Term One 2018
“The best teachers don’t give you the answers... They just point the way ... and let you make your own choices.”
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21/11/17 5:14 PM
Index
3
Your Soapbox
4
Wanted: Collaborative Problem Solvers!
C.M. Rubin
5
2018 Set To Be A Year Of Growth For
Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre 9
The Grit Groupie
John Hellner
10
Sanitation improves health but not stunted growth
Rachel Leslie
12
Getting To Know You
Elaine Le Sueur
14
Keeping it real...
MOTAT
18
How storybook lessons impart scholastic success
J.D. Warren
22
The notion of “quality teaching”
Laurie Loper
24
Opportunities widen for all manner of teachers overseas
Anne Keeling
28
4 Critical Skills To Make A Difference In Your Career
Michelle LaBrosse
42
Destroying Childhood Innocence, One Elf at a Time…
Stephanie Jankowski
44
Is there a word for ‘nieces and nephews’?
Oxford Wordblog
46
5 qualities of emotionally intelligent leaders
Joel Garfinkle
48
Study of learning and memory problems in OCD helps
Barbara Sahakian
50
Foods Distorted Through Liquid and Glass in Photographs
Christopher Jobson
52
AI, Algorithms and What Should We All Be Thinking About?
C.M.Rubin
58
Social change from the stage
Colleen Walsh
62
4 Things That Happened This Semester
Secret Teacher
64
6 pieces of bad advice people give their kids without realizing
Emma Seppala
66
Does This Writing Group Work?
Bethany White
74
Yale Young African Scholars celebrates 5th anniversary
Adam Gaber
76
Hello Coding – When Did You Get So Cool?
C.M.Rubin
80
How Do Leaders Use Compromise and Consensus?
Jill Berkowicz and Ann Myers
84
Miniature Paintings on Tea Bags Laura Staugaitis
86
Reports show that Australia needs to strengthen and extend
96
Early Childhood Australia
Catalyst Education Awards recognize Vicksburg principal Christine Van Timmeren
98
University of Cambridge launches a regional teaching hub
Dr James Biddulph
99
UN Human Rights?
Roger’s Rant
Front Cover: Back Cover:
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‘Raupo’ sculpture in steel by Kelly Hudson - Barisa Steel Adelaide Zoo... Meditating meercat
Good Teacher Magazine would like to acknowledge the unknown designers and craftspeople internationally for the some of the images and art in the magazine, every care has been taken to identify and acknowledge artists/photographers... however this is not always successful... most were collated from a wide range of internet sources.
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Your Soapbox!
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If you want to have YOUR SAY please email your offering to: info@goodteacher.co.nz
4 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
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Wanted: Collaborative Problem Solvers!
C. M. Rubin
Girls outperformed boys in every country. “Girls show more positive attitudes towards relationships, meaning that they tend to be more interested in others’ opinions and want others to succeed.” — Andreas Schleicher
We live in a world where trust and teamwork is more important than ever. OECD Pisa has completed the first ever assessment of collaborative problem solving skills (CPS) to see how students stand in relation to their global peers. In some of the main takeaways from this study, Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for the Directorate of Education and Skills, notes that students who do well in PISA’s reading and math assessments also tend to
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be strong performers in CPS. Examples are Japan, Korea, Estonia, Finland and Canada, all of whom did well. However, there are countries where students had different results in CPS than you would predict from their performance in science, reading and math. For example, Japanese students do well in the subjects but even better in CPS. Chinese students were just average in CPS despite being strong performers in math and science.
Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 5
Another interesting take away from the study is that girls outperformed boys in every country. “Girls show more positive attitudes towards relationships, meaning that they tend to be more interested in others’ opinions and want others to succeed.” Classroom activities focused on positive student/teacher interactions and presentation work foster problem solving skills. Hence, teachers can help “facilitate a climate that is conducive to collaboration”. The Global Search for Education welcomes the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher to discuss the study further.
“Disadvantaged students see the value of teamwork often more clearly than their advantaged peers. They tend to report more often that teamwork improves their own efficiency, that they prefer working as part of a team to working alone.” — Andreas Schleicher
Welcome, Andreas. What did you learn about disadvantaged students? It is interesting that disadvantaged students see the value of teamwork often more clearly than their advantaged peers. They tend to report more often that teamwork improves their own efficiency, that they prefer working as part of a team to working alone, and that they think teams make better decisions than individuals. 6 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
So schools that build on those attitudes by designing collaborative learning environments could engage disadvantaged students in new ways. Interestingly, the data also show that exposure to diversity in the classroom tends to be associated with better collaboration skills. And of course, education does not end at the school gate when it comes to helping students develop their social skills. For a start, parents need to play their part. For example, students score much higher in the collaborative problemsolving assessment when they said their parents were interested in their child’s school activities. What happens outside school – using the Internet, playing video games, meeting friends or working in the household – can also have a social, and sometimes antisocial, component. PISA shows that students who play video games score much lower than students who do not play video games, and that gap remains even after considering social and economic factors as well as performance in science, reading and math. But accessing the Internet, chatting or social networking tends to be associated with better collaborative problem-solving performance, all other things being equal.
Given the variations in educational environments and cultures globally, what methodology did you use? In order to ensure similar assessment conditions, we used an agent-based approach where students interacted with digital avatars as their counterparts. We then did a validation study to explore to what extent this kind of humancomputer collaboration is an adequate representation of human-human collaboration with similar tasks. And we found this to be a fairly reasonable match.
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“Strong academic skills will not automatically also lead to strong social skills. Part of the answer lies in giving students more ownership over the time, place, path, pace and interactions of their learning.” — Andreas Schleicher
How do you predict technological advancements will be a driver for focusing on these competencies in curriculum? Social media but also interactive platforms for knowledge sharing and knowledge creation already play an important role in many instructional systems. And as technology advances, schools can use a greater variety of collaborative learning environments. But even without technology, there are many opportunities which schools have today to foster collaborative skills across the school curriculum. Strong academic skills will not automatically also lead to strong social skills. Part of the answer lies in giving students more ownership over the time, place, path, pace and interactions of their learning. Another part of the answer can lie in fostering more positive relationships at school and designing learning environments that benefit students’ collaborative problem-solving skills and their attitudes towards collaboration.
How should schools determine the skills to teach their students to prepare them for jobs that have not yet been created? This is a difficult question. But there are some things in which we can be fairly confident. Important are people who think creatively about the development of new products, the introduction of new enterprises and the deployment of new business models. In the years running up to 2030 and beyond, some
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experts suggest that an increasingly digitized economy will be built around small, agile companies, employing just a handful of carefully chosen people. But creating new value will be important well beyond the sphere of the economy. Creating new value, as a transformative competency, connotes processes of creating, making, bringing into being and formulating; and outcomes that are innovative, fresh and original, contributing something of intrinsic positive worth. It suggests entrepreneurialism in the broader sense of being ready to venture, to try, without anxiety about failure. The constructs that underpin the competence are imagination, inquisitiveness, persistence, collaboration and self-discipline. The growing complexity of modern living, for individual, communities and societies, also suggests that the solutions to our problems will be also be complex: in a structurally imbalanced world, the imperative of reconciling diverse perspectives and interests, in local settings with sometimes global implications, will require young people to become adept in handling tensions, dilemmas and trade-offs. Individuals will need to think in a more integrated way that avoids premature conclusions and attends to interconnections. The constructs that underpin the competence include empathy (the ability to understand another’s perspective and to have a visceral or emotional reaction); adaptability (the ability to rethink and change one’s perceptions, practices and decisions in the light of fresh experience, new information and additional insight); and trust. A third transformative competency is a prerequisite of the other two. Dealing with novelty, change, diversity and ambiguity assumes that individuals can ‘think for themselves’. Equally, creativity and problem-solving require the capacity to consider the future consequences of one’s actions, to evaluate risk and reward and to accept accountability for the products of one’s work. This suggests a sense of responsibility, and moral and intellectual maturity, with which a person can reflect upon and evaluate their actions in the light of their experiences and Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 7
personal and societal goals; what they have been taught and told; and what is right or wrong.
purposes or pursuits. But it requires deliberate and continuous effort to expand our radius of trust to strangers and institutions, to create the kind of binding social capital through which we can share experiences, ideas and innovation, and build a shared understanding among groups with diverse experiences and interests. Societies that nurture binding social capital and pluralism have always been more creative, as they can draw on and bring to bear the best talent from anywhere, build on multiple perspectives, and nurture creativity and innovation.
Thank you Andreas.
“Societies that nurture binding social capital and pluralism have always been more creative, as they can draw on and bring to bear the best talent from anywhere, build on multiple perspectives, and nurture creativity and innovation.” — Andreas Schleicher
This is one of the greatest challenges for education. But PISA shows that some countries are much better than others in ensuring that they attract the most talented teachers to the most challenging classrooms and provide the best resources to the students who can benefit from the most.
What do you see as the next step in growing social skills among children in school? These days, schools need to become better at preparing students to live and work in a world in which most people will need to collaborate with people from different cultures, and appreciate a range of ideas and perspectives; a world in which people need to trust and collaborate with others despite those differences, often bridging space and time through technology; and a world in which individual lives will be affected by issues that transcend national boundaries. We are born with what political scientist Robert Putnam calls “bonding social capital”, a sense of belonging to our family or other people with shared experiences, cultural norms, common 8 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
C. M. Rubin and Andreas Schleicher
Join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. MadhavChavan (India), Charles Fadel (U.S.), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honourable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. EijaKauppinen (Finland), State Secretary TapioKosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Geoff Masters (Australia), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Professor Manabu Sato (Japan), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (LyceeFrancais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland, is publisher of CMRubinWorld and a Disruptor Foundation Fellow. Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
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(All photos are courtesy of CMRubinWorld)
Out of classroom activities affect collaborative problem solving abilities. How do we ensure that students from different learning environments and backgrounds have the same opportunity and access to activities that promote collaborative learning?
2018 SET TO BE A YEAR OF GROWTH FOR
Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre
Taratahi’s efforts to attract new students has paid off with solid enrolments for 2018. Taratahi upped its marketing and as a result, the definite enrolments for 2018 are looking great, says chief Executive Arthur Graves. Arthur says the institutions taster courses have attracted large numbers of students. “Taratahi and the wider primary industry have been promoting the job rich agricultural environments and extensive career pathways on offer and those campaigns are now yielding some great results. The institution is also adapting its farming systems in response to consumer demands for greater visibility over the provenance of their food. “For instance, this year Taratahi is introducing “sexed” bull semen that almost solely produces female calves - negating the need for the bobby calf trade which is becoming less acceptable to the public. Our aim is to use this innovation to ensure we have zero bobby calves on all our dairy farms. It also means our students are exposed to some of the latest on farm methods while educating them about “bigger picture” of where farming is heading with lower input, more animal welfare friendly, environmentally friendly, traceable, natural food. We have also worked hard to attract prospective students from the city,
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by showing them there are a range of interesting career options in what is now a very complex and rewarding sector. This has resulted in strong demand for Taratahi’s 2018 courses with more students already enrolled in a range of programmes for 2018 at Taratahi’s nine campuses around the country than at the same time in 2017. We are finding that students are keen for a different experience in another region - so many of Telford and Wairarapa residential campus students are coming from all over NZ.An extra area of business is the increasing demand from agricultural service organisations seeking practical on farm experiences for their staff and we anticipate this market will continue to expand.” Farm insurance companies, Farm advisors and government departments who deal with Primary sector and health and safety issues, are a growing customer base for our tailored farm experience and team building programmes. “That means that Taratahi is providing an on farm education and experience that gives policy makers and influencers a chance to learn the practicalities of modern farming methods while mixing with students who will be tomorrow’s farm leaders.”
Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 9
The Grit Groupie The grit groupie (gg): “I thought I’d found it.” The teacher (tt): “Found what?” (gg): “The panacea to ensure kids learn; the richest bottomland of the River of Education; grit.” (tt): “What’s grit?” (gg): “You know, the Angela Duckworth stuff about students being able to learn if they work hard and long enough. She said something like, ‘the passion and perseverance to work towards long term goals’. Having staying power. Falling down seven times and rising eight.”
(gg): “Well, somehow the teachers design a classroom environment where kids can experience belonging, connection, opportunity, growth, competence, autonomy, and relatedness – that’s some of the jargon around grit – and this changes the students’ internal wiring. I loved it.” (tt): “’Design a classroom environment?’ Now, how do you do that? That is the secret.”
(tt): “Sounds a bit like the ‘marshmallow delayed gratification’ experiment.”
(gg): “Maybe I was so keen on grit because it featured a lot of what I already did in my classroom: cooperative small group learning, less lecture time; fewer repetitive worksheets; solving problems, engaging in discussions, and collaborating on long-term creative projects; giving students more autonomy in their learning meant giving up control, not having to be the centre of attention; letting kids self-assess; quality feedback; choice and variety in learning activities; using behaviour-management techniques that dialled confrontations down rather than up.”
(gg): “What’s that?”
(tt): “Sounds pretty good to me.”
(tt): “Experiment in which little kids were given a choice: you can eat this marshmallow now, but if you can wait for 20 minutes, I will give you 2 marshmallows. Kids who held out for the 20 minutes turned out to be more successful in later years. Similar idea – persevere if you want to win the jackpot. Check it out on YouTube.”
(gg): “I liked to think I ran a room in which kids came into my room or left my room knowing it was a safe place, where they were appreciated, they could get something worthwhile done, and believe it was a pretty good world we live in.”
(gg): “I would fail that test. Not really that good at self-management all the time.”
(gg): “Yeah some. I have reconsidered and have a couple of reservations. Grit is fine, but it isn’t the total answer. It’s just another answer. After all these years and all these kids, I know it takes more than grit to
(tt): “Sounds like some posters in the locker room. What’s grit supposed to achieve?” (gg): Success in the classroom and success in life. The grittier kids get through school regardless of family background, social class, IQ and so on. I really thought it was the answer to the barriers to kids learning. It resonated with me. Made sense, like the old line about ‘success is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration’.
(tt): “So what does this grit look like in the classroom?”
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(tt): “It sounds like you have toned down your ‘grit groupie’ status.”
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John Hellner
succeed at school and life. We all need opportunities, some mentoring from someone who cares, we need to know how to ask for help, to build a network of support. We need luck. Money helps a lot. Social scaffolding.”
“And I worry a bit about the whole concept of ‘never give up, perseverance, commitment to long term goals’: they need to be tempered with an element of judgment. Sometimes it’s smart to quit, ‘know when to hold’em and know when to fold’em’. Some of Duckworth’s real-life models of grit have done some pretty ugly things, or turned a blind eye to questionable antics in the process of being gritty. Sometimes when people become completely focussed and committed to a task or goal they can become dangerous. They don’t see the other side of the coin. Is that what we want to teach kids to be like? All of them?”
(tt): “Do you think you might be a bit off with the dreamboats on that one.” (gg): “Yeah maybe, but we ought to nurture our dreamers, our rebels, our creators, our curious, our visionaries as well, and be careful not to stomp them into conformity in the name of grit. OK, this is pretty theoretical. Maybe ‘grit lite’.” (tt): “So where does that leave us in terms of ensuring kids succeed?” (gg): “The business of learning is messy, difficult and sometimes ugly. There is no cure all for ensuring all students succeed all the time.
have had one educational panacea after another: relationships, feedback, learning styles, reflection, peer tutoring, zero tolerance, thinking about thinking, project based instruction, back to basics, cooperative learning, character education, standards based assessment, self-esteem, inquiry, authentic learning and assessment, experiential learning, problem solving. “Grit is one of the most recent and one of the oldest, but with a different name. And they all have something good to offer. But like fashion, the panaceas come and go, and if you adopt some of the stuff, some of the time, you will get it right in some situations, now and again, with some kids, but never all the time with all the students. And that is as good as it gets. “The best chance I can think of for maximizing our success in teaching is a ‘pragmatic, piecemeal approach’ – beware of the grand theories and cure alls. Something may work today, but not tomorrow; something may work with one student, but not another. Mix and match your pedagogy to the situation you are in. Try a strategy and if doesn’t work, try another, but don’t look for the universal truth. It doesn’t exist.”
(tt): “That might be the lesson nature has given to us: be pragmatic, piecemeal – seize the opportunity.” (gg): “Talk about dreamboats.”
“Education is like fashion, always changing, sometimes coming around again in a slightly different guise. Over the last 30 years we
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 11
Sanitation improves health but not stunted g Improving water, sanitation and hygiene in poor regions of Bangladesh helped overall health but, contrary to expectations, did not improve children’s growth and development. Despite mounting research over the last decade linking poor sanitation to stunted growth in children, a new study found that children born into housing compounds with improvements in drinking water quality, sanitation and handwashing infrastructure were not measurably taller after two years compared to those born into compounds with more contamination – although children who received the interventions were significantly healthier overall. In a trial study, improving sanitation and hygiene in poor regions of Bangladesh helped children’s health but did not improve their growth and development. The WASH Benefits Bangladesh trial, led by Stanford epidemiologist Stephen Luby, is one of the first to examine what are known as water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions as a way of improving children’s growth in low-income communities. How well a child grows in the first year can indicate overall well-being and is linked to both survival and brain development. These WASH interventions have been proposed as a way of improving child growth and are being implemented in many communities around the world, but haven’t been rigorously tested. “Part of what we learned is that this problem of stunting is not going to be easily fixed by a little bit of attention to water, sanitation and hygiene,” Luby said. “Modest efforts to marginally improve environments are not going to be sufficient. If we want children in the lowest-income, most resource-constrained environments to thrive, we’re going to need to make their environments radically cleaner.” Children in the Bangladesh trial who received nutritional supplements in addition to WASH interventions did grow taller and were less likely to die during the study, but WASH interventions alone did not improve growth.
Better nutrition needed The study, published Jan. 29 in The Lancet Global Health, examined the health and growth of 12 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
children from over 5,000 pregnant women in rural Bangladesh after two years. The mothers were grouped according to geographic clusters and randomly assigned to one of six interventions or a control group. The six interventions included: integration of chlorinated drinking water; upgraded sanitation facilities; promotion of handwashing; a combination of chlorinated drinking water, upgraded sanitation and handwashing promotion (WASH) efforts; nutritional supplements; or WASH and nutritional supplements. After two years, nearly all the interventions reduced diarrhea. Although expected, the result is important because it suggests that families did adhere to the interventions. It also creates hope that WASH interventions could beat back one of the greatest killers of children globally – the World Health Organization estimates 361,000 children under 5 years of age die as a result of diarrhea each year. Of all the interventions, providing nutritional supplements in addition to combined water, sanitation and handwashing interventions had the greatest effect on curbing mortality, in addition to improving growth. Children receiving this intervention were 38 percent less likely to die compared to children in the control group.
The way forward Past research has shown that WASH strategies are effective at reducing diarrhea and improving child health, Luby said, but evidence of the impact of these strategies on child growth and development has been sparse. In response to this lack of data, Luby began laying the current study’s groundwork over a decade ago. One of his concerns was ensuring the group developed a rigorous and transparent trial design that included close community partnerships and innovative ways of encouraging village residents to adopt new behaviors. Unless most people in the community adopted the interventions, he knew the results would not be conclusive.
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growth in a Stanford-led trial in Bangladesh Rachel Leslie With the large number of children in the study, good adoption of the interventions and careful design, the study had the statistical power to detect small effects. Thus, Luby noted the absence of growth improvement with WASH interventions was genuine. “We developed an intervention that the community really liked and were able to achieve really high uptake,” said Luby, who is also director of research for Stanford Global Health. “What this tells us is that these interventions, even with high uptake, likely didn’t clean the environment enough to impact child growth. This is a disappointment, but it also helps to provide direction as a way forward.” While a great amount of knowledge has been gained from the primary outcomes data, Luby and his team are continuing to analyze the broader range of health benefits that could have resulted from these successfully integrated WASH
strategies, such as the impact on bacterial, parasitic and viral infections, anemia and nutritional biomarkers, and child cognitive development. Luby is a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine and serves as the director of research for the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health. Co-authors of the publication include scientists from the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Dhaka, Bangladesh; the University of California, Berkeley; the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; the University of California, Davis; Emory University; and the University at Buffalo. The research was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
(Image credit: GMB Akash)
Study data collectors measure a child’s growth in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to assess impact of water, sanitation and hygiene interventions.
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 13
GETTING TO KNOW YOU Every class has a few students who want to belong to the class community and fit in, but find connecting with others to be a challenge and need a bit of help. They may be shy, or just unsure of how to communicate with others, especially after the long holiday break where some have not had a lot of interaction with others outside the family. They may be gifted or different in some way and uncertain of how they will be accepted by their classmates and the new teacher. Everyone needs a sense of belonging in order to be effective in their working environment and the teacher has a big part to play in the world of the student. The classroom is a community but I believe that it is important to provide reasons for wanting to be part of that community rather than telling students what not to do. The activities outlined here are a collection of ideas for teachers to use at the beginning of the year to help everyone in the class to get to know each other. Seeing how the students react to various situations can provide useful insights for later.
SWITCH AND SHARE The start of the year brings anticipation and a degree of nervousness for many students moving classes, while others who have already formed strong friendship bonds are eager to share their holiday stories. Switch and Share is a game that can help to meet the needs of both and can be played either indoors or outdoors. Since it is 2018 there are 18 caller statements but you can easily add your own or change them to suit your students. How to play: 1. Define the playing area. .All you need is a line. 2. Students stand on either side of the line, facing the caller. (teacher)
Caller x x x X
x x
x
X
x
x
x
X
x
x x x
x
x
1. Caller starts the game. Each time you switch sides then your job is to talk to the person closest to you. Switch to the other side if… • You have a pet. If you switched sides then tell the person nearest to you what pet you have and its name. • You went to the beach in the holidays. If you switched then share three things that you did there.
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Elaine Le Sueur
• You went to a barbecue in the holidays. Tell the person next to you what your favourite barbecue food is. • You are the oldest kid in your family. Share your sister’s /brother’s names with a partner. • You like to sing. Sing a song to the person next to you. • You have ever been in hospital. Tell why. • You have ever been to a zoo. Share the name of your favourite animal. • You did jobs at home this morning before school. Share what you did. • You like fruit more than vegetables. Share the name of your favourite fruit. If you didn’t switch then tell the person next to you why not. • Your first name starts with a letter that comes after M in the alphabet. Share. • Your first name has more than four letters in it. Share the number. • You play a musical instrument. Share what it is and how long you have been playing it. • You love to read. What is your favourite book? Share. • You have an Xbox or PlayStation. Share the name of your favourite game. • You like to dance. Share a dance step with your neighbour. • You like math time. Share why. • You like to play sport. Talk about your favourite sport. • You didn’t walk to school this morning. Share how you got here.
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NAME SEARCH This activity requires a little preparation from the teacher with the help of www.puzzlemaker. discoveryeducation.com
Go to the website and type in a list of all the student’s first names into the word search creator to create a classroom specific name search. Challenge your year 3 /4 students to find their own name and to share that with others in the class to complete the search. The aim is to make sure that everyone completes the puzzle and gets a chance to talk to others rather than to be the first finished. Instead of names you could use holiday activities and ask students to find an activity that they participated in during the holidays. A google search will generate a list of verbs to choose from. The task then is to find others who did the same activity to share with. If the word has not been chosen by anyone else then the student shares with the teacher.
CLASSROOM ALPHABET A walk around the school with cameras or iPads to take photos can help you and your young students to become familiar with the surroundings and you can use the photos to create a wonderful personalised alphabet for the classroom. This activity is an ideal opportunity to identify students who are creative thinkers. Provide opportunities for students to talk to each other about phonetic sounds and to make decisions about which pictures to use. You might be surprised at what you can learn from the side line if you listen in.
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Older able students might like the challenge of creating an alphabet with a difference following the ideas from one of the following fun alphabet books…
Tomorrow’s Alphabet by George Shannon. Illustrated by Donald Crews. ISBN :978-0-688-13504-1 This book is for those who know the alphabet well enough to want to play with it a bit. You have to think ahead! A is for seed. Tomorrow’s apple. B is for eggs. Tomorrow’s birds. C is for milk. Tomorrow’s cheese etc.
Alphabet Squabble by Isaac Drought and Jenny Cooper. ISBN : 978-1-77543-124-4
FIND 10
Everyone in Alphabet Land knows that As, Es, Cs and Ps are popular letters, but what about the Xs,Ys and Zs? Do they matter? Read about the rowdy alphabet squabble to gain recognition.
Another activity involving the teacher in some preparation is to take 10 close up photos of things in the room then challenge the students to work with each other to identify them. Photos are numbered. Best done as a small group activity, it ensures that all the students know where things are kept and can put them back after use without teacher having to nag. An alternative to close up photos is to use the photocopy machine to enlarge just a small area of a photo and to use that as the search picture.
TOY MINGLE FOR JUNIORS (Thanks to Shelly Terrell for this idea). Each student is given a toy. Pair the students up. Give them one minute to play with each other before ringing the timer. Each student then finds another peer to pay with for a minute.
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FLIP IT This game is over and done with very quickly but is popular and a great interactive before settling down to work or getting ready for a break. Students who find it a challenge to sit still after a learning session will love this activity. How to play: 1. Start with everyone standing. At the signal 3.2.1 FREEZE. Everyone chooses either hands on heads or hands on bottoms to represent the heads or tails of a coin toss. 2. Caller tosses the coin. 3. All those who are doing the action that mimics the coin call remain standing. The rest sit down .No changing of position after the call of FREEZE is allowed. Infringers have to sit down. 4. Repeat until there is a winner who becomes the next caller or some other appropriate action designated by the teacher.
And finally, an activity for Valentine’s day…
VALENTINE’S DAY February 14 is a special day for me and my family. It is the day that my daughter was born. Feel free to visit my Thinking Challenges website and download the Valentine’s Day riddle and leave feedback or become a follower. Not into riddles? There are other Valentine’s Day activities available to suit different class levels. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/ Thinking-Challenges
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Keeping it real‌ Remember the 1990’s, when computers were the new thing in schools? We all got excited about the need for students to learn how to use the new technology, we collected shopping receipts and cashed them in for computing hardware, we housed our shiny hardware in specialised computer rooms and timetabled our students to learn about trackball mice and Excel spreadsheets. It took us a while to get our heads around the difference between Technology in Education (learning about the computer) and Educational Technology (using the computer for learning), but when we eventually did we took the computer from the pedestal we had created for it, disestablished computer rooms and relegated computers to being just another a tool for learning. We changed the focus from learning about the computer to learning with the computer.
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This progression wasn’t a wasted journey for us, the process was necessary for us to gain knowledge of the computer itself whilst developing an understanding of its potential to revolutionise education and learning. The journey was as important as arriving at the destination. When I look at what we are currently doing with robotics and coding I think we are in a similar situation. At this early stage we’re a bit dazzled by the novelty, and the challenge of learning about robotics – what code needs to be written to navigate our shiny robot around the maze, to make it turn at precisely the right point, to turn on the lights and sound effects? We need to spend a bit of time playing with the hardware as this is a necessary part of gaining knowledge and developing our understanding. This is just the start of our journey, figuring out the nuts and bolts, making our first stuttering attempts at speaking the language, mastering the rules and conventions. But what’s exciting is the next stage in the journey, when the novel becomes
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commonplace and the dazzle has dimmed. What will our students do once they have completed the navigation challenge, learned how to speak ‘code’ and mastered the discipline of computational thinking? What will they achieve when they put their new knowledge to work in authentic, real situations? What is possible when we change the focus from learning about robotics to learning with robotics? This year the spotlight is likely to remain firmly trained on digital technologies as many schools look for effective ways to address the requirements of the soon-to-be-gazetted document without causing teaching staff undue stress or breaking the already-stretched resources budget. To support schools with this, the Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) in Auckland has established their mobile STEAM Cell education service to bring STEM education experiences to students within their normal school environment. The Museum sees this as an innovative way to share resources and expertise with teachers and learners without the usual hassle and expense of organising a EOTC experience. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 19
A STEAM Cell is a trailer loaded with resources, driven to schools by one of MOTAT’s expert educators to provide a unique learning experience for students throughout the North Island. Rather than focus on content, MOTAT has developed STEAM Cells around competencies such as computational-thinking, collaboration and design-thinking. Within these broad competencies there are different experiences offered. The MOTAT Education team have deliberately adopted a flexible approach to designing the STEAM Cell service, rather than dictate constraints around maximum numbers of students and duration of visits, they consult with you to design an experience that is going to work best for your students, time constraints and enquiry topics Further development of the STEAM Cell concept has come about through collaboration between MOTAT and Brainary Interactive out of Australia. In 2018, the Museum will be incorporating the world’s leading and most widely used humanoid robot for education and research, NAO, into its education programmes. NAO is an ideal platform for teaching Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths concepts with students at all levels. However, learning is not limited to STEM subjects with NAO as it provides novelty and engagement when incorporated into almost any type of lesson. For more information about the learning possibilities offered by MOTAT STEAM Cells please visit www.motat.org.nz/learn/steam-cells/ or call (09) 815 5808
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How storybook lessons impart scholastic success J.D. Warren
Students in the United States and Mexico are likely to encounter storybooks that stress happiness as a goal. The lessons from childhood storybooks are decidedly different in China and the United States, and align with the lessons the respective countries impart in the classroom, UC Riverside research finds.
There is a widely held perception — and some research to affirm it — that East Asian schools outperform schools in North America. A recent study published by UC Riverside psychologist Cecilia Cheung skirts the link between storybooks and school performance, but asserts that the lessons taught in Chinese schools could start early. “The values that are commonly conveyed in Chinese (vs. U.S.) storybooks include an orientation toward achievement, respect for others — particularly the elderly — humility, and the importance of enduring hardship,” Cheung said. “In the U.S. storybooks, protagonists are often portrayed as having unique interest and strength in a certain domain, and the themes tend to be uplifting.” For her study, published in the Journal of CrossCultural Psychology, Cheung compared storybooks in the U.S. and Mexico with those in China. She chose 380 storybooks recommended by education ministries in the respective countries, for children aged 3 to 11. The study considered three core aspects of learning-related qualities: beliefs (views about the nature of intelligence),
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Credit: iStock/FatCamera
motivated cognitions (achievement, determination), and behaviors (effort, overcoming obstacles). Charming stories with divergent values... A representative Chinese storybook is “A Cat That Eats Letters.” In the book, a cat has an appetite for sloppy letters. Whenever children write a letter that is too large, too small, too slanted, or with missing strokes, the cat eats the letters. The only way to stop this runaway letter-eating is for the children to write carefully, and to practice every day. This leads to a hungry cat, because the children have all become skilled writers. (Not to fear, the compassionate children then intentionally write some sloppy letters to feed the cat). A more typical U.S.-Mexico storybook formula is represented by “The Jar of Happiness,” in which a little girl attempts to make a potion of happiness in a jar, then loses the jar. The happy ending comes courtesy of the girl’s realization that happiness doesn’t come from a jar, but rather from good friends – including those who will cheer her up when she loses a jar.
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To a large extent, Cheung and her team found the Chinese storybooks celebrated the behaviors associated with learning and hard work. Somewhat to their surprise, they found U.S. and Mexican storybooks had a shared emphasis on self-esteem and social competence. Past studies have affirmed the important role of parents in children’s scholastic achievement, Cheung said. But few have considered the role of “cultural artifacts,” such as storybooks. Cheung argues that storybooks play a key role in establishing the values that can help determine scholastic success. Referencing past research, Cheung said it is “conceivable that exposure to reading materials that highlight the importance of learning-related qualities, such as effort and perseverance, may lead children to value such qualities to a greater extent.” Cheung was joined in the research by UC Riverside graduate students Jorge A. Monroy and Danielle E. Delany. Funding was provided from the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States. https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 23
The notion of “quality teaching” What does that term mean to you? Not so long ago there was an article in the New Zealand Herald about an Auckland secondary principal who was alerting everyone to what he saw was a looming crisis in Maths and Science teaching in Auckland. He wanted to ensure that any teacher he put into a classroom was going to be capable of delivering “quality teaching”. I wondered as I read that article whether his understanding of the term was anywhere near what mine was. I doubt it. What has to be understood here is that whether learning has occurred or not cannot, for example, be detected by the reaction students’ show as they take part in any learning activity. The person who busted many of the myths upon which teaching rests its practice, the late Professor Graham Nuthall, then of Canterbury University, conducted an experiment with teachers who were doing one of his courses. He asked them how they knew when children were learning. Over the 12 years he ran this course almost invariably their replies were that the children would show engagement and enthusiasm for the learning activity, the results of which would be evident in any follow up testing of content.
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Nuthall found learning has little to do with such one-off experiences no matter what their interest value is perceived to be. In fact, he found that should the students not have had three complete experiences/exposures over a two-day interval of the full information relevant to the topic/idea/concept involved, learning would not have taken place. Fortunately there is an evolution of teaching occurring right now but I doubt whether the great bulk of teachers now have any greater understanding of the relationship between teaching and learning than teachers had three decades ago. Nor does that understanding include ideas like “Knowledge is more like a continuous landscape rather than a set of countable objects. It cannot be sensibly represented by numbers.” This is yet another one of the many understandings flowing from the Nuthall research that teaching has virtually ignored. With the advent of Bobbie Maths pedagogy has advanced to the point where there is now a process that is more closely aligned to what all students not only find hugely attractive but which enables them in so many ways as learners. To get to this stage the teachers involved will have had to survive the huge dissonance challenge involved in having to give up/change some cherished beliefs/practices (like ability grouping) and have gotten used to promoting other practices (like getting students to talk to other students so teachers can hear what understandings they’re picking up). It will also
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Laurie Loper Psychologist
indicate how much teachers have benefitted from the three years of supportive mentoring as they convert to the new teaching role Bobbie Maths requires of them. Once teachers can comfortably use the Bobbie Maths process, they are set to reap the reward of seeing all students really learn, not just some. Moreover their students, even their so-called top ones, are all going to learn to a higher level than they did previously. So the gains aren’t just an indication that the previously educationally underserved are catching up. No, Bobbie Maths creates the kind of educational tide that lifts the educational performance of each and every child. That this should be possible should come as no surprise for Nuthall found that that the capacity to learn is “remarkably similar” across the entire student population. As the several Bobbie Maths videos that have already been produced indicate, the transformations in learning being witnessed are truly remarkable. This view of what has been achieved is quite independent of whose eyes are doing the looking. For instance, parents are now reporting their children are coming home and talking about what they did in Maths that day. The children are responding positively to having their culture incorporated into the programme. Making use of their culture quite quickly forges a powerful link with homes especially as the parents realise that their culture and its contribution to their child’s education matters. Once schools convey a sense that
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parents themselves matter, quite apart from any cultural contribution they bring, things are set up to really take off. From the child’s perspective, the process that is Bobbie Maths has multiple advantages. Suddenly so much that was mystifying now makes sense. Sensing the teacher now values their culture obviates the students from feeling whakama (ashamed) for at times wishing that their skin colour were a whiter shade of pale. Not only that, much of that culture ends up getting connected to an important maths idea. Also students get to discover how other students think, they learn the art of friendly arguing; and learn to work co-operatively/communally as a family unit (not competitively as a team). Current teaching practice being so wasteful of student capacity to learn, it becomes pertinent to list all of Bobbie Maths’ many attributes for doing so the complete package can be revealed and the emphasis gets directed to where it should rightly fall – on the importance of the innovation that is Bobbie Maths. (Note: This listing has been adapted from one compiled by Dr Adrienne Alton–Lee.)
• It does build teacher mathematical content
knowledge and teacher knowledge about how to teach maths, and accelerates improvement in student mathematics achievement (this could be as much as a 4 - 5 year achievement gain in one school year for previously low achieving Maori and Pasifika primary students), though the top
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students also improve their performance. Obviously, this shows it creates the follow-on effects leading to life proficiency and career pathways, and needs to be backed by Government to win as a core part of any national mathematics strategy.
But Bobbie Maths is not just a mathematics intervention. • It does generate rare transfer effects across the curriculum, accelerates proficiency in oral language, develop the five key curriculum competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum (thinking; relating to others; using language, symbols, and texts; managing self; participating and contributing), and gives effect to the values of both the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga (the national Maori Curriculum).
But it is not just a curriculum intervention either. • It does counter bullying, and builds prosocial skills through productive collaboration;
But it is not just a bullying or behavioural intervention. • It does make it safe for children to learn in a curriculum area long-associated with subjectspecific anxiety through to adulthood.
But it is not just an intervention in learner confidence and risk-taking in maths. • It does offer a way to build teacher and leadership capacity to be responsive to the identities, cultures, lives and values of Māori and Pasifika students in particular, and to the diversity of learners in New Zealand classrooms; but it is not just about creating a culturally responsive teaching environment or of providing one that allows all students to truly be valued for themselves (minority
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group students regard this area as their paramount concern, it’s what puts them off classroom learning the most, it’s what makes them feel they don’t count as learners). • It does take a strengths-based approach to drawing upon family and community funds of knowledge and forges educationally powerful connections with the families, communities and iwi of the learners in the school community; but it is not just an intervention with families and whānau disconnected from ongoing improvement in teaching and learning. • It does respect the proficiencies of learners, the mana and significance of the languages of learners, and facilitate access to learning and communication through normalising the use of those languages for learning, including through using multi language approaches; but it is not just a language strategy (schools these days can easily have upward of 40 or more ethnicities on their rolls). • It does forge a highly inclusive and respectful learning culture with reciprocal benefits for all students – especially students with special needs – through building teacher capability to effectively use mixed ability groups; but it is not just an inclusive education strategy for students with special needs. • It does through school selection give priority of access to learners from families who are in poverty or of low socio-economic status to accelerate these children’s life chances; but it is not just an educational intervention in poverty (one decile 7 Tauranga intermediate has found to its delight that it has raised student outcomes across-the- board sufficiently to win the Prime Minister’s Award)
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• It does equip students to be adaptive and future-focused through addressing “big picture” learning (otherwise known as deep learning); but it is not just about digital learning.
training every teacher in the use of a version of Bobbie Maths that will serve all subject areas.
• It does offer a transformative approach to building teacher and leadership capacity to be responsive to the identities, cultures, lives and values of Māori and Pasifika students in particular, and the diversity of learners in New Zealand classrooms; but it is not just a culturally responsive and transformative teaching approach.
In my view, this then is only a beginning for Bobbie Maths. It has first class credentials to be the achievement booster for all students across the board. I cite the current interest of agencies such as the Teachers Council, the Education Review Office, the Children’s Commissioner. and Treasury as further evidence of that. Evidence also indicates that it has to be done very well to get the best outcomes. Any reluctance by the government of the day to get in behind it would be foolish. But foolishness is not unknown in such circumstances by governments and their agencies.
In the history of pedagogical advances Bobbie Maths stands out like a beacon, showing the way. If it hadn’t come along, there would have been little prospect ever of rescuing a substantial proportion of student potential to learn that’s currently not being developed (something like 50% of the total student capacity to learn is at stake here). Having provided a means for this to happen, Bobbie Maths has huge downstream benefits for both the students and for society at large. As yet it is only on offer in a total of around thirty or so low decile primary schools and a couple or so of intermediates. Scaling up is a challenge that is receiving the assistance of the NEXT Foundation. Being a new innovation awaiting full recognition of its potential, some might consider it premature to be thinking about how to extract all of that potential and to apply it for the benefit of every student. To me, all the signs point to that potential being absolutely huge. In my view there is no point in waiting for further proof of efficacy, rather effort ought to be invested into developing a universal teaching package that could be applied across all subject areas and into finding a quicker way of
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To me, Bobbie Maths is the sort of gift that will keep on giving; as yet very little of its potential is being harnessed.
Risk averse people in strategic places could easily throw a spanner in the works. Or if oldfashioned racism were to re-enter the scene – that could muck things up no end. Unfortunately, with the change of government there is every chance some reactivation of these issues could occur. In the event that no Government is prepared actively back Bobbie Maths, I would want one of the more affluent iwi to step up to the plate. Ngai Tahu has already been involved in a joint effort to establish Bobbie Maths in the South Island so that iwi would be my first pick. Then there is the possibility of bringing in charities like the NEXT Foundation that has long made known its desire to contribute not only to the establishment of Bobbie Maths as we currently know it, but to other language versions of the programme.
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Opportunities widen for all manner There has never been a better time to teach overseas. There are now 9,332 English-speaking international schools located all around the world, with more opening each month. Qualified, English-first-language teachers wishing to experience living and working in another country, and within a new culture, are really spoilt for choice. Each year, international school recruitment specialist, TIC (Teachers International Consultancy) helps teachers from across the globe find career opportunities beyond their home countries. Working with accredited British, American and International Baccalaureate schools in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, the organisation has seen new opportunities open up for teachers of a wide range of ages, experiences, circumstances and nationalities. Here, two of these teachers share their experiences of working overseas: English teacher, Adam Wunker from Canada moved with his wife and young family to China; and young, single, Physics teacher, Jack Higson moved from the UK to his very first experience overseas, in sunny Bermuda. 28 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
Harrow International School, Beijing
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r of teachers overseas Anne Keeling
Assistant Professor Justin Reich
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An exciting life, a new culture and the opportunity to travel Adam Wunker from Toronto used TIC to help him find his job at Harrow International School Beijing, where he now teaches English. Adam moved out to China with his wife and two young children, driven by a desire to lead a more interesting life and travel more. “Canada is quite isolated from the rest of the world” Adam says. “It was difficult and expensive to visit other countries from Toronto”. Since moving to Beijing, Adam and his family have already visited Borneo, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea, as well as many parts of China. “Beijing is a great base,” he explains. “This opportunity has offered me the chance to have new experiences and open my mind. Working with students who are learning English and coming from different cultures with different customs and history has forced me to explain things that I once took for granted”.
Opportunities for teachers with children It’s not just Adam who is benefitting from the change of lifestyle. His whole family are now reaping the rewards of living in Beijing. “The experience is providing many opportunities for our children,” he says. “My daughter attends nursery school at Harrow and my son will start there next year. Learning a foreign language from a young age is certainly a major benefit; our children are both bilingual in Mandarin and English. My daughter is as close to fluent as can be expected for a four-year-old. My son speaks more Mandarin than English as he approaches two and a half”.
Adam’s advice Adam offers advice to other teachers to help them get the most out of the experience: “I would suggest having an open mind and a willingness to give up your usual comforts and to experience new things” he says. “Plan to bring with you just enough to be comfortable. In short, if you prepare for an adventure, then that’s what you will have!”
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Adam, Rohan and a Peking Duck in Beijing
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Adam and Daughter Asha in Beijing
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Teaching in sunny Bermuda Physics teacher, Jack Higson found out about teaching internationally through a teacher friend who had been working in Kazakhstan. “She had had an amazing time teaching at an international school and highly recommended both the experience and TIC Recruitment”, Jack says. “So, I registered and here I am!” Jack moved from teaching at a state school in England, to Warwick Academy in Bermuda, the oldest school on the island. He now has children in his classes from many diverse nationalities and this has pushed Jack to develop his teaching skills. “I’ve had to adjust and plan how I teach my lessons; it’s been an interesting challenge,” he says. “This experience is teaching me to become more independent.”
Life outside the classroom Jack has embraced all that Bermuda has to offer and is now involved in a range of extra-curricular activities. “I’m already coaching a football team, and will soon be going on a school ski trip!” he says. He’s also appreciating the cultural differences. “It’s been great to experience a new way of life. I’m really enjoying how friendly everyone is in Bermuda. A welcoming attitude is part of the culture here,” he adds.
Warwick Academy, Bermuda
Jack Higson
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Bermuda
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Bermuda
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How you can find your ideal position teaching overseas This March, TIC Recruitment will host one of the first ever international school virtual recruitment fairs. Already a very popular way to recruit for pharmaceutical and global corporations looking to attract quality employees from all over the world, this virtual event is specifically for qualified teachers. Completely free for teachers to attend, it is a convenient and exciting way to meet with some of the leading international schools from around the world that are recruiting for vacancies beginning in August and September 2018.
Attending a virtual recruitment fair means that teachers won’t have to pay expensive travel costs, or take time off from work. Instead, they can attend the fair from the comfort of their own home, at a time that suits them. Teachers will be able to connect directly with the schools that interest them mos, and have the chance to ask questions about teaching positions, curricula, ethos, salary packages and more, before making any decisions. More information about attending a virtual recruitment fair and how to maximise your time there is available at www.ticrecruitment.com
Bermuda
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Bermuda
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 41
4 CRITICAL SKILLS TO MAKE A D strengths to master four critical skills that could help them make a huge difference in their careers, just like I had done in mine. I hired them to help me integrate these ideas into Cheetah Learning courses. We tested this for ten years in our accelerated learning online course format. We saw first hand how tens of thousands of people quickly moved up in their careers when they learned how to leverage their innate strengths in these four key areas:
Find out your personality type, then go several steps further learn how to make a huge difference in your career... Become a Cheetah Certified Project Manager.
1. Learning. We all have unique ways in which we learn best. When you can master how you best learn based on your innate strengths, you can pick up new skills quicker, you can change faster, and you can pursue better opportunities. Given how rapidly our world is changing this skill is critical to remain viable in any career.
2. Focus. There are so many things vying for Back in 1991, while toiling away as an Aerospace Engineer, I found this book called “Do What You Are, Discover the Perfect Career for You.” While having achieved my early life’s dream of becoming an Aerospace Engineer, I felt there was something else I could be doing to contribute more of my talent to humanity. This book helped me realize that my true strengths were as an entrepreneur and teacher. The key to success, according to this book, was finding the right path for you based on your personality type. Twelve years later, serendipitously I met the authors in person. Their children attended the same school as mine. I discussed with them the idea of using their concepts of picking your career based on your personality type, to have people learn how to leverage their innate
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our attention that distraction is now the number one block for people to move forward in their careers. Mastering how to focus in the way that works best based on your innate strengths, not some cookie cutter approach to focus, is the difference between soaring vs struggling in your career. Why not create the best approach for you to focus as what works for you is going to be as unique as you are.
3. Completion – Finishing projects is a major
feat these days. Considering 75% of all projects fail to meet their objectives, learning how to pick the right projects for you and finish those projects in the way that works best for you helps lead the charge for change in any organization you serve. Every single one of us does projects – look at any goal you have. You are much more likely to achieve that goal when you set it up like a
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DIFFERENCE IN YOUR CAREER By Michelle LaBrosse,CCPM, PMP®, PMI-ACP, RYT,
project and do the project in a way that best uses your innate strengths.
4. Negotiate – We all negotiate all day long
with co-workers, suppliers, friends, family, bosses, and customers. The luxury of being a good negotiator is not just for those naturally talented at negotiations. Every single one of us – yes even you, has natural talents in how you best get along with people. When you learn how to use your natural talents with the fundamentals of a negotiations process where you learn how to bring out the best of everyone, you create alliances that can make your career soar.
I have personally spent the past 23 years developing a comprehensive online accelerated learning approach to help you quickly master these four critical skills. We’ve had over 70,000 students who have become Cheetah’s with our award winning programs. The specific program to master these skills we call the Cheetah Certified Project
Manager program. You use proven accelerated learning techniques to complete all the coursework in 60 hours, over 12 weeks and it is all online. Once you’re done, you even get to call yourself a “Cheetah Certified Project Manager.” This credential shows the world you have the ability to learn fast, pick the right projects for you, and finish them fast, and negotiate with others in a way that brings out the best of everyone. Here is what one of our recent students had to say: What was the most valuable part of the course?: “The overall methodology: clear, organized, simple to implement. I was amazed that course went far beyond project management. There were some beneficial life lessons embedded in the course as well. I would recommend the course to anyone who needs a fresh approach to life in general.” – L. G.
About the Author:
Michelle LaBrosse, PMP, is an entrepreneurial
powerhouse with a penchant for making success easy, fun, and fast. She is the founder of Cheetah Learning, the author of the Cheetah Success Series, and a prolific blogger whose mission is to bring Project Management to the masses. Cheetah Learning is a virtual company with 100 employees, contractors, and licensees worldwide. To date, more than 50,000 people have become “Cheetahs” using Cheetah Learning’s innovative
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Project Management and accelerated learning techniques. Honored by the Project Management Institute (PMI®), Cheetah Learning was named Professional Development Provider of the Year at the 2008 PMI® Global Congress. A dynamic keynote speaker and industry thought leader, Michelle is recognized by PMI as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in Project Management in the world. Michelle also developed the Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) program based on MyersBriggs Type Indicator personality profiling to help students master how to use their unique strengths for learn is recognized by PMI as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in Project Management in the world. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 43
Destroying Childhood Innocence, On My 6-year-old is a sweet kid. She’s very people-y and can read your mood with a single glance at your face. She’s kind and snugly and wants nothing more than for everyone to get along. She’s also a major space cadet who wears her heart on her sleeve then wipes her chocolate milk mustache on it. My husband and I joke that of our three children, the 6-year-old is the easiest yet hardest to love: her sincerity lures you into a world of high maintenance everything.
The child asks questions then forgets to stick around for the answers. She’s fabulously infuriating like that. So the other day when she started asking me 63 questions about tags, I admit I was only half listening. Her: My shirts have tags, right? Me: Yep. Her: My pants have tags? Me: Mmmhmm. Her: Toys have tags? Towels have tags? Shoes have tags? Our couch has a tag?! Me, brain melting under her rapid-fire nonsense: Yessssssssss. Her: Things with tags come from stores? Me, obliviously wading into her quicksand: Tags, stores. Sure. So imagine my surprise when her big brown eyes bore into my soul and she stated very matter-offactly: The Elf on the Shelf has a tag. Me, internally: Shit. Her: Is the Elf on a Shelf from a 44 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
store, not Santa? Don’t lie! Tell. Me. The. Truth.
Let me rewind to the beginning of this December. Many of our friends have these friggin’ elves. They hang from light fixtures in the kitchen, create mischief in the bathroom, and brandish notes from Santa himself. VERY EXCITING. Except we don’t have an Elf on the Shelf because…I’m lazy? They’re expensive? I think they’re dumb? They’re just another way we’re commercializing Christmas don’t even get me started? Anyway, at one point earlier this month, my 6-year-old cornered me (never her Dad–WHY NEVER HER DAD?!) and ordered me to tell her why we don’t have an elf. As I prepared my dissertation, her lip started quivering and she wondered aloud if she had been bad. “Is that why Santa didn’t bring me one?” Stoopid elf.
I assured her she had been wonderful and Santa was very pleased with her behavior. I explained it’s up to the parents to allow the elves to be part of their holiday, and Daddy (threw him right under the bus so I did) opted for no elf because we already do our big Christmas countdown. This appeased her. Until…
The week before Christmas break, her older brother came home from school and announced a boy in his class told everyone there is no Santa Claus. “Is that true?!” he demanded. I studied my son’s face
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ne Elf at a Time… before responding, a trick I learned from those who have come before me: speak less, listen more. Also, I was biding my time because AHHHHH!
Taking another page out of Mother Wisdom’s book, I answered his question with another question. “What do you believe?” True to his zero-tolerance-for-conflict approach to life, my son emphatically stated the boy in his class was wrong: “There is a Santa.” I know he’s secretly wrestling with the truth, but if he wasn’t letting on, neither was I. DONE!
juxtaposed with her “knowed it” was a little gut-punch. So here we are, now straddling the worlds of childhood innocence vs. knowing the things all because of that damn elf. And I’m all too aware that telling the truth about the Elf on the Shelf has only teed up the Santa conversation. I have been mentally preparing myself just in case. For the next 365 days, I will be on my toes. Come at me, son.
Then here comes the 6-year-old and her elf business. She insisted on the truth. She literally said, “Do not lie to me.” What’s a parent to do?!
I always promised myself I’d be the mother who would lay it on the line when my kids asked me to. No beating around the bush. No fluffing up the cold, hard truth. I kept my promise. I explained to my sweet kiddo that the Elf on the Shelf was something parents did for their kids to make the holidays more exciting (also to scare them into behaving because if we can’t use Santa as leverage, are we even parents?). I compared the elf to our Christmas countdown and reminded her everyone has different traditions. A slow smile crept onto her face as she exclaimed, “I KNOWED IT!”
Sonny
Such a grown-up realization
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Hey there, I’m Steph! English teacher by trade, smack-talker by nature, and mother of three who lives by the mantra: Life is Magana too short, laugh! I hope you’ll stick around and check out my stuff. And by stuff I mean my writing. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 45
Is there a word for ‘nieces and ne Every so often you notice that there just isn’t a word for what you want to say. ‘That’s my sister’s father-in-law’s brother’s wife,’ you whisper to your partner at a wedding, expecting him to decode and remember this piece of information for use over the canapés later. Wouldn’t it be easier if there were already a well-understood term for that relationship? (Or should people just have smaller weddings?) English is not particularly rich in familial words. This probably says something about the importance (or not) of extended family in our culture. Spanish has a word for your child’s spouse’s parents (they are your consuegros) – a vital piece of wedding vocab, and Hindi speakers have no problem at family gatherings – there’s a word for your elder brother’s wife, your younger brother’s wife, your wife’s sister’s husband, your father’s brother’s daughter, your mother’s sister’s husband, and everybody in between.
Some niblings with your siblings? We do have a few useful family terms in English. We can avoid laboriously saying ‘Mum and Dad’ all the time thanks to the gender-neutral collective term, parents. We also have children and siblings to avoid having to specify our sons and daughters, sisters and brothers. And yet, for some reason, we still have to talk about our ‘nephews and nieces’. What is the word for these? Languages like Spanish and French are fine with using a masculine plural to simply call the whole lot ‘nephews’ (sobrinos and neveux, respectively) – although some people are calling for a rethink of this approach at the moment. At one time, this might have been acceptable in English, too, but try it now and you’re likely to experience a fair amount of outrage from your little niece Trixabelle. There have been a couple of suggestions to fill this gap, but they haven’t made it into the dictionary yet. ‘Niblings’ appears to be the most popular, like siblings with an ‘n’ for nieces and nephews. Several people claim to have invented this word, but it appears to have been first used by a linguist named Samuel E. Martin in 1951. A
Just say, ‘My chaachii will try to make you dance at this wedding,’ and your partner instantly knows which aunt to avoid (it’s your father’s younger brother’s wife, FYI).
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ephews’? Oxford Wordblog
few fans use the term – I actually heard somebody mention their niblings last Christmas. Personally, though, I find it a bit odd. Your nephews and nieces aren’t really comparable to your siblings (even if they look like them). They’re a different generation, for one thing. So ‘niblings’ doesn’t feel like a good fit to me.
Would you rather have sofralia? Never fear, one man in Michigan has invented an alternative. Rabbi Schneur Stephen Polter’s word, ‘sofralia’, takes so from the Latin word for sister, fra from the Latin word for brother and lia from the end of the Latin word for child. It’s an attempt at a more accurate description of what nieces and nephews are – bravo that man. Unfortunately, Polter doesn’t seem to be having much luck popularising it. “I haven’t gotten much momentum,” he says.
… Or something else? In German – a language that’s never afraid to create a lengthy noun to describe something accurately – they simply call them what they are: Geschwisterkinder. Literally, ‘siblingchildren’. But when you’re back to the same number of syllables as ‘nephews and nieces’,
what’s the point? Everyone seems to love portmanteau words right now (is the person who coined Brexit feeling Bregretabout it yet?), so perhaps we should be thinking about ‘nieceyous’ or ‘nephses’? And let’s not forget that whatever we decide to call them, your nephews and nieces still don’t have anything to call you. They’re stuck telling everybody about their aunts and uncles, unless ‘aurents’ or ‘piblings’ catch on.
It’s not too late for niblings It’s not impossible that one of these suggestions will make it into common usage. The word sibling was around centuries ago but used to mean any relative at all. It was only reintroduced into English and given its current meaning in the 1900s, when early geneticists needed a term for brothers and sisters. So it’s probably not too late to add a new word to the family. You might end up with some niblings after all.
The opinions and other information contained in OxfordWords blog posts and comments do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Oxford University Press.
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 47
5 qualities of emotionally intellig
Some of the most revered leaders in business today share common traits that attract great staff and inspire the best work. These people are often described as warm, personable, approachable and just plain real. What do they have in common? The qualities can best be described as emotional intelligence -- the ability to be aware of their own and others’ emotions, giving them the capacity to better handle interpersonal work relationships. If you aspire to be a better leader, you would do well to work on your emotional intelligence quotient. While these traits may seem natural and inborn, they can also be learned, fostered, developed and honed. If you’re looking to better connect with others, draw the best resources and keep your team happy and focused, read on to learn about identifying and developing these qualities. 48 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
1. Empathetic Empathy is the ability to understand how another person is feeling. Great leaders are able to look at issues from many different perspectives and to consider the effects from other points of view. The ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes when viewing a problem can be invaluable to finding a solution and gaining consensus. With a bit of effort, there may even be a solution where everyone ends up happy.
How to practice: Make a concerted effort to visualize yourself in the other person’s position. What would the problem look like? What would your attitude be? How would it differ from yours? This helps validates and understand their perspective. Even if the answer to a problem is not the best outcome from any given viewpoint, acknowledging the positions and feelings of others can go a long way to creating acceptance and understanding. 2. Self-aware Do you know the situations that bring out the best in you? What about the worst? Have you considered your biases, preferences and general dislikes? Self-awareness is having an
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gent leaders Joel Garfinkle understanding of your own feelings and an active knowledge of the history you bring to the table. When you’re self-aware, you can add your own ideas but also be aware of how your past experiences and current emotions play into the situation. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses and when you can and can’t trust your own instincts can make you an even better leader. How to practice: When faced with a problem or situation, examine how you feel in the moment, and try to determine why. If you can identify the emotions that are at play in your attitude and your assessment of the issue, you can determine whether they need to be tempered or modified by other factors.
3. Positive Can you call yourself an optimist? The art of being truly optimistic lies not only in the ability to keep a positive attitude in adverse situations, but also in being able to offer sincere, realistic leadership that gets the team through the hardship in one piece. No one is looking to have sunny platitudes hashed out or unrealistic predictions made. Great leaders can be positive in the face of difficulty and still be very much in touch with the situation. How to practice: When a problem arises, you’re frustrated or the situation is difficult, take a moment to consider the positive aspects of the issue -- whether you’re building a stronger team, providing a learning opportunity for someone, or uncovering and fixing a deeper problem, there’s always something to be gleaned. When conveying optimism to the team, be sincere: The situation might not be great right now, but you have confidence that you’ll all find a solution and, in the end, it’s all going to be OK. Be authentic and positive, and people will want to help you make it right.
4. Considerate Caring and consideration can go a long way to creating a cohesive, high-functioning team. Taking the time to acknowledge others, noting their contributions and making sure they’re
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heard can be invaluable in drawing people to you and bringing out their best work. Great leaders know that getting to know their team members -- professionally and personally -- and caring about them and their careers will mean that everyone works better together in the long run. How to practice: Take the time to check in with others, even when (especially when!) the pressure is off and there’s time to talk. Concentrate on giving others your full attention when discussing them and their careers, and follow up to help them meet their goals. In meetings, make sure everyone at the table has had a chance to talk. Seek out the opinions of anyone you may have missed. If your memory isn’t great, be sure to take notes that you can refer to later, and give credit where it’s due.
5. Authentic No leader can apply any of the tenants of emotional intelligence without being sincere. Authenticity is critical in leadership – be an open book with your intentions and your agenda. No amount of other leadership behaviors will make up for a lack of truthfulness in what you say and do.
How to practice: Your integrity is paramount to
your reputation as a leader, so only say what you mean and don’t make promises you can’t keep. Be trustworthy and follow through with your statements. It may seem counterintuitive, but when you make a mistake, admit it honestly, and follow through with the actions needed to make amends. It is a lot easier to recover from a misstep than from a loss of trust. Take every opportunity to practice your emotional intelligence skills. Beyond work, think of ways to apply yourself at home, in social and community situations. Every chance to work on your skills will make you a better leader, no matter the location.
Joel Garfinkle conducts executive coaching and is the author of «Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level.” Joel Garfinkle
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Image Carol Credit: Luci Correia
Study of learning and young people
Adolescents with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have widespread learning and memory problems, according to research published today. The findings have already been used to assist adolescents with OCD obtain the help they needed at school to realise their potential – including helping one individual go on to university. I was surprised and concerned to see such broad problems of learning and memory in these young people so early in the course of OCD OCD in children and adolescents is a distressing condition, which is often chronic and persists into adulthood. Almost 90% of these young patients have problems at school, home, or socially; with difficulties doing homework and concentrating at school being the two most common problems. Children and adolescents are well set up for learning and, indeed, can quickly pick up new foreign languages, computing skills or motor tasks, such as riding a bike, much quicker than older adults. But if an adolescent is not learning well in school, they are likely to become stressed and anxious. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have previously shown that there are core problems of cognitive inflexibility in adults with OCD. Since 50 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
flexibility in problem-solving is an important skill for performance in school, they wanted to study whether adolescents with OCD had difficulty in this area. Cognitive flexibility becomes important when trying to find the correct solutions to a problem, particularly when your first attempt at solving that problem does not work. To reach the correct solution, you have to switch to a new approach from the one you have previously been using. In healthy individuals, there is a balance between goal-directed control and habit control, and this balance is crucial for daily functioning. For example, when learning to drive, we focus on specific goals, such as travelling at the right speed, staying within the traffic lines and following safety rules. We often have strategies to perform these tasks optimally. However, once we are an experienced driver, we frequently find that driving becomes habitual. In new situations, healthy people tend to use goaldirected control; however, under conditions of stress, they frequently select habitual learning. In a new study published in the journal Psychological Medicine, researchers looked at whether cognitive flexibility for learning tasks and goal-directed control was impaired early in the development of OCD. The study was led by Dr Julia Gottwald and Professor Barbara Sahakian from the Department of Psychiatry. Thirty-six adolescents with OCD and 36 healthy young people completed learning and memory tasks. These computerised tests included recognition memory (remembering which of two objects they had seen before) and episodic memory
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d memory problems in OCD helps e unlock their potential at school Barbara Sahakian
(where in space they remember seeing an object). A subset of 30 participants in each group also carried out a task designed to assess the balance of goal-directed and habitual behavioural control. The researchers found that adolescent patients with OCD had impairments in all learning and memory tasks. The study also demonstrated for the first time impaired goal-directed control and lack of cognitive plasticity early in the development of OCD. Dr Julia Gottwald, the study’s first author, comments: “While many studies have focused on adult OCD, we actually know very little about the condition in teenagers. Our study suggests that teens with OCD have problems with memory and the ability to flexibly adjust their actions when the environment changes.” Professor Barbara Sahakian, senior author, says: “I was surprised and concerned to see such broad problems of learning and memory in these young people so early in the course of OCD. It will be important to follow this study up to examine these cognitive problems further and in particular to determine how they impact on clinical symptoms and school performance.”
the help they needed at school in terms of structuring the environment to ensure that there was a level playing field. This allowed them to receive the help they needed to realise their potential. “One person with OCD was able to obtain good A Levels and to be accepted by a good university where she could get the support that she needed in order to do well in that environment.” Future studies will examine in more detail the nature of these impairments and how they might affect clinical symptoms and school performance. The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. Reference Gottwald, J, et al. Impaired cognitive plasticity and goal-directed control in adolescent obsessive-compulsive disorder. Psychological Medicine; 22 Jan 2018; DOI: 10.1017/ S0033291717003464 https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news
Experiencing learning and memory problems at school could affect self-esteem. Furthermore, some symptoms seen in people with OCD, such as compulsive checking, may result from them having reduced confidence in their memory ability. The stress of having difficulty in learning may also start a negative influence and promote inflexible habit learning. Dr Anna Conway Morris commented: “This study has been very useful in assisting adolescents with OCD with
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 51
Foods Distorted Through Liquid and Gla In her ongoing series titled Perspective, photographer Suzanne Saroff creates fractured and skewed images of common foods as seen through vessels filled with water and glass objects. The images play with concepts of light and shadow resulting in distorted still lifes that appear almost like digital glitches. “With tools and techniques such as refraction, directional light, and bold colors, my photographs give everyday items alternate visual avenues of expression,” shares Saroff. “Taking shape via shadows or fragmentations, my subjects often become more than the singular and expected version of themselves.”
All photos © Suzanne Saroff.
Saroff was born Missoula, Montana and now lives and works in New York where she shoots for a variety of brands. You can follow more of her photography on Instagram. (via Booooooom)
http://www.thisiscolossal.com 52 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
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ass in Photographs by Suzanne Saroff Christopher Jobson
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 57
AI, Algorithms and What Shou
“Algorithms are as biased as the humans who designed or commissioned them with a certain intention. We should therefore spark an open debate about the goals of software systems with social impact.” — Ralph Müller-Eiselt
Biased algorithms are everywhere, so at a critical moment in the evolution of machine learning and AI, why aren’t we talking about the societal issues this poses? In her book, Weapons of Mass Destruction – How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Cathy O’Neil points out that “big data processes codify the past” but they do not “invent the future.” How do we feel about machines influencing our human institutions? Who protects the quality of life when algorithms are in charge?
O’Neil argues that the human touch is essential to “embed better values into our algorithms.” Ralph Müller-Eiselt is an expert in education policy and governance and heads the Bertelsmann Foundation’s taskforce on policy challenges and opportunities in a digitalized world. In his latest ”Ethics of Algorithms“ project (he is co-author of Die Digitale Bildungsrevolution; English Title – Education’s Digital Revolution), he takes a close look at the consequences of algorithmic decision-making and artificial intelligence in society and education. He joins The Global Search for Education to talk about AI, algorithms and what we should all be thinking about.
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uld We All Be Thinking About? C. M. Rubin how algorithm-informed decisions are being made. Instead, we need mechanisms like selfexplanatory statements of purpose for algorithms that can be verified by an evaluation through neutral experts who are granted access to the relevant information and data. These evaluations should be designed as holistically as possible in order to check whether algorithms are actually serving the intended purposes and to reveal their real-life risks and opportunities. “It is up to us to determine whether AI in education will be a catalyst for strengthening social equity – or for weakening it.” — Ralph Müller-Eiselt
Ralph, how do we ensure that algorithms are always conceived to achieve a positive impact for societies and education, rather than a danger or a risk? Algorithms are as biased as the humans who designed or commissioned them with a certain intention. We should therefore spark an open debate about the goals of software systems with social impact. It is up to us as a society to decide where such systems should be used and to make sure that they are designed with the right purposes in mind. Secondly, we must remember that even algorithms designed with good intentions can produce bad results. The larger their potential effects on individual participation in society are, the more important is a preventive risk assessment and – once automated decision making is in use – a comprehensive evaluation to verify the intended results. Involving neutral third parties in this process can significantly help to build up trust in software-based decision making.
How do we assess whether or not they are accomplishing what is intended? Transparent accountability is key when it comes to assessing algorithm-based applications and tools. This does not mean that we need to make the code of algorithms publicly accessible. In fact, that would not at all be helpful for most affected individuals to gain an understanding of
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“While there are vast opportunities for algorithm-informed advice on competenceoriented curricular choices and job options, we may not close our eyes before the dangers of targeting weak customers, standardized discrimination and large-scale labor market exclusion.” — Ralph Müller-Eiselt
How do you see algorithms and AI adapting to the evolving education systems? The digital era offers a number of potential added values for education. Many of them are inherently dependent on the use of connected data – be it personalizing learning, overcoming motivational barriers through gamification, providing orientation in the jungle of opportunities, or not least, matching individual competencies with labor market demands. The use of algorithms and AI in the education sector Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 59
is still in its initial phase, with a lot of trial and error to be observed. But technology can and will quite certainly help evolve all these issues in the very near future. Since this might impact education at quite some scale, policy makers should better not await these things to happen and react afterwards, but actively shape regulation now towards sustaining the public good. It is up to us to determine whether AI in education will be a catalyst for strengthening social equity – or for weakening it.
How can we personalize AI to adapt to every classroom and child’s needs? Personalizing learning to better develop individual capabilities is one of the main opportunities of digital learning. Algorithmbased applications and AI can democratize access to personalized education that for costrelated reasons was previously only available to a limited number of people. But there is a fine line between promise and peril of AI in education. While there are vast opportunities for algorithm-informed advice on competenceoriented curricular choices and job options, we may not close our eyes before the dangers of targeting weak customers, standardized discrimination and large-scale labor market exclusion.
Since AI is made by humans, is there risk that algorithms and AI will not accurately work in an educational setting due to human error? How will mistakes in AI impact the learning experience? Algorithms are only as good as the humans who designed them. Human error can translate into an algorithm at many stages: from collecting and selecting the data over programming the algorithm to interpreting its output. For example, if an algorithm uses historical data, which is biased in a certain direction due to discriminatory patterns of the past, the algorithm will learn from these patterns and most likely even strengthen this discrimination when it is used at scale. Such unintended errors need to be strictly avoided and constantly checked for, since they would broaden social inequalities in the education sector.
How can these issues be minimized? As explained in more detail above, we need to do preventive risk assessments and ensure a 60 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
“For policy makers, it is now high time to proactively sha involved in the actual design and development of algo responsibility and create common stand — Ralph M constant and comprehensive evaluation of algorithm-based applications through neutral third parties. We should also spark a broader public debate and raise awareness for the use, chances and risks of algorithms in education. For policy makers, it is now high time to proactively shape this field towards more social equity. And those being involved in the actual design and development of algorithms should take the time to reflect about their social responsibility and create common standards for professional ethics in this field.
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(All photos are courtesy of CMRubinWorld)
ape this field towards more social equity. And those being orithms should take the time to reflect about their social dards for professional ethics in this field.” Müller-Eiselt
Do AI and algorithms need to be readjusted for different educational systems globally? How important will it be to incorporate cultural differences into formulation of AI? What most education systems in the world have in common is that they aim to empower and support people in developing their individual capabilities and talents, in short: to create equality of opportunities. However, the ways to approach and achieve this aim are manifold. All of them have their strengths and weaknesses.
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What works in one place does not necessarily work in another social context. In the same way, algorithm- and AI-based applications need to be adjusted to the particular socio-cultural setting they are being employed in.
C. M. Rubin and Ralph Müller-Eiselt Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 61
Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer
Social change from the stage
Show at the A.R.T. connects Nigerian women to #MeToo In America, social change and cultural reckoning can be driven by the internet, as they have with the #MeToo movement.
Based on true experiences, Radcliffe fellow Ifeoma Fafunwa’s stage play “Hear Word!” at the American Repertory Theater weaves together music, spoken word, dance, and song to tell what Nigerian women endure in a society that puts men first.
In Nigeria, playwright Ifeoma Fafunwa hopes they can be driven from the stage. Female empowerment and speaking out are the key themes in her “Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True,” playing at the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) through Feb. 11. Based on true experiences, the show weaves together music, spoken word, dance, and song to show what Nigerian women endure in a society that puts men first, turns its back on sexual assault and abuse, and values marriage above all else. “There are several lines in the play that seem to relate to what’s happening [at] the forefront of dialogue in America,” said Fafunwa of her play’s charged language. Since 2014 her all-female cast has been delivering lines such as “Enough is enough,” “Stand up,” “Accept nothing less,” “It is
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/ 62 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
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Colleen Walsh Harvard Staff Writer time for a change,” and “There’s a hashtag for that” — comments that have become rallying cries against sexual harassment and assault in recent months. Fafunwa debuted “Hear Word!” in Cambridge at the Harvard Dance Center in the spring of 2016. Today she is back on campus for a two-week run of her show at the A.R.T.’s mainstage and a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, where she is working on her next production, a play that examines the LBGTQ experience in Nigeria.
Fafunwa said that lack of trust is tied to male promiscuity “and the consistent stroking of the male ego.” She said mothers, daughters, and wives who excuse men’s bad behaviour share a large part of the blame. But things are changing, most noticeably in the business sector, said Fafunwa, who has seen women bonding together for support in recent years. She thinks her work is driving important conversations around change forward. Like the stories told online with #MeToo, she believes true stories on the stage can make a difference.
Discussing “Hear Word!” on a recent morning in her Radcliffe office, the playwright said the No. 1 goal for a single woman in Nigeria “is to get married.” The importance of marriage is so ingrained in the culture, she said, that it undermines women at every turn.
“You can sit all day in conventions talking about inequality and put data up on the wall all day long, but it’s when people sit inside a room … and hear the heartfelt story of a rape or some sort of attack, [they] pay attention in a different way,” she said.
“If you are raped, why would you talk about it when it lowers your chances of marriage? If you are beaten, why would you report it when it can make you divorced, which is not married again?”
Fafunwa said she hopes her plays will mobilize African women to start “showing and building instead of waiting,” and teaching their children a better way.
Even women who perform female genital mutilation do so to satisfy men, said Fafunwa. Those women think they are “ensuring the marriageability of those little girls because they believe the men will say ‘I am not marrying a woman who has not been circumcised, she might be loose,’” she said. “So every violent act, every boxing, every containing, every pushing down of a woman in the society has centered around marriage-worthiness, male appeal.”
Seen in the context of the broader cultural movement, Fafunwa hopes that instead of looking at the differences between their own lives and the lives of women in Africa, audiences will instead focus on parallels.
After leaving Nigeria Fafunwa and her husband — also a Nigerian — had their first child and the family moved back to the country. It was only then that she began to fully understand the burdens women face there. She watched as they took care of the family, worked outside the home, and tolerated their husbands’ promiscuity — and often, their abuse. They were stressed out, overworked, and, she said, “they did not trust one another.”
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“To see this universal story of women’s struggle with the #MeToo just connects the dots,” she said. Her latest play will again highlight the stories of women, this time those who are struggling in Nigeria’s homophobic culture. In 2014 the country’s former president, Goodluck Jonathan signed into law sweeping anti-gay legislation that made same-sex marriage punishable by 14 years in prison. Responds Fafunwa, “I am asking the question of women and particularly mothers and grandmothers: How do they feel when their child is attacked [for being gay]?” Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 63
4 Things That Happened This Semester That Should Give You Hope For the Future
We have a lot of reasons to be worried about the future. (I won’t list them for you. It’s hard staying informed and involved without personally crumbling.) But.... One thing I’m going to do more of in 2018 to avoid personal crumbles in my quest to stay informed/involved is to practice gratitude in a more disciplined way—to sit and list out each morning at least three things I’m grateful for. I also will take this opportunity to recognize that I stick with journals/ routines/resolutions like this for approximately three weeks before abandoning them permanently. But it’s going to be a really good three weeks. I 64 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
can feel it. To get myself ramped up for the New Year, I’m listing out some moments from this past semester that have made me grateful and hopeful for the next generation. Though I worry about the world we’re leaving them, I rarely worry about the goodness of the young people. Here’s what I mean. 1) My students watched Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story” early in the year, in which Adichie discusses the harm in accepting stories about a person, group, or situation from only one point of view.
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I had thought that the best part of this lesson was my student’s initial discussion of the video, but it turns out that the best part was how much it stuck with my students. Without my prompting, my students have returned to the talk again and again, comparing ideas and stories to things they find in literature, current events, and in their own lives. When one student confessed to me that she had a crush on a guy in school—one that I don’t have in my classes—my first question was if he was nice to her (“Yes,”) and my second question was if he tries hard in school (“Well… not really.”). When I raised an eyebrow at her answer to my second question, she said, smiling, “Ms. ______, you aren’t making him into a single-story kind of guy, are you?” I absolutely was, and I was absolutely delighted to be called out on it. 2) Another middle school teacher I know—we’ll call her Ms. Todd—told me this story. A student asked why they weren’t doing Christmas activities in her class, and she responded that, although Christmas is a special time, anyone who celebrates Christmas would have more than enough opportunities to do so at home with their families. “But everyone in here celebrates Christmas!” one student said. “Right?” Another student spoke up that he was Jewish, so his family celebrated Hanukkah. He was happy to explain to the class the origins of the holiday and how his family celebrated. (In case it’s been a while since you were around middle schoolers, acknowledging that you are apart from the pack at age 13 is basically the bravest thing in the world.) Then the next day at school two students brought him Hanukkah cards that they had the class sign. You can go cry now.
“You seem sad. Is everything OK?” The other person had written beneath that question, “No.” Then the first person had responded, “Want me to draw a sloth for you?” 4) Ever since I taught my students about finding and evaluating sources for reliability, they have developed this running joke (really, a clever social criticism) that anything they disagree with or don’t want to believe is fake news. Me: Well, I would let you redo this tomorrow, but we’re presenting projects tomorrow. Student: We are? No—I thought they were due Thursday! Me: Nope. It’s been on the board, my friend. Student: The board is fake news! Student: How long does the analysis need to be? Me: Hmm, I would say ballpark 700-1,000 words. Student: Fake news. You meant 100. Me (laughing): One hundred words is barely a paragraph! Student: Fake news. One hundred words is a book now. It cracks me up every single time. They’re being silly when they say it, but it makes me deeply happy to send a pack of kids into the world who can read, think, and recognize absurdity for themselves. There are more reasons, but I didn’t have space for, like, four thousand more. Peace and joy to you in 2018. Let me know if you want me to draw you a sloth. Love, Teach http://www.loveteachblog.com/
3) One day I found a note between classes that had fallen on the floor. It said,
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 65
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
6 pieces of bad advice people g
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Some popular parenting advice is actually counterproductive to children’s success.
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Parents shouldn’t tell their kids to focus on the future — instead, they should encourage living in the moment.
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Children are experiencing stress at younger ages so parents should teach coping mechanisms.
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Kids should also be reminded that it is okay to make mistakes.
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Most parents want their kids to be successful in life—and so we teach them attitudes that we believe will help them achieve their goals. But as I learned while researching my book “The Happiness Track,” many widely-held theories about what it takes to be successful are proving to be counterproductive. Sure, they may produce results in the short term. But eventually, they lead to burnout and—get this—less success. Here are a few of the most damaging things many of us are currently teaching our children about success, and what to teach them instead.
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give their kids without realizing Emma Seppala
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What we tell our kids: Focus on the future. Keep your eyes on the prize.
What we should be telling them: Live (or work) in the moment. It’s hard to stay tightly focused. Research shows our minds tend to wander 50% of the time we›re awake. And when our minds wander, we often start to brood over the past or worry about the future—thereby leading to negative emotions like anger, regret, and stress. A mind that is constantly trying to focus upon the future—from getting good grades to applying to colleges—will be prone to greater anxiety and fear. While a little bit of stress can serve as a motivator, long-term chronic stress impairs our health as well as our intellectual faculties, such as attention and memory. As a consequence, focusing too hard on the future can actually impair our performance.
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Children do better, and feel happier, if they are learn how to stay in the present moment. And when people feel happy, they’re able to learn faster, think more creatively, and problem-solve more easily. Studies even suggest that happiness makes you 12% more productive. Positive emotions also make you more resilient to stress—helping you to overcome challenges and setbacks more quickly so you can get back on track. It’s certainly good for children to have goals they’re working toward. But instead of always encouraging them to focus on what’s next on their to-do list, help them stay focused on the task or conversation at hand. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 67
Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
What we tell our kids: Stress is inevitable — keep pushing yourself.
What we should be telling them instead: Learn to chill out. Children are feeling anxious at younger and younger ages, worrying about grades and feeling pressure to do better at school. Most distressingly, we’re even seeing stress-induced suicides in children—especially in high-achieving areas like Palo Alto in Silicon Valley. The way we conduct our lives as adults often communicates to children that stress is an unavoidable part of leading a successful life. We down caffeine and over-schedule ourselves during the day, living in a constant state of overdrive and burning ourselves out—and at night, we’re so wired that we use alcohol, sleep medication, or Xanax to calm down.
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All in all, this is not a good lifestyle to model for children. It’s no surprise that research shows that children whose parents are dealing with burnout at work are more likely than their peers to experience burnout at school. I recommend that parents consider teaching their children the skills they will need to be more resilient in the face of stressful events. While we can’t change the work and life demands that we face at work and at school, we can use techniques such as meditation, yoga and breathing to better deal with the pressures we face. These tools help children learn to tap into their parasympathetic “rest and digest” nervous system (as opposed to the “fight or flight” stress response).
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Oleg. / Flickr
What we tell our kids: Stay busy.
What we should be telling them: Have fun doing nothing. Even in our leisure time, people in Western societies tend to value high-intensity positive emotions like excitement, as opposed to lowintensity emotions like calm. (The opposite is true in East Asian countries.) This means that our kids’ schedules are often packed to the brim with extracurricular activities and family outings, leaving little downtime. There’s nothing wrong with excitement, fun, and seeking out new experiences. But excitement, like stress, exhausts our physiology by tapping into our “fight or flight” system—and so we can unwittingly prompt our children to burn through their energy after school or on weekends, leaving them with fewer resources for the times when they need it most. Moreover, research shows that our brains are
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more likely to come up with brilliant ideas when we are not focusing (thus the proverbial a-ha moment in the shower). So instead of over-scheduling kids, we should be blocking out time when they can be left to their own devices. Children can turn any situation— whether they are sitting in a waiting room or walking to school—into an opportunity for play. They may also choose calming activities like reading a book, taking the dog for a walk, or simply lying under a tree and staring up at the clouds—all of which will allow them to approach the rest of their lives from a more centered, peaceful place. Giving your kids downtime will help them to be more creative and innovative. And just as importantly, it will help them learn to relax.
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The point here is not to never challenge them or deprive them of opportunities for learning, the point is not to over-schedule and over commit them to the point where they don’t have opportunities to learn independent play, to be with themselves and daydream, to learn to be happy just being rather than always doing.
Getty Images/Ian Waldie
What we tell our kids: Play to your strengths.
What we should be telling them: Make mistakes and learn to fail. Parents tend to identify their children by their strengths and the activities that come naturally to them. They say their child is a “ a math person,” a “people person,” or “an artist.” But research by Stanford University’s Carol Dweck shows that this mindset actually boxes your child into a persona, and makes them less likely to want to try new things that they may not be good at. When a kid receives praise primarily for being athletic, for example, they’re less likely to want to leave their comfort zone and try out for drama club. This can make them more anxious and depressed when faced with failure or challenges. Why? Because they believe that, if 70 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
they encounter obstacles in a given area, that make them “not good at” the activity. But our brains are wired to learn new things. And it can only be a good thing to learn from our mistakes while we’re young. So instead identifying your child’s strengths, teach them that they actually can learn anything—as long as they try. Research by Dweck, author of bestselling book Mindset, shows children will then be more optimistic and even enthusiastic in the face of challenges, knowing that they just need to give it another go to improve. And they will be less likely to feel down about themselves and their talents.
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Flickr/Giulio Mola
What we tell our kids: Know your weaknesses, and don’t be soft.
What we should be telling them: Treat yourself well. We also tend to think that criticism is important for self-improvement. But while self-awareness is of course important, parents often inadvertently teach their children to be too self-critical. If a parent tells a child that she should try to be more outgoing, for example, the child may internalize that as a criticism of her naturally introverted personality. But research on self-criticism shows that it is basically self-sabotage. It keeps you focused on what’s wrong with you, thereby decreasing your confidence. It makes you afraid of failure, which hurts your performance, makes you give up more easily, and leads to poor decision-making. And self-criticism makes you more likely to be anxious and depressed when faced with a challenge.
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Instead, parents should encourage children to develop attitudes of self-compassion—which means treating yourself as you would a friend in times of failure or pain. This doesn’t mean that your children should be self-indulgent or let themselves off the hook when they mess up. It simply means that they learn not to beat themselves up. A shy child with self-compassion, for example, will tell herself that it’s okay to feel shy sometimes and that her personality simply isn’t as outgoing as others —and that she can set small, manageable goals to come out of her shell. This mindset will allow her to excel in the face of challenge, develop new social skills, and learn from mistakes.
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Mat Hayward/Getty Images for Knowledge Universe
What we tell our kids: It’s a dog-eat-dog world — so look out for number one.
What we should be telling them: Show compassion to others. Research shows that, from childhood onward, our social connections are the most important predictor of health, happiness, and even longevity. Having positive relationships with other people is essential for our well-being, which in turn influences our intellectual abilities and ultimate success. Moreover, likability is one of the strongest predictors of success — regardless of actual skills. Wharton professor Adam Grant’s book “Give & Take” shows that you express compassion to those around you and create supportive relationships instead of remaining focused on yourself, you will actually be more successful in the long term—as long as you don’t let yourself be taken advantage of.
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Children are naturally compassionate and kind. But as psychologist Jean Twenge has written about in her book Generation Me, young people are also becoming increasingly self-involved. So it’s important to encourage children’s natural instincts to care about other people’s feelings and learn to put themselves in other people’s shoes. It’s true that it’s a tough world out there. But it would be a lot less tough if we all emphasized cutthroat competition less, and put a higher premium on learning to get along. Emma Seppälä is the Science Director of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education and author of The Happiness Track. She is also Co-Director of the Yale College Emotional Intelligence Project at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
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21/11/17 5:14 PM
Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 73
Does This Writing Group Work? In Artistic Licence blog, Bethany White wrote about a writing group run by history students. Now she finds out whether or not the group works. I’d heard many good things about the Shut Up And Write writing group, but I’d never tried it out for myself. But with a worryingly high number of words left to write for my PhD, and the encouragement of the group’s leader, Rachel Delman, I finally decided to give it a go.
Feeling lethargic on a Monday morning in June, I headed to the History Faculty. The group I found there was small but friendly. We gathered in the common room for breakfast and chatted about our writing goals. At 9.30, we settled into one of the classrooms. Furtively brushing pastry crumbs from my lap, I opened my laptop and dutifully gathered my notes, casting sneaky glances around the room. I felt like a novice. Would I really be able to write for this long without getting distracted? What about Twitter?! It’s no secret that writing a PhD is a long slog. In fact, any kind of writing involves navigating a psychological obstacle course. First there are all the distractions: e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, news, memes, YouTube, 4,000-word think-pieces that must be read now. Suddenly, everything else in the world seems far more important. But it’s not just the lure of distraction. You’ve also got to contend with writer’s block. Writer’s block is endlessly frustrating. At its worst, you can’t think of any words at all. At its best, you can just about pluck some out and put them in order, but at a pace that feels like running in slow-motion. It was these two demons that I was hoping to excise by joining the writing group. Hopefully, I thought, the guilt-trip of being in a room full of productive people would keep me on the straight and narrow. Before we began, Rachel went around the room and asked us to announce a writing goal for the day. Someone wanted to finish their master’s thesis; another wanted to tidy up their references; another needed to perfect an abstract. I settled for a thousand words of a new chapter. As soon as we started, library silence filled the room: complete stillness save the tapping of
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Bethany White
keyboards and the odd shuffle of papers. Brows furrowed and pens were chewed as everyone clicked into concentration. It was remarkably easy to focus. The room felt heavy with the weight of work, and in a room like that, motivation is catching. By the end of the first hour, I’d written five hundred words, and hadn’t checked Twitter once. During the break, I chatted to Rachel about why she thinks writing in a group helps. “I think it works because it’s such short chunks of time, and you assume everyone else is working,” she says. “When I’m on my own, if I get an e-mail, I check it. But when I’m in the group, I think, I’ve only got fifty minutes left—I’ll check it later!” I agree. Most of the time, comparison is demoralising and unhelpful. But in such a supportive environment, little dashes of it can help. If he can finish his footnotes, I can write this paragraph. We’re all in this together. In the second session, I flew through five hundred more words. It felt refreshing to work uninterrupted, and to wrangle with references rather than guilty retweets.
The third hour was harder, and more sluggish. But by the end of the session I had 1,263 words, in a row, making some degree of sense, that I hadn’t had that morning. I’d also gained three strawberries, an almond pastry, two cups of coffee, and some writing companions. I’m sure the writing group isn’t a magic fix. We all have good days and bad days—days when you feel like you’re writing the next big thing, and days when all you can heave out of yourself is one lonely sentence. But working together, regularly, for a strict number of hours, is unusual for a humanities postgraduate, and it definitely helps. It helps to know that you’re among others and that everyone else struggles, but it also helps just to have a chat over coffee. Writing is hard. But with initiatives like Shut Up and Write, hopefully the journey will feel a little easier. Plus, there are free strawberries. That always helps. http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog
Rachel Delman, a history PhD student who leads a writing group for students
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 75
Yale Young African Scholars celebrat
Yaa Oparebea Ampofo ‘16, Mentorship Coordinator for the Yale Young African Scholars program, with a group of students. When Yale President Peter Salovey announced the Yale Africa Initiative in 2013, he inspired several Yale students from the continent to work toward achieving his goal of “bringing Africa to Yale and Yale to Africa.” The students wanted to find a way to expose students in Africa to the experience
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of studying at a university like Yale before they apply to college, as well as advice on submitting a strong application. They consulted Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science and director of the The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, who embraced the idea.
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tes 5th anniversary Adam Gaber
information about how to complete the forms, about what requirements they have to meet, and especially about financial aid options. We wanted our peers back home to know what incredible opportunities are out here for them, and we wanted to share our advice as students who’d gone through the U.S. university application process successfully.” Rebekah Westphal, then-director of international admissions for Yale College, and Erin Schutte Wadzinski, director of the Yale Young Global Scholars program (YYGS), helped the students create a comprehensive YYAS pilot program, which launched in the summer of 2014.
Inaugural sessions in Ghana and Ethiopia
With funds contributed by the MacMillan Center, Yaa Oparebea Ampofo ’16 B.A. and several other African students designed and piloted Yale Young African Scholars (YYAS), a week-long program designed to introduce high school students to the concept of a liberal arts education in the United States and to the process of applying for admission and financial aid. “Often African students on the continent struggle with the process of applying to universities abroad,” said Ampofo. “They lack
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To gain visibility and get the program up and running, the YYAS team developed an application form, which the Yale students distributed through their networks back home. In their first year they received more than 1,200 applications from 15 countries. They selected 100 participants and ran the first YYAS sessions in Ghana and Ethiopia during July and August 2014. In seminars and discusion groups, the Yalies offered an introduction to university academics and provided training for taking the SAT (the standardized test is often foreign and challenging to international students). Also, the Yale students shared their personal experiences and offered encouragement to the participants. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 77
Ampofo consults a YYAS student. “We wanted the students to benefit from what we’d learned, and see that we’d made it through the process so they could believe in themselves and their own chances,” Ampofo said. Recognizing the success of the pilot program, and keen to see it continue to help raise awareness about Yale across the continent, the university made the YYAS an official session part of the YYGS department. Again with support from the MacMillan Center, YYAS ran another two sessions for 100 students in Rwanda and Zimbabwe during summer 2015. “What YYAS immediately underscored for us is the huge number of high-potential, and highly qualified students to be found across the continent,” Schutte Wadzinski said. “We were thrilled to see that YYAS could help us reach more of them.”
‘Something truly transformative’ “We were absolutely thrilled with how well the pilot program went,” Ampofo said. “Not only were participants excited about at the information they gained, but a great many of supportive lifelong relations and friendships were formed as well. We knew, upon conclusion of the pilot that we were onto something — something truly transformative.” It was then that the Office of International Affairs connected with Strive and Tsitsi Masiyiwa, 78 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
philanthropists from Zimbabwe who were eager to support YYAS. Through their Higherlife Foundation the Masiyiwas provided a gift that would fund an additional three years of YYAS programming and help it expand to reach 300 students per year. Today YYAS is one of the flagship programs of the Yale Africa Initiative and aims to make higher education more accessible to Africa’s most talented student leaders. This past July and August, YYAS brought together a total of 300 secondary school students in Ghana, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe.
Meaningful impact on young African leaders Now entering the final year of the funding from the Masiyiwas, YYAS has become an intensive academic and enrichment program for African secondary school students who plan to pursue a university education and make meaningful impact as young leaders on the continent. This year, YYAS will offer two programs for 150 students each in Kigali, Rwanda, and Tema, Ghana. On average, students come from more than 30 African nations and more than 200 different schools. Twenty Yale undergraduate and graduate students, most of whom hail from the continent themselves, will serve as instructors and mentors to the participants. Participants will attend lectures by prominent
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Yale faculty and local experts as well as seminars developed and taught by Yale graduate and undergraduate students. Participants also engage in several experiential activities focusing on leadership and teambuilding and have a chance to interact directly with admissions officers from North American, African, and European universities. Following the program, students will be paired with mentors from local organizations and U.S. university students who will help advise them throughout the university application process. YYAS offers daily workshops on different components of a university application, such as the ins and outs of the Common Application and how to craft a personal essay. By the end of the program, students have a plan and timeline for submitting their applications, as well as abundant resources for further research and mentorship. In addition, students receive both individual and group lessons for standardized tests, designed specifically for African test-takers. Participation in the program is free, making it accessible to students of all financial backgrounds. In addition, YYAS offers a limited number of travel grants for admitted students from low-income backgrounds who demonstrate
the need for financial assistance to offset the costs of airfare between African countries. YYAS is made possible thanks to the support of the Higherlife Foundation as well as by contributions from The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studiesat Yale. YYAS benefits from support from three Local Partner Organizations who help administer the sessions alongside Yale’s staff and student teams. Ahaspora, located in Ghana, Imbuto Foundation in Rwanda, and Education Matters in Zimbabwe each offer local expertise plus ongoing mentorship for YYAS alumni from these countries. In addition, these local partners host Educators’ Conferences during YYAS. These conferences bring together 30-50 teachers, advisers, and headmasters from secondary schools in their regions for a two-day training program on how to support African students applying to university abroad. Such conferences expand the YYAS impact considerably, since the educators return to their communities equipped to assist many students with their university and financial aid applications. https://news.yale.edu
Laura Kaub, YYAS Program Manager, addresses a group of students.
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 79
The Global Search for Education: Hello Cod
“We specifically write our content using language that even young children can understand.” — Derek Lo
Why were 600,000 high-paying tech jobs unfilled in 2015 in the United States alone, or is the better question: Is technology developing faster than humans can learn to handle it? According to the White House, by 2018, 51 percent of STEM jobs will be in computer science-related fields. However, the number of tech employees has not increased along with the number of jobs available. Why? The answer is simple: lack of relevant education. The White House maintains that just one quarter of K-12 schools offer highquality computer science with programming and coding. In addition, in 2016, the PEW Research Center reported that only 17% of adults believed they were “digitally ready.” When we look at diversity, things only get worse. In 2015, 22 percent of students taking the AP Computer Science exam were girls while 13 percent were AfricanAmerican or Latino. These statistics are not 80 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
U.S. specific; in 2015, Australia reported that only 28 percent of ICT jobs were held by women. Coding has always been regarded as a mysterious field, something Derek Lo, cofounder of the new application “Py”, wants to change. Launched in 2016, the application offers interactive courses on everything from Python to iOS development. The “unique value proposition,” as Lo puts it, has been a revolutionary success. The fun-oriented application has so far resulted in over 100,000 downloads on both iTunes and Google Play. Most parents frown when kids use their phones at the dinner table, but what if the kids were learning to code over Sunday roast? “Ok, so maybe not the Sunday roast, but seriously, could a more accessible and fun coding application make all the difference?”
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ding – When Did You Get So Cool? C. M. Rubin
“Coding can provide people with the awesome ability of being able to create tangible things like websites and apps. It also instills less tangible things like a greater aptitude for systematic thinking and logical decision making.” — Derek Lo
The Global Search for Education is excited to welcome one of Py’s founders, Derek Lo, to discuss how Py’s revolutionary approach is literally making coding cool. People say education today is often treated as a business and that individual students’ needs have not been prioritized enough. As the number of qualified applicants increases, can individualized learning tools, such as Py, help today’s generations remain competent in our globalized world, even with “broken” education systems? Yes. As college acceptance rates decline, more people will need alternatives for learning careeressential skills, and we believe Py will be a big part of that. Using machine learning algorithms, we’re able to adapt the user experience based on prior skill and behavior within the app, creating a tailored curriculum. Having a personal tutor in your pocket that knows how you learn and what you should be learning is powerful and why we are investing in personalization. Py provides its users with a simple and easy platform while many other coding applications
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(e.g. Solo Learn) have opted for more traditional and serious lesson plans. Does making learning applications appear more serious fuel the conception that coding is a hard and scary thing to learn? Are we over-complicating the field of coding and making it seem inaccessible for people or should students really be this wary of programming? One of the reasons that my co-founder and I started Py is to demystify “coding”. We make it easy by making it fun. When you’re dragging pretty blocks around and pressing colorful buttons, it doesn’t feel like work. Yet users are still soaking up all the same knowledge they would be by slogging through a boring textbook. We also intentionally avoid programming jargon until the learner is ready. A good example is when we teach users about loops—-we use words like “repeat” instead of “iterate”. Almost all of Py’s courses are focused on teaching the fundamental concepts using simple language and in an interactive fashion. Also, many people are scared away from learning how to code because they hear from friends Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 81
“We’re extremely excited about helping to change people’s image (and selfimage) of who a coder is and actively encourage more girls to get into coding.” — Derek Lo
that computer science is such a difficult major in school. An important thing to realize is that there’s a big difference between theoretical computer science and making a simple website. An art major might not need to understand Dijkstra’s algorithm, but would greatly benefit from knowing a bit of HTML and CSS. What would you say to skeptics who question whether a game-like application like Py can truly help people learn how to code properly? Gamification isn’t a hindrance to learning—-it accelerates it. By keeping you excited and engaged, Py teaches you better than if you got bored or zoned out. When you’re having fun, you actually learn faster and better. Another way to phrase this question might be, “Even if Py is fun, do you walk away having learned something from it?” The answer is yes, definitely. We’re very data-driven, constantly improving our courses by analyzing our users’ progress. We can see (and track) real progress in our users’ ability to understand everything from basic semantics to high-level algorithms and design principles. Do you think Py’s game-like surface allows younger generations to become more involved 82 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
with coding? Yes. We specifically write our content using language that even young children can understand. In fact, a parent emailed us just the other day telling us he was using Py to teach his 10-year old son Python! Currently our target demographic is definitely a bit older than that though. We think of Py as the learn-to-code solution for the SnapChat generation. What general skills does coding teach kids/ young adults? Coding can provide people with the awesome ability of being able to create tangible things like websites and apps. It also instills less tangible things like a greater aptitude for systematic thinking and logical decision making. Py has recently partnered with Girls Who Code. Why do you think coding has been branded throughout history as a ‘male’ profession and how do you hope to eliminate this gender gap? Historically some of the most important computer scientists are women. Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper are considered pioneers of programming. Stereotypes aside, men and women are obviously equally capable of becoming great software engineers. We’re
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(All photos are courtesy of CMRubinWorld)
extremely excited about helping to change people’s image (and self-image) of who a coder is and actively encourage more girls to get into coding. We’re huge fans of Girls Who Code and we’re so excited to provide them free premium subscriptions for some of their students. When we think of coding, we mostly envision computer screens, yet we tend to use our phones more often than we do our computers. How does Py bridge the gap between using a computer screen as opposed to learning how to code on smaller devices? Is the coding world shifting to using smartphones or is coding still a generally ‘computer’ based field? People actually don’t need to type lots of code to learn the concepts necessary to become great programmers. We’ve built interaction types like “fill-in-the-blank” that let users quickly edit code on the fly without any typing. Recently we’ve also created a custom keyboard that allows users to type real code on their phones in a frictionless way. This is great for short programs and practicing the fundamentals, and it’s how we’re making the transition from computer to phone and vice versa easier. Applying this knowledge to create a website or app does still primarily take place on computers. But the world is seeing a wave of new mobile learning applications, and I
think we’re at the forefront of that trend. How do you envision the world of coding changing in the next 15-20 years? How will Py keep up with these changes in the field? Coding will become less about rote memorization of basic syntax and more about high-level understanding of what’s really going on. At a minimum, programming languages have morphed from low-level (shifting bits and allocating memory) to high-level (abstract data structures and functional programming), from obtuse (assembly, machine code) to human friendly (Python, Swift). That’s why Py focuses on high-level concepts. Once you understand how an algorithm works, typing it out should be an afterthought. The important thing is to understand it—once you do, it’s yours forever. (Zita Petrahai contributed to this article)
C. M. Rubin and Derek Lo
“Once you understand how an algorithm works, typing it out should be an afterthought. The important thing is to understand it—once you do, it’s yours forever.” — Derek Lo
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 83
How Do Leaders Use Compromise A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus. -
Beneath the surface of the national shutdown, is a nagging question. It is one that has haunted our history and that of other nations as well. Is compromise a necessary dimension of a system where multiple perspectives are welcomed or is it a convenience that has too often leads us away from a necessary conflict of principles and into perpetual gray and even avoidance? Many of our policies and decisions involve a process of compromise and, sometimes, we find ourselves so committed to an idea, a position that we cannot engage in a process that causes us to give up some piece of what we see a right and good. Or, is that when we become obstructionists to those who want a deal? Certainly, it seems the age old practice of give and take, of compromise, is now broken in Washington, DC. It caused us to ask a group of young educators the questions, “Is the ability to compromise dead in the US?” “How is compromise reached?” Answers varied. The one that follows is a sample of the general response.
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Martin Luther King, Jr.
I believe the ability to compromise still exists, although the willingness may be stunted. The current government shutdown shows that while compromise hasn’t happened yet to end the shutdown, there are still people who are working to end it. While it is unfortunate that the Senate is reactive instead of proactive, I believe eventually we will find a compromise because the stakes are too high. This does show that there is an example of pushing beyond the limit before giving up a win and settling for an understanding. I see school leadership as similar to government leadership. Each group of stakeholders has a goal in mind, but the path to the goal differs. We, as leaders, must find a path that we can all follow, even if it is not the preferred path for all parties, it is a path we can all navigate successfully to achieve the end goal. What we find of most interest is the ‘what’ in the answer. It explains the author’s description of compromise. There is an assumption of agreement on the ‘what’, on the end goal. Most people in the room expressed similar perspective. Leaders and their teachers know what has to be done and expect others including their boards and students to see the same end line. We aren’t sure that is the case but let’s accept their assumption and consider it is the path, the ‘how’, that presents the problem. Another revealing comment above was the line, “...before giving up a win and settling for an understanding.” This may be the most powerful and revealing phrase. It asserts that in every compromise there is a loss. Maybe this is where Washington gets disabled. Compromise can be a process in which everyone wins a
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Photo by catkin courtesy of Pixabay
e and Consensus? Jill Berkowicz and Ann Myers
little and gives up a bit or it can be framed as a win vs. lose process. It can provoke the strong to revert to, “My way or the highway.” When that happens in governing bodies, usually, over time everyone loses.
Consensus and Compromise Perhaps leaders who deeply listen to the comment of the young educator might get an insight. Could we marry the processes of consensus and of compromise to benefit our work? Here’s our take away thought and question. If we could get agreement on the ‘what’ by consensus, does that open the door to compromise on the ‘how’? Consensus is based on these three statements...I understand. I can agree. I will support. Merriam-Webster offers these words as synonyms: accord, concurrence, concurrency, agreement, unanimity, and unison. A recent headline read “Lawmakers remain in partisan disputes”. None of the synonyms for consensus apply here. As MLK stated, a leader must be a molder of consensus. Anyone who has done pottery knows that it is clay, the potter’s skillful hands, a wheel, a kiln and a glaze that produces unique and stunning pottery. The leader who molds consensus is one with skill and vision, one who works with people and honors them while asking them to hear another. It is one who discerns well and can separate the wheat from the chaff. The ‘what’ is the essence. It matters most. If decision making begins there and keeps returning there as a litmus test of authenticity, perhaps a bit of give and take on the ‘how’ gets easier.
Once a safe space is established, where all opinions are welcomed, it is the finesse of the leader that helps mold the group into a shared place. That subtle art of leadership makes the real difference. Where people can express and examine thinking and maybe clear out the bias and influences that cause them to seek a win or impose a loss to a place fertile ground is found for agreement.
In the End Building consensus requires the leader to be certain everyone can let go, understand, agree, and support an idea. Building consensus is a social/emotional skill, not an administrative one. Building consensus is accomplished only when the goal is the same, the common ground is clearly articulated and agreed upon and all involved are heard, understood, respected, included, and all leave the room having experienced the same process. When, in MLK’s words, molding consensus is accomplished, the pathway is cleared for movement forward. Educators can model and teach this. As we have said so many times before, we have the opportunity to develop the next generation of leaders, of consensus builders and compromisers or not. Ann Myers and Jill Berkowicz are the authors of The STEM Shift (2015, Corwin) a book about leading the shift into 21st century schools. Ann and Jill welcome connecting through Twitter & Email.
School leaders, as all leaders, need to respect the opposition as well as those who are supportive. That is unless a leader believes he or she can be successful by leading a part of the community and serving a part of the student body. Educators know they are responsible for all so we cannot allow the luxury of dismissing those who see the world through differing lenses. Care, listening, and understanding are the foundational attributes that begin to help those involved.
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Miniature Paintings on Tea Bags by
Some of us may give our used tea bags a second life by squeezing an extra steep out of them, but Ruby Silvioustakes things a step further by using the thin paper as a canvas for miniature paintings. Silvious mirrors the simple ritual of tea drinking in quiet paintings that show slices of everyday life, like laundry drying and cats looking out the window. The artist began her initial year-long series of paintings in January 2015. Since then, Silvious has compiled that year into a book, and traveled to Japan and southern France for month-long sessions of tea drinking and painting. Her work is included in a group show “Deemed a Canvas” at Paradigm Gallery in Philadelphia, which opened on January 26th. You can see more of Silvious’ work on her website and Instagram.
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Ruby Silvious Laura Staugaitis
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boredpanda.com
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Reports show that Australia nee early education Early Childhood Australia (ECA) today welcomes the Lifting our Game report, commissioned by state and territory governments, which calls on Australian governments to increase their investment in early education and extend universal preschool access to three-year-old children. ‘This report makes very strong arguments that investing in high-quality early education for Australia’s children delivers both education benefits for children and wider social benefits for the whole community’, said ECA CEO Samantha Page.
In particular, ECA welcomes the call for Australia to extend preschool programs to three-year-olds, while ensuring that funding preschool in the year before school is made secure. ‘This is not about three-year-old children starting school; three and four-year-old children benefit enormously from participating in preschool programs that are delivered in an age appropriate way—that means the program is play based, the environment is specifically designed for young children and the staff are qualified in early education’, said Ms Page. OECD data shows that Australia has historically one of the lowest participation rates of threeyear-olds in pre-primary education, at just 15 percent in 2015, compared to the OECD average of 69 percent. The “Lifting Our Game” report comes on the back of the Report on Government Services (ROGS) 2018 for early childhood data being released overnight, which shows that enrolments in four-year-old preschool are still improving. ‘It’s good to see preschool enrolments are increasing nationally with 92.4 percent of children attending a preschool program in the year before school in 2016’, said Ms Page. ‘While NSW demonstrated lower levels of enrolment than other jurisdictions in 2016, at 85 percent, it is encouraging to see enrolments lifting in that state.’ ‘ECA is encouraged by the continued improvement in quality ratings, and supports government efforts to ensure that parents can readily access information about the performance of a service against the National Quality Standard, including any breaches. We also welcome that the proportion of educators with qualifications in early education and teaching continues to rise, this is a critical component of
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eds to strengthen and extend
The ROGS data from the Productivity Commission shows that there is still more work needed to ensure that children at greatest risk of educational outcomes have better access to high-quality early education, including children with additional needs, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, children in refugee and migrant families, children from low income households and those living in remote areas.
least 15 hours of a high-quality preschool program for two years before school. The current National Partnership Agreement on Universal Access to Early Childhood Education seeks to ensure that in the year before school, children are attending 15 hours per week. We need to extend this same benchmark for threeyear-old preschool to ensure we are meeting global best practice. ECA also welcomes the increased focus on reporting of preschool participation in the ROGS report.
‘We know that children who attend some form of quality early learning before they start school have significantly lower risk of being developmentally vulnerable (19.9 percent), compared to children who don’t attend any form of early education (38.5 percent)’, said Ms Page.
‘The latest ROGS report attempts to get a more accurate picture of how many children are participating in preschool programs at long day care centres, but ECA remains concerned that the methods for measuring enrolment don’t accurately reflect attendance levels.
ECA welcomes the “Lifting Our Game” report recommendation for prioritisation of disadvantaged children, families and communities during the rollout of three-year-old preschool.
‘Ultimately, if we want to measure the impact of early learning on children’s education experiences, we need the Australian Government to build a data system that can measure participation in a more meaningful way than just enrolment, and track children’s trajectory overtime’, concluded Ms Page.
Research evidence tells us that children need at
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Source: State of Early Learning in Australia 2017
improving quality experiences for children, as well as addressing low wages in the sector’, continued Ms Page.
Catalyst Education Awards recognize Vicksburg principal who created the ‘Tobey Way’ Christine Van Timmeren
Under Barwegen’s guidance, the staff created a model the school lives by everyday called the Tobey Way.
Rather than words on a wall, the Tobey Way is a philosophy, and one everyone buys into at Tobey Elementary School in Vicksburg. Created by the staff under the guidance of principal Mike Barwegen, the Tobey Way is a model for how everyone at the school lives each day. The leadership Barwegen provided on that project is one of the reasons he was recognized as a winner of this year’s Catalyst Education Awards, presented by Southwest Michigan First. The organization chose this year to honor a teacher, a principal and an education program at its annual event. Being a school principal is about more than just management and authority; it’s leading by example and creating a positive environment where students and staff can thrive. Those who know Mike Barwegen, said he is a principal who exemplifies those traits. “He is hands down the best principal that I’ve ever met,” said Nikki Gerber, a volunteer at Tobey Elementary School. “The kids respect him; the teachers love him; the parents love him.” Painted on the school buildings wall, the Toby Way includes five behaviors -- each starting with the letters that spell out Tobey. They are: • Treat others with respect! • Offer a helping hand! • Be responsible! 98 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
• Expect excellence! • Yearn to learn! School staff and volunteers said the Tobey Way presents itself in everything students do, from raising money, to building a handicapped accessible playground for another student, to petitioning the Michigan governor to create a Dwarfism Awareness Day. “The reason for this award is not me; it’s the people around me and the kids here at Tobey,” Barwegen said. “We make them leaders, and they become leaders in the Tobey Way. For example, four girls exemplified the Tobey Way when they saw a student from another district in need and stepped up. “I guess we just did our best to help her,” the students said. “Yeah, we remembered the Tobey Way and offered a helping hand.” Barwegen said the girls made an impact. “The parent from that school district called me and wanted to transfer her daughter to Tobey, because of what she heard the girls say that night to her,” Barwegen said. While he won’t admit it, Barwegen is the spark behind the Tobey Way. Gerber said Barwegen is a deserving recipient of best principal in Southwest Michigan. “Mr. B makes Tobey Elementary,” she said.
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University of Cambridge launches a regional teaching hub to inspire teachers and children Dr James Biddulph Cambridge University Primary School Headteacher The University of Cambridge Primary School opened in 2015 and was the first primary University Training School in the UK.
Morley von Sternberg
University of Cambridge Primary School By becoming a hub for the Chartered College of Teaching we hope to share best practice across East Anglia and the Fens and benefit from the experience of teachers from across the region. The University of Cambridge Primary School (UCPS) has become a regional hub for the Chartered College of Teaching (CCT). Through the work with the University of Cambridge and other local and National partners, the regional hub is designed to be an energising and intellectually stimulating space to foster relationships and nurture professional dialogue among teachers. It will help teachers to explore notions of research-informed and research-generating practices which will benefit teachers and their pupils across the region. It offers an opportunity to support educators to feel inspired to further inspire the children they work with. Dr James Biddulph, headteacher of the UCPS, said: “We are committed to exemplary teaching and learning for children. In our approach to learning, we aim to be creative, bold, free thinking and rigorous. The school endeavours to put into practice what matters to children and is also an innovative professional learning community for teachers. By becoming a hub for the Chartered College of Teaching we hope to share best practice across East Anglia and the Fens and benefit from the experience of teachers from across the region.”
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Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge said: “We know that excellent teaching transforms the lives of all students, from those in early years to adult learners. We also know at the University of Cambridge that collaboration allows best practice and worldleading research to be shared and increases the benefit to the public that knowledge can impart. “I am delighted that the primary school will be the hub to develop, support and give voice to teachers in the region, enabling them to be the best they can, for the benefit of teaching in general and for their pupils in particular.” The CCT is a new initiative, set up in early 2017 to promote what works in teaching and help teachers from across the country to interact. Professor Dame Alison Peacock, Chief Executive of CCT, said: “The education landscape is challenging. Everything from curricular and assessment reform and budget constraints and workload concerns, to feelings of disempowerment and disillusion, can hamper what happens in the classroom. We set up the Chartered College of Teaching to change that. This is a once-in-a-generation chance for the teaching profession and we are incredibly encouraged that an exemplary organisation like the University of Cambridge Primary School, with its links to research within the university and beyond, takes on the role as a hub for the region.” A launch event for the hub set the scene for the role of the hub in supporting teachers engaging with research-informed teaching throughout Cambridgeshire and the Fens. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018 99
UN Human Rights? repression of civil society; discrimination against Tibetans and other minorities. Cuba Expertise in human rights: Systematic violation of freedom of speech, assembly, press; elections are neither free nor fair; threats and violence against dissidents. Iraq Expertise in human rights: Pro-government militias commit widespread human rights abuses, including assassinations, enforced disappearances, property destruction. Burundi Expertise in human rights: Police killings of peaceful protesters; government forces commit summary executions, targeted assassinations, enforced disappearances; arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence; genocide warning.
Meet the 2018 membership of the U.N. Human Rights Council, elected by the United Nations with the mandate to “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights“: Democratic Republic of Congo Expertise in human rights: President remains in power in violation of constitution as democratic elections postponed; suppression of opposition; torture; arbitrary arrests and prolonged detention; civil war; extrajudicial killings and massacres by government forces; violence against women; child soldiers. Qatar Expertise in human rights: Exploitation and abuse of 2 million migrant workers in Qatar; no political parties; women subjected to discrimination and denied basic rights to equality, denied right to be elected to legislative council; finances ISIS and Hamas. Saudi Arabia Expertise in human rights: Death sentences for apostasy and adultery; corporal punishment including flogging and amputation; judiciary controlled by regime; beheading more people than ever before; arbitrary arrests of dissenters and minorities; no freedom of speech; jails blogger Raif Badawi. Venezuela Expertise in human rights: Widespread arbitrary detention; imprisonment of opposition leaders; intimidation of journalists; torture; policies causing mass hunger and health catastrophe. China Expertise in human rights: Denial of freedom of speech, religion, and association; extrajudicial killings; 100 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018
United Arab Emirates Expertise in human rights: No political parties, no option to change government; restrictions on freedoms of speech, press, assembly, association; arrests without charge, incommunicado detentions, lengthy pretrial detentions; police and prison guard brutality; violence against women; anti-gay discrimination; mistreatment and sexual abuse of foreign domestic servants and other migrant workers. Pakistan Expertise in human rights: Extrajudicial and targeted killings by military and security forces; terrorism; torture; arbitrary detention; corruption; violence and discrimination against women and girls including honor killings and rape; violence against gays; violence against journalists; persecution of religious minorities; keeps Christian mother of five on death row for blasphemy. Afghanistan Expertise in human rights: Widespread government corruption; torture and abuse of detainees by government forces; terrorism; extrajudicial killings by government forces; arbitrary arrest and detention; restrictions on freedoms of speech, press, religion; routine violence against women and girls; abuse of children; trafficking in persons. Angola Expertise in human rights: Endemic government corruption; economic crisis; mass poverty; high child mortality, one in five children die before age five; extrajudicial killings and torture by government security forces; harassment and intimidation of journalists Etc.
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This is the same body that passes resolution after resolution condemning Israel. Hypocrites the lot of them. Afghanistan, Angola Australia Belgium Brazil Burundi Chile China Côte d’Ivoire Croatia Cuba Democratic Republic of the Congo Ecuador Egypt Ethiopia Georgia Germany Hungary Iraq Japan Kenya Kyrgyzstan Mexico Mongolia Nepal Nigeria Pakistan Panama Peru Philippines Qatar Republic of Korea Rwanda Saudi Arabia Senegal Slovakia Slovenia South Africa Spain Switzerland Togo Tunisia Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland United States of America Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)
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If you have an idle moment, you may wish to peruse the current membership of the United Nations’ Human Rights’ Council. There are a fair few member nations and I won’t list them here but there are several where human rights would be as likely as Donald Trump being asked to host the Oscars. Denial of freedom of speech, extrajudicial killings, extreme sexism, homophobia, torture and suppression of democracy are commonplace. Basically, it’s choose an atrocity and you’ll find a home on the UNHRC list. The logic which could justify inclusion of these countries escapes me. It’s like appointing Hitler to be chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Genghis Khan to head Amnesty International and Tom Cruise to oversee the Rationalist Society. But just to show how fair this august body is, it has passed something like 85% of all UN resolutions condemning Israel. Got to earn their pay after all! Anyway, seeing though inappropriateness is the order of the day, I thought I would delve into literature, mass media and the arts to compile a few more examples. After all, art does imitate life, eh? So here we, in the spirit of the United Nations, are some pairings with international groups, some of which may be imaginary. (no kidding) Exemplifying Women’s Rights: The Harem by Eric Gill https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-andideas/artwork/2150/the-harem Save the Children: The Pied Piper of Hamlin. Universal Love: Guernica by Pablo Picasso https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=qfZVu0alU0I Hyper-realistic Art: Women in Hat and Fur Collar by Pablo Picasso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_in_ Hat_and_Fur_Collar Society for Pitch-Perfect, Dulcet Tone Singers: Wandering Star by Lee Marvin https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=El9eCRisbDo Universal Optimists Society: Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuire https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=qfZVu0alU0I Amnesty International: Portrait of Genghis Khan http:// www.welcome2mongolia.com/archives/genghis-khansportrait/ RSPCA: After the Hunt by Gustave Courbet https:// www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436007 P.S. Let us not forget that other uplifting human endeavour, sport. Sorry, I know this is so last century but I couldn’t resist it. International Fair Play Committee: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=QIjCpPStHnE May 2018 be a wonderful year for education.
Roger
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“The best teachers don’t give you the answers... They just point the way ... and let you make your own choices.” 102 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2018