Blog Entry 5
There are many social issues that the students in my classroom experience, especially considering it is a low decile school.
Ethically in my classroom of new entrants I struggle with dealing with negative behaviour. Our principal reminds us constantly that for our students, school is the safe place. That results in us professionals needing to be consistent, caring and a stable person in that child’s life. Unfortunately lots of our tamariki don’t have a stable home life. Another issue is the main aspect of my innovation is for students to be in charge of their learning and give them an opportunity to have freedom to learn and develop the skills they choose to. I found a medium between these and we have developed basic class rules for the materials they use.
Another reason I struggle with this is I don’t want to upset the students when dealing with behaviour. I want them to feel comfortable at school, but know what is expected of them. As mentioned earlier, some of my students don’t have the most positive household. I have developed this by always focusing on the positives and always giving the students a chance before giving them a consequence. The theory that links to my style of learning is Maslow. Maslow’s learning theory focuses on physiological needs, wellbeing and the need to be included and belong before academic learning. “Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a paradigm for motivating learning / providing belonging support inclusive education: an opportunity to actualize Maslow's hierarchy and rediscover belonging as a human right” (Kunc, N. 1992).
An issue arose of Improper use of social media, a random posted inappropriate comments on our class blog, a post about my students learning, luckily I noticed them before any of the students at GI school read them. This was actually beneficial for staff as it sparked the conversation of what we needed to do to ensure online safety for our children and made us rethink our guidelines of our digital platforms.
Education impacts on the individuals in society in terms of personal advancement as some students come to school without any number knowledge, or ability to write their name or identify letters this is generally linked to social status as their parents aren’t educated on what their child should know at that age, some families have substance abuse in their household affecting the amount of time they spend with their child. Some parents have just moved here and have limited English too. In the future I would like to improve communication with whanau to involve them in their children's academic needs.
Digital divides cause students to have no lunch every day and walk home or catch rides home with other families because their parents don’t want to pick them up. As a professional, I am not judging, I understand socio economics and how hard families need to work just to survive or stay afloat in this capitalistic society, especially those where equity doesn’t exist. However, this still breaks my heart to see these situations affect my students wellbeing, behaviour and ability to learn. I want to do nothing but support these Whanaus and help in any way possible. These issues are addressed through staff meetings and with management. Weekly we have free lunches, food parcels for families delivered and resources for our students. I ensure my children have access to everything they need during the school day and food is sent home with students weekly.
Something that I needed to analyse was the pronunciation of words I was going to implement into routines and lessons - this links to students' culture as I didn’t want to be culturally insensitive. I involved students' culture as much as possible within my resources and referred back to the Tapasa document for support as it was vital for my school community and innovation that culture was involved “high-quality inclusive education system that provides all New Zealanders with learning opportunities to lead rewarding and fulfilling lives” (MoE, 2018).
I meet the 6 professional requirements by ensuring that the class environment is reflective, fair, collaborative, progressive for my students levels, pbl activities still relevant to the curriculum, culturally inclusive, achievement and wellbeing focused while maintaining professional relationships (MoE, 2017).
The main ethical issue is ensuring my students are comfortable, fed, safe and feel loved. Once that is sorted then positive collaboration and learning between children can occur. Unfortunately, some student’s wellbeing can be affected for a whole day (depending on homelife) which affects their behaviour or ability to positively collaborate with other students. The issue of negative collaboration between students and behaviour is usually always linked to their home life.I have to constantly reflect, to ensure I am doing all I can to motivate, de escalate situations and create safety for these students. All stakeholders are given priority in my classroom.
References
Kunc, N. (1992). The need to belong: Rediscovering Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In R. A. Villa, J. S. Thousand, W. Stainback, & S. Stainback (Eds.), Restructuring for caring and effective education: An administrative guide to creating heterogeneous schools (p. 25–39). Paul H. Brookes Publishing. P. 1.
Ministry of Education, 2017. Our Code Our Standards Code of Professional Responsibility and Standards for the Teaching Profession. Wellington.
Retrieved from https://renew.teachingcouncil.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf
Ministry of Education, 2018 Tapasā Cultural competencies framework for teachers of Pacific learners.
Retrieved from: file://gipsdc02/USERHOME/kcunningham/Downloads/Tapasa%CC%84-%20Cultural%20competencies%20framework%20for%20teachers%20of%20Pacific%20learners%20(1)%20(1).pdf
Disclaimer (not part of the word count)
I feel as though as a professional and individual with white privilege I would just like to elaborate once again I am not judging any of the parents or whanau part of my school community. I understand that the world unfortunately isn’t a fair place, there is still a lot of prevalent racism and inequity in NZ making it even harder for these families to get by. I also grew up in a low socioeconomic household, so I understand first hand how difficult it can be to raise children under certain circumstances, this is what made me want to become a teacher and work at a low decile school in the first place, so I can try and help make a positive difference. Unfortunately I am just discussing these issues as they are a reality for a lot of our tamariki. Also I will not be keeping this public on my blog as my professional blog is linked to my class blog and I wouldn’t want any parents to read it and be offended.
Reflective entry 6
A law that I will address that is in relation to my innovation is the Education and Training Act 2020. I believe my innovation resides with this aspect of the law “Provides New Zealanders and those studying in New Zealand with the skills, knowledge and capabilities that they need to fully participate in the labour market, society, and their communities” (New Zealand Government, 2020). This is because my innovation involves a lot of 21st century skills to equip my children for society such as collaboration, creativity, flexibility, social skills, communication, leadership, critical thinking and student voice (Lotta C. Larson. 2011). My activities involved the students needing to collaborate/communicate positively with each other, they also left room for student voice, flexibility/ creativity for the students to express themselves. We stayed involved with technology via the classroom smart tv and classroom blog, however, an issue was due to lack of devices, students weren’t able to get as digitally literate on devices in the sense of setting them up for the future. They are only 5 so they will get 1 on 1 devices as they move up classes throughout the years, but I am not scaffolding that learning or helping the students prepare for that part of society/of their future because I have no resources, so there are parts of the law that my innovation could be improved in the future to meet more requirements. Critiquing this law, I think it needs to take into consideration low decile schools with lack of resources/devices and should find a way to create equity and include all types of schools and learners.
Another part of the law that resides with my innovation is “supports their health, safety, and wellbeing; and assures the quality of the education provided and the institutions and educators that provide and support it” (NZG, 2020) a main focus of my innovation/classroom is to create a safe space for the students where their well being and other needs are looked after and prioritised, just as much as the academic learning. I ensure that the students aren’t hungry and have food for the day, that they can talk to me about issues they have and overall there has been a huge focus on collaboration, kindness and sharing. This relates to the learning theory of maslow where wellbeing and physiological needs are just as vital as academics (Kunc, N. 1992).
“The Act makes it easier for those in the education sector to understand their rights and obligations under the Te Tiriti O Waitangi by locating in one place the key provisions in the act that recognise and respect the crown’s responsibility to give effect to Te Tiriti”(MoE, 2020). Part of my innovation was about cultural inclusiveness. I ensured that Maori language/culture was involved as much as possible. Due to limited resources I was unable to involve it as much as I would’ve liked, but it was a beneficial starting point. Due to the fact my students are 5, an issue is I wasn’t able to talk about the Te Tiriti o Waitangi in much depth due to lack of understanding the concept.
Policies that are put in place to ensure teachers are constantly meeting professional requirements are the registration policy. This is in relation to my innovation because it is a requirement that teachers must constantly reflect on practice and show evidence of meeting requirements. Reflection is not only part of my practice in general, but for this innovation I needed to do in depth reflection to make improvements, to ensure I was doing the best for my students.
This policy relates to regulations of Our Code Our Standards. It ensures teachers are aware of all the same requirements that they need to implement in their practice. Not only do I need to follow these regulations, I created my own regulations for my innovation to ensure that the materials were looked after, the classroom was culturally responsive, the students were safe and engaged and the collaboration and creativity could flourish.
There are also regulations on wifi so the students wouldn’t see anything inappropriate on the smart TV when we’re using it. Also, I’m in charge of the TV, I could regulate what they saw in order to keep them safe.
Critiquing these regulations: I believe there should be a winder focus on other cultures. Although Our Code Our Standards involve “respecting the diversity of the heritage, language, identity and culture of all learners” Education Council, 2017. New Zealand is so multicultural I think they should include more specific and in depth examples about how to implement involving/respecting all different cultures that we are lucky enough to have in New Zealand. However, with my regulations I ensured that I involved each childs from my class’s culture weekly, whether it was through a song, story etc.
References
Education Council, 2017 Our Code Our Standards Code of Professional Responsibility and Standards for the Teaching Profession. Wellington 6145, New Zealand PO Box 5326. Retrieved from: https://teachingcouncil.nz/assets/Files/Code-and-Standards/Our-Code-Our-Standards.pdf
Ministry of Education. (2020). Education and Training Act 2020. https://www.education.govt.nz/our-work/legislation/education-and-training-act-2020/
Kunc, N. (1992). The need to belong: Rediscovering Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In R. A. Villa, J. S. Thousand, W. Stainback, & S. Stainback (Eds.), Restructuring for caring and effective education: An administrative guide to creating heterogeneous schools (p. 25–39). Paul H.
Brookes Publishing.
Lotta C. Larson & Teresa Northern Miller (2011) 21st Century Skills: Prepare Students for the Future, Kappa Delta Pi Record, 47:3, 121-123, DOI: 10.1080/00228958.2011.10516575
New Zealand Government. Parliamentary Counsel Office. Education and Training ACT. New Zealand Legislation. http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2020/0038/latest/LMS170680.html
Reflective entry 7
In order for my innovation to meet national guidelines I had to make some adjustments. My innovation consists of creating a play based, culturally inclusive learning environment, with the main values of it being student directed learning, culturally responsive experiences, student choice and voice.
However for my students to meet the requirements of the New Zealand curriculum and make the necessary progress needed at their age and year level they needed to experience teacher structured learning.
Meaning, to meet these requirements and support my children in meeting the end of year assessment requirements, there needed to be a compromise of teacher instruction, scaffolding and child choice. The students need to have letters being written, sight words being exposed, their name written, numbers written, sounds of letters etc modeled and instructed by the teacher, and then they can move on to doing it as an independent activity that they chose.
Another factor that contributed to this decision of amplifying the instruction to meet guidelines is the fact that most of my students begin school with no number knowledge, letter knowledge and can’t write their own name or identify the letters in their name. Scaffolding the learning aligns with Vygotsky’s learning theory constructivism because I must support my children until they are able to do a task without support. Constructivism can also support positive collaboration between peers which is vital in this innovation (Doolittle, P. E. 1997).
An aspect needed to improve children's learning is collaboration with parents. If parents were more aware of what was expected of their children when they begin school/during their first year of school then they would be able to better equip their children with the necessary skills, rather than just letting it be the teachers responsibility. I have been trying to create whanaungatanga with parents as it has benefits to student learning (MoE) by creating resources/games that the parents can play with their children to consolidate learning at home, making posts on class dojo to involve the whanau in the students learning process and by continuing to try and encourage parents to come in and share their culture with the class- which unfortunately, has not been very successful.
The delivery model of this innovation was at first self directed learning, but as reflected on earlier needed more instruction so it became self directed, merged with blended learning. “It is argued that new approaches to teaching such as student centred and blended learning offer considerable possibilities to enhance the student experience” O'Connor, C. 2011. P. 1)
I used digital technology to show the children songs to backup learning we have had about formation of letters, formation of numbers, songs, jingles and videos to introduce topics or consolidate learning that has already been done. We also frequently reflect on our learning via digital technology by looking at our class blog and the posts I make about prior learning, looking at the photos sparks beneficial learning conversations. I believe my innovation lines up with digital guidelines as it was used for “teaching, designing and developing digital outcomes, resources and computational thinking” (TKI, 2020). Computational thinking was used when student voice was used to critique activities, it was used for teaching as mentioned prior, designing and developing outcomes was used as my students understand if we make a post about our learning on the blog, another school can see it and comment back. If I had the resources (e.g. ipads, chromebooks) I would have been able to meet more requirements.
Another main guideline that is relevant to my innovation is the Tapasa document. “understand processes and practices involved in supporting and fostering bilingualism especially in early learning settings, recognise the importance of cultural locatedness in education settings, and for learner well-being and achievement” (Ministry of Education, 2018. P.6). This document along with alot of other research has taught me the effect involving students' culture has on student achievement and wellbeing, it has reminded me what I need to include in my framework to make it successful and has given me a guideline to refer back to when I am reflecting on my practice.
Another learning theory that resides with my innovation is communities of practice- this is because my innovation was all about trial and error and was ongoing. My delivery model Self-directed learning goes along with this too because not only did I reflect and improve the activities I used the stakeholders (students) to reflect, have conversations and student voice to have their say in how we could improve the tasks to meet their needs (whether the needs were engagement, collaboration or academic). This also aligns with one of the guidelines Digital Technology NZC as one of the aspects of that is making improvements. Communities of practice and my innovation focus on creating an ongoing, reflective, collaborative learning environment (Coburn, C. E., & Stein, M. K. 2006).
References
Coburn, C. E., & Stein, M. K. (2006). Communities of practice theory and the role of teacher professional community in policy implementation. New directions in education policy implementation: Confronting complexity, 25-46.
Doolittle, P. E. (1997). Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development as a Theoretical Foundation for Cooperative Learning. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 8(1), 83-103.
Ministry of Education, 2018. Tapasā Cultural competencies framework for teachers of Pacific learners. P. 6. Retrieved from: https://pasifika.tki.org.nz/Tapasa
Ministry of Education, 2020. TKI Digital Technologies and the Technology learning area. Retrieved from: https://elearning.tki.org.nz/Teaching/Curriculum-learning-areas/Digital-Technologies-in-the-curriculum#js-tabcontainer-1-tab-4
Ministry of Education, 2018. Tataiako cultural competencies for teachers of maori learners.
O'Connor, C., Mortimer, D., & Bond, S. (2011). Blended learning: Issues, benefits and challenges. International Journal of Employment Studies, 19(2), 63.
Entry 8
There were many aspects to consider when evaluating my innovation such as tools and resources. This limited my innovation, I struggled with finding resources for PBL. I tried reaching out to management for materials such as a water table, outdoor play equipment and a wider variety of construction and imaginary play resources for the students. Although we weren’t able to get these things, now these materials are on the agenda theres a possibility the school will invest in materials in the future.
Here are some examples of PBL that I integrated into my program: they consisted of kinesthetic/visual learning, free choice and student voice. “The main effects of the variables visual and kinesthetic are significant on academic achievement” (Vaishnav, R. S., 2013. P.1) The outdoor games seen in the photos below were constructed and altered by the students therefore giving them ownership over their learning. I’m content with the outcome and engagement of these experiences.
Evaluating my innovation using research from (Tiven, M, 2018) made me consider the outcome needs. I used the following to help me understand if I have achieved what I intended on in the beginning. Reflecting on “Needs assessments”. I had to ensure that the students were meeting all the requirements of national standards. Therefore I slightly altered the learning style. Whilst I had a free choice environment where the students were able to choose their learning, I would use this time as an opportunity to pull one student aside at a time and do written work with them that was needed for them to meet requirements. This was an enhancement, as I realised there were requirements that needed to be met and unfortunately needed to be teacher focused. I found that working one on one with a child was much more beneficial than the learning prior, when all the students did it at the same time. The time was more valuable, I was interrupted by students less, I would ensure I saw every child that block and it was beneficial to meet all the students individualised learning needs.
Deepy reflecting using “outcome evaluations” (Tiven, M. 2018.) I would have to say unfortunately I did not have the outcome I wanted for the cultural inclusiveness and whanau involvement in my innovation that I would’ve liked. I especially struggled with finding cultural materials and due to the craziness of term 4 unfortunately wasn’t able to get the whanau involved in their children's learning as much as I would’ve liked, and I also didn’t learn as much to share with my students from the families as I would have liked to either. In my plan I wanted to have whanau come in and share their knowledge of their culture with myself and/or with the students. “Culturally responsive classrooms specifically acknowledge the presence of culturally diverse students and the need to find connections within themselves and tasks” (Montgomery W. 2001). Critiquing my practice using this statement, I do not think I achieved this to the best of my ability.
Looking through a holistic view: I thought I was going to achieve an environment that would give students ownership over their learning, make them collaborate with each other positively, involve their culture, develop their learning while engaging them. I believe that I have achieved my goal- except for the cultural aspect. Although it was still involved in the learning through books, songs, counting etc.I did not have access to other materials. So critiquing my innovation- I would say did I expose the children to all the cultural inclusivity, resources and whanau involvement like I planned? No, not to the standard that I wanted. However, this is something that I can challenge myself in perfecting in the future.
The effects of the different teaching strategies (such as student choice, playbased etc) affected the classroom behaviour and engagement positively. I found the students were more motivated to do the learning activities if they choose which one to do.
This innovation was measured through engagement, giving the students ownership of their learning, student collaboration and achievement (general assessment). It is hard to measure considering students started at different times, covid, absences etc however it is obvious my students have made progress academically, but a longer time to measure the innovation would give more accurate results. Critiquing my outcome using “process evaluation” (Tiven, M. 2018.) I would say the time constraint made this innovation difficult to measure and was hard to do in the limited amount of time along with other expectations e.g. assessment, reports etc. However, I would say I have achieved the first part of pbl, but need to continue making improvements in the future to continue innovating the learning to fulfil my entire expectation.
References
Montgomery W. Creating Culturally Responsive, Inclusive Classrooms. TEACHING Exceptional Children. 2001;33(4):4-9. doi:10.1177/004005990103300401
Tiven, M. E., Fuchs, E., Bazari, A., & MacQuarrie, A. (2018). Evaluating global digital education: Student outcomes framework. New York, NY: Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/pisa/Evaluating-Global-Digital-Education-Student-Outcomes-Framework.pdf
Vaishnav, R. S., & Chirayu, K. C. (2013). Learning style and academic achievement of secondary school students. Voice of research, 1(4), 1-4.
