All posts by graham hiebert
Practice Make Purr-fect: Looking Back On My CFE
Over the past three weeks, which have gone by in a flash, I have had the privilege a great deal of good, solid educational practice. I have seen firsthand the impact that carefully planning, clear expectations, precise execution, and a meaningful reflection back can have on educational experiences outside the traditional norm of a classroom. For me, something that has stuck out in this whole process is that the content is nothing without the delivery. Very little can replace good modelling and there is no true substitute for expectations, both in relation to content knowledge and behaviour.
Something I have truly seen value in over my community field experience here at the Greater Vancouver Zoo and out at Camp Squeah, is the impact proper modelling can have. At camp, this was obvious. Especially in a new environment showing, actually showing, the students how to behave to ensure safety, structure, and fun is so very crucial. When the students were rock climbing, showing them that yes it can be scary but it is so much fun when you get on that wall, so much fun to take that risk, and so rewarding to complete it. This transfers to them the confidence to try. Modelling this confidence (whether you feel it or not) shows them that if you the teacher are willing to take the risk, so can they. Modelling encouragement for other students when they a participating in activities encourages the student to be encouraging towards each other. It is a cycle of encouragement. This is encouraging to see (ok I’m done with the word encourage). Through this, we see that this is connected to both the behaviour of your students but also the relationships that are created. Now this is obvious in the camp setting as the nature of camp strips away the layers of analogy and everything is much more literal (see my previous post), but the power of modelling can also exist in a setting like leading a tour at the zoo. In this scenario, modelling is important for the students as it allows them to make the most of the experience. Sure you could just lead the tour, giving information about particular animals and answering the odd question, but are the students going to connect to the information this way? No. However, if you can take the time to model the process of inquiry for the students, questioning and then discussing, formulating answers and sharing them, the impact on the students is tremendous. During my tours, finding time to model this and then allow the students time to do this themselves made a huge difference. By telling and then showing them how this works, the connections the students make the to the content were significant. They are being talkative. They are very excited. But all this noise is good. They are engaging their peers in questions and answers about the animals. They are enthusiastic, engaged, and using critical thinking. As an educator, this feels good. And how did I achieve this blissful state of scientific inquiry? Giving them the space to do so and modelling the skills/prices they will use.
But expectations are also important. I know we have discussed them at length in theory classes. Placing the expectations in the hands of the students so they know what is appropriate and what is not. However, these expectations are often misshaped and distorted to resemble expectation’s negative cousin: RULES. They are not the same thing. Expectations have a quality that sets it apart from rules and is simply more effective. By explaining and modelling (see the connection to the first section? Educational mind blow!), expectations describe the WHY. I am expecting you to act this because of this reason. It is the because that is important as it allows the students to take ownership of these guidelines. For example, during my tours, I created a spiel about how all the students are my Jr. Zoologists and as Jr. Zoologists, we care for the animals by making sure the pay are getting the proper diet, making sure the animals feel safe, making sure the animals are comfortable, etc. And to do this, we have to make sure the animals don’t get any of our food, make sure we are giving them space by staying off the fences, and make sure we are quiet so the animals can live in peace. Much better expectations than the simple rules of no feeding the animals, no climbing on the fences, and no yelling at the animals. Upon anointing them my Jr. Zoologists, the ownership they took for the role and expectations for the role was remarkable. They were the perfect little scientists.
Overall, this is simply good practice. Both of these elements, modelling and expectations, is something every teacher should be doing in their classroom and out. It wasn’t the content that connected my students at the zoo and out at camp, it was the delivery. Yes animals are exciting and you would be hard pressed to find a primary student who wasn’t fascinated by these creatures. Camping is an exciting activity and the majority of my intermediate students found the whole activity engaging. However it is in the getting them to care about and connect to the material where we as teachers find difficulty and the two practices of modelling and setting clear expectations, do go a long way.
PS. Tigers don’t actually purr, they chuff which is loud and more car-engine like but the name was too good to pass up.
I will miss the view
My Community Field Experience: The Camp Squeah Interlude
In my previous post, I reflected upon the power of the outdoor classroom, a place that is truly experiential and allows the students to connect to material using a new set of “tools”. This applies to a very broad range of experiences students can have outside the traditional, desk-and-pencil-and-paper education. Opportunities to mentor younger students at a different school, day trips up the mountain to learn how to ski, or maybe even a field trip to the zoo to give the students a first hand experience in a unit about animal adaptations. However, this last week I was given an opportunity to take the students from my practicum to an outdoor camp. A truly outdoor education experience as they slept, ate, and did activities all outdoors, an experience most of which had never had.
The three day outdoor camp experience was certainly new for the majority of my students. Hardly any had been camping and a significant number hadn’t ever left Metro Vancouver. So this world of trees, and plants, and open skies was a new one and one that was, probably, quite uncomfortable at first. For myself as a teacher, this was also a new world. How do I, given so many distractions, obstacles and possible dangers, create a space structured yet open, a space to try and fail and try again, and a space that’s fun but also safe. So the same game-plan as a regular day of teaching but with so many more added elements. Right there, in considering how this outdoor camp will run, I’m going through the same mental list of how these activities are going to work as I would have in my classroom with a math activity on Experimental Probability.
However, this experience IS different and I would be a fool to say otherwise. These extra factors I need to consider are paramount. As the students are being taken out of their comfort zone in a lot the activities (ex. rock climbing, hiking, archery, etc.), I need to consider that this lack of comfort can result in an increase in the probability of something going wrong. Therefore this new, outdoor classroom is different. I found myself more “on edge” in a way. I was analyzing every activity and organizing the students to maximize protection of their safety and mental well-being. Upon reflection, this heightened sense of awareness was an important aspect of my being during the trip. I’m not saying that in a regular classroom lesson, I’m not considering these precautions, letting my students play full-contact tag in a third story classroom with the windows wide open. I’m saying that this outdoor classroom does require a certain awareness that a regular class doesn’t. And through it, your students are given the greatest possible opportunity to have success in this new environment, yet remaining mentally and physically safe.
But Graham, does this mean you’re standing underneath a student on the climbing wall, with arms outstretched, ready to catch them when the fall? No. Outdoor education is an unique experience as all these mantras and cliques we tell our students on a daily basis come to life:
“What do we do when we fall? We pick ourselves up and try again”
“There are many paths to your destination”
“You aren’t always going to hit a bullseye on the first attempt”
These quite, mantras, or cliques statements are made literal in these activities. Through outdoor education, I do think it makes the messages you’re trying to convey easier for the students to understand. If we fall off the wall when we are rock climbing, you learn from that experience and try again. Sometimes obstacles will block your path when you’re hiking, but there will be a way around them to your destination. A bullseye is an incredibly hard target to hit with a bow and arrow, nevertheless on your first attempt. With all these messages and the themes behind them presented in such an obvious way, the students are given a hands-on experience of what the message truly means. They feel the failure and feel the success of the achievement. They see how hard something can be, how the can learn from it, how to become stronger, and how to reach that goal. It is learning transformed into something tangible and something rooted in reality.
So what does outdoor education feel like? It feels real.
Lions, and Tigers, and Bears
An outdoor classroom is a truly powerful space and I doubt anyone would argue the merits of taking your students and putting them in a new environment, one that is in stark contrast to the walls and desk they usually inhabit. In this outdoor space, the students are given the chance to self-explore the space, forming their own questions, answering those inquiries, and developing a lens of critical thinking. For the development of these skills, I doubt there a location that is truly more perfect than the zoo.
So now that I am here at the zoo, surrounded by lions and tigers and bears (oh my), what am I doing here to further my personal development as a teacher? The educational programming here at the Greater Vancouver Zoo is truly wonderful and provides teachers with some strong tools to help their students make the most of their trip. The programming has many different levels and areas of focus. Kindergarten-Grade 1 “Introduction to the Zoo” tours, “Amazing Animal Adaptations” for upper primary students, even “Animal Mythology” programs for intermediate and middle school students. All of these programs are well designed and contain a wealth of resources to accompany the already incredibly resource of the zoo itself. However, along exploration of these programs, while thumbing through the resources, I noticed something was missing. Something that I as a educator would be thrilled to have before I brought my class to the zoo. Curricular Connections. Something that has been wonderful this year is our opportunity to discuss, experiment with, and implement the transformed BC curriculum. In my practicum, this was a valuable portion of my UBC coursework as I had a great deal of experience with the “new” curriculum. In that scenario, I could pass on my knowledge to those around me and now I found myself in a similar situation. What a wonderful thing it would be to have the curricular and content connections from the curriculum to go along with your pre-package of your upcoming zoo program. Adaptation program? Well here are the Grade 2 and 3 skills and content, along with the a key “Big Idea”. Along with this, here are a few extension projects to consider for an inquiry-style unit. In fact, as it is so heavily focused on in the curriculum, here is the skeleton of a unit based on inquiry, using the field trip as exploration time for the students to inquire, question, re-think, and draw conclusions about the ideas the teacher had pre-taught. This would be a powerful resource to be given as an educator in preparation for an upcoming trip to accompany the already powerful resources of the animals themselves.
So here I am. Unit planning, developing resources, and putting in place scaffolding that will allow students to make real life connections before, during, and after their visit to the zoo. To put it plainly, I’m doing exactly what I’ve been trained to do and what I’ve been doing for the past 9 months…only this time with tigers.
Hana (the most beautiful thing ever)
The End Of The Beginning
Well it has certainly been a journey. 8 months. I have been in this classroom for 8 months and it still feels like I walked in yesterday. I honestly could ramble on about lessons learned, reminisce about that one time that student did that thing, or think back fondly on all those long, wonderful hours spent marking probability packages. Alas, that is not why you are here so I fear I must focus this tirade of memories on one important area. Competition.
My final week was capped off by taking the students I had coached in Track and field to the District Track Meet at Swangard Stadium. I had worked very hard with them over the course of the season to steadily improve, work on tricky aspects like the baton pass in relays and cadence in events like 800m, but most importantly, we worked on SELF-IMPROVEMENT. That kind of intrinsic motivation to try better than next time, to work harder, and generally improve for the sake of improving. This is a tough thing to foster inside oneself and at first, (and for some not at all) the students were resistant to it. “What place was I?”and “Who did I beat?” were the cries at the end of each race at the beginning. However, (again for some) this changed. They were soon replaced by “What was my time?” or “Was I faster than last race?” This was truly great to see and I do credit it to the nature of track and field. As was stressed often, you are racing the timer as you are going for the fastest time, not the fastest in each race. In long jump or shot put, you aren’t all jumping or throwing together. You do your best one by one so you don’t even have the person in the lane beside you to compete against. It is truly a place for training, mentally training, yourself to work towards personal bests.
At Swangard this came into fruition. Everywhere I saw students discussing personal bests, wishing and hoping that the next race would result in their fastest time. Were they competing against each other? Yes, in a way. It is a district competition so I believe it would be pointless to argue that it isn’t. However, that competition isn’t directed right at another competitor. You are competing against yourself and through that, you are building intrinsic motivation. Previously I have discussed the concept of competing against an external force like a timer and this is the manifestation of that idea. It is theory put into practice and it works.
If it works for athletics, it certainly can be applied in a cross-curricular manner into other areas of the classroom. New goal: Math Athletics. Next event: The 400cm Geometry Calculations.
Track and Field is truly a place for training, mentally training, yourself to work towards personal bests.
-Me
A Brave New World (Part 2): TOCing
In the past, I have used the phrase “A Brave New World” in reference to some element of my teaching experience, but if I could go back, retract that statement, and reapply it to this most recent experience, I would. Alas, it shall remain in the past and a must regurgitate the sentiment that after spending almost 8 months in a Grade 7 classroom, moving to a K-1 for the day was certainly “a brave new world”.
However, this world was certainly not a negative one, it was challenging yes, but a fun, exciting, and educational experience. It took me a little but at the beginning of the day to get my brain to switch over into “primary teacher mode” but once there, it was “relatively” smooth sailing.
To be blunt, Grade 7 to Kindergarten is a big jump. However, regardless of the grade level, good practice is still good practice. As we scaffold for our students of differing abilities, so can we with our methods for students of differing grades. Some specific skills that transferred well for me is my focus on building relationships with the students quickly. Engaging them in their interests and asking questions allows me to connect with them at the beginning of the day and then user the information to motivate and personalize their learning throughout the day based on their interests. Additionally, being able to outline expectation, even at such a young grade, was something that carried well with me into this new experience. Students need to know what is expected of them over the course of the next activity. The need to know what they should be doing, how they should be acting, what to do if they need help, and what to do when they are finished. This wasn’t new for the students and my colleague’s classroom was well set up for this. The students knew that once the expectations were down, they followed them well throughout each activity. This I feel is a testament to my colleague structure she has put in place throughout the year and that the students comprehend/respect the concept of expectations.
Overall, wonderful day, wonderful experience, and I am so thankful to have had the privilege to get to see teaching through a new lens. A brave new world? Yes. But an exciting one? You betcha!
IN-trinsic Motivation
The term personal best is a curious one. Striving to beat oneself; to push past one’s accomplishments towards bigger and better things, it does require a certain mindset. It is not unknown that the concept of personal bests is related directly to the idea of intrinsically motivation and that “inner drive” that powers us forward towards success through none other than our own will. However, what cannot be ignored that this is a difficult mindset to accomplish. One could even say that the nature of IN-trinsic motivation is IN-tricate. IN as IN-side yourself, not OUT-side. Get it?
Well the point of this isn’t for me to make cheesy one liners so let’s connect this to my practicum shall we? Over the course of the past several weeks, I have been developing the concept of a Track and Field unit based solely on the concept of personals bests. This is intrinsic motivation at it’s…well, best. Great concept, however the notion of working against oneself is tricky. For myself, I am not an overtly intrinsically motivated person. I don’t do that well with personal bests and I need some form of extrinsic motivation; another competitor, a timer, etc. Therefore, it is reasonable to imagine the same mindset is present in at least some my students. So how do I encourage a group of students to adopt a mindset that I myself struggle with. Well I accomplish this through example.
From the beginning of my long practicum until now, my SA and I have introduced a new morning routine where the students are reflecting on a motivational video, finding a connection to the theme of a clip, and sharing how it relates to them personally. The shear amount of wonderful, articulate mantras that have been created by my students in connection to these videos on a daily basis is outstanding. “Success is looking at your life and being happy”, “if you don’t take risks, you’re not really living”, “failure is a stop on the road to success” are all credos, although probably not coined, by certainly echoed, by my students. In subsequent PE lessons, I found the concept of personal bests easier to get through to my students, they were sharing their times or distances as would be expected, but I also began to hear comments such as “I beat last week’s time by 10 seconds” or “I did better than I did last week”. In discussion with my class, they related the motivational comments that we created at the beginning of every day to an increase in their intrinsic motivation (this sentiment being paraphrased by me). The videos and discussion of them encouraged them to work harder and not necessarily against others. They seemed happy with beating their previous best and were excited to try again next time to improve even further.
So I suppose the whole idea of this is that you have to use the tools available to you to achieve your desired outcome. This, plus the notion of students exploring concepts on their own to derive their own meaning from it, are a powerful combination when facing a struggle like this one. What I found interesting at the end of all this, the students increase in intrinsic motivation spurred my intrinsic motivation to get into gear. It is the little things in this profession that you derive simple pleasure from.
“Success is looking at your life and being happy”
“If you don’t take risks, you’re not really living”
“Failure is a stop on the road to success”
- My Students Paraphrasing Motivational Videos
Teachable Moments
As I have moved throughout this journey that is my practicum, something has become increasingly clear for me: the ability to adapt is critical. Much like in the process of evolution where those with the capability to change to fit into their surroundings, teachers that can adjust on the fly to fit the needs of the present situation, to “make it work”, are the ones who will survive (I know this is a dramatic analogy but I am one for theatricality, so I believe it still applies). Something that I have been mindful about throughout this process is finding ways to weave my inquiry topic into my daily routine. Setting up lessons that will bring my class together collaboratively but keep them engaged in a competitive sense. Therefore, when I reflect back upon my process (as I am doing now), I will have ample fodder for my ever-hungry blog. Was it a good plan? Yes. Are these careful sculpted lessons where I have witnessed some of the most insightful interaction to connection to my inquiry topic? No.
The reality is that “stuff” happens. And it is in those moments where a teacher is forced to adapt to a situation that you find connections to things like, in my case collaborative competition, where you didn’t see it before. An example of this was over the past weeks, my SA (who has been organizing the majority of the badminton games between our school and others) was given the task of picking 9 students to send to an upcoming badminton tournament from the over 60 who had originally signed up to play the sport. He elected to create a bracket-style tournament to pick who would go and during the course of the 3 days when the games occurred, you could see the students participate in the classic style of competition, which engaged the students with the extrinsic motivator of representing out school in this tournament. As the students were playing doubles, they did, in one way, engage in my concept of collaborative competition when the connected with their partners, supporting each other to achieve the task. This is noteworthy but something I could have predicted before the games began as it also is the classic style of teamwork and collaboration. However, it was after the games were all played out that the true, and unintended form of collaborative competition came out.
The gym was packed with teams that had finished playing, and other students who were there just to support their friends and spectate. After congratulating the winning team and noting there was time remaining at lunchtime, we proposed to have a friendly game of the winning team vs. us (the teachers). They said they would love to and the frantic excitement among the rest of the students was palpable. As the game began, something very interesting happened, the entire gym rallied behind these two players, supporting them, cheering them on, and bonding together as one. It wasn’t them vs. just another team, it was them vs. an external force (in this case us). As I have referred to in the past, this environment where the students, and not only those participating but spectating as well, can act as one against an external force (ex. a timer, another school, and yes in this scenario, the two of us). The long and short of it is that the students won a very close and exciting game, and everyone went away smiling. In conversation with the two students after, the noted as the game went on they played better and better, and they referred to the support of their peers as a driving factor behind this. They were unified and through this they felt they could achieve the goal better than if they didn’t have the collaborative force behind them.
This wasn’t intended. It wasn’t in the plan. It was spontaneous. Finding moments such as that, but more importantly taking advantage of them, is vital for a teacher to make connections to their students. I am not saying that teachers do not need to be planned or that lessons can just shift as if influenced by the tides. No. Anyone who has spent time with me knows that I am very organized and that isn’t my MO. However, what I am advocating is that rigidity and inflexibility is limiting. It limits your students and also limits your own potential as an educator. The ability to, in a structured and thought out way, ease off of the reins from time to time is one that I wish to possess and will work towards in the future.
“It is in the chaos that we find teachable moments.”
– Me
Inquiry Synthesis
For my inquiry synthesis, I have created an infographic that encompasses the main ideas of my inquiry question, process, and findings. Enjoy!
Positive Competition Infographic