As part of our work in Ladner (see our first post here), we introduced Catalyst to 25 Coordinators of Inquiry. These are lead teachers who are released about one day a week to support their colleagues to engage in Spirals of Inquiry.

A Post-It Note activity uncovered what would make the next two hours most valuable for the coordinators. As we sorted the contributions from the Coordinators, we saw three key themes. They wanted:

• practical tools to use with their colleagues back in their context
• a better understanding of Spirals of Inquiry
• to learn to play Catalyst!

The themes this question xposed reflected our reasons for creating Catalyst. The Spiral of Inquiry encourages diverse ways of knowing, being, and doing, and so we began by getting to know one another.

Forming a circle (a familiar First Peoples process for sharing), names and three key personal words were offered from each circle member. The collaboration process and ways of knowing continued as we began the first Catalyst activity. The Papa Tāngata (or ‘people board’) offers a practical way of sharing our personal data with one another and building the relational trust needed for collaborative inquiries.

As Brooke Moore, District Principal of Inquiry and Innovation (Delta School District #37), said in her feedback, “The game creates relationships needed. Going slow at the start helps you go faster later”.

It was a delight to watch the group process taken when unpacking their Catalyst game pack. Inquiry mind-sets were clearly present — some groups had opened and explored the game pre-workshop, others waited for step-by-step facilitator instructions, while others had fully explored the game by setting it up, allocating roles, and attempting to figure it out.

As we facilitated the gameplay, groups became immersed in learning conversations prompted by the role cards which contain question stems to test assumptions, seek varied perspectives, and challenge one another’s thinking. This ability to stimulate and deepen learning conversations is a strength of the game-like tool. Catalyst has been noted as offering a ‘third point’, helping the coordinators or leaders of learning to ‘take the edge off’ the hard parts of challenging conversations. Everyone in the team has a role to play, and using the role question cards flattens the hierarchy in team learning-focussed conversations.

Brooke summarised the session and offered a challenge to the room:
“We talk a lot about analysis paralysis. This process took two hours — what could you do with the game in a whole morning?”

After the session, one of the coordinators came up to us to offer thanks and share her reflection. She confessed she was initially reluctant as she was too busy to play. She thought, ‘What are we going to have to do —  roll a dice and play a stupid game? But actually, I got heaps out of this! It was definitely useful, and I will be using Catalyst in my role. Thank you!”

This post is dedicated to Hazel Owen, our amazing mentor in New Zealand and the Project Leader of uChoose, CORE’s tailored mentoring packages.

Tashi Kirincic, Coordinator of Teacher Mentorship, Delta Manor Education Centre invited us to attend her morning workshop for the Teacher Mentorship programme that the Education Centre funds. You can read more about the Mentorship programme through the Delta School District blog here. Tashi leads the education of mentors engaged in the programme which has run for about three years. There are currently 16 Mentors and 60 Protégés involved in the programme.

Tashi’s session with the small group of attending mentors started with the reading of a First Nations poem by the Elders of the Hopi Nation:

To My Fellow Swimmers: http://www.shambhala.com/images/illus/Prophecy.pdf

The following parts of the poem were particularly relevant to the group reflections on their recent experiences and next steps:

“And I say see who is there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves. Banish the word ‘struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary.”

A key question of the group in this session was “How can we best support our peers so they embrace and model wise practice?”. This question was accompanied by an artwork by First Nations artist Susan Pointe called Full Circle. The image of circling salmon can be interpreted in many ways. Tashi uses the image to encourage thinking and conversations about spiralling towards a common goal. Each salmon can be seen as representing a different group forming a whole. Balancing points can be seen as significant in terms of equal contribution between group members. Another effective analogy for teamwork is that different salmon take different paths but are all heading to the same place and have the same ultimate purpose.

The group is using Mentoring Matters (Lipton and Wellman) to guide their learning and practice and today the group spent time unpacking the theoretical model for Structured Learning Focused Conversations. This model is flexible and cyclical:

After reading about this model, the team came up with a word, a phrase and a sentence to represent the parts of the reading that resonated for them and then rich conversations emerged from these:

As mentors in the use of Spirals of Inquiry, we found it refreshing to share our practice with these classroom teachers who were released once a week to mentor their protégés. We had much in common with them and in unpacking a theoretical model together, we could engage in metacognition to consider improvements in our own practice.

The team also reviewed their year of mentorship and considered new ways to operate the programme to make the mentoring more effective for their protégés. It caused us to wonder, ‘Have we thought about the following in our own mentoring programmes that we deliver in schools?’

• Give time for mentors and mentees to get away together – to build relationships in order to become more effective together during the year. Enable people to bring their families with them.
• Consider the gaps between sessions and whether they are too long or too short depending on context.
• Consider the ideal number in group mentoring – what is working and what isn’t? Why?
• Have an overarching vision co-constructed for the mentoring (e.g. a Support-Challenge vision).
• Plan a whole year of mentoring in your school, ECE or kura — including events, reviews of how it is going, specific learning opportunities for mentoring (e.g. how to mentor, change leadership) and celebrations.

To set goals with mentees, consider asking a question to help them think broadly. For example, Brooke Moore asks “In a year from now when you look back, what will you regard with pride and accomplishment?”

Our takeaways from this session included the following:

• Mentoring is about Creating Reflective Practitioners!
• Goal setting conversations can have flexible structure to them and can be based on theory.
• Mentors can and should model and extend the habits of goal driven thinking.
• Mentors can introduce topics to explore to add to a mentee’s current awareness. This involves consolidation and extension of professional thinking and habits of mind.
• Asking your mentee to weigh priorities can be a useful approach to working through complexity.
• A mentor can help a mentee to organise and integrate learning – to widen the conversation from immediate issues to the bigger picture through building habits of reflection. (e.g. So what is the bigger issue or concern here?)

Reflective questions related to Spirals:

• Mentoring capabilities are crucial to implementing Spirals of Inquiry. How do you foster these qualities in yourself and in your colleagues?
• External expertise and a neutral mentor is sometimes the key to creating reflective practitioners. How do you decide on which courses or mentors are most suitable for you or your team?

CORE offerings:

• uChoose virtual mentoring packages
• Change Management Courses

Kia ora from Ladner, Delta! Suzi Gould (@SuziGould2) and Becc Sweeney (@beccasweeney) are Live Blogging and Tweeting from Ladner and Vancouver about learning innovations we come across as we engage with BC educators over the next ten days.

Our main purpose while here is to bring Catalyst: the collaborative inquiry game to the Network of Innovation and Inquiry (NOII) Symposium. We introduced Catalyst to Linda Kaser and Judy Halbert during its development and they recommended that we play with a focus group of the leaders/teachers who they work with.

We are very gratefully being hosted by these Catalyst focus group players, and incredibly generous women, who work to support and mentor Delta, BC educators through the Delta School District:

Claire D’Aoust – Coordinator of Primary Learning, Delta Manor Education Centre
Brooke Moore – District Principal of Inquiry and Innovation (Delta School District #37)
Tashi Kirincic – Coordinator of Teacher Mentorship, Delta Manor Education Centre

Farm Roots

Farm Roots is a mini-school trial focused on providing learners with an alternative style of learning that uses a project-based approach to learning. Farm Roots is specifically designed around learning the curriculum through an agricultural lens as many learners in the Ladner area are from families working in this industry.

Brooke Moore, District Principal of Inquiry and Innovation (Delta School District #37) has led the implementation of Farm Roots in Delta over the past year. We loved listening in on her conversations with two learners, Georgia and Brooke, as she asked them about the impact of Farm Roots on their learning over the past year:

“In this school we might experiment or go outside and do what we actually talked about. We don’t forget what we learn” – Georgia

“We want teachers to know that this way we learn a lot more. We enjoy it more. We are not in the classroom all day long. – Georgia

The learning at Farm Roots is visible at the school. Their learning plans can be seen transformed into actual gardens as we explored Farm Roots.

Learning is also visible beyond the school. For example, the Grade 12 learners studied global water systems and ended up presenting their learning to local government. Their learning foci ranged across:

1. sustainable farming
2. policy recommendations
3. personal learning they had achieved on the farm
4. levels of bureaucracy in relation to applying for permits (for example)
5. farming business models.

Other learners investigated ways to deal with a First Nations archaeological site that they discovered when preparing land at the school for farming. They ended up working with local government and archaeologists to establish protocols for further digging.

The secondary teachers in this project are learning a lot about differentiated learning and teaching, and about how practical application of learning can transfer to grades without putting grades first. You can see videos of what people are saying about Farm Roots here (including what learners are saying).

Reflective questions:

• How can project based learning address engagement and achievement challenges that we face in our regular state schools?
• How can we learn from pilot projects like the above and transfer the pedagogical findings into all school or kura contexts?
• What can we do right now to make learning more active, relevant and memorable for our learners?

CORE offerings:
Online courses: Inquiry Approaches