Encouraging reflective practice…

What’s your current reality? Where would you place yourself on a scale of 1-10? What’s already going well? What might take you up a notch or two? So what?

This is a coaching tool that works from the perspective of appreciative inquiry and encourages a strength based focus. The emphasis is on recognising positives and then deciding on the next step, rather than seeking perfection and feeling inadequate because it’s not achievable. The ‘so that…’ means that the purpose and outcome of the goal have been considered and identified.

How might you utilise this approach as a teacher to encourage self assessment and goal setting in students, perhaps alongside success criteria in the form of ‘I can’ statements?

How might you utilise the approach as a leader, to encourage reflective practice in teachers, perhaps supported by your articulated beliefs about learning?

How might you use the approach as a workshop leader or presenter to encourage participants to reflect and consider action they will take as a result of their learning from your session?

Below are some goals shared during my workshop at the Toddle planning meetup yesterday:

• ‘I will start with the child before considering last year’s planner, so that we can create more responsive and authentically differentiated units’
• ‘I will change my plans as students respond so that they can see more of their curiosity represented in learning engagements.’
• ‘I will use the two questions- What has been revealed? How might we respond? to support greater responsiveness to our students as we plan for our teaching and learning’
• I will find times in our PLCs for revisiting the unit planner so that reflection is more organic.

It’s an effective model to use with others, but also for personal reflection. What are my strengths? What am I proud of? What is one thing that I might do next? So what?

CONTEMPLATIONS ON COACHING #2

Cultivating action…

“When students see tangible actions that they can choose to take to make a difference, they see themselves as competent, capable and active agents of change “(Oxfam 2015).

‘How do we get them to walk the talk? ‘ someone asked in our leadership meeting, sparking, as always, a host of ‘what if’ and ‘how might we’ questions. (A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger)

• What if we chose action as our whole school focus for 2019?
• What if we created a whole school inquiry that was inherently about action?
• How might this provide an opportunity for teachers to delve into the new PYP Principles into Practice?
• How might we explore the interconnection between action and agency?
• How might we link our focus on ‘cultivating action’ to our previous annual teacher inquiries?
• How might action look in the early years?
• What if we redeveloped our Year 6 leadership program to further encourage students to pitch and drive ideas for action? (Thank you Stephanie Thompson!)
• How might an action focus impact school culture?
• How might thinking beyond ourselves empower us to act?
• What if we used the cultural forces as a way to think about cultivating action?
• What if we included parents and how might we get them thinking about action they might take with or in relation to their children?
• How might members of the whole learning community take, encourage, support and acknowledge individual and collective action?

… which brings us to Day 1 of the school year and a massive, whole school workshop for teachers, assistants and leaders, to initiate the process of our inquiry.

We start with time to chat about the holidays first… with the guiding questions ‘What is something you learned in the holidays?’ and ‘Which form of action was sparked as a result?’

(Action markers in Early Years PYP doc)

Inspired by the beautiful Lead India clip, The Tree, participants record their initial thoughts about action.

Each group is assigned one of the action examples (Participation, Social Justice, Social Entrepreneurship, Advocacy and Lifestyle Choices) to unpack, considering how it might look through the lenses of their various roles and contexts, using the action markers above as prompts. The action section from the new PYP Principles into Practice is a valuable resource, adding a layer to the process.

Regrouping in jigsaw fashion, allows teachers to share their groups’ thinking as well as build an understanding of the bigger picture. What better way to synthesise the ideas and express the essence than through making….

The next stage is to consider how this goal relates to and builds on our whole school inquiries of the past few years, such as encouraging learner agency and starting with the child. Guiding questions: How does this goal connect with our previous goals? How does this goal extend learning and teaching? What challenges or questions do you have?

Then it’s back to the initial thoughts recorded by participants at the start of the session. How has their thinking changed? What new questions do they have? What action will they take?

What action do you plan to take in 2019?

10 alternatives to goal setting…

My friend Jason Graham is a passionate educator with a massive amount of energy and enthusiasm for learning. You can find him on any given day planning great learning for his kids, supporting other educators, developing and delivering workshops or engaging in learning conversations via Twitter, blogs or face to face. He’s an inquirer, always posing problems, exploring possibilities and dreaming up new ideas. He’s a change agent who doesn’t accept the status quo, constantly questioning and seeking ways to do things better. He loves his students and strives to be the best teacher he can.

Yet (like me) he finds it frustrating when he’s asked to write down specific goals. This exchange on Twitter got me thinking:

I often wonder about the value of teachers asking their students to write down their goals (and admin expecting their teachers to.) I’m sure most respond the way Jay does. (See his post here)

Rather than asking students or teachers to set specific goals, consider some of these options…

1. How do you learn best? What hinders your learning? How can this knowledge help you with future learning?
2. What are you proud of in your teaching or learning and what do you wish you could do better? How might you go about it? Who might support you?
3. What do you really care about? How might you make a difference? What steps could you take to start the process?
4. What are you fascinated by? How might you find out more about it? Who else is interested? Can you collaborate?
5. What do you dream of doing? How might you work towards that dream? Who might you share it with? What kind of support do you need?
6. What do you wish you could change? What small steps could you take towards making it happen?
7. What excites you? How might you make that part of your learning? Who might you collaborate with who shares your passion?
8. Who do you admire? What can you learn from them?
9. What are your strengths? How might you develop them further? How might you be able to support others in their teaching or learning?
10. Instead of asking someone to ‘set goals’, what would you ask them to think about that might take them beyond where they currently are?

Wouldn’t these sorts of questions promote real, valuable reflection?

And I rather like this idea from Kath Murdoch-
Choose a single word that represents something you’d like to focus on. Put it in a place where you can see it every day as a reminder to keep that focus in mind.

Or would you rather write down your ‘smart’ goals?

Looking back and forward…

Looking back…

Interestingly (or not), my most popular blog posts in 2013 were not written last year. These three have been the most enduring:

10 ways to encourage students to take responsibility for their learning (2010)
10 ways to differentiate learning (2012)
10 ways to encourage student reflection (2011)

My WordPress ‘Annual Report’ suggests I consider writing more on those subjects. In reality it seems that any post written in point form tends to be more popular as it’s quick to scan and requires less time and effort for the reader to process.

My top posts written in 2013:

10 ways to create a learning culture
10 questions to help you become a better teacher
10 principles of effective professional learning

As Seth Godin says, my most popular posts this year weren’t necessarily my ‘best’.

In 2013 my colleagues and I spent a great deal of time exploring inquiry and concept driven learning, improving our planning process and developing more effective approaches to in-school professional learning. So I liked these posts, with less advice, more reflection:

How do you assess understanding?
Planning for inquiry and Planning in response to learning
Concept based learning
Choose your own learning and There is never enough time
5 misconceptions about professional learning

Looking forward…

I don’t ‘set goals’.

Goals need to be specific, focused, achievable and include a plan of action. Ask me what my goals are for next year, I feel pressured to come up with something that fits those criteria, and I can’t think of anything to say.

I’m more of an inquiry kind of person. I love learning and exploring, making connections, going off on tangents, finding and solving problems, experimenting with ideas and possibilities, questioning and innovating.

So, rather than asking me for goals, ask me what I’d like to explore and I will rattle off an ever growing number of books, ideas, experiences and possibilities.

Watch this space…