Mrs Millar's class

A teacher to remember

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Mrs Millar entered my life in 1986. I was a skinny 12 year old with a face full of freckles. She was my Year 8 teacher. It wasn’t my favourite year of school. I faced hormonal surges, erupting pimples, squabbles with friends, and the impending doom of college. Yet Mrs Millar made my school days bearable. She easily takes the cake for favourite teacher. She made such an impression on me, that I wanted to become a teacher just like her.

Mrs Millar's class

So what was it that Mrs Millar did almost 30 years ago to make her a teacher to remember? And do her attributes still have a place in classrooms today?

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The average student

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the average student

I’ve been thinking lately about the average student … the learner in your classroom who works steadily and unassumingly, who doesn’t require too much intervention and who achieves middle of the road grades. A decade ago, as a full time teacher, I considered these students to be my easy students. As long as they made regular progress and met appropriate learning outcomes for their age and stage, I was doing my job.

Fast forward ten years … I am now a mother of three young children and as part of my role with CORE, I develop curriculum support materials. With wisdom and experience, I realise that I was selling my so called “average students” short.

This year I’ve returned to work as a teacher one day a week. As I re-enter the classroom I have a new outlook on students who are considered to be average, and a new appreciation of the far reaching influence of teacher expectations. In this blog I share several epiphanies that have led me to re-shape my teaching approach.

Epiphany 1: The power of believing that you can improve

Several months ago I watched a TED talk delivered by Carol Dweck. In the talk, Carol reflects on the power of “yet” as she describes an American high school that gives out “not yet” grades to students who don’t pass a course. She commends this idea because it delivers the message that students are on a learning journey where their minds and abilities can be developed. This talk struck a chord with me. It has led me to realise both the peril and futility of labelling students as average. If we promote a growth mindset in our classrooms, where the teacher and students reject the idea that intelligence is fixed and believe in their ability to improve, then everyone can reach their full potential and be anything but average.

Since returning to the classroom, I consciously look for opportunities to build a growth mindset with my students. Some strategies that I’ve tried so far include:

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Educational Positioning System | The Whole School Development Tool

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The Education Positioning System developed by CORE Education in conjunction with Dr Julia Atkin offers a comprehensive process for formative school self-review to empower schools to shape and direct their future development.

Following extensive research and trials in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom, the EPS has developed as an effective framework for guiding data driven decision making, providing real-time research and analysis, enhancing community involvement, and enabling schools to gain a better understanding of what is working and what is not.

As you can hear from above, the process offers a non-threatening and provides an anonymous method for capturing the perceptions plus ‘voice’ of the school community whilst enabling schools access to rich data that is personalised and relevant to your specific school context. This, then becomes the basis for future dialogue and professional learning opportunities that will foster and promote ‘personalised learning.’

Just as a GPS helps us locate where we are in space, the EPS aids in determining where a school is in its educational development. Based on a framework of three interrelated dimensions and eighteen key elements the tool is designed to provide a comprehensive process by which schools can review, plan, implement and evaluate their progress in an ongoing manner.

This comprehensive framework combined with an online data gathering tool and facilitation support, enables schools to identify their ‘current reality’ and generates a sustainable self-review and school improvement process for whole school development.

The online survey provides baseline information for your school’s development process, and can be used interactively to explore data plus the next steps, then at a later stage to provide evidence of where progress has been made via an immediate analytical report (both online and in print). This report identifies relative strengths and weaknesses, providing a sound basis for strategic planning and future development thereby fostering a culture focused on promoting personalized learning.

For more information please check out the EPS website or get in touch direct for a demonstration of this service.

 

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