Teaching for Reconciliation

I am a citizen of Saskatchewan and a member of Ms. Eyre’s riding. I acknowledge that I live on Treaty Six territory and the traditional homeland of the Métis people. I feel I must make you aware of my dismay at the statements made by the Minister of Education with regards to Treaty Education and its place in the curriculum of Saskatchewan schools.

Treaty Education is a fundamental piece of Saskatchewan and Canadian history. The impact of treaty on the settler and the First Nation’s peoples is undeniable. We live in its shadows.

As a descendent of settler people, I have needed to find my way to a place of hope for the future while understanding the complicity of my ancestors in the mistreatment of First Nations and Métis people in the past. I am proud of the resilience, strength and capacity of my settler ancestors. My great-grandparents worked land in Osler and near Edmonton. They worked to raise families and hoped for a future of prosperity for their children and grandchildren. They believed in education as a fundamental tool in the lives of their children to bring about that prosperity. Their children are business owners, teachers, and community development workers. They have university education and have had access to political leaders, community leaders and policy makers. While they came to this country with nothing but their work ethic and family connections, they were given access to land and opportunity. I am proud of the stories which they have given me and the virtues and values which live in me because of those stories. I am glad to be a citizen of Canada and a prairie person. I am the beneficiary of Treaty agreements.

I live with the guilt and regret of the mistakes of the past. I wept at the protests in front of the Manitoba Legislature in 1990 at the recognition of my colonial ancestry. I have wondered what is within my capacity to do and change to make a difference rather than hide from the injustice. As a result of my turbulent feelings, I have worked to improve my own understanding and stand up for the rights of the indigenous peoples of Canada. I participated in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in Saskatoon as a volunteer. I must lend my voice now to speak for the continued importance of Treaty Education and the full integration of indigenous ways of knowing as one of the pieces in the Truth and Reconciliation process. We are called through Truth and Reconciliation Commission to take action to improve the education of indigenous peoples including Treaty Education and integrating indigenous history as our shared history is a part of this process.

It is incumbent on the Minister of Education to be aware of the current context of education in Saskatchewan and Canada. She must know the obligations we have to bring about reconciliation between settler peoples and the indigenous peoples of Saskatchewan. We cannot change our history and keep to a view of it, in which we, the privileged, have been right and good through all of time. Minister Eyre needs to take some time to learn and develop her understanding of what it means to be a Treaty person and a person of privilege. She needs to learn about cultural responsiveness and see where she is on that journey. The Minister of Education is the key policy maker for Education within our province, if she is unable to begin this journey, she is not fit to be the Minister.

Mindsets in the Classroom by Mary Cay Ricci

I’m reading this book to prepare for professional development which I am leading in the fall.

I just hit something I want to remember and didn’t quite know where to put it so, here I am. It’s been three years since I blogged anything. I write my reviews on Goodreads and I tweet periodically things I find which interest me but for more in-depth work, I guess this is where it goes.

From Guy Kawasaki’s book Enchantment p. 33: “Eaters and bakers. Eaters want a bigger slice of an existing pie; bakers want to make a bigger pie. Eaters think that if they win, you lose, and if you win,, they lose. Bakers think that everyone can live with a bigger pie.”

This quote makes me think about life in competitive dance. It’s very hard to keep your child remembering that all of their class can improve as dancers and yet that’s what makes dance so engaging and exciting. Just because you dance well doesn’t mean I can’t dance well. On one day to one examiner or adjudicator one of us may be ranked higher but that isn’t the end or beginning. It’s just one day.

My fixed mindset

I have a fixed mindset when it comes to my athletic ability. I stopped thinking of myself as an athlete long ago – grade nine or so. I was one of 90 girls who tried out for Junior and Freshman basketball. They cut to 40 after one day. I didn’t make it. Then in the later part of the year, I spent the whole track season looking for something at which I would be competent. This meant that I would be among the top three in my age category because it didn’t seem to matter if you were less good than that. My school was large. I wasn’t that good at anything. They recommended middle distance running. It didn’t interest me. That was the complete end for me in athletics. I spent the rest of my high school career in fine arts and academics. I was in the top of my class but there were 60 or so of us in the higher academic stream. I ‘belonged’ there. I was among the best of the musicians.

I married an athlete. I see him take so-so runners and encourage them to be active and enjoy their own improvement. I wish I had considered improving my own athletic ability before I got arthritis in my feet. I’m not sure I would have ever loved to run but perhaps if I had been better earlier in my life, it would have made a difference.

I struggle with my fixed mindset when I work with disadvantaged students. Students who have already given up on themselves and are not motivated to learn are hard to teach. It’s not that I don’t think they can, I don’t think they will. I’m not sure how to move that part of my thinking. It’s not a long distance from ‘they won’t’ to ‘they can’t’.

Questions and Reflections about Learning in the Digital Environment

Alec Couros and Katia Hildebrandt are facilitating a Digital Citizenship Massive Open Online Course(#DCMOOC). The community within this course is discussing the digital environment and the implications for educators and students. The week two presentation looked at learner participation in the digital environment and the implications for critical thinking and ethical behavior. We explored the questions around age restrictions and filtering for learner environments. The following questions followed the presentation for continued discussion.

How do we ensure that learners are critical, ethical, and knowledgeable creators, consumers, and participants of digitally mediated environments? How can we develop students’ abilities to become self-regulatory in the appropriate use of digital media, rather than relying on external filters and restrictions?

Learners need guided opportunities for purposeful use of digital environments. We teach critical and ethical activity through our modeling during instruction and by setting tasks which require thoughtful creation of artifacts and products. When we plan for these tasks, we need to establish the guidelines which support students’ understanding of copyright and privacy. Along the way, we can give feedback on their sources and their citation of their sources. Learners’ develop their abilities to self-regulate when they are given real opportunities to choose. In the digital context that means choosing their sources of information and critiquing them. In the early years, we can do these tasks together as a class and model the citizenship they will need to develop. As they grow, we can give opportunities to develop their skills by providing examples and non-examples of sources and materials as well as guidance for what to do when they ‘arrive’ at online places they know are not appropriate. I think the following analogy is appropriate: we teach children to swim by taking them to the pool. If we stayed in the bathtub, they would not learn what they needed in order to swim. Just as children need to be in the pool to learn to swim, we need to go into digital spaces to learn to participate in the digital environment.

How do we model modern approaches to copyright and creativity, where the rights of both creators and consumers are balanced and respected?

I believe learners and teachers need to know the limits and freedoms we have as citizens. Under Canadian copyright legislation, it is recognized that citizens can make mash-ups of material without breaking copyright. Mash-ups are digital artifacts made by mixing a number of sources (photo-shopping a photograph, mixing two music tracks, adding music to a series of video clips). These mash-ups must not interfere with the ability for the owner or creator of the original to make a profit from their creation or product. As a consumer, I also have a right to use portions of material for research, for private study, for review or criticism, and news reporting. I also have a right to use materials for education, for parody, and for satire. My uses must be fair to the owner or creator of the work. To use work fairly, I need to give credit for the work, not sell the work, and not interfere with the selling of the work.

Learners need to be aware of their rights and the rights of others when it comes to making and sharing work digitally. We need to teach them simple ways to give credit. With younger children we can call it a ‘thank you’ for the work of others which is supporting their work. We can model these things in our own presentations and artifacts which we produce for school. We can develop age appropriate ways to say ‘thank you’.
How do we help students develop positive digital identities? What activities/assignments/projects can we integrate into our teaching to help our learners build their digital footprints?

How do we help our students to become kind and caring citizens who act with integrity in all spaces, including digital ones?

As a parent, I help my children develop their digital identities by having them use their own name when they work online. We started with their email addresses and have slowly added tools and artifacts to their online spaces. They check with me before adding friends and talk about how what they ‘like’ sends a message about who they are and what is important to them. We have talked about how what appears private can be copied and shared in public. We have started to develop portfolios of videos and projects which will form the oldest section of their digital footprints.

At school, I work with young children. Not all their parents are ready to have their children identified online by name. I think we can help to mitigate this concern by using first name, last initial, and avatars for identifiers with younger children. I hope to counsel the students’ parents to consider how creating a ‘fake’ identity could harm their child’s ability to navigate the online world honestly and carefully. Our children need opportunities to develop their online presence with the support and advice of trusted adults. Teaching them to be themselves online is an important first step in developing a positive digital citizen.

What is the role of schools in terms of developing student activism? How might we encourage and support students to use online spaces and social media to contribute positively to our world?

I believe in being an active, engaged citizen of the world. I struggle with the term ‘student activism’. Why? I should love it. I believe in learners being active, engaged citizens of the world and I believe in being in online spaces using social media. Activism needs to be the outgrowth of student engagement. I think we need to be cautious about doing social action because it’s well-marketed. This is peer pressure activism, which I sometimes get a whiff of with the “Be the Change” T-shirts or mandatory Pink T-shirt day. I think we need to get our learners into the real world and making a contribution in the ways which “fire them up” and make the world a better place.

So how do we encourage it? We do things that matter. We teach about the real world, real people, in real places, with real struggles. We cry, we laugh, and we think carefully about what we are doing and when we have kids ask the question, “but what can we do?” We do something, anything, which we can think of together to help make a difference.

11’s for Kelli

11 Random Facts about me:
1. I am an amateur musician – I love to sing, play piano and recorder. I love making music with my family – my dad and mom and kids.
2. I am a theatre groupie. Local theatre is one of my answers to living locally. My husband and I get date night and some local people get to work in an area they love. Win-win.
3. I run to eat.
4. I love reading. I am part of a book club which helps me read outside my usual fare of YA dystopian/fantasy.
5. I need things to make sense and constantly re-evaluate my life goals against my ideals.
6. I frequently do not meet my own expectations.
7. I can feel hopeless about the world.
8. I believe in peace and justice as the only way to make things right – socially, environmentally, personally…
9. I believe in the power of stories – historical, current, futurist – to make change and make the world a better place.
10. I like children. Mine are the best of course.
11. I want to have close relationships with a small circle of friends. I think that’s harder than it used to be.

11 bloggers to tag (not going to get 11, I’ve moved to Twitter mostly…)

1. Back at Kelli http://sporadicsquiggles.wordpress.com
2. Vicki is my go-to-girl http://coolcatteacher.com
3. Joyce V http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/
4. Alec Couros http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/

That’s about it.

Questions for these bloggers:

1- What is one thing you do that you would not change for anyone?
2- How often do you check your email?
3- Where do you find inspiration?
4- What is your comfort food of choice?
5- What is your guilty pleasure?
6- How do you relieve stress/let off steam?
7- How many hours of sleep do you get a night?
8- Where is your happy place?
9- Rule follower or breaker?
10-If you could be one age again, what would it be?
11-How did you start blogging?

My answers:

1. I would not lie.
2. Too often.
3. Twitter and Pinterest for tech and books and education. Church and my church friends for life.
4. Chocolate – dark and European.
5. Chocolate – again.
6. I play piano and talk to friends and family. I read.
7. 8.5 – try for 9.
8. My front porch with a coffee and my sweeties.
9. Follower but see Number 1.  10. The one I am. No regrets.
11. To figure out what it meant to be online and an educator. It was part of my Masters work, now I’m trying to see if it is still something I need but I don’t seem to completely quit.

Making Thinking Visible – continued

Routines versus Strategies

Routines are a structure teachers use over and over again to build student independence and to create their classroom culture.  When we have routines to support thinking within the classroom we are supporting students thinking as a regular part of their experience and developing their ability to think independently.

Strategies are ways of processing or working.  When we teach a strategy for learning, we tend to teach it and then move on.  Perhaps we bring out the strategy again once in a while but strategies don’t create culture.

I like the idea of having routines for thinking.  I know routines help classrooms run smoothly and make the work of running a classroom simpler and smoother.

The authors of Making Thinking Visible fill the rest of their book with thinking routines divided into three sets:  set one – routines for introducing and exploring ideas, set two – routines for synthesizing and organizing ideas and set three – routines for digging deeper into ideas.  Although I could summarize them all here, I think perhaps the book does it best.  In addition, I think I need to try them to really add anything to what is there.

 

I hope to try some of each of these routines throughout this year.  I’m wondering if I might blog about them here or if they should be blogged as teaching practices on my school division’s instructional practices blog.  I’ll see.

Making Thinking Visible – Part Three

What can a teacher do to help create a classroom where thinking becomes visible?

Question. Listen. Document.

Question:

Good questions help students to construct their understanding.

Questions need to be thought through to help students think about the content not simply to outline the facts.  I think asking good questions is one of the toughest parts of good teaching.  This is at least the second time I’ve read about the importance of questions in creating teaching excellence.  It seems strange that something so simple can be so difficult.  It’s easy to ask who, what, when, where questions but to ask questions which ask them to make interpretations, make connections, focus on the big ideas requires thoughtful planning and deep understanding of the content and intent of your lesson.

Listen:

Once a teacher asks the good questions, what do they do with the responses?  Really listening to the responses students give and figuring out what they mean and what they might have missed in their understanding is another task which takes care and deliberate thoughtful preparation.  I’m not sure I’ve figured this one out.  Often I listen for the answer I think I want as opposed to listening for the thinking the students are doing and learning about them from those responses.  I think the third part of this trio probably would help me with that.

Document:

Recording what students say during a class helps track what has been said, demonstrates the value of the students’ ideas,  gives an object for further discussion and reflection.

 

Three simple actions to take in order to make thinking the work of the classroom and learners within the classroom.

I know I’m going to use this.

Making Thinking Visible – Part Two

Looking at student responses to thinking.

In Making Thinking Visible, the authors outline four different types of responses students give when asked to thinking or write about their thinking:  emotional, associative, meta and strategic.  Emotional responses indicate how the students feel about their thinking – unsure, hurried, stressed.  Associative responses indicate accompanying features when students are thinking – while traveling, in math class, when reading.  Meta responses have to do with student awareness of the purpose of thinking and complexity of the process – there is always more to know, knowledge is partial, you need to know something in order to create something.  Strategic responses indicate how the student goes about thinking – practice, look for information, organize my ideas.  These strategic responses can be broken down into four further categories – memory and knowledge development, generalized strategies, specific processes, self-regulation and monitoring processes.

While all thinking about thinking is useful for learners and their teachers and coaches, learning which strategies to use to monitor and regulate our learning, to commit things to memory and to complete specific tasks are of particular help for learners when creating independence and understanding.

 

Making Thinking Visible – Ritchhart, Church, Morrison – Part One

How can we help students to become engaged and independent learners?  Ritchhart, Church and Morrison contend we can help them by Making Thinking Visible.

Students develop understanding, engagement and independence when they are taught well but what does teaching well look like.  We, the teachers, can first think about the work which students are doing in our classrooms.  What kinds of actions do the students in our classes spend most of their time doing?  Now think about the actions which are authentic to the discipline of study which the students are engaged in, that is, what writers, artists, or scientists, for instance, actually do when they are engaged in their work.  Comparing the actions your students are doing to the actions authentic practitioners do will help you determine whether students are learning about the subject or doing the subject.  This is a key aspect in creating good learning environments with engaged and independent learners.

Some ways of thinking are helpful across subjects and disciplines.  Ritchhart et al, give a list of eight ways of thinking which are important to develop for independent learners:

1) Observe and describe

2) Explain and interpret

3) Reason using evidence

4) Make connections

5) Consider a variety of viewpoints or perspectives

6) Find the main idea and form conclusions

7) Ask questions and wonder

8) Get below the surface

This list reminds me of the main strategies for reading comprehension which have been a focus of mountains of PD in the past few years.

(Find the main idea, synthesize, infer, connect, conclude, question).  Good thinking and good thinking about reading are not different.  Cool.

The CAFE Book: Engaging All Students in Daily Literary Assessment and Instruction

author: Gail Boushey
name: Susan
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/09/07
shelves:
review:
Practical advice, strategies and forms for running a good quality student-driven reading program.

via Susan’s bookshelf: all http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/713931511?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss