Something special about specialisation

As we move away from silos, the role of the specialist teacher becomes obscure and teachers who have been trained in an isolated field can experience a loss of identity. Education is moving towards a broader interpretation of project learning where students are working across the curriculum.

So what of the specialist teacher and their specific knowledge. Can expertise in a traditional sense be useful in a modern learning environment?.

Recently a news article highlighted how teachers were trying to deal with the noise levels in a large learning space. Some were ' rebuilding the walls' in a bid to resolve the sound dynamics and minimise irritation. 

How do we resolve the challenge of noise - which I would suggest is nothing new - is also a challenge across smaller classes, through the walls between traditional classrooms and if we are really honest especially prevalent in staff rooms and even restaurants and bars. 

So who is an expert we call on who could offer value advice in resolving this current issue.

I would suggest Music and Drama teachers.

Music and Drama teachers are well versed in understanding how to work with a range of instruments and personalities in large groups dynamics where noise is not always orchestrated . Ask them the strategies they have refined over the years to cope with and exploit the opportunities in this setting. 

What about other specialists?

Art and design teachers are experts in chaos, if you have ever experienced the last week of folios, then you will understand the skill required to survive the intensity of working with individual students with individual projects. My personal experience enables me to switch from giving advice to one complex project to continually flicking every five mins from one student to another for up to nine hours. You soon learn to work at a high level of cognitive complexity. 

The skill of English teachers was recently highlighted, working pastorally with a student who always got in trouble by thinking out loud and reacting to authority. By getting him to take time out to sort his thoughts and write an ' essay' on what his key challenges were, he was able to develop the skill of refining his thoughts prior to unleashing. 

There are lessons to be learned from all specialists.

The gist of this blog post is that as we generalise education it is important to acknowledge the deep pool of knowledge that already exists, many educators not realising that they already possess the skills required to ensure success in a modern learning environment.

There is something special about specialisation.

Noise

The modern world is noisy, there are seldom times for quiet. This generation is seldom unplugged and find it uncomfortable to live in the quiet. It reminds me of a story that someone told me once that a tour group of Japanes tourists got off the bus in the Mackenzie Basin and suddenly became very uncomfortable with the eeery space and quiet of the Endless space. They are used to a intense bustling city and struggled to adjust to the lowly populated landscape.

In the same way students when invited to contemplate the silence can be at a loss as to how to function in this unique  landscape. The young listen to music constantly for a reason, often it is to quell the confusion of an adult world. Often we are the ones that require the tranquility and the quiet. 

Can the young meditate amongst noise , they can certainly hold a conversation while gaming intensely and often it is a wiser pathway in discussing personal matters. 

Silence in a modern world is elusive , yet may not be essential for the current generation. 

Technology is inspiring me to take up handwriting.

Playing around with the 53 Paper App and their stylus- the Pencil 
                                                             and wondered why I would ever want to type again.

The act of writing and drawing digitally, rubber tip on glass is somewhat sensational, even to an artist who appreciates the tactile surface of paper, canvas, and ink.

 I can draw anything, make charts and convert all my visual thinking to a slide show, no more power point presentations, no more audiences reading line after line of typed communication.

I could hand write my reports, the personal touch, acknowledging the individual, expressing my excitement in strokes with irregular rhythm. But then I would have to learn to hand write again, relearn the art of writing, clear enough to communicate.

Makes you think - what if technology proceeded to take us to the next level where we hand wrote all our digital communications. We would need to introduce a  new subject at school - the art of calligraphy. 

Is this format that has been mapped out for me the word document, the lines of text within a program the way forward?. Or could we see in the future a room full of students writing with styli. Perhaps it;s closer than thought.

Something to think about as after using an Ipad for long enough, the regular plastic keyboard isn't doing it for me anymore. 

It just isn't a well crafted process.

Course I could have handwritten this blog but i thought I would meet you in the middle, after all, teachers can have an aversion to handwriting ironically enough after marking infinite numbers of essays.

Selah.

The faceless clown

A critique of all things that speed up our lives and yet make us forget what is important.


I often wonder if google is all it is cranked up to be,

It is interesting when adults make themselves playgrounds when they are supposed to be working. I love my job yet have learned that students need adults to be adults not act like children.

Endless supplies of food, yet as a personal trainer, my clients needed self control.Have we changed?
Why are people besotted with something, when there is no gain without pain?

Has technology ever done anything for me?. It has speed up my life yet what I need is to slow down to the rhythm of my children. Siri decides what I need from the net, but what would she know she is only a faceless clown. Isn't it time I stepped up and determined my own path.

Predictive text causes chaos rather then communicating what I really want to say. So I have switched it off and have learned to think before I speak. No one tells me what to do!

Google allows me to access to a huge amount of information yet I would prefer honesty and respect and that I cannot google.

Someone  wise once told me that nothing is free and I have found when something is advertised to be free - there is always a catch or an agenda.

China was painted as the evil clown by google but how can I trust anything I hear on the internet when I google that news item. We know that history is tainted by bias.


All I have left to say is that as a parent and as a teacher, I am responsible for my children and my students.

Since I can't get my money back if google is not all it is cranked up to be. I would like to know who will take responsibility if this affects the children.

A faceless clown?

Connected, Disconnected, Unplugged, Switched off...

Power to the people or the children?.  Or perhaps the sad reality is the power is still with the system. The industrial revolution a celebration of 'mankind's potency'  turned our education into a industry and as a human race we saw it as progress. There are many lessons to be learnt for this current modern age.... lest we forget.

I completed my art degree and teacher training six years ago after working for Child, Youth and Family. During that time my children were born. As I learnt about teaching I listened to their endless questions spurred on by endless curiosity, sometimes I had enough .......but that was just my immaturity as an adult.

My children now all go to a Montessori school ( from year three ) and have been able to continue this exciting journey of curiosity and questions.  As parents, a choice was made as generally the education system is unable to hear the individual.

 I know there are an incredible number of passionate teachers in primary school - in the primary school that we bypassed in order to give each of our children a chance - Aroha mai.

An incredible number of teachers who used to wake up with all the passion in the world until the system ground them down. And yet they continue to try.

Maybe e-learning can make possible what is humanly impossible ? - to meet the individual in a classroom of thirty.... it's early days and time will tell if that theory is correct.

Another trend is to have classrooms of ninety with three teachers - why? - some expert sees it as progress. Who am I to criticise an expert's finding?

I am  a parent - a qualification that gives me a platform to challenge anyone , if they are going to conduct a social experiment with our children. With respect, a scientific approach to education is no better than an industrial one, if it doesn't see the individual. And where is your evidence?

As I write, there is a severe storm outside cutting across the estuary and I am reminded of a proverb-

'No longer be infants tossed back and forth and blown here and there by every wind of teaching'


Hey I am all for progress and e-learning.

 I would not want to live in any other era. I use twitter, facebook, tumblr, instagram, blog, shop 90% online, I have a smart phone. My children play minecraft. I appreciate the real world which is not as virtual as we make out.

Yet what do we do?   I believe the answer is with the Treaty of Waitangi- that made some progress.

According to the Treaty of Waitangi - education has a responsibility to whanau, according to the Treaty of Waitangi - government has a responsibility to whanau, according to the Treaty of Waitangi, whanau has a responsibility -we all have a responsibility to each other. No shifting of  the blame.

The graffiti on a garage door makes us angry not because there is a bored young man out there but because he intruded on our space. ( Ownership of space, well thats another blog)

And there lies the problem, we have ceased to be a nation that respects individuals.

We need to cease being spectators and make sacrifices so that individuals in New Zealand can have a better education.

We are all part of a great nation. And this nation will only make progress when we listen to all the individuals.

This nation will only make progress when we unplug from the machine.


Make the switch.


The Artist.  The Teacher. The Parent. The New Zealander.

Imagination or Fantasy

Credited to my daughter - Sicily.

My daughter has at age three evidenced what my sons already proved, that children are abstract and critical thinkers. When my oldest son was three years old and started at a Montessori school, I became Mister Mullen - an art teacher. I watched him learn and wished my senior students could do the same - independently learn about their world without interference.

This year, my daughter began her education 'formally'.

Sicily loves Art and often begins her day in the childrens' house painting. That is cool in itself but there is something I have discovered that is way too cool for school.

One morning as my sons were watching cartoons ( fantasy?). I started the day hanging out with my daughter, it was 6:30am on a Saturday morning. She wanted to draw so I set her up with pen and paper. She drew some gestural pieces and I asked her what they were. She said ' the beach and these are the steps through the sand hills to the water'. My eyes were opened to understand the drawing but also I began to understand her process. What Sicily seemed to do was to create chaos and then use her imagination to translate it into order. It was incredible to watch. All I had to do was listen, really listen. And I caught a glimpse into the world as she saw it, I will never see television the same way.

So back to the cartoons upstairs.There is a hell of a lot of lateral thinking going on in 'Finn & Jake' and Spongebob Square Pants which sets my lads off giggling, so they get it. But what if the fantasy has already been played out in a pre-concieved order. Where does the imagination reside?

And the the toy-box upstairs, full of products that have already been imagined for you. What's the point if 'the colouring in' has already been done?. I get it. Its like the computer programmes I use at work which frustrate me as I try to lateral think within the perimeters of someones else's imagination. I want to imagine and cause unlimited possibilities, not be reduced to the confines of another person's design.

Do dress ups as a fantasy promote imagination or lessen it, by imposing the designer's experience, while limiting the creativity of the  'consumer'?  As an art teacher you would think that I would be an advocate for fantasy, but what if it limits the imagination? I could hardly support that.

 This is a challenge. Not to become a careful consumer, But to listen to your children, Not to give into their demands for product. but to cause opportunities for imagination to run rife, lateral and critical thinking to then kick in and the magic to happen.

The No 1 rule of parenting in my experience is .... listen, really listen to your children, stop everything that you are doing and devote your time and energy to one little person. And you will learn from a great teacher.

Imagine being to taught how to imagine, by the reality of your children.

The Loophole

So I've been thinking and I've come up with a scheme, its a bit shifty but I kinda wondering why no one else has thought of it?!

I mean this teacher gig ain't as bad as it's cracked up to be.

It goes like this... Boom Boom Chur

I don't need a Modern Learning Environment, coz the modern classroom don't need walls. We can teach anywhere.

And  Minecraft, well we are preparing for the Real World, so...

... Project based learning , my lawns do need mowing,

then there's Blended learning - a bit of this and a bit of that

And Maker education, could use my my old man's shed.

Universal design for learning like a universal tool? one that fits everything?

What If students BYOD and I flip the classroom, does that actually work?

Collaboration,  you mean they do half the work?

I've heard of Design thinking,  though hasn't the human brain already been invented?

 Multiple intelligences, yes many minds do make light work.

To Stem or Steam, I  prefer the sauna over the weed personally

Learner agency - does that mean we can hire them out to make money? GeeWhiz!

Google classroom, what comes up?

Self directed learning so I get paid to do less?

Solo Taxonomy, don't like the sound of that, a little matter of a run in with the law a few years back.

Coding -is that better than Panadol, often get headaches with this job.

Mindfulness - well yep after this their minds will be full...

And so hang on - your colleagues are slow adopters #edchatnz?

I don't get it?


But anyway brilliant,  I'm sorted.

Cheers,


The Artist.