A Great Time to be in Education!

With Dr Penland, Mr Petrey, and Mr Wendling currently in Canada and the US for recruiting, my meeting schedule has lightened somewhat. This has enabled me to spend more time in the classrooms - in the last two days I have been in 20 different middle school classes. I have observed so much learning and so much enjoyment and engagement in these classes! Here's some of what I have observed:

• Grade 8 students creating stop animation movies in Design Tech - displaying real inquiry
• Grade 6 students writing short stories and sharing these with their peers - examples of great thinkers and communicators
• Grade 7 and 8 students learning the finer points of volleyball - a great example of being balanced
• Grade 6 students performing in a guitar ensemble - another example of balance and also of being knowledgeable and taking risks
• Grade 6 students participating in drama activities involving lots of movement and risk taking
• Grade 7 students researching the countries of South America - demonstrating very open-minded attitudes
• Grade 6, 7, and 8 students studying the language and cultures of Korea, China, and Spanish speaking nations in their world language classes - students have been taking risks, communicating, inquiring, open-minded and principled
• Students enjoying the stories of the Bible and learning the value of prayer - thinking students who are balanced and caring
• Grade 7 students engaging with books and taking their online AR quizzes - communicating their knowledge
• Grade 7 students taking a Science test, while the grade 6 students were learning all about heat and conduction - students being knowledgeable, inquirers, and risk-takers
• Grade 8 boys working an interdisciplinary assessment that involves researching North Korea in Humanities and writing the report in their English class - this has really challenged the students to be inquirers, open-minded, caring, principled, and balanced in their views and preconceptions

After a visit to each class I have the same thought - Wow! Our students are learning so much and in so many different and exciting ways. Whether you are a student, a teacher, or an administrator, this really is a wonderful time to be involved in education!

Increasing Global Awareness Through KIVA

In 2008 I was fortunate enough to attend some presentations by Alan November at the EARCOS Administrators' Conference. During one of his presentations he stated that KIVA.org was justification enough that the internet is a good thing.

At that stage I had a personal KIVA account (which I still have) but I had not considered how this micro finance website could be used in education. This year I have been working with our Student Life Minister, Ms Choe to increase our students' global awareness by lending money through KIVA.

Each student contributed 3000 won (roughly $3 USD) that enabled us to create an account that each Home room could use to lend $25 USD to an entrepreneur of their choice. Interacting with the KIVA website and researching the profiles on the site has enabled our students to learn a great deal about developing countries around the world, as well as gaining an awareness of the plight of individuals who need a helping hand in the form of a loan to get their business idea off the ground, or to expand a business that is already running. The monthly updates keep the students engaged with their chosen entrepreneur, and helps them to feel connected as they see the loan being repaid.

This is proving to be a great way for our students to develop a more caring attitude and to engage in an authentic and meaningful way on an ongoing basis. I hope this initiative prompts some of our students and families to look for other ways that they can make a difference.

Benefits of an e-Portfolio

Last semester we launched our e-Portfolio in the MS. This semester we continue to work with students on developing and personalizing these portfolios and they will become an integral component in our student-led conferences in March/April.

One of the questions that still pops up from time to time is, "Why do you use e-Portfolios?" This is a good question to which I always respond in terms of benefits for the students. Karen Barnstable has posted "41 Benefits of an e-Portfolio" on her blog. After reading this insightful list I think the question will become, "Why aren't you using e-Portfolios?"

For more information in support of e-Portfolios be sure to visit Ray Tolley's blog, eFolio in the UK.

Full Engagement and Enjoyment

As I walked down the hall towards Ms Letsche's grade 8 Design Technology room I was struck by a wonderful smell, and I as I got closer the smell got stronger. When I entered the classroom I was delighted to see her DT class busily preparing and cooking a dish that each student had researched and chosen to cook. What I witnessed was students who were fully engaged and enjoying what they were doing.

Once the meals were prepared the students had the opportunity to look at how the meals were presented before tasting them and giving feedback to each other. What a great way to engage the students and offer them the opportunity to participate in a unit that involved a wide range of interdisciplinary links that enabled the students to apply skills and knowledge from other subject areas to a real-life and authentic situation.

Are you Balanced

At yesterday's MS assembly Ms Postema's homeroom explored the IB Learner Profile Balanced and encouraged us to think about our lifestyle and ways that we can ensure balance in our lives. This is not always an easy thing to accomplish, but it is certainly something that we should always be aware of and constantly strive for.

If you do a Google search for "balanced lifestyle" you will find in excess of 1, 790, 000 sites that offer all sorts of advice on how to live a balanced life and the benefits of being balanced. It is harder to find ways to determine whether or not your current lifestyle is balanced. One of the sites (http://www.wikihow.com/Have-a-Balanced-Lifestyle) contained the following quote:

If you live a balanced life you will find joy in almost everything you do. Some a bit more than others but your happiness will originate from inside of you and not from external sources.

I think this is a pretty good indicator of a balanced lifestyle - your are happy and content rather than searching for happiness from external sources.

One of the major benefits of leading a balanced lifestyle is that when challenges arise we are better equipped to deal with them - we have the physical energy and stamina to take on the challenge, we have the emotional stability to handle the challenge in a calm and rational way, we have the social skills and network to seek help from peers and friends, we have the spiritual grounding to pause and reflect before acting, and we have the academic knowledge to approach the challenge in an intelligent and thoughtful manner.

Students face just as many, although different, challenges than we adults, so it vital that we help students to lead a balanced lifestyle to better equip them to deal with these challenges when they arise. Holistic Education is so much more than academics and is imperative as we collaborate with our students and help them develop the skills necessary for success in the 21st century.

The Power of Reflection

With 2009 drawing to a close now is a good time to reflect on the year and all of the highlights and challenges that occurred throughout the year.

As I prepare for the first two recruitment fairs in Sydney next week I have been reflecting on my recruiting experiences from earlier this year. I have been looking through my notes and my interview questions and thinking about what worked well, what needs to be improved, and what I have learned since then that can be incorporated this time around to enhance the interview experience for both myself and the candidate being interviewed.

While going through this process the power of reflection has really been evident - if we don't take the time to reflect and look for opportunities to improve then we run the risk of repeating the same mistakes, or even worse, we repeat a process that may be flawed. Modeling reflective practices for our students helps them to see the value in this process and enables them to engage in reflection of their own learning. Sometimes we see that the reflection can be equally as powerful as the learning process itself.

Being a Risk-taker

It is very easy for us to become so comfortable in what we do each day that we can shy away from opportunities to try new things. One of the great things about coming home to Australia and visiting family is that we get to try many new things, or at least things that we have done for many many years. My adventure yesterday is a perfect example of this.

My son has been wanting to go fishing for some time now, but we have not really had the opportunity to make this happen - it has also been over 30 years since I last cast a line. On Tuesday night my sister mentioned to me that the following morning she would be going fishing with her partner, so I jumped on this opportunity and asked if my son and I could go with them. She happily agreed, so at 6:30am on Wednesday morning we were putting the boat into the Elliot River. It was a magnificent day with an electric blue sky, crystal clear water, and some real quality time spent together.

We had a great time driving around in the boat and stopping at different places to try our luck with the fish. I was quite shocked and excited when I finally felt something pull on the end of my line, and when I felt the line being pulled away from me I was even more excited at the prospect of what might be on the end. After a good fight and some patience I finally landed what you see in the photo below - a 68cm barramundi!

Fishing is by no means one of my regular past-times, but this was a great opportunity to try something different and move out of my comfort zone. I hope this Christmas offers you the opportunity to be a risk-taker and try something different as well.

What do the students think?

Well it is the end of the first semester and we have finalized our semester 1 reports ready to be mailed home next week. At the end of each semester we have our students write their own report comment based on a template that guides their reflection in the following areas:

• What they have learned
• Their areas of strength
• Their areas for growth
• Their behavior and attitude
• Which IB Learner Profile they feel they have grown in and how this growth occurred

Giving the students the opportunity to participate in this type of reflection provides valuable feedback in a number of areas:

• The student comments are rich, detailed, and very personalized
• The teachers gain valuable insights into their teaching and learning practices from the students' perspective
• The parents are given specific information about their child's learning and behavior from the learner's perspective
  
• The students engage in authentic reflection that helps to determine where they are now, where they would like to be, and how they are going to get there

It is a very enjoyable experience to read the student comments as they are honest (sometimes brutally so), insightful, thoughtful, and from time to time funny! We don't often take the time to hear from the students and gain their perspective on their learning - providing the opportunity for students to write their report comments is one way that we can make learning and assessment something we do "with" the students rather than something we do "to" them.

I'm So Tired!

"I'm so tired!" is a statement that we here from our students quite frequently - I have no trouble admitting that the majority of our students sleep less than I do. It is amazing the number of emails that I receive, and I know the faculty receive, from students with a time stamp that is after midnight.

This quote from the ASCD journal, Educational Leadership, entitled Sleep: The E-ZZZ Intervention highlights just how important sleep is for young adolescents and how an increase in sleep each night can have a number of positive effects on our students and children:

Sleep-deprived students tend to be more restless, irritable, and impulsive than other students. They also may be more depressed and have lower self-esteem than their classmates who sleep more. The effect can go in both directions—sleep deprivation may cause emotional disorders such as depression or anxiety, and emotional disorders may cause poor-quality
sleep.

Ensuring our children get enough sleep each night is one aspect needed to help them achieve the IB Learner Profile of Balance.

I'm Ready to Learn!

About 3 weeks ago I was working on a Prezi at home when my son, who is in 3rd grade, came into the study and asked what I was doing. I showed him what I was working on and explained to him how a Prezi differs from a Power Point presentation. He said he thought it was pretty cool and off he went to continue playing.

Today I saw him in the hall with one of his classmates taking photos of different parts of the school. He explained to me that they were taking photos to send to their pen pal in the US so he could see what our school looked like. I thought this was a great idea and was impressed by his creative thinking.

On the was home this afternoon he asked me if I would show him how to make a Prezi - he had decided that rather than do a Power Point to send to his pen pal he would do a Prezi. I was very surprised that he remembered something I had shown him only briefly a few weeks earlier - I was even more surprised that he remembered enough about it that he thought this would be a good way to share some information and photos about our school with someone on the other side of the world. We discussed what he planned to do and he asked me if you could draw arrows in Prezi - I replied that I didn't think so and that I had never really tried before.

When we got home from school we created a free account for him and then I showed him some of the basics to get him started. I then left him to play around and explore this new program. After about 10 minutes he came into the kitchen and said, "I know more than you now!" He went on to explain that he had found how to draw arrows - so I sat down as he explained to me how to do this.

This was a wonderful learning experience for us both - we both got to teach and we both got to learn. It was clear that his interest was high in learning how to use this program, therefore he was fully engaged in what we were doing and his ability to learn and apply his new skills and knowledge was outstanding.

It is amazing what people, especially children and adolescents are capable of when they are ready to learn. As educators we need to be aware of these teachable moments and be ready and willing to capitalise on them - when students are interested in what they are doing and see a practical application for it then don't need to be extrinsically motivated, they are ready and willing to learn because they want to and because they see value in what they are learning.

Korean Education Getting Creative

Creativity and critical thinking are not words that are often associated with traditional Korean education practices. According the article below, Seoul's Mayor is hoping to change that:

Oh Plans to Bring Creativity to Kindergarten Education

This is a bold plan in an educational environment that has often valued rote learning and self-discipline above creativity. Hopefully it is a plan that is carried through effectively for the benefit of the students.

Struggling with Identity

Yesterday I heard from Dr Josephine Kim, a graduate from a Korean international school (ICS-U) who now teaches and counsels at Harvard University.

This was a fascinating presentation and narrative that highlighted many issues that affect international students, particularly Korean students in international schools. It would take many pages to fully and effectively summarize the presentation, so I have highlighted some of the major points in the bullets below:

• One positive experience with a teacher can impact a student for life
• When Korean students study abroad they try to lose their Korean identity to try to fit in - when they return to Korea they find it difficult to know what their identity is
• Many Korean students suffer from 'perfectionism'
• Western cultural norms are very different, and sometimes in contrast to Korean cultural norms (individualism vs collectivism)
  
• At school we encourage critical thought and expressing ideas and opinions, but these are not traditionally encouraged in student-parent relationships

MS students are in a stage of their lives when they are struggling to find their personal and social identity - when you add in a cultural identity struggle as well things become very complicated.

It is important for educators and parents to be aware of these challenges that our students are facing, and to be understanding and supportive as we nurture our students and children through these difficult years. It is imperative that parents and teachers work together to help each other understand the cultural differences we are dealing with - this will enable us to more effectively support our students as they find their cultural identity.