![]() A beautiful hot day out at Karitane only moments away from an Epic water fight, my mind stumbles back to the school. It is the Zucchini you see served up on the BBQ. Proudly I say our students grew that at school! It is only a Zucchini but in a way, I saw it as the fruits of our labour; we certainly would gather more nutrition from it than a raft of Credits or an end of year exam. I have spent a massive amount of time reflecting on the end of year project based learning programme for year 9’s. There were some real highlights and lowlights. The student feedback was positive the teacher feedback not as positive (and that's me putting my usual positive spin on things). In my deep reflection, I clearly underestimated the actual size of this “Change initiative”. I hummed, harred and admittedly slurred a little as I caught up with my whānua in Scotland over Christmas talking about the undertaking. The judging day was a real highlight of the term, the effort that some of the girls had put in was fantastic. The joy some of these girls brought to the sick elderly and possibly bewildered, just made the heart sing. What of the others though? What about those who didn’t rise to the challenge in the most appropriate way? Some of my research on Project Based Learning pointed me towards the idea of these projects bringing Social equity. Students could thrive in these settings. For me that is an idea so intoxicating I couldn’t just put the idea away. So what were the next steps? The Future Focused Learning Committee was granted a book to read on the conditions we write about it in the Siren. Look out for that article when I finally finish the book! A lot of the Project Based Learning literature repeats this mantra around “embracing the chaos”, words like “messy” and “fail” are ping ponged across the pages or through the pages or radio waves. As part of my own PLG I have been trying to look at how I can increase student agency, how can we light a fire under the learning to bring purpose? Reading the first few pages of the book I had it. Project Global Inform was an initiative set up by the authors of ‘Launch’. The wicked problem we have in Social Studies is we look at Human rights and weep but don’t make any real impact. Project Global Inform was a global project, mostly around North America, with students tackling the problems of human rights, informing people through social media and then raising money, resources or political awareness to make a difference. This reminded me of the amazing middle school educator Craig MacDonald-Brown who spoke at Ulearn (link below). My ever-patient Head of the department had to put up with me on a soapbox for the first month of the term saying I was no longer going to teach about Genocide I was going to end it. She told me to plan it out and go for it. I did a kind of lazy remix of some of the sources that are included with the book I am not reviewing at the moment and hacked at the core assessment and turned them into my slightly Frankenstein core assessment. After teaching the kids about the United Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) we used this as a framework for looking at various humanitarian issues. I then showed them about what was happening in Myanmar and the ongoing genocide there. We empathised, we wept, we got angry, then I said to them it is our duty to act and fix human rights issues. So my year 10 were sent forth, I wanted them to end genocide. They, though, needed to find a project that sang to them. One group looked at gender equity, specifically looking at the price of shampoo and beauty products. They planned to create a podcast informing people about it but despite support, the group never really got the project off the ground. Another group ended up in discussions with a South African NGO who were working to educate about the huge levels of sexual violence in SA. The process was organic and frustrating, at the time we felt that the world seemed so intangible, the student doesn’t always understand why the Minister of Health won’t reply hourly to their emails. Hashtags and Social media accounts were created to raise awareness and quickly were connected to social networks of people interested in what the girls were doing. Was it a success?Not always... it felt difficult at times. Were the girls engaged and stakeholders in their own learning? Yes. The biggest shock to me was that after all the hard work, to-ing and fro-ing, surveys, social media accounts, head scratching and confusion, one of the girls’ favourite things was producing the human rights boards to see and share everyone's learning. I was surprised, as these had been the very things I had been raging against to start with. From this start, I have continued my learning journey failing fast on a number of projects with the students. My Year 9 plan to create a tool to inform and educate students about digital citizenship fell flat. Some students did produce work that covered our curriculum but others fell well short of the mark. The Economics girls did a fantastic job of pitching several charity ideas to a team of judges, and they are currently enjoying using the design thinking process to create the perfect holiday for their client while developing a budget. I am starting to count a few more successes than fails. It is all hard work and we often underestimate how much heavy lifting there is in the thinking. Being creative and thinking deeply about solving a problem is really hard. When you are invested in the problem it becomes even more difficult.
So really in the end what have I learned? Well firstly, I am a proper failure. Let us never doubt this; I have been talking about Genocide for the past 16 years and it persists in this world. In a technology driven world, it will be up to the humans to solve these issues and we as teachers have an important role to play in ensuring the correct framework exists to help the students navigate through these projects. Just because something is difficult, doesn’t mean you should give up on it. Also, my biggest reflection on these projects is that they need to be student-led. Though I may have an idea of what I want to be fixed or the students to work on, student agency only really comes through the girls being truly invested in the work. To do this well you need to understand a design process, possibly the ‘Launch’ process or other design thinking templates. Also, the students, just like ourselves, will want to take shortcuts in these processes. Don’t! The more you work with the frameworks, the more you see the pain points in the process. Have I got it right yet, hell no, but I am getting closer and I long for the day that my students code an algorithm that make cars run on smiles and students enjoy equity in educational outcomes. ~Duncan Trickey
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In our PLG discussion on Tuesday, the terms grit and resilience came up. Are they interchangeable? What’s the difference between them? we wondered. When looking to the experts, here’s what we found: What is Grit?![]() According to Angela Duckworth, a researcher, a MacArthur Fellowship winner and with a TEDtalk with over 13 million views, grit is “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” Duckworth’s research has evolved around discovering why some individuals accomplish more than other individuals despite having the same talent, intelligence, and resources. Grit is the motivational drive that keeps you on a difficult task over a sustained period of time. “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.” - Angela Duckworth How gritty are you?How is grit different from resilience?Resilience involves the ability to get back up when you’ve been knocked down or to come back fighting stronger after a loss. The subtle differentiating factor between these two deeply entwined character traits seems to be that resilience is the optimism to continue when you’ve experienced some failures and times are so tough that others see continuing as futile or impossible. Testing your Resilience Characteristics The 5 common topics which are explored in resilience questionnaires are: Self-Control: This concept in a resilience test measures your ability to make rational decisions, to suspend judgement, and to act rather than react to provocation. It also tests your ability to finish up boring and menial tasks. Adaptability: This is your ability to improvise, exhibit creativity and inventiveness. It highlights your flexibility based on your capacity to absorb feedback, separate the wheat from the chaff and make the best use of feedback. Optimism: Another key trait explored is your ability to maintain an informed positive outlook on issues. This includes your ability to find solutions and find ways of adapting to all different manners of situations with enthusiasm and passion. Self-Sufficiency: This is your ability to trust in your own talents and solutions. People who display a greater awareness of their innate gifting, and practice self acceptance, tend to be more self-sufficient and resilient. Persistence: The stick-to-it attitude counts a lot in how you fair in resiliency questionnaires. Most successful ventures tend to be the product of people who stuck to it long after others had quit. It’s the inner willingness to continue working on something even after the excitement has worn off. How Resilient are you? A Growth MindsetCarol Dweck’s work has shown that you can change your mindset. Her research found that when students had a growth mindset; a mindset which perceives a challenge as an opportunity to learn rather than an obstacle to overcome, they responded with constructive thoughts and their behaviour showed persistence rather than defeat. “How are we raising our children? Are we raising them for now instead of yet? Are we raising kids who are obsessed with getting As? Are we raising kids who don't know how to dream big dreams? Their biggest goal is getting the next A, or the next test score? And are they carrying this need for constant validation with them into their future lives? Maybe, because employers are coming to me and saying, "We have already raised a generation of young workers who can't get through the day without an award." - Carol Dweck So what can we do? How can we build that bridge to yet?From Dweck’s research into the growth mindset in regards to tenacity and its effects on achievement, especially in an educational setting, she discovered: 4 factors that affect ongoing tenacity or grit:
Below are 5 suggestions to increase your grit and resilience through developing a growth mindset. 1) Focus on Your Language Choice Praising efforts fosters resilience and reminds people of their role in a successful outcome. Too often young children are praised for “being smart” rather than having a good plan. Use language that encourages perseverance and praises effort. 2) Surround Yourself with People Who Persevere Surrounding yourself with people who have both passion and perseverance towards their goals, will help to strengthen or grow the mindset required to increase resilience and grit. 3) Adopt Flexible Thinking Patterns Being less rigid in your thoughts and actions allows resilience and grit to blossom. Simply because flexible people don’t see problems they see opportunities for growth and learning. When every challenge is met with enthusiasm and creative thinking you will see yourself as capable and this confidence breeds resilience. 4) Set Tiny Goals That Align with Your Purpose People with a sense of purpose are happier. However, your purpose is very abstract and often difficult to define. By creating smaller short term goals which align with your bigger purpose, you increase your success rate and your speed of accomplishing goals. This will keep you motivated to keep persevering. 5) Build Time into Your Day for Reflection When you take time to reflect, you bring awareness in a focused way to the things you have accomplished and the path you want to take to continue. Whether your reflection takes the form of meditation, a journaling session, talking with your Critical Friend, a gratitude exercise or a walk outside while you think back on your day, when you give yourself time to think back on your day in a non-judgemental way, you can see what you have accomplished and what actions you need to take tomorrow to keep moving forward. Take Home MessageGrit is our passion and perseverance towards reaching a long-term goal while resilience is the optimism to keep bouncing back from failure. Both of these traits for success are rooted in a growth mindset, and the good news is that a growth mindset means you can learn, develop and build your resilience and grit. Like most valuable skills, this will take practice and dedication. However, these efforts are well worth it because fostering these traits of a growth mindset will have positive impacts on every aspect of your life. ~Rowan Taigel References: https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/5-ways-develop-grit-resilience/ https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/resiliency-questionnaire/ http://resiliencyquiz.com/index.shtml https://testyourself.psychtests.com/testid/2121 https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve/transcript#t-209464 It was a bit nerve wracking walking to the university this morning as there were police everywhere, as well as riot police, ambulances and nurses in preparation for today’s student strike. The are protesting to get better education for future generations as part of the upcoming elections. At the university, the classrooms were blocked to disallow the teachers entering, but we were a special case so went in. We had a class on indigenous languages, which was so interesting. There are 65 languages in Colombia and 1 million indigenous people. 600,000 of them speak those indigenous languages and some languages are sadly beginning to become extinct. For some, they speak their language at home, Spanish at school and English at church. There are 13 linguistic families those native languages pertain to and the languages that survive are those that are living in isolated communities. 25 of the indigenous languages are found in the small region of Vaupes. One issue is indigenous people marrying someone who speaks Spanish, which interrupts it being passed down to the next generation. In addition, people leave their community in the country to work in the city and the language gets lost that way too. We also talked about how TV really interrupts the transmission of indigenous language as children watch TV rather than talking to (and learning from) their elders. We also learnt about the importance of the rubber trees in Colombia. The demand for the rubber turned many indigenous tribes into slaves to manufacture the rubber. From there it turned violent and lots of natives disappeared. Some of those communities separated trying to flee from being slaves and the language was hence lost as they are not all together in their communities. We looked at all the languages and the areas they are spoken in. Some have as little as 14 speakers remaining and some are monolingual in that language while others speak up to 8 other languages. One tribe, had so few people left who spoke their native language that when one of elders died last year it made national news. A lot of land has been taken away from indigenous areas to be turned into cocaine farms from paramilitary groups. With the peace agreement signed between those groups and the government, the government has recently set up a new department which aims at buying land and giving it back to the indigenous. It is said all conflict in Colombia is over land and looking after the native people also helps in the conservation of the language. ![]() The chemicals they put into cocaine is contaminating the water the tribes depend on and in some areas they are in ‘lock down’ letting no one in or out. Many indigenous end up working in the drug trade as they have nothing else to do in that region. The university has now set up a campus in these regions to encourage indigenous people to study rather than get drawn into the drug trade. The Ika language is linked to a group that wear white and hats that represent the snow capped mountains. They live in a special area really close to the Carribean Sea (hot) but also close to the snowy mountains. They carry bags to collect Coca leaves (the leaf which is used to manufacture cocaine), which are sacred to them. Coca leaves aren’t just cocaine though. They have many medicinal purposes including helping with altitude sickness. Saying that Coca is just cocaine would be like saying all grapes are wine. They have a census here in Colombia but it isn’t very effective as it doesn’t reach isolated areas and some don’t understand Spanish (the language it is written in) so it is hard to define how many speak each language. It is also hard define if you are a speaker o that language as how much do you have to speak to say you speak it. Most native languages are generally only spoken (not written) but some alphabets have been created (mainly by investigators of the language). Some are trying to keep their language alive through music (lyrics through rap or rock). Music is important for many groups as a form of healing. He talked about a tree one tribe uses which makes you high (the flowers) and then you see things, then it makes you vomit. They see it as a cleansing of bad spirits. They sing and chant around you when you are on it. If Spaniards hadn’t arrived in Colombia then everyone would probably speak Quechua language as it was rapidly spreading through Peru around that time. All over Colombia you can find Quechua selling their medicinal products and bracelets babies wear to defend off sickness which are made of stones and animal teeth. The macu tribe are the ones that speak lots of languages but are seen as the lowest socio economic group of all and are used as servants and no one from outside the tribe would marry then. They are the only real nomadic known group. For indigenous, food is really important as they use it to make alcohol as well as to eat. Chicha (alcoholic drink made from corn) takes only 3-4 days to ferment. Many elders walk around barefoot. They live mainly in 2 bedroom houses with an outside kitchen as they cook on open fires. Part of the government programme is giving them resources to build their own houses as there is no point in building a house for them that doesn’t fit their needs. They generally don’t have formalized bathrooms. What is helping the continuation of languages is tribes not allowing members to marry from within their tribe for fear of incest. So they marry outside of the tribe which is helping the next generation learn more than one indigenous language. The languages which are in trouble are the ones with an ageing population as when they die the language will too. The Pisamira language only has 30-50 speakers but that number doesn’t seem to have risen or fallen over the last few years as it is getting passed down from generation to generation. Part of the conservation of the languages has involved bringing back lost traditions, like festivals, creating children songs (and videos) in the language as well as stories and computer programmes with basic dialogues. We briefly heard one language and it sounded interesting (hard to describe but with click sounds). There were certain laws set up for indigenous people in 2010 saying you can’t discriminate because of their native language. They are allowed indigenous names on official documents (in the past their names were changes to other names – sometimes offensive words – without their will). They can use their language at hospitals, court and public administration. They have a 10 year plan to protect languages, but it is a very expensive plan. 36 languages are at risk of extinction. We then heard all the noise of the student protest coming through. Lots of signs and drums and people but a lot calmer than I imagined. They walk the 5km to the main square near congress and the president’s residence. The traffic was soo blocked as the police allowed the students to walk along the main street. A huge bowl of bean soup, rice, fried banana, avocado and juice for lunch for $9000 pesos ($4.50) then a class in the afternoon about use of IT in the classroom. It was very boy focused with games such as plagues and comics, which I just don’t think my students would be that into.
A lazy night in (after a visit to the supermarket to get some lollies as gifts) and a granadilla (similar to a passionfruit) for dinner and an icecream after my huge lunch. I am sick of taking my own toilet paper/tissues to the bathroom or having to pre-estimate how much I need before I go in. Surely paper in the cubicle wouldn’t lead to people using it too excessively?? ~Abbie Law |
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June 2019
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