Inquiring Into Specific Aspects Of My Current Teaching Practice

Main Learning About My Teaching and My Next Steps

To be reflective is uncomfortable. I'm a firm believer in those aspects of your teaching that you become defensive about are probably the aspects that most need changing.

I have observed three aspects relating to my teaching where that uncomfortable feeling rose from my gut. Indicating an area that I need to reflect on. Below is a description of those moments and what it has meant to me in regards to areas I can make changes to my practices.

Situation 1

During an observation of behaviours of students within my class, my DP observed two students rushing through their writing. We had a great reflective discussion regarding the possible expectations I have of these students. 

Some questions I reflected on:

Do I have lower expectations of these boys who find it difficult to stay focused and complete tasks to the same level as other students? Thinking back to lockdown these were the boys who refused to do online learning when their parents asked them too. What is causing this divergence? If I up my expectation of these students will they persevere more with their learning?  One of these boys is a fidgeter and struggles writing his letters in sequence. Does observing these tendencies lower my expectation of writing output? What would happen if I lifted the bar? How can I motivate them to write more, for longer periods? How can I use self-directed learning and student agency to accelerate progress with these students?

Situation 2

Every now and then we come across a difficult situation that takes us by surprise and makes us evaluate how we see the world. My second reflection on my teaching practice is not actually directly related to my teaching. It was a cultural misunderstanding by me that made me reflect on the value of Whanaungatanga and my understanding of what this means. 

My instant reaction to a conflicting situation that arose was to stand my ground in what I believed in, but I was wrong to do this. I needed instead to look at how others see the situation to truly learn from the experience. The situation that arose (without going into details) could easily put down to miscommunication, however, I believe the real problem was my own lack of knowledge of Māori culture, values, and the Tikanga of Whanaungatanga. I am on a personal journey to grow my understanding of Te Ao Māori and this highlighted important new learning for me.

The situation made me reflect on how I have been brought up. I have grown up in an English family who are insular in our ways. We are not part of a large community, we don't go to church or have large family gatherings, I didn't play team sports and although I will do anything to help I often need to be told what to do. Whanaungatanga is something I am having to learn.

How much do my Pakeha beliefs and values come into my daily teaching practice that I am not even aware of? Of course, they are going to, but I truly believe I need to acknowledge my culture and put it to one-side and embrace Māori and Pasifika culture, to teach Māori as Māori and Pasifika as Pasifika in culturally responsive ways. I'm sure I will not be successful all the time and I will make cultural mistakes (as indicated above) but if we are putting students in the centre of teaching and learning, then expecting them to assimilate to Pakeha culture is not the way, it is putting us in the centre instead.

Situation 3

The third learning about my teaching is how easy it is to revert back to the comfortable, the well-established ways of teaching. Looking at my learning site during lockdown is an example of this...

There were great things I was doing on my site to engage learners, make learning accessible for those students that were working independently without adult help and continuing with ways to accelerate language acquisition through our work with Dr Jannie Van Hees. However, the one thing that slipped away was culturally responsive teaching. This tells me that that I have a long way still to go until culturally responsive teaching practice is a natural way of teaching and a part of all that I do. When the hugeness of lockdown happened and we had to change how we taught and students learned in many ways. That is the one thing that dropped off. This tells me that there is so much more work, learning, changes to my everyday practice that I need to make to ensure culturally responsive teaching is at the forefront of my practice.

Summary

• High expectations for all students. Student agency and self-directed learning to engage, motivate and encourage perseverance amongst the boys in my class.
• Acknowledgement of my own culture and putting my culture perspectives aside to truly learn about and experience Te Ao Māori and increase my cultural responsiveness.
• Keep the changes I am making to my practice in terms of PELP and culturally responsive practice at the forefront, even when times are challenging and you feel yourself reverting back to past ways of teaching.

How PELP Changed My Practice

What Is Language?

Language is the words or symbols we use to communicate meaning, it is arbitrary, and it can convey information about things that are not present in the current place or time. (Northbrook, 2020)

However, it is far more than a tool to communicate meaning and ideas. It is deeper than that. It is fundamental to what it means to be human. Not only does language learning shape meaning and capability, but it is an integral part of culture and identity. Language and culture are intertwined. With the loss of language, we see the loss of culture and cultural identity. (MOE, 2016)

How taking part in PELP has changed my understanding of literacy acquisition.

PELP has made me aware that building on a child's heritage language or languages helps strengthen the acquisition of English as a second language and I have seen first hand the power of drawing on a child's cultural capital to support literacy learning.

I have known that learning is about making connections, connecting new knowledge and skills to our prior experiences and beliefs, however until recently I hadn't thought about the part language plays in this...if language shapes meaning and capability, then surely making space in the classroom for children to use their heritage language to make connections and build understandings makes sense.  

For me, PELP helped me understand the 'why', it showed me the 'how', it supported me in changing my practice to be a better teacher and it opened up possibilities. It quite frankly has totally changed a part of how I teach and my pedagogical beliefs. 

I came to Tamaki Primary from a high decile, predominately Pakeha school. Myself having grown up in England for half my life and then teaching in a school that was reflective of my own culture I knew very little of the Pasifika cultures represented within my new school. Although I jumped at the chance to take part in PELP I was completely outside of my comfort zone attending the first workshop. Fear of what you don't know is always scary, which is crazy as we all know that that is usually an indicator opportunity for learning. I can remember clear as day the thought "How can I teach using dual language books when I don't know the language myself?" 

From what I know now - I don't need to, I have a have half a class of Tongan speakers who are more than willing to be the experts... I just need to value their language and culture and create space to explore literacy in their language and allow them the opportunities to make connections between Tongan and English. 

So what has PELP taught me?

• Opening up opportunities for the students to be the experts, to bring all their knowledge, their culture and language to the table and to be able to connect this to their new learnings.
• Value bilingual and multilingualism and foster it within our classroom. Know that it is easier to acquire a second language when one is strong in their first language.
• Value the cultural capital that students bring to school. Use this to help build literacy acquisition.
• Try speaking in Pasifika languages. Students love it when you attempt to speak their language. This in itself is valuing their identity.
• To use the dual language books as you would any other reader, and utilize the audios online. Think of follow up activities that may help students connect their culture and language with English.
• Create opportunities to use Pasifika languages and cultures across the curriculum e.g. Count in Samoan, use the Cook Island Maori colours in art.
• The importance of listening to families and understanding the students within their family and home context. 

What am seeing as a result of my change of practice?

• The students going from not associating the languages they speak at home with the school context and not speaking them within the classroom, to students now using their heritage language across the curriculum.
• Students competing to use their language when we are doing counting or playing games e.g. let's count in Tongan!...no Samoan!,
• Students giving the meaning of Samoan words or telling me what an English word or phrase means in Tongan. They are verbally translating constantly.
• They naturally speak to each other in their own languages in the social context of the classroom.
• They are fiercely proud of their culture. 
• Massive confidence and overall happiness of students and a sense of belonging.
• They use the illustrations in the books to discuss the story and make connections to their own experiences. 
• Families are realising the importance of building using heratage language and that it can help their children to acquire English as a second language. 
• A spark of interest in students that don't speak in their heritage language at home. They have also become aware that they do not know their heritage language from seeing their peers speaking in their language at school.

What are my next steps?

• Increase my knowledge of Pasifika cultures, as this has highlighted how little I know.
• Increase opportunities for families to come in to share their culture with the class. 
• Create more ways to be culturally responsive in my teaching practice.

PELP is such an effective programme. I encourage all teachers to run with this opportunity. I have been amazed how easy it actually is to make these changes to your practice and even more amazed at the incredible effects it has on the students. 

Push past the fear of not being an expert and make those first few steps... and just see what happens!

Here is a link to my first few reading lessons using the dual language books 

Retelling The Story In My First Language 

Manaiakalani Digital Student Teacher Practicum

I have been lucky enough to be a part of the Manaiakalai Digital Teacher Practicum 2020.  Gabriel Francis, Eugene Kim, Luke Xia and Rachel Ernst, Graduate Diploma of Education Students from The University of Auckland were given the task of creating an online learning site to meet the needs of our students.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of being an online tutor teacher, especially after just going through the lockdown journey. Sharing some of my own learning with others about to embark on their teaching career and reflecting on what has been effective for my students learning online at home has strengthened my beliefs about effective teaching online.

Here is our journey over the last few weeks:

Designing The Brief

First I set about creating a brief for my student teachers. This process in itself was a great opportunity for me to reflect on what has worked for me and my students over the COVID period learning online at home. Summarising the needs of my students gave me the opportunity to really think about where they are right now with their learning and what I would like them to achieve next.
I have had my students for a year and a half and know them and their needs extremely well. However, articulating these needs to my students in the brief was so important as knowing your students allows you to create effective learning tasks that are just right for the individual learner. The students hadn't met the learners and I really had to think "What do these teachers need to know about my children in order to create a successful learning opportunity?"

They certainly didn't have an easy task. Our student's needs are complex...




Delivering The Brief

It was really exciting meeting Gabriel Francis, Eugene Kim, Luke Xia and Rachel Ernst over Google Hangouts. Their enthusiasm and passion for what they are doing was instantly evident. As I started going through my brief I was sure I was overloading them with info.
I was on a release that day so took my laptop into my classroom and airplayed the hangout so my class could introduce themselves. This was brilliant as the class remembered this when it came to introducing them to the learning site. I left the hangout thinking what a huge task this was for our student teachers and at the same time super excited to see what the results would be.
I also invited them to school to see for themselves the effectiveness of the site as I delivered it to my students two weeks later.

Receiving The Site and Giving Initial Feedback

Fun With Fractions Learning Site

Wow! I was completely blown away. These guys had totally nailed the brief. Every element was covered from making hands-on learning activity videos to creating tasks whereby students could work together in groups. They understood that my students working at home may have limited resources and valued my oral language focus across the curriculum. They even made a video using some Samoan. The learning tasks are rich activities that build on students prior knowledge and the whole site scaffolds the students learning and allows for multiple entry and exit points. They also hit the nail on the head in terms of pitching the site at the correct level. This is hard to do when you don't know the learners and have limited classroom experience.

Sharing The Learning Site With My Students

Luke, Gabby and Eugene came to school to see the learning in action

Summary

Gabriel Francis, Eugene Kim, Luke Xia and Rachel Ernst met the brief to an exceptional standard. It is an engaging and fun site that allows our students to explore fractions through hands-on language experience activities. The videos were amazing. They gave clear and simple instructions including the use of new vocabulary reused and recycled throughout the site. The children were then able to independently do the activities and revisit the learning over and over again if needed. They thought about the brief and showed a clear understanding of my students and their learning needs and how to create rich ‘hands-on’ learning activities online using video. 

They took into account the limited resources that many of my students have at home (including making sure they can access learning without having one on one support from parents), their culture and language, the fact that our students learn best working together.

I loved how they acknowledge our focus on accelerating oral language acquisition by explicitly teaching new vocabulary and concepts. 

The games are a fantastic resource for teachers to use and the lesson plan is a great extra.

The children loved the site. They were extremely engaged and it was pitched at exactly the right level. The activities challenged them and scaffolded the learning perfectly.

There is so much content on the site that we will be exploring it for weeks after the holidays. I have also left it on our class site so they can continue to access it over the holidays if they wish to. 

It was wonderful to have Luke, Gabby, and Eugine join us to introduce the site to my class. They were able to see how fantastically it worked in reality. They instantly built a rapport with the students and the children thought they were wonderful.

We have been very lucky to be given this fantastic teaching and learning resource and I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of working with Gabby, Luke, Eugene and Rachel. Your site really does fit the brief perfectly!

I wish you all the best with the rest of your year and the beginnings of an exciting teaching career ahead.