Te Whakamānawa for Facilitators - Reflections Module One - Ko Wai Tātou / Who Are We?

How well do I know myself?

This learning has been very contentious and made me realise just how little I know about my ancestry and past. A week after completing this module, I was contacted by a distant relative who has put together a Maddren Family site of all the family history back several generations. Very timely and well-received.

Part of the module was to look at my cultural iceberg and reflect on it.

Reflecting on my cultural iceberg made me realise some of my unconscious bias and its implications in the relationships with other people, organisations etc.

These are a few of the components of my cultural iceberg:

• A strong sense of fairness and justice
• Strong time management skills and living my life to time
• Communication that includes minimal physical touch, hugs and affection
• Strong respect for elders
• Grown-up being seen, not heard
• Very much a mentality of apprenticeship and doing your time before you become a leader
• Males role in a partnership?

How you feel your whakapapa has impacted your worldview and how you live your life? 

As with many of my generation living in the southern parts of New Zealand, I grew up in a white world with no knowledge of Te Ao Maori all through my school years or tertiary years. In my early teen years, the Waitangi Tribunal gained momentum, and large settlements were made with lots of resentment felt by the local communities.

Over the last eight years, my knowledge of the past and understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi has opened my eyes. I think my world view has changed a lot. I am a bit disappointed I never learnt these things growing up!

How you think your whakapapa might impact and influence how you facilitate the learning of others? 

This is changing and will change more as my knowledge and understanding is established more. At the moment facilitation around culture and equity is a bit worrying however as a pakeha it is important I am brave enough to challenge my colleagues, friends and whānau to also look at themselves and how bias in their teaching or interactions impact on others.

This is the pepeha I have been using for the last seven years.

I now need to rework this as I am not tangata whenua I can not claim Aoraki as my mountain, however I can state that I am in the shadow of Aoraki.

Here is the start of my new pepeha

Tēna koutou kua huihui mai nei 

Greetings everyone gathered here

E mihi ana ki te mana whenua, Ngāti Moki

Greetings / I acknowledge manawhenua 

Nō  ōku tipuna Madron, Cornwall

My ancestors are from Madron, Cornwall

I tae mai ōku tipuna ki Aotearoa i te tau kotahi mano waru rau whitu tekau ma wha

My ancestors arrived in NZ in the year 1874

How to Create Half an Ironman!

Create is often seen as a product that you make, for example, art and craftwork, music, sculpture, photography, bridge building, boat making, weaving, screen printing to name but a few.

However, create can also be a do. I want to unpack this in terms of my training for the Challenge Wanaka Half Iron Man.

Learn
I already knew a fair bit about running and cycling, as I have done many half marathons and 100-kilometre road cycle races, a couple of marathons, some short duathlons, one short triathlon and one 500 metre ocean swim. However, my knowledge of endurance multisport events was limited.
So I was able to access my knowledge. However, there came the point where I needed to obtain intelligence from others through a variety of sources, modes and text types.

So to access my new knowledge I have a coach, I’m using Facebook to access swimming tutorials, and I am connected through communities like Strava, Garmin and my Coached coaching app to keep my motivation up. I also belong to the Ellesmere Road Runners and Christchurch Marathon Clinic running club to stay motivated, get more knowledge, hill work and variety in my training. I also belong to the Leeston Road Cycling Club for the same reasons.

All the components I have mentioned above enable me to access and engage with a variety and multitude of knowledge through face to face discussions, text, video, audio, and self-reflection. They allow me to access recognised effective practice from expert practitioners ensuring my training was best practise and minimised the risk of an injury.

Coaching became very important providing me with access to knowledge in the Learn phase and giving me a focus to analyse the Create phase.  Having a coach became a big part of my training. The coach helped build a training programme, examining my outputs and consistency and giving me access to a library of resources to support my plan.

Create
My most significant change to mindset and understanding as up until now I would have possibly put creating a training plan in as a Create, however, now I see a training programme fitting more into the Learn aspect of learning.

The Create is when I got to combine my existing knowledge with other original ideas in new and imaginative ways to create a new outcome. These Creates involved each training swim, cycle and run as this was where deep learning occurs and gives you more opportunities for self-reflection and understanding.

These Creates included many moments of looking very silly completing swimming, cycling and running drills to build up my strength and efficiency to improve my speed and endurance, running in the public parks with high knees or completing squats and lunges on the side of the road.

The most significant learning, however, came when I competed in races, these included sprint triathlons, Olympic triathlons, ocean swims and half marathons. These are the most critical Creates, as events stop you from lying to yourself or making excuses for your performance which is easy to do in training. The pressure of a race is hard to replicate in practice. I remember my first competitive ocean swim being one of the worst events I had ever done, and it was not until I was debriefing with a good friend that I realised I had not been breathing out underwater, meaning I could not take a full breath when swimming.

The competitive events also gave me an opportunity to put into to action my learnings about nutrition, pacing, cadence, transitioning, hydration and endurance. It also surrounds you with a multitude of like-minded people of all ranges that you can glean nuggets of gold from watching, listening or talking too.

Share
The digital technology I utilised during my training really amplified my ability to Share by connecting with others, it empowered me to be able to Share easily and look at my own and others performances, it gave myself, my connections and my coaches ubiquitous access to my data and visibility of all aspects of my training and events.

Without the use of my Garmin GPS watch and Garmin cycle computer, Coached app, Strava app, Garmin Connect App my experience and learning would not have been as turbocharged.  This turbocharging enabled me to rewind and review sessions; it allowed for me to collaborate with others quickly and efficiently online in real time, access and share knowledge with other athletes and my coaches and create connections online which then became face to face when at events. The ability to connect online with other athletes was quite comforting especially when I was competing at a new race and did not know anyone, having a connection with someone online and then meeting face to face at the event helped calm the nerves.

A safety aspect that the technology-enabled was the incident reporting on my cycle computer, as much training involves 3-hour rides I was often a long way from home on quiet country roads. My cycle computer can recognise if I have a crash and will text specific contacts with my GPS location, this is a sharing component that was unheard of only a few years ago at such a cheap cost.

I did much sharing with my coaches and colleagues through the Coached app however did not share a lot through social media such as Facebook. I felt my friends on this would find the sharing of nine specific training sessions a week as well as a multitude of events a bit much and possibly defriend me. It is essential when sharing that you connect with the right audience to get the most of the connections.

Overall my experience of Challenge Wanaka was really excellent and looking back and reflecting was amplified by the new learning, connections and access to technology. The only thing is now I want to take this new learning and have another crack in 2020. Bring it on!

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.

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you — Digital Convergences for happiness

Here is a blog post I wrote for Core Education, it started off looking at happiness and ended up heading off into a lot of new learnings.

Please check out the blog post at

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you — Digital Convergences for happiness

The writing process and a Year 9 Student - A Students Reflection

This is Megan's reflection of the Writing Process using digital tools.

What did you like about the tools for writing?

• I really liked using poppet it was really easy to use and it was easy to organise the way you wanted it to be and you could move the text boxes around wherever you wanted to. 
• Wordle was very useful just because it was a different and cool way to show what words you had used too much. 
• The speech selection was also good because it would speed up it's talking when there wasn't enough commas and full stops. 
• Book creator was a good app to use once you got the hang of it to set out your work. 
• Write about this was a good app to decide what to write about it had good pictures to use if you wanted to and it was just good in general because I'm pretty sure it had topics.

What barriers or problems did you find with the tools?

• With dictanote I found it very awkward to use because it did not fully understand my voice and I feel like if you were to use this in the classroom that the computer would go physco trying to understand what you were saying. 
• Book creator was a little bit fiddly at the start learning how to use it and putting the text in the right place was a bit annoying.

What did you like about Write About This?

It was a a good app to get an idea of what you were going to write about. I think I got one of my pictures in the book from there.

What barriers/issues/problems can you see with using Write About This at home/school?

It looked like it was made for little kids, the app could be designed for older kids and teenagers.

What did you like about Popplet?

It was handy to show your ideas clearly and you could customise it sort of.

What barriers/issues/problems can you see with using Popplet at home/school?

I don't know I thought it was a good app overall and I would use it and I'm sure that other kids would use it in class

What did you like about Googles Docs/Track Changes?

I already use it at school so I am used to it now, I like it because it has the search thing at the side of the screen that you can get images and just normal google search. It's good so you know what you have fixed and you can go back and and change it back again.

What barriers/issues/problems can you see with using Google Docs/Track Changes at home/school?

Not having internet and having other apps and program's already like Word and Pages. You would have to know how to track changes in add ons and not many people know how to use it.

What did you like about Wordle?

I liked wordle because it all you have to do is copy and paste all your writing in and it makes the words you use most the boldest. It's quite a good tool because then you can compare your changes with the first time you did it.

What barriers/issues/problems can you see with using Wordle at home/school?

No internet. On the iPad it doesn't like using it because I tried and it didn't work. Wordle is a Web Based Java program the equivalent on an iPad may be Word Collage  https://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/word-collage/id527057508?mt=8 

What did you like about Speak Selection - iPad reading your text aloud?

I liked it because it would speed up speaking when there wasn't enough commas and full stops.

What barriers/issues/problems can you see with using Speak Selection at home/school?

It had a Horrible voice which made it a bit frustrating but you could have it set to your voice maybe.

What did you like about Book Creator?

It was a good way to set out your work. Once you knew how to use it, it was quite good.

What barriers/issues/problems can you see with using Book Creator?

Not knowing how to use it. It took a while to figure out to change the font and change the size of the words. It was just quite fiddly in general.

What other tools or digital opportunities would you like to see at school?

Getting to use more apps in school to help our learning. I think that the teachers need some training about new apps to help kids in the classroom.

Anything else you would like to share about the day?

It was a good use of my work day.

Creating personal knowledge from existing knowledge - Understanding the How

Agency, Collaboration, Connectedness and Ubiquity are all catch words in the New Zealand education sector.

But do we truly understand these terms as educators. Along with two of my colleagues we attempted to gain a greater understanding of Agency as we were about to present to a cluster of schools at a teacher only day.

Having mentioned these terms in workshops in the past we were quite surprised to discover that between the 3 of us our understanding of Agency was not very consistent or well formed in our heads.

So we looked to existing knowledge to help us clarify our understanding. After turning to Art Costa, Derek Wenmoth and numerous other papers and articles we started to form a greater understanding of agency especially when we had to think about teaching others about it. By collaborating together on the presentation and bouncing our ideas and thoughts about agency, a greater clarification occurred for ourselves. The ability to connect with others thinking at anytime ensured our learning could occur when we were ready, as we all needed to first process some aspects of the new knowledge before we could move on.

Keywords from Art Costa's Video

The personal knowledge of agency that I have gained through this collaborative approach of synthesising existing knowledge has enabled me to understand agency and also see a much bigger picture when it comes to Modern Learning Practise.

What we need to focus on as educators in this new and exiting time is not the Why or What aspects of technology in the classroom, as these are focussed on continuously and often lead to the digital tools being used as consumptive or as substitutes for traditional tools.

Instead we need to focus and unpack the How. Looking at Agency, Ubiquity, Collaboration and Connectedness. By focussing on the "How" we can use the digital tools to ensure personalised learning, creativity and sharing are embedded in our practise. 

So the next time you open a Google Doc for your learners, start to think "this is not a word processing tool", instead see Google Docs as an opportunity to increase collaboration, give learners agency, connect them outside the classroom and allow them to learn anywhere and anytime.

The writing process and a Year 9 Student - My reflection

Last Friday I had the opportunity to work with a student from the local college who was on work day and I employed her to play with some of the apps I had found and to give me feedback from a students points of view. I was thinking as part of the writing process she could use digital technologies to enable her to express her creativity.Megan is a Year 9 who does not particularly enjoy writing however she is a very creative person.

Megan started by using Popplet to create a brainstorm of what she wanted to write about. After a few moments it was apparent that she needed more guidance around the topic and what to write about. Using Write About app gave her some ideas to create her story. Once Megan had chosen a topic she asked if she could brainstorm her ideas using pen and paper.

Once Megan completed the brainstorm I asked to her to create a copy using Popplet so she had an experience of using Popplet as a brainstorming tool.

Reflection of Popplet

On reflection some students would not choose Popplet as their first choice as a brainstorming tool and neither would I. To brainstorm I like to get my ideas on paper as it gives me more freedom to quickly build a mental image of my thinking.

In hindsight I tend to use an electronic brainstorm when I need to publish the output and would generally still choose paper over digital for my own personal use. In a class situation with a group brainstorm I can see the power of collaborative brainstorms that are digital and would lean towards Popplet or similar.

Drafting was done using Dictanote as was this reflection. Dictanote was not an easy tool to use on the Megan’s Acer Laptop as the microphone did not pick up the words well. We tried to calibrate the microphone and used the train the computer to Megan’s voice with little success. We also tried my Macbook however I think it was tuned into my voice and this did not work well either.

Reflection of Dictanote

• Works best on an individuals own device
• need to set spoken i to capitalise to I
• Takes awhile to learn the tool but worth the effort (device also takes awhile to learn your voice)
• Speak naturally and pause to allow dictanote to catch up
• realise there will be mistakes that need to be fixed later (try not to fix as you go)
• Really need a good brainstorm with good sequence to help prompt speaker what to say next
• Stop mic recording to enable think time
• Text will need cut and pasted into a word doc or equivalent to edit

Using google docs Megan drafted her writing using her handwritten brainstorm as a guide.  On completion of drafting we cut and pasted her text into Wordle keeping the common words boxed ticked to enable repeated words to be shown larger on the wordle.

We used Wordle to see which words were most commonly used, in the case above we focussed on cutting back the use of and. From the Wordle Megan focussed on what words can be changed in her writing to make it more interesting.

Reflection of Wordle

• Needs flash plugin on a Mac
• Fantastic to focus students into words they have used too much. The above Wordle shows how Megan used and to join sentences together.
• Visual easy to see or screenshot

Finally we turned track changes on in Google Docs and Megan went about the process of editing her writing.

I emailed the text of the document to myself and opened the email on my iPad. This enabled me to use speak selection on the iPad and get Megan's text read aloud so she could hear her mistakes. The less punctuation the faster the iPad speaks the text, so easier to hear where punctuation needs to go.

Reflection of Speak Selection

• Easy to use
• Makes mistakes very obvious
• Student can hear and fix the mistakes as they go
• The less punctuation the faster the iPad reads, inserting punctuation correctly, slows down the speaker.

Finally we used Book Creator to publish Megan’s writing by cutting and pasting the text from the google doc into Book Creator. Some images were added to the book and then it was published to iBooks and as a PDF.

On reflection the day was a great success for me as I gained a lot of in sights in how to use the apps in a class situation. I also feel it was successful for Megan as she produced a good piece of writing and hopefully will use some of the tools she used with me in her own work. Even though it looks like a long process it was very quick to flick between apps and digital tools to complete the writing.

Dictanote or an equivalent app really would allow a reluctant writer much greater opportunities to get text onto a page as long as you are willing to give some time to learn the skill of dictating text.

Thank you very much Megan for allowing me the opportunity to work with you.