Build it and they will come: Creating spaces for learning and working

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

pin-up board montage

I had come to a place where I was meant to be. I don’t mean anything so prosaic as a sense of coming home. This was different, very different. It was like arriving at a place much safer than home. ~ Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline

At the start of this school year, I have been obsessed. Obsessed with learning and working environments. Over the summer I wrote about my own learning and writing places. Since school has started here in Australia I have been focusing on the spaces in which I work and teach: my classrooms and a new office space for my team of coaches (these are the teachers who will be coaching teachers in our school-based teacher growth model).

My thinking about working and learning spaces is based on a few personal principles:

Comfort. This is physical comfort (Is it comfy? Can each individual make themselves comfortable?) and emotional comfort (Does each person feel like they belong? Is the space welcoming and emotionally cosy?).
Flexibility. I am a great lover of flexible spaces. What I have found – in classrooms, working with colleagues, writing in cafes for my PhD thesis and watching my own children and husband interact with environments – is that we all have preferred ways of being in a space. When we are working at home, my husband stands at a tall bench while I recline on a couch. Given movable pieces like beanbags and floor cushions, children and young adults will take charge of a space and make it their own, changing groupings or even purposes of furniture. Each will find a nook in which, or stool on which, they feel they belong.
Appeal. While we don’t necessarily want our classrooms, offices or homes to look like something out of a Scandinavian design magazine, for me it is important to pay attention to bringing visual appeal to a space. This might be about colour, space, playfulness, details, natural materials or tactility.
Ownership. How can the space belong to the people who use it? This might include student-driven spaces and displays in classrooms, family-focused rooms at home, or offices which bear the mark of those who work there.
Purpose. The work of Prakash Nair and Randall Fielding (including their excellent publications) explains spaces in terms of purpose: campfire spaces for learning from someone else, watering hole spaces to learn collaboratively with others and quiet cave-like spaces for nestling into learning from and with yourself.

What follows are some examples of these principles in action. Get ready for a picture-fest.

Home spaces

My space principles apply in my home, too. We have piles of beanbags, cushions and ottomans which get moved around the house depending on the space required or game at hand. I have DIYed artwork for the walls of my children’s play and sleeping places. (There is something about DIY that really appeals to me. Maybe it is the catharsis of creativity but I always feel that, if I make something, I instil that something with a piece of myself, my energy and my investment in the person or people for whom I am making it. This goes for my kids’ birthday cakes, the things I have made for their rooms, the artwork I create for friends and family, and the learning and office spaces I have had a hand in designing for students and colleagues.)

DIY artwork & soft furnishings in the ‘kids spaces’ in my home

Open learning spaces

When I was Head of Faculty at my school, I had the opportunity to work with a team to design and furbish renovated classrooms. These two immersive spaces are my favourites.

How would you feel learning here?

Classrooms

Early learning teachers seem to be great at creating environments for their students. In my (limited) experience, this is especially true of Reggio and IB inquiry classrooms. High school classrooms and school offices, however, tend (and I am generalising) to default to ‘seated at grey desks and chairs’ as the main way to learn and work.

This year in our high school English classrooms, we have removed teacher desks (that bastion of symbolic power) which means that teachers need to be flexible about where and how they work. It also encourages teachers to get in amongst their students rather than sitting apart from them or getting students to come to them.

Additionally, we have added more multi-level seating options. Rugs, beanbags, cushions, ottomans and tall benches not only add a homely comfy feel to a classroom environment, they importantly allow for flexibility of space and choice of how individuals work.

Extra whiteboards or walls painted with Idea Paint give the room multiple points of teaching and learning focus (as recommended by learning spaces and places guru, Professor Stephen Heppell).

I spent last Sunday afternoon at IKEA buying high pile rugs, partly for this sense of homey comfort, and partly to add some tactile awesomeness to the shoeless learning / barefoot teaching we are going to try. I haven’t scheduled any official ‘shoeless learning’ time yet, but since mentioning it to my classes, a number of my students have asked at the start of each class if they can work with their shoes off.

comfy classroom spaces

The best thing about doing this to a classroom is watching the students. They walk in. They look around slowly and with a mixture of confusion and delight. Most sit at their normal desks. Some hover around the new comfy corner. Someone asks, “Is this for us?” “Are we allowed to sit here?” And the next thing you know, they are making it their own and nestling in. They sit on the floor around low tables. They use cushions as tabletops and footstools as chairs. They lie on rugs. They stand around tall benches. They sink into couches. They feel valued and engaged. They find it easier to find their flow.

Offices

I was delighted to hear that my team of teacher coaches would have a war room in which to meet, explore ideas and have coaching conversations. When I inherited the space it had two big tables, a desktop computer and two chairs. I had those removed and got to work reimagining the space for our purpose.

My dream for this space was of collaboration, conversation, co-learning and reflection, so from around the school and storeroom, I found a round table and some chairs, a couch, an armchair, a small bookshelf, a whiteboard and a little table. In they went. I also have two beanbags on order.

be deliberate about office furniture

Then it was time to work on emotional comfort and visual appeal.

consider floor, wall, tabletop and ceiling spaces

I DIYed some bespoke decorations like the ‘5 States of Mind’ bunting (a concept from Cognitive Coaching) and hanging paper planes. I added and repurposed some bits and pieces from my own house (including some snow domes and the blue painting which is one I painted years ago and has been gathering dust in my garage). A few touches from IKEA and Typo made the office look less officey.

I chose to frame posters rather than laminate them so the feel was more home and less classroom.

Initially, I wanted a plant for the table, but I knew it wouldn’t survive holidays unwatered, so I opted for a bowl full of Play-Doh and squeezy brains: tactile playthings for kinaesthetic thinkers.

details from my team office

Importantly, the quotes in frames and the ‘one words’ on the pin-up board are directly from members of the team. It is their goals, visions and inspirations which have come together in this space. I can feel the collaborative energy there. I hope they can, too.

What are your own principles for designing learning or working environments? Where are your favourite places to learn or work?

Teacher Growth: Helping teachers open their gates from the inside

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

This post on my Australian school’s teacher growth model was originally written as a guest post for Starr Sackstein, acclaimed educator, author and bloggess extraordinaire. It was inspired by a #sunchat Twitter chat moderated by Starr, which challenged me to talk more specifically about the professional learning and culture model I keep going on about …

~ ~ ~

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal. ~ Marilyn Ferguson

How do you help someone open their gate from the inside?

The global education community tends to agree that better teaching equals better student achievement. Schools, districts and nations have taken this notion and used it in attempts to improve the quality of teachers through professional development and teacher evaluation systems.

There is a long continuum of possibilities for developing teachers and teaching, but it seems that many systems sit solidly at the teacher-evaluation-for-improvement end. When I visited the USA I was surprised at the quantitative, and at times punitive, approaches being used to score and evaluate teachers. Eric Saibel’s recent post questions whether all the work and time put into teacher evaluation has made a difference to teaching or student learning. In this thoughtful video conversation Eric talks with Starr Sackstein about ideas for meaningful teacher feedback and growth.

As a teacher, school leader, researcher and parent, teacher growth and evaluation are areas of immersion and passion for me. My own ideas are based on my:

Experiences as a classroom teacher in Australia and the UK;
Experiences as Head of Faculty in Australian schools;
Recent visits to New York schools, researchers and edu-experts;
Current PhD research on what makes transformative professional learning and leadership; and
In-school strategic work on researching, piloting and developing a teacher growth model for my Australian school. We are at full implementation phase this calendar year.

To develop my school’s teacher growth model we have used a Schooling by Design backwards design approach to planning and implementation. This has allowed us to align our vision, purpose, evidence and action. This has centred us around our own context and our goals of improving the learning of our students and developing the professional culture of our school.

Our change management philosophies of ‘go slow to go fast’ and ‘evolution not revolution’ have given us permission and time to tailor the model to our context and nurture teacher buy-in. Adaptive Schools, which I have written about here, has influenced our work by providing us with models of collaborative strategically-aligned change.

Our model itself is based in a belief that schools are relational places where trust is key to risk taking, growth, willingness to be vulnerable, deprivatising classrooms and learning from, with and alongside each other. It involves teachers-trained-as-coaches (and, every few years, administrators) who help teachers to use non-judgemental lesson data (written scripting, video, audio) as the basis for reflection against the Danielson Framework for Teaching and teachers’ own goals. The Danielson Framework was chosen for its research-basis and specificity. We like that ‘distinguished’ teaching is all about what the students are doing.

As well as meeting with Charlotte Danielson in Melbourne and Princeton (where we spoke about the nature of coaching and my school’s use of her Framework), I heard her speak at the 2014 Australian Council for Educational Leaders Conference in which she explained the importance of a trust environment of challenge and support for teachers, and teaching frameworks as conduits for the thinking of the teacher, rather than telling by the administrator. Ellie Drago-Severson agrees that adult learning needs an environment of support and challenge. Her work on ‘holding environments’ and adult learning is based in trusting the capacity of adult learners. I spoke with her in October about her work with schools and the importance of starting slow and building momentum. We are similarly focused on self-directed teacher growth with a belief in the capacity of teachers to reflect, learn and grow.

As the cornerstone of our conversations, Cognitive Coaching places our emphasis heavily on the coach as non-threatening facilitator of teacher thinking, rather than feedback-giver and scorer. The coach focuses on facilitating the teacher’s thinking, not giving advice or solving problems. This approach is partly based on research like this which shows that what actually gets our brains to be open and changeable is compassionate, positive conversation which sparks our own thinking.

The opening quote by Marilyn Ferguson reflects my thinking on teacher growth and evaluation: teachers need to be supported in opening their own gates from the inside. If, as David Rock and Dan Pink have explained, rewards and punishments don’t motivate, change behaviour or facilitate creativity, how can we encourage students and teachers to be intrinsically motivated, passion-driven, continuous learners who seek improvement through curiosity, reflection, collaboration and risk tasking?

Does your teacher growth or evaluation model encourage self-directed growth and a culture of professional learning? How might you build trust, apply a belief in the capacity of teachers, or develop collaboration in your own context?

it’s all about the growth

Powerful & unforseen consequences: our butterfly impacts

Posted on January 18, 2015 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

#leaningenvironments – evolution of a new edu-revolution?

A cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland—a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth—can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent. ~ Slavoj Žižek

With the start of the Australian school year almost here – a year in which I am working to implement the teacher-growth model on which I have been working for two and a half years – I have been thinking about what it is that makes a trusting, impassioned, vibrant community of continuous learners.

Ok, as both the subject of my work and of my PhD research, I have been doing more than thinking about this. I have read close to 300 references and written about 85,000 words around effective school change, what makes effective leadership and what kinds of learning teachers find transformational. I have blogged briefly about some key ideas to anchor school change, about the importance of embracing discomfort for growth and about my own learning environments.

Tonight I was participating in the #aussieED Twitter chat when Australian educator Adriano Di Prato tweeted that ‘developing a leaning environment that is welcoming, warm and safe is a fundamental aim of every classroom.’ Now, I knew that Adriano meant ‘learning environment’ when he typed ‘leaning environment’ in a fast-paced Twitter chat, but it got me thinking: How are schools ‘leaning environments’?

It reminded me of psychologist and professor Ellie Drago-Severson’s notion of ‘holding environments’ (which I wrote a bit about here) in which she asserts the importance of teachers feeling ‘held’ by their learning and working environments, especially if positive change is to take place.

It reminded me of Costa and Garmston’s notion of ‘holonomy’ (explained in the Cognitive Coaching course material) in which the parts (individuals) and whole (organisation) are interdependent.

It reminded me of this great moment last year when a group of commuters on an Australian train platform used their leaning-together momentum to tilt a train and free a man trapped between the train and the platform.

So I tweeted back about ‘leaning environments’, and all of a sudden we were back-and-forthing about how the word ‘lean’ might apply to school environments. Would it be about individuals ‘leaning in’ to the community, to opportunities, towards each other? Could it be about students, teachers, parents and leaders ‘leaning on’ or ‘leaning alongside’ or ‘leaning with’ each other? Might it be ‘leaning out’, away from those things which should matter less but sometimes drive schooling (high stakes testing, grades, league tables)?

the power of a Tweeted typo

Fellow edu-Tweeter Melissa Daniels noticed the banter and asked whether this could be “the education revolution that started with a typo?” leading to another discussion about innovation, revolution and the evolution of ideas, all in 140 character bites.

This was an invigorating discussion for me, not because I thought it was to be the next big thing in education, but because of the thrill of the unsurprising serendipitous connections, conversations, ideas, thinking and challenges that come out of conversations and connections with like-minded like-passioned others. Here was a vibrant online environment of trusting, holding, leaning (in, out, on, with, alongside), impassioned, creative, continuous learners.

It also reminded me of our unforseen impacts. We never know the impact of a conversation, a word, a decision, or a typo.

I have noticed this in my self, in conversations or moments which stay with me until an idea bubbles to the surface. I have noticed it in my work with teachers and students, who often take some time to realise what moments or relationships have shaped them. I have noticed it in my PhD research participants, many of whom told me that the very act of being interviewed for my research changed something for them, opened something up, surfaced a reflection or became a moment of learning.

So, don’t ignore life’s typos. Even the seemingly tiniest things can have powerful & unforseen consequences.

You never know when you might uncover the next revolution.

Small shifts in your thinking, and small changes in your energy, can lead to massive alterations of your end result. ~ Kevin Michel

Find your space. Choose your place.

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

It’s important to create spaces that people like to be in, that are humanistic. ~ Frank Gehry

Once a colleague and I spent one working week taking a ‘holiday’ in our own workplace. Looking at our everyday space with fresh eyes, each day we found a place we could envisage as a vacation destination, and took a photo of ourselves there. At the end of the week we printed a collage of the photos on A4 postcards, signed off ‘wish you were here’ and gave them to our colleagues. We were looking for ways to experience the expected in unexpected ways, to find magic in our own backyard, to discover new ways of seeing our daily environment.

I was asked today at a barbeque how I ‘find the time’ for all the things I am doing: parenting, teaching, implementing a strategic school initiative, blogging, PhD thesis writing and all the life-and-relationships stuff. Partly, I think, doing-all-the-things works because I have found ways to feel like each of these bits is a little holiday from the other bits. And part of that is around choosing to be in places which make me feel grounded, inspired or joyful.

beach spaces – for grounding & play through learning

My favourite place to go with my two pre-school age kids is somewhere in nature. In winter that means muddy puddly bushwalky places, and now, in summer, it means the beach. Do I love parenting at the beach because it’s enjoyable, free, feels good and keeps the kids busy? Yes. But also because hippie ideas like ‘grounding’ resonate with me, as do educational theories of nature play, play-based learning and maker education (where creating and tinkering are central to learning and problem solving).

Watching my children experiment with sand and water is joyful for me. I see them building while figuring out the impacts of the environment and of themselves. They work together to develop systems for creation (and destruction). They discover critters and examine shells for their beauty and individuality. They clamber, climb and explore, being careful and daring, inquisitive, and sensitive. At the beach my children learn through play while being active and getting the vitamin D, fresh air, ocean salts, and the exhilaration and balance which comes from curling your toes in the sand, digging with your bare hands and feeling the silky ocean against your skin.

The beach provides a space for immersive learning and intentional be-ing, fitting perfectly with one of my 3 words for 2015: presence.

learning spaces at my school

So how might all this beach frolicking relate to work or academic writing? It comes down to designing and finding spaces which work for individual and purpose. Schools are being inspired by incredible offices like those of Google’s Engineering Hub, Zurich; LEGO in Denmark; Skype, Palo Alto; Innocent ‘Fruit Towers, London; Capital One, Virginia; Saatchi & Saatchi, Bangkok; and Palotta Teamworks, Los Angeles. In contemporary work and school spaces, some of which I have had the pleasure of co-designing and furbishing, there are choices for individuals and flexible furniture arrangements (much of this based on the work of Prakash Nair and Randall Fielding). High benches for those who like to perch, low couches and beanbags for those who like to lounge, collaborative campfire spaces for working together, quiet nooks and cave-like spaces for nestling into lone thinking (Bianca Hewes explains this nicely from a teacher perspective; ‘match the physical space to the mental space’). The SCIL building at Northern Beaches Christian College in Sydney and the Green School in Bali are worth a look for interesting school spaces.

Personally, when I want to do my work or academic writing, I try to find my own inspiring, grounding or playful space.

I talked on the PhD Talk blog about my thesis as sacred ‘me time’, and one of the things I do to make it so is to write in places which feel like an indulgence. I have favourite cafés with the right amount of people-buzz, good tunes, quirky touches and sometimes a view. These make me feel like I’m sitting down to a treat in which to luxuriate, instead of an arduous slog which must be endured. I order a good coffee, find a comfy spot and start to work. Today was on a daybed in this outdoor courtyard with mellow lounge music, waterfalls, buddhas and frangipani trees:

today’s academic writing space

Other favourite writing café spots are pictured here (I do love a good coffee and a good view):

working spaces collage

One of my favourite spots is a cushioned bench seat in a café housed in an old hardware store. Above the seat is painted: ‘Not the sharpest tool in the shed.’ Perfectly ironic for PhD writing, don’t you think?

So – where do you find the space for your intention? Where are your sacred, inspiring or playful places? How do you choose your physical place to transform your mental space?

‘Not the sharpest tool in the shed.’

Presence, Sharing, Strength: 3 words for 2015

Posted on January 2, 2015 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

presence * sharing * strength ~ words for 2015 against the backdrop of my New Year's Day

presence * sharing * strength ~ my words for 2015 against the backdrop of my New Year’s Day

Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.’ ~ Alfred Tennyson

We have passed across the threshold of the year to come. The new year is upon us.

While I tend to reflect constantly and set small, achievable goals, it’s been a while since I have set a New Year’s resolution (and I don’t intend to start here; what follows is an alternative approach to finding focus at the inception of another trip around the sun). While I love a good list, and an inspiring goal, I also love a good vision. Like organisations, individuals function optimally when we align our words and actions with a clear, coherent sense of identity and vision. Chris Brogan advocates for a simple personal visioning exercise to develop our own personal vision for the year ahead: ‘3 words’. Interestingly, some people (like educator Kirsten Wilson here) use this approach intuitively.

This is my first year of utilising the 3 words approach, and here they are:

Presence

This is a year of being present for me; of hereness, mindfulness and breathing into each moment. Presence, as I wrote about here, is an ongoing daily focus for me. My life, like most lives, is filled with competing, overlapping commitments, including my family, teaching, leadership role, PhD research, wellbeing and relationships. I have written about how I approach doing a PhD and my thinking around finding work-family commitment. My intention is to commit to being absolutely present in each of these spaces. If I can minimise distractions and focus fully on experiencing the person or task at hand, I can be immersed, productive and joyful. I can nurture relationships and be effective in my work and writing. I don’t want to see 2015 as a mad juggle of life’s components, but as a kind of ecosystem of interconnected wonderfulness in which all elements can be honoured and enjoyed. In amongst the doing needs to be the being.

Sharing

Sharing is reciprocal and collaborative. I read what others share. I share my thoughts on social media and on this blog. I share the stories of others in my PhD (which uses narrative research to examine transformative adult learning and school change). This word could have been ‘connecting’, ‘storytelling’, ‘expression’, ‘conversation’, ‘communication’, ‘collaboration’ or ‘tribe’ but none of those capture quite what I mean by ‘sharing’. In 2015 I am sharing – hopes, dreams, stories, pedagogy, beliefs, leadership approaches, writing strategies – with my friends, family, PhD, supervisors, PLN, Twitterverse, blogosphere and hopefully even some thesis examiners (although that might not be until 2016). As I discussed in my post about writing dangerously, I will be writing various texts in various styles to be shared with various audiences. Sharing our own thinking makes connections, starts conversations and builds collaboration. Sharing is viral, organic and transformational.

Strength

In 2015 I want to be strong in body, convicted in belief, confident in voice and resilient in character. A strength regime therefore involves physical bodily exercise including strength training, development of writerly voice (especially important in the final stages of my PhD), honouring my deeply held beliefs, and confidence in sharing my thinking in blogs, at conferences and in academic articles. Strength in myself and my identity means being able to stand up for my ideas, believe in my approach and be accepting of my own idiosyncracies, my own creative ways of thinking, my own imperfections and my own brand of ‘lovably weird’.

If you are looking for more visioning inspiration, check out the 2015 #3words blog posts of C. C. Chapman, Joyce Sullivan and Sheree Martin. Educators, check out Dave Burgess’s Teach like a PIRATE: Passion, Immersion, Rapport, Ask & analyse, Transformation and Enthusiasm – kind of a vision and a list all rolled into one acronym. ‘Piracy’ would be a pretty good word.

What are your 3 words for 2015? I would love to hear them.

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time. ~ Winston Churchill

into the future we go

2015: The Year of Writing Boldly, Abundantly & Dangerously

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good. ~ William Faulkner

For me, 2014 has been a year of writing thoughtfully, reflectively and introspectively.

As always I have been writing unit plans, assessments and resources for my students. I have been writing 140 character tweets, and participating more and more in education Twitter chats (such as #satchat #sunchat #aussieED #whatisschool and #BFC530). I have started a blog in which I have been experimenting with voice and purpose. I have been writing my PhD, which is currently at almost 80,000 words. As part of my PhD I have written a self-study chapter in which I reflect on myself as learner, educator and leader.

2015 will be my year of writing abundantly, boldly and dangerously.

Writing abundantly

In 2015 I will need to write abundantly. I will need to write words and words of thesis. I will need to pen some papers on my research. I will need to write applications and abstracts for education and research conference presentations. I will write blog posts. I will write tweets.

Each form of writing is a different kind of therapy. I am prone to over-wordiness (I love words!), to verbosity, to an inability to be concise. Thankfully, Twitter is therapy for the verbose. To distil thoughts into 140 character bites is to crystallise thinking down to its essence. I am never more concise than when I tweet. Blogging allows personal exploration of ideas in an informal space. My blog is where I can explore ideas in greater depth than a tweet, but in more informal ways than in academic writing. My thesis is the place where I get to burrow into challenging writing problems and thrash around, working hard until I break through and find a solution. The PhD is writing friend and nemesis, a beast I have to wrestle into its cave, clay I have to mould into its form (or is that stone I have to hack at until it takes shape?).

And the more I write, the more my writerly-self expands and transforms, like a shape shifter, always taking new forms in organic, non-linear ways. I am a hybrid writing being who writes as educator, school leader, researcher and bloggess. 2015 lays the challenge of balancing these overlapping writing selves.

Writing boldly

I will need to be bold in my writing in 2015.

I will need to be boldly honest, self-reflective, self-revealing and authentically-voiced in my blog posts, and in the conversations which bloom from those. I will need to be willing to disagree in Twitter conversations, in order to promote robust discussion instead of an inward-looking echo chamber of the same voices saying the same things.

In my third (and hopefully final) year of my PhD study I will need to be self-assured in discussing the contribution of my work. I will need to be confident in communicating in my own academic voice.

Yet in my boldness I will need to be sensitive to ethical issues such as how to tell others’ stories while protecting their anonymity and the authenticity of their words. Part of the reason I choose to blog and tweet under a pseudonomic identity is to protect my research participants. So boldness needs to be tempered with thoughtfulness.

Writing dangerously

Language is power. Words are tools. As a teacher of English and Literature part of my job is to help students to understand how language works (functionally, socially and globally), and help them to develop the capability to use its power to communicate, share, converse, discuss, disagree and disrupt.

Writing can be dangerous. It can be disruptive. It can be transformational for writer and reader. It can change individuals, groups, organisations and the world.

2015 is the year for all researchers, bloggers, tweeters and writers (or ‘those who write’, but don’t think of themselves as ‘writers’ as Pat Thomson explains in this post) to write fearlessly and compassionately, abundantly and concisely, reflectively and dangerously. I’m going to give it my best shot.

Happy writing!

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing. ~ Eugene Ionesco

Presence not presents: connect, unravel & be this Christmas

Posted on December 22, 2014 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

Joy is not in things; it is in us ~ Richard Wagner

Western Australian Christmas

With only three sleeps until Christmas many of us are wondering how to wind down, how to enjoy time with our family and friends, and how to continue or create meaningful traditions for this time of year. Perhaps we are trying to avoid a hurricane of over-receiving and over-indulging, trying instead to connect with Christmastime as about giving, faith and connectedness to others and ourselves.

One of my big challenges this year is winding down. In many ways I would like to switch off my work and research selves so that I can be present with family, friends, nature and the present moment. But the hybridity of my roles (teacher, school leader, researcher, connected learner, parent) makes it hard to power down. My leadership work in my school is closely related to my PhD research on teacher growth and school change, so I am constantly immersed in reading, acting and thinking about these things. Being a participant in education Twitter chats this year (like #satchat #sunchat #aussieED, #BFC530 and #whatisschool) has also kept my brain buzzing with ideas sparked by stimulating conversation with inspiring individuals, most of whom I have never met (thank you, my learning network). It appears you can’t turn off a turned on brain!

So to ground myself and connect to this time of year I have been taking time to be present in holiday tasks: playing with my children, swimming at the beach, reading Christmas stories, enjoying music and wrapping presents. Surely I’m not the only one for whom the careful, mindful process of wrapping gifts is meditative and grounding? Anything can be meditative and grounding if we approach it mindfully and with presence.

gingerbread house with dinosaur

I also find creativity and making to be grounding and connecting acts. Things we make ourselves seem to have a magical energy, an investment of the person or people whose hands forged the object or made the marks. I have been hand-making ornaments, recycling found materials into eco-decorations and picking foliage from the garden for vases. Our Christmas tree is one made by my eldest son and I (he was two years old when we banged it out in our garage) out of upcycled scraps of wood. The physicality of painting, cutting, pasting and glitter-shaking can anchor us to the holiday spirit.

making our Christmas tree

decorating our DIY Christmas tree

I was reminded recently that being a flâneuse is about being a ‘human being’ not a ‘human doing‘. Christmas is the perfect time to focus on what is important, in whatever way is meaningful for our family. Coming together should be about celebrating our connections with those we care about – in all their perfect imperfection – and taking the time to really be with them and with ourselves. Happy being.

The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present. ~ Eckhart Tol

bauble-licious with freshly picked garden foliage

Embrace your discomfort zone: bubbling in the crucible of growth

Posted on December 15, 2014 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength. ~ Sigmund Freud

my scribblings: Comfort vs. Discomfort Zones

Scholarly literature and the blogosphere are saturated with thoughts around motivation, growth and what it means to learn, lead and be the best we each can be. Some of this is around what qualities, attitudes or behaviours we need in order to weather life’s difficulties while continuously growing our selves.

Skill sets & mindsets for discomfort and growth

Carol Dweck’s much-touted work on mindset argues that our self-conceptions frame our life paths. If we perceive ourselves as having fixed immovable traits, then we are less likely to be resilient and positive in the face of challenge. Those who perceive that their talents and abilities can be developed are more able to see setbacks as opportunities for learning and growth.

Art Costa and Bob Garmston’s Cognitive Coaching model would suggest that we need to help individuals to reflect upon their own goals and experiences, figuring out their own ways to get better while assuming that each individual has the capacity to do exactly that.

In their recent book Uplifting Leadership Andy Hargreaves, Alan Boyle and Alma Harris talk about a yin-yang balance between positive energised leadership and tenacious hard work. They talk about disciplined innovation and feet-on-the-ground (rather than pie-in-the-sky) creativity. “An uplifting mindset and skill set keeps your head up high while your feet stay firmly planted on the ground.” Hargreaves, Boyle and Harris articulate the need for leaders to have visions and dreams alongside the determination to struggle through hardship and adversity. They remind us that “without dreams, profound human and social change would scarcely be possible” but that we need inspiration that incites action, daring and doing. Leaders, then, are grounded visionaries whose diligent exertion drives imagination and change.

Environments of support and challenge: being held while being pushed

In her work on adult learning, Ellie Drago-Severson talks about organisations as ‘holding environments’, spaces in which adult learners feel ‘held’ and which provide both high support and high challenge. When I spoke with Ellie this year, she emphasised the need for schools to facilitate the development of self-authoring individuals, able to take charge of their own journeys of transformation.

Charlotte Danielson, too, talks about the need for support and challenge for teacher growth. Teachers need an environment of trust, she says, in which it is safe to take risks in the spirit of ongoing professional inquiry. As I explained previously in my reflections on hearing Charlotte speak at the Australian Council for Educational Leadership 2014 conference, the need for balance – between safety in which teachers feel supported and trusting, and enough discomfort to challenge practice and change thinking and behaviour – has been pivotal in my school’s work to provide a setting for the transformation of classroom teaching, professional conversation and collaborative culture.

Enter the discomfort zone, the birthplace of rainbow growth

So while we need to feel supported enough to take risks, we need to be daring enough to be vulnerable, uncomfortable and daring. Margie Warrell calls this the ‘Courage Zone’, the place beyond comfort (but before terror and paralysis) in which risk taking and growth happens.

In my own experiences I have found this discomfort zone to be a tipping point for my own growth. Often it is in the squirmiest spaces of discomfort that my breakdowns become my breakthroughs. As I illustrated (literally) in the drawing above, my discomfort zone is a place of dark messiness, but from which rainbow-like growth can emerge. The comfort zone might be all white fluffy clouds, affirmations and unicorn-blessed pixie dust, but it also tends to be a space of inertia.

My classroom is a place in which my experience and comfort level are best served by being challenged to try new things like a recent term without marks or grades. And while my online PLN and at-school professional friends provide me with support, it is getting out of the supportive echo chamber and into dissenting debate which pushes my thinking and incites my learning.

Some of the most uncomfortable moments of my growth this year have been in my PhD work which often involves wrestling with my thesis. Support and criticism from my supervisors help me to work tenaciously through difficult research and writing problems to find solutions and make progress. As an experienced educator but novice researcher, it is interesting negotiating a space in which my learning curve is dizzyingly exponential. The best thing about grappling with and through discomfort is the unrivalled feeling of satisfaction at solving, innovating or realising learning.

Who, where or what makes you feel ‘held’ and comfortable? How at ease are you in your discomfort zone? Is it a crucible of growth for you? What do you find when you stay there and thrash around for a while?

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching …. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape. ~ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Mostar jumper: leap into discomfort

Building superheroes: power, freedom & responsibility

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

You say you don’t want the responsibility? Guess what? People like us…we don’t get a choice. ~ Peter Parker

Spider-Man: power, freedom & responsibility

One of the current favourite lounge room anthems in my house is ‘Superheroes’ by The Script. It’s about struggling through adversity into strength: turning “the pain into power … That’s how a superhero learns to fly”: http://youtu.be/WIm1GgfRz6M .

How do we encourage our own children and students to fly and to build resilience, grit and a sense of individual responsibility for their own flight?

I recently stumbled across a Twitter chat which was around the topic of ‘learning differently’. It seemed to be focused on students who were considered high risk, high needs or ‘different’ learners. Having worked with students with cerebral palsy, students considered ‘at-risk’, and in mainstream and not-so mainstream classrooms, my reaction was: but we all learn differently from each other. So isn’t trying to address ‘learning differently’ just addressing the needs and contexts of all of our students, whatever those are? Can’t we help all individuals to grow and fly in ways appropriate to each of them?

My own approach to differentiation and independence-building is often one which allows student choice and self-direction, which in turn lets me work with students in more individualised ways. Maria Montessori said that a teacher’s greatest mark of success is when “the children are now working as if I do not exist.” If students are to fly, they need to be able to get there on their own. How can we help build their superpowers?

my three superheroes

Voltaire’s line ‘with great power, comes great responsibility’ was made famous by Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben. It is a line I borrow from when reminding students of their responsibilities in the classroom and in their own learning, adapted for my purposes (and also reflecting the sentiment of something my parents used to say to me):

With great freedom comes great responsibility.

In other words, the more freedom of choice a student has, the more they are expected to act responsibly. As students prove their self-managing, self-motivating, independent capacity for action and thought, so they will have more freedom, and the responsibility that comes with that.

Students tend to connect with and remember that line, maybe because their first reaction is one of correcting me, telling me I have the line wrong; they know it from Spider-Man and they defend the original. Yet they are also reminded that they need to earn their freedom by proving their capacity for self-directedness.

I discovered, after using this line for years, that Eleanor Roosevelt did actually say that “with freedom comes responsibility.” She asserted that freedom requires that we grow up and carry our own weight. Being free-choosing, free-thinking, free-acting citizens of the classroom or the world comes with the responsibility of being thoughtful, ethical, independent individuals, traits often modelled by superheroes.

How do you remind your children or students of the responsibilities which come with freedom? How do you enact your own duty as an educator or a parent? A duty expressed by Hargreaves, Boyle and Harris in Uplifting Leadership as a “lasting legacy” of raising others up, so that, when we step aside “the good work should still go on”?

How do you help your superheroes find their power and learn to fly?

Do you know what is the greatest gift anyone can receive in his lifetime? The greatest gift we can receive is to have the chance, just once in our lives, to make a difference. ~ Dr Strange talking to Peter Parker

Batman

No grades? No marks? No worries.

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

We need to ensure that feedback causes a cognitive rather than an emotional reaction – in other words, feedback should cause thinking. … it should be more work for the recipient than the donor. Indeed, the whole purpose of feedback should be to increase the extent to which students are owners of their own learning. ~ Dylan William

Is there a joyful feedback loop?

I remember from my own experience as a school student what feedback can feel like, especially in those subjects at which I did not excel. A harsh or critical word, a page bleeding with red pen, or a mark – that number always so final and inflexible – can be crushing, humiliating or incomprehensible to a child or adolescent.

An approach to feedback

As a high school teacher, I never mark in red. I try to build into units of work multiple formative opportunities which allow students to try things, reflect upon their learning, and try again.

I encourage students to see a mark, not as an endpoint, but as a formative learning opportunity. I explicitly tell students that a mark is one number attached to one moment in time, not a judgement of them and their worth. That even summative assessments are really learning opportunities, to reflect on areas of strength, realisations of learning and areas for development.

I implement a post-test feedback process in order to facilitate this cognitive rather than emotional reaction to the result achieved for a piece of work, in an attempt to ignite, rather than shut down, students’ thinking.

My usual process after a test or assessment is this:

I provide whole-class oral and white-boarded feedback based on the assessment rubric and patterns in student responses.
Students write a quick prediction and reflection based on that oral feedback and their understanding of their preparation for that assessment and how they think they went.
I give the assessment back, on which is written individual feedback in relation to the rubric. Students do not receive a mark or grade (yet).
Each student silently writes a reflection on their work (including areas of strength, areas for development and strategies for future growth) and has a consequent individual conversation with me about their reflection. Sometimes this step also involves identifying a part of the assessment to re-do for their own growth.
Students receive their mark and are then able to re-reflect or make a time to see me to discuss how they went, why, and how they might approach future work.

While many of them initially find this process excruciating (‘Just give me the mark!’), I hope that it helps them to develop skills for using their experiences, successes and disappointments as moments for reflection and growth, rather than emotive reaction and cognitive shutdown.

All this seems to have a lot of what ‘I’ the teacher am doing, but really the focus in on how best to facilitate the thinking of the students, and propel their understanding of assessments as data for growth, as opportunities for micro-transformation.

‘No marks, no grades’ in action

One of my classes is currently finishing up a term unit which has had no marks and no grades. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

That is, for this term, every student in Year 10 was able to choose a unit from a series of choices offered by the Faculty which would be run as a project-based and unmarked unit.

I was sceptical about this approach. While I endeavour to lead students away from their marks and towards their learning, I wondered if they would continue to work if there was no mark at the end. Would they apply themselves when they realised that there were no marks up for grabs, no traditional scoring of their efforts, no numerical way to compare themselves against their peers? What would happen when students realised that the work didn’t ‘count’, in the traditional school sense, towards a mark or grade?

To my surprise and delight, I have reached the last week of what has been a term of focused, engaged, passionate and diligent work by my students. My instincts about the pleasing way the students have worked, and the good (at times inspired, origial, creative or prolific) work they have produced, tell me that some combination of the following factors may have facilitated this.

Students had ownership. They chose the unit, thereby placing themselves in the class, declaring an interest in the content and a desire to be there.
Students and teacher were liberated from marks and grades. In a class with a very diverse range of abilities, I was able to work with students at their level and stage. I could help weaker students to move their work forward without having to disappoint them with a low mark after submission. I was able to extend and encourage more gifted students beyond what might have been considered mainstream curriculum.
There have been other non-mark non-grade measures of success along the way. For each minor task I chose the top student responses and awarded small prizes to those who had produced the best work. I also offered opportunities for the class to off-campus mini-excursions, if work was completed, motivators which helped to keep students on track with milestones along the way.
Student passion and purpose was harnessed through a passion-based project-based approach to tasks. As teacher I was guide, facilitator, collaborator and mentor to their work.
Authenticity of audience. We organised an end-of-term showcase of student work, a kind of walk-through exhibition in which student work was displayed and celebrated. Students took responsibility for selecting and displaying work, and were able to share this work with community. We also kept class blogs which were creative, collaborative, organic explorations of ideas.

It turns out I should have remembered Dan Pink’s assertion that carrots and sticks (a mark or grade can be either), squash motivation and crush creativity. That people are intrinsically motivated by a desire for purposeful self-authorship. This recent un-marked un-graded unit was an example of students working with a sense of personal pride, personal voice and personal purpose.

the édu flâneuse

Blog reflections by Dr Deborah Netolicky

Category Archives: Education