My journey with Collaborative Problem Solving

It has been two month since I started my journey with community circles and just over three using it with my own daughter and it has been amazing.

For those that are new to reading this blog post in August I was introduced to Dr Green's book, explosive child and lost at school. His book mentions many strategies to deal with trouble students. He calls for collaborative problem solving model. It is a model that works both on solving the problem but teaching students the skills to change their behaviours. The book predominately deals with those "troubled" students; however the more I read the more I realized that this strategy is best for all students and so my journey began.

At least once a week we as a class have a community circle. In this circle we discuss how the week has gone and if any problems have occurred. At times we have spent more it all depends on what is needed and how severe the problems are.  It has allowed my students to feel like they are a part of the classroom and have a place inside of it. When I say that they are in charge of their learning it is true they are and they know it.

Community circles have also given me a time to voice my concerns in a positive manner. If something was bothering me as a teacher I can address it. Now you may say can't you do that anyways and the answer would be yes but now its not me lecturing and telling them but voicing a concern that I have. Because I have let them tell me their issues, they have more respect for mine. In addition to this we as a class solve them and it isn't just me lecturing them about what I expect.

At home my daughter's episodes have calmed down. She has now been able to communicate her feelings. I get more "Daddy, I am tired and need to rest!" or "Daddy, I am getting hungry can I please have a snack?" At the same time, my partner and I are able to recognize certain situations or her triggers. We avoid those situations so that her episodes don't happen. 

If you haven't read this book or started Community Circles and Collaborative Problem Solving I highly recommend that you too. It will change your practise and your life. 

What does it mean to be a teacher?

In Ontario we are currently in a work to rule situation  we haven't had a contract in over a year and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. 

Whenever we are in contract negotiations it is always lovely to hear how everyone feels about the profession (being sarcastic here). The problem is I am not too sure why? I mean I understand what people see, two months off as kids have breaks in the year, our job is seen as baby sitting and anyone can teach. This is especially true if you follow the saying those that can't do, teach. However, teaching is so much more.

I know that I am preaching to the choir about this as most of my readers here are teachers but it is nice to be reminded about all the great things that we do as professionals.

1) Teachers take their job seriously:

Teachers take their job seriously. I have not met a teacher who does not stay up late marking, is in to school early to plan and stays late for school concerts and meet the parents. I know that many of you may think that this is part of the job description but it is not.  I also know that all teachers are here for students success. This means that we will do whatever it takes to make a student successful.  Buying books, buying school supplies or even supplying lunches from our own money is not out of the possibilities. Many teachers put their own families second behind that of the school and students. Teachers are always the constant learner. They want to do better and will because it makes their students better.

You know this is true because no matter what your story is presently you have had that one teacher who has made a difference in your life.

2) Teachers are more than babysitters:

There is more to my job than babysitting. Yes I watch 25-30 young students but I don't just give them an activity to pass the time. A good teacher motivates, they encourage and they teach. This brings me to my next point.

3) There is more to teaching then tell kids what to do:

Teaching is a gift. As much as we all think we may be able to teach, to truly teach a skill it takes more than telling students information. Real teaching takes planning, understanding what motivates and how students learn. Learning is a developmental process (though I know many may argue with this) but learning takes time. It takes a teacher to know that development so that they move students a long a continuum of learning.  When a student is stuck, it takes a teacher to know where they are stuck and how they can help them. It takes a teacher to know in what way a child may learn best. It takes a teacher to know how to show the information to get the best out of their students.  For example, this year I was able to go to China to help teachers learn about Problem Based Learning. I was given a class of 30 students, who I had never met and spoke little English. We were expected to have them ready to be showcased in 3 days in front of 1000 teachers. If teaching was just about reciting knowledge then I wasn't needed but it took my teaching partner and myself real teaching to get them to understand the physics of flight.

A teacher knows when and how to scaffold information, they know how where a child needs help and when to help.

4) Teaching should be an honoured profession:

I have no idea when teaching became a disdain on society here in North America. I understand that the grass is always greener on the other side and what teachers have as a contract may not be the same as the rest of the world but teaching should be an honoured profession. Teaching is the only profession that trains all other professions. We as a profession see children and raise them the same amount of time as their own parents.

Yes I am a teacher, Yes I have a bias but never have I thought that education, and teachers are not worth the money that we pay them. Teachers have a hard job, they have worked hard for the job they have and deserve the respect for it.

So as labour negotiations head into a critical weekend think about your child's teacher or teachers in general. Thank them for what they do and who they are.

If you are a teacher keep your head up high and remember that you are amazing.

Love every student

I still remember my associates teacher words in teachers college, love every student. I know its simple but it is also hard to follow up on sometimes.

Now I am not saying that as teachers we don't, we all came into this profession because we love kids but I also know that as the year goes on there are students that can just bug or irritate us just so and we cannot wait to the year ends.

Lately I have been reading some books by Dr Greene Ross, the explosive child and lost at school. This has been mainly because of my daughter who I know is one of those kids that by the end of the year we just can't wait to have a break from. I mean I want that break and she is my kid. However, as I have been reading my daughter has a lot of lagging social skills that need to be developed. We all know that ALL kids want to be good.

Take a look at this sheet.

It was developed by Dr. Greene to help identify the types of problems that a child may have. This is the first step to Plan B as he calls it.

Plan B is where you collaboratively with the students to solve problems. Once you identify the problems you can then start the empathy stage. Here you seek the students perspective. It is important that we do not force our perspective. At this stage we are just hearing the child out. It is also important to note that this stage may take time. Many kids are not familiar with being asked what they think is up. Once you identify the concern, re-voice to see if it truly is the problem. Then state your concern and seek help to solve it. The last note is that this does take time but in the end you save time because you are solving problems.

This year I plan to do this with my whole class and have a whole class collaborative problem solving period every week and maybe more if we need it. 

I think about all of the students that I have had in the past and how even though I thought I was talking it was me telling. So as you start your week out, getting to know your students academically don't forget the social side. Remember that ALL students want to be good just many don't know how.

That chaotic student....

We have all had them. The one student we often tread, the one we are always on pins and needles waiting for something to happen......

.....The problem is that student has turned into my daughter and I have had a paradigm shift (a huge one). Its amazing how these shifts happen when you can closely relate too the problem.  

Let me introduce you to Izzy. Izzy is one of the most enthusiastic, funny, entertaining and joyful kid you will ever meet; unless she is having a melt down.  It feels like I am in constant Jekyll and Hyde movie. One day she is amazing and the next its a melt down. Izzy hasn't always been like this and yes she is five and still learning social skills but these melt downs are a lot different than normal. 

Now you may be thinking why am I writing this post and no it is not to vent and get some thoughts out (though this is quite therapeutic). Because of Izzy my partner and I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking. 

Lately I picked up a book called "The Explosive Child" by Dr. Rosse Green. 

I will admit that I am only a third of the way through this book but it has already changed my thinking about dealing with children that have these explosive tendencies. 

When we first had to deal with Izzy we dealt with her as I did most of my students, hard nose and draw the line. I mean it worked quite well for the most part with many students in my classroom.  It is also what most parents and our own told us. Be firm, she just needs to know where the line is. This of course would pretty much work in the classroom. I mean occasionally, I would have blow-ups or there was always that one student but I chalked that up for being those rare occasions where you get that student. I never thought that it was me or what I was doing; until Izzy. Of course this hard nose approach didn't work with my daughter and it ended up making it worse. We had more severe blow ups and it just ended up making my partner and I more and more frustrated. 

Reading this book as made me see that my daughter has a problem with thinking and communicating when in highly frustrating situations. Now you may all think don't we all and that statement is true but we also have learned adaptive skills to help us cope and these particular students have not.  I mean when I first heard this I too had my doubts, as far as I know there is no real diagnosis for this but seeing this first hand makes me want to bring this more to the attention of others. 

As I am reading this book I cannot help but think that my own classroom management strategies have been misguided. I have always felt that a firm hand is needed for most if not all students. Draw a line that students know where it is and you won't have problems. To be honest this works for most kids but what about the ones that it doesn't.  What about Izzy? I have seen the impact it has on her. She doesn't like school anymore (yr 1). She had a hard time making friends. The teachers (bless there hearts) where drained and tired (as we were as parents). It was a tough go for her as I am sure it is for many.

Now it is important to note that Dr Greene mentions that if all is fine then normal classroom management and parental skills still work and will work. But when you have many unsolved problems and run into walls it is time to rethink, for both you and the child.

The book has three plans: 

1) Hard nose and see where it goes

2) Collaborative Problem Solving: Where you work with the child to solve problems together. This is the one that he recommends and the one that to be honest has had the greatest impact. 

3) Dropping some expectations so that you can work on the important ones. This strategy has been working at times but it is a strategy that we use to get to the bigger problems and deal with them in a collaborative way.

I am only writing this post because I cannot help but think and fear how Izzy is going to do in her school life. She has already had a rough first year and not at the fault of the teachers she had. We have had amazing teachers who have only had Izzy's best interest at heart. I mean Jen and I do too but we still have our difficulties and we still struggle with dealing with her. We all have these kids in our classrooms and many of us may feel just as helpless as my wife and I. 

Hopefully this post may shift some thinking for you and if it does I would recommend that you read this book. It isn't just about parenting but also has many connections to our teaching and classroom management.

Any thoughts feel free to leave them here, love to read them. 

What it is Like to be an ELL Learner?

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be an ELL learner in your classroom?

For me I would have to say I never really have.  Not that I haven't thought about how I could help but that the perspective has always been from the other side. Me the English learner, teaching English with good pedagogy. But never really with the lense of what it was like to receive a foreign language.

I will have to say I have never experience life as an ELL learner until I was in China. I mean I knew what it was like to be a teacher of ELL students, I know the pedagogy and the approaches that I need to do in order to engage and help my ELL students but I have never felt what it was like to be one until two weeks ago.

It is probably safe to say that the majority of us in North America as teachers can say the same thing as I did just above. Born and raised as an English speaker, in an English country I have never known what it was like to not understand the language around me. Well that changed dramatically when I went to China for the Global Education Summit.

Even though this summit was a Global Education Summit it was predominantly meant for Chinese teachers so it was predominantly or pretty much all in Chinese. In addition to this our interpreters didn't understand English that well and there was not enough of them to go around for all of the English speaking teachers.

This meant that I spent the majority of my day listening to the cadence and rhythm of random words and sounds. Though it was pretty and every now and then I picked up a word or two it was quite frustrating and often times I tuned out and wasn't engaged in the conversation. I mean why would I want to be when all I heard was the Charlie Brown teacher. WanWAA WANAA

This was quite a frustrating experience. My brain was able to comprehend what was going on but I wasn't able to communicate all of my thoughts in a manner that was acceptable to the audience I was talking too.

To help with this there was a lot of hand gestures, asking questions, visual cues, lot of review of english and Chinese, repeated practise or listening and talking, etc. But in the end many of times I was just bored and lost interest.

This got me thinking about my own classroom. Is this how my students feel? Is this what they are going through as they learn a new language?

In my head I was thinking no way, my classroom is amazing! but to be honest it is most likely the reality that many of my students have just tuned me out.  Can you blame them? It is a lot of work to listen intently, to try and pick up words that you think have meaning. I mean I wanted to learn, I wanted to be there, I wanted to participate but I just didn't know what was happening. Even with translators it was hard work and after a day of it my brain wanted to explode.

I know as teachers we do amazing things in the classroom to engage our ELL learners but it was truly humbling to be in the other shoe ( so to say) and really shifts your paradigm and perspective on your own classroom.

What do you do in your classroom to help engage the ELL learner? What strategies do you find work best? 

This post s more of a umm...I never thought about this. I have more questions than answers but wanted to put this thought out there. I would love to hear your ideas and thoughts.

Global Education Summit: China 2015

This has been a well over due post but after two weeks away from my family, they were my first priority.

This summer I was given the opportunity to go to China for their Global Education Summit (GEC2015). Basically, the Chinese are embarking on a path of discovery and trying to analyze good teaching practises. Professor Guoli Lang decided to bring Project Based Learning to Chinese Classrooms. In order to do so he started a GEC community three years ago with teachers from the United States, Finland, Australia, Singapore and now Canada. He has also teamed up with Ann Lieberman from Stanford University who was the person to bring my teammate Michelle Cordy and myself, along a with two teachers from Butler University and Lab school in the States.

As I stated the point of the conference was bring Project-based Learning to China. This was a totally new experience for many of the Chinese Teachers; even after three years the teaching that the other GEC countries brought was a total new phenomenon.

The conference lasted two weeks, during which time we were asked to develop a project on Flight or bridges and then model a lesson from that unit. We were given three days to meet and greet with our students and then 75 minutes to teach the lesson, which was broadcasted over a huge screen to about 200 teachers.

The first day was a little rough as I was still getting over jet lag and being 12 hours ahead of everyone. However, during this day we got to see parts of the school and I was able to play some sports with the kids on the play ground. There is nothing in the world that can put a smile on a Teachers face then being with students. I know that many of you understand, there is no word to describe it but one of the biggest learning moments I had is no matter where you are in the world kids are kids.

I absolutely loved the atmosphere of the schools that we were at. The first school was in Beijing. Supposedly it was the number one school in the whole city but that aside, even though in a gated community it had a welcoming vibe. I say parents and kids coming and going and doing all of these amazing activities together.  The Chinese value good physical education and culture in their programs. There is a lot of facilities for activities and the students even learn the culture of serving tea.  

They have three wings a K-1 wing, 2-3 wing and a junior wing. Also in the school are various cultural and physical spaces. I saw at least two band rooms, with numerous practise spaces. Some of the classrooms became specialist music rooms as well. For example there was a room dedicated to violins and one for a cello. They had a ballet section as well as the whole outside was for sports (basketball, football, volleyball, track and a jungle gym).  From what I have seen and heard there seems to be a really good balance between school, the arts and physical education; then again students go to school for a long time each day so it is a little bit easier to fit that into their schedule.

Before I knew it I had a huge line of students. In fact they asked if I was the new Volleyball Coach.

Library Reading area

Hallways of the School

Library

Tea Classroom

Music Room and Band

More from the Library

The school from the outside

The only thing that I was not a fan of was the differences in classrooms. The picture above is the American classroom. Students sit in groups there is paper and "stuff" all over the wall. It is a visual nightmare. The Chinese classroom are all in rows with very little visual, in fact nothing except for the socialist tenets and rules of the school.  It made me reflect on my own space and how effective the "scholasticy" posters are (Caveat: I have nothing against scholastic. I use that name as a verb to describe all store bought posters).  I have been thinking about this for a while but I wonder how effective these posters really are. Sure they make our rooms look pretty and full of information but do the students really view them? If we just put them up on the wall and never refer to them then what good are they? (Caveat: I know that many teachers use these posters quite effectively and they do have great content on them.) All I am really trying to question is the purpose for our posters. Is it to make our room look amazing and special or is it for educational purposes? For me I would rather see student generated success criteria, performance rubrics, and student work samples on the bulletin boards.

The school in HangZhou was even more artistic. They had a sculptures yard, outdoor playgrounds, ponds and a track in the middle. Quite an amazing design.  

Makes me think about our own school design and classroom design. What can we do to make it more inviting? What can we do to make it a true learning space? What is a true learning space? What makes it a learning space?

Sorry a lot more questions than answers. 

However, back to the teaching.  We finally got to our Demo's and it was really great to see all of the teachers in action. Here are some of my thoughts:

First I want to start off by saying that no matter which group was teaching it was interesting to see some commonalities between all three. 1) the interaction with students is a key for problem based learning. In all three groups the teachers spent time talking to students, working closely with them, giving them feedback and helping them to improve. 2) Kids are kids. In all three groups the same behaviours that I would witness in my classroom in Brampton happened here. Kids are kids and they are just happy to be learning. They want to talk, they want to feel honoured and they want to have fun. 3) Good pedagogy is good pedagogy. In all three classrooms there was wait time, good questions and a reflection process.

Here are my thoughts on the Chinese group:

The Chinese teachers designed a ball launcher. It was interesting to see how even though they had three teachers in the classroom, each one work as a separate unit. The teachers seem to have specific roles to play. Afterwards I found out that they actually do. There was the Chinese teacher, the math teacher and the physics teacher.  Each of them were looking for different things and taught different parts of the lesson. Where I do think that specialty teachers have their place I would rather have teachers know their content super well and be able to teach it effectively than having three teachers out of sync with one another. The best world would be where these teachers could teach together fluidly, which would serve the best interest of the students.

Here are my thoughts on the American and Finnish Teachers:

I loved the connections that the teachers made with each student. They knew who and what each students was. This connection is very important because it makes the students feel that they are honoured and feel important. This may not have any statistical value but it does have quantitative value.  We were given three days to work with these students in order to bring the best out of them. Having a good connection and making them feel honoured is key to this success. These students did amazing work and I attribute this to being the key to success. I was also amazed at all of the good teaching pedagogy: the scaffolding, the good thinking questions, student voice, and observations where tremendous.

Overall, good teaching is still good teaching no matter where you are in the world. Kids need many things to be successful. Scaffolding, clear expectations, clear assessment and honouring their voice. I was truly honoured when they asked the students what did they learn and they said: 

"that learning can be fun, mistakes are okay as long as you are learning, and that they have a voice and ideas."

This is really what our kids want, they want to know that they matter. When they feel that they matter, they will learn and do amazing things for you as a teacher. We had three days to get students who spoke very little English to basically perform and learn about flight the biggest key was making them see the value in learning; of course also tied into amazing teaching pedagogy and learning.

Need I say that this was quite an interesting experience. However, in the end meeting some great people from Finland, the United States and Australia was truly remarkable and the best part of my two weeks. Take a look at all of the photos: https://plus.google.com/+JonathanSoMrSo/posts/MAi31hCZrBS.

Year 2 of primary

It's been my second year of second grade and even though I entered the grade with some reservations it has been two of my best years of teaching.

Being in primary has taught me three things: 1) Inquiry learning is amazing; 2) really look at the curriculum when planning and 3) kids are amazing.

INQUIRY LEARNING

As I said above inquiry is amazing. When students are given the autonomy to learn the possibilities are endless. Now I am not promoting that kids are off on their own doing whatever they feel like but that the teacher is always there guiding and asking questions. The teacher has a plan in mind and has mapped out how the standards all fit together.  The students are exploring and learning about the concepts.

When students have an opportunity to learn they gain so much more knowledge then if they were just told. Now this does take time but when you look at the curriculum there is that time. Primary is the time to explore, investigate, practise theories and interjections.

Inquiry also builds self confidence, research skills, critical thinking and inferencing skills. Students have to use all faculties to make judgements about what they are learning. It is also about the community and the learning that is happening around them.

LOOK CLOSELY AT THE CURRICULUM

Before coming down to primary I taught junior (4,5) for a very long time. I often thought what is being taught in the primary grades, why do these grades seem so high but I wasn't looking at the expectations close enough.

When I came to primary I had to examine the curriculum very carefully because I had no idea of what to expect. I was shocked at how little was expected of them. It made me realize how primary students were receiving an A but then in junior dropping to B and Cs. There is a huge jump in learning expectations in junior that is not found in primary (possibly another post). However the point is no matter what grade you teach one has to look carefully at the expectations that is expected of them. Map out the learning, map out the questions and the trajectory of those expectations and see where it goes. Remember that expectations are by the end of the year so we have to keep revisiting them.

KIDS ARE AMAZING

We as educators cannot forget this important fact in our profession. If we think that they can't do something then they will never be able to do it. Kids are amazing and will continue to surprise you at ever turn. I had to stop myself a lot this year from saying they're too young or they won't get it. They might not but more often then not they did. Kids are amazing.

These are just 3 of the most important things that I learned this year. What are yours?