Complex institutes and new tools

Thought I would record some thoughts here in the facilitators' blog about complex institutes as a means of providing some insights to Diane who is soon off to the Yukon for an institute that has anglophones, francophones and indigenous educators attending and an organizer who seems that we can do all things for all educators. On one level we can -we can provoke and generate questions but as with all of our institues some folks think they are coming to these things to have answers delivered.  Not the case.

Emphaize we are doing professional inquiry
This is so important up front.  Professional inquiry being:
-professinal leanring being directed by participant's questions
-group knowledge builidng -that acknolwedges that insights are found in the group
-making the learning visible -so that the learners can see what has been learned, revisit, build on

-and we are doing this in the context of supporting an"owning you own PD" position -which is a way of supporting individual professional agency -learning to know what you need to know and then be able to pursue those needs
-we also are having participants experience inquiry as a means of helping them facilitate inquiry with their studnets

-so best to make it really clear that we don't have the answes, we don't even have the quesions -that is what we are here to facilitate

Intro provocation
-we have been starting sessions with having participants reflect on issues that keep them up at night for short
-sharing these as a mixer with others in the group
-posting these and then going right into a KBC

-recently I have evolved this to asking participants to individually think of a child important to them and recording on a large index card
-child's name
your relationship to them
-insights about the child -their uniqueness
-your hopes for this child
-your fears for the child or what challenges he/she and their generation will face

-we do this provocation to bring emotional elements to our inquiry and to set up the context for the KBC as to why learning which is what underlies the KBC question --what should these learners experience in school in order to achieve our hopes and prepare them for these challenges.

-in planning with indigenous educators recently we decided to go back to the original version of this initial provocation to make it less personal in acknowledging that the experiences currently part of life in indigenous communities might be too close/invoke feelings too deep.

-anyway this is something to consider

Additional video examples of transformative practice

Secondary-students choose their teachers -see the 4 minute video from a much longer AlJezera story about students in London who choose their teachers based.

-see the Grade 7 to 12 video folder in the facilitators' folder

Norcan Math -this video show secondary students talking about their math learning experience -being math coach in their class, being asked about how they learn best, being part of the school math council which informs teachers about math learning -part fo the NORCAN math project involving schools in Alberta, Ontario and Norway

-also in the facilitators' video folder

New Kindergarten video from the lab School
-this 7 minute video features Carol again and spans outdoor learning and then bringing that indoors
-this is a nice addition to the gravity experience that is

Starting kindergarten video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKRkYSsvP78&feature=youtu.be

 And  some pretty far out videos of outdoor kindergarten in Denmark

Kindergarten outdoors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkiij9dJfcw

 

Outdoors pre school from the US Seattle region
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jNAImEvcAs



Bringing in Indigenous Perspectives 
-in moving from Conventional teaching to transformative learning we highlight the underlying values or perspectives and then have use the simple T chart to compare the two

-this is not particularly helpful for indigenous educators since their cultural base is different from the dominant and minority western ones we highlight

-a number of sources have identified First Nations Principles and these can be used in having a base on which to inform decisions about teaching practice

Here are a few -but note these may not be accurate for all First Nations

Sites and Resources relevant to Indigenous learning and the shaping of this learning

First Nations Holistic Lifelong Learning Model

http://www.afn.ca/uploads/files/8_-_attachment_lifelong_learning_model_-_letter_size.pdf

First Peoples Principles of Learning

http://www.fnesc.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/PUB-LFP-POSTER-Principles-of-Learning-First-Peoples-poster-11x17.pdf

http://www.renaud.ca/public/Aboriginal/Mino-Bimaadizwin-Principles-for-Education.pdf

For our activity where we have participants add to the T chart comparing conventional and Transformative learning we might add another column

feature	Dominant western –conventional teaching	Minority Western –Transformative learning	Indigenous traditionally inspired
Why schooling	Serve the economy	Individual enlightenment and citizen capacity
Role of teacher	Command and control	Facilitate and coach

It will be very interesting to see what educators wiht Indigenous roots have to contribute to this chart.

Note that we might also compare transformative principles  with Indigenous ones.


Supporting Change

In the last half day of the 2 day institute we often start looking at considering where we are going from here after the institute.

Chnage is central to this but change to what, is not clear.

Freeing up some time in our busy educator day is essential and hence consideration of what are we going to stop doing.

I have borrowed a title from an ASCD book "Never work harder than your students" at this point but that was based on a misinterpreataion -I never read the book until recenlty.  The author did not propose the idea I thought it meant -stop doing things that your students can do and share your power and the learning that comes from these activies with your studnts.  Example -don't get your room all prepared with the bulletin boards filled in before school starts -share that with your students asking them -what should be on our bulletin boards to help us learn better and be a better community?

That calls us to change our vision of teacher. Hence based on some nice interviews a few yeas ago with teaches at Stirling Public school I created the video Good Teaching 1.0 to Good Teaching 2.0.  It is in the video folder.  Certainly a good provocation before going  into a KBC on what are you going to stop doing.