Aligning actions with values and beliefs…

“School culture is a manifestation of the relationships, beliefs and values of a learning community. It shapes the ways members act and interact, and expresses the principles and values that underpin thinking and communicating.” (IB PYP Principles into Practice 2020)

We know what we value in the members of our learning community (the attributes of the IB learner profile) and we know what we believe about learning (our learning principles). This year we have chosen to revisit those and focus on alignment of actions with values and beliefs.

‘Live it, don’t laminate it’, has long been our mantra, but it’s time for a deeper exploration of what it means to walk the talk, using the eight cultural forces as a lens for exploring, and a means for enculturating, the attributes of the Learner Profile and our Learning Principles. We launched the focus in our first day workshop for K-6 educators.

LEARNER PROFILE
Keeping in mind the cultural forces of time, language, modelling, interactions, expectations, routines, opportunities and environment, the following questions were explored.(Try it!)

Inquirer
How might we (continue to) build a culture of curiosity?
Knowledgeable
How might we build a culture that encourages engagement with local and global issues?
Open minded
How might we build a culture where exploration of different perspectives is valued?
Caring
How might we build a culture based on empathy and compassion?
Thinkers
How might we build a culture of critical, creative and ethical thinking?
Communicators 
How might we build a culture of respectful communication and collaboration?
Principled
How might we build a culture that encourages honesty, integrity and sense of justice?
Risk takers
How might we build a culture that encourages experimentation, innovation and resilience?
Balanced
How might we build a culture that strives for intellectual, physical and emotional balance?
Reflective
How might we build a culture in which we thoughtfully consider our strengths, ideas and experiences?

LEARNING PRINCIPLES
In order to revisit our learning principles in context, teachers shared examples of meaningful learning through powerful inquiries they have led or experienced, while others identified the learning principles that were evident. The power of teachers sharing learning, their own and that of their students, is energising and inspiring; noticing and naming beliefs in action adds another dimension!

Then, keeping in mind the cultural forces, we revisited and unpacked each of the learning principles.

• We learn in different ways, depending on abilities, preferences and interests.
• Learning takes place through inquiry: questioning, exploring, experimenting and problem solving.
• Learning occurs by acquiring skills and knowledge, constructing meaning and transfer to other contexts.
• Learning is active and social and best takes place through collaboration and interaction.
• Learning takes place when we feel secure, valued and are able to take risks.
• Learning needs to be challenging, meaningful, purposeful and engaging.
• Learning includes meta-cognition and reflection, and requires learners to take ownership of their learning.

The plan is for teams to engage in collaborative action research underpinned by these beliefs, as the year unfolds.

LEARNER FOCUS
While the theme of ‘walking the talk’ will be integrated into student learning in the younger years too, the central idea for a year-long unit for our upper primary students is ‘Our actions reveal who we are as individuals and as a community‘. The conceptual understandings below could well invite lifelong reflection!

We can reveal our values through our actions

• I can make connections between my values and actions.
• I can make decisions about actions based on my values.

Our actions affect the way people perceive us

• I can think critically about my assumptions and perceptions of others.
• I can engage in reflective conversations about my own actions.

Through action and reflection, we can grow and change

• I can describe changes and growth in my actions and values over time.
• I can decide who I want to be every day.

Apparently we’re not the only ones thinking about this currently… (Sign spotted locally by one of our leaders)

Building cohesion…

“Cohesion is the powerful social glue that turns us from human beings into people. It is the glue that binds us to every element of our social context. When there is strong healthy cohesion in school communities, we feel connected to those around us; we’re on the same page with them. We feel we belong, that we are part of the team, with shared values and a shared sense of what is normal.”

Helen Street: CONTEXTUAL WELLBEING (Slightly adapted)

How might we build cohesion?

With ‘building cohesion’ as our 2020 focus, we started the year with a whole school workshop in which over 120 educators across disciplines and campuses connected and interconnected through a range of activities. Noticing and naming the ways they built cohesion, each time they changed groups during the morning, heightened awareness and highlighted transferable possibilities.

In groups, teachers shared a highlight from the holidays and something they hope for this year. Next we asked each person to consider and share a time when they felt a sense of belonging and identify common characteristics.

• Caring relationships
• Shared experiences
• Shared values
• Storytelling
• Active listening
• Deeper conversations
• Sense of connection
• Common purpose
• Choice and ownership
• Appreciation of each other
• Mutual trust
• Collaboration
• Authenticity
• Personal growth
• Non judgemental acceptance.
• Openness and support
• Playfulness

Co-developing this shared understanding of how it feels to belong will help us reflect on the extent to which these things are evident in our classrooms and in our learning community, and to recognise possibilities for improvement.

How might we build cohesion in our classrooms?

Many of us have already read and engaged with the content of the book ‘Contextual Wellbeing’ as a springboard for such reflections. Providing quotes such as those below helped provoke thinking and encourage a flow of ideas.

With any wellbeing program… teachers have to be careful not to counteract their positive impact with unnecessary class competition and inequitable teaching the rest of the time. As soon as students are pitted against each other with tests, awards or ability grouping, cohesion and positive relationships suffer. It is the power of ‘show over tell’: explicit teaching of social and emotional competencies has to be backed up with real life contextual wellbeing.

Teachers are under continual pressure to make headway with a dauntingly large curriculum, so it is a big ask that they regularly find time for gluing the class together. But that time willingly spent on building cohesion will save an enormous amount of wasted time and energy throughout the rest of the year. A happy class is a cohesive class is a productive class.

Norms and rules are not the same thing. It does not matter what rules apply to the classroom, it is the established norms that guide the behaviour of those who feel they belong. Rules are written down and made explicit whereas norms are established through the repetition of certain behaviours and reinforced with every element of social context. Norms are the true behavioural guides within any group.

Norms develop through repeating desired behaviours, and contextual support, not through repeated verbal reminders. The more a class follows the rules in their daily activities, the more likely the rules will become norms. It also follows that the more the rules are broken, the more ‘not following the rules’ will become the normal way to behave.

Rewards and punishments may bring a disruptive child to the river of compliance, but only cohesion will keep them drinking. Instead of ‘paying’ disconnected kids to behave, or threatening them if they don’t, we need to help them connect to a world where positive behaviour is normal.

How might we further extend the idea of building cohesion?

Teachers then engaged with a series of broader questions which emerged from our self study, addressing how we might build cohesion beyond our classrooms, in our curriculum, in our community and in our culture. Building cohesion in all these areas will be the theme and the through-line of our action plan as we move forward.

And what better way to build cohesion than to have a whole school inquiry, involving the entire learning community?

Central idea: Building community creates a sense of belonging.

Some of the lines of inquiry at different year levels include:

• how we build community through play
• how we learn together as a community
• the connection between place and community
• opportunities and challenges in building community
• parents as part of our learning community
• how we build relationships within our community
• diversity and commonality in our community
• the impact of restorative action on community
• how we co-construct our community
• the interplay between individuals and community
• the power of cohesion

What are some of the ways you build cohesion in your school or context?

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?

Start with the child…

Start with the child, not the curriculum. Schooling is currently organised the wrong way around. The curriculum becomes the structure for the learning and is delivered via a timetable. Yet we know that every child is different so there cannot be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to schooling. Learning and teaching should be designed around each child’s learning strengths and needs. In this way, the curriculum is the reference point, not the blueprint. 

~Greg Whitby

On the first day back after the summer break, we introduce our 2017 focus to our team of educators:

Check in: Choose a word that describes one of your strengths and then one you would like to work towards.

Sharing the justification for our choices serves both as an ice breaker in the cross campus, multi-year level groups, and as a provocation to think about and value the diversity amongst us.

A provocation: Watch till 2:38 and create a title that sums up the essence.

The video provokes a range of responses and lively conversation ensues. To what extent are we guilty?

Pre-thinking: Create an image that represents your first thoughts about the notion of starting with the child.

There are rich conversations about the possible connotations of the phrase and an exchange of ideas about what it might mean to us.

An appreciative inquiry…

Discover: What are we already doing?

It’s important to acknowledge the many ways in which we already start with the child.  This activity creates a space for cross pollinating ideas and sharing practice.

Dream: What are the possibilities for taking it further? 

Teachers are encouraged to imagine. What if…? How might we..? Could we…? How would we…?

• How do we ensure we cater for diverse needs and interests?
• How might we rid ourself of the idea of a controlled classroom?
• Imagine if we didn’t have grades and reports.
• What if we could get rid of Naplan?
• What if we had one free choice unit of inquiry every year?
• What if the children wrote the curriculum?
• What if we didn’t have timetables?
• How might we increase opportunities for cross age learning?
• How might we build a culture where all children value each other?
• How can we ensure social and emotional wellbeing of every child?
• What if there were no bells interfering with learning?
• How might we help every child to believe in himself?

Design: What will you do?

We ask teachers to record something they will start working on right away.

What will you do? Try out? Think about? Explore? Change? How will you ensure that you start with the child?

Focusing on ownership of learning…

Day 1 of the new school year had a hundred and twenty teachers gathered in one place to think about student ownership! What could be better?

In cross campus, mixed role groups, teachers took turns to talk about something they had learned during the holidays and how they had learned it. Conversations were varied and animated, as experiences and reflections were shared between people who don’t usually work (or play) together. *Imagine doing this as a whole year level or cross grade exercise…

Our 2016 focus was introduced: Increase opportunities for ownership of learning.

Teachers were asked to ponder the question – ‘What does student ownership of learning look like’? *Imagine doing this in your classroom…

• READ a blog post. 
• SHARE something you read relating to student ownership of learning.
• DISCUSS which of our learning principles it connects to.
• CREATE a poster about ownership of learning.

How can we set a tone from Day 1 to give the message that we value student ownership? *Imagine asking your students this question…

Having considered the ‘what’, the teachers now explored the ‘how’, using Ron Ritchhart’s 8 cultural forces as a scaffold:

• Time
• Opportunities
• Routines/ Structures
• Language
• Modelling
• Interactions/Relationships
• Physical environment
• Expectations

And finally, it was back to where we started:

Looking forward to an exciting year of increased ownership of learning for teachers and students alike.

** Join us to unleash the learning in March at Unleashing Learning!