Term One 2019
“The best teachers don’t give you the answers... They just point the way ... and let you make your own choices.”
ATTENTION TEACHERS O-I New Zealand Environmental Fund Expressions of interest to make application for a grant from the O-I New Zealand Environmental Fund are invited. Up to $25,000 will be available in total for suitable environmental projects. For application forms and guidelines see our website www.recycleglass.co.nz or contact:
O-I New Zealand Environmental Fund: PO Box 12345 Penrose, Auckland 1642 Phone. 09 976 7127 Fax. 09 976 7119
Deadline for expression of interest is 31 March 2019
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Your Soapbox
Our Year in Review Mind Lab Scholarships Prepare Teachers Mind Lab The Façade vs. the reality John Hellner Just A Plate Of Rocks Elaine Le Sueur (MNZM) The Reality of Deforestation – Coming to a Classroom Near You CM Rubin From Tic Tac Toe to Fortnite - the real story behind games MOTAT Education Why having and utilizing empathy matters Joel Garfinkle Educators - save the date and get planning for Road Safety Week Book Releases New Holland £20 million research hub could help African teens achieve Oxford Research Society Sunlight Casts Shadows of Phrases Exploring Theories of Time Laura Staugaitis More Mindful Citizens Please CM Rubin A dose of Dr. Seuss for Packard Children’s preemies Erin Digitale
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Demand for Qualified Ece Teachers Spurs Return to Education Vision College
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‘Irish identity’ buried by SA’s colonial rule Flinders University How could multilingualism benefit India’s poorest schoolchildren? University of Cambridge Accelerated learning techniques in project management education Michelle LaBrosse Dried Grass and Branches are Woven and Stitched Laura Staugaitis Global students find solutions to Waikato’s waste problems Wintec Stronger political leadership needed to close global gender divide University of Cambridge Communicate with purpose David Nielson Knitting for a good cause Rhona Freeman Criminology students ‘Learning Together’ with local prisoners University of Surrey Welcome to the Family, Charlie! Stephanie Jankowski Norton Security for Windows Norton Molded Paper is Shaped into Personality-Filled Animal Portraits Laura Staugaitis Children’s sleep not significantly affected by screen time University of Oxford The Cruise Handbook Review Defying Tradition – Learning with Nooks CM Rubin Russian Artist Pushes Embroidery To Its Limits Sofia Tapia Truly Memorable Roger Front Cover: Back Cover:
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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
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Our (home-schooling, unschooling, lifeschooling, make-it-up-as-you-go schooling family) I’m supposed to keep records. I haven’t. It’s the only thing I am actually required to do - and I haven’t done it. Don’t worry though, just because I didn’t write it down, plenty of learning still happened. However, it certainly would have made it easier to write this article reviewing our first year as a home-schooling, unschooling, life-schooling, make-it-up-as-you-go schooling family had I made just a few notes along the way. The first year was probably a bigger learning curve for me than it was for our
Year in Review
just about 7 year old who is convinced she is “almost, nearly a teenager”. I have struggled at times to ‘be cool’ about sitting in a room with nothing to add while my friends proudly compare their children’s reading levels, While my inner-teacher freaks out that my child still isn’t reading. I caved. I looked up the colour wheel. She’s fine. A few weeks later she also read on a whim a whole chapter of Millie Molly Mandy one evening as I jokingly said one night if you read a
M checking out the driftwood washed up on the beach at Mount Maunganui after the first spring storms.
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 5
chapter I’ll read you the whole book. She did it. It was a long night. She hasn’t done it since. She doesn’t want to. She finds it hard and doesn’t enjoy it. But little by little I see her reading more independently. A recipe in a cookbook, a picture book to her sister, a road sign. The difference is, her reading progression is completely non-linear. She doesn’t fit on a colour wheel. I need to ignore the colour wheel. It’s hard to ignore the colour wheel when everyone is talking about the colour wheel and you are the only one with no colour wheel credentials, She has however, listened to the entire 127 hrs and 39 minutes of Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter on audio book - twice. It was a long winter; We have a nice warm fire and she has a table in front of it where she sits and plays lego, draws and crafts or otherwise she just lolls about on the floor listening to her stories. Harry Potter
has switched on a little light in her. It has pushed her imagination into overdrive, her vocabulary is enormous and her comprehension is beyond her years. For a number of weeks she referred to us as Muggles and carried a chopstick wand with her from the minute she got up in the morning. She painstakingly explained all the character connections, their motives, their achievements and their fatal flaws. She understands plot conventions and character motivation. How do I know? Because she talks about it endlessly to us - and through listening to the complexity of the underlying narratives in her play. Home-school activities… they are a thing. Interestingly they are the one thing that seems to make those most concerned with our daughter’s “social skills” breathe a sigh of relief. Those with the most concern tend to be people at checkouts or shop counters who always ask if
M exploring a beach hut in the made of driftwood in Marlborough sounds on our camper van trip around the South Island in October.
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M stripping apart the old bird house ready for ‘renovation’
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 7
she is having a day off school sick. She tells them she is homeschooled. They look at me in alarm and usually take about 3 questions to get to what they really want to say “what about the social aspects?” I reply don’t worry there are heaps of us and we do activities together. They breathe a sigh of relief and let us continue on our way. But truly. There are heaps of us and we do do activities together. From venue organised activities catering to homeschoolers such as swimming, music and drama classes, to trips, guest speaker type events, sports teams and co-op learning opportunities where families get together and parents take turns to run workshops or lessons in their area of specialty. The kids by-and-large get on great. They seem unconcerned by age. They play with whoever they want. They support each other, they chat away about their interests and activities and they basically just be kids together. Sounds idealistic? It pretty much is. Our weekdays have a rough flow - we have some activities locked in and then the week pans out around that. Monday afternoons are skating, “Big Tuesday” feels like a bit of a sprint to homeschool swimming lessons, followed by homeschool drama then off to 6 aside Football in a local school team who were only too happy to include us. Wednesday morning is art and then … that’s us. No more plans, structure, routine. We take each day as it comes and usually don’t know what will happen at the start of it but by the end we have caught up with friends, visited the library or art gallery, sewed, gardened, been to the beach, been bike riding, climbed around the rock pools, baked and cooked. So what has she done this year? She is a fearless mountain biker and makes regular trips on weekday mornings to ‘burn around the redwoods’ with her Dad; She makes stop motion movies of her LEGO characters; She independently cooks a meal of her choosing for the family one night a week; She makes cakes and pasta from scratch;
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We lie in bed until mid-morning watching live rocket launches and then watch YouTube videos to answer her unending questions about space and rockets; She stays up late to watch the International Space Station fly overhead and catches up on sleep the next day; She sits in her Dad’s office ‘working’ alongside him, sketching and drawing - on occasion she joins him for business meetings; She starts most weeks writing a goal list - little things she wants to achieve for the week; Apart from needing our EFTPOS cards to pay for the groceries she could do the household grocery shopping completely on her own - she knows what we need to stock up on before we do, she writes a shopping list and as we go around the supermarket works out the prices of different items and at the end has an estimate of the total by looking at how full the trolley is - which is usually pretty close!; She has started her own little business making roller skate covers and keeps a little book of receipts, stock-inventory and fabric samples and sells the covers to her friends; She independently heads out to the vegetable garden to “see how it’s getting along” having helped raise most of the plants from seed; She sews her own clothes and recently was stopped in town by a lady asking where she could buy the outfit from as she wanted one for her niece; She found an old bird house on our section and spent weeks completely pulling it apart, ’renovating’ it and putting it all back together using mostly her own tools; She built a tree house with old building materials and ropes. So here we are, at the beginning of another year. Someone asked us yesterday if we will start back at “the homeschool” next week. When I try to explain what we do it all comes out in a bit of a jumble so no wonder it’s hard for others to understand. But basically we do what we are interested in and take it from there and so far it’s turning out pretty ok!
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Mind Lab Scholarships Prepare Teachers for the Digital Technologies Curriculum In a bid to help support educational equity across New Zealand, The Mind Lab is offering full-tuition scholarships for their Postgraduate Certificate in Digital & Collaborative Learning to the first 100 teachers working in decile 1-3 schools for the March 2019 intake. In addition to building leadership capability, the Postgraduate programme prepares teachers to deliver the Digital Technologies Curriculum | Hangarau Matihiko, which the Ministry will embed across the curriculum from 2020. National Postgraduate Director at The Mind Lab, David Parsons, says the scholarships are offered to encourage teachers to evolve their practice and prepare for the big changes ahead while removing financial barriers. “Our focus at The Mind Lab is to fully support teachers through their learning journey to integrate this new digital technology curriculum into their practice. It’s an exciting time for our profession and our students. “Our postgraduate qualification has been redesigned to more directly support delivery of the new curriculum, enables teachers to lead impactful change. Through collaborative learning, teachers develop practical strategies for bringing technology to life in the classroom, with the goal to overcome barriers and feel empowered in digital education to the benefit of all learners.” All schools and Kura will need to implement the new digital technology curriculum content from the start of 2020. The digitally focused syllabus covers two new Technology Areas: “Computational Thinking” and “Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes” for all New Zealand students from year 1 - 10.
instrumental for staff, leaders and teachers alike, in transforming collective practice from one where students learn prepared lessons from their allocated seats, to one where learners lead their own learning. “Our diverse team are now equipped with the skills, confidence and capability to develop a school where all learners, students and staff, can determine their own success as learners and leaders in life. “As the principal, I feel unashamedly confident to face whanau, with hand on heart and say, at our school, your child is developing the dispositions to be a confident, connected, actively involved lifelong learner.” To date, over 4000 teachers have completed The Mind Lab’s Postgraduate Certificate in Digital & Collaborative Learning. “The key will be making sure teachers get the professional development they need. This is a huge change across the whole country and we want to ensure New Zealanders are fully equipped to contribute and flourish in the workforce of the future, “ David says. The Mind Lab scholarships are awarded to the first 100 teachers who fully enrol in the order they are received. This initiative continues The Mind Lab’s history of providing scholarships for teachers in priority areas. Since 2014, over 4000 full or partial scholarships have been granted to teachers through the financial support of The Mind Lab and NEXT Foundation.
Papakura Intermediate Principal Bec KauKau says, “The Mind Lab programme was
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 9
The Façade vs. the reality The deputy principal stood in front of the assembly in the great hall and said, “now that exams are over, the hard work begins – your teachers will be giving you ‘model answers’ to help you to improve your results.” Of the assembled 2200 boys and 100 plus assembled staff members, none of us had heard of the “model answers” we were to give out. And few, if any of the teachers in the late 1980s, actually believed “model answers” would do anything to help students prepare for external examinations, designed to challenge candidates to THINK and not just regurgitate. “Yes,” the staff on the stage and on the floor of the great hall, nodded in agreement. It sounded good, it would play well for the parents, school visitors, governing boards. It provided an inspirational uplift to the huddled masses – a ray of hope. But what was, and where were, the “model answers”? It was the façade vs the reality. Cutting edge stuff for the 1980s.
Façade is everywhere Walk past any chain pizza shop and look at the picture poster of a pizza in the window. It portrays a product with a surface area covered in tightly packed pepperoni salami pieces, gobs of dripping stringy cheese, barely discernible, but glistening reflection of olive oil, puffy crust edge tinged with bright red tomato sauce. The façade. The reality: minimal toppings of cheese, sparsely spaced pepperoni, a hard and overcooked crust, tiny and tasteless dabs of tomato sauce. The product qualifies as a pizza only in name, shape and general idea of taste. Look for “mission statements” in stores, businesses, clubs and organisations: • • • •
“We bring you the best products with the best price.” “To inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real food.” “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” “To create a better everyday life for the most people.”
No matter if the product is the best, cheapest, healthiest or better. Not a day goes by that governments, policymakers, leaders and celebrities create a “façade” removed from the “reality” in order to “spin” the vision of themselves and what they do: • • •
Did President Trump have more attendees at his inauguration than President Obama? How accurate is President Trump’s estimate of fatalities after Hurricane Maria? How consensual were Harvey Weinstein’s sexual “assaults”?
More and more slogans, pledges, adverts, overstatements, from “fake news” to innuendo to outright lies, characterized by exaggeration, euphemisms, inaccuracies, half-truths, and excessively emotional appeals, designed to fool us.
Schools and the “façade” Schools caught on with their versions of “facades” with charter statement introductions of their missions, like: 10 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
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John Hellner • • •
“Commitment to empowering students to achieve personal excellence in a learning culture which values everyone.” “A learning environment to maximize the ability of all.” “Enriching our young to be responsible citizens in a changing world.”
Then followed the core values, like: • • • • • • • •
Respect. Excellence. Cooperation. Resilience. Integrity. Risk taking. Individuality. Relationships
And on and on… Then came performance management – appraisal systems – in schools and elsewhere. We rated ourselves on how good we were. In some institutions we offered up “portfolios” as evidence of how good we were. This gave rise to a cottage industry of people who shamelessly rated themselves highly and developed expertise in providing supporting “evidence” proving they were as good as they said they were. They were better at building the façade, than they were at the reality of doing the job. More and more… Façade: “We had some tremendous feedback from parents at parents’ night,” says the school leader. Reality: What does it tell us when only 30 percent of parents bothered to show up? Façade: “The new policy is highly effective and improving our students’ capability,” says the enthusiast whose idea it was and who oversees its implementation. Reality: How do you know that and what do the teachers on the front line have to say about what they see? Façade: “Students will need these skills in the ever-changing world of the future,” says the
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Ministry of Education. Reality: Who did the research and how do they know? Façade: “More and more of our students are gaining better and better qualifications under the system,” says the government. Reality: Has the difficulty of the qualification changed over time and has the ranking of our students on comparative international testing gone up or down? Façade: “One of our core values is ‘Resilience’, says the school charter. Reality: How exactly does your school teach a non-cognitive characteristic and how do you decide what the core values of the whole school are? And by the way, does it work? How do you measure that?
Test the façade We do need the “façade” to provide guidance and a working framework for whatever we do and think. It has probably always been this way, but we just seem to have more of it now, spelled out formally, with a wider licence to inflate the facade and accept exaggeration as correct. To delineate the “façade” from the “reality” we must use our “crap detectors” when buying pizza, judging governments and corporations, evaluating people and the claims they make. And when we assess our schools and what happens in them, we need to identify how much is “façade” and how much is “reality” by asking questions like: Can I see real results of the claim? Is the claim measured and if it is, does it match reality? How is the claim pursued and achieved? How many or how much of this claim is actually happening? Does this claim fit with the reality of what I know about the world I have experienced? Does the claim match what I know about the reality of what they say will happen? How can I find out more? Be specific and be explicit. Increasingly, in a world of facades, we need to discover for ourselves what is true and what is not true. Not a bad thing – it is what it is. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 11
Just A Plate Of Rocks A teacher affects eternity. No-one can tell where their influence stops. I’d like to tell you a story,,, On my desk in my classroom, many years ago, I kept a dish of rocks. I am fascinated by stones because of the colours and patterns in them. They weren’t precious stones. They were just a collection of rocks. The kids in my class sometimes asked me about them and I loved to share what I knew about rock collecting but in reality I kept them there because they grounded me and on a day from hell I could look at them and know that there was life beyond the classroom and it would pass. Fast forward 25 years. I chanced to meet up with a former student from that class and I asked about his life nowadays. He told me that he was a geological engineer and then dumbfounded me by saying that it was my fault he had gone into that line of work. He explained further... Do you remember the plate of rocks you always had on your table? And the kid who was always asking questions about them? Well, that kid was me and we all knew that if we were having a bad day and you looked at the rocks then somehow they made things better. I knew then that I wanted to work with rocks because they could withstand anything and so I studied geology at university. And I thought it was just a plate of rocks!
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Elaine Le Sueur (MNZM)
Here’s a suggestion for you... Have something in your classroom that you are passionate about. Something you can look at and feel that there is life beyond the classroom. Something with special meaning to you.
Be prepared to share your knowledge and passion with a child who asks about it but it is there for YOU, not for the class.You will probably never know the influence you have had on the future, but it will be positive because enthusiasm is contagious.
The only proviso is that it needs to be child friendly! Put it in place as soon as you get back to school. • a painting • a family/ animal/ place picture on your desk • an item from something that you collect • a book that you love • flowers from your garden
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These days I sell original resources online through https://teacherspayteachers.com/Store/ Thinking-Challenges I would love you to visit and follow my store to be updated as new resources are added.
Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 13
The Reality of Deforestation – Com
“When the viewer looks down, they’ll see their arms are branches, their body is the trunk, and when they move, the tree moves too.” – Winslow Porter
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality Markets are expected to reach US$162 billion by 2020. How can schools use virtual reality to make learning more engaging? Most of us don’t live in a rainforest but we do know that they are in great danger. Classrooms are looking for ways to help young learners better understand the deforestation crisis, for which we urgently need to find global solutions. What if it were possible to have first-hand experience on how we as humans are contributing to the extinction of trees?
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Tree is a hyper-realistic VR experience that transforms the audience into a living and breathing rainforest tree. The viewer can see and feel the tree’s growth from a seedling into its fullest form and witness its fate firsthand. In a collaboration between MIT Media Lab and filmmakers Milica Zec and Winslow Porter, a fully immersive virtual reality story about a tree was created. The film has been presented to date at over 70 conferences and film festivals (including Sundance and Tribeca). The Global Search for Education welcomed Winslow Porter and Milica Zec to talk about the reality of deforestation and how Tree can help.
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ming to a Classroom Near You C. M. Rubin
What motivated you to tell this story? How did you come up with the idea? Everything started with our first project, Giant, in which we depicted an innocent family trapped in a war-zone. Giant speaks about the destruction humans do to each other, and we wanted to continue in our second piece with how humans destroy nature. That is how the idea of Tree was born. We wanted to shift the perspective of the audience and place them in the position of nature, so that they can witness firsthand how we as humans contribute to deforestation. What does the VR experience really add to our viewing experience in this story? Are we missing something if we don’t see this movie in VR? In our piece, we use VR as a tool to transform the viewer into a living and breathing tree. When the viewer looks down, they’ll see their arms are branches, their body is the trunk, and when they move, the tree moves too. We use multi-sensory
elements so the viewer feels the growth from a tiny seed underground, to the tallest tree in the rainforest. We use a Subpac – essentially a backpack with bass speakers in it – to vibrate along with the piece, simulating the feeling of growing and expanding. The viewer can also smell the soil and the rainforest, sense the change in temperature and feel the wind on their face when they reach their tallest height. As of now, we believe that VR is the only medium that allows us to closely replicate what it is like to be a tree. How do people react during and after the Tree experience? What kind of emotional connection is evoked? So far, we have brought Tree to over 70 festivals and conferences and witnessed thousands of people from across the globe take off the headset. Most people have a very emotional reaction to the piece, strongly identifying with
People often develop a personal connection to the tree after viewing the experience.” – Winslow Porter
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 15
the tree. There is no language in the piece, just the sounds of nature, which creates a universal story that anyone can relate to. After the experience, people have a stronger understanding of the deforestation happening all around the world. People often develop a personal connection to the tree after viewing the experience. Climate Change and the Environment are timely topics. In what ways do you believe Tree can add to our understanding of these issues? How would it be different from traditional ways we
learn about The environment and climate change? Since most of us do not live inside of a rainforest, it’s difficult to imagine what is really happening. Tree brings you into that environment and shifts a viewer’s perspective to shed light on a topic that many people haven’t really thought about before. We partnered with the Rainforest Alliance,which helped us remain scientifically accurate while creating the project, and also provided us with a lot of knowledge about deforestation. People often come out of the headset asking what they can do to help, so at the end of the experience, we give each viewer the seed of the tree they just embodied with the message “take this seed as a reminder to keep our forests standing.” We link them to our website and the Rainforest Alliance, so they can discover the many different ways they can help. What can you tell us about your next project, Rainforest? What’s the story and what’s the inspiration? Rainforest is a mixed reality game. In Tree, we focused on a singular rainforest tree, when in reality there are many plants and animals that inhabit those forests. We want to educate people on this entire wonderous world that is being
“At the end of the experience, we give each viewer the seed of the tree they just embodied with the message “take this seed as a reminder to keep our forests standing.” – Winslow Porter
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“With VR, the screen is no longer just across from us, but all around us, and viewers have the ability to be a part of the piece they are viewing.” – Winslow Porter threatened by extinction. To do that, we wanted to bring the actual scale rainforest into the player’s room. Rainforest allows people to play in the environment, and through entertainment and fun they can discover and learn about all the life within. They will also learn about the dangers that rainforests are facing and actively participate in the preservation of those ecosystems. The global VR market is growing rapidly. As the technology improves in the next 5 years or so, what do you believe are the additional benefits for storytellers/creators as well as entertainment consumers? What are the challenges?
We’re breaking the boundaries and making entertainment more visceral and real, no matter where people are. Instead of watching movies on a TV screen, the movie can be playing all around someone, even inside their home. The viewer is getting the opportunity to become a participant in these pieces and decide on where the story should go, and how it should progress. The biggest challenge is that although we’re developing these projects with ground-breaking technology, not everything is ready for mass consumption, however, that time is coming very soon.
With VR, the screen is no longer just across from us, but all around us, and viewers have the ability to be a part of the piece they are viewing. C. M. Rubin, Winslow Porter and Milica Zec
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 17
From Tic Tac Toe to Fortnite
A sure bet to injecting some enthusiasm and engagement in the classroom is to let your students dig deep into the primal appeal of games.
Effective gamifying within the classroom can also be a crucial tool for helping students retain information.
So why not make gaming the focal point for your Games hold an important biological function first topic of study now that the Summer holidays are over, and the new year is before us.
and can play a part in teaching a host of social, physical, and psychological skills.
Young and old all respond to the elemental appeal of games and scientists have even observed aspects of gameplay appearing in the daily interactions of other animal species. Games, in any form, can boost motivation and engagement in learning as any teacher who has ever used leader boards and award stickers can confirm.
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Let MOTAT help you and your students tackle the topic of Games and the vast learning opportunities that exist around this subject. Whether to motivate, engage, or challenge students, probing into what ‘makes a game’ will get their creative, problem solving and design thinking minds into gear for the year ahead. To support your teaching programme MOTAT has an extensive collection of historical games from ancient forms such as Mancala and Chess, to games like hoops, marbles and knucklebones, and even family favourites such as Monopoly, Twister, and The Game of Life.
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e - the real story behind games And to support the introduction of the Digital Technologies curriculum MOTAT can also help students gain a better understand of how games are created within a digital format. MOTAT’s collection of early digital games gives students the chance to experience early iterations of digital gaming on original Sega, Nintendo and Playstation platforms. Playing Alex the Kidd, Super Mario Bros, Sonic the Hedgehog, Crash Bandicoot and Buzz! gives students a blast from the early days of digital gaming and invites them to consider the technological developments that have contributed to today’s highly immersive digital games. When designing a game, students must consider concepts such as challenge, competition and fairness, and to achieve these elements students must go through briefing, scoping, storyboarding
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and testing stages to reach the final design iteration. All these processes mimic those used in professional games design, not to mention many workplaces in most industries! Whatever your enquiry question or learning intentions are, why not consider games as your next topic of study? The education team at MOTAT are ready to work with you to support your learning around this topic with onsite Museum visits, access to collection materials and historic items or perhaps we can bring the action to your classroom with our transportable MOTAT STEAM Cells. Come on, let’s play! Contact the MOTAT Education team on (09) 815 5808 or find out more at: https://www.motat. org.nz/learn
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Why having and utilizing em Why are people making so much of this so-called soft skill called empathy? Why care about the feelings of others? It may seem that consideration for emotions would have no place in the business world. They’re not important for getting the job done –-- or are they? Today’s top companies are looking for leaders who have that ability to empathize, to put themselves in others’ situations and imagine things from an different perspective. Knowing how to elicit the best from your team requires empathy and understanding. Those who can get at the heart of what motivates people can tailor their approach and harness that energy to get ahead at work. Unsure how empathy fits into your leadership style? Consider the following, and learn how having empathy can help you tailor your tactics and build a strong and loyal team.
Know what motivates Imagine that you have an employee whom you need to complete a specific task. You know all the steps required, and may even have significant experience in doing it yourself. Will this team member be excited by this new responsibility, knowing only the general task, the basic business knowledge and the desired end result? Would they be more enthusiastic if they knew your detailed process and exact steps to complete so they could ensure they deliver just as you would have? Knowing how your team member is likely to feel before you delegate a task can help you tailor your approach and guarantee not only the best outcome but also the most engaged and motivated employee. Modifying to fit is a powerful tool in drawing others to work with you.
Know what causes stress Now consider a situation where you are sitting in a large meeting that includes a number of groups from your organization. A question arises, and while you have a general understanding, you believe one person on your team likely has more than enough information to competently answer the question and put the topic to bed. Would they appreciate it if you spoke up and called on them, giving them a chance to shine? Would being asked to speak off the cuff in front of the group be the stuff of nightmares for them, no matter how well you thought they answered? If you don’t know, it would be hard to decide if you would be empowering or torturing them by giving them the floor. Knowing how others are likely to feel will dictate a great leader’s actions just as much as the tasks at hand and the organization’s larger goals. Taking feelings into account can make all the difference in retaining a great employee, and a great leader knows how to build a strong following.
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mpathy matters Joel Garfinkle
Know what inspires If you’re aspiring to increased leadership opportunities, chances are you’re the sort of person who does best when they know the “why and the how” of your organization’s big-picture goals. You may have been someone who needed to understand the purpose of a task in order to give it your best -- grand ambitions may get you out of bed in the morning. Just as likely, you may have met others along the way who thought differently. Some people prefer to focus on the task at hand. They would rather go home at the end of the day knowing all the boxes are ticked on the checklist. Worrying about larger (as yet) unmet goals and loftier targets would just be stressful and would put a pall over the prospect of tomorrow. Time spent with your team will give you an idea about how each of them approaches the world. Some may be inspired by working with you toward a larger objective, while others only want to concentrate on what is expected of them today. You can adjust and get the best work from all if you know how to share and inspire them.
Putting yourself in another’s shoes to understand how they view and approach work can be vital in knowing how to best use their skills to complete your team’s objectives. Time spent communicating and getting to know your staff and their styles, preferences and motivations is never wasted, inside or outside the workplace. Anything and everything you learn will help you to be a better leader who can inspire and motivate your team to do their best. Start planning today to make empathy a part of your approach. Great leaders get ahead by knowing how to get the best out of themselves and their team.
Joel Garfinkle is an executive leadership coach who recently worked with a SVP who was struggling in making a connection with his team and understanding the importance of empathy. Joel utilized these three above areas in the coaching. The SVP was able to change his approach and improve his empathy, and his employee retention. Joel has written seven books, including How to Be A Great Boss: 7 Qualities That All Great Bosses Have.
Joel Garfinkle
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 21
Educators - save the date and get
planning for Road Safety Week
Road Safety Week 2019 will take place 6-12 May, and teachers and child-carers are being encouraged to put the date in their 2019 calendar and start planning activities now. The week, which is coordinated by Brake the road safety charity, will focus on road safety leadership and demonstrate how everyone can be a leader for road safety. Brake is calling on educators to help save young lives and raise awareness of key road safety messages by taking part. The week will also coincide with the UN Global Road Safety Week which also has a leadership theme. Road Safety Week is a great opportunity for teachers, youth workers, and early learning educators to engage children and young people in life-saving lessons and encourage safer, more responsible road use throughout the community. It’s an engaging topic with plenty of scope for creative and interactive learning, while also meeting curriculum goals. Educators can access free electronic resources and guidance to help them get involved. Go to www.roadsafetyweek.org.nz/action-pack to register to get a free e-action pack. This will include downloadable posters to display during the Week, advice, activity ideas and case studies of what other educators have done in previous years. There are also ideas for taking part in the Week on the website, and links to useful resources from other organisations. More details of plans for Road Safety Week will
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be released in early 2019. Caroline Perry, Brake’s NZ Director said: “Road safety is a crucial issue for children and parents, and educators can play a key role in helping to reduce the risks children, young people and families face – by teaching road safety and raising awareness of local issues. “Children and young people can be fantastic road safety leaders. They all have ideas to contribute on the dangers of roads and solutions for making them safer. Road Safety Week is a great opportunity to help them to speak out about road safety by giving them ownership of their own road safety campaign. Through it they have the opportunity to explore and improve their own safety, while also meeting important curriculum goals. I urge all schools and childcare centres to register today and get your free action pack.” Brake is a national road safety charity that promotes road safety and campaigns against the carnage on New Zealand roads. It does this by running a number of initiatives including a service for fleet and road safety professionals. Brake coordinates national Road Safety Week each May. It is also fundraising to improve support for families bereaved and injured in road crashes. To support Brake, go to www.brake.org. nz. Brake was founded in the UK in 1995, and now has domestic operations in the UK and New Zealand, and works globally to promote action on road safety. Road crashes are not accidents; they are devastating and preventable events, not chance mishaps. Calling them accidents undermines work to make roads safer, and can cause insult to families whose lives have been torn apart by needless casualties.
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Coo-Coo Kererū
Antarctic Journeys
By Terry Fitzgibbon
By Philippa Werry
RRP $24.99
RRP $24.99
A familiar sight in the bush as well as urban areas, the kererū has achieved an iconic status, with images gracing everything from postage stamps to paintings, and was the winner of New Zealand Bird of the Year 2018.
Antarctica has no native inhabitants, and it’s very remote, which means everyone who goes there - today or in the past - has a special reason for wanting to go. It’s a place that children can only imagine, because they can’t go there.
In Coo, Coo Kererū award-winning author and illustrator Terry Fitzgibbon’s beautiful pictures jump off the page, wrap around the words and breathe life into this extraordinary bird.
Philippa Werry won a place on Antarctica NZ’s community engagement programme. From her captivating experience she decided to write the very first book targeted for 8-14-year old children about the unique history and distinctive features and wildlife of Antarctica.
An engaging depiction of the kererū and its antics is balanced by informative text giving key facts about this unique bird, its role in Maori legend, habitat, feeding and breeding habits, predator threats and the important role it plays in spreading the seeds of native trees and ensuring the well-being of our native forests. Coo-Coo Kererū brings this bird alive for young readers, highlighting its distinctive personality and characteristics and is engagingly portrayed in fun verse with crisp facts. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Terry Fitzgibbon is an enthusiast for protecting Aotearoa’s wild native species. Terry’s Master’s thesis is on protecting forests and he has worked for both Forest & Bird and the Department of Conservation. He illustrated Gentle Giant Wetapunga and Kārearea and wrote and illustrated Sea Dreamer.
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This book is about the journeys (historic and contemporary, human and animal, large and small) that centre around Antarctica, to build up an overall picture of Antarctic history, geography, science and wildlife. The incredibly challenging and at times fatal early expeditions reveal the immense courage and perseverance needed to map and explore the region. Image-rich, using photographs, maps and paintings Antarctic Journeys features letters, diaries, newspaper and eye-witness reports from the days of early exploration and current research and interviews and also includes biographies, maps, a timeline and glossary. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Award winning children’s author Philippa Werry has wide experience in writing fiction and nonfiction for both trade and educational publishers. Her latest book The New Zealand Wars was a finalist in the 2018 NZ children’s book awards. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 23
£20 million research hub could help Afr A long-term initiative championed by the UK Research and Innovation Council (UKRI) could significantly improve the health and life prospects of a generation of Africa’s youth. The Oxford University-led project is one of 12 individual studies taking place as part of the new UKRI Global Research Hubs. The work is financially supported through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), which has allocated nearly £200 million investment to the initiative - the largest single investment ever by UKRI. The GCRF funding pot is a key strand of the UK’s AID strategy, helping to put British research at the heart of efforts to tackle the United Nations Sustainable Development
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Goals (SDGs). The UKRI GCRF Accelerating Achievement for Africa’s Adolescents Hub is led by an interdisciplinary team at Oxford University and the University of Cape Town, with University partners across Africa from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to Lesotho and Tanzania. It takes the UN Development Programme’s core concept of ‘accelerators’ – policies or programs which improve multiple SDG goals or targets – one step further. By 2050 Africa will be home to half a billion teenagers. Despite the incredible opportunity that such a vibrant pool of young potential presents, many of these teens will already be trapped in a cycle of poverty, violence, low education and poor health, by the time they reach adolescence. This new Hub aims to help
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rican teens achieve their full potential Oxford Research Society them achieve their goals and aspirations. Researchers from Oxford’s departments of Social Policy and Intervention, Tropical Medicine, the Blavatnik School of Government, English, Economics and Psychiatry will work alongside international partners including UNDP, UNICEF and the World Health Organisation, governments across Africa, donors such as the Global Fund and PEPFAR, NGOs and young people themselves, to identify and test a range of ‘accelerator synergy’ service combinations, from across health, education, social and economic sectors. In doing so, they will determine which combinations, such as malaria prevention, business skills and violence prevention, offer teenagers across Africa the best opportunities to lead better, safer lives. Professor Lucie Cluver, Professor of Child and Family Social Work in Oxford’s Department of Social Policy and Intervention, said: ‘We have been lucky to work for many years with governments across Africa, UN agencies and donors. They want to help their adolescents to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, but this is a major challenge with fiscal resources and shrinking global aid. This Hub aims to meet their needs: to identify what simple combinations of services are costeffective to improve health, education, employment and safety. Africa’s adolescents
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deserve the best evidence and the best opportunities.’ The team’s previous work includes ‘cash plus care programmes’ which now reach over two million children across Africa, and the open access ‘Parenting for Lifelong Health’ programmes with UNICEF and the WHO, which are being delivered in 20 countries across the Global South. Over the next five years the UKRI Global Research Hubs will work with governments, international agencies, NGOs and community groups within the developing world. These regions include the African continent, South America, South-East Asia and the Caribbean, where they will work to tackle and provide creative and sustainable solutions to each region’s specific societal problems. The Hubs will focus on some of the world’s greatest challenges from improving human health and promoting gender equality and social justice to fortifying ecological systems and biodiversity on land and sea. Other project themes include generating agricultural sustainability and fostering greater resilience to natural disasters. The overall goal of this work is to make the world safer, healthier and more prosperous. Sir Mark Walport, UKRI Chief Executive, said: ‘From tackling climate change to preventing and treating infectious diseases, the search for knowledge is a global endeavour that requires collaboration between the world’s best minds. The Fund for International Collaboration and the creation of twelve global research hubs demonstrate the commitment of the UK to ensuring our researchers and innovators can work with their counterparts across the world to address important questions.’
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Sunlight Casts Shadows of Phrase a Street Art Installation by DAKU Pseudonymous Indian street artist DAKU recently installed an immersive text-based work in Panjim, Goa. Placed along 31st January Road, a fishnet structure suspends letters above pedestrians. The region’s abundant sunlight pours through to cast shadows on the street, spelling out tropes about the passage of time. Some of the phrases include, “Time works wonders. Time moves. Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind. Time fades. Time is an illusion.” The temporary installation, titled Theory of Time, was supported by the public art nonprofit St+art India, as part of the Start Goa festival. DAKU often integrates language into his urban interventions.
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es Exploring Theories of Time in Laura Staugaitis
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 31
More Mindful Citizens Please
“We want mindfulness to be as common as brushing your teeth!” – Addie Wootten The Dalai Lama once said, “if every 8 year old is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.” Mindfulness has become much more relevant and effective in a constantly changing environment. Clinical psychologist Dr. Addie Wootten insists that inducting young children into the principles of mindfulness early on in education allows them to focus more in class, improve their learning outcomes and build healthier and more constructive relationships with all those around them. Addie is a well-known leader in delivering innovative programs to promote wellbeing. She is also the CEO of Smiling Mind. The Global Search for Education is pleased to welcome Addie to talk about the numerous benefits of practicing mindfulness, the challenges to implementing good programs in classrooms, and how good practice can help every mind thrive in a modern world. Mindfulness has been used by clinicians to treat stress, anxiety depression, eating disorders and addiction. Why isn’t mindfulness an important 32 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
part of every student’s education? We are passionate about bringing mindfulness into every classroom for exactly that reason. We envision a world where every young person has the skills and resources that they need to thrive. Mindfulness provides the foundation for young people to be mentally healthy and to build strong and compassionate relationships. It is this strong foundation that supports learning and academic success. Over the last 5 years, there has been exponential growth in schools’ interest to implement mindfulness programs. However, this implementation has varied widely according to each school. It ranges from one teacher who is passionate about supporting their class using mindfulness techniques, to more systematic and structured programs spearheaded by the school leaders. We consider both approaches as equally important. Yet, it has proven to be passionate individual teachers who have been invaluable in helping us achieve what we have. Right now, we have over 45,000 Australian teachers subscribed to our mindfulness programs and resources to
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C.M.Rubin enhance their classrooms. Nevertheless, our aim is to eventually provide support to schools as institutions, rather than just individual teachers. Research shows an entire school participating in mindfulness techniques will yield a much larger impact. This will positively affect students, the culture and climate of the school, and teacher wellbeing. We even hope to reach beyond schools by encouraging parents to use mindfulness practices at home. At the moment, wellbeing initiatives are often seen as secondary to a student’s academics. With such a large focus on educating students in STEM, most believe that mindfulness programs only detract from other, more important, areas of learning. On the contrary, mindfulness programs have a positive effect on students’ ability to perform in an academic context. We can only focus when our minds are calm and therefore our learning is optimized by improved mental health. I hope to see a change in attitude where mental wellbeing can be appreciated as supportive to academic learning. “We can only focus when our minds are calm and therefore our learning is optimized by improved mental health.” – Addie Wootten
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Thinking of today’s context versus the past, what do you believe are the new skills youth need in an age of search, robotics and AI? How are the goals of your framework aligned with social and emotional learning in the age of AI? Our modern world is more connected and unstable than ever before. The skills that students require are fundamentally different to the skills needed only a few generations ago. There has been a decrease of the stable and defined professions that had shaped the working world. Moreover, the development of Artificial Intelligence has rendered many jobs obsolete. As a result, there is an increasing need for students to develop general and transferable skills that can apply to the multiple different career paths. The future of work will rely on our ability to adapt, innovate and work creatively without defined borders or even stable workspaces. Our programs are designed to encourage students to develop these skills while they are at school. These skills underpin essential social and emotional learning. We want to foster a growth mindset in children that makes them resilient and open to new experiences.
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Are We Prepped for Superintelligence Is mindfulness something that can be taught with toolkits and slides in a classroom? How do real world experiences enhance/amplify the learning? Toolkits and slides are just the beginning. Initially, students need to be introduced to the foundational concepts and discuss them with their peers. Although peer-to-peer learning and debriefing is very important, it’s not until students are able to apply these concepts to the real world that they are able to appreciate the potential positive impact that mindfulness has
on their life. Therefore, alongside meditation practices, we recommend mindfulness activities that clearly link mindfulness with everyday activities. This can be as simple as spending time in a garden or mindful movement activities, or more complex such as activities designed to build social relationships. We also encourage teachers to encourage students to use mindfulness more informally such as when they are interacting with their friends and when they’re at home. It’s amazing to see the impact that mindfulness has on young people, and how it encourages students to support each other. What are the mindfulness learning skills needed at different points in a student’s learning journey?
Our programs are designed to support students of all ages. We recently launched our new Mindfulness Curriculum for primary school years. Our programs for young students are more focused on emotional awareness. These younger level programs provide foundational mindfulness skills such as focusing your attention, tuning into your emotions and listening to your body. As students mature we incorporate a variety of practices such as emotion regulation skills. Finally, as they mature into their senior years of school we focus on the integration of these ideas and concepts into real world experiences like exams, managing relationships and exploring personal values.
“We should look for opportunities to integrate mindfulness across the learning environment.” – Addie Wootten
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e?
“It’s amazing to see the impact that mindfulness has on young people, and how it encourages students to support each other.” – Addie Wootten Curriculum is “overloaded” and many believe kids are “overstressed” with required material. Do you see mindfulness education as another “add-on” or should it be part of school culture? This is one of the biggest barriers for many teachers; there is already so much required material that they can never find the time for mindfulness programs. I hope that more teachers and school leaders will begin to consider mindfulness as inherently part of their school culture and teaching way, rather than considering it an add on. Schools that have been successful in doing this have actually found that it helps save time. For instance, schools that begin with a mindfulness session every day have displayed a significant decrease in the time needed to gather the attention of students across all subject areas. Teaching quickly becomes more efficient as students are focused and there are often less behavioral disruptions during class time. Personally, I don’t think we have to choose between traditional curriculum and mindfulness sessions. Rather, we should look for opportunities to integrate mindfulness across the learning environment – even at the start of science or math class!
The movie, Room to Breathe, illustrates to me that not only do students need help with mindfulness education, teachers and parents who care for them need it too. In what ways does your framework nurture more of a community learning experience? We believe strongly it is most effective to involve an entire school – that includes encouraging teachers to use mindfulness in their personal time when we train them, and also allowing parents to use techniques home with their children. Parents and teachers are hugely influential and we hope they will become mindfulness role models. It’s not until you feel the benefits of mindfulness yourself that you can truly teach young people to imitate you. Also, if we believe that mindfulness can help young people, why wouldn’t we want teachers and parents to reap the benefits as well? We have therefore committed time to developing programs and resources to support mindfulness in schools, in the home and in workplaces. We want mindfulness to be as common as brushing your teeth!
C M Rubin and Addie Wootten Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 35
A dose of Dr. Seuss for Packard Chil Earlier this month, the tiniest patients at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford benefited from the work of a doctor who is not on the hospital’s staff. At the Bedside Reading Event for NICU Families, held in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, parents and nurses sat down to deliver a healthy dose of Dr. Seuss’s ABC: Big C, little c, what begins with C? Camel on the ceiling, c, c, c Although the premature infants staying in the NICU can’t yet appreciate the goofiness of such Dr. Seuss creations as ceilingstrolling camels, duck-dogs and fifer-fefferfeffs, several studies have demonstrated benefits to reading to babies, even very young preemies.
of her body, and some noises of the outside world. Babies who arrive early still need to hear human speech to help their language development. To help verify that reading sessions are safe and beneficial, Scala’s team designed a study where parents read to babies for 15 to 60 minutes — either in live reading sessions or via recordings that were played in their babies’ incubators. The researchers compared babies’ heart rates, breathing rates, blood oxygen levels, apnea events (gaps in breathing) and bradycardia events (unstable heart rhythms) before, during and after their parents read to them. Breathing and heart rates were the same before, during and after parents’ reading sessions, and
This area of research got a boost earlier this year when a Stanford team led by Melissa Scala, MD, published a scientific study in Journal of Perinatology examining NICU patients’ cardiorespiratory stability before, during and after reading sessions. The study was done to help clarify which sounds benefit premature babies. In recent years, many neonatal intensive care units have made efforts to lower their noise levels, since the loud noises of a busy hospital unit — monitors beeping, conversations about patients, the clatter of people and equipment coming and going — has been shown to cause potentially harmful fluctuations in babies’ heart rates, blood pressure and blood oxygen levels. But silence isn’t ideal for preemies, either. Normally, during the latter half of pregnancy, the fetus begins hearing its mother’s voice, the sounds 36 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
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ldren’s preemies Erin Digitale there were no signs that reading was unsafe. Oxygen levels were better during and after reading: The babies had fewer periods of reduced blood oxygen, also called desaturation, during reading than before. The benefit lasted an hour after reading finished. The study gave more details: The effect was larger with maternal voice exposure than with paternal voice exposure and with live vs. recorded reading exposure…
ment of parent-infant synchrony which has been linked to healthy parent-infant relationships and future infant neurodevelopment. Hopefully, all that reading will help today’s newborns grow into big kids who are chanting right along with their parents’ future renditions of Dr. Seuss, all the way to “Big Z, little z, what begins with z?”
Significantly fewer desaturation events seen during live reading may reflect the ability for parents during live reading to respond to infant cues and modulate the pitch, rhythm and volume of their voices. This type of reciprocal interaction has been well described as important to the develop-
Veena Jones reading to her son, Bodhi, courtesy of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 37
Demand for Qualified Ece Teachers Changes in government policy will impact New Zealand’s early childhood education sector, according to experts – with a predicted shortage of qualified teachers spurring new training opportunities for experienced but unqualified educators. There is also demand for bilingual teachers, particularly those who can speak te reo Māori or Pasifika languages. Joanne Groenewald, who heads the school of Early Childhood Education at Hamilton’s Vision College, says the ECE industry in New Zealand will grow and more qualified teachers will be needed in the future. “We are hearing every month of new centres being built, all with different teaching philosophies, increasing the need for more teachers and creating more options for parents and caregivers for their children,” says Groenewald. “Combined with the new minimum teaching qualifications mandated by the Ministry of Education, and proposals to move towards a 100 per cent qualified teacher workforce in ECE centres as well as for home based providers, New Zealand is going to be experiencing a shortage of qualified teachers, unless we recruit more students to the industry,” says Groenewald.
As part of the government’s announcement last November of its $3.5 billion early childhood review, the draft 10-year strategic plan includes raising the minimum percentage of qualified teachers in teacher-led early childhood centres from 50 to 80 percent by 2022, and to 100 percent in the longer term. Education Ministry figures indicate that 57 per cent of all teaching staff were qualified in 2018, up from 56 per cent in 2017. However, in the home-based educators’ segment, 90 per cent did not have an ECE qualification. “This could mean the likes of those who may have 20 years’ experience but aren’t fully qualified and are working in centres, along with a high proportion of home-based educators, should look to ECE qualifications to upskill,” says Groenewald. There were 4,532 licensed ECE services in New Zealand in 2018, according to Ministry of Education figures, with more than 200,000 New Zealand children aged 0-4 attending at least once a week. There was growth in private education and care services (day cares), but a decrease in other service types such as kindergartens and playcentres. Groenewald also believes the industry is crying out for more bi-lingual teachers, particularly those who can speak Māori and Pasifika languages. This is backed up by Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) Occupation Outlook reporting that says the demand for early childhood teachers who are speakers of Māori and Pasifika languages is particularly strong. “We have an intake in East Tamaki that is generally made up of students who can speak
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s Spurs Return to Education Māori and/or Pasifika languages, which reflects the demand for the multi-languages in our communities. Our tutors are also from our communities, and speak the languages, so they are able to offer full support to our students,” says Groenewald. There were 655 ECE services in 2018 that offered either bilingual or immersion language instruction in a language other than English, according to the Ministry of Education. Te reo Māori, Tonga, Samoan and Northern Chinese language are the most commonly spoken in bilingual or immersion ECE services. Salilo Ward, an ECE tutor with Vision College, is fluent in Samoan, English and also speaks basic Tongan and te reo Māori. She’s been tutoring the NZ Diploma in Early Childhood Education and Care for four years and has seen the growth of private childcare centres and the growing shortage of qualified ECE teachers.
Salilo Ward & Joanne Groenwald
Ward believes that Vision College offers a unique and supportive learning environment for its students, with small class sizes and a focus on practical and collaborative work. “We are genuinely invested in our students, with a huge focus on building relationships with our students, like a family unit,” says Ward. “We want to ensure our students successfully complete the course, not just achieve, but excel.” For more info about studying the early childhood education course, see visioncollege.ac.nz or phone 0800 834 834. University Entrance (UE) is not required to start on a journey towards becoming a qualified ECE teacher. Courses start on March 4, 2019 at four different sites throughout New Zealand.
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About Vision College Vision College, a division of ATC New Zealand, is a private training establishment with four main campuses in Christchurch, Auckland, Pukekohe and Hamilton. The college offers a variety of tertiary qualifications at certificate, diploma and degree level in six key areas of study: information technology, early childhood education, music, leadership, counselling and business. To find out more, visit www.visioncollege.ac.nz Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 39
‘Irish identity’ buried by SA’s colonial The ‘Irishness’ of Irish settlers was commonly ‘buried’ during British colonisation of South Australia, with many Irish emigrants such as farm workers and domestic help treated as ‘second-rate’ citizens. An historical archaeology study of regional South Australia by Flinders University experts gives vivid insights into the towns and communities built by Irish migrants, many of them brought here to fill labour shortages in the young colony. Alongside Irish colonial forefathers such as George Kingston, Robert Torrens and Charles Harvey Bagot, who joined the ruling elite, were hundreds of young female orphans shipped to SA in the 19th century as domestic workers, and poor rural workers who settled in regional ‘cluster’ areas in the Mid North and Clare Valley where they made a strong Irish footprint.
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Many escaping the aftermath of Ireland’s Great Famine, the Irish in the ‘free’ colony – as in other Australian settlements – were largely indistinguishable from the appearance of their British counterparts except for their religion, says Flinders University archaeologist Associate Professor Heather Burke. “Our archaeological analyses of architecture, land use, graves and personal items from three colonial sites in SA demonstrate forms of ‘Irishness’ that distinguishes the Roman Catholic and Protestant Irish from the non-Irish around them,” Associate Professor Burke says. “While the Irish were relatively invisible within Australian colonial society, they did retain their national identity and culture in many ways and faced a degree of anti-Irish sentiment, for example the treatment of the young domestic workers who were often described as incompetent, stupid and insolent by employers.” Irish clusters grew at Baker’s Flat near Kapunda, and towns with names like Navan, Clare,
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l rule Flinders University Donnybrook, Dublin, Kilkenny, Rostrevor and Tipperary. National symbols such as the Celtic cross, shamrock, harp and wolfhound, and cultural and religious practices, were signs of the Irish diasporic communities’ support for Irish political changes in the second half of the 19th century.
“The St John’s reformatory at Baker’s Flat, northeast of Adelaide, became a real centre of Irish settlement in South Australia,” says Dr De Leiuen. “The landscape, architecture and artifacts at St John’s are expressions and reflections of the
While male immigrants found work as mining and farm labourers and bullock drivers, the shortage of domestic servants in the 1840s and 1850s resulted in 1620 female orphans receiving assisted passages and 4000 young, single Irish wormen sponsored to emigrate.In the city of Adelaide, an estimated 4000 new arrivals from the northern Irish province of Ulster settled while many other Irish migrants moved away to work in the countryside. In a new book Irish South Australia, fellow Flinders University researcher Dr Cherrie De Leiuen studies the lives of four of 4000 young Irish women who took assisted passages to the new colony where they entered a Victorianera English settlement where landowners were known to describe their servants as uncooperative, rebellious and lazy ‘biddies’ (a corruption of Bridget).
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 41
complex relationships of Catholicism, Irishness, class and gender. “The environment of the reformatory system was actively used to produce the desirable outcome of cleaning up the streets, not only because these girls were perceived as ‘bad’ but also because they were poor, Catholic, Irish and female.” By the end of the 19th century, the SA Irish population was still much smaller than other states, which made it “both less threatening to the Protestant majority and more unified within itself,” the researchers say in the Historical Archaeology paper, ‘In Search of the Hidden Irish: Historical Archaeology, Identity and “Irishness” in Nineteenth-Century South Australia’ (2018) , by H Burke, S Arthure, C De Leiuen, J McEgan and A Gorman. The new book ‘Irish identity’ buried by SA’s colonial rule (Wakefield Press, RRP $39.95), edited by Flinders academics Susan Arthure, Stephanie James and Dymphna Lonergan and Fidelma Breen (University of Adelaide), is available through Book Depository. The book will be launched by Ambassador of Ireland, Breandán Ó Caollai, at Adelaide Irish Club on 1 February. While the Cornish and Scottish, who also arrived in big numbers in colonial SA, much of the Irish history is under-researched and not celebrated, says Dr Susan Arthure, who writes about the Irish history of Kapunda in the book.
enterprise, bringing in thousands of Irish emigrants between 1845-1888 under tenant and kinship assisted-passage schemes. The class stratified society retained an overwhelmingly English Protestant outlook throughout the 19th century, with many opposing the ‘poor’ Irish emigrants and their Catholic faith in line with traditional Anglo-Irish tensions. Irish migration to SA started to slow down from the 1880s, with fewer than 100 new arrivals annually from 1895 to 1950. The Indigenous Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains first sighted European explorers in 1627. Key contacts: Associate Professor Heather Burke, History and Archaeology, Flinders University Email: heather.burke@flinders.edu.au Dr Susan Arthure, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University. Email: susan.arthure@flinders.edu.au Tania Bawden, Office of Communication and Engagement, Flinders University Email: tania.bawden@flinders.edu.au W: https://news.flinders.edu.au
The River Torrens
“Ireland was a colony of Britain when South Australia was colonised, so when everyone looked the same it was easy not to acknowledge Irish identity and treat people poorly,” Dr Arthure says. Flinders University will host an Irish women history conference in Adelaide, 9-21 December 2019. Background: Unlike convict settlements in NSW and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), South Australia was established in 1836 as a private
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Irish South Australia New histories and insights Susan Arthure, Fidelma Breen, Stephanie James, Dymphna Lonergan Its capital is named after German-born Queen Adelaide, its main street after her English husband, King William IV, so it is not surprising that little is known about South Australia’s Irish background. However, the first European to discover Adelaide’s River Torrens in 1836 was Cork-born and educated George Kingston, who was deputy surveyor to Colonel Light; the river was named in turn for Derryman Colonel Torrens, Chairman of the South Australian Colonisation Commission. Adelaide’s first judge and first police commissioner were immigrants from Kerry and Limerick. Irish South Australia charts Irish settlement from as far north as Pekina, to the state’s south-east and Mount Gambier. It follows the diverse fortunes of the Irish-born elite such as George Kingston and Charles Harvey Bagot, as well as doctors, farmers, lawyers, orphans, parliamentarians, pastoralists and publicans who
made South Australia their home, with various shades of political and religious beliefs: Anglicans, Catholics, Dissenters, Federationalists, Freemasons, Home Rulers, nationalists, and Orangemen. Irish markers can be found in South Australian archaeology, architecture, geography and history. Some of these are visible in the hundreds of Irish place names that dot the South Australian landscape, such as Clare, Donnybrook, Dublin, Kilkenny, Navan, Rostrevor, Tipperary, and Tralee (as Tarlee). The book’s editors are twentieth-century Irish immigrants from Dublin (Dymphna Lonergan), Portadown (Fidelma Breen), Trim (Susan Arthure), and by descent from eight Irish-born (Stephanie James). ‘Until very recently, the impact of the Irish in South Australia has been underestimated and under-researched. This sparkling collection of essays at last does justice to the Irish in South Australia, and will appeal to all who seek to understand more of the state’s unfolding history.’ - Emeritus Professor Philip Payton ‘Ranging across a broad field of interests from history to archaeology, these detailed vignettes are as rich and diverse as the Irish who populate them.’ - Associate Professor Heather Burke ‘There is something in this book for everybody; the scholar, the family historian, no less the casual browser. The editors must be congratulated on their initiative.’ - Dr Brad Patterson
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 43
How could multilingualism benefit rather than enjoying the cognitive and learning advantages seen in multilingual children in the Global North, Indian children show low levels of learning basic school skills. Professor Ianthi Tsimpli is trying to disentangle the causes of this paradox. The trick may be to bridge school skills with life skills and make use of the richness of a child’s life experience to help them learn in the most effective ways possible
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The crowded and bustling streets of Delhi teem with life. Stop to listen and, above the din of rickshaws, taxis and buses, you’ll hear a multitude of languages, as more than 20 million men, women and children go about their daily lives. Many were born and raised there, and many millions more have made India’s capital their home, having moved from surrounding neighbourhoods, cities and states or across the country, often in search of a better job, a better home and a better life. Some arrive speaking fluent Hindi, the dominant language in Delhi (and the official language of government), but many arrive speaking any number of India’s 22 officially recognised
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Images: Ianthi Tsimpli
Multilingualism is the norm in India. But
India’s poorest schoolchildren? University of Cambridge languages, let alone the hundreds of regional and tribal languages in a country of more than 1.3 billion people. Around 950 miles south of Delhi lies Hyderabad, where more than 70% of its seven million people speak Telugu. Meanwhile, in Bihar, in the northeast of India, Urdu has replaced Hindi as the dominant language across this poor and populous state of more than 100 million people. What links Delhi, Hyderabad and Bihar is a four-year project, Multilingualism and multiliteracy: raising learning outcomes in challenging contexts in primary schools across India, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Department for International Development. Led by Professor Ianthi Tsimpli, from the Department of
Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, the project involves Dr Dénes Szucs from the Department of Psychology, plus researchers from the University of Reading and project partners in Karnataka, Hyderabad and New Delhi. The overriding aim of the project is to find out why in a country where multilingualism is so common (more than 255 million people in India speak at least two languages, and nearly 90 million speak three or more languages), the benefits and advantages of speaking more than one language, observed in Europe for instance, do not apply to many of India’s schoolchildren. For Tsimpli, the answers to this conundrum may lie within the dataset she and her colleagues are compiling with the help of more than 1,000 primary-age schoolchildren across Delhi, Hyderabad and Bihar. “Each year across India, 600,000 children are tested, and year after year more than half of children in Standard 5 [ten-year-olds] cannot read a Standard 2 [seven-year-olds] task fluently, and nearly half of them could not solve a Standard 2 subtraction task,” says Tsimpli, who co-leads Cambridge Language Sciences, the University’s Interdisciplinary Research Centre that brings together researchers from different fields to tackle ‘grand challenges’ where language is a factor. “Low literacy and numeracy limit other important capabilities, including critical thinking and problem solving. Low educational achievement can lead to many dropping out of school – a problem disproportionately affecting female students. And the gap between state schools and private schools increases every year.” She and colleagues are looking at whether these low learning outcomes could be a by-product of an Indian school system whereby the language that children are taught in often differs from the language used at home. “We are looking at eight to 11-year-old schoolchildren in rural and urban areas,” she explains. “Within those urban areas we make the
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 45
distinction between boys and girls living in slum and non-slum areas.
dominates and there is little room for independent learning.
“Many children are internal migrants who move from remote, rural areas to urban areas. They are so poor they have to live in slums and, as a result of migration, these children may speak languages that are different to the regional language.
Although the findings are at a preliminary stage, Tsimpli and her team have found that the medium of instruction used in schools, especially English, may hold back those children who have little familiarity with, or exposure to,the language before starting school and outside of school life.
“By looking at the mismatch between home and school languages, and by using tests and other socio-economic and educational variables, we try to find out whether these children are advantaged or disadvantaged in literacy, numeracy, mathematical reasoning, problem solving and cognitive skills.” Two years into the four-year project, the team has discovered considerable variation in the provision of education across government schools in the three areas, with different teaching practices and standards. Having tested all 1,000 children, they will now embark on retesting them, looking not only at test results, but also allowing for other variables such as the standard of schooling, the environment and the teaching practices themselves. It’s possible that one of the causes of low performance is the lack of pupil-centred teaching methods; instead, the teacher 46 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
“Most of the evidence from this and other projects shows that English instruction in very disadvantaged areas might not be the best way to start, at least in the first three years [Standards 1 to 3] of primary,” says Tsimpli. “What we would recommend for everyone, not just low socio-economic status children, would be to start learning in the language they feel comfortable learning in. The medium of instruction should reflect the strengths of the child. When it does, that child will learn better. English can still be used, but perhaps not as the medium of instruction in primary schools. It could, for example, be one of the subjects that are being taught alongside other subjects, starting perhaps from the third year of primary school. “We are not suggesting that English be withdrawn – that ship has sailed – but we perhaps have to think more about learner needs.
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There is perhaps too much uniformity in teaching and less tailoring to the children’s language abilities and needs.” While the preliminary results show that there is no difference in general intelligence among boys and girls from slum versus urban poor backgrounds, a surprising finding has been that children from slum backgrounds in Delhi do not seem to lag behind other children from other urban poor backgrounds – and in some cases perform better (e.g. in numeracy and literacy tasks). This unexpected finding may be down to the life experiences of children growing up in slums, where they are likely to mature faster and come into closer contact with the numeracy skills essential for day-to-day survival. Tsimpli adds that, despite the project only being at its midpoint, it has already caught the attention of government ministers, including Delhi’s Minister for Education, who is keen to use their findings to inform and adjust school policy in India’s capital city and the wider state. “Delhi may be keen to adopt root-and-branch reform if our findings support it,” explains Tsimpli. “They are as keen as us to understand how the challenging context of deprivation can be attenuated when focusing on the languages children learn and use while at school. “Our findings don’t mean that you’re doomed if you’re poor. It may be that these low learning outcomes are because of the way education is provided in India, with a huge focus on Hindi and English as the mediums of instruction, to the
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potential detriment of children unfamiliar with those languages. “Language is central to the way knowledge is transferred – so the medium of instruction is obviously hugely influential. We hope to be able to show that problem solving, numeracy and literacy can and do improve in children who are educated in a language of instruction that they know. The trick may be to bridge school skills with life skills and make use of the richness of a child’s life experience to help them learn in the most effective ways possible.” Read more about our research on the topic of children in the University’s research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu. Research partnership Co-Investigators (India) National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Karnataka (Prof. Suvarna Alladi); The English & Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad (Dr Lina Mukhopadhyay); Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (Prof. Minati Panda) Co-Investigators (UK) University of Cambridge (Dr Dénes Szucs); University of Reading (Prof. Theodore Marinis and Prof. Jeanine Treffers-Daller) Project partners British Council, India Language and Learning Foundation (India) Bilingualism Matters (UK) Quest for Learning (UK) The Communication Trust (UK) Funding ESRC Research Grant Number: ES/N010345/1
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Accelerated learning techniqu education a longitudinal study into the experiences o In an information-driven world, moving quickly in business is vital. Pundits speak of an Internet year taking only one-month. Others have declared that what used to take a decade can now be accomplished in a year. Business professionals need a simple approach for launching their ideas, initiatives, and projects. They need one consistent way to launch projects so they can spend their time getting their work done, rather than each project team member using a unique way of planning how to get that work done. They need a project management process that enables them to think, react, and change fast. Using Accelerated Learning techniques to teach project management works for today’s fastpaced environment. Project teams need a fast way of coming to consensus on customer requirements, project scope, project schedules, and project budgets with a process that is simple and reliable. Fifty percent of all product failures are attributed to poor project management— many project teams have not adequately undertaken the necessary activities for project management because those activities have been time consuming,without the perceived return on time invested. Project teams to quickly launch their projects can also use the accelerated learning techniques that are used to teach project management. Simply being fast today is not enough.Businesses must also get to their target markets before the competition does. Increasing the speed at which people learn is only part of it—improving retention, that is to say their ability to implement 48 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
immediately that, which they learn, is equally critical.Creating new skills and having them become habits to be used instinctively are the keys to responding fast to changing market forces.Accelerated learning provides a mechanism to ensure, what is taught, is quickly learned and easy to apply. Accelerated Project Management Base Camp is a one-day course developed using accelerated learning techniques. It was designed to develop habits that can be used instinctively to respond fast to new opportunities using proven project management methodologies. In the sections that follow, you’ll see a brief history of accelerated learning and its benefits. How it was applied to project management training and the results from the initial research developing the program and the subsequent applications in a variety of industrial applications. Accelerated Learning—What Is It? Accelerated learning is a proven way to teach people new skills … •
In a way that will improve their retention and their ability to apply the new knowledge
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So they can rapidly use what they’ve learned
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To benefit their projects and ultimately their customers.
Accelerated learning was pioneered over 40 years ago in the teaching of foreign languages. It has since been applied to a wide variety of fields in business and in academia. The military has used it to rapidly train people in a variety of areas. It uses a combination of teaching principles to make the learner comfortable and create an environment where participation produces learning almost without any conscious effort on the learner’s part. Actually, an accelerated learning program looks like the participants are playing a game and not actively engaged in a typical learning event.
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ues in project management
of British Army officers in UK defence related projects By Michelle LaBrosse,CCPM, PMP®, PMI-ACP, RYT,
There is a lengthy testing and revision process of courses developed with accelerated learning methods to assure that every technique used achieves the desired learning outcomes for the participants. The environment is tightly scripted in courses using accelerated learning to assure that participants leave with a high level of competency.
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Better teaming relationships due to a shared understanding of how to get things done
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Better distribution of work amongst team members’work by an understanding of what it is going to take to create specific deliverables
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The right team by having the right people working on the right tasks based on their skills
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A documented agreement between the team members and with the project sponsor on the scope of the project and a mechanism for adjusting the project based on changing requirements
Application to Project Management Education The one-day project management course that we developed using accelerated learning principles teaches a simple project management process—that some call project management “lite” or just enough project management. With the simplified, accelerated approach, it makes it easy for project teams to develop:
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Exhibit 1
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•
•
A better understanding of the resources necessary to accomplish the tasks to create the deliverable thus preventing cost overruns and slipped deadlines Coordination between other projects on sharing joint resources.
The project management launch methodology the author developed over a 15-year career doing project launch and project disaster recovery facilitation fit in well with the accelerated learning principles to create the one-day course. It uses a technique adopted from process mapping facilitation to quickly help the project teams come to consensus on:
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Dependencies of their respective deliverables
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Tasks needed to complete their deliverables
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Resources (labor and budget) needed to produce their deliverables.
Accelerated Learning Framework To teach this approach, techniques were adopted from accelerated learning augmented with Gardner’s work on multiple intelligences. Exhibit one shows the mind map of the approaches used to develop an accelerated learning framework for teaching project management. There are three main elements of this accelerated learning framework—keeping people safe (based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), focus on improving retention, and having multiple learning modes for people to grasp the concepts.
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Customers’ needs, requirements, and acceptance criteria
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Business case for pursuing their project
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Teaming protocols
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Deliverables
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Processes needed to create their deliverables
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Conflicts facing their project
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Significant milestones of the projects and the reviews necessary
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Risks facing the completion of their deliverables
The key to people’s success with accelerated learning is in their participation that leads to self-discovery of the basic project management learning objectives.However, the simulations created to accelerate learning push the boundaries for many people. In order to be psychologically prepared to participate, the course is structured to ensure the participants basic needs are met.
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Timing of their deliverables’ completion
Exhibit 2
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Keeping People Safe
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As outlined in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, people need to have their basic needs met in order to reach higher levels of self-actualization. We use this hierarchy in structuring the course so people can reach the optimal state of selfactualization through self-discovery. Illustrated below is each of the hierarchical needs with examples of how that need is addressed in the construction of the project management course. Physiological Needs—In Maslow’s book Motivation and Personality, the first need he identifies in his hierarchy is fundamental physiology—food, water, oxygen, etc. Anything the physical organism needs to survive. Very fundamental life or death needs. In the course we provide food throughout the day, ensure that there are comfort breaks every hour, take care in ensuring the physical space is comfortable, and prepare people ahead of time for the course by recommending they get adequate rest. Safety Needs—The second of Maslow’s hierarchical needs is safety—according to Maslow, “If the physiological needs are relatively well gratified, there then emerges a new set of needs, which we may categorize roughly as the safety needs (security; stability; dependency; protection; freedom from fear, anxiety, and chaos; need for structure, order, law, and limits; strength in the protector; and so on).” In the course, we develop the course structure, explain the course structure in our precourse preparations, explain the course structure at the beginning of class and have several props in the class for continual referral regarding the course structure. Additionally—we use an emotional gradient t-up for every new activity—this ensures that people feel psychologically ready to participate in the upcoming activity. All this is done to ensure that people’s second need for safety is met prior to moving forward. Belonging Needs—The third of Maslow’s hierarchical needs is for belonging and love— according to Maslow, “If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, there will emerge the love and affection and belongingness needs, and the whole cycle already described will repeat itself with this new center. The love needs involve giving and receiving affection. When they are unsatisfied, a person will feel keenly the absence of friends, mate, or children. Such a person will hunger for relations with people in general—for a place in the group or family—and will strive with great
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intensity to achieve this goal. Attaining such a place will matter more than anything else in the world and he or she may even forget that once, when hunger was foremost, love seemed unreal, unnecessary, and unimportant. Now the pangs of loneliness, ostracism, rejection, friendlessness, and rootless ness are preeminent.” In the course, to address the need for belonging we have the participants in teams the entire day. To create an affinity for their team, we have them competing with the other teams. Also, we have them selecting personas that are part of the simulation, very early in the day. The personas have quirky personality characteristics (these are developed based on personality types for the industry with whom we are working). The personas create an environment where the participants create a number of shared jokes about their characters. Situational, and shared humor further enables the participants to feel an affiliation to their team and increases their sense of belonging. Esteem Needs—The fourth of Maslow’s hierarchical needs is esteem—according to Maslow, “All people in our society (with a few pathological exceptions) have a need or desire for a stable, firmly based, usually high evaluation of themselves, for self-respect or self-esteem, and for the esteem of others. These needs may therefore be classified into two subsidiary sets. These are, first, the desire for strength, achievement, adequacy, mastery and competence, confidence in the face of the world, and independence and freedom. Second, we have what we may call the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), status, fame and glory, dominance, recognition, attention, importance, dignity, or appreciation.” “Satisfaction of the self-esteem need leads to feelings of self-confidence, worth, strength, capability, and adequacy, of being useful and necessary in the world. But thwarting of these needs produces feelings of inferiority, of weakness, and of helplessness.” “The most stable and therefore most healthy self-esteem is based on deserved respect from others rather than on external fame or celebrity and unwarranted adulation.” The way the course is structure does several things to meet the esteem need. The first one is with finding out in the precourse preparations Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 51
what people think they do well with project management and what they want to improve (their esteem need is therefore met as a prerequisite of the class). The second element to meet the esteem need is with the personas the participants select as part of being engaged in the simulation. The persona aspect of the course is introduced by finding out where people’s expertise lies in their particular field. They are then told that they are going to build off this expertise to develop an expertise in project management. And one of the premises of accelerated learning to being an expert is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, the personas are constructed to be some element of an expert in project management. The last thing we do is to help people ground themselves in their true expertise throughout the course further developing their self-esteem so they are more open to self-discovering project management concepts that may be new to them. Exhibit two shows a model called the awareness vs. knowledge grid. As noted in Maslow’s last quote—stable esteem is based on deserved respect rather than on unwarranted adulation. Many people unwittingly think there is absolutely nothing to project management—and because they have achieved a level of respect and mastery in one field they deserve the respect in the project management arena as well—even though they may not have demonstrated consistent competence in the project management arena.Many people are unconsciously incompetent—they are not aware of what they don’t know with respect to project management (quadrant three). Likewise, there are many people who are also unconsciously competent—they aren’t aware they know so much about project management (quadrant four). People operating in quadrants three and four are not operating in stable self-esteem. Through participating in the course simulation, they move up to quadrants one and two—they self-discover areas where they have mastery and areas where they know they need to learn more. Self-Actualization Needs—The last need in Maslow’s hierarchy is self-actualization—“Even if all these needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he or she, individually, is fitted for. Musicians must make music, artists 52 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What humans can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self-actualization.” We use this last need in the premise of learning. When people are learning, they are in a mode of discovery. Self-discovery leads itself to the highest level of learning—when people are self-actualizing their innate growth. By meeting the earlier needs with the course structure and the simulation, people are open to self-discovery and the pace of their learning is accelerated. Improving Retention When constructing a course using accelerated learning techniques, there are a number of elements that are done to improve retention. Exhibit one shows the four main areas where we use the course structure to improve retention. The first area is with creating the course scenario. People remember by making links to what they already know. Creating metaphors develops strong links from new concepts to “old themes.” In creating project management simulations to teach project management for specific industries, great care is taken to develop the scenario of the simulation. The first criteria for the simulation scenario is that the simulation needs to be close enough to their day-to-day projects, but far out enough so they won’t get caught up in the technical nuances of setting up the project. The scenarios are also developed to stimulate humor amongst the project teams since laughing is a very strong mnemonic. The other two elements of the course to improve retention are in the way the whole day is structured. People remember the most at the beginning and endings of sections. Therefore, the course is arranged in eight, one-hour-long modules. And within those hour-long modules there are four rituals that happen. The rituals in and of themselves improve retention, but also add to the beginnings and endings phenomena. Each module has a T-Up—this is where the participants are engaged in a question and answer session to establish their preparedness for the module’s activities. Once all the participants are prepared to participate in the module’s activity, then they are given instructions for the activity and allowed as a group to work through the activity. Once they
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are done with the activity, then they go through a debrief period where they answer questions about their discoveries during the activity— individually and as a team. The last ritual of every module is the segue—where the current module is briefly linked to the next module and the participants are given a time for Q&A and a break. A Note About Improvisational Comedy While developing this accelerated learning framework to teach project management, an ancillary effect of the approach used was that it created an environment where improvisational comedy was the norm amongst the participants. At first it was presumed that the early participants were just by their nature funny. As more and more groups participated, it was obvious that the course structure stimulated the improvisational comedy. It worked to improve retention since laughing is a strong mnemonic and people laugh the most at their own jokes. It also worked to increase the participant’s feeling of belonging. It was an accidental by product of the accelerated learning framework for teaching project management, not an initial conscious creation. Using Multiple Learning Modalities The framework of the course was designed for people to be able to self-discover the project management concepts through many different learning venues. The premise of Gardner’s work on Multiple Intelligences is that all people can learn from different intelligence domains, but some have an easier time learning or are more dominant, in one intelligence over another. The way this course was developed, there are opportunities to learn the project management concepts from many intelligence domains. Exhibit one shows the multiple learning modalities used in the accelerated framework for teaching project management. Many of the elements here also tie into accelerated learning theory. Musical—The first learning modality listed on the mind map in exhibit one is musical. This also addresses one of the premises of accelerated learning—classical, baroque, and romance music can stimulate different aspects of the brain and make it easier to learn new concepts. Various classical, baroque, and romance musi-
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cal selections are played during the numerous activities done throughout the course. Each one is selected based on the type of activity and the level of engagement of the participants. Music is also used to ground people in the rituals with the course—during the breaks, theme music that is related to the simulation scenario is played. Starting the theme music signifies the ending of the “structured” learning and the beginning of the break. Stopping the theme music signifies the end of break and the beginning of the next module. Kinesthetic—People learn by doing hands on manipulative activities. The course starts out with a ballgame to teach the concept of procedural knowledge and how to create solid project management “instincts.” That gets everyone moving and realizing that there will be a large kinesthetic component to learning the material. Additionally, the teams record all their agreements on the wall. As the course progresses, the participants move between their team space, on the wall, and their team table. They create their project plans; do risk assessment and quantification, scheduling, and budgeting with a series of kinesthetic activities on their wall templates. The last element of kinesthetic learning happens at the ending of the breaks—part of the break “ritual” is stretching exercises that the participants lead themselves. The stretching gives an opportunity to rejuvenate and relax—a critical element of accelerated learning. Logical and Spatial—The course uses a colorcoded system with post-its that the project team participants use to build up their project plans and schedules. There is a logical progression how they use their color-coded post-its and by the time the scheduling section is done, they can see the clear step-by-step progression of how to launch a project. It becomes an immediate aha for the participants and brings alive the project management concepts they self-discover participating in the simulation. Linguistic—This type of learning happens where people learn by communicating. In the course linguistic learning happens through writing, brainstorming in their teams, and in presenting the team’s work to the other teams. Each team participant is involved in the writing and the brainstorming and they self-select the level of presentation participation—with ample Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 53
opportunity for presentation for all those inclined to participate in learning through that realm.
expression is an aspect of estimation in budgeting and in manipulating the schedules based on the dependencies.
Mathematical—People who learn through mathematical expression get cued into the learning objectives through the very way the course is structured. Every activity and the breaks in the course are timed. Participants who are mathematically oriented learn many of the fundamental team dynamic concepts because of this timing. They are motivated toward completion the project management task at hand through effectively working with their teammates because of the focus on the timing measurement. This heightens their awareness of the project management task at hand, of the importance of sharing team leadership roles, of engaging in positive conflict resolution steps, and of setting appropriate team guidelines. Additionally, learning through mathematical
Intrapersonal—This learning is represented by how well someone understands himself or herself. At the end of every module, there is a debrief of the activity in that module. Adults learn and retain what they learned by reflecting on what they experienced. Participants are asked to reflect on four questions as part of that debrief: 1. What did you feel doing the activity? (When you link a learning experience to an emotion, it improves the retention of the learning experience). 2. What happened when you did the activity? 3. What did you learn doing the activity? 4. How are you going to use this?
ATTENTION TEACHERS O-I New Zealand Environmental Fund Expressions of interest to make application for a grant from the O-I New Zealand Environmental Fund are invited. Up to $25,000 will be available in total for suitable environmental projects. For application forms and guidelines see our website www.recycleglass.co.nz or contact:
O-I New Zealand Environmental Fund: PO Box 12345 Penrose, Auckland 1642 Phone. 09 976 7127 Fax. 09 976 7119
Deadline for expression of interest is 31 March 2019
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Interpersonal—This is where people learn through their participation with other people. In the course, the participants are in a team-based simulation the entire day so they can take advantage of interpersonal learning. Emotional—We are all emotional beings and emotions can stimulate or block learning. One of the strongest emotional catalysts for learning is competition. In the class the teams are competing with each other based on timing of the activities, coming back in time from the breaks, and with an end of the class simulation of executing their project plans. This competition element keeps people focused on participating in the simulation—if not for themselves—then for their teammates. It’s been found that people will do the right thing because they want to protect their teammates more so than it’s the right thing for them to do. This fact is used also to stimulate the motivation through competition amongst the teams. Conclusion While there is a great deal of background work that goes into crafting an accelerated learning project management simulation, it is transparent to the participants. The feedback received from a number of former course participants was that they were surprised they had so much fun and they were amazed how much they learned. They report back that it is easy to implement what they have learned back in their work
environments on projects within their circle of influence. Since the participants have password protected access to downloadable customized project management templates on the course website, it’s also noted that 90% of course participants access the templates for later use. This approach to teach project management is unconventional from the standard classroom approaches used today. However, it’s been proven highly effective for a wide spectrum audience—people from a wide variety of backgrounds and experience levels. References Gardner, Howard. 1993, March. Multiple Intelligences—The Theory in Practice. Basic Books. Maslow, Abraham. 1987. Motivation and Personality, 3rd Edition. Addison-Wesley Publishing, Co. Rose, Colin. 1985. Accelerated Learning. Accelerated Learning Systems. This material has been reproduced with the permission of the copyright owner. Unauthorized reproduction of this material is strictly prohibited. For permission to reproduce this material, please contact PMI or any listed author. Proceedings of the Project Management Institute Annual Seminars & Symposium November 1–10, 2001 • Nashville,Tenn.,USA
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 Project Management and
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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 Myers-Briggs 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 2019 55
Dried Grass and Branches are Woven a Drawings by Kazuhito Takadoi Artist Kazuhito Takadoi uses natural materials combined with traditional Japanese art supplies like sumi ink and washi paper to make delicate sculptural works that tread between two and three dimensions.
Takadoi cultivates and then gathers grass, leaves, and twigs from his garden to form the meticulous structures that comprise his dimensional drawings.
The artist, who is originally from Nagoya, Japan, trained in agriculture and horticulture in Japan, the US, and the UK before studying art and garden design in the UK. Takadoi is now based in Britain and is represented by jaggedart gallery in London.
His work will be on view at Saatchi Gallery as part of Collect, an international modern craft and design fair, on view in London from Though these organic findings are secured in February 23 until March 3, 2019. place through weaving and stitching, they continue to evolve as they dry and mature, Laura Staugaitis changing in flexibility and color.
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and Stitched into Delicate Sculptural
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A hands-on course at the GSE had Stanford undergraduates designing and field-testing new concussion education tools for high school students.
Global students find solutions to Waikato’s waste problems You know that old saying, a problem halved is a problem shared, right? Well, imagine sending your problems on a virtual relay around the world, to be solved by teams from four other countries who apply fresh thinking at each stage. The Rat Relay is a Design Factory Global Network annual event, a global design-thinking ‘hackathon’. Each Design Factory brings a sponsored challenge that is relayed around the world before returning ‘home’. Recently, Wintec’s Design Factory NZ took part for the first time with a team of students, staff and other motivated people who wanted the experience of solving a variety of global challenges. Wintec Design Factory NZ director Margi Moore said the heat was on for the teams who worked six hour shifts during the relay before moving their ‘challenge ’ to the next Design Factory team across the globe. “It’s all about solving a problem that the rest of the world can relate to, but also having fun and learning new ways of thinking along the way. We want our students and staff to know what it’s like to collaborate locally and internationally.” The team deliberated over a complex, environmental challenge from Raglan’s Extreme Zero Waste. The challenge? How might we change single-use packaging habits? The participants worked for six hours on Extreme Zero Waste’s problem, including doing empathy interviews with shoppers at a mall, before sending it on to the Warsaw Design Factory team in Poland. From there it went to Chile, then Korea and Columbia before coming back to New Zealand. The participants reviewed all options and presented a detailed report and a video to Xtreme Zero Waste’s chief executive Cheryl Reynolds.
governments to incentivise consumers. An awards system was proposed to encourage consumers to return the boxes, therefore creating a “closed loop”. Amanda Moxey from Xtreme Zero Waste says they found the process extremely inspiring. “We had ideas, but you gave us insight into how we can explore those further,” she said at the post Rat Relay gathering to acknowledge participants at Design Factory NZ headquarters at Wintec. We manage the project Plastic Bag Free Raglan and we’re passionate about keeping our environment plastic free. What you have presented is really in line with where we want to go.” The global hackathon involved 14 of the 24 Global Design Factories including New Zealand’s only Design Factory at Wintec. Most of the 2018 Rat Relay problems were environmental, including how to deal with waste from humanitarian aid. Moore says the Design Factory NZ is keen to take part again next year and expand the teams to include participants from secondary schools and other organisations who want people involved in innovation experiences.
The solution was to create reusable boxes for retailers, made of recycled plastic for shoppers to pack their goods in to. The teams dealt with issues such as overcoming food contamination with repeated use and came up with ideas for local and central The Design Factory team that took part in the Rat Relay recently.
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 63
Report: Stronger political leadershi divide in education The poorest girls in many Commonwealth countries spend no more than five years in school, with the global target of 12 years of quality universal education remaining “a distant reality” for many, according to a new report charting global inequality in girls’ education. It is vital that current political uncertainties do not jeopardise the prioritisation of investment in girls’ education
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The study, commissioned by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and produced by the REAL Centre at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, reveals that the most disadvantaged girls rarely reach high levels of education, beyond primary, that benefit most from national and aid funding. In Nigeria and Pakistan, girls from poor rural households average just one year at school, while rich urban boys enjoy 11 or 12 years of study. National governments and donor countries must show greater political commitment if global goals on gender equality in education are to be reached, according to the report, 12 Years of
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ip needed to close global gender University of Cambridge Quality Education for All Girls: A Commonwealth Perspective. The report will be launched at the Education World Forum, the world’s largest gathering of education and skills ministers, in London on Monday 21 January 2019. Barriers to access The study highlights an array of barriers that prevent girls accessing education, including gender-based violence within and on the way to school, and absenteeism during menstruation because of a lack of availability of sanitary protection. For marginalised girls, cost is also a key barrier in sending girls to school, with poverty leading some girls to have sex with men
who provide them with the essentials of secondary schooling that their family cannot afford. Schools must be made “safe spaces” for girls, particularly in areas affected by conflict, say the authors, while cash support for the poorest families may help ease financial pressures and free up daughters to go to school. Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the REAL Centre and author of the report, said: “Evidence shows us what works to address barriers that marginalised girls face in their access and learning. Much more needs to be done to implement these interventions at far greater scale. It is vital that current political uncertainties do not jeopardise the prioritisation of investment in girls’ education to enable this to happen.” The report was commissioned by the Platform for Girls’ Education, co-chaired by the UK Foreign Secretary and Kenyan Cabinet Secretary for Education. The platform, a group of 12 influential figures across the Commonwealth, was created after the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in April 2018 affirmed the importance of 12 years of quality education for all, particularly marginalised girls. Achieving that target by 2030 is one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals signed up to in 2015 by leaders across the globe. Equality a “distant reality” The study finds that, over the past 20 years, considerable progress has been made in increasing access to primary schooling in the 53 countries of the Commonwealth. There are now equal proportions of boys and girls primary enrolled in 31 out of 44 Commonwealth countries with data. But despite this progress, “12 years of schooling remains a distant reality for many of the most disadvantaged girls residing in Commonwealth countries,” the report says. Gender parity in enrolment has sometimes been achieved even though primary schooling is still not universal: in 2017, 137 million primary-and-
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 65
secondary school aged children were out of school in these countries, approximately half of them girls.
Early years not prioritised
Poor learning in school
education aid appears to be spent with the main objective of achieving gender equality. The UK alone bucks the trend, with all but 2% of education aid targeting gender equality directly or significantly affecting it.
The same failure to prioritise the early years is seen in education aid spending. Funding for primary education fell fromPamela around two thirds in In 15 out of 21 Commonwealth withgave UCLA “Thecountries Good Place” philosophy professor 2002 to under a half (47%) by 2016, available data, poor rural girls spend no Hieronymi anmore Easter egg-style visual shout-out by writing herand a mere 0.4UCLA percent of education aid to Commonwealth than five years in school, and so have little name on the board. Credit: countries was spent on pre-primary education. chance of making the transition to secondary By contrast, 10 percent is spent on scholarships school. In six countries, they spend only one or two years in education. Children and adolescents to allow students from aid-recipient Commonwealth countries to study in donor affected by conflict are most likely to be out of countries, even though only the most privileged school, and refugee girls are particularly at risk: benefit from such schemes. they are half as likely as their male counterparts to be in secondary school. In addition, only around five percent of total Even those children in school are frequently not learning the basics, researchers found. The recently launched Human Capital Index shows that girls’ education fares far worse when years in school is adjusted for whether or not children are learning. In 14 out of the 26 countries with data, girls who are in school are learning only for the equivalent of six years or less. The picture is likely to be even starker for girls in rural areas and those facing other forms of disadvantage. Disadvantage starts early, the study says, with many girls denied early years investment that is proven to boost educational achievement later. In eight of 14 Commonwealth countries with data, no more than 40 percent of poor rural girls have access to pre-primary education, and in three out of these eight countries, fewer than 10 percent are enrolled. Governments should do more to target funding on lower levels of education and marginalised groups, the report argues. In 33 out of 45 Commonwealth countries with data, governments are spending far more on postprimary levels of education than on primary schooling, even though the probability of the most disadvantaged girls reaching these levels of education is extremely low. Of the 35 Commonwealth countries with data on preprimary spending, 25 governments are spending less than five percent of their education budgets on pre-primary education.
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To tackle discrimination and work towards gender equality in education, governments of Commonwealth countries must show visible high-level political commitment backed by resources, the study concludes. Funding towards early childhood education and early learning should be prioritised. Support for girls at puberty There must also be steps to address the particular challenges marginalised girls face at puberty, such as provision of sanitary pads in schools, and moves to keep girls safe and secure in school, including providing female staff, secure buildings and door-to-door transport between school and home. More broadly, gendersensitive teaching practices and materials are needed to ensure discriminatory stereotypes are not enforced, says the study. The report sets out three priorities for further action, including “high-level, visible political leadership” towards gender equality in education, backed up by sufficient resources to reach the most marginalised girls. Investment in early years education is also vital, together with making girls’ education a priority in wider national development planning.
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 67
Communicate with purpose David Nielson
Purpose What is the purpose of your message?
Be consistent.
What do you hope it will achieve?
Remember, the internet is forever.
Providing facts, queries, responses, greetings, invitations, etc.
Whatever you put out there is likely to be out there for as long as the Internet exists.
Regarding email messages, there is nothing worse than sending (or receiving) a revenge email. When you are upset and want to dump all of your thoughts and emotions, do not write an email.
You can bury it, but you can never really delete it.
If you have to write your feelings, use pencil and paper -- and then a shredder.
Be sure you pay attention to what you say on social media. You are what you tweet! Employers vet people through social media.
Never underestimate the power of words.
What are you posting?
They can cut or they can elevate -- and they can haunt if used harshly.
Is it consistent with the company brand?
Are your messages consistent with your purpose? Are the words and ideas you include consistent with your personal brand? You do not want your differentiation motto to be, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Or worse, “Do as I do, not as I say.” This causes confusing messages that can hurt your credibility or trustworthiness. 68 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
News travels fast, and social media travels at the speed of light. There is no real privacy in emails, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other online social media platform. You can always hit the delete key before you post something, but once it’s out there, it’s out there. You are judged by what and how you write.
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Self-awareness Ask yourself: “What is my emotional state right now and how might it influence what I’m about to say or write?” You not only have to be aware of the words you use but the emotions and state of mind behind them. Even though written language does not convey emotional states as do verbal and visual communication, it still has an emotional state that can bleed through. Take time to consider your frame of mind and check your gut. If you’re reacting out of anger or hurt or without having all the facts, hold off sending that text, email, fax or letter. It can save so much grief and misunderstanding. If there is not a time element to a communication, type it and then walk away from it for a bit. Come back and read it with fresh eyes. Remember, once you send it, it’s gone. Also, take time to edit for spelling and typos; your work reflects on your work ethic.
Social awareness What is my intent in saying or writing this? What impact do I want to make on the recipient(s)? Use the best, most articulate words for maximum impact. People are being bombarded with communications from every angle every day and night. From texting and instant messaging to Facebook and Twitter, not to forget billboards, television, radio, YouTube and the millions of websites yearning to grab your attention. Society is overflowing with written and spoken words. Choose carefully how you present yourself to the world through your words and speech.
Words have impact. Use them wisely and correctly. Now what? 1. Improve your vocabulary. Learn a new word every day. There are calendars that can help you. Use the word in the sentence at least three times, and you will own the word. Do crossword puzzles. This is an excellent way to build vocabulary. When you are reading, have a dictionary nearby. Don’t just gloss over words you don’t know; look them up. 2. Video record yourself with both prepared remarks and extemporaneous talk. How effective did it look to you? What did you like/dislike/ want to change?
“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.” Plato David Nielson brings over four decades of corporate, Fortune 500, and private consulting experience in organizational change management and leadership development. Nielson has helped guide large-scale change initiatives and business strategy driven by ERP, mergers, restructuring and executing cultural change. His latest book is “The 9 Dimensions of Conscious Success.”
Tip: The following do not create positive effects when writing professionally:
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 69
Knitting for a good cause Rhona Freeman
The strains of Bach, Stravinsky, and jazz aren’t the only sounds coming from the Music Department and the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library lately. On most Friday afternoons the sound of knitting needles and can be heard clattering away. The weekly knitting circle, currently composed of graduate students, staff, and anyone affiliated with the department and library, is an ongoing gathering to promote well-being, to “unwind,” and to work on individual yarn and fiber projects. In addition to making interesting and intricate items for themselves, family, and friends, several members of the group knit for charitable causes. Recently the group focused on a special mission orchestrated by Patricia O’Brien, the music library administrative coordinator, in concert with NuDay Syria, an international non-profit organization which among other things ships 70 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
humanitarian aid to displaced people inside Syria. The organization provides clothing and other urgently-needed items for Syrians who have been displaced because of the current political situation. O’Brien, who serves on the board of directors of NuDay, and has worked with the organization since before its inception in 2013, reports that the collected items are shipped to Syria at least monthly and are given directly to people who need them. The knitting effort came just in time for the cold winter month, when warm clothing and accessories are of particular importance. If you would like to donate your own knitting, or learn about other ways to help, please contact Patricia O’Brien, (obrien2@fas.harvard.edu).
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Surrey criminology students ‘Learning Together’ with local prisoners Academics from the University of Surrey’s Department of Sociology are introducing a new criminology programme enabling students to work alongside prisoners at Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Send. Studying criminology at university rarely brings students into contact with the subjects of study and analysis – the prisoners themselves. However, in a new initiative that will begin in spring 2019, criminology academics at the University of Surrey will work with local prison HMP Send to teach a new module entitled ‘Opening Criminology’. Programme co-ordinators at the University of Surrey Dr Daniel McCarthy, Reader in Criminology, and Dr Maria Adams, Lecturer in Criminology, were responsible for the design and implementation of the course and both specialise in the effects of incarceration on prisoners and their families.
shared learning. It will unite university students and current serving prisoners in an environment where knowledge and experience can be positively exchanged. It is hoped that other departments will follow this pioneering programme, creating a longlasting and mutually beneficial partnership between the University of Surrey and HMP Send. Dr Adams said: “The content for this module will provide learners with an understanding of crime in today’s society. It will also enable critical discussion on issues which dominate criminology, including exploring identity, i.e. gender and race and how this relates to wider societal issues of inequality and injustice.” HMP Send currently operates as a closed Female Training Prison and houses a Substance Misuse Unit, a Resettlement Unit and a Therapeutic Community. Carlene Dixon, Governor at HMP Send, said: “This is an exciting partnership that will give women at Send the chance to work towards their full potential, whilst also breaking down barriers and challenging perceptions – a huge step in building hope for a better future and a life away from crime.”
Dr McCarthy said: “We were mindful that the course should be more than just transplanting what we do in university into the prison. Our intention is to try and make the learning environment a place where we can recognise differences in power and opportunity, but learn from these in a humanistic rather than voyeuristic way.” The new course is the first of its kind to be run at the University, and brings to Surrey the best of a pioneering Learning Together programme (similar to the InSideOut Initiative originating from America) established at Cambridge University, which is an educational initiative bringing the criminal justice and higher education sectorsattogether for medical the purpose of A Kiribati family their local clinic.
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McCarthy and Adams
Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 71
Welcome to the Family, Charlie! When we lost our Bella and Hurricane within two months of each other, I was devastated. I didn’t know life without a dog, and while my husband was ready to enjoy the freedom of not being responsible for yet another living thing, I missed it. Like, a lot. I whined about it on Facebook and to friends. I cried about it in our quiet house when the kids were at school. I talked about nothing else to my husband who, understandably, was ready to muzzle me. Realizing he was not my ally, I quietly joined Petfinder, an online database of animals who need homes. Hundreds of furry faces began showing up in my inbox. Thus began my clandestine search for Our Next Dog.
As silly as it sounds, it felt lonely. I was a child hiding candy under her bed, knowing full well if my parents found it, I’d be in big trouble. It’s not in my nature to be sneaky, but my husband’s grace period (the time he thought we should be without a dog) kept getting longer, from a few months to a year, and I didn’t think he would understand my desperation. Despite our friends trying to reason with him (“your wife loves dogs, you love your wife, you get another dog”), he wasn’t budging. So I continued the search on my own, stashing Snickers and Twix in pillowcases, purposely not involving the kids as to not get their hopes up. But my hopes were up–way up!– because there were all these sweet fur babies who needed a home, Petfinder said so! I’ve always visited shelters or friends trying to find homes for the dogs, so I was used to meeting the animals one-on-one. Such was not the case this time. I had to fill out applications, give proof of residence, 72 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
provide references! Look, I don’t mind doing the necessary work to ensure a safe home for an animal, but like a pal who works for the ASPCA said, dealing with some of the organizations was like the Spanish Inquisition. Yes, I own my house. Yes, our back yard is fenced in. Yes, we have a vet. I work from home; the dog would be with me all day. Three children, ages 9, 7, and 4.
I did this song and dance about twenty times before realizing it didn’t guarantee I’d be getting a dog! More questions, someone else wanting a pint of blood, saliva sample, piece of my soul. I got a little discouraged. I had been under the impression the organization would contact me with a match or potential furry friend, but negative. What made it even more difficult was the competition. By the time I’d submit another, specific application for a certain dog, it would take a few days to get a response, by which time the dog was usually gone. So I had no choice but to become hyper-vigilant, or obsessive if you will. I was a stock broker on Wallstreet, buckling under the pressure of immediacy. Wildly and without much thought, I began submitting applications for any dog I was remotely interested in, even if it meant traveling hours to get it. There was neither rhyme nor reason to my panicked searches, and as lame as it sounds, it really took an emotional toll on me. Many times, no one would respond. Or I would comment on a Facebook pic, which I learned is the never-explicitly-stated-yet-totallystandard-protocol for inquiry: “Is this one still available?” The answer was always no. Incessant nosedives into
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Stephanie Jankowski sheer disappointment consumed my day. I did receive a few direct responses from some very unpleasant people who made me feel like a criminal each time I asked about a dog. I understand these individuals are volunteers with limited time, but some of them are ridiculous, doing the animals more of a disservice, what with their ego getting in the way and all.
What struck me was that these fellow animals lovers never once expressed their condolences for our recent loss of Bella and Hurricane. Okay, fine. I don’t need coddled, but still. Then early one Saturday morning, Scarlet popped up in my newsfeed. She was an easy two hours away, but she was a gray Labrador Retriever with soft blue eyes and I MUST HAVE HER. I made a plan to call the shelter the second it opened at 10am. I waited. So many butterflies in my stomach. I was so sure Scarlet was the one–I even loved her name! At 9:59, a pleasant voice answered the shelter phone and I almost cried!
Wait, what? How could someone else have paid for her over the phone fifteen minutes ago? You guys don’t open until 10! Oh, your hours changed? But you forgot to update your website. Okay, no problem. Thank you anyway. Knife to heart.
I understand people have real problems in life, and as far as severity goes, losing a dog I never technically knew doesn’t begin to compare, but I had a hard time shaking that one off. I was in a funk for the rest of the day, unreasonably angry with my husband who–bless his heart–was totally
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oblivious. He had no idea my heart was broken, no clue about my obsessive searching. I kept telling myself, “It should not be this hard.” It had never been this hard with any of our previous dogs. We just…connected. I’m sure that sounds a little weird and a lot dramatic, but I’m telling you, we were meant to have our other dogs and they were meant to have us. There was just…a feeling. I don’t know how else to describe it. Finally, and on the heels of a raging case of PMS, I concluded my husband didn’t really know me if he didn’t understand we would always be a family with a dog. I explained my oh-so-rational thoughts in an even tone that didn’t at all resemble shrieking: “I’VE HAD DOGS LONGER THAN I’VE HAD YOU! I THOUGHT YOU KNEW THAT WAS PART OF THE DEAL! LIKE BASEBALL IS PART OF YOU, DOGS ARE A PART OF ME, AND I THOUGHT WE JUST MERGED THAT SHIT WHEN WE GOT MARRIED! LIKE, IT’S NOT EVEN A QUESTION!” Big finish: “I’M GOING TO DEFY YOU AND BRING A DOG HOME AT SOME POINT, SO YOU SHOULD JUST GET ON BOARD NOW!” He blinked at me.
That night, our 7-year-old daughter started crying as we tucked her in. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 73
Friends had recently and unexpectedly gotten a puppy, and she was inconsolable, missing our Bella and Hurricane beyond reason. I feel you, girl. “When can we get another puppy?” she sobbed. Bazinga.
I obviously had been going about this all wrong. Recalling the days when I, fellow Daddy’s Girl, could persuade my dad into doing just about anything, I watched as my husband curled up to our daughter, and marveled at her already expert level tactics.
No. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t use my daughter as a pawn against my husband. Even though I was sad about the dogs, which translated into illogical anger directed specifically at my husband for no apparent reason, I still couldn’t play the Divisive Card. Husband and I were a team, a united front, yada yada yada. This, of course, made me even angrier at him. I am a prize, I tell ya. Later that week, likely beaten down and hating life, my husband gave his approval for an initial dog search (initial, he’s adorable!). I admitted I had been already been looking and friends had been helping and when he rolled his eyes, I’m pretty sure it meant, “I love you and want you to be happy.” Still, after all the rejection and disappointment, I wasn’t confident his approval would mean anything. But I was wrong.
A local reader responded to my pity party on my blog’s Facebook page, suggesting I look into the Norwin Petland, as it sells rescue pups. I hadn’t even considered chain pet stores because of the horror stories I’ve heard; apparently, I’d been missing out on a diamond in the rough! My kind reader linked me to the Norwin Petland’s page where I saw this face: There was that heart aflutter feeling. I 74 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
tamped it down as best I could, trying not to get my hopes up. I continued reading about the dog:
German Shepherd mix (Husband was adamant he wanted another GSD mix!) Hurricane Michael rescue (my brother’s name is Michael!) Born July 26 (my son’s birthday!) Those eyes–they were so familiar…
Okay, hopes undeniably soaring. When my husband’s first comment was about the dog’s kind eyes, I knew it was meant to be. Convinced the Universe heard my husband and put this animal in our lives, I felt…it. The feeling with our other dogs, the connection. Still, I was leery. It was 5:59am, surely no one would answer, but if I learned anything from Scarlet it was to make the damn call. I rolled over in bed and dialed the number. SOMEONE ANSWERED.
I sounded gross, words laden with thick sleep, but after a lot of throat clearing, I was able to vocalize my interest in the dog listed as Queenie. I basically gave the woman our entire history and when I paused to take a breath, the first thing she said was, “I am so sorry for your loss–that has to be incredibly hard.”
Ready to give her a kidney, I continued asking questions. When all was said and done, I learned this dog came from North Carolina, was crate trained, had been fostered by a family so she was used to people and kids, and was already spayed, microchipped, up-to-date on all vaccinations, and if we went through with the adoption, there were all these amazing perks like a free night’s boarding, three free days of doggy daycare, and more. I wondered why not everyone adopted from this place!
Husband and I threw the kids in the car the next day, telling them we were running errands. As it was a Friday
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and they would have much preferred to be playing with their friends, they were none too pleased with the trip. I could tell my son sensed something was up, and he actually guessed we were going to get a dog before we got there. My girls aren’t as attentive, especially when they’re pouting, so we were able to properly surprise them! They squealed when they saw our name on Queenie’s sign:
We were able to take the pup into a little cubicle so the kids could hold her. My son started crying. I didn’t expect him to be over the moon thrilled like his little sisters, but the crying took me by surprise. I stole a few minutes to talk with him and learned he was still reeling from the loss of our other
dogs: “Why would we get another one when they just die?” My heart.
It was then I realized what a profound impact family pets have on all of us. For a dog lover like myself, it’s obvious. For someone like my son, it’s not. But we all love them in our own way, and that kind of connection is important. I knew getting this dog was the right move, for more reasons than I originally imagined. I knew he’d appreciate being able to make a few important decisions about our dog, so my son and I decided on the name Charlotte (because North Carolina and he’s quite literal, my boy), Charlie for short. He also picked out her red name tag that clashes with her purple collar and my OCD cringes but whatever it’s totally fine. He got her a special toy and some treats, too. By the time we were back in the car, he was vying for her to sit on his lap like the rest of us.
He has since kept an eagle eye on her, reminding everyone within ear shot to shut the front door, keep chocolate out of reach, and basically regurgitating all the information he has learned about puppies. The girls just rub her belly with pure joy.
Aside from the obvious valuable responsibility that is having a puppy, my kids are learning what it feels like to have someone depend on them, to really need them. At least once a day, someone says, “I’m so glad we got Charlie!” Well, unless Charlie is stealing
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019 75
their toys and trying to bury them in our floorboards…For the most part, they’ve stepped up to the challenge of having a pet and have fallen head over heels for this dog.
I had forgotten how much a puppy is like a newborn in the sleep department and a toddler who’s just learned to walk in every other department. I’m pretty tired, saying No-no! a lot, making sure she doesn’t put bad things in her mouth, and potty training like a champ. Last night was the first Charlie didn’t grace me with her 2am wake-up call and I’m hoping we’re on to something here.
During the day, she forces me to go outside when I don’t want to, which is a blessing because I need to stretch my legs but wouldn’t if it weren’t for her. When she’s not following me around, she’s content to nap in her crate which is beside my desk or attempt to claw her way into the shower and join me. She’s almost 5-months-old now and tipping the scales at about 18 pounds. We’re hoping she’ll at least double in size, mostly so she can’t fit through the pickets of our fence, but also because I’ve already “lost” her under beds, like, four times. I’m grateful to my husband for putting up with my antics and to the kind, competent do-gooders at Petland 76 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
Norwin. They’re in the business of saving animals and I’m so appreciative of their work. I mean, WOOK AT DIS FACE! How can you not want to give it a home?! Welcome to the family, sweet Charlie!
Hey there, I’m Steph! English teacher by trade, smack-talker by nature, and mother of three who lives by the mantra: Life is too short, laugh! I hope you’ll stick around and check out my stuff. And by stuff I mean my writing.
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Norton Security for Windows 10 in S Mode: Safer than Safe As parents prepare to make important purchasing decisions about their children’s devices for the new school year, Norton is helping to give more peace of mind when it comes to cyber safety and Windows 10 devices. Windows 10 in S mode is a specific lightweight mode of Windows 10 that’s streamlined for security and performance. Operating in a closed environment, which uses apps from the Microsoft Store exclusively, users of Windows 10 in S mode can now add an additional layer of security with Norton Security for Windows 10S. While operating in a closed environment, Windows 10 devices operating in ‘S’ mode may still be vulnerable to cybersecurity threats including: Browser threats: • Fake technical support scams • Malicious / phishing sites • Cryptomining attacks • Webmail phishing Network threats: • Unencrypted traffic and privacy concerns • Man in the middle attacks via unsecure, malicious Wi-Fi hotspot use • Malicious network activity including DNS spoofing attacks App threats: • PII leaks (personal identifiable information) via downloaded apps • Phishing, scams, malicious files on local drives, file sharing services and social media Files and documents: • Active content attacks for office files, PDF and other documents • Malicious files and programs after switching out of 10S mode People should consider an additional layer of security software when purchasing their devices to ensure optimal and cybersafe browsing.
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Norton Security delivers more protection above the baseline security of Windows Defender by helping to safeguard users’ connections, browsers and passwords via add-ins, cloud-based protection, and access to Norton Secure VPN to further protect browsing and provide additional privacy. Key features: 1. A virtual private network (VPN) delivering a more secure connection to help protect browsing and provide additional privacy when connected to public Wi-Fi 2. Browser protections for non-Microsoft browsers to help safeguard users from malicious links and phishing sites 3. Norton Password Manager, which stores and helps protect passwords in an encrypted vault. Mark Gorrie, Director, Consumer Business, Norton by Symantec says that Norton complements S mode in the Windows ecosystem. “Norton has been keeping people safer on computers since before the internet, and we are pleased to provide Windows 10S users an even more secure and private browsing experience, safe from malicious sites.” “People who have opted for the additional security of Windows 10S can now enjoy enhanced protection combining the power of Norton Security with the built-in Windows Defender. We think this additional peace of mind will appeal particularly to parents, small businesses and educators.” says Mark. Pricing and availability Norton Security is available from nz.norton. com and quality retailers. Users can install Norton Security on their 10S machine by going to www.norton.com/setup and following the prompts.
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Carefully Molded Paper is Shape Portraits by Tiffany Miller Russel Colorado-based wildlife artist and natural history illustrator Tiffany Miller Russell uses carefully molded paper to express the unique characteristics of her animal subjects. To start the sculptural works, the artist first creates an original drawing. She then cuts and forms found specialty papers by hand to build a three-dimensional collage atop the underlying illustration. “I delight in the unique and unusual,” she shares with Colossal, “and my goal when creating is to communicate with my viewer that excitement. I hope to pass along a little bit of wonder for the world around us.” In addition to creating paper sculptures for the past fifteen years, the artist has also volunteered in a zoology prep lab and paleontology lab to further her knowledge and personal passion for evolutionary history. Miller Russell explains, “I’ve always felt a connection to animals. They have personalities and go about the world in their own ways that matter to them. Humans can anthropomorphize them, and cultures can bound them up in symbols and mythology, but that makes little difference to these creatures which have been going about their business and doing their own thing for millennia.” The artist tells Colossal that some of her larger tableaux can take up to 300 hours to complete. You can discover more of her three-dimensional animal portraits on her website and Facebook, as well as Etsy, where the artist offers originals and prints for sale.
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ed into Personality-Filled Animal ll
Laura Staugaitis
Colossal.com
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Photo Acknowledgement University of Essex
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Children’s sleep not significantly affected by screen time University of Oxford
Screens are now a fixture of modern childhood, and as young people spend an increasing amount of time on electronic devices, the effects of these digital activities has become a prevalent concern among parents, caregivers, and policy-makers. Research indicating that between 50% to 90% of school-age children might not be getting enough sleep has prompted calls that technology use may be to blame. However, the new research findings from the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, has shown that screen time has very little practical effect on children’s sleep. The study was conducted using data from the United States’ 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health. Parents from across the country completed self-report surveys on themselves, their children and household. “The findings suggest that the relationship between sleep and screen use in children is extremely modest,” says Professor Andrew Przybylski, author of the study published in the Journal of Pediatrics. “Every hour of screen time was related to 3 to 8 fewer minutes of sleep a night.” In practical terms, while the correlation between screen time and sleep in children exists, it might be too small to make a significant difference to a
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child’s sleep. For example, when you compare the average nightly sleep of a tech-abstaining teenager (at 8 hours, 51 minutes) with a teenager who devotes 8 hours a day to screens (at 8 hours, 21 minutes), the difference is overall inconsequential. Other known factors, such as early starts to the school day, have a larger effect on childhood sleep. “This suggests we need to look at other variables when it comes to children and their sleep,” says Przybylski. Analysis in the study indicated that variables within the family and household were significantly associated with both screen use and sleep outcomes. “Focusing on bedtime routines and regular patterns of sleep, such as consistent wake-up times, are much more effective strategies for helping young people sleep than thinking screens themselves play a significant role.” The aim of this study was to provide parents and practitioners with a realistic foundation for looking at screen versus the impact of other interventions on sleep. “While a relationship between screens and sleep is there, we need to look at research from the lens of what is practically significant,” says Przybylski. “Because the effects of screens are so modest, it is possible that many studies with smaller sample sizes could be false positives - results that support an effect that in reality does not exist.” “The next step from here is research on the precise mechanisms that link digital screens to sleep. Though technologies and tools relating to so-called ‘blue light’ have been implicated in sleep problems, it is not clear whether play a significant causal role,” says Przybylski. “Screens are here to stay, so transparent, reproducible, and robust research is needed to figure out how tech effects us and how we best intervene to limit its negative effects.”
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The Cruise Handbook Lonely Planet Check your local book store for your country’s RRP
‘Inspiring ideas and essential advice for the new generation of cruises and cruisers’ With this by-line I settled down to read and review another book from the Lonely Planet bookshelf… as I glanced through the window down to the port I saw two cruise ships, one entering and the other waiting on the first as the cruise season is in full swing where I live. Cruise ship holidays have gradually become more and more popular as a holiday destination and there is such a variety of themed and regional specific cruises on offer now it would be hard to have difficulty finding one which suited any taste. The Cruise Handbook seems to cover any questions a potential cruise participant might have, from why you might want to entertain the idea of going on a cruise, the history of cruising to types of cruises… ocean, river, Mediterranean, Round the World, Off the beaten track through to self-cruising. The book dips into many destinations (though not all… you can discover those yourself), looks at planning a cruise (as inclusive or personal as you may wish) what to pack, it even covers health tips, cruise etiquette and sustainability.
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You find out about what ships you might encounter, themes and the cruising calendar year. It would be impossible to cover in this review all the aspects the nine authors of this invaluable resource cover. And while I am not contemplating taking a cruise in the near future I will be enjoying dipping in and out of this book, and possibly lending it to some potential cruising friends. You don’t need to be going on a cruise or thinking of going on one to enjoy reading Lonely Planet’s The Cruise Handbook, as its also entertaining enough for dreamers as well. However if you are a first time cruiser or one who is a regular traveller on the high seas and river waterways you will find this book is perfect for you to refine your trip and enhance your enjoyment of it.
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Defying Tradition – Learning w
“Why should there be only one teacher in class? Why not everyone teach and learn?”- Abhijit Sinha
India’s rural schools struggle with high rates of teacher absences and student dropouts. How do you educate youth without sufficient government funding, resources and teachers? Abhijit Sinha believes fixing the problem is about defying tradition and instead allowing youth to design their own education using the internet and their community to support their learning. Sinha is the founder of Project Defy. His model puts the power of learning into the hands of the learner. The learner identifies an interest or passion and then gets started with an outreach manager on the learning journey via a Nook or “learning space”. Nooks enable quality learning “due to better content on the internet and the grounding of the learner’s own interests and needs as 88 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
the source of their motivation.” The learners learn collaboratively with their peers and local community instead of traditional teachers. They learn what they want and need and ignore what they believe isn’t relevant to curricula. Sinha says “learners fare better in the Nook if they work together, whereas students fare better in schools if they do better than others.” A total of eight Nooks currently exist in Karnataka, Punjab, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and in Uganda and 11 more are in development. Will we see self-learning spaces pop up all around the world in the near future? The Global Search for Education welcomed Abhijit Sinha to find out more.
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with Nooks
C.M.Rubin
” You do not truly own your learning if you do not have any say at the learning space.” – Abhijit Sinha
Many would argue that teachers are more important than ever in a changing world, given the infinite access to all types of information. For example – teachers help students navigate through the good content vs the bad content. They ensure learners engage with their learning tools in a way that supports deeper learning – what do you have to say about these perspectives? First, it is simply infeasible to have as many great teachers as are needed, just as it would be to have millions and millions of amazing engineers, lawyers, etc. Second, why burden someone in a role of such extreme expectation of knowing everything and learning nothing? This one-sided relationship has no benefit for teachers. What is more natural is an exchange of information, learning and skills. That can happen between any two people. And it does. So why should there be only one teacher in class? Why
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not everyone teach and learn? As far as navigating content goes, there are currently infinite learning resources over a large variety of domains. A finite number of teachers could only offer finite assistance based on their expertise. If that is the case, then others can help navigate your learning too based on what they have learned so far.
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“Take risks. Redesign. Reimagine education. The conventional is not working.” – Abhijit Sinha
Please share some examples that illustrate how empowering students to take ownership of their own learning is working? How do you ensure that the learner is learning?
math. Most people dislike certain subject areas not because they are truly boring, but because they had the misfortune of bad teaching or irrelevance.
Firstly, non-domain learning. We notice that the non-existence of subjects in nooks works to the advantage of learners, prevents biases against any form of learning, and helps them create interdisciplinary projects. We had a young girl who hated math, but when she picked her project attempting to build an analogue clock, the old type, without batteries, she managed to figure out about six forms of math to make the gears, without even thinking that she’s learning
Secondly, intergenerational and lifelong learning. Nooks allow adults and young ones to learn together. We have seen many project teams comprising of very young and very old people who work together and teach each other. In Kaggalipura, it was a wonderful sight to see a 60 year-old man learning from an 11 year-old child about how to make a little motored boat.
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Thirdly, interpersonal respect. Nooks attract diversity. When we create the nook, we take care
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to start with those who are most marginalized in the community so that others who are higher up in the food-chain have to accept their presence from the very beginning and seek their help to effectively use the nook. Bringing people together in a close-knit safe environment helps people to get rid of their biases and understand those who were previously misunderstood. Finally, the fun and responsibility of freedom. In nooks, the learners are fully responsible for the space as a community, and that not only includes cleaning the space, but also managing finances, making budgets, resolving interpersonal issues, paying bills and helping others learn. There is no hierarchy, so anyone who wishes to use the space must contribute to running it. How would you describe the competencies and skills you are focused on? Since we do not teach, the onus of learning is on the individual and the community. There are only two competencies that we focus on that we feel are essential for the individuals to embark on their learning journeys. The first is self-learning. It is hard for us to start self-learning and to discover our own interests with generations of schooling under our belts. Our social programming makes it difficult to have our own dreams, especially in a country like India where we spend most of our lives satisfying our parents, grandparents, neighbors, teachers and society. We focus on building a small community at the nook that helps its people to learn what they want without imposing sanctions. We help individuals learn to ask for help and to help in return. The second is self-management. You do not truly own your learning if you do not have any say at the learning space. Schools are therefore usually ineffective, because their primary target audience has no say in its functioning, and therefore schools are unable to improve, or really cater to the true needs of the learners. We help the community of learners create democratic processes to manage their learning space completely. How do nooks accommodate different kinds of learners? Nooks are nothing but communities of learners.
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When we create a new nook, we work with the first learners to create processes to invite and engage the learners that will come afterwards. New learners go through an introduction program by the existing learners, who help them get used to self-learning and become a part of the community of learners. The rules and work processes of the nook are created by the learners with our help. As new learners come, if the same rules and functions will not work for them, then there are ways to challenge and amend these as well. Since diversity is in the nook right from the very beginning, the community gets a first hand experience of inclusion from the get go.We are currently trying to understand how various forms of disabilities can also be included by community-led initiative. What can traditional education systems learn from your model? Take risks. Redesign. Re-imagine education. The conventional is not working. I do humbly request all those who are in positions of power within the educational sector, or those who in some way influence it, to please look at education beyond just the last fifty years. Look at the origin of schools and reasons behind creating them. Then, consider if that’s what they want their students to go through. I also hope that they will practice empathy and do the simple task of asking the learners, even if they are little children, “what do you want?” Believe me, children are not stupid. You will be able to create great education models and learning environments if you listen to children and essentially, seek their help.
C. M. Rubin and Abhijit Sinha
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Russian Artist Pushes Embroidery To Russian embroidery artist Vera Shimunia’s dreamy, miniature nature landscapes have over time become more stunning. With a growing Instagram follower count of over 200k people, it’s easy to see her talent and imagination have not peaked. The talented creator is completely self-taught and just like many artists she was inspired by ‘love’. “I just decided to try. And when I made my first embroidered piece the boy I liked (he has great taste and he is in art community) wrote me: ‘you did this?? So cool’ and I decided to continue,” Shimunia told Bored Panda. It took about a half a year for her to bring her vision to the public, said the embroidery star, “I started to publish my embroidery experiments in Instagram and people start to write me, ‘can I buy it?’ And I thought - why not.” With vibrant blues, whimsical pinks and deep purples, each piece transports you to a world Shimunia has created, inspired by nature and music. The intricate detailing depending on the difficulty takes anywhere from three days to a month, “I am thinking about future embroidery, I am preparing the necessary materials. “Sometimes the picture in my head does not coincide with what I made, then I cut off treads and try again.” Over time this young visionary’s work has continued to evolve as is evident on her page. Her enchanting needlepoint can be seen displayed over complimentary backdrops, only adding to the already eye-popping visuals.
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Its Limits, Making It Look Like Paint Sofia Tapia
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Truly Memorable Recently I learned that Emeritus Professor Ivan Snook had died in October, 2018. I am usually behind the times, and found out about his passing when skimming through the New Year honours’ list and saw ‘deceased’ after his name.
Joel somewhere). Haig’s handling of troublesome people was legendary. I remember when he was accosted by a bogan parent who burst into his office, aggrieved about Haig’s treatment of his unruly son.
A few people have impressed me during my journey in education and Ivan Snook was one. As a tutor way back in the early 70’s at the University of Canterbury, he delivered his lectures with a clarity that was astounding, and he was the only one who received a generous round of applause from a cynical bunch of students at the end of year. In his later life he championed humanism in education and was a vociferous critic of meaningless testing and neo-liberalism. Truly a giant totara has fallen.
‘If you had even half a mind, you wouldn’t even consider that. Enjoy gaol.’
Who else is etched in my memory? William Taylor. Teacher, author and mayor, who took the drabness out of the 50s and made me a fan of amateur dramatics. Also deceased. I acknowledged Bill in a previous rant. Haig Whiting. Principal. With a wit as sharp as knives, knives, knives (sorry, I had to quote Billy 100 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2019
‘I’ve half a mind to bash you one.’
After an abusive phone call: ‘Can I speak to the white haired old &$#%?’ ‘I’m sorry, your mother isn’t here right now. Can I take a message?’ Haig is also deceased. Mrs. Carson in Std 3, Trentham School, (one of five teachers that year) who was very kind and nurtured my interest in reading. She read a story about the Finnish/ Soviet Winter War-cool stuff! I imagine she is no longer with us. “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.” I’d like to disagree with Big Bill when I remember those worthy fellows and fellowesses. However: Others are implanted in my memory
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excuse the shoddy grammar in the last sentence) Teachers are avid Uriah Creep* for his cynical sarcasm collectors of classroom resources and and stifling of a schoolboy’s natural it didn’t take me long to realise my enthusiasm. Talking in class was colleagues were probably the motherthe ultimate crime, punishable by lode. cane. Thank you to the colleagues who Jerkyl Hyde* for snubbing my passed on (or I purloined them): request at Teacher’s College for help • The Second Storey Window song with music education in my first year of teaching, despite a big pitch • The Outsiders as a book to read to year 8s (Just ask-Yeah right, Jerkyl) at graduation. • How to open-tune a guitar for less noble reasons.
Daffyd Duck-Llareggub*curmudgeon extraordinaire. He’d sit in his self-appropriated chair, scowling at everybody, on the alert for any insult to the Land of the Leek. There were others in my education odyssey, the good, the bad and the spectacularly ineffective. Many were talented musicians, comedians and sportspeople-not to mention brilliant teachers. Multi-talented they often were. I can recall one who could smoke a cigarette, play the guitar and eat a pie at the same time. Come to think of it, my teaching career was influenced in some way by most of the people I had the luck to be associated with. (Sorry- please * surprisingly not their real names
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• Numerous camp activities and tricks. • How to make ‘stained glass windows’ with boiled sweets and pastry. • How to make five-minute ice cream • Brilliant maths games • The fact that technology need not be restricted to specialist teachers • How to mute a descant recorderOh how useful that was. I’ve deviated somewhat. So it goes. Perhaps you would like to spend an idle minute or two and reflect on those influential people in your life of learning.
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 2019