easily in the face of challenges…[they can] be bored, depressed, anxious, or even angry about their presence in the classroom; they can be withdrawn from learning opportunities or even rebellious towards teachers and classmates.

I am interested in this apparent correlation between engaged students and positive behavior patterns. On the surface it seems a no-brainer. We need to continue the flavour of primary high engagement through to secondary school (particularly for boys).

Why is it we are unable to do this. An inquiry method investigation would help with this.

As I’ve blogged recently – the behavior of our students at Ali bin Abi Taleb School is relatively good and the emotional engagement of students at our school is reasonably high given the Arabic context for males (many are eventually headed for government jobs - the police force or the army are two lucrative career paths).

In a NZ context it would an interesting area of action research. Maybe it's already been done?

I'll consider this and get back to you. I'm off tomorrow on holiday back to New Zealand. It's the end of the first Trimester here, the second starts on January 8.

While I'm away I will endeavour to keep up with the blog but you'll understand if it's not so regular for a while.