What Are You Looking For? (Things That Have Worked For Me #3)

This post is part of a series of things I've picked up over the last 9 years that have turned out to be incredibly helpful. Obviously their mileage will vary depending on your context and I don't expect them to work for everyone, so feel free to either take these on board or put them in your brain-bin - I won't mind either way.

3. Look for the Positives rather than the Negatives

This one sounds so simple on the surface but in practice it can be quite difficult to maintain. Any cursory look at a behaviour monitoring database held by a school will include entries that cover various behavioural events. These can be positive or negative, including things like a student completing a particular lengthy and high quality piece of classwork (positive) to a student becoming argumentative with the teacher (negative). In a lot of cases there will be an imbalance between these events, with a higher quantity of negative events being listed because these are the sort of things we've been trained to 'jump onto' as quickly as possible.

But when we think about it (or even look more closely at the data) there is often a pattern that reveals that the negative events are restricted to a very comparatively-small percentage of the student population. A look at the complete roll of students in any class will make it clear that the vast majority of students are doing the 'right' thing or, at least, not doing the 'wrong' thing (which in most eyes is considered the 'right' thing by default).

Child psychologists (such as Doctor Roberto Parada) will be among the first to tell you that recognising desired behaviour in children has a much bigger impact than acknowledging the kinds of behaviour we don't want. In a classroom, this can be admittedly difficult, but the long term effect of pushing further in this direction cannot be be underestimated and undervalued.

Here's a scenario called 'Picking Your Battles' that makes the thinking a little more explicit:

1. A student with a history of defiance comes into the classroom late while wearing a hat or listening to headphones. He sits down and begins working on the class activity like everyone else in the class, perhaps doing some work for the first time in weeks.
2. The teacher pulls the student up on breaking the school rule about wearing hats, listening to headphones, or coming to class late.
3. The student responds defensively, or aggressively, or both.
4. The student stops working on the class activity.
5. The student continues to break the original rule AND/OR gets detention for arguing. 
6. Any opportunity to build a positive relationship with the student during this lesson is now gone, PLUS no work has been completed.

If the student had gone unchallenged then we would've had a different scenario play out. The undesired behaviours, such as coming late or listening to headphones, could be dealt with afterwards when the student doesn't have an audience.

U.S. Educator Annette Breaux makes a few points that relate to the above scenario:

• If a student is angry, leave them alone and give them space.
• Weigh up the reality of what you're asking them to do - are they going to react favourably?
• If there is a choice of you having them working while breaking a minor rule, or not working at all, then what is more important in the long run? 
• Is it more likely that the student will listen to your instructions about following rules if you show them first that you care foremost about them getting the work done rather than having them accept your authority? 
• Is challenging a disruptive student going to ease the issue?
• Is their education the most important aspect of their being at school? How can we make this clear to them?

I'll add to the above that our syllabus doesn't include behaviour management. I'm not saying that behaviour management isn't a part of our job (that would be insane) but I'm saying getting students to meet syllabus outcomes is the first priority. If you can manage to get students to meet syllabus outcomes then the chances are that they won't have time to be able to break rules too much. Besides, what is a parent going to query more - the teacher disciplining their student or the teacher educating them in line with the syllabus requirements? If we're successfully teaching a student our subject then I'm arguing that that's the better goal.

I know it's not ideal but it's preferable... we don't live in an ideal world and there's a higher chance of teacher burnout when we strive to create an ideal world in our classroom. As Breaux suggests above, a student (and their parent) are more likely to listen and respond reasonably to our management of undesired behaviours if we're actively demonstrating that the student's education comes first (more on that in the next blog) or if we're waiting until after class to discuss the issue (proving that it isn't about humiliating them in front of their peers).

There's another really clever chap called Adam Lefstein who talks a lot about 'face-work', which is the idea of teachers becoming preoccupied with looking a certain way in front of their colleagues. This is nominally because we're worried about having our behaviour management judged. The more we can break the appearance of judging our colleagues, keeping an open door to our classrooms, and being honest about the challenges we face, the more we can start changing the conversation to being about the things that students are doing right in the classroom. Yeah, okay, there's four kids chatting and not focused on their work, but look at the twenty-odd other students who have done everything you asked! Is the visiting teacher seeing that part of the lesson?

The challenge here is to walk into a 'challenging' class you have this week and decide to only acknowledge the 'good' things happening, even with the students who are still exhibiting undesired behaviours. This could be awarding points in a system of some kind, chucking out some lollies, giving award certificates, promising a positive phone call home to their parent... but whatever you do, unless something completely un-ignorable happens, try to avoid even seeing the 'bad' stuff. We've all had enough lessons like that. We've had plenty of lesson where we only saw the things that went wrong, so what's the harm in trying the opposite just once?

Don't approach this as a sentimental or emotional exercise; try to drop any preconceived ideas you already have from your time teaching these same students in the past. Approach the lesson as scientifically as possible, identifying and rewarding desired behaviours only, and watch to see if student completion of work improves.  

Settling the Class (Things That Have Worked for Me #2)

This post is part of a series of things I've picked up over the last 9 years that have turned out to be incredibly helpful. Obviously their mileage will vary depending on your context and I don't expect them to work for everyone, so feel free to either take these on board or put them in your brain-bin - I won't mind either way.

2. Don't Wait for the Class to Settle

If you're nearly 7 foot tall, and look like Conan the Barbarian, then you'll probably have no problem quelling the dissent of the class with a booming voice and a threatening neck-vein the size of a rope. For the rest of us, however, relying on physical intimidation or authoritarianism isn't necessarily going to work. I spend a lot of time telling student-teachers they should play to their strengths and that, if their strength isn't in presenting a strong and authoritative presence, they may need to rely on other strategies to shape a learning environment based on engagement. 

The time spent waiting for a mixed-ability class to become quiet is almost never time well spent. There are likely somewhere between 20 and 30 individual students (all with their own drama going on) and waiting for every single of one of them to simultaneously fall silent and pay attention can be an immense challenge. The probability of different interactions between this many people is so high that you can't predict how settled the class will be each time you see them (think about it - if you have 25 students then how is each individual potentially going to react to any combination of their 24 peers on a particular day? I'm not a Maths teacher but I'm sure the figure for the amount of student-combinations is quite high). 

I've most often fallen into the trap of waiting for the class to be quiet usually just before I'm about to play a film clip of some sort. Waiting for the students to be quiet before I play the clip (while forcing myself not to yell at them in order to make it happen) is almost always futile. This can be the same for a range of other activities, including whole class instruction. 

What surprisingly sometimes works instead is just moving straight into the clip or activity while the students are still unsettled. The activity becomes the thing that settles the students. If I have a task that requires instruction then I'll put the instructions up on the board or hand out the sheets... this will get those who understand (and are willing to work independently) to engage with the work. Then, while this half of the class is getting underway, I'll start moving around and instructing the other students one-on-one. This works because:

• The amount time spent moving around and doing one on one instruction tends to be equal to the amount of time it would get me to settle the whole class at once.
• Even if I do manage to settle the entire class and they become quiet, this doesn't mean that they are all attentive or capable of understanding the instructions. Just because a class is quiet and compliant it doesn't mean that they're listening. Once the activity gets underway, speaking one-on-one guarantees a higher level of engagement across the class as it allows for differentiated instruction. There are students who struggle to follow the more traditional lecturing-style of whole class instruction and moving around to them once their peers have started working gives them an opportunity to listen and interact with you.
• Even if I do decide to try and settle the whole class at once and it somehow takes less time then just putting the activity in front of them, I can usually be fairly certain that my personal stress level will be higher as a result. I want to be in this for the long haul, so it's better overall if I don't break myself trying to get over 20 students to simultaneously be quiet. If I can let go of the idea that my authority needs to be recognised (and let's be honest here, no syllabus includes 'recognition of teacher authority' as an outcome) then I find myself a lot less stressed by the settling section of a routine lesson. If being authoritative works for you then that's fine, but for myself it's not one of my strengths so I've had to develop and adopt the other aforementioned strategies to save my sanity.

Non-verbal cues are also good. This can include the tried-and-true methods of:

• Holding my hand up and waiting for silence. Students should reply by putting their own hands up so other students can see that I want some quiet. Yelling for silence has always felt counterproductive and contradictory to me so I've found modelling silence in this way a bit more logical. 
• The above can be accompanied by quietly counting from 1 to whatever until the class settles. If I have to, I'll resume from whichever number I got to at any point in the lesson and this becomes the amount of time some individuals from the class might owe me.
• Proximity. Standing near the most disruptive students usually has a dampening effect on their off-topic conversations. 
• Walking around and pointing to clear, simple instructions that have been written on the board can be effective too. Many students are disruptive or disengaged simply because they don't know what to do and they aren't able to understand verbal instructions. 
• Write personalised instructions on a note and quietly place it in front of the student. This works especially well for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. 
• This isn't exactly non-verbal but choice theory can be really effective with students who might be categorised as naturally oppositional. Quietly give them two choices (both choices need to be positive ones, EG. You can do this work, or this work) and then walk away and let them decide without you hovering over them or waiting for a response. The act of waiting for a response can often exacerbate the opposition we're trying to circumvent. 

One more caveat before I finish up. I'm aware that behaviour management is very subjective and can be complex in light of school policies, and I'm also aware that nothing above is particularly revolutionary. My recent experiences teaching English Method to pre-service teachers has had me thinking a lot about articulating my processes and, as a result, I've been thinking of these blogs as living documents to help me sort and solidify pedagogy that I've found helpful. 

Hopefully there's something here that might prove useful to you too. 

Classroom Schematics (Things That Have Worked for Me #1)

Followers of this blog may have noticed that I've slowed down a little in the last few months in terms of sharing resources.

There are a few reasons for this, chief among them is the fact that recent times have been awfully hard for myself and my wife. I look at this blog sometimes and, much like George Harrison and his guitar, my life goes on while it gently weeps. Another reason for the absence is a much more positive one though, being that I've been working on a range of writing projects in various stages of germination. This includes a textbook on Under Milk Wood for Into English, some writing on Aboriginal history, and a few other projects that should hopefully cement themselves in the near future. 

As of last week I just finished supervising my tenth student-teacher. It's a nice round milestone and one that has given me pause for thought. I always find supervision of student-teachers to be a very fulfilling practice as it provides a great open dialogue around pedagogy, and it re-positions my daily focus onto the part of my job that matters most: the actual teaching. The idea of articulating the teaching process becomes more concrete and it always forces me to reconsider the reasons why I do particular things, and observing someone else as they teach across a block of 5-6 weeks has consistently proven to be a valuable learning experience. 

Anyway, thinking about my teaching habits led to the question: what are the main things that I do that have worked well for me?

This post is the first in a short series of five things I've picked up over the last 9 years that have turned out to be incredibly helpful. Obviously their mileage will vary depending on your context and I don't expect them to work for everyone, so feel free to either take these on board or put them in your brain-bin - I won't mind either way.

1. Classroom Schematics

When I started teaching I was working as a day-to-day casual. This meant that I was often teaching outside of my subject area and was a complete unknown to the students. When students don't know who you are, they often jump to the conclusion that you don't know who they are either - and when you're a new teacher or working casually this can very likely be true. 

And if you don't have their names then it's all over. 

They'll pretend to be the wrong student, run away from you when you try to hold them back after class, or completely disengage on the basis that you can't identify who they are without their help. The one chance you have to get their name is when you mark the roll, because most students realise that they'll be marked as truanting if they don't answer truthfully at this point. So you have to use this chance wisely.

Here's what I do. I can't remember who I picked this up from but it's been such a useful thing to do, and I still do it every time I start with a new class. 

1. Draw a map of the room. 
2. As you mark the roll, ask each student to put their hand up so you can see them. Don't move onto the next student until you have sighted each one.
3. Write the names of each student onto your map/schematic of the room.

It doesn't matter how long this takes it's always worth doing. Even if the students are noisy or wandering around or if it takes a full 10 minutes, spending the time doing this will be the best thing you can do with a complete group of strangers because - once you have their names - you have the basics of behaviour management in your hands. Anything can be followed up if you know exactly who each student is.

A positive impact from this is that it also allows you to address each student by their name, which can help build valuable rapport. In my teaching context, Western Sydney, students tend to become significantly less stand-offish once you address them by their name. You're letting them know that you see them.

New Assessment Approaches in Stage 6 English

The 2019 ETA Conference emphasis the progression of 'Passion to Practice', which covers a range of conceptual pedagogies for their implementation in the English classroom.This particular session was borne of consideration pertaining to Outcome 9 in the NSW Senior English syllabus and the new HSC specifications rolled out by NESA in the past 18 months.

Extract: With the arrival of the new HSC specifications for Stage 6, the time has never been better for examining new approaches to essay writing that take students away from the stress and anxiety of formal exam settings. In this presentation we will cover how peer editing, conferencing, annotation, and Assessment as Learning can be used to build both confidence and valuable writing skills in senior English students. Teachers will also be given access to a variety of materials that can be adapted to their own classrooms and a number of Year 11 and 12 modules. 

Here is the presentation, which covers multimodal assessment, peer editing, conferencing, lexical density testing, feedback (or analytical) criteria, and dynamic assessment.

• New Assessment Approaches

(I'll add here, as it's as good a place as any, that none of this is really 'new' - it's just new in the sense that these approaches provide alternatives to commonplace formalised assessment strategies that require stripping back in light of the new HSC specifications).

Here are the resources that go with the presentation:

• Resources

Thanks!

Ten Things We Should Say Everyday (and Why They're Important)

Sydney Church of England Grammar is also known as the 'Shore School'

Earlier this year I attended the Project Zero conference at the Sydney Church of England Grammar School. It was ace, and I've already written about some of the other professional learning I did there on feedback processes and pushing for depth in student thinking. The conference itself was a great opportunity and saw over 500 people in attendance from the full gamut of Australian schools - state schools, independent schools, religious schools, and other educational sectors - and I recommend checking it out the next time it comes around.

One of the keynote lectures drew on the concept of a culture of thinking, with Dr Ron Ritchhart speaking quite passionately about the joy of 'learning together' and defining a culture as a shared language that represents a collective way of thinking. In the case of a learning culture, Dr Ritchhart identified several cultural forces that can shape this shared language:

• Routines
• Opportunity
• Modelling
• Time
• Interactions
• Environment
• Language
• Expectations

In the specific case of modelling, Dr Ritchhart elaborated further by describing this as demonstrating good practice and thinking aloud. More particularly, modelling of exemplar responses allows students to explicitly see how teacher cognition works, and - in the words of the great educator Vygotsky - lets "Children grow into the intellectual life around them". 

And that brings us to the title of this post, the ten things that Dr Ritchhart says we should say to students everyday. I've jotted them down here with his explanations of why they're important.

Dr Ron Ritchhart's presentation ^

1. Hello and Goodbye - all students need to feel known and acknowledged. Disruptive behaviour decreases, learning and engagement increases. Try not to be busy during this transition time while students are entering and leaving the class. 
2. WMYST?: What Makes You Say That? - make this an integral part of the classroom. Ask students this question so that they are forced to become more independent in terms of responding to class activities, providing their own thoughts rather than relying on the teacher's.
3. Talk to me about what you're doing - with this prompt, students are also being asked to make their metacognitive process more visible. Leave it open-ended, let the student find their own way to articulate what they're doing.
4. Here's where we're going with this - purpose is important. When people have a sense of purpose their learning increases dramatically. There is no research supporting 'learning intentions', the research tends to centre around 'purpose' instead, and this is because they aren't the same thing - stating a learning intention may not be as effective or the same thing as the broader purpose of something.
5. Here's the thinking you'll need to do... - when teachers explain an assignment or project to students we tend to get into the logistics by default. Then students fulfill these logistics and are surprised when they do get an A, and some aren't even sure how it happened or how it can be replicated. As teachers we need to keep in mind that i's the thinking that needs to be striven for, not the result.  
6. Let's debrief - new learning is incredibly fragile, so it's important to go over it to help reinforce/consolidate what students have just learned. Students in a high school setting are most often about to move on to another class or activity with completely different demands (for example, once the student finishes English they may be about to move on to their Mathematics or Geography class). One way that Dr Ritchhart highlighted was the 'IQ routine' in which students are invited to give insights and ask further questions at the end of each lesson.
7. I've noticed... - contrast this with 'I liked', which flips attention back onto the teacher. The language of 'I've noticed' is that it's less about turning students into people-pleasers and more about them considering what they've just done as learners. 
8. We - this creates a sense of community with the students.
9. I'm sorry - teachers need to be willing to admit mistakes, rather than seeing apology as a sign of weakness. 
10. Wow! - give students an opportunity to surprise us. Delight in their learning. If there are no 'wow' moments then you're playing too safe. 

More on this can be found on Dr Ron Ritchhart's website here.

Teaching: The Demographic Approach

In the words of my city council, "Penrith is here"

English is all about context. We look at the context of authors, the context of their texts, the context of a text's intended audience, the context of our students in responding to said text, and the context of the teacher teaching the text and how it fits into the syllabus. But really, thinking outside of the KLA, isn't everything about context?

"I want to give you $20".

If someone said that to me, then I would want to know why. What is the context? I would want to know who's giving me this money, why they are giving it to me, and what they expect me to either do for it or do with it. 

Then I would accept the $20. Most likely. Well, it depends on the context.

I teach in Western Sydney at Glenmore Park High School; a fantastic comprehensive government school full of great students who will no doubt grow into our proud future. Like all schools, it comes with its own context - both in terms of the immediate community and the wider demographic of Western Sydney - and these are things that bear some examination for a couple of reasons:

• If we know where the child is from, we'll have a better idea of where they're going.
• If we know what their parents expect and want, we'll be able to better cater to the needs of our community.
• If we know the sort of priorities and attitudes that have been passed on to the students from their community, we'll know how to better implement the kind of change that will have a generational effect and foster increased positivity towards education in our demographic.

In my case, Penrith City Council have a wonderful website with data on the city's demographics called Penrith Progression. There are some caveats that need minding when looking at statistics, such as not drawing direct conclusions when data could be correlating with certain observed trends. This simply means that if I see a percentage in the numbers then I should be careful not to say that this automatically proves a hypothesis I may hold. That would be an opinion, rather than a fact. 

I can, however, use the demographic data as a basis for assumptions. I can assume certain things as a means to explore pedagogy. This should be a design process rather than a solution. I can use the information gleaned from Penrith Progression (or any other set of figures related to demographics) to support ideas I want to test out. If these ideas work; hurray! If they don't; look at the data again and perhaps craft a new hypothesis - try something else. Perfection is impossible and pedagogy should therefore be flexible and fluid; constantly shifting and improving to make things better. In short: it's a design process.

For those who teach in Western Sydney, here are Penrith's demographics (as of 2015):

Housing

• 50% of families in Penrith have children, which is equal to the rest of Sydney, however, Penrith has a 25% higher proportion of single-parent families.
• The average personal income for an adult in Penrith is $632 per week - better than Blacktown or Liverpool, but less than Sydney and Camden.
• 10% of Western Sydney's population is concentrated in Penrith.
• 22% of Penrith residents own their house outright, with a further 42% paying off a mortgage. A further 26% rent. This compares as similar to Blacktown and Liverpool, however, it does constitute a drop compared to Penrith in 2005, where 32% of houses were owned outright. There has also been a shift towards increased renting in Penrith (something that has not occurred in Blacktown or Liverpool).

 Education

• In all of Western Sydney, Penrith has the highest proportion of adults who finished school at Year 10 (32%) and the least to complete Year 12 (38% - compared to 50% in both Blacktown and Liverpool). 
• Penrith is a 'leading skills city', with 22% of adults having vocational certificates (trades). In contrast, 10% go to university - which is less than other Western Sydney areas (Liverpool has 17% of their Year 12 students going on to university). 

Other

• People in Penrith are much more likely to go on to work in their hometown. 56% of workers in Penrith also live here, which contrasts with 38% in Liverpool and 44% in Blacktown.
• In the next 15 years, demographic models currently predict that the amount of Penrith citizens under the age of 15 will increase by a whooping 42%.

Some ideas I've assumed from this information were that:

1. Due to such a relatively high proportion of Penrith students staying on in Penrith to work, this may mean that attitudes towards work and education are more likely to be entrenched and generational. 
2. The increase in the number of Penrith-dwelling teenagers in the near future will mean that schools (particularly those in growth areas, like Glenmore Park High School) will continue expanding towards capacity.

You might be wondering what I do with this information. In my personal teaching context, the main idea is that it supports a Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) approach that favours the building of positive relationships through extrinsic recognition of desired attitudes and actions. If I want to affect generational change then it becomes important to teach students (especially those who might be at risk of long term disengagement) that school can be a positive experience and that, even if they leave with the sole purpose of picking up a trade, they may therefore pass on positive opinions of schooling to their own children. This may, in turn, then improve the percentage of students primed for university enrollment in the next generation.

It's a long game, but I've always preferred to play the long game. And, at the end of the day, I shouldn't really need an excuse for having a PBL focus in my pedagogy, but it certainly helps to reinforce it if I can see what the data says about my city. I can use this information in my design process for catering to my community better.   

Marking Metalanguage

Working towards a better understanding of things can be hard...

As someone very interested in assessment, and the contexts that go with different kinds of assessment, I often find myself working towards a kind of multilateral understanding that can be shared between teacher and student. In more general terms, this means two things:

• Using analytical criteria grids wherever I can, so students can see how they perform in relation to particular skills.
• Using language that can be understood by students whilst maintaining the integrity of the rubric as a teacher's assessment tool.

The second of these dot points is perhaps the trickier of the two as there is a pre-existing metalanguage used by markers that should be retained as much as possible for the sake of clarity. One of the issues with metalanguage is that it can be inherently jargonistic; that is to say, different groups favour different shared lexicons when it comes to discussing and assessing the abilities of students, and there's no overall rule book that everyone everywhere is willing to adhere to.

Hey, that's life. 

One example of this is the use of 'sophisticated' to refer to an understanding achieved by a top-marked student, which  contrasts with other rubrics that favour the word 'skilful' as the top descriptor. How can we say one is wrong and the other is correct? Is an attempt to nail down our metalanguage to only one set of terms in fact a contradiction of the ethos of English as a subject that rewards independent thinking and multiple interpretations? And how do we reconcile this with the need of our students to have a clear guide to the terms used in our marking criteria?

I don't have the definitive answer to that, hence my earlier use of the words "working towards a kind of multilateral understanding". What I would like to offer here is a short guide to the English assessment metalanguage that I tend to use; a guide that has been designed for Advanced English student use in conjunction with peer assessment. The hope here is twofold:

1. Students become more confident in using a wider variety of terms when providing constructive critiques of their own work and the work of their peers.
2. Students gain an increased understanding of the sort of language they're likely to see in marking rubrics.

The following terms have been gleaned from school-based assessment tasks, HSC marking rubrics, and the metalanguage used by NAPLAN SMART data and the Literacy Continuum to describe writing standards. I have deliberately tried to keep it from being too long so as not to overwhelm students who are already trying to decipher a marking rubric, but I'm happy regardless to hear any feedback that can assist in the refinement of these terms (or the addition of new ones).

Cracking Open the Marking Terminology used by Teachers

Appropriate to Audience, Purpose, Context and Form: This terminology is taken straight from the English syllabus outcomes. It is asking if the response a student has written reflects the right text type for the question. Additionally, do the sentences reflect the level of care suited to the context (EG. An exam, or a performance), and has the student understood the requirements of the task?

Attempt: Anything on the page that demonstrates a student has tried, even without evidence of understanding, to engage with the question.

Basic: Student shows some understanding, or can use a skill to some extent (most likely not well or successfully). This can indicate a D-grade; slightly below-average.

Cohesive: The student's response 'hangs' together and assists the reader in understanding the composed text. It includes: using synonyms that fit, ellipsis of unnecessary repetitive words, using groups of words that fit together well, and using the right group of words to refer to a specific idea. 

Control of Language: Maintaining one kind of tense (EG. Past tense), keeping the same perspective throughout (EG. Third person), not breaking the subject-verb agreement (EG. Singular noun matches with a singular verb), and making the right word choices.

Effective: Student can do something with some degree of skill or higher understanding. Usually indicates a B-grade; above-average.

Evaluates: Makes a judgment, shows an opinion. Matches up with questions that use the phrase 'To what extent'.

Implied: Something that cannot be obviously seen in the response. The teacher may judge that certain elements in the response indicate the student understands something, or can do something.

Judicious: The student has put thought into what details or examples they choose to use. Could also refer to the deliberate ellipsis of unnecessary details, or purposefully not doubling up on the same kind of technique or example, or matching supporting evidence well to the thesis statement/topic sentences.

Limited: The lowest tier of understanding, or evidence suggests that a student is unable to use the skill being assessed. Indicates an E-grade; well below-average. Interchangeable with Elementary.

Satisfactory: Student has shown that they understand what needs to be understood, or can use the skill that needs to be used, but has done so in a 'workmanlike', 'un-showy' or inelegant fashion. Usually indicates a C-grade; average. Interchangeable with Adequate.

Sentence Variety: Uses simple sentences (one clause sentences), compound sentences (sentences with two clauses joined together that could otherwise be separated into two one-clause sentences) and complex sentences (multiple clauses that are dependent on one another for the sentence to work).

Skilful: Student is able to do something exceptionally well. Can indicate an A-grade; well above-average.

Sophisticated: Occupies the same level as Skilful; can indicate an understanding that goes above the majority of the age group.

Sustained: More than one page of writing.

Thesis Statement: The sentence that states the main idea of an extended response to a question, and helps to control the ideas within the paper. It should reflect an opinion or judgment that the student has made in response to the task's instructions.

What Could I Be Doing Differently?

Most of my blog tends to focus on the practical and pragmatic. Well, I at least hope that's the case - it's up to those of you who read it to decide if these lessons and resources have been practical. The point is that I like to focus on what it is that we, as teachers, can do in the classroom to make things run more efficiently and effectively. 

It's not a perfect world though, and things can and do occasionally go pear-shaped in the classroom. There's a tendency in teaching for people to externalise these issues and look for blame-factors - heck, it's something that lots of people do in life in general. I'm not saying that external factors don't exist but there's little point in stressing about what you cannot change.

Therefore, if something ever goes askew or wrong then I like to internalise the problem and look for what it is that I, the classroom teacher, could be doing differently to avoid or fix the situation. There are three things that I always come back to in my head, and they work like a mantra:

1. If I don't like something, then I'm the only one who can fix it - and that extends to fixing my perception. I might just be looking at the whole situation the wrong way. What could I be doing differently?
2. If I want something done the way I want it done, then I should do it myself. That's how things get done. No one else is going to do something for you, they have their own things to do.
3. Don't ever ask anyone - parents, other teachers, students - to do something that I myself would not be prepared to do. 

I recently read 101 Answers for New Teachers and Their Mentors by Annette Breaux. It's a fantastically positive book for educators that has given me a whole bunch of great ideas and reaffirmed my teaching philosophy. I think that we all, at some level, want to be appreciated by our clientele - the students, the parents, and even the administrators/executive branch that we work for. It's their taxes that generate our salaries - we owe it to each of these groups to do a good job. 

At the end of 101 Answers is a section from one of Breaux's other books, Seven Simple Secrets, that details what makes for effective and appreciated teachers, and a lot of it just makes sense to me. I read over it and came up with this list on how I reinforce positive teaching practice:

Things that students like:

• Teachers who are nice to them
• Teachers who make learning fun
• Teachers who help students succeed
• Teachers who challenge students
• Teachers who are clear and consistent with expectations 
• Teachers who are willing to start each day afresh
• Teachers who get to know their students as people

Things that parents like:

• When teachers treat their child as fairly as we would treat our own
• Teachers who do their best to keep them informed
• When teachers make an effort to communicate positively
• When teachers listen to what they have to say 
• Teachers who never give up on their child
• Teachers who challenge students while making learning fun 

Things that the executive like:

• Teachers who prepare their lessons well before they teach them
• Teachers who handle their own discipline problems
• Teachers that make decisions based on what's best for students
• Teachers who maintain professionalism when interacting with non-administrators (parents, students, other teachers)
• Teachers who continue to educate themselves
• Teachers who manage their classroom efficiently 
• Teachers who treat every child with respect and dignity
• Teachers who cater for all stakeholders 

I'm not saying that I'm a great teacher, but I think that if I continue to work on doing each of these things to the best of my ability then I'm going to get there eventually. We can always be better at what we do.

I realise that not every teacher reading this will be willing to focus their frustrations entirely on themselves but I figure that there's more than enough negative stuff out there so a little bit of positive practicality can't go astray.

STEM Sells

It's Thursday afternoon, and I'm sitting in a lecture theatre at Western Sydney University simply because the professional learning on STEM has been offered as a free seminar. I've heard this acronym a few times over the last year and since it's free I thought I should come see what's it all about. 

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths. The STEM organisation has grown as a response to Australia's flagging home-grown talent in these areas, in the hope that better ties can be made between high schools and industry to plug the gap. I'm paraphrasing here, but one great opening idea to this lecture ran as thus, "The more connections a young person has with industry, the higher their chance of post-school success". STEM seeks to embed this philosophy into Australian education through the support of the Beacon Foundation and Origin Foundation, in the hope that our senior students will start selecting these subjects in greater numbers.

This chart shows the Top 10 performing countries for Maths, Sciences and Reading (please excuse the poor lighting).

Many students are not choosing STEM subjects at high schools. For example, the number of students who don't study maths at all has tripled in recent times. In Australia, 30% of staff in some STEM sectors are manpower imported from overseas, and coders created in this country are almost all male. The Beacon Foundation seeks to connect STEM businesses with schools in order to build more productive pathways into these industries.

So where do my KLAs English and History fit in? Well, if you want to be a teacher, you will - believe it or not - find that STEM skills are highly useful in working as an effective educator in our increasingly administrative and data-driven profession. It's also believed by the STEM organisation that 1/3 of the jobs of the future haven't been invented yet, so I think we should also therefore consider that current jobs will also undergo additional evolution in conjunction with technology and use of data. The way that teachers teach in the future will be radically different to the way we teach now, in much the same way that current professional expectations contrast quite heavily with the way teaching was conducted 30 years ago. 

From a content-driven standpoint, English in particular can actually contribute to the deficit in STEM industries by addressing gender stereotypes. The sheer dearth of females in STEM jobs in Australia has been borne out of gender stereotyping that continues to persists as an ingrained aspect of Western society. This is where the importance of the English curriculum comes into play, with several opportunities throughout Years 7 to 12 to address our society's cultural constructs regarding gender, which should help encourage more teenage girls to become interested in STEM subjects. Additionally, from a STEM standpoint, we should also be ensuring that numeracy is as accounted for in humanities subjects as we'd like literacy to be catered for in the STEM subjects.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this seminar was an interview panel with some industry professionals. From left to right in the picture above, we have:

• Andy McDaid - manager of sourcing programs for Origin Energy
• Sean Barrett - Head of Origin Foundation
• Mark Bernhardt - Senior HSE Business Partner - Origin Energy (Health Sector Environment)
• Ben St Clair - Manager, Market Risk Development - Origin Energy 
• Catherine Attard - Associated Professor WSU
• Scott Harris - Chief Exec of Beacon Foundation

Each spoke about their interest in STEM subjects and the ways these domains of knowledge are imperative for their respective industries. 

This chart shows the motivations behind teachers choosing to specialise in STEM subjects. Blue = 47%, Darker Green = 29%, Light Green = 24%

Barriers to student uptake of STEM subjects. Green = 32%, Grey = 26%, Dark Blue = 30%, Light Blue = 16%, Orange = 16%

How much do we currently engage industry in the delivery of our curriculum? No = 49%, Sometimes = 14%, Yes = 37%.

WARNING: I'm going to get political now, so close this tab if you don't want to think about all of this too negatively.

STEM ultimately wants to prevail in creating an 'innovation pedagogy'. There is, however, one great irony that needs addressing here - in a political regime that promotes 'innovation', why is education funding so poorly considered by Malcolm Turnbull's government? For STEM and other areas ripe for future breakthroughs, our culture isn't going to change while education is so undervalued by the blokes in power (and let's face it, most of them still are men). 

At the time of writing, the government has pledged $12 million towards restoring a focus on STEM subjects. Under a purely equitable model, that equals $8 per school. You can't even buy one calculator for that much. And let's face it, without better literacy in our schools, how are we even going to get students to engage with higher order skills in STEM subjects? With that point, I would say that funding needs to go to all areas of education in order to improve STEM, not just the STEM subjects. 

This is through no fault of the STEM organisation, at least no more than any other aspect of Australian society being the fault of voters. All I'll say is: when you vote, think about how much money that particular political party is willing to put into education. Nothing is going to happen in this culture of ours without better funded education. We talk about the future as being a space that needs to be prepared for, but what about now? Students need us now. 

For more information, check out these websites.

Beacon Foundation

Origin Foundation