It gets different

Here's the thing, I've never been bullied for being queer. I've been bullied for other things, but not for that. Oh, and there was the time someone wrote "Mrs Cooper is a dyke" in pencil on my classroom door (ridiculous, since all the students know I'm not married), but as a kid? Nope. I guess there were enough other things about which to bully and ridicule me without having to guess about that.

But I recognise that queerness is an important facet of bullying and victimisation in schools in Aotearoa New Zealand. Hearing 'gay' and 'fag' used as put-downs, the subtle heterosexism that prevails in books and classrooms, it all can add up to making queer - gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, genderqueer, asexual, questioning and so on - young people feel invisible. Feel worthless and marginalised. Feel unsafe.

The It Gets Better project is designed to combat this with the thought that things change. You grow up, other people grow up, and you can change your life. Which is great, and I am certainly a different, more confident person now.

I was reading Karen Healey's livejournal post on the matter this morning, and so much of what she said resonated with me.

Every day, I worry that a student in my classes or at my school is being bullied or victimised and I am not seeing it or doing anything about it. I'm missing the signs, or the student is too scared to tell anyone, or, worse, I am seeing it and not realising how serious it is. Every day, I worry that I won't be able to do something positive for a student who is being bullied. I worry that I am not enough of a positive role model, that being out and living my life is not enough. I worry that the systems I work in will fail students, and that will feel like I have failed them. I worry that I'm not hard enough on students who are casually homophobic, cruel or abusive. I worry, I worry, I worry.

So, I do some small things. I am out, to start with. I am openly bisexual. I have zero tolerance to 'gay', 'homo' and other homophobic language. I use examples with queer people in them - it's hard, given that I teach science, but not impossible. I try. I try to get the Guidance Counsellor to get me posters that highlight sexuality acceptance, and I put them up with my Quit Smoking posters. If I know there are students who are having a hard time, or who are high risk, I put more effort into having a positive and encouraging relationship with them. Sometimes, these students come to talk to me about whatever is worrying them, and I take the time to listen.

But I still worry.

Does it get better?

Well, yeah. For me, it did. For my students, I hope it will get better too.

Slime and fear factor

Slime is one of my favourite things, and I am delighted that I have a unit which requires me to make it this year. Fear Factor is going to be an awesome unit, I can tell already. The cleaners are going to kill me, though, for the amount of paint and glue and gloop we managed to get on the floor yesterday.

Anyway, it turns out that the high grade PVA we get here in NZ is not the same thing as Elmer's glue. Who knew? I am disappointed, because it means that our slime is not quite the same thing as I expected, based on the instructional video I found.

One of the things I like best about teaching science is that, if first we don't succeed, we can just try again. The lab technician and I spent a happy hour making various concoctions - sometimes, I am sure I didn't grow out of making mud pies, I am just more purposeful about it now. Anyway, we came up with two possible recipes:

40mL PVA glue
10 - 15 mL acrylic paint
approx 5g borax

Sprinkle the borax onto the glue and paint mix and mix thoroughly. If it is too sticky, try moving it to another person who has clean hands, or add more borax if that doesn't work

This gives a beautiful, shiny putty that is charmingly elastic and doesn't stick to your hands too much.

We also made a slime that is quite lightweight and frothy.

1/2 cup PVA glue
few drops of food colouring
1/2 cup water
2 heaped Tbs borax

Mix all ingredients in a tip top container. The PVA will curdle and the borax will feel grainy, but just keep mixing until it starts to coalesce. This will make a firm, frothy slime that sticks to your hands rather more than classic slime.

We plan to mix grated polystyrene into the second slime and make sculptures. We expect that they will set nicely if left on a windowsill for a couple of days.

Anyway, the science that we are teaching along with this is all about states of matter and things like that. I hope the students are learning something in addition to the enjoyment of slime. Next week, cornflour slime. I love me some non-newtonian fluids too.

Cyclical thinking, the midnight sun, and connecting with others

Blame my vaguely witchy version of being an athiest (which is a post for another day), but I have always loved cycles and repeating patterns. It's just gone winter solstice here and, like every year, I'm finding it hard to haul myself out of bed every morning - but at least, having celebrated the solstice, I know that better times are on the way (at least with regard to it being light when my alarm goes off).

The next unit in Year 10 Science is Amazing Adventure, where the students 'travel' around the world learning about scientific issues in different places. One of the places they visit is Oslo, in Norway. I wanted to visit Iceland, but no one would be able to reliably speak or say Reykjavik. Also, fiords are cool. It's a shame, though, because Oslo does not actually experience the midnight sun, you have to travel North for that. Right now, I am collecting first hand experiences from people who have seen the midnight sun, and also from people who live in northerly places where they experience the long winters and blinding summers. What is it like to live in a place where the cycles are so strong, compared to the fairly gentle ones we have here? I hope to set up a skype interview with a friend so that students (some, at least) can ask questions about that experience.

Anyhow, aside from the connected learning aspect, I am quite excited about this, because cycles make me happy. I love to look at the moon each night (or early morning) and track the phases. I like to celebrate the solstices and equinoxes (and I often celebrate the other Sabbats, just because). And I like to have quite a cyclical approach to my own creative process too. I think that the most interesting part, for me, will be to hear how the really strong sun cycles affect people in the northernmost portions of the world.

Clouds *sighs*

I love visualisations, particularly wordy ones. I love how this nice little service produces charming word clouds. Here are the contents of my blog:



Cute, huh?

Today, a compliment

Well, I took it to be one, anyway. A student asked me if they have Daylight Savings Time in the Cook Islands. I kind of blinked and asked why I would be expected to know that, and he replied that I am a fount of knowledge and so it was worth a try. That was nice.

So then, I asked why he didn't just google it to find out. His answer? He's not very good at searching. He doesn't know what keywords to use, and, even if he takes a guess at the keywords, he doesn't know how to combine them or how to sift through the results he gets in order to find something that will be useful to him.

In this particular instance, he was trying to find the time in the Cook Islands based on a time in Aotearoa New Zealand, given one time when NZ is not in DST and one when it is. First of all, I explained how time zones worked and we figured out in our heads how the times related. Then, we confirmed it with a handy time zone converter.

I found one online.

This student had no idea how I found it.

So I tried to explain boolean searching. At this point, he started to have that hunted look that people get when they really, really wish I'd just shut up and let them continue on having no idea how to fix things. I am pretty much immune to that look now.

I started with some venn diagrams, as in this picture below:


He kind of got the point of this. It's using simple English conjunctions to connect search terms in a way that makes them form a combination. That's all good. But that doesn't really make much difference with the first problem - that of the lack of sensible keywords in the first place.

In the Daylight Savings question, I put in daylight savings Cook Islands as my keywords. I didn't even bother with boolean connectors, because I was pretty sure I would find a useful link on the first page. I asked the student what he would have put in, and he shrugged. He didn't even really know where to start with it.

I think I will, next week even, start working on this with my younger students. I am inspired, because, even though being the fount of knowledge is good, I'd rather be the facilitator of how to do it yourself.

Sherbet, or the fizzing taste of success

I like to think that cognitive dissonance is a little like sherbet. It fizzes on your tongue or in your mind and you find yourself having to adjust to the new ideas and tastes. I am also a bit of an opportunist. I would blame it on having a bit of crow in me, but we don't really have the crow archetype as such in Aotearoa.

Leaving aside my fondness for shiny things, I love to encourage moments of cognitive dissonance. The thing is, they take time to find and set up. Then the students take time to talk through what they've observed and come up with new explanations that are consistent with both their observations and the theory you and/or the text have provided. Today, I wished for a shortcut. I wish that sometimes, me saying "it just does" was enough of a reason for students to believe.

Reports, front ends and curricula

So, I am just working on the schemes for the entire department. We teach five levels of General Science, four of Horticultural Science, and two levels of each of Chemistry, Physics and Biology. I have to check that all the schemes and units have been revised or devised with reference to the Revised New Zealand Curriculum.

This is something I enjoy doing. I have an inordinate passion for curriculum. I take the widest view of curriculum, defining it, in my head, as the total set of learning experiences within a school. It includes both the explicit curriculum, the null curriculum and the relationships and environment in classrooms and in the playground.

In my school right now, we're working on cultural capital. I think this is awesome. Unpacking teacher expectations and the ways we communicate those expectations is vitally important. However, it's not something easy to do, partly because beliefs and values about gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality and disability are so pervasive and entrenched.

Here is an example that's really annoying me right now:



Okay, spot the only Maori in the ad.

He's driving the car. None of the clerical workers are Maori. The boss certainly isn't Maori. The only Maori shown is a (presumably) unskilled warehouse/driver/labourer.

This wouldn't be so bad if it was an isolated example. I opened up a textbook - one in which I like the explanations and questions - and turned to the first page with pictures of people. There were seven people on the page. One was clearly not Pakeha, and another was not clearly Pakeha or Maori, but the rest were clearly Pakeha or could pass as Pakeha. There was only one woman pictured. That woman was on a boat with two men - one of those men was getting ready to dive, the other was at the wheel. The implication was that the woman was a mere passenger.

I wish that was an isolated incident in that textbook. It's not.

Curriculum is the sum of all learning experiences. The textbooks we use, the examples we give, the analogies we draw: these are all learning experiences. That's how we encode our expectations, even beyond the verbal assurances we give to students that we value them.

That encoding is not okay. I want to do better. We should all do better, or we're condemning all our students to repeating the inequities we face now.

This differentiated, self-directed stuff is hard for us all

Today's class saw a bunch of students going "but what do we doooooooo?" and flapping their hands over their freedom. I was so tempted to flap my hands back and reply, "I don't knoooow!"

Part of the problem is that they have never done anything like this. When I rewrite the Y 7 & 8 units, I will be sure to include the babysteps version of this unit. Part of it is that they don't really believe that they are allowed to be self-directed, and another part is that they are unsure of exactly what the parameters of their self-direction are. So, right now, we are compromising. All students have lists of the materials they need and should have them by Wednesday, ready to start experimenting and refining their methods.

I still need to finish off my exemplar. Finding time for this sort of thing is like pulling teeth in this place.

I like to think I am a happy person

It is one of my more cherished delusions, for realz. But there are things that make me happy and I like to share with people. However, this week, I have been reminded that 'people' and 'students' can be a mutually exclusive group, for values of 'people' which mean 'people who will appreciate the happymaking of the things'.

Here are some examples.



My students said "why would anyone go to the trouble of making food look that good when all you're going to do is eat it?". My students are philistines.

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My students said "What? Why is this even funny? What is this song? Why are you laughing?" My students are young and do not recognise the juxtaposition.

The perils of trying new things, and why it's important to try

I can totally see why teachers, heads of departments and school managers and governors stick to what they know. It's just so much easier than setting fire to the past and starting from scratch (or even just hacking the past back to rubble and then trashing the useless bits).

So, one of the things about the new units we're using in junior science is that they need fine-tuning as we teach, and that is hard work. It's worthwhile work, but it's not like any of this stuff has been tested before, or even like any of the teachers have worked in schools where science is taught this way. So each lesson is a learning experience.

Today, I learned that some students are idiots. Well, that's a pretty mean way to describe it, so let me say it in a more professional way. Some students are so accustomed to being given knowledge that they find the most simple of self-directed tasks daunting - even paralysing. So they cover it up with not caring. This, then, is the most nerve-wracking part, for me. I am trying something new, and expecting students to try something new, and expecting my staff to try something new.

Sometimes, I wish we could all have a group hug.

The scientific process and other monolithic entities

So many students think of the scientific process (okay, if they think of it at all) as a set of data-in/conclusion-out, cookie-cutter, pre-made experiments. They get called investigations, but the outcome always seems pre-determined. The teacher always knows what the answer should be (even if your crappy following of directions has resulted in something quite, quite different).

One of the things I am loving on at the moment? The exemplar I am making involves me in my favourite part of the investigative process - the bit where I do some mini-tests and alter my method accordingly. I'm not recording data, just playing around within the limits of my investigation to make sure that my method is going to work. I love it.

I hope to have some success soon though - all those internet tutorials made it look easy! Here are two pics of the dismal failures so far. One was using a hot iron, one a cooler iron. I think maybe I need to let the baking paper cool before I peel it back *sadfaces*

One of the things I like about being a teacher...

Is trying things first.

Next term, the Y10 class is doing a unit based around investigations and different inquiry processes. It features self-direction, individual learning outcomes and all sorts of happytiems so-hot-right-now educational features.

But the bit I am happiest about is that there is an exemplar for the first round - for very low ability students, they can use the exemplar as a template and basically plod along in the exemplar's footsteps.

Naturally, I get to make the exemplar.

Even that wouldn't ordinarily be enough to excite me, but I am making my exemplar about using plastic bags as t-shirt transfers. Yeah, I know, exciting right?

Look at this example of what someone made with plastic bag transfers:



I was inspired by three posts on Filth Wizardry - post one, post two, and post three.

And there is lots of science behind this - like why the particle structure of plastics makes them prone to melting, not catching alight. Why some plastics are softer and more melty than others. Like where plastics come from in the first place. Even though the tutorial gives basic instructions, there is still plenty of scope for investigation and coming up with a solid hypothesis. My exemplar deals with the effects of plastic type, holding the temperature and time of fuse constant. At the moment, though, I am freeform experimenting, to get the basic range of my constants settled. I will have pictures later.

So, I'm hoping that a few other students will choose other plastic recycling topics to use for their first investigation. I have some awesome tutorials on fusing plastic bags - here, with patterns if you want to make a rain hat or bag and here, with some more crafty ideas, and even a video tutorial:



But I need more! I'm going to exercise my google-fu later and come up with as many awesome plastic recycling ideas as I can. If any readers have ideas, I'd be delighted to hear them too!

But getting back to this unit of learning. Not many students are going to grasp quite what I'm on about quickly and be able to run with it. Some will, and I am really looking forward to seeing what they and their awesome imaginations come up with. But many will need a lot of support to get through it. That's where the exemplar and some supported options come in - at least for the first round of investigations. And if I get to play round with making t-shirt transfers out of the fifty million plastic bags littering my house, that's even better.

Some thoughts on assessment, IEPs and success

So, the HoD meeting last night was fascinating. We talked - really talked about, like, actual ideas - and it was constructive and thoughtful. I left wondering if the entire school had exploded into pod people, but no. We had freaky mind melds and respectful disagreements and it was awesome.

One of the things we talked about was the need for students who have low ability to also experience success in some way. We talked about ways to measure and comment on where the students are improving, even if their improvement is not enough to achieve at the level needed in our assessments. I have been thinking about this, and the need to give good, constructive feedback and feedforward on what students are doing.

So, I have decided to make more use of the 'comment' option in our reporting programme. I think it will be helpful, not just for the students who receive the comment but for me too.

Self-reflection and students

Well, I wanted to write a blog post, so I made the mistake of asking my students what it should be about. I don't think I've ever seen such faces - there was an underlying incomprehension about what the hell I was asking them for, true, but on top of that there were a myriad of shades of incomprehension about why I would want a blog in the first place.

Sometimes I wonder that too.

But today, I have some very specific things to reflect on. Like the report I have to write about how the Science Department is going in implementing the new NZ Curriculum into our schemes. Perhaps it would be more proper - and accurate, in our case - to say that we are re-writing our schemes in light of the directives of the new curriculum.

There are many parts I like about the curriculum. I like that it explicitly states that a positive sense of identity is a key learning outcome. I like that it expects students to learn how to be international citizens and informed decision makers. I love how it values diversity and social justice.

The challenge now is how to implement all of this into a comprehensive scheme of work that leads into the highly content-driven NCEA environment, where students must absorb and regurgitate knowledge. But it's a challenge I am excited by.

One thing that annoys me is to hear teachers say "but we already do this!".

Well, sorry, no. Mostly, you don't. You drive content. Sticking a new front end onto your existing schemes is not implementing the new curriculum. That's why we're thinking big and making big changes.

Good teaching, good learning?

So, today I did a rather adventurous activity with my Year 10 science class involving mixed ability grouping, student-directed activities and a peer-assessment survey to follow up. One of the things I did in the peer-assessment survey was ask about how well I did. Specifically, I asked how well I explained my instructions, how well I explained the content, and how well I responded to questions.

After seeing these results, I am doing a little reflection on how I actually do respond to questions. Two of the three groups gave me an unfavourable ranking for my question-response skills.

My default, whenever I am asked a process question (like, "how do I fold this paper?"), or even a content question, is to refer them to someone who is successfully doing the process or task. My view is that students should turn to each other for advice, so long as the questions are appropriately difficult for them. If no one gets it, then I am definitely at fault and should explain. Otherwise, they can work collaboratively to find answers, and this includes asking someone else for help on what a word means or what a question is asking for.

But it occurred to me that students still think that teachers are the founts of all knowledge and that an answer from me is 'better' than an answer from a classmate, even if the content if exactly the same.

Since I don't want to have to answer the same questions fifty million times, I guess I have to take some action. Here are some thoughts:

1. Work on my instructions. In particular, make better use of bullet points and short, sequential sentences in a list rather than a short, paragraph-style set of instructions

2. For each class, assign two or three people (in a rotating roster) who will be experts on explaining tasks. Then the role can be filled by people who have a good track record on understanding the type of task we're doing that day

3. Do more examples and modelling and make more use of templates

I shall continue thinking on this and making improvements.

Learning at school

Okay, so I've only been here since just before 9am this morning, but I'm still excited and think I thought be blogging just a little bit. Twitter is all awesome and stupendous but sometimes 140 characters just doesn't cut it.

I'm in a session on the SOLO taxonomy and we're rattling around a bit in this huge room. I think people are still digesting the keynote. Now, I'm pretty excited about this spotlight because I'm all about the learning outcomes. I try to have really clear signposts for learning in a lesson-by-lesson fashion and also on a longer scale. But many of my longer term goals are a little... well, punk, in the sense that I value a bit of a rough and ready, diy, homegrown kind of learning. Sometimes, I don't talk about them too much. It makes people nervous.

But I am enjoying the slow unfolding of the SOLO taxonomy. What I'm seeing so far is an interesting, deeper take on the rather dirty version of learning I use: "I know nothing", "I know something", "I know many things", "I can do things with the things I know" and "I can create and explain new things with the things I know".

You know, I'm thinking more about self-assessment matrices and how our department uses them. I think we need to work more on developing what those last two criteria look like for students. In particular - and I know this will go down like a lead balloon at my school - we need to focus on what application and creativity looks like for girls in subjects that are traditionally considered to be boys' subjects. I know I am influenced by being a physics teacher, but it is definitely a concern for me.

Right. More thinking. More listening. More link making and integrating.

(More dirty outcomes? You bet)

So excited that I might need more caffeine

So, I have posted a lot about the integrated scheme we've got going with the junior science classes. I had a crisis of faith late in the holidays about whether we were making the right choice in abandoning a traditional model to go for something so unusual.

However, in the last week, I have collected some anecdata that has really reassured me that we've made the right choice. I'm confident that our test results and more formal surveying will bear out this confidence.

Most importantly, we've had success with at least two students who have, in the past, been notoriously hard to engage in learning. They enjoy the idea that for each bite of learning - about scale diagrams or the particle nature of matter or whatever - they do an activity that celebrates and consolidates that learning, and they get to display the artefact from the learning. What they do in class is what we base our assessment on, and these students are responding really positively to that.

On a less important, but enjoyable note, I managed to create a lesson (around mixtures, compounds and elements, with the beginning of an introduction to separation techniques) that uses mashups. In particular, it uses DJ Earworm's United State of Pop 2009. There is a video, which I've embedded below, but - even better - there is a colour-coded lyric sheet which shows the different artists who have been integrated into the mashup. So my students can watch the video and try to identify all the artists and songs, then use the colour coded sheet to see how they did. Then, we're going to show, on Audacity, how we can do things like that ourselves, making mixtures of audio clips. It's going to rock.

Of course, not nearly as much as this does:

Fail person is fail?

Recently, I have been teh fail when it comes to blogging. I would like to blame any number of things, but I think it mostly comes down to the heat drying out my brain. Seriously. Northland is in the grip of the worst drought in years and it's miserable.

However, being back at school is not all doom and gloom. For one thing, I am excited about how the new junior schemes are going, even if it is only early in the term. Of course, the fact that I am getting to set up a crime scene on the front desk may have something to do with it - and the entirely spurious transcript of my 'interview' about it. I love this sort of creative work.

Hopefully, I will have resources soon. That is also exciting. I love the diy ethos we've got going in our department. We make things up and recreate them in different shapes and formats. We fix things and break things. It's refreshing, to work in a department that takes risks and works hard to make them worthwhile risks. I'm pretty happy, all things considered.