Mega Meet - Equity and Success for All

 

For the first time in my teaching career, I was part of a conference that included Primary, Intermediate and Secondary teachers from the local area. Waiting outside for the powhiri to begin, I was excited to see a lot of colleagues I knew from 12 years teaching in this area. I also had the chance to meet new people. 

The powhiri was really special - listening to the speeches and singing waiata, I felt the sense of unity - he waka eke noa - we're all in this together.  

To add to my excitement - Russell Bishop was the key note speaker. The focus of his work is really close to my heart - developing teaching approaches that are highly relational, while also having very high quality teaching interactions with students. 

Here are some key points that I took from Russell Bishop's address... 

- When students are achieving at a lower level than expected, teachers often seek to explain it by saying there is a problem with the child/family/society. 

- A more constructive approach is to ask, 'How could I teach differently so I increase achievement for all students?' 

- Teachers don't implement teaching approaches as they are intended... they might start off well, then the high impact teaching actions tend to fall away. 

- Often we know what to do, but we don't do it. We need systemic changes (not just good intentions) to implement the highly effective strategies. 

- Often teachers are using a vocabulary of  us/them  - we don't see our students as belonging to 'us'. We refer to students as 'those students' not 'our students'. 

The solution:  - you need both the below approaches together 

Part 1: Create an extended family like context for learning 

Part 2: Teachers need to use effective pedagogic interactions 

More in my next post...

Let the learning continue...