Here we go again...

I am a pile of goo.

I am no longer existing in a solid state. My brain, and all associated faculties have turned to mush.

Welcome to Stage 1, 2016.

I have forgotten how exhausting teaching is. How?! How could this happen in a mere 5 weeks?!

WHY DID I NOT SLEEP MORE???? WHY DID I SPEND TIME CLEANING AND WEDDING PLANNING WHEN I COULD HAVE SPENT TIME SLEEPING!!!???

Me. At 3pm today.

               
Now don't get my wrong. My class - BEAUTIFUL. They were fantastic. Settled, attentive, focused - we got through most of the day's activities in the morning session. I was blown away.

Oh god I hope I didn't just jinx it.  *does complicated anti-jinxing manoeuvre*

I've just forgotten what it's like to get a bunch of brand new little munchkins with very short attention spans. I regret wearing a dress to work today. So much floor work.

Anyway.

I took a big break from the blogosphere last year due to some personal issues and this year I'm going to make a consistent effort to be reflecting and writing in blog form, while bringing you much laughs and much happy from 1/2Superstars.

Today, our happy moment? The hugs from kids that I had only met 6 hours earlier, while telling me they were excited to come back tomorrow.  Makes it all worth it.
                                             

Find me online!

Twitter: @bswain1

email: missswain24@gmail.com

pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/bswain14

or comment below!

How do you measure success?

Today was a day in which I felt successful.
Everything went well - students were well behaved regardless of wet weather (unlike previously, as described here), they were focused and they LEARNT SOMETHING.
In fact, it is the first time I have felt successful with my class this year - we've had a fairly eventful and rocky start.

Success is a word we throw around a lot in education. Success of our education system, success as a school, teacher success, student success. We are always brainstorming and reinventing our definition of success as a staff, a stage, as individuals. We ask ourselves What does it look like? Feel like? Sound like?

That's right Ladies and Gentlemen, get out your Y charts.

Richard St. John, in his 2005 TED talk 8 Secrets of Success takes years of research and attempts to define what makes a person successful.

If you're a visual learner like myself, this screenshot will help you consolidate that speedy presentation:

So, basically, St. John says we need to work hard and love what you do. So, by that definition I must be DROWNING in success.

Truth be known, in its own abstract nature, success is a concept that manifests uniquely for each individual. The 'face' of success has a different look and a different feel for everyone. There's no overarching imagery we can use paint a picture of success - in fact, this is as about as close as we get:

Clichéd, I know. But look at his little face!

Success is something that we as humans strive for - that feeling of satisfaction from achieving something that we have worked our sweet little tushes off for. In fact, success is something that our individualistic western society has come to expect of us - if we're not striving for success, then what the hell are we doing?

So, with its individual 'face' that looks, feels and sounds different to all of us - how can we measure the abstract concept of success in our students?

We, as teachers, attempt to measure success in a multitude of ways - from achieving 'expected' academic growth in the long term; down to getting them to JUST SIT STILL FOR FIVE MINUTES, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD in the short term.

Our students measure success by achieving their learning goals, by accomplishing success criteria and seeing an improvement in their report marks. Maybe. We hope.

But what about teacher success? When do we get a chance to measure how successful we are? When do we stop to focus on our own accomplishments and achievements? Do our students have to achieve 'success' for us to feel successful?

Judy Halbert and Linda Klaser, the geniuses behind Spirals of Inquiry, have developed four key questions that allow students to reflect on their own learning and understanding.

• Can you name two people in this school/setting who believe that you can be a success in life?
• Where are you going with your learning?
• How are you going with your learning?
• Where are you going next with your learning?

Our staff ask these questions routinely of our students to act as insight upon our own pedagogy. And it is insightful - we use these comments to realign our practice and really refocus on what our students need to feel success in their learning. (To read more about this, you can read their full paper here)

But, perhaps, we should be asking these questions routinely of ourselves. Our feelings of accomplishment should not always be directly correlated with student achievement. Considering Richard St. John's perspective, even if our students are not 'successful', we are - because we persevere even when they don't get it, we are passionate about developing student understanding and we are incredibly dedicated, even when it's really hard.

Hell, somedays, just getting out of bed after one alarm is a success.

So, ask yourself those 4 key questions:

• Can you name two people in your world who believe that you can be a success as a teacher?
• Where are you going with your teaching?
• How are you going with your teaching? (and what makes you say that?)
• Where are you going next with your teaching? 

What does the 'face' of success look and feel like for you, and how do you measure success in your pedagogy?

The Power of Collegial Support

Friday is a great time to look back on a week and really reflect both on your professional practice and personal life. Today, I'm looking back on a mixture of both.

My school is not the toughest school in the world, but it is far from the easiest. We have kids from a range of cultural backgrounds, a range of socio-economic backgrounds and a range of educational backgrounds. We have kids that want for nothing, and kids that have nothing. 

But some days, it is not the kids that keep me coming back to work.

It is my amazing, supportive, hilarious and caring colleagues.

The people I work with are like our kids - we come from a whole range of places, have a whole range of life experiences and have a whole lot of different teaching philosophies. 
But, unlike our kids, our staff get on like a house on fire.

There is not a day where laughter cannot be heard from the staffroom, whether it be at the expense of ourselves or our kids. There is not a day where you cannot find a shoulder to cry on, or someone to give you a hug when you feel you're at your wit's end.

The power of collegiality is very evident at our school. We are a team, a force to be reckoned with, an army, if you will - armed with formative assessment tools up the wahzoo, and a wicked sense of humour that whizzes straight over our kids heads, but will have each other laughing so hard we need to do a wiggly wee dance.

Maybe its the emotional nature of our profession - one in which we are so involved in the lives of our students that their pain is our own -  and it is this shared experience which brings our staff together so closely. 

Perhaps its our pedagogical standpoint - that we all share similar goals and views on current educational theory - that allows us to team up so easily and work collaboratively.

Possibly, its our Exec team - our experienced teacher mentors who are ready to share knowledge, support our crazy ideas and help us develop professionally and personally. (A special thank you execs for supporting me in this blogtastic venture).

Or perhaps its just that we're really really ridiculously good looking.

If you don't get the reference, then get out of my office, like right now!

Either way - as teachers, its absolutely vital that we recognise the power of collegial support in our professional lives. 

Think about it - have you recognised the incredible influence of the support of your colleagues this week?

It is these colleagues - the ones we sit brain dead with on a Monday morning,  simultaneously trying to finish off that Notebook file while stopping each other from drowning in our coffee - that help us keep it together.

It is these colleagues - the ones we sit with around the staffroom table on a Friday afternoon sharing war stories from the week - that help keep us sane.

It is these colleagues - the ones we sit on the couch with on the weekend eating scones and drinking copious amounts of tea - that keep us doing what we do best: educating little monsters wonderful children.

So colleagues - I raise my tea mug very full wine glass to you. Thank you for being the ones who keep me, me.

High five worthy moments

So, my mum is also a teacher, and an incredible one at that. She's an Individual Needs educator who specialises in sensory processing disorders (amongst all the other amazing things in that brain of hers) and is a huge inspiration for me both as my mum and as a professional. 

(She's actually written a book on the topic! Check it out here.)

Anyway, as I'm a fairly incredibly anxious person, talking to my mum is a massive help as a 2nd year teacher who is still attempting to figure out the right end of a whiteboard marker, so to speak. 

*Note: its the end with the ink.

I've had a pretty rocky start to the year behaviour wise, (read: my class can be little you-know-whats) so one piece of advice my mother dearest has given me is to write down one positive thing a day.

So today's... A day of fan-Tan-stic reading and writing.

See what I did there? Yes, I'm very punny!

Please, don't all cheer at once.

I could rave about Shaun Tan forever, but my happy face moment came today with my student's writing.  Truth be told, my students aren't the world's best writers. In fact, often much banging of the head against a wall ensues when marking their books. 

So when we have a little breakthrough, like metalanguage or figurative language use, I exclaim loudly about how truly incredible they are and demand high fives all around.

(its like a scene in a Disney movie actually - everyone smiles so hard our faces hurt)

So today, we looked at 'they came by water' (which, in its own right is a beautiful piece of art that I'm dying to have up on my wall if anyone is feeling particularly generous???) and we studied the differing perspectives in the image (power/majesty vs. domineering/invasion) as well as reviewing the concepts of salience and vectors (two VL terms my nutbags are very confident using now!). 

Ahh, its just so AWESOME!
Taken from: http://www.shauntan.net/images

Here are some of my high five worthy statements from today's writing:

(Overprotective Teacher Disclaimer: Please bear in mind that these kids have only been in my class for 6 weeks, none of them are achieving above a Satisfactory for writing and they are all LBOTE learners)

"I think this picture is that the big humungous ship and how small the tiny numbats are compared to the ship" a comparison, woohoo!

"I think the author made the numbats look anxious at the pointy part of the ship" adjective use, hell yes!

"First when I opened the book I saw the mighty ship staring at the land" personification???!!! WOO F***ING HOO!

Ok so the last munchkin didn't realise he used personification, and then called it 'person fiction' but small steps!

It might not seem like much, but for these kidlets, small successes might not be celebrated anywhere else, so I make even the smallest of achievements the Biggest of deals. These kids deserve to feel like they've inspired someone, like my mum inspires me.

So take a second to reflect, whether teacher or not:

What was your high-five-worthy positive moment today?