This appeared in the paper yesterday and how it reads is somewhat disturbing. Considering the 5000 children quoted in the head line are ‘just’ Intermediate and high school that is quite a large number. Shortly, they will be adding in the primary school children and it got me wondering. What happened to all my students.

If I had kept all the students I had through the year my roll would stand at 31, but now I have 26. That includes a couple who left and have returned. So four students have left. Some of them said “We’re moving to Samoa” or “We’re off to Australia”. Now when I question them, they’re seven remember, ‘Australia’ is frequently translated for the New Zealand word ‘Auckland’ and ‘Samoa’ is the translated into ‘Wiroa’.

But it does beg a question; “Where are they ACTUALLY going?” Sometimes we hear the story “Moving to Australia.” so the school does not expect requests for records from such exotic locations. Well done government on the ENROL system. Not that that I understand much of how it works but it appears to identify those ‘lost children’ as they are refered. If so many are missing out on a sound basic education, what are the implications on our economy for the future.

‘Slipped through the cracks’ seems an inadequate term. Perhaps they are the same cracks that the water of Noah’s flood seaped through all those years ago!

Are performance indicators necessary for defining the key competencies? I have heard recently from those at the ministry and presumably in the know.. “Don’t go assessing the key competencies until the final Curriculum is out”. Well that was back in August but we’re in December now and staring the next academic year in the face. As is the way with these things. Lots of wait and see, wait and see, hold off from doing anything. Then it’ll be  ”What do you mean oyu haven.t been donig that! You were supposed ot be ing doing that all year!”

 I hope that is time we’ll have a little more clarity along the way regarding these competencies.

In the rush to assimulate KC in our current practise my school has been looking at producing Matrices and indicator sheets what ever the current ATOL phrase is.

For participating and contributing level 1 looks like this:

Level 1

Participates cooperatively within a group or class situation

Takes turns and shares resources

Listens to and responds positively to others ideas

Respects and cares for our immediate environment

Understands people are different

But really! Is this necessary? and what it looks like in my school compared to yours, is it really that different that we need to invent our own wheel?

These are another couple of questions from my interview some weeks a go now. I’ve found it very interesting having an opportunity to reflect on reflecting on my blog. 

Could you describe to me how you view your blog, what you use it for?

I’m very much wanting it to be reflective of classroom practice, and the direction that the classroom practice is going.  I’ve noticed over the time that I’ve been doing this, which is nearly a year now, so not very long.  But there’s a global quality to education reform now, and through the edublogosphere then, you can see the threads of where the problems are the same, where there solutions are, so we could try this, in our school or in our community.  Educational reform is much more of a global issue, I think, now, more than ever before, and so that’s what I want to use my blog for, is to reflect on my practice, and to offer up insights that I have about where education practice is going.  At the moment, I’m still working through some of the material that I’ve been using, when I enrolled in my MA course.  Unfortunately I had to give that up: other professional pressures meant that my study time, and the time that I had to allow for that was just eaten up.   But what I’ve been able to do then, because I’ve still got the reading booklet, and I’ve still been able to get all those resources, now I’m using my blogging in that manner, so that I am working through those things, and instead of being accredited for it by sharing it with my classmates on the course, I’m now picking and choosing some of those readings, and actually sharing them through my blog, and people are commenting on things that I’m writing about, and offering their perspectives now.  I mean, that’s significant in the perspectives we are able to view such literature.   

Now are they mainly people from
New Zealand, overseas, your own school?

They’re mainly in New Zealand,   I do have a few people who I know subscribe from the States, and my cluster map shows that there are some people in England  are interested as well, there are also dots from Australia and scatterings over the globe and that’s very good.

Folk pick and choose the people that they want to read, and they tend to go back to those people, and those people tend to reciprocate, and that’s very good, it’s what makes it a community, basically.

On that note, I would love for you all to comment, just to say “Hi… I’m from…”. It would really help to get an idea of where you are reading this from. Cluster maps are great but the personal touch is so…. I don’t know….. personal

The title was the question posed to me in the interview, admittedly I did blah on a bit about the historical context of this blog of mine first but I thought I’d just share these thoughts.

You give the impression that the on-line community that I belong to is somehow structured in some formal manner such as online education or based around a ‘Ning-thing’ but really it’s not. Its simply a few people who choose to make comment on the stuff that I write, what I write is neither novel nor profound. I often wonder why it is that people bother to comment. It’s great for me, don’t get me wrong, it’s a huge buzz when someone engages with what I am thinking about and blogging about. The ‘community’ is very informal and fluid. I am of the option, having tried on-line education for a short period, that informal and fluid works much better. Formal and fixed communities such as exist for specific educational purposes tend not to have such a free flow of ideas…. People are scared of being wrong in those contexts and appearing stupid or ill-informed. Whereas this community that I seem to belong to; there is a ‘easy-nature’ about it. I blog not to impress, but to share,  learn and be inspired.

How would you have responded or what could you add to make my answer sound even better!

There is a real global perspective to education now. One that I was totally unaware of 2 years.  

What I’ve identified over the last couple of years is that the children that we’re teaching today are going to be using technology in a very, very different way compared to my generation, my dad’s generation. So many jobs now have a technology element, all of them I would imagine. What will the next generation workforce look like? What skills are they going to need? The work my children have been doing with Skype this year and last… I kind of went through a spot where I thought.. “seriously, are they going to need these skills of communication?” Then I was talking with an electrical engineer friend of mine who was telling me how he was working with an engineer in Christchurch and Tel Aviv, remotely accessing, from home ,the computer at the plant he’s been working on. Global collaboration, the skills he needed he picked up because he needed them then and there. Imagine what my 7 year-olds will be capable of in 20 years.  

It’s a very different future now, than my dad’s time. He started in the post office at 14 and retired 4 years ago.. from the post office. I’ve had about 7 jobs in the last ten years, most of them on the other side of the world from where I started. Skip on to this generation, who knows what it’ll look like? I’m very captivated by that notion, I’m really interested, because the children being in Flaxmere in New Zealand, which puts them in a very interesting position, in terms of New Zealand in the world, in the global community, and then Flaxmere within
New Zealand. It is quite an interesting position to be in, because it’s a relatively small community, with many social issues, and all that sort of stuff, and whenever Flaxmere is ever mentioned On Agenda or in news items, it tends to be in a pretty negative light, whereas in actual fact the children that I teach are really keen and really ready to learn, and I’m wanting them to get the best. To get the best out of them, and to give them the best possible opportunities for this unknown future.  I really think that their being able to use technology in this manner is really going to see their way open up to the future, and its  possibilities. When I spoke to the staff about this, there were mixed reactions about it, but I said I don’t want us to be training up people who were going to be working in ‘Watties’ for the rest of their lives.  We need to broaden out their perspectives.  Can I put a name to it? Is it Classroom2.0, School2.0? There needs to be a fundamental shift in how and what we teach. Progress towards took at leaps just recently with the introduction of the new New Zealand Curriculum I hope that the leaders of our schools are prepared to step up and take a fresh look, I’ve heard it said that the leaders of today are ill-eqipped for leading education into the 21^st century. Can’t remember who said it. But it’s gauntlet laid down.