The Gifts We Bring

“Each one has their gifts.They are not for you- they are to give!”             ~Hemat Malak~

A few weeks back I asked our students and staff to join me in a little project. With the holiday season in full roar and the busy-ness associated with this time of year I asked our students and staff to take a moment to think their talents and gifts and share with me one that they felt they shared with others. I gathered all the responses and pasted them into this Wordle word cloud (for those who are new to Wordle, the larger the word, the more often is was used).

A little sappy? Sure. Of course the reason why I thought it was worth a try was simple- empathy. All month long our school has been exploring empathy- what it is and why it is an integral part of an inclusive school and a civilized society. I’ve always believed that private victories come before public ones (credit to Steven Covey).  Before we are truly able to share our gifts or talents with others; we need to have a sense of what they are and know that they are recognized and valued by others.

The essence of empathy is respecting, appreciating and valuing others for who they are and the gifts they bring. There are almost 500 children and adults who work and learn at our school every day. We are a collective of individuals; unique and united- and we make up a wonderful, messy mosaic-we create, we make mistakes, we laugh and we cry. I value and appreciate the gifts and talents of each member of our school community and am happy to celebrate them!

As was the case last year, the Open Office will take a break for the next few weeks and I enjoy the company of friends and family and squeeze in a few trips to the ski hills! On behalf of our school community- I wish you peace, happiness and joy.

See you in 2014!

 

Joint Work in the Digital Staff Room

Dean Shareski makes me chuckle and makes me think- two things that are greatly appreciated. He has a well-developed sense of the importance of play and joy in learning and asks great questions.  Perhaps it is the amount of time he spends travelling, or those long, cold Prairie winters- but Dean’s blog posts speak to me, they are reflective, transparent and challenging. Because I appreciate @shareski and believe that a network is both a place where one gives and receives; I am happy to accept Dean’s invitation to engage in a (seemingly) random act of web-enabled joint work.

Need to activate some prior knowledge? Click here . I suppose that Dean is looking to engage in a little play and extend a capacity building task- he may have some other unknown goal-or, it could be he’s trapped in the throes of a Saskatchewan winter- who knows?

Regardless, I’m happy to play along…

So here is the task…

1. Acknowledge the nominating blogger- in this case it would be me…
2. Share 11 random facts about yourself.
3. Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger has created for you.
4. List 11 bloggers.
5. Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer, and let all the bloggers know they have been nominated. Don’t nominate a blogger who has nominated you.

11 Random Facts About Me…

1. As much as I love being a principal, my coolest job was working on an Aircraft De-Icing Crew
2. Though I write with my right hand, I am actually left handed
3. Between my wife @techieang and I we have taught every grade from Kindergarten to grade 8
4. But I have taught more grades: 1,4,5,6,7 & 8
5. I was a Boston Bruins fan until I was 6 years old, then I was told being a Leaf fan was a ‘family rule’
6. Ever since I was 6, I’ve resented rules
7. If there is a James Bond film on TV, I will watch it
8. Answer: Yes   Question: Coffee?
9. Any challenging, difficult or complex problem is easier to solve after a day of skiing
10. I am an introvert
11. I believe it is important to face my fears (see 10)

11 Questions from @shareski

1. How do you feel about pants?    Levis, please
2. What was the last movie you saw in a theatre?  National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation at the Retro Holiday Film Fest in at the local cinema 
3. Where are your car keys?  Hanging by the door on an appropriately key-shaped key holder
4. What time is it?     EDT
5. What’s the last tweet you favorited?   Here
6. Outside of your immediate family; which relative do you like to spend time with? Brother-in-law’s don’t count as ‘immediate, right?
7. Have you ever been to Saskatchewan? No
8. How long did it take you to walk to school as a kid?  10 minutes- 5 if I had slept in
9. Besides you,  blogger should I be paying attention to?   Paul Aniceto
10. Name one golf course.  Bushwood
11. What’s your favorite Seinfeld episode or line?  “that’s right- he’s a real sideler.”

 

A reminder of  the task…

1. Acknowledge the nominating blogger- in this case it would be me…
2. Share 11 random facts about yourself.
3. Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger has created for you.
4. List 11 bloggers.
5. Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer, and let all the bloggers know they have been nominated. Don’t nominate a blogger who has nominated you.

My Questions for You Are…

1. Who is your favourite superhero?
2. What is the most interesting place you have visited?
3. IOS or Android?
4. Would you rather be a hammer or a nail-Why?
5. What was your first part time job?
6. Left on a desert island, what 3 books do you take with you?
7. When do you usually write your blog posts?
8. Pizza- thin crust or regular?
9. What was the topic of your first blog post?
10. Did you ever own an 8-Track cassette?
11. Lennon or McCartney?

Now its Your Turn…

1. Aviva Dunsinger
2. Paul Aniceto
3. Yoon Soo Lim
4. David Truss
5. Rodd Lucier
6. Zoe Branigan Pipe
7. Stephen Hurley
8. Mark Carbone
9. Doug Peterson
10. Sue Dunlop
11. Donna Miller Fry

Of course, your participation is not mandatory…if you do remember to link back!

Peace!

Leaning on PISA

“Bad news sells” is a very depressing truism of our business, even when the bad news doesn’t remotely convey what’s happening.”        ~Jeffrey Simpson~

The media landscape has been filled with responses to the release of the results from last year’s Programme of International Student Assessment test (PISA). The assessment is designed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to gather data on the core skills of reading, science and mathematics and is administered to a sample of 15 year old students from around the world. The focus of last year’s test was mathematics and, though many countries participated in this assessment, it is important to note some key points:

• approximately 510 000 students (21,000 from Canada) participated in the assessment world wide and their selection was made by school- all the 15 students at a randomly-selected school would’ve taken the 2 hour test;
• there was a mix of countries, states and cities that participated; from city-states like Hong Kong and Singapore to countries like the United States and Russia. In fact, the OECD, which administers the test classifies participants as economies and states;
• the assessment does allow for the gathering of demographic information that permits a more robust and detailed analysis of the results.

The last point is where I will direct my focus for now. Predictably, the release of the test results set off a lively cycle of reaction from the media; with responses ranging from panic, denial to smug self-congratulation. Across Canada media outlets analyzed, sought ‘expert’ insight and opined about the national and provincial results. The initial reaction from the media that I have scanned has been pretty balanced. There were some initial alarms claiming that we are ‘falling’ due to low standards’ a misguided mathematics pedagogy of inquiry and exploration and that we needed to get ‘back to the basics’ and focus on more traditional methods of math instruction. But, as the days have passed and accounting for bias, some helpful points have been raised and discussed:

• Much was made of the rankings as evidence as indicative of Canada’s declining status in mathematics as we ‘slipped’ from 10th in the world to 13th (out of 65). While, the raw math scores have declined 14 points over the past decade Canadian 15 year olds still perform at high level using this measure. Only muddled math could equate above average as a crisis- especially when one factors in that 4 of the 13 ‘countries’ above Canada in the rankings are actually cities in China that were reported as separate entities.  The key concern here is the decline using this measure and how we can explore this pattern in our context. A common element among the districts that had high performance in math is the emphasis they place upon teacher quality and expertise in the teaching of mathematics. Though factors like curriculum design and socio-economic status play a role; the PISA results confirm that the students who perform best in math have teachers who are well trained, both initially and over the course of their careers.

• When comparing the performance of Canadian provinces much was made of the superior results in Quebec; with some commentators giving credit to Quebec’s focus on rote memorization and avoidance of the ‘fuzzy math’ that other Canadian provinces have adopted.  Fortunately, commentators have looked more deeply at Quebec and realized that though their curriculum is not that different than the rest of Canada, the investment that they make in preparing and supporting the on-going professional knowledge of their teachers is; with Quebec teachers spending significantly greater time learning about mathematics during their pre-teaching preparation and beyond.  McGill Mathematics Education Professor Annie Savard points out that; “People on their way to becoming math teachers also do plenty of field work, watching and doing hands-on teaching while still in university. By the time they graduate and head into classrooms, they have done a minimum of 700 hours of in-class internships.”   We could also point to Quebec’s decade-old investment in affordable, universal child care as a factor in these results as there is a robust connection between a child’s development of early number concepts and later academic success.

In our school context we are considering the PISA insights to guide both our planning for professional learning and our allocation of resources.  We know that one-off ‘programs’ that emphasize basic skills and memorization do not work just as we know that ‘inquiry learning’ that expects children to discover and develop mathematical understandings by themselves will not work. What we do know is that learning occurs when teachers have the skill to design tasks that require students to struggle, allow them to use models and strategies that they have been taught and compel them to prove and justify their thinking. These are all outcomes of classroom teaching.

As a school, our key investment is in developing the capacities of our teachers to provide focused instruction in mathematics.  And that is why it is exciting that 8 of our teaching staff will spend some time learning about effective mathematics instruction with Dr. Cathy Fosnot over the next week.