'Where to next?' Leveraging your new found digital skills in a post pandemic world

16th April 2020

Name of Course/Programme/Seminar: Where to next? Leveraging your new found digital skills in a post pandemic world

Provider/Presenter: Carl Condliffe

If I was to summarise the key things I took away from this Professional Development what would they be and why?

Overall the PD was looking at the issues and challenges we may have faced going into the lockdown, opportunities that may have presented themselves to us and where to next after the lockdown. Below are some of the key points I took from this morning's presentation:

• We are fortunate that King's took the week to prepare us for distance learning as many schools and teachers felt underprepared
• A huge opportunity that is given to us is that we can create student agency and autonomy as they are accountable for their own work/effort - can we transfer and continue this when we return to the classroom?
• Ensure the focus is on identifying issues and creating solutions, encouraging students to think critically, rather than rely on content

How has this professional development challenged my thinking?

This lockdown has presented us with many opportunities to enhance our practice. How can we ensure to transfer these skills when we return back to the classroom?

What aspects of my practice would I consider changing as a result of this professional development and why?

This year I proceeded to push blended learning to help create a more authentic learning environment for my IG PE students. As the IG curriculum has so much content I found classes were heavily based on learning new content rather than allowing learners to apply this, reinforcing their knowledge. I feel like this is something that I haven't done as much for my senior NCEA classes as we have more time in class for each unit of work. However, I have found that creating videos for my senior students particularly around breaking down of achievement criteria and assessments has been useful and is something that I would look to continue in future.

Leadership Session #2 - Time Management

17th March 2020

Key Points:

• Steven Covey’s matrix of time management - looking at tasks and whether or not they are urgent, not urgent, important, not important as shown in the matrix pictured below:
  

• Try to drop tasks that are deemed not important off the list
• Try to avoid a list mentality - doing so can be overwhelming and it often does not show priorities
• Simon’s tips:
  • Daily planner matrix
    • Includes list, properties and times that you are free
  • Ensure all high priorities are completed by the end of the day
  • Ensure that there is time to work on components that are important but not urgent each day
  • Remember that sometimes may come across your desk because they are important/urgent to others but not yourself, just as things that are urgent to you may not be urgent to others

Q&A

• If something is urgent to you and you need cooperation from others however, it is not urgent to others how do you work around this?
  • Questioning about what has been done before handing up the line
• Leaders who micromanage - how do you address a manager who has a crisis and makes their crisis become your crisis
  • Courageous conversations
    • It is all about the delivery of the conversation
    • how can you support them in their role whether it is planning or taking some of the load off them

I feel that over time I have gotten better at prioritising my tasks and identifying tasks that are important and urgent and focusing on those first. The key tool I help with my time management is the apple app 'Reminders'. It allows you to create a list, prioritise your tasks and even set day and time reminders that will sit on your home screen until you have marked these as complete.

A key point I have taken away from this session is the idea that you need to ensure that everyday you are working towards a task that is important but not urgent. This can allow for greater thought and creativity. This could be by researching for 10 minutes or having a conversation about a future event etc.

Being an Effective HOD

20th February 2020

Name of Course/Programme/Seminar: Being an Effective HOD (18th & 19th Feb)

Provider/Presenter: Kay Hawk & Jan Hill from the Education Group

If I was to summarise the key things I took away from this Professional Development what would they be and why?

• The different leadership and managerial roles of an HOD and breaking down of the educational leadership capabilities
• What make an effective department and one that is 'moving' (teams where everyone is adding value, working together towards a common goal) or a performing
• Reinforcing the importance of a team knowing the 'Why' e.g. a team usually knows what their role is and how they complete it but they need to fully understand the why to get complete buy in
• Frameworks for leading professional learning discussions including opening discussions and fronting an issue

How has this professional development challenged my thinking?

• By placing emphasis on the need to develop group culture - what is our vision and what are our department goals for 2020?

What aspects of my practice would I consider changing as a result of this professional development and why?

Key points I have identified that could easily be implemented are:

• Creation of a Google Doc - emailed once a week to the department, includes department meeting agenda, important dates for the week, recognition, notices, etc.
  • Ensures meeting time is not used for admin and stops overuse of admin emails
  • Allows for all members to contribute to the doc
• Ensuring the whole department is aware of the vision and 2020 goals

*Have spoken to REY about both of these points. He thinks it would be a good idea for the first to be implemented. As for second he agrees this needs to happen and wants input from the whole team

Further notes that I took away from this PD can be found here.

08/11: 'What does it mean to be a Successful Teacher?'

'What does it mean to be a Successful Teacher?'

8th November 2019

'What does it mean to be a successful teacher?' - John Hattie

"Your job is to help them do better than what they believe their best is"

Synopsis - Key Things I have taken away?

Throughout all of his research Hattie's focus for educators is to understand learning through the eyes of the student. So what is the most important influences on student achievement and growth?

• Hattie acknowledges the tension amongst priorities e.g. pedagogy vs content. However, he emphasises the need and importance of PD - that it’s not about what you learn today but what you do tomorrow
• He suggests moving the focus away from the strategies and instead provide evidence that you are having an impact on your learners
• Hattie addressed Educator Burnout in his book '10 Mind Frames for Visible Learning' - he believes this is because too many teachers believe they need to be constantly busy and work individually. Efficiency, reprioritising and removing certain content, collective and collaborative work can help to minimise burnout

How has it helped me?

Hattie emphasised that we need to take a look at how students are learning. Students need to be able to relay the ideas they are taught and relate them to each other. However, the strategy on how to do each of these are different. Hattie also emphasises that students need to be given a range of different strategies so they can be successful. This is what I have been focusing on with my inquiry throughout the year - ensuring to provide students with a range of different strategies to suit different levels within the class and learning styles. However, I may have not fully acknowledged students ability to decide when a certain strategy is applicable.

Hattie identified some examples of what student impact could look like; changes in test scores, change and growth in student work, student voice and how they believe they have changed/grown and teacher reflection on impact and change. I notice and identify these impacts. However, I don't always ensure that the student also notice these. Test scores could be obvious, but often students won't recognise the growth in their work. This was evident to me via a discussion with a student in my Level 2 Physical Education class. The student had chosen not to take PE for Level 3 because they were unsure they were good enough. I pointed out to them how much they had grown and developed throughout the year moving from Achieved's to Excellence's. This was not something that he had already identified himself.

So What?

• In recognising that students don't automatically know when certain strategies are most applicable, next year I will focus on introducing students to a range of strategies I will also emphasise when they would be appropriate to use.
• Next year I am going to aim to introduce further strategies to celebrate student achievement and growth. I hope in doing this that students themselves will be able to then recognise and celebrate their own growth.

30/10: Reflection of HPE Scholarship Process 2019

Reflection of HPE Scholarship Process 2019

30th October 2019

Today was the final day of the Health & Physical Education Scholarship process for 2019. For the Health & Physical Education scholarship students self-select a topic or issue they would like to exam in depth over a 30 page report. As this was my first year leading the programme I thought I'd take the time to reflect on the positives and negatives of this year's process to help improve for next year.

Tips for 2020:

• Multiple afternoon workshops
  This year we held 4 afternoon workshops in Term 4. Each workshop ran for about 3 hours. The aim of these workshops was to give students an opportunity to chip away at their report, while having the support of staff in the room. Overall this process was really effective this year. This worked better than previous years where we held two big workshops that ran for about 6-7 hours each. For 2020 I would look at potentially adding some in the final week of T3 to encourage students to start working earlier.
• Insist on drafts by end of T3
  This year it seemed like students started the writing process later than previous years. I'm not sure if this is because we had less NCEA students participating this year who are given class time? By adding a workshop or two in the final week of Term 3 I would hope that would encourage students to start writing earlier. I would also push for students to have a rough draft before the end of Term 3.
• Push criticality
  This year some students struggled with the level of criticality needed for their report. They often chose topics they were passionate about, which is great, but they often had a strong view or opinion which reflected as a one sided argument. This typically was harder for the Cambridge students and I wonder if this is due to the level of criticality in Level 2 & 3 Physical Education? I wonder if we can push the idea of criticality earlier e.g. in Dragon’s Den workshop?
• Focus on solutions
  Students often also underestimate the importance of the solutions that they suggest towards the end of their report. By really looking in depth to what they suggest such as how it would be implemented, the change they hope it will have etc it will show a deeper understanding and a more critical view.
• Encourage students to reference as they writeStudents often underestimate the time it takes for them to reference their work properly once they have finished their writing. By teaching students how to reference and to reference as they go this will help to eliminate the rush of referencing once a report is deemed complete.
• Research & ReadingsSome students struggled to find academic readings and references to refer to while writing their report. Next year a base folder could be made with readings applicable to different scholarship topics for students to access and utilise.

This process wouldn't be as effective if it wasn't for the help and support of the department. For now all we can do is wait until the results come out to see how our students have gone.

16/09: Undergrad Presentation

Undergrad Presentation

16th September 2019

This afternoon Rob Paterson, Georgia Dougherty and I went and presented to a group of Undergraduates at the University of Auckland on 'Stepping into the Real World". This is a result of an Auckland PENZ initiative from the Graduate Mentor group.

Last year we recognised the need for a new section of the Auckland PENZ Graduate Mentor group. We have had great success with our workshops run for first and second year teachers on a variety of topics including; surviving your first six months & expanding your toolbox, culturally responsive & relational pedagogy, marking & moderation and gathering evidence for the 6 teaching standards. However, we noticed that feedback from these sessions and from our own personal experiences, there were no presentations or tips on how to actually get a job upon graduating university. This lead to the creation of the sub-group of Undergraduate Mentoring.

The purpose of today's presentation was to present to undergraduates on what to expect in your first year of teaching and how to navigate your way through the job application process. Topics in our presentation included; CV & cover letters, interview tips & possible questions, relief and legalities. The link to our presentation can be found here.

A group of about 20-30 students from the BPE and Grad Dip programmes attended from Auckland University and a couple from the AUT Sport & Rec programme. Overall today's presentation was a success with those attending engaged throughout - this was evident through the great questions that were asked throughout the session and feedback from the lecturer (pictured below).

This has already been in improvement on last year's presentation, particularly presenting this earlier in the year and the ability to catch students from multiple different courses in the same session. Hopefully the students found it useful and were able to take away some tips to help them with their job hunting.

26/05: Reflection of 2.2

Reflection of 2.2

26th May 2019

What went well:

• Most students smashed the anatomy - this came through in student feedback where students identified that this was the easiest section

What could have been better:

• Students found the interrelationship slide hard. This was voiced both in class while completing the assessment and in the student voice feedback. This was also evident as some students chose to leave this last slide blank
• Students commented that they would have liked more one-on-one time throughout the assessment. I agree with this and when reflecting on the assessment I spent more time with 'needy' students who had a lot of questions or by checking in on students who I had previously identified struggling with the content. This meant that I didn't push some of my more capable students as much. This resulted in some students needing to resubmit their work as they are boarder line High Merit/Low Excellence

Changes for next time:

• Emphasis on referring back to anatomy slides at the start - quite often students complete this and then don't refer back to their anatomy. Is there a way to combine the biophysical principles more rather than laying them out in three separate sections e.g. focus the assessment on the prep, action and follow through phases incorporating anatomy and biomechanics and then using motor skills as a section later on how to improve? Will this create a more natural interrelationship?