PB4L Expo 2022 - It is all about connections.

An opportunity to CONNECT (kanohi ki te kanohi) and to hear how kura are using the PB4L-SW framework to make CONNECTIONS.

Hurunui College

Explicit teaching of what it is to be a student at Hurunui College

No assumptions of students knowing what happens in school.

Newcomers Group - integrating new students into school

Use older students - Kaiārahi

Wairakei Primary School

Classroom practice team - Tier One team before become Tier Two - 5 years in and still at Tier 1.

Two behaviour continuums one for teachers complicated and then simplified for class and child and parent. 

Yellow and orange behaviour - teachers solve while teaching.

Red and Black needs the stopping of teaching and is dealt by leadership.

Added in blue and green behaviours on the continuum to value the positive behaviours. When children are at this stage they are able to have restorative conversations.

Also teach the behaviours at blue and green.

New Brighton Catholic School

Social stories linking to PB4L. Tied into virtues teaching and Learn Create Share pedagogy. Social stories have worked right across the school.

Power is in the co construction of the stories for the students.

Rolleston College

Restorative Practice - Restorative chat - Restorative conversation - Restorative class conferences - Restorative formal conferences

Staff Card to support the chats.

Role Play Time - restorative chat - with staff at staff meeting. 

Restorative Rangers - a group of teachers who volunteer to support restorative work. Students eventually trained up to take the role.

Heathcote Valley School - Te Tihi o Kahukura

Biodegradable bamboo tokens and up cycling of shelves cupboards etc for whole school acknowledgements.

Lyttelton Primary School

Classroom Practices Teams - teachers who connect and strengthen their practices. Not until tier two.

Function of behaviour 

Setting events - Antecedent - Problem Behaviour - Consequence - 

On fortnightly team agenda - nomination form for teachers to access and fill in.

Westburn School

Tags more succinct so data cleaner, which means lessons then can be picked based on the data.

Get rid of unknown tags as an easy go to which gives no data to change behaviours.

Reflection 

Great connections today. Follow up

• Investigate SWISS for 2023 $450
• Look at the action plan
• Update Tracey on PB4L
• Revisit school wide acknowledgements with Tracey

Wellbeing Won't Cut It Alone!

I thought by reflecting on my journey during this opportunity; I might clarify my thinking and support others. For myself, I believe that it is not wellbeing alone that made this challenge so manageable. It has been the combination of wellbeing, success and engagement, which has enabled me to come through this period refreshed and excited.

In my head, this has never been a crisis, I have seen it as a challenge or opportunity. I have been fortunate like most educators, I have continued to receive my full income. I am in no doubt if my wife or myself lost our incomes, then this would have become a possible crisis.

Do not get me wrong as I have had many moments of self-doubt, stress and anxiety; however, I have managed to work through these. I have come out the other side fresh and reinvigorated in my purpose and role supporting schools.

How have I done this? Let me take you through my reflections focussing on my wellbeing, success and engagement. At the time, I was not aware I was doing things that supported all three aspects.

I remember a colleague once telling a school staff meeting to ensure student success we needed to look at three parts of an equilateral triangle. These parts were student wellbeing, student engagement and student achievement. Missing one would impact on the others as they were all interconnected.

 Since the earthquakes in Christchurch, there has been a real push for wellbeing. As a result, I think we have forgotten about the importance of success and engagement for improving wellbeing.

The image above is my attempt to understand what these three things looked like for me. 

When I started, I was not sure how to define each, so I went to good ole Google. Here are what I have used to describe Wellbeing, Engagement and Success.

Wellbeing - I focussed on the Five Ways to Wellbeing from the Mental Health Foundation NZ.

Success - I used ERO's Valued Student Outcomes and Wellbeing for Success.

Engagement - I used a combination of resources from TKI Student Engagement Teaching as Inquiry, Universal Design for Learning from Inclusive Education and Ka Hikitia Accelerating Success. 

I am going to relate them to my own experiences and why I am feeling so positive and refreshed.

Wellbeing

• Take Notice - One of the simple things that give me joy is having a spa with the family which continued over lockdown.
• Keep Learning - I signed up to two challenges during the lockdown, one around nutrition and the other the 25 days push up challenge. I learnt many new things which I implemented into my daily routine and enjoyed. I did so much professional knowledge building as I am sure many educators did as I worked through what learning from home required to be successful.
• Be Active - I maintained my regular exercise program and even added extra with regular walks with my wife.
• Give - with a colleague; I explored new ways to present content to teachers, learners and whānau online, created resources and shared these with our communities. I connected with friends online, played games with my bubble, supported my wife and children in working and learning from home. However, my wife did most of the learning support for our children while I had online meetings.
• Connect - I connected teachers and leaders I supported either face to face online or through blogging, email and online support and found this very rewarding and enjoyable. I met daily with our national team for a quick update and participated in Friday online drinks. We connected with other family members outside our bubble. We gave our children access to messenger apps that allowed them to communicate with their friends and cousins.

Success

• I participated and contributed confidently in a range of contexts to support teachers, leaders, students, whānau, family, friends and new acquaintances. For example, we created a site to support educators teaching from home and I joined a Whatsapp group to support each other in a nutrition challenge. I was involved in numerous video conferences, messages, emails, and phone calls to connect with others personally and professionally.
• I was a successful lifelong learner completing a nutrition challenge which I gained much new knowledge to support my training and future sporting events. I blogged as I worked through my thinking about the new learnings in lockdown. My children and I learnt lots about how we all work as we came up with strategies to support our learning from home. Once again, I blogged about this to support others who may have had similar issues.
• I have good relationship skills, are self-confident and can bounce back from setbacks. I can lead while being able to self manage and make responsible decisions to ensure my practices are sustainable. One of the things I did that was successful during this time was creating a routine early on and sharing this with all the educators I supported.
• I have self-belief due to the knowledge I am involved with numerous individuals and organisations that know what they are doing. I also know how to navigate the online world when I do not know something to access content, knowledge and skills to support myself. I think this self-belief supports me to be confident in my identity, language and culture as a citizen of New Zealand. This confidence extends to fixing a motor on a washing machine, supporting my son through the meltdown of online learning, or changing the way I look at traditional knowledge of food and education.

Engagement

• Cognitive - I learnt late in my life that I learn best by either doing, watching or talking with others to develop my knowledge and skills.  However, I am also able to draw on other modes of accessing information like text and audio if the situation warrants it. I am lucky the leaders I work with understand learning and therefore provide access to materials in numerous ways. I have been trying to utilise the principles of Universal Design for Learning in my work when supporting others. We had supported our children by looking at the content provided for their learning. When it was not available through the class learning, we found the information in different formats online. 
• Cultural  - this has been an exciting experience seeing how families and organisations, including my own, have created environments online to promote a sense of belonging. The addition of grid view in a Google Meet helped develop a sense of belonging along with the use of secondary smaller online bubbles for more intimate group work. When learning online, there is a real need to show the organisation's culture and values, what makes your audience think "that is my classroom". Acknowledging culture is an area I am developing and often is left till last as I think about how learners will access the content. However, reflecting on this as I write this, what use is equitable access if the learner can not see their culture or values in the content and choose not to engage?
• Behavioural - My children certainly had enjoyed the choice they were given and the freedom of choosing when and how they completed their learning. We did have meltdowns when there were no scaffolds as to how to complete the work or support for the students' workflow. I have been allowed the space to work in a high trust model. I had choice and opportunities for how I interact with material and how I want to show that material in my context. I was able to think about what I could manage in my context and then plan my workload accordingly. I had support and guidance from leadership about how to proceed in our daily meetings. The big enabler was I realised with support from colleagues and reading others experiences what was manageable and sustainable. I think some educators who felt their wellbeing had been impacted by Learning at Home did not modify their behaviours. They proceeded to interact with learners the same way they did face to face.
• Emotional - going into this experience, my colleagues have known me and built relationships with me for seven years. They understand how I work and what support I might need. I think with the work I have done with educators in our online meets has developed stronger relationships. For some, working at home offered an environment with fewer distractions so they could focus on what mattered and changed as needed. It was so awesome seeing my son connect with one of his teachers and the commonalities he found he had with the teacher. Caution needs to be applied, especially in a secondary context as it would be impossible to connect with all your students individually online. I would imagine where educators tried to do this; they may well be exhausted now as we head back to schools.

My personal opinion is that if we solely focus on wellbeing at the expense of the other two, we will end up in a worse position. 

As leaders,

• Can we empower individuals and groups to manage their own lives by focussing on the five ways to wellbeing?
• Could we support them to enable themselves to be successful in life?
• Might we encourage them to engage by considering how we interact with them through material and expectations of evidence? 

Maybe by focussing on all three aspects, we may help to create a  state of being for all that is comfortable, healthy, and happy for the majority of the time.

Equity: is it the Device or Teacher?

There has been an increasing focus on equitable access to education throughout the Covid19 event as it has highlighted the issues with access to education. The event has been challenging my thinking, along with being challenged by my colleague Sharon Spragg to deliver our Cybersmart curriculum differently.

Cybersmart Lesson Tahi - Exploring Blogs

I have a strong drive for equitable access and visibility for education hence why I continue to be involved in education.

Sharon and I are inspired by a number of our colleagues' work, particularly Cam Cameron from Kootuitui ki Papakura Cluster planning our Term 2 Cybersmart Lessons.

My colleague Linda Ojala also gave me some feedback on the site's layout and UDL principles.

If I genuinely believe in equity, then getting the devices into students hands is only the first step. We then need to ensure the content itself is accessible and equitable.

We have attempted to do this following Universal Design for Learning Principles and our own experiences in education. We have tried to take a lesson and differentiate the content into three parts.

The teacher, whether online or face to face, would then modify in response to individual students' needs. They would also emphasise critical thinking and strategic learning. I think we still have a way to go to create lessons that reflect a high competence of UDL however we need to start somewhere and this blog post is the beginning of my reflections into our planning efforts.

So what have we done?
As I stated in the previous paragraph, each lesson is in three parts, beginner, stepping up and confident and is aimed from Year 3 - 10. We are expecting in the classes we work with we will have students ranging from beginners to confident and want to support and stretch all the students. The lessons can be guided by a teacher or completed independently with some teacher or peer support.

Each lesson layout is the same and also colour coded, grey for beginner, blue for stepping up and white for confidence, with a button at the top of each page to take the student to the correct place. We will reflect on our layout once we have taught in some classes to get feedback on the amount of information on each page.

Any text on the web page or in the Google Slides has narration reading the text. We have done this as we find that the text to speech tools can be a bit hit and miss for the students, and we want to remove as many barriers as possible.

Each lesson has a screencast video on the left explaining the learning task and on the right side is the Google Slides of the learning resource. As you can see in the slideshow, there is a Learn Create Share overview, videos teaching, explaining or modelling the tasks as well as instructions to work through the learning.

Each lesson also has a "Pathway for Learning" to support students who like a pathway or list to support their learning. These may be added to the slides in the future; however, at the moment, they are separate as some students may like them printed out so they can tick off each task as they do it. I know personally, my son loves the format on the left, whereas my daughter prefers the one on the right. Maybe another future step is colour coding the list to Learn Create Share?

In my head, this sort of access to learning for the student should

• Free me up as a teacher to rove and support students with discussions and critical thinking.
• Allow time for students to choose and opt into workshops and conferencing to support their learning.
• Empower students to drive their learning and choose when they wish to complete the work.
• Spend longer on a lesson if it interests them and go deeper by moving onto the next stage for example beginner to stepping up
• Reduce time the students have to wait for the teacher to explain the learning

The planning of this content has been time-consuming and has added to our workload; however, we are getting faster as we develop our processes for recording sound etc.
How would I make this work if I was in a classroom?

• Just like learning at home, I would reduce the content I wanted to get through. LESS IS MORE!
• Collaborate with others to plan content and share the workload.
• Utilise Multi Text databases, and other teachers work off their sites.
• Use everyday authentic texts that are engaging and interest students, such as journals and books both online and offline. 
• Plan for one to two-week lessons allowing more time for discussion about the texts and learning. Separate discussion from collaboration. What is the quality of the conversation that these students are having?
• Go wider and deeper into texts about an area instead of more texts on lots of topics. Focus on the thinking about thinking, e.g. "Do I have evidence, have I justified myself, is this an opinion or a fact etc."
• Allow more time for the Learn. Encourage students having a role in the workshops, for example, questioner, summariser etc. Do students understand what is expected of them, and they have permission to speak and think?
• Allow more time to Create. All these lessons work on the assumption the teacher will encourage and empower students who are capable to utilise the best tool to present their learning depending on the task.
• Allow more time to share. Collaborating and making choices in the sharing. Encourage students to think "what is the purpose of sharing this artifact?". "Why did you choose to share in that particular way?  

If we believe in equity, then this is the next step in supporting students to ensure all our students discover success in their learning. It should work in all subject areas and right across the curriculum.

I think It is well worth the effort! Do you?

Please comment on any ideas or suggestions you have to make our teaching more accessible to our learners.

“It is the kids time use it well!”

School life gets busy, and often we get ground down in the fine detail and testing and forget the big picture of education.

Our vision is for young people:

• who will be creative, energetic, and enterprising
• who will seize the opportunities offered by new knowledge and technologies to secure a sustainable social, cultural, economic, and environmental future for our country
• who will work to create an Aotearoa New Zealand in which Māori and Pākehā recognise each other as full Treaty partners, and in which all cultures are valued for the contributions they bring
• who, in their school years, will continue to develop the values, knowledge, and competencies that will enable them to live full and satisfying lives
• who will be confident, connected, actively involved, and lifelong learners.

No matter what technology comes along, oral language, reading and writing are still needed in this world and will remain so into the future. It is an indictment that a large number of adults in NZ do not have the basic literacy needs/knowledge and successfully contribute to society efficiently and productively.

I would argue that in some classrooms, even with all the constant testing, some teachers would not trust their gut to make a call on a child’s progress without access to their data.

For me, the Learning Progression Frameworks provides an opportunity to increase teacher pedagogical content knowledge and support them by removing some of the testing from their workload.

If you as a teacher, don’t trust your judgement, then your students will miss out. Relying on student data from the likes of PAT does not show what a student can do because they are a closed answer test.

Consistency comes from using the same illustrations rather than adapting and making your own. The tool creates reliable information that can be used by everyone.

Using PaCT reports

The tool and framework were created to give an on balance decision that looks at the whole child’s literacy ability.  Link to the tool here. 

Looking at the Site

Mustard videos are the information videos - useful with schools in staff meetings.
Other videos are examples of an aspect of practice - from educators in schools using tool.
Screencasts are the how to use. Replaces 124 page user manual.

Good video about the tools creation



Looking at the diagram above, making sense of texts is what reading is about. Students then use the components of making sense of texts to read for different purposes.
When thinking about Learn Create Share very simply, students in the Learn are reading to organise ideas and information for learning (there is also some create in there). Students in the Create are using information and ideas in informational texts (would these be the DLO’s?) Smart Learners are also understanding distractions of online text, and need teaching around how to manage self online to make sense and reading deeper rather than scanning. T shaped literacy from Woolf Fisher supports this.


This learning progression framework is not about pedagogy; it is about content knowledge and how reading, writing and maths develop, what do students need to know before they can do the next thing.

Teachers need to be spending their time creating rich tasks and lessons NOT finding evidence for assessment purposes. 

“Having evidence is not going to make you a better teacher” 

“It is the kids time use it well!

Mentoring and Coaching - Building foundations - Reflection

In your context, what difference could effective mentoring have on teacher retention?

Looking at the teachers I work with, the 1:1 support offered each week has the potential to decrease the leaving rate as the teachers are supported in class each week. This support helps ensure the teachers in their first year of a 1:1 digital level have support in their learning and creation of structures and systems to prepare them for effective use and the ability to maximise the affordances of digital technology.

Part of my role is also to transition these teachers into their second year when my support ends to ensure they still feel connected or supported at an appropriate level.

In your context, what difference could effective mentoring/ coaching have for priority learners?

The impact on priority learners is large with engagement in their learning increasing due to the access of technology and the authenticity through Learn Create Share and Blogging.  For me, it is to move into being a high effect facilitator to get a more significant shift of teachers in the year I am with them. It is also to ensure that ownership remains always with the principals, SLT and teachers and not with me which limits buy-in and shift. There is a fine line between supporting to stop overloading and having it being done to them.

What difference could effective mentoring / coaching have in your context for building teacher agency and leadership capacity?

The teacher's capabilities in a digital world increase, giving them the skills and knowledge to apply their pedagogical knowledge to students using the affordances of technology to increase student achievement, well being and engagement. In the second year, opportunities could arise to take a leadership role in the school around Manaiakalani Outreach and Learn Create Share. The new confidence and leadership opportunities also can lead to more agency as they then become the drivers of Learn Create Share.

What does a coach/mentor ‘look’ like and what do they do? Is it the same across cultures?

The coach/mentor needs to be highly adaptive and able to change to meet the needs of the mentees. If they cannot then they need to recognise this and suggest alternatives. They need to be able to build relationships and make connections quickly with the mentee to enable relational trust which ties in nicely with Five Dysfunctions of Team learning I have done in the past.

My definition of Mentor and Coach (developing)

Mentor = Guide - Greater use of questioning and learning talk to get the mentee to set a goal and then work towards it? Educative mentoring represents a shift away from advice and guidance / pastoral care to the facilitation of “evidence-informed reflective learning conversations.”

Coach = Support - Goal is preset, and then the coach is there to support the mentee to get there?

Learning conversations are crucial for both.

Listening to Manu and Anaru's Podcast and thinking in my own context it does seem there are synergies between cultures with knowing your learner being at the centre. Maori may prefer a group mentoring model to a 1:1 model.

Where do you think your current mentoring / coaching relationship sits in relation to these definitions and the ‘Situational coach-mentoring continuum visual diagram’? How do the definitions/continuum approach shape your expectations of this relationship?

My role possibly has me sitting in the middle of performance and potential on the continuum as it is context driven around Cybersmart and Learn Create Share, is a medium-term and focuses on roles and competencies. Somehow I need to be able to move this into the Personal Space for leadership as they are long term and have a more complex and evolving landscape to the teachers. There needs to be a partnership where the leaders to take more ownership in the strategic direction of the school in relation to Outreach and the cluster and requires me to facilitate this rather than do it to them.

While you read through these principles consider why they might be significant for you in a mentoring / coaching relationship and how they might influence the way you work with your current mentee/coachee.

Adult problem solving

• Watching and feeling
• Watching and thinking
• Doing and feeling
• Doing and thinking

What other practical applications of these adult learning principles can you see?

What’s on top for the mentee? Need to know this first before we can move forward and ensure the discussion is actually supporting the mentee and relevant to them.

In our model of Learn Create Share the opportunities for Watching and feeling, Watching and thinking, Doing and feeling, Doing and thinking are amplified as the mentees go through the process of learning. By accessing some new knowledge/information and then either creating or watching someone else produce a learning object is really going to support their education. The sharing of the new knowledge also gives opportunities for Watching and feeling, Watching and thinking, Doing and feeling, Doing and thinking as they interact with the blog post and potentially comment.

I guess in a 1:1 session there is going to need to be times when I am modelling in order to give the mentee an opportunity for Watching and feeling or  Watching and thinking or giving the mentee opportunities to do the Doing and feeling, Doing and thinking and being able to talk through this if they so desire.

Staff meeting implications - Adult Education

• let learners know why something is important to learn,
• show learners how to direct themselves through information,
• relate the topic to the learner's experiences,
• help ensure that people are at the stage where they are ready and motivated to learn, and
• help learners overcome inhibitions, behaviours and preconceived beliefs about learning.

This is an excellent framework to use when planning staff meetings and would complement the use of a site rather than a slideshow. I would need to know my learners well to relate the topic back to their experiences.

• Following a formal process
• Getting to know your coachee/ mentee
• Setting aside a time for the session
• Protecting the time from other responsibilities or keeping the different roles clearly separated
• Taking the meeting off-site

When thinking about your current mentoring/coaching relationship, which approach do you think you presently take in your mentoring relationship? Why? What outcomes are you trying to achieve? When might you need to use a variety of approaches with the same mentee/coachee?

At the stage when working with teachers, the approach I take is Directive  - Control to Directive - Informational. This is due to teachers not feeling empowered to direct the learning and move into the collaborative space where I would much prefer to work. This is possibly due to many reasons

• Lack of planning time with the teacher - need to book in time with each teacher at the end of the term to plan the following term
• Lack of buy-in that they can drive the learning - make time to discuss this and use active listening. I may move to problem-solving before hearing all the message?
• A structured context of cyber smart making them feel like they have no choice - I have tried giving options in the past to choose from still found little buy-in.
• Poor communication of expectations and opportunities for engagement of my support - School leadership taking some role in here as well as my part especially at the start of the year.
• Busy teachers overloaded - working Cybersmart into what they are already doing.

Coaching and Mentoring to Develop Practice

Sometimes being a reflective practitioner really sucks, all these ideas formulating and getting chewed to bits inside my head. I have been thinking about my inquiry for 2018 and have been lucky enough to be mentored by Sarah Whiting as a Whānau lead. Going in for my first session in 2018 my head was definitely full of ideas and reflections that Sarah skillfully drew out into a concrete substance. This allowed me to then group the themes together which had led to the formulation of my inquiry and my new learning for 2018.

Busy - this is part of a new cluster and will slow down as we move into Year 2.
Relationships - This has been very good in some classes however I have possibly not invested enough time in some classes to build these. The lack of a day at the start of 2018 to set expectations etc for the year has contributed to this. I need to reflect on “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” and remember relational trust is the first part to build.

• Expectations of Learners - Sometimes the expectations on learners completing work is not very high. This has been noticed in other cluster schools as well and even measures have been put in place to support learners with learning how to finish task. How can I support teachers in setting expectations for their students?
• Accountability - Who are the teachers I work with accountable to? Do the teachers understand the expectations of the programme and their leader's expectations?
• Value Added - What is the value-add to the teachers from my work, I see the value with the students. How could I measure the value-add with staff?
• Frustration - The risk of the above themes developing into frustration on my part and then this impacting on the relationships with staff and schools.

My inquiry is going to focus on the use of coaching and mentoring to facilitate better practice. I am interested to learn the skills and knowledge of coaching and mentoring and then see if this can be utilised in the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme implementation. I am intrigued to know how I could use coaching and mentoring in the programme.

Next step is to do some new learning around coaching and mentoring as part of a CORE Education Tātai Aho Rau Empower Course on Coaching and Mentoring.

Leaving to learn - the Big Four and Deeper Four

I am currently reading Leaving to Learn - How out of school learning increases student engagement and reduces dropout rates by Elliot Washor and Charles Mojkowski.

I am blogging as I continue to make my way through this book. At the very start the authors talk about the Big Four warning signs for dropping out of school. They are

• Academic failure
• Behaviour
• Life events
• Disinterest

Academic failure is an obvious one, if you are not succeeding at something then why would you wish to continue the pattern and stay in school. My son intrigued me tonight as he is learning the Ukulele and has had a change of teacher this term. All of a sudden his anxiety around his Ukulele practices has increased as the new teacher tests the learners to ensure they are making adequate progress to stay in the group. It is interesting and I am sure the original teacher did not tolerate students who did not practise and had consequences in place to deal with this. However the mention of tests has changed the whole dynamic for my son and added in a possibility of academic failure.

Disinterest is also at the forefront of many school's as they begin to collect student voice and look to ways to engage their learners in learning. The affordances of digital technologies, when integrated with a quality pedagogy can really reduce the disinterest of learners.

The Deeper Four are very interesting and I think drive the Big Four for our learners.

• Not mattering
• Not fitting in
• Unrecognised talents and interests
• Restrictions

I would think this is why well being is beginning to come to the fore front in education and the job place. I guess the challenge is how do we change a traditional education system to address these deeper four?

Collaborative Leadership

Growing Leadership in Collaborative Environments

CORE Education Empower Course

Challenge 2

My colleagues and I have been involved in an Empower Course through CORE Education for the last few months. As part of this learning we have been required to complete challenges. The latest challenge is below

Module 2 - Intentional Acts of Leadership Challenge

Making the case for collaborative leadership. Develop a 2-4 page model that shows how you see collaborative leadership working in your context. Include a rationale, risks and opportunities, possible implementation strategy/practice, roles and responsibilities. Also Include any challenges you identify and how you envisage overcoming them. 

The purpose of this challenge is to: 

• Formulate a model for leading within a collaborative setting and leading in a way that fosters a culture of collaboration and inclusivity. 
• Describe the dispositions or qualities and style of a collaborative leader and the deliberate acts of leadership required to build and support a collaborative, inclusive learning culture within your context 
• Justify, reflect on and defend your collaborative leadership model.

Here is our team, made up of Chris Bell, Maria Krause and James Hopkins, combined thoughts and new learnings. 

Reflection

This Empower Course has been very beneficial to my knowledge and development of leadership. The very collaborative nature of my colleagues has really enhanced my learning through powerful discussions as we decided to do challenges as a collaborative project. This has been really interesting as it is decreased our workload immensely while increase our understanding and learning much more than if we were working individually.  

I have been really impressed with the way conversations happened, with a group of people that are comfortable with collaboration, and also comfortable with conflict. On a number of occasions our online meetings have been ones where we have come in with no real idea of where we going to head with our learning and challenge, definitely times we were well and truly in the “pit”.  Once we got used to the fact that there's going to be silence in these meeting and you get comfortable with that silence. While we were processing the information or latest discussion, we came up with some really good unpacking of what we had to do.

It was very interesting because we would start with the four of us looking for someone to take a leadership role and quite often no one was really in the position of a good enough understanding of the task to do this. So as a result there was a lot of uncomfortable silence, until someone might have just said or sparked an idea which then developed with the rest of the group until a more tangible idea that we could latch ahold of and move forward.

I think this is something that we as teachers often forget about, the uncomfortableness of new learning, of taking a risk. I suppose putting yourself out there and allowing others to know that you do not really know what you're talking about. I guess part of this blog post and our presentation is that that we were putting it out there, that we may not necessarily be right on the money as to our understanding of the new knowledge, however there was very good learning from this and we continued growing and learning as we move through the challenges.

I think that messy learning is good for others to see you as well, often we produce and share a final product that you do not get to see all that messiness in behind. I know that in the past teachers have said to me ‘we go to a conference and see that amazing presenter up on stage and they think OK well that's awesome but how do I get to there"?  I often have to stop and inform them that the awesome presenter has got there by experiencing the warts and all and learning from them.

I think that is a part in our education system that we miss as leaders, showing the process and learning the person has gone through in order to get where they are now.

As our sector embraces Teaching as Inquiry and the affordances of digital technologies I wonder if this messy learning will become more visible.