Parents as Partners

On Thursday last week, I had the chance to hear Sir John Abbot speak about learning in the 21st Century.  He takes an interesting perspective on how history has shaped our ability to learn and the lessons we should draw from that in how we structure our schools.  Key to his thinking is the importance of a nurturing and supportive home environment, hence the importance of parents as partners in learning.

Sir John talked about the elements for students to be successful and refers to a "three-legged stool that can find balance on any surface".  The three legs of the stool are home, community, and school, which suggests that school is only a part of the learning journey we are all on.  The home, plays a critical role in the development of the child, particularly during the first five years.  When humans are born, their brain is only about 40% developed, which means that a lot of brain development is environmental and not pre-disposed.  As a result, our innate abilities must be "activated" through stimulation in the environment, "use it or lose it", whereby lack of stimulation at an early age means brain connections aren't made and that area of development is shut off.  A nurturing and supportive home environment helps to activate our learning at an early age and stimulates our brains.  While this is critical in the first five years, it continues to be important throughout our lives in the creation of a supportive and encouraging environment for learning.

Jesse Jackson once said, "no parent is too poor to turn the TV off and labour alongside their child."  In order for our children to be successful we must have parents in partnership with the teacher and school to support student learning.  Engaging our parents in understanding the changes that we are trying to make in education is important for the long-term success of our students.  We have to make the message strong enough to bring people together.

Transitions

This past week we had two events for our grade six students to begin their transition to middle school.  In only a few short months our grade sixes will be saying good-bye to elementary and hello to the next chapter in their education.  This is true for many of our parents as well who will be leaving David Cameron with their child(ren).  Our two feeder schools, Spencer and Dunsmuir, have done a great job in welcoming everyone and making them feel at home right away.

Over the next few months, these transition events will continue for both students and parents, helping to acquaint them with the routines and layout of these schools.  We are fortunate in this district to have such great places to send our students.  We know it is hard to let go of a place many have know for seven years (more for some parents) and moving to something so different, and so big.  This is why so much effort is put into these transition activities.  Students get a chance to see the strong performing arts programs at each of the schools, meet with school counsellors, administrators, teachers, and other students through a variety of events.

A huge thank-you goes out to the staffs at both Dunsmuir and Spencer for the care they show with our students.  I know it is relief to our parents to know that their children will be in good hands.

Supporting the needs of all

In the past, I have blogged about "fair not being equal".  Fair is the process of figuring out what each person needs in order to be successful and move forward with their learning.  Equal means that everyone gets the same thing, regardless of circumstance.

I am reminded of this again as we struggle to support the behaviour needs of a couple of students at school who are going through a difficult time.  The circumstances in each case are very different and therefore require a different approach.  The process of uncovering, and working with the student to figure out what they are trying to get from their behaviours is slow and sometimes frustrating as set backs continue.  Each of the students' issues are manifesting as outbursts of behaviour, in which case the notion of equal would mean that the same consequences are dispensed to each - but how would this support their particular needs and the particular struggle that they are facing?

I think that for the most part, our staff is extremely attuned to this notion of fairness over equality, but it is a struggle for everyone when we consider the competing interests.  As educators we want to take the time to help students learn from their mistakes, but we must also take into account what's fair for: other students who are faced with these behaviours, other staff who sometimes take the brunt of these outbursts of anger and frustration, and other parents who see the behaviour manifest but don't know the details behind the scene.  These are some of the factors that weigh in our decisions as to the best way to support the individual and the broader community of learners as well.

Treating everyone the same and handing out the same consequences in each circumstance would certainly make my life easier, but it would also take away our credibility as an educators.  Education is so much more than math and reading, it is the whole person that requires our attention, our support, and our love.  I am also reminded of advice a colleague gave me years ago:  "what is best for the student is not always easiest for the adults involved."  With this in mind, and with the many successes I have seen over my career, we continue to find what is best for the learner and work hard to make a difference.

The Value of Involvement

Michael Jordan is a pretty famous sports personality and wasn't too bad a basketball player.  When he was in grade 9, he was cut from his school basketball team, he persevered, made the team the next year, and the rest is history.

We have 30 grade five/six boys and another 30 grade five/six girls that have come out to play basketball for the school team this year.  It would sure be a lot easier to coach if we reduced those numbers to about 12 players on each team, but what would the negative side of that be?  It would mean that a lot of students wouldn't get a chance to participate in a physical activity, they wouldn't get the opportunity to represent their school, and they wouldn't have the chance to engage with their school in a different way.  For many students the relationship with their school is tenuous, and as they go through the grades, if they don't have a "hook"; something that engages them, then the chances of losing them increase significantly.  For some, athletics is a nice distraction to the really important things in life, but for others, it is the important thing that allows them to hang on school.  It is precisely for this reason that we take all comers and try to give them the skills and attitude to carry on with sport in their life.

I am proud of the commitment that our staff has to our students and to ensuring that they have great opportunities to connect with their school.  Athletics serve a very important part of our school community.  We are fortunate to have such great involvement.

Community and Technology

What a great event our PAC put on this past Friday night.  Our Family Dance was a great success with many of our families coming out to enjoy an evening at the school.  At one point during the evening I was talking to a couple of our parents about the incredible advances in technology that have happened over the past few years and how easy that technology is to use.  We were looking at the source of our music for the evening, which included an iPod Touch and an iPhone hooked up to our school stereo system.  We marvelled at the idea of having so much music at our fingertips in such small containers.  As we were talking a student came up and requested a song from her iPod Nano, but the connection was different from what we were using.  No problem, we grabbed a MacBook from our lab and plugged the iPod into that and then patched the MacBook into the stereo system: instant playlist and another 250 songs at our disposal.  A little later, another student came up and requested a song that was not on any of the three players we were using.  Again no problem, out came two more iPhones from the parents I was talking with, we quickly found the requested song and had it playing.

I find this fascinating in part because of the incredible technology available at our finger tips, but also because of the ability the technology has to bring our community together.  This year our PAC has made a purposeful decision to create some "no-cost" events for our families to come out and enjoy.  In this case, utilizing the technology allowed people to have fun, enjoy a wide range of music, and easily accomplish the task by ourselves, without having to hire someone to come in and do it for us.  Truth be told, it wasn't really the technology that did this as much as it was a hard working group of parents, but the point is that the technology allowed for it to happen.   We often hear stories in the media and the lament of many, that technology is causing us to lose connection with one another.  Many of our children prefer alternatives such as texting, tweeting, or even blogging, to face-to-face contact.  I don't think this makes us less social, in fact I think it helps us to be more social, creating greater opportunities to connect with friends over bigger distances.  The technology that so often seems to push us apart can also be responsible for bringing us together.  Of course, the important lessons still have to be how to play nice and get along with others, whether in person or on-line.

Thanks to our PAC for organizing this event and bringing us together.  In the end, it is still the people involved that make a community what it is.  Technology is only a tool that helps us, it is not what creates it.

Student expectations and their behaviour

I am now officially a part of the twitter crowd.  So far only as a follower trying to figure out all of the things that our students do without thinking.  In one of the first posts I read, by our own vice-principal, I found a fascinating quote that got me thinking about our work with students.  She was commenting on a blog post by Joe Blower (http://www.joebower.org/) and said, "how can a teacher claim to be progressive yet subscribe to a series of punishments for non-compliance".

The blog and the tweet (never thought I would write that in a sentence) raise several issues about the progressiveness of our education system.  We are certainly in a system in transition. There are those that are keen to move us forward with what research is telling us about reward and punishment and those that cling to past practices.  The challenge for us is to continue to move forward and to help those less inclined to understand the changes occurring around them.  How do we support students in a system that is standing astride the old and the new?  As Dr. Dave Hepburn said in an interview in the most recent Boulevard Magazine, "If a doctor is practicing the way they were five years ago, they may as well be practicing in a museum".

Students make mistakes.  Sometimes they repeat the mistakes over and over without changing their behaviour.  Does this mean that they should be punished, made to feel guilty, shunned from the group?  On the contrary, we need to support kids when they make mistakes and to help them learn from them, not push them further down.  Don't get me wrong, there are and need to be consequences for our actions, but there is a difference between consequence and punishment.  Our work on Restitution (www.realrestitution.com) allows us to support students when they make a mistake and allow them to return to the group strengthened rather than chastised.

This is an area that we all need to work on and move forward with to support the development of our students.  The ultimate goal that we have in mind is to have students make positive behaviour choices because it is within them to, rather than the fear of punishment.

What's Changed?

I had a fascinating conversation with a friend, colleague, and mentor last night.  He has been retired for a while now from education and doesn't miss the politics of it all.  He still likes to keep up to date with what's going on and asked a fairly simple question that unfortunately does not have a simple answer.

We were discussing the opposing views of education funding.  The Ministry of Education says that they have been and continue to increase the amount of money that goes into education; the BCTF describes on-going underfunding and the resulting issues, most notably increased class sizes and changing compositions in those classes.  His question was, "are kids doing worse in school now because of  class sizes?"  See, a seemingly simple question with a not-so-simple answer.  It seems to boil down to how you answer it.  Our grad rates are at an all-time high - more students staying in school and graduating, scholarship results are up, and provincial exam results seem to be holding, as are FSA results at grades 4 and 7.  In Sooke our aboriginal student success rate is above the provincial average.  By these measures it would appear that things are holding or improving, but that would be a simplistic answer.

The deeper answer is that we have dedicated, caring teachers who continue to struggle daily with the impact of more students, greater diversity, and fewer resources to do the job.  It is because of these teachers and there unrelenting desire to ensure the success of their students that we continue to get the results that we do.  Teachers are notorious for taking on more and more in support of their students.  The worry is that these gifted and caring individuals will burn themselves out and move on to easier, less demanding careers, retire early, or simply quit.

I'm not sure where we go from here, but it does seem clear that we have to do what we can to support the most important element in education - our teachers.