Friday, January 27, 2012

The beauty of storytelling

In one of my teacher's recent reflection blog, she spoke on telling stories as a way of teaching. In her blog, she likened using motivational story telling as a way of encouraging her students to improve their learning. While I think that there are other forms of teaching which are less direct but no less important, I agree that storytelling is a classic example.

Stories, read or told, have always been among the favorite teaching instruments of the world’s educators. I believe the reason is that stories are taught by attraction rather than compulsion – that is to say they invite rather than impose. Stories also capture the imagination of our students and touch their heart. Each of us has experienced the power of a good story which stirred strong feelings. And so that is why storytelling is such a natural way to engage and develop our students in learning.

Some teachers tell a story on the first day of school and their students find it captivating and so created an immediate rapport with the class. Teachers in a way are great “storytellers” of the various subjects they teach and as such storytelling can be considered as one of our most important teaching tools. And when the teacher finished the lesson (story) and you could see that the teacher has succeeded in reaching her students about the subject taught, it was not just because she had a convincing story or interesting subject. It was because the teacher told the story; that it came through the story to the students. And that made it personal, a gift from the teacher to the students. That is the beauty of storytelling.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Human side of change

I sat listening intently when my principal asked if we saw the approach taken (the IDEA framework) as people developer be seen by others as “being soft” and our justification of doing it. To me, I felt that a school is a very human organization. Teachers, middle managers and school leaders are continuously faced with the need to help others, in our case, our students, fellow teachers, other middle managers and even among school leaders themselves, see the reason for change, work on it, manage it where necessary and so they become a part of our learning school.

Education is constantly evolving and school leaders, middle managers and teachers alike are constantly working with this process of change, analyzing situations and looking for opportunities and leverage point for change to better our students learning. However, I feel that change is a very personal experience, and the resultant effect is different for each of us. Take for example the profession learning team (PLT) which started two years ago where teachers were asked to engage in learning with fellow teachers, consider the change at the beginning of our PLTs then and our PLTs now. Teachers are unlikely to open up themselves to learning and participate in activities such as peer observation and feedback, ICT mentoring and discussion of best practices and about pedagogical issues, unless they are confident it is safe to do this. Trust is the key and our school leaders had been the strongest facilitators of what become our school professional learning community today.

Attending to the teachers’ self appears to be the key to bring out successful change. Our emphasis is to look at the teacher as a whole human being and not just a productive unit. I also believe that together with the social factors within school which plays a greater influence than external organization such as the ministry imposed factors on levels of our teachers’ motivation to best improve the learning in school.

Above all, I believe that looking after the human side of our teachers highlights the values and beliefs about the basis on which each individual relate to the entire school, where the same approach is applied in treating students and teachers alike in promoting learning and inquiry.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Review on my Professional Development on Leadership

One of the key inspirations of the people development module is that the middle managers developed a professional network that shares a commitment to the growth of people, in my case teachers. I personally valued the local knowledge of fellow middle managers, who supported and provided common and contextualized understanding of leadership issues within schools and our organization. I find that the mutual support among the middle managers was accepted readily as we listened to fellow peers who offered realistic advice for problems and issues raised, thus addressing the sense of isolation, felt by new middle manager.

It was also interesting to note many middle managers expressing a desire to continue their collaborations beyond the course, we exchanged contacts and emails and even the instructor provided us his contacts. And if this is to be able to sustain beyond the life of the 3 days course, I will feel an added sense of security and empowerment, knowing that there will always be help available to provide perspectives of critical aspect of leadership. I also suspect that as the middle managers are from different schools and zones, there is less constraint and so are more inclined to raise thorny professional issues.

The instructor also played a key role in this “community of learners”. He brought an experienced perspective to the theoretical aspect of leadership – illustrating the five levels of leadership by John C. Maxwell with real examples, help raise important issues on communication skills, exemplify leadership attributes and act as a source of validation. He bring credibility to the course which enable building of trust and relationships through quality conversations and with ground facilitation (being himself a former vice-principal) which met the needs of new middle managers, and his presence is highly valued.

I personally also find it reassuring to hear that my experienced instructor still grapple with some difficult issues with teachers, and they sometimes too have anxieties and concerns. I hope to develop additional skills to operate as facilitator, process supporter, co-learner and coach, leveraging on the core theory of success to create a high performance team, as well as to develop insight to know when each of these different roles are appropriate. In doing this, I hope to derive much practical experience from this course’s learning – both in terms of theory and practice.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Teaching and Its Relationship

Reflections of my teachers highlighted the discussion of “teaching” and its relationship to learning. As there is already a great emphasis on the former (seen through our own PLTs, daily classroom practices, external research papers), I am greatly encouraged by my teachers’ reflections to speak on the latter – considering what exactly constitutes such learning.

Often teachers teach students not subjects, instead I believe that it must be teaching something to someone. However, what is the relationship of teaching to learning to be considered? There are those who believe that the only way to increase the learning of students is to increase the quantity and quality of learning. But yet we also know that learning is something that student has to do himself and such initiative lies with the student – hence we emphasized on self-directed learning SDL. So I believe that we teachers are mere guide and director of a band, who steers the group but the music that comes out of it must come from those who are learning.

Such thoughts, especially with reference to the students own responsibility seemed to bring about the idea that if the student was not learning, then the teacher was not teaching. Is this the right conclusion? One of my considerations is the intent of the teacher to bring about learning. However, I also know that this alone does not necessary result in good teaching, and it is especially hard to separate out between those who try to teach but fail to do so and others who actually do teach. Hence, good intended teaching must show purpose to the learner and introduce competencies that support the students learning. Such supporting conditions may include introducing life skills or strategies chosen by the teacher that would likely help the student achieve the learning.

How about the unintended learning of the students? Is it still of the teacher’s responsibility? In my opinion, the teacher is responsible for the students’ learning and because of this, if the students learn things from the teacher even though there is no intention to teach such things, for example, that it is alright to be “blue” – so less attentive during lesson on Monday or in the afternoons, or it is permissible to be bad-tempered during certain days. My point is that students learn things from their teachers for which these may be no direct intention of the teacher. Hence, if teacher exemplifies such values, the students may readily pick them up from them.

Therefore, what this means for teaching is that failure for our students to learn may not be the teacher’s fault alone – for example that students may fail to learn even though teaching was going on. However, if we take our teaching responsibility seriously, we may have to ask ourselves for some good reasons why such failures is not our fault especially if the student consistently fail.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Getting the students’ point of view!

This week I read one of my teacher’s reflections which addresses the pastoral care in her classroom and was glad to know of the teacher’s decision to spend quality time in the classroom – that is to understand her students’ needs first. I too believe that it will ultimately be the quality of classroom life that determines the quality of students’ learning. And once the teacher is able to get her students to open up, the teacher will be in a better position to impact the students’ learning and create a respectful relationship within the class.

The teacher has rightly pointed out that teachers should analyze the attitudes teachers themselves hold towards troublesome students and their way of working with them. I believe that as teachers, we work in human care and have enormous power over the students we are trying to help. I am at the same time mindful of how such power can be “misused” even when they meant well. Sometimes, I hear of teachers who use their power to try to force students to behave in “normal” or acceptable ways. Sometimes they do so successfully, but more often that approach only sets up detrimental and unnecessary barriers between teachers and students.

I personally think that teachers, sometimes, forget the power they hold over the students of their charge, which can be far greater than they might think. I agree with my teachers’ course of action which was to get to understand her students who are difficult to manage. Through this way, we will better understand the students’ own perspective on life and the world. It is usually a waste of time to try to get the students to see the “right” way of doing things. Instead, I believe that the students benefit more if we help them learn to disagree with us respectfully. And to do that, we must encourage them to give their points of view, which then give us opportunity to learn from them.

I believe that it is not the teacher’s job to make students over in our image. Trying to do so will only produce frustration and battles of wills (which sometimes lead to heated arguments between teacher and student), leading to more use of force (caning due to defiance). I think the best way is for teachers to accept these students as individuals with different perspectives on life from their teachers’. Even with these differences, teacher and student still share values, emotions, certain points of views, thoughts, ideals. Teachers can move to understand these mutual interest with students by talking with them frequently. As we strive to understand them, to acknowledge them and avoid exerting our power over them, it will help them to open up to the teacher who then can share life views with them – which students who are difficult to manage do not often encounter.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Teachers are learners too!

With the formation of Professional Learning Teams PLT for about two years now, our school culture is now moving into collaborative system which is something of a culture shift.

Since that time, teachers have worked together in their departments, but I feel that the benefits of this spirit of cooperation need also be taken into attitudes towards teacher professional development. The old model based on ‘what happened to me’ still pervades among us. Generally, people assume that the more you can do on your own the better it is. I however, feel that this should not be the case as this begets the question of how by simply doing more improve our teaching practice. As a result, similar kind of patterns of observations followed by some shared teaching by experienced teachers is carried out for teachers. More and more sharing sessions are carried out. But I think we still need to come back to the question of how do we best learn to do complex tasks like teaching? How many teachers used these sharing ideas for their own teaching?

I see my teachers as learners, and so what do we understand about how people learn that we can apply to them? When teaching our students, we would naturally provide a big picture, scaffold and provide clear information. We would use different strategies, involving self-directed and collaborative approaches, in which the students could explore what they need to learn. We would offer time for reflection using journals, summary, etc. Yet much of teacher professional development practice lack these ideas and leaves the individual teachers to “get on with it”, whatever, “it” might be, considering that they are already not knowing what to start with.

The point is that it is the quality of professional development that is important. This I think depends, on above all else, on the quality of the collaborative relationship between teachers. Success will be strongly dependent on the attitude of the teachers to the process. Someone who believes that both of them have things to learn together is more likely to help each other than someone who thinks that the process is about monitoring and getting on with it. No one, even the most experienced teacher is an expert in every part of the subject to teach. Working with another teacher will allow even the experienced teacher opportunity to learn more and at the very least to develop the teaching approaches. I have a teacher who has applies real life applications to her Math lessons which I believe will be an enormous benefit to making the subject come alive for the students. The teacher brings a different perspective, not only on the subject, but on the students too. I too with my own children bring to school other ideas on how to approach students. Hence, I strongly believe in such opportunities to learn with my teachers and the possibilities available. Inevitably, through this process, I hope to develop together with my teachers into a better teacher.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

What inside and outside of Teaching

I have had a first professional development with my teachers last week and from that meeting gave me some understanding of what I am considering as important – the relationship between the teachers and their many teaching experiences.

This is indeed not a simple relationship based on “just copy and paste”. And I believe that those with such a view is bound to fail. In the simplistic version of process, the teacher receives input and tries to emulate them. The input may be the middle managers’ advice, instructions or fellow teachers’ suggestions, or it may be a piece of reading (after the staff meeting, it seemed to be the ‘in’ thing). It seems useful, or successful, and so the teacher attempts to replicate it in the teaching. And this simple model may appear to work for a time, but I believe that it will inevitably collapse.

There are a number of reasons I feel are reasons for this failure. One is that I strongly believe that teachers have to find their own teaching practices, and this will be unique to the teacher, just as mine is to me. Copying others may be useful for essential scaffolding activity (especially at the beginning), but like all scaffolds, it is only for “a short period of time”. In fact, drawing from my personal experience, I believe that teachers often begin their initial teaching with some models of themselves as teachers. This I think is more important in the long run. These models are obtained from various sources, the most common are based on the TV- teacher model (the inspiration teacher, the teacher who mold our future..) or the my-best- teacher model (my favorite primary or secondary or junior college or poly or even NIE teacher).

As I watched the TV-teacher model during the last staff meeting, I see the teacher as dynamic and attractive. She is mold-breaking where she has an instinctive understanding of her student and makes astonishingly effective relationship with her student, even he is the least promising. I see this as an idealistic stimulus for a beginning teacher, and indeed there is nothing wrong with being ideal. But I wonder the notion of teaching portrayed as dynamic performance.

Alternatively, many teachers start with a self-image based on their own favorite teacher(s). It is not unusual for them to start their teaching with a ready-made set of teacher mannerisms, often based on their “best moment in class” during their school days. The image is reworked during actual school experience, and the teachers make good progress as they came to understand this process – when they understand, not only that they have to move beyond this initial replication mode as they attempt the many practices, and when trying to be somebody else would not work for them. We all are different people in different circumstances (even among classes we may behave differently). We know that even sometime students behave differently when they are sitting in their favorite lesson. Students though young are instinctively spot and dislike fakery, hence the teacher has to find a teacher-version of himself/herself that proceeds authentically from inside, not outside.

This initial simplistic model needs to be discussed with my teachers, because we need to learn the important lessons from them. More significantly, we would realize that teaching is a complicated juggling of acts, and that simple replication is not enough, and this lesson need to be reworked to the many new inputs (through sharing from other teachers) that will form the real improvement in teaching.