My first challenge

I teach at a school in South Auckland, with 52 students in year 5 and 6, and 2 other teachers who support and challenge me (often at the same time).

Here will be a record of my development this year, both within the classroom as well as at the MindLab course run by Unitec (and also at home where I spend hours trying to plan and yet still end up feeling like I'm on the back foot in the classroom). It will also be a place for some reflecting, pondering, brain storming and general learning.

So far, I have survived 8 whole weeks of teaching (a fact that doesn't seem real even as I tell myself it), and I have hope that I can make it through many more! Hopefully this blog will give me a way to explore my pedagogical beliefs and practices further, and figure out who I want to be as a teacher and how I can grow in the right direction.

One of my favourite quotes about education comes from Malcolm X: "Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today." Tomorrow also belongs to those who do their planning today (not moments before the learners are ready and waiting for a challenge!).

The sun setting as I left my beautiful school the other day (my goal is to never be at school after dark - so far, so good)

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Our first piece of art

So I took on my most feared moment teaching. Well one of the many most feared moments. Starting, and more importantly, completing an art project with all 52 kids. The result is bigger than I thought it would be, almost recognisable as a kiwi, and it looks pretty stunning high up on our walls. I'll take it as a win but it was not without a fair amount of chaos and stress. This jigsaw piece was bound to be a logistical nightmare - so I did my best to pre-empt the drama by carefully cutting out, laminating and numbering squares, then cutting out and number more squares, than matching said squares together, then trying to keep track of which student had which square. Inevitably we still lost some (there are a few that were completed last minute by yours truly when I realised the pieces were lost in the class room abyss). The finished kiwi. 120 little pastel images pieced together to create a pretty striking art work. Reflections from this project (because I do nothing...

The Technological Revolution and my classroom

Did you know that 90% of the world's data was created in the last 2 years ? Neither did I until last night. But apparently the world is moving quite quickly, and technology advancements are a key driver in this rapid river of change and discovery (mixing metaphors here but I think the idea is clear enough)! Me trying to figure out how to get the technology to work with 52 kids waiting... This week we are considering a broader, international context with regards to not just the world around us but how it affects education on a global, national and local context. The trends on a global scale are both fascinating and terrifying, with a future that feels completely inevitable but also incredibly unclear. Coming from an ILE ( innovative learning environment ) where my students are 1:1 with devices, and the teachers are learning about how to best teach our students to be 21st Century learners I wanted to focus on the trend of technology and its rate of accelerated progress. This tr...

Community of Practice - Surrounding yourself with Marigolds

Today's post is brought to you by Mindlab , who have set up a series of topics and reflections over the next few weeks in order to assist us teachers in becoming critically reflective. I think I am both critical, and reflective, but not always at the same time and not always in the constructive ways that Mindlab is promoting. This first year is flying by, and one huge thing that has become very apparent is how important it is who I choose to surround myself with while I move through the challenges and struggles that seem to crop up on a daily basis. The community of practice is defined as those groups of people who use their shared passion or voca tion to deepen each others' knowledge and skills through that ongoing interaction - both in an unofficial sense (e.g. a coffee in the staff room) as well as through more structured interactions such as team planning sessions. Communities of practice that I belong to include my colleagues from last years study, with whom I inter...

First Year Madness

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