My Key Passions as an Educator and Leader

As an educator and leader within the K-12 system and at SFU, I am passionate about collaboration, inquiry, assessment, technology, imagination, engagement and motivation. My list of passions continues to grow as I explore how our schools can meet the needs of all learners.

As a Science Department Head in the Burnaby School District, I collaborated with a number of different groups within the district. From the two year Building Your Leadership Capacity program that I was a part of, to district department head meetings and various collaboration groups, I have had many opportunities to work with a variety of different teachers, administrators and directors within the district. I highly value the collaboration time that was carved into our schedules to meet and share ideas that would ultimately help to improve student success in our schools.

Strategies that have worked well for me in collaboration groups include:

• listen and hear what everyone is saying without judgement
• determine what philosophical underpinnings different members may be coming to the table with
• value different perspectives 
• give recognition to the time and energy that members are giving to be part of the conversation
• encourage participation
• lead by example
• work to find a common understanding that is rooted in research 
• offer continued support for any further explorations

As a Science Educator, I have been working on incorporating meaningful formative assessment into my practice as well as transforming my lessons using an inquiry based approach. After attending the Catalyst conference, I further investigated and implemented aspects of the Smarter Science program that is being developed in Ontario. The presentation on Smarter Science really inspired me to continue my work with developing lessons rooted in inquiry.

Please see the following website for more information on Smarter Science:

http://smarterscience.youthscience.ca/

Currently, I have been transforming my units using an inquiry based approach. Rather than give students the information and then test them on their understanding of it, I started with having my students research the unit topic. This research was structured to help students acquire a minimal understanding, but was also open enough that they could explore avenues that I may not have chosen or expected. After completing the research, students were asked to formulate questions that they still had about the topic. From that list, they were asked to choose and possibly revise a question that they could test. Then students were asked to create an experiment to test their question. They conducted the experiments, wrote up reports, formed conclusions, reflected on their understandings and connected theory to practice. During all of this exploration, I would be checking in on the progress of the students and would give feedback to them. Once they felt confident that they understood the topic, they were given a series of questions that they would be tested on that related to the material they were studying. We used these questions to see how deep his/her understanding was of the topic for summative assessment.

I used formative feedback for both myself and my students. This feedback was used to change lessons to give more support to my students in the development of their understandings. This also allowed students to take ownership over their own learning and take responsibility for their progress. I used summative assessment as markers for reporting out to both students and parents what a student's current level of understanding was at that particular moment. I am also a huge supporter of second chances and students always have the opportunity to "retest" as needed to show that his/her understanding was still developing and deepening. I also began using portfolios with my Science 8 class and assessed using the portfolio at the end of the unit. I found this a useful way to track student progress as it gave a more complete picture to both students and parents as to the progress the student was making in class.

I have been very interested in engagement and motivation. After reading Tuned Out, by Karen Hume, I joined a group in the Burnaby district that was discussing and working on how to engage and motivate students in the classroom. I have continued exploring this area of interest while working at SFU.

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The intent of this blog is to track my journey as I explore different aspects of teaching and learning within the BC school system.

Experiences at SFU - Connecting past and present

Starting my position of Faculty Associate last September and leaving behind my class, department, school and district, I was challenged in my beliefs about education. I came into the position with experience and an open mind,  but my experiences within the program have transformed, deepened and solidified the way I think about teaching and learning. In addition to this, I am now past the half way point in my Masters of Education Program. Spending time every couple of weeks with a dedicated group of teaching professionals has also given me more time to reflect on my practice and the system as a whole.

My Role as a Faculty Associate:

•         Responsible for the supervision of student teachers during their school placements
•     Mentor pre-service teachers as they develop their practice
•     Evaluate and recommend successful student teachers for certification
•     Provide a liaison between SFU’s Faculty of Education and the public schools
•      Develop module programs for individual and group instruction

o   Create a classroom and an online community (through the use of twitter and SFU’s online application – Canvas)

o   Promote the study of education literature and the examination of education issues

o   Prepare and implement workshops on a variety of topics including: planning, assessment, motivation, relationships with students, teaching strategies, aboriginal education, and special education.

o   Provide opportunities for students to practice skills

o   Provide feedback on student reflections and student progress within the program

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Being a research based profession, and on a life long learning journey, I feel that educators should spend time as both learners and mentors. As we find out more about how students best learn our teaching practice needs to change with these new understandings. We should always be striving to find new and innovative ways to reach all of our students, grounded in research. In addition to this, the act of mentoring provides both the learner and the mentor with new insights and can greatly strengthen everyone's practice - which benefits all students. I believe that all teachers should spend time both learning and mentoring others in our profession. Becoming a Faculty Associate has been one of the best professional development opportunities I have had.


A few nuggets from topics we explored in our module this past month:

• Building a strong community is essential for learning
• Outdoor education helps connect students to the Earth and enhances learning
• POE - Predict, Observe, Explain: an open-ended strategy for inquiring into science topics
• Boys Emotional Literacy: boys are told a single story of who they are that often supresses emotions and encourages violence
• Sharon's Super Seven: explicitly teaching group collaboration skills
• Making Just One Change - How to teach students to formulate good questions for inquiry
• Formative Assessment
• External versus intrinsic motivators
• Mindfulness: Encouraged through the Minds Up Program and Yoga practices
• Reflection: through writing and visual journaling

In addition, as Faculty Associate I was introduced to two new government mandates:

(1) Develop and demonstrate an understanding of First Nations and Indigenous pedagogy as well as issues relating to historical and current context of First Nations, Inuit and Metis

(2) Learn and practice ways of accommodating and valuing student difference in the classroom with particular attention to those students with exceptional or special needs

Though I attended to both students with special needs and students with aboriginal ancestry in the past, my more recent learning has increased my understanding of the particular needs of these students. From my time spent reading the statistics, delving into the research, and discussing with pre-service teachers about how to best incorporate our new understandings into our classrooms, my own understandings around diversity and differentiated instruction have also deepened. How we attend to these issues in the classroom will be reflected in how people with special needs and people with aboriginal ancestry are treated in society. I believe that as educators we need to learn how to best support the individual needs of all our students within our schools.

During my time as Faculty Associate and in my Master's Program, I came across a number of books that challenged or deepened my thinking. The following is are a few that I highly recommend.


Influential & Recommended Readings:

• The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer
• The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
• The Short Bus by Jonathan Mooney
• Drive by Daniel H. Pink
• Braiding Histories by Susan Dion
• Mindful Teaching and Teaching Mindfulness by Deborah Schoeberiein and Suki Sheth
• Spirals of Inquiry by Judy Halbert and Linda Kaser 
• Bridging Cultures: Indegenous and Scientific Ways of Knowing Nature by Glen Aikenhead and Herman Michell
• Making Just One Change by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana
• The Future of Education by Keiran Egan
• Learning in Depth by Keiran Egan
• Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher by Stephen Brookfield
• Tuned Out by Karen Hume
• Redefining Fair by Damian Cooper
• A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades by Ken O'Connor
• An Imaginative Approach to Teaching by Keiran Egan
• The Educated Mind by Keiran Egan

More to come...