Re-thinking Appraisal

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
- Albert Einstein

Appraisal has a new look at our school. After a thoughtful consultation process, we now have an on-line process that asks us to think about our strengths and weaknesses and how this impacts student achievement. Appraisal is moving from a tick-box administration process to a design that seeks to encourage teacher reflection and personalised development opportunities. I, for one, am very happy with this change.

For many of us, our identity or sense of self is closely aligned with what we do for a living. As teachers, we can often fall into the trap of feeling like we must know everything: we are teachers, after all. This is perhaps, where recent titles such as facilitators and learning leaders seek to remind us that we are just one part of the process. Students should be at the centre of it all. If we have spent much of our teaching life at front and centre of the classroom, it might be difficult to let go. But, in order to keep moving forward, we must acknowledge what we don't know and take action. There is no weakness in that. A good appraisal system should allow us to feel safe in our reflections on and explorations into our teaching practice.

I had the opportunity to contribute to part of the new appraisal document. I used the SMART criteria as a base:

• Specific: Goal(s) should be clearly articulated and described
• Measurable: Goal(s) should be easily measured by a collection of evidence
• Achievable: Goal(s) should be challenging – perhaps taking you out of your comfort zone – but focused enough to be achievable
• Relevant: Goal(s) should be informed by and have reference to school goals
• Time bound: Goal(s) should have a clearly defined timeline

And then I added some reflection questions to get the thinking started:

• What do I know about my students’ achievement?
• How could I enhance my students’ learning?
• Which particular teaching skill would I like to develop?
• How familiar am I with current best-practice educational theory?
• Where are the gaps in my professional development record?
• What evidence collection methods could I use to support my goal(s)?
• How is my appraisal goal linked to a school or faculty goal?
• How will my appraisal goal help to strengthen my teaching practice?
• How is my appraisal goal linked to the RTCs?

I am hopeful that my faculty sees this newly redesigned process as encouraging and enabling them to think critically and deeply about their own pedagogy. We have a number of cycling enthusiasts in our team; as a peloton, we could certainly achieve the momentum required to reach our individual bests.

Explicit Language Ahead

"Thanks for believing in me, Miss."

I had stopped to chat with one of my student's from last year. I had seen (and heard) her practising for her oral presentation assessment a couple of times and I told her how impressed I had been as I walked by. She made some typical comments that students make when they have no confidence in their ability in a subject. I told her I thought she was far more capable than she thought and that she shouldn't give up. As she walked off with her friend, she looked back over her shoulder and called, "Thanks for believing in me, Miss."

I have to admit, it gave me a warm glow. I felt like I had done something good for at least one student that day. The thing is though, I really, truly believe that she is capable of achieving. What it is now making me wonder is whether or not all my students feel that I believe in them. Because I do. Yes, I know they all arrive in my class with different levels of confidence and a wide range of skills. But have I made it sufficiently explicit to each and every one of them that I know that they can achieve? And I want them to know that AND believe that. In the final week of the first term break, I realise that I don't think I have made that explicit enough, and I certainly haven't personalised it.

What can I do about that? Yes, I can continue with those blanket statements I give about expecting everybody to achieve. Yes, I can emphasise the expectation of Excellence or Merit. But now I don't think that's enough. What I want to do is going to take time, and time is always the missing ingredient. But I think I need to do it. I'm envisaging a mini-conference with each of my students where I can discuss such things as their past achievement (or otherwise), their concerns and worries, and what they think are their strengths and weaknesses. I need to make this purposeful; I don't want the students to feel it is just another tick-box process like some of the other "tracking" that occurs. It is very much an embryonic idea at this stage, but, I believe, a worthwhile idea.

Out and About Visibly Learning

It can be a breath of fresh air to get out of your classroom, out of your school, and perhaps out of your comfort zone. So heading off on Friday to the Visible Learning Summit was much anticipated by our small exploratory team.

Sometimes it happens that the presentations of the day leave something to be desired, and the learning happens from the conversations with colleagues. On this particular Friday, the thing I enjoyed most at the Summit was hearing from two principals who have got in there and lead change from the top; the embodiment of leaders of learning was on display in these two and it was quite inspirational.

However,- and here I may be being rather contentious - what didn't inspire me was the (not choosing my words diplomatically) at times sycophantic adherence to certain theories and certain people. I ask my students to think for themselves and I will occasionally play devil's advocate to see if any of them challenge me. I didn't really see any of this on Friday. Real discussion seemed lacking. People who disagreed with ideas or aspects of presentations did so in hushed voices, afraid of upsetting the cart or being different in a room full of disciples.

Don't get me wrong, I am fully in favour of research, best practice, and doing what works for our students. But I want to know what works and doesn't work, what the problems and constraints are, what workarounds might be necessary. I want real-world scenarios, not the text book practices. I want discussion and difference. How can I learn if I can't see anything of myself or my situation in your story? How can I grow if I am too afraid to be derided for offering a different, but perhaps valid, perspective?

In the end, the journey back home gave our small exploratory team the time to debrief, and this was perhaps the most valuable aspect of the whole day; an opportunity for colleagues to process their responses and reach shared understanding. Professionally developing and growing together.

Growth Mindsets

Last night I participated in my very first Twitter #edchatnz. I started off on my Twitter homepage and quickly realised that I was going to need to venture into TweetDeck. A few minutes later it was all systems go..... at 200km/h it seemed. Tweets were flying through the ether and I was back in noob-ville (population 2 or 3). But I was in and giving it a go - quite apt given that the focus for the evening was a discussion of fixed versus growth mindsets.

There are many ways these terms can be applied in education, and last night's Twitter discussion was evidence of all the ways this is true. My first contribution was to share something I heard a student say that day. She had been talking about "cab maths" (cabbage). It rolled off her tongue and her friend knew exactly what she was talking about. I have heard this term - and those similar - in other schools, so I realise it is not unique to mine. My question last night was "Where did this terrible label come from? Fixed mindset teachers/systems?" Are we perpetuating fixed mindsets through the systems we adhere to in schools and our own fixed beliefs about the students in front of us?

When we stream classes, someone has to end up at the "bottom". How do we remove the ceiling that is imposed by the next class up? How about we let the students know that they can get in the elevator and bypass those floors - that the level they find themselves in is only a starting point and which floor they end up on is only limited by the buttons they choose to push?

As teachers we need to ensure we do not fall into the trap of labelling and settling. We should not enter our classrooms as we return to teaching in the coming week, having already placed caps on what we think our students are capable of. Yes, we can look at the data from previous years, but we have to believe that this gives us a starting point, not an ending point. If teachers do not believe this, then it really is no wonder that "cab maths" exists.

This year there are already lots of challenging and exciting opportunities before me that will help me grow as a professional. My job in the coming weeks is to discover what challenges and opportunities each of my students needs to help him or her grow.

To SOLO or not to SOLO

So I am supposed to be on holiday now, but I have an inability to unwind which I put down to one and a half decades of teaching. Instead, I have been browsing Twitter and the like, catching up on some professional reading. It has been a very busy term and this blog, which I set up with noble intentions for reflective practice, has been at the bottom of my to-do pile.

However, I have been a member of a workplace PLC looking into SOLO. We have been doing some reading, research, and a few classroom trials. We also had a session with Pam Hook to get us off on the right track.

The group's thinking at the moment is that we can see potential in SOLO; it helps us to clarify the learning intentions and aims of our units and is getting us thinking about how we really break things down for our students. One thing we don't like about SOLO is the language: uni-structural, multi-structural, and so on. Perhaps if you are a science teacher it might appeal, but as an English teacher it does not dance trippingly off the tongue. We feel that students are bombarded with enough teacher-speak as it is and we are thinking about ways to link SOLO to our national assessment system terminology. It shouldn't be too difficult as they are structurally very similar. Luckily I work in a school that recognises the need for adequate time when it comes to professional learning and thinking, so we have at least this year to experiment.