Just Enough Vs Excellence

I was fortunate as a kid to have an amazing teacher. A teacher who taught me that no matter how well you had done, you could always do better. Mrs Carter was my swimming coach.

School and I didn’t get on.
School wasn’t the place where I developed a passion to learn and achieve.
I was a swimmer.
Swimming took over my life. Swimming gave me direction. Swimming taught me to want to win.
Swimming felt like I was flying, water was my sky, which I guess just made me some kind of superhero who had to settle for the nearest pool.

Mrs Carter taught me that in life you only get one chance - so you may as well be truly excellent.
She never had a harsh word to say or even an extreme sense of competitiveness, Mrs Carter just knew that the journey was never done and If you’re any good at all, you know you can be better.
Achievements were celebrated, personal best times applauded and trophies awarded, however, you still knew that a pep-talk was coming and you still had work to do.
Reflection became automatic and essential. We knew that if we were simply content with an average performance - then average was all we would ever be. With 5 x 4:30am starts each week and over 70km in distance to plough through - average wasn’t something I was striving for.

How was school different?

School taught me that Just Enough - is enough. 50% to pass. Add those pretty borders and over utilise that lettering book. Not at one point did my academic education teach me excellence or give me the tools to strive to be the best.

Through complete disengagement with the system, I skipped years 10 and 13 and still entered into a restricted tertiary course - by achieving "Just Enough."

As I reflect on the opportunities I give my students to celebrate achievements and embark on next steps - am I encouraging or insisting on excellence. Is Just Enough still enough!

Too often, as teachers we use fabulous and fantastic adjectives to describe attitudes or achievements without thinking about what we are saying. Was that outcome amazing? Really?

I'm watching the students reflect on their creations, and those of their friends, and time and time again they are reluctant to be critical and are happy with simply having created something. 

Uili reflects 

Laita reflects

Tau reflects
Levi's thoughts

Can we expect improvement if mediocre is what they are happy with? Or.... am I unrealistic?

The Power of Reflection

I have written before on the power of sharing and what it holds in motivating a student to share their best.
I am beginning to question that thought.

Yes, the students do want to look good in front of their peers, they want their peers to laugh and engage with their creation.

Do they use reflection as a meaningful tool to improve and strive for excellence?

I am continually asking and advising students to do something no-one has done before, to come up with purple cow ideas and stand out as doing something different. Each week 75 students surprise me by playing it safe and creating the same thing. MTVs are the creation of choice at Pt England School and they are created well. The students have a wide range of filming, animating and editing skills and they are developing some much tighter and detailed plans and scripts. What they don't seemingly do well, is the extraordinary.

My goal, through the use of critical reflection, is to have the students think much more carefully about their work and creativity. I want to see these very talented students branch out, be different and make incredible gains in their key competencies as well as produce quality products.

Meaningful Creation

For the last 8 weeks our intermediate school of 5 classes has been trialling a new way to tackle literacy. I say tackle, as team wide we were struggling with how to incorporate great teaching, the need to accelerate our kids learning as well as addressing the creative, fun tasks that engage and motivate the students.
The answer, we felt. lay in teaching to our strengths, small group rotation and working together.

The students are split into two streams and each stream into 3 groups - making 6 groups in total.
Odd weeks - Stream A rotate through fundamental literacy skills with 3 teachers - this means there are roughly 20-25 students in each group. Meanwhile, Stream B undertake the creative strand with two teachers. Much larger groups but less individual input required.

Even Weeks -the streams switch over - the beauty lies here.
Stream A who spent the odd week writing and reading around a specific theme and genre now have the opportunity to create an artwork, movie or animation based around their literacy.
As the teacher overseeing the animation and film creation I can often have over 50 students working with me. The engagement, self management and perseverance is evident when I have very little to do while the students are in the throws of creating.

After a week in creative strand creating movies, animations and artworks the students are ready to share - Welcome to Friday afternoon.

We have a communal space in our intermediate block named The Street. It is in The Street where we gather as a team to share the week's efforts. It truly becomes a showcase for all students and definitely a chance to show off and shine. These moments provide immense motivation to the following week's groups to work hard to better the previous creations.

As with any new innovation there are challenges.

How do we engage the students in the storyboarding and planning process?
I perceive it to be a vital literacy to be able to to plan where your creation is headed. Outlining shots, angles and themes to best tell their story or share their message, is definitely the area of literacy we are beginning to focus more strongly on.



How best to ensure that students are being reflective and getting the most from their experiences?
With only seeing children once each fortnight for a short space of time, we are currently lacking in time to effectively reflect and revisit the process from the creative week. By working closer with the other teachers in the literacy stream, we hope for the students to have the opportunity to reflect on their creations as a part of their rotation. This is something we aim to introduce as soon as possible.

TKSD Movie Room15 from Team 5 PES on Vimeo.

Rocky Wyatt Isara Shayne Love from Team 5 PES on Vimeo.

The Power of Sharing

Sharing has become part of a catch phrase in our learning this year.

"Create something to share that will make the world more awesome!"

Transparent learning and sharing means the world to these kids. Seeing where they've started, how they got there and showcasing amazingness, drives and motivates the "Where to next?"
Too often we move on to the next thing. Days are busy and time is precious, "We must get through the curriculum!" Unfortunately this is to the detriment of sharing, reflecting and ultimately, the learning.
Learners need that opportunity to show off, to shine, to share and to receive feedback, feed forward, ask questions and offer further ideas. This is true collaborative learning.

Whilst undertaking an experiment on making ice-cream the other week, the students began to, quite loudly, question as to how on earth this simple process could possibly work.
Through personal research, the kids discovered that salt melts ice. When making ice cream why woud you salt the ice to make it melt?
This led to many more questions around the process that everyone had just shared. Groups formed and students began to explore further, offering hypotheses, challenging each other and ultimately reaching the valid conclusion of energy transfer. A fun, collaborative, learning filled, off the agenda, afternoon. Interestingly, many children went home that weekend, repeated the experiment and taught family members about what they had learnt around the idea of energy transfer. Sharing!

Sharing is the power behind reflection and learning, facilitating superb conversations, allowing further exploration and giving each learner a chance to have their voice heard.