Month: February 2016
Sorting Out: Part II
StandardT
his week, I have been reading Promoting Resilience in the Classroom: A Guide to Developing Pupils Emotional and Cognitive Skills, by Carmel Cefai. Again, this presents a model of resilience-enhancing classrooms, which focuses on caring, prosocial, engaging, collaborative, and empowering classrooms. Within this, in order to achieve relatedness, autonomy, competence, and fun, Cefai (2008) suggests seven classroom processes that students should be a part of:
- Feeling connected with their teacher and their peers
- Being told that what they do is valid and worthwhile
- Are supported to engage in meaningful activities in which they feel autonomous and successful
- See their accomplishments and efforts recognised and celebrated
- Have their voice heard and their choices respected
- Share common values and beliefs related to learning all together cooperatively
- Work together collaboratively to achieve common goals
Examining these models is allowing me to identify common themes, as well as gain some insight on what is important to me. What i’m finding is that there are many resiliency models out there, but the majority are theoretically based and don’t include the practical strategies that teachers can take and apply within their classrooms. This books does include case studies and practical examples, but most are aimed towards the primary grades. This is something I hope to develop with my own model of resiliency in the classroom, with perhaps creating a little mini-unit on teaching the importance of vulnerability and failure.
References
Cefai, C. ( 2008). Promoting resilience in the classroom: A guide for developing pupils’ emotional and cognitive skills. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Sorting Out: Part I
Standard
This week, I managed to get through one of my key resources, Resiliency in Schools: Making it Happen for Students and Educators, by Henderson & Milstein (2003). This was helpful in giving me a general overview of the topic of resiliency in schools, allowing me to start “sorting out” my resources and guiding my research in the direction I want to go in. Henderson & Milstein argue that there are six steps to fostering resiliency, which they present through a Resiliency Wheel. They break it down into mitigating risk factors and building resiliency in the environment. The six areas they describe are:
- Increase prosocial bonding
- Set clear, consistent boundaries
- Teach ‘life skills’
- Provide caring & support
- Set and communicate high expectations
- Provide opportunities for meaningful participation
What was interesting about their approach was that they also emphasized developing resiliency in educators. I initially hadn’t planned to include this as part of my question, but in thinking about this, in order for educators to facilitate the development of resiliency in students, it is important for them to be able to understand and model resiliency themselves.
Last post, I mentioned that I may start to mind map the direction I am going in. While this is subject to change, based on the reading I have done so far, I plan to break my question down into four areas:
- Building self-efficacy through classroom management
- Teaching failure and vulnerability through risk-taking
- Building a resilient, supportive community
- Building a supportive student-teacher relationship.
References
Henderson, N. & Milstein, M. M. (2003). Resiliency in Schools: Making it happen for students and educators. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, Inc.
A New Challenge…
StandardAs of beginning of January, I have started at a new practicum school which, excitedly, is in the very first stages of becoming a PYP school. And while I feel like the new kid on the block again – having to learn names, find my way around the school, and work out what the staff room etiquette is – I am particularly grateful for being able to see the IB programme at different stages, and how it works in both a public and an independent setting. What’s more, I get the added bonus of working in a different grade, with 9 more kids than my previous practicum class. In other words, a new (and possibly greater) challenge… which means a more valuable learning experience. Bonus!
Starting a brand new PYP programme from scratch, in a small but established elementary school, without a full-time PYP coordinator, must be quite the challenge. But with such caring and dedicated staff, I am glad I am able to accompany them on part of this journey. This week in our courses, we have been starting to learn about the IB Planners. In most schools, these are already set up, which teachers continuously review and alter based on the year and the needs of the classroom. Yet this got me thinking, where does a school start in transitioning to the PYP programme? Where do you go with a blank planner template?
Once accepted as a candidate school by the IBO, schools have a trial implementation of the programme which can take a couple of years to reach authorization. This includes training staff members and implementing the curriculum, which is the stage my practicum school is currently at. The below image summarizes the full process to gain authorization.
IB Authorization Process. Retrieved from http://www.ibo.org/become-an-ib-school/how-to-become-an-ib-school/
Subsequently, not only are they implementing their first Units of Inquiry, they are also combining this with trialing the new BC curriculum…. AND having teacher candidates they have to mentor?? My hope is that we can help with the process. We will likely be collaborating to help develop the planner for the next U of I, which will be great experience to create it from scratch and reflect on how it is progressing in a real educational setting. I am also hopeful that the knowledge we have gained over the last five months will be helpful during the IB planning meetings we will likely get to attend once we are at the school full-time. The next couple of weeks will be crucial, as we learn more about implementing the planner, and chat further with our SA’s in planning for our extended practicum.
Finding Out: Part II
Standard
Within our learning teams, we are continuing on our “Finding Out” journey. Since last week, we have made some progress, although it is difficult with so many final deadlines for other courses taking priority. The nice part though, is that everyone is so passionate about their inquiry topic, so it is easy to jump straight back into it. This week, I have taken some small steps in listening to some TedTalks and taking out some books from the library. We also reached out by email to some inquiry and assessment experts in local school districts. I even sent out a Tweet (#resiliencechat) to see if the Twitter World has any words of wisdom for me. As I start to make my way through my many resources, my plan is to create a mind map over the next week in order to identify common themes and organize my thoughts. We have been using these frequently in our methods courses for unit planning, and i’ve found it particularly helpful in visualizing concepts and developing direction in projects.
“Failure was an AWESOME experience” (Cordell Steiner)
Check out this TedTalk from this little superstar, on what classrooms should look like.
Until next time…
