Alignment

NOTE: In case others are having a tricky time, I had trouble posting at first and needed to request a second 'invite' from Stan.   

There is a lot to unpack from last week!  Not only did we have our amazing LSF session but I was out for 2 other PD sessions that left my head spinning.  The lovely part was that through the week, I was slowly 'Connecting The Dots' with each of them and felt privileged to be doing PD that was truly aligned with my passions.  Hmmmm, that's a different thought.  PD for passion.  I like the sounds of it...

Here are my recent take-aways from all this PD and some of my questions moving forward...

Monday (Outdoor Council of Canada Course) - co-facilitating and turning the ownership of the PD over to the group has been a breath of fresh air for the both this course and the previous course we ran.  It is in this 'place' where I actually find my strongest and most confident voice.  By recognizing and honouring the 'knowledge in the room' (even in a certification course) I find it sets a tone for richer learning.  It brings a safety to the group where we can step outside our comfort zones and take risks while supporting one another.  This led beautifully into...

Tuesday (LSF) - thanks to all the support/coordination (we did it!) most of us were able to really slow things down and look deeply at how this related to us personally as educators, our school, our kids. Amazing.  It brought professional collaborative work to the next level AND included a variety of voices which I loved.  I walked away feeling like we had each others backs...that we now had a network that allowed us to say "Help!" or "Can You Celebrate This With Me!" Both equally important.  One of my take aways on Tuesday was similar to Kim's comment about revisiting the document Natural Curiosity.  I learned that things I have been digesting, experimenting with, reflecting on for the last 5 years STILL FEEL SO NEW!  Each time I look at those 2 resources, I get something completely different.  This year, more than any other time working with this 'inquiry stance', I am more emotionally invested than ever.  Perhaps it is because things got personal this year. Our little guy is struggling in our system and it both heartbreaking and a catalyst for learning all that I can to support him.

Thursday (Evergreen Brickworks) - a day dedicated to developing nature connections with our early learners in a fun, engaging and accessible way.  Phenomenal facilitation, idea generation and visioning left us walking away ready to make some small (and BIG) changes around our school yard. This has inspired moving forward with a school-wide visioning assembly which will serve to collect student voice (and parents who attend!) around further development of our school yard space with an emphasis on student engagement through loose parts play.  After capturing student and staff voice and combining it with data we already have from parents, we hope to move forward with a 3-phase plan

'Connecting the Dots' through these experiences, it looks like my own personal focus will be:

1. Making the Learning More Visible - to students, staff, community (including the Knowledge Building when we bring the curiosity inside...) and;

2. Capturing Student Voice 

Our Looking Inside The 4-Frames with an invitation for
Grade 1, 2, 3 to see their own learning reflected in the 4 areas.
TO DO: shift INQUIRY section and move it to the left of the board.
It is too cluttered and it needs its own 'spotlight'! Any other suggestions?

To the right: With Brenda's artistic skills supporting the vision, we have started using the bulletin board outside my  office to capture the learning inside the 4-Frames of the new FDK program.   I also want to use social media (Twitter/Remind), add to our RMPS Outdoor Learning folder, and share more bits and pieces in staff meetings when possible.

Second goal, CAPTURING STUDENT VOICE, has always been so important to me.   Happy to report we have an assembly in the works for after March Break.  Inspired by the folks at Evergreen Brickworks, we would like to create an opportunity for students to dream both small and big about their ideal outdoor space.  We think the Dot-Mocracy activity we did together at Evergreen would be a great tool once we collect student voice (and parents if they attend!).  Once our school comes up with 20 or so big ideas that are manageable and set us up for success, each student/staff will have 3 'votes' similar to below.  We shared this vision at the Staff Meeting last night.   Any thoughts or feedback around this process are welcome!  I want to be mindful that it isn't just 'token' student voice...and that we truly will be able to honour their ideas.  Do you think this will work? How can we set it up so that we don't have waterslides on everyone's ideal greenspace?! Any advice around next steps?

Student Voice and Making Our Learning Visible - Mapping Our Community:

In Outdoor Learning News, two of our FDK classes went outside for a mapping walk last week around our community.  My hope is that this may be a spark into a potential mapping inquiry which could lead to an action project that would help the community but who knows. It can at the very least help inform and set the stage for our planning/visioning assembly for our dream school outdoor space.

You can see the collaborative group maps we started when we came back inside.  Hmmmm, tricky part about prep/planning coverage is that some of these sparks are lost with lack of time and inability to follow-through...I encouraged the class to post it somewhere where they could continue adding their ideas until the next time we met.  Any other suggestions on how to weave these experiences more seamlessly into the FDK program outside of my own time with the class?

Next Steps:

I plan to invite kids to bring in a map from home and I will bring my wilderness tripping maps, local township maps as well as our school map below to spark more discussion about symbols, pictures, scale, directions, etc.  We had the National Geographic giant map 'Canada From Space' earlier in the year that we can now reference back to as that was a really fun, experiential intro to maps.  Any thoughts?

My commitment which was added to our collaborative sculpture at Evergreen last Thursday was to take these tools/ideas and continue to share and build capacity in our school. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed being at the school on a part-time basis and keep reminding myself  'slow and steady' and 'big changes start with small steps'.  One of my flaws is saying YES to everything which gets me into trouble so I might need reminders from this group to take it one step at a time.

So inspired to be learning with all of you,

- Tanya

Getting Started

After our session last week, I left like I do most times after a professional development session - Inspired and excited! Although something was different this time. I started to feel ans "see" the connections between many of my current passions in my professional practice. I have been on a journey in understanding the importance of creating a safe environment for all students, a focus on the mental health of myself and my students, Self-Regulation through Shanker's work, Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset, and I was beginning to understand of the importance that Outdoor Education and Inquiry base learning has in supporting these other concepts, but something was missing. Something was preventing me from jumping off the ledge fully. 
Once I was introduced to Natural Curiosity for the 'third' time...I was finally ready to hear and see what it was offering, that I wasn't able to before.  

Here are some quotes that made me pause and reflect;

1) "For students to understand their fundamental connections with all living things, they need opportunities to connect directly with the environment, and to reflect on that experience.  As teachers, we cannot expect students to connect with the environment if we confine them, and our teaching approaches, to the prescribed boundaries of classroom walls, worksheets, and textbooks." (Pg. 37) 
  As I     have been trying to focus on how to support the Learning of my very active and disengaged students, I have seemed to get away from going outside. Don't ask me why? Maybe because my comfort is the routine of the day and going outside with one adult and    
21 students was not apart of my regular routine. But again, after many different   conversations with colleagues, I was ready to hear the message and it has clicked.  I am planning on taking the student outdoors each day this week to attempt to spark an inquiry that most can get excited about. ☺️ We will see what this does for the active and disengaged students in our class. 👍🏽

2) " All education is environmental education.  By what is included or excluded, students are taught that what they are apart of or apart from the natural world. We must be wary not to imprint a disciplinary template onto impressionable minds and with the belief that the world really is as disconnected as the divisions, disciplines, and sub-disciplines of the typical curriculum.  Students come to believe that there is such a things as politics separate from ecology or that economics has nothing to do with physics.  It just happens to be dead wrong. The same is true throughout the curriculum." (Pg. 43)

This statement was very evident last week when I posed a question for our students during the "literacy block" that said " How many tennis balls will we need so every chair in our classroom can be nice and quiet so we can focus on our learning? 

As the students went to work using various strategies to try and come up with an answer to our 'real life' problem, a student came up to me and said, " why are we doing math now and not after recess?" I was blown away. I knew I was a teacher who valued the interconnectedness of the subject and curriculum, but it was clear in that moment, that in creating a highly predictable learning spaces for all, I had unintentionally taught them that math was something that happened after recess. This has now become one of my focus areas. I want to look at my schedule and see how I can integrate the curriculum more  effectively while still giving a sense of predictability. 😊
Like 
3) " Stewardship is a form of civic responsibility and of comparable value to other primary  learning expectations such as the acquisition of content knowledge." (Pg. 57) 

I am passionate in supporting opportunities for students to see how they can contribute and have a positive impact on the world around them. I believe this is necessary for the mental health and well-being of our students, however, I have fallen into the trap of trying to get through content on prescribed timelines  and I have missed many opportunities to encourage and foster our student to see themselves our world and be able to make a difference. I can see now how integrating the curriculum,  giving student voice, and fostering a connection with our community and world can offer many outstanding opportunities to inspire stewardship all our students. I think the real problem will be to select what we are going to work on. ☺️

Like Crystal, I gave the students the real life challenge of the balls for our chairs and as I watched the students interact, listened to their conversations and supported them only through prompting questions, I discovered many things about our students. 
1) Cooperation skills
2) Communication skills
3) Organizational skills
4) Problem-Solving skills
5) Perseverence
6) Self-Regulation
7) Math concepts they are familiar and comfortable with (ie. organizing data, comfort with seeing patterns in objects and  comfort with the  100's chart to count by 2's or 4's 

These are just a "few" examples of what was visible. ☺️ 

The real excitement was to see how the students worked together, shared their ideas and strategies with each other and they all grew in their learning to problem solve using math concepts, team work, collaboration, and perseverence! Some students were focussed on expanding their thinking and use of math concepts, while others were working on collaboration or perseverence. 

My question still remains, how do you capture the evidence of learning in all different areas that is effective, valuable to the students and manageable on me? 

 

Learning Combustion...

I left our session on Tuesday feeling inspired and energized. As stated during our KBC, it is important for us to continue to nurture this 'amazing' momentum as it is easy to default to what is comfortable and predictable when supporting multiple learners and initiatives. 

Context

 I teach prep coverage for Grade 3 Science and Social Studies and have engaged in numerous discussions of how I frequently leave feeling that my 'educator' tool bag is empty of effective strategies. Yes, (surprise) I have shed some (okay many) tears of frustration as I know that we are not engaging in the learning that is impactful or inspiring. I see their faces of boredom, lack of engagement and this leaves me feeling defeated, overwhelmed and frustrated at the same time. I left my last class with them knowing something has to change and began thinking of taking them out to the forest to  learn about Indigenous communities (they came up with this and more on their own...keep reading). 

Implementation Goal 

Don't work harder than your students! This resonated with me as I feel consumed by trying to make this 'better'. I have to fix this and everything I try does not seem to work or last. 

My goals are: 

- to promote/enhance student voice;

-  to take our learning outside 

The Experience 

The Grade 3s met together and sat in a KBC. After sharing the KBC protocols,  I explained how our time together is not the type of learning that leaves me feeling happy and I am sensing that it doesn't make them feel happy either. I shared that I don't see all of their 'gifts' skills being used and I need their input.

Questions: 

1. How might we change our learning environment to help us learn? 

Some responses 

- we can have more fun, going back to the forest 

- maybe we can have talk circles before we do our work 

- we can play games 

- things to do, plays

- something to make it better, help each other to get work done and then play together 

- get work done faster then play 

- listen and not be silly 

- do partner work

- chew gum 

- do more experiments 

- maybe have stress circles to get our feelings out

- help each other when having a hard time

- not be rude to anybody

- TM- teamwork 

- move our bodies more 

- fidget tools 

- drawing our learning 

- videos to see 

- choose our own way to show learning like videos (reference to prior work with natural disasters) 

They followed all protocol as they were active listeners and waited to be called on. They were respectful and attentive. It felt phenomenal! I was busy writing with my head up and down and the circle ran on its own. 

I synthesized what I heard and shared with the group with nodding of agreement. 

- we want to do more when learning 

- we want to have talk time

- we want to have voice in what we do and how 

- we want tools that may help us control our bodies 

They shook their heads in agreement. 

Conversation - not a KBC. 

2. We are just starting to learn about different Indigenous communities to help us understand our history. How might we learn about their culture? 

- we can Skype experts or other communities 

- we can research using iPads or computers 

- we can read and do a play about it

- we can look up knowledge and traditions 

- we can search dances and traditions 

- we can make models

- we can go to the forest 

- we can go and make a community like theirs 

(AND THIS WAS THE BIRTH PLACE OF LEARNING COMBUSTION)

You could feel the excitement in the room. Alhtough it was not a KBC, they continued to be active listeners and take turns. Students began to whisper many new ideas of how to create a community. Kids were planning on making fishing tools and string games and were engaged in dialogue using the knowledge that we already know about the different communities. Each student wrote their name on a sticky and placed it on a community to research and prepare. They were asking questions to each other and of me. They were making PLANS. They were excited and engaged. At this moment, I felt overcome with pride of their enthusiasm and engagement and looked at them in wonder. It felt that it was a beginning. We ended this part of the discussion with direction of how we need to plan and do some research the next day to help us plan and understand their life. 

3. Gratitude circle. We went around and could share something we were happy about, thankful or grateful for or pass. I began by sharing how grateful I am for them taking risks and sharing their ideas and feelings. 

Here are their responses verbatim! 

- thankful that you wrote our ideas down 

- we got to pick our own groups 

- we worked together 

- so cool we REALLY get to go to the forest 

- happy no fights. Very, very excited. Can't wait to make our own place 

- grateful and happy that I thought of a plan for the forest thing 

- thankful you letting me carve a stick 

- thankful to bring in stuff from home 

- all of us saying what we want and making our social studies more fun 

- thankful no-one got in a big fight and we are focused 

IT. WAS. AMAZING. 

Wonderings

I left feeling so rejuvenated and hopeful. The next day we co-created a concept map of elements we need to consider (location, food, transportation, gender roles, housing) and then each group decided how to document their own discussion. For almost 100 minutes they planned, read  and talked. We regrouped and listened to each other. Identified similarities and differences between Indigenous communities. They asked questions of how they knew what they could eat? How did they know where to meet for trading? How did they build boats then? Can they build a boat and can we try them? It was explosive! 

We decided we need to contact an Elder to come and teach us more about their history and the relationships with our environment. This supports the social studies thinking concepts of cause and consequence, continuity and change, perspective, significance  and interrelationships. 

I see an area of need as being able to document this journey and maintain this learning engagement. We are off to a great start. I am full of excitement to see them next week and not feeling dread and defeat. I just have to keep this momentum going.