May Staff only day
- Rebecca Smye-Rumsby
- Jun 16, 2018
- 3 min read
‘Samaras (2011), talks about children relishing the chance to get their hands dirty in play, exploration and learning. She goes on to compare adults who often forget how much they learned by playing and sharing ideas, and end up not wanting to muddy up their hands or make mistakes.’
I believe that this is so true, and often as teachers, we tell the students that it’s OK to fail, yet we so rarely model this.
Jayne also talks about the value of belonging and how space and place are an integral part of this. How much do the student’s connect with the school? How much ownership do they have?
“Success means to stick by your word, be honest with yourself, only you will know yourself if you are successful. It means to wake up in the morning and be proud of what you did the day before. It’s measured in how much you can give back”. (Focus Group, 2015)
I think we need to challenge the students’ idea of what success is. I feel that there is so much focus on academic achievement and assessment, that students develop an idea that this is what success is. Sometimes we find ourselves stepping away from learning for the love of learning, or valuing personal excellence. At HPSS, I love the fact that we place value on our habits and we communicate personal progress as well as academic. I’m not sure if, due to external pressures and personal experiences, we’ll truly help students develop a more holistic sense of success.
Culture can be described in terms of both its visible and invisible elements:
“The visible are the signs, images and iconography that are immediately recognizable as representing that culture and that theoretically create an appropriate context for learning. The invisible are the values, morals, modes of communication and decision making and problem-solving processes along with the world views and knowledge-producing processes that assists individuals and groups with meaning and sense-making. Hence the notion that the creation of learning contexts needs to allow for the existence of both visible and invisible elements.”
R.Bishop, M.Berryman, T.Cavanagh and L.Teddy, (March 2007) Te Kotahitanga Phase 3: Establishing a Culturally Responsive Pedagogy of Relations in Mainstream Secondary School Classrooms, pp 30-31.
Here at school we have the pepeha embedded into our school through way-finding. As individuals we often avoid Tikanga Maori because of a fear of making a mistake. I think it is better to try and be corrected than not try at all. Despite saying this, I think I need to put this into practice more often.
To become a better teacher of Maori learners I could look at these toolkits:
Atawhai ngā rito, kia puāwai ngā tamariki.
Ako i ngā tamariki, kia tu tāngata ai, tātou katoa.
Cherish and nurture the shoots, so the children will bloom.
Learn from and with these children, so that we all can stand tall.
Sally’s videos on Tikanga.
My biggest take out from this is that many iwi have different tikanga. I think it’s best to ask questions and be explicit about your current understanding to ensure that you are respectful.
Andrea’s focus: Taxonomy
I am reasonably familiar with Bloom’s taxonomy and solo taxomony but have always struggled to fit it into a practical context within Technology.
Andrea showed me Dave’s taxonomy adapted by Atkinson, which focuses on Psychomotor which I imagine is the cross between thinking and doing. I’ve used this to help me with my current assessment rubric around skills. For level 4, I adapted the idea of imitation and for level 5 I started to introduce the idea of manipulation and perfection.
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