A Showcase of Learners and Learning: Opening Keynote

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A Showcase of Learners and Learning Opening
Keynote
Toward Cultures of Responsiveness Fred and
Patrick Renihan March 1st 2007 Prince George,
British Columbia
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- Introductory Keynote -

• Unpacking the Model
• The Themes and the Strands
• Keynote overview
• Contextual realities
• The changing ecology
• What works and what doesnt work?
• Perceptions of beginning teachers
• Responsiveness through student empowerment and
  voice
• The simultaneous nurturing of membership and
  engagement

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Keynote OverviewContinued

• Responsiveness through Parent/community
  empowerment
• Responsiveness through professional empowerment
• Questions and interaction (20 minutes)
• Synthesis Cultures of Responsiveness

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Connecting curriculum, instruction and assessment
Providing learning in a continuum from rural to
urban context
Literacy
The First 10 Years
Compelling learning is constructed in community
powerful communities connect learning and the
most successful communities extend their learning
into the future
Extending community connections
Middle to Secondary Learners
Equitable Futures
Creating healthy environments
Shared Leadership
Using technology as an invisible, seamless support
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The Organizational Context for Schooling

• Imagine that you are either the referee, coach,
  player, or spectator at an unconventional soccer
  match. The field for the game is round there
  are several goals scattered haphazardly around
  the circular field. People can enter or leave
  the game whenever they want to. They can throw
  balls in whenever they want to. They can say
  thats my goal whenever they want to, as many
  times as they want to, for as many goals as they
  want to. The whole game takes place on a sloped
  field and the game is played as if it makes
  sense.
• And, if you now substitute in that example,
  principals for referees, teachers for coaches,
  students for players, parents for spectators and
  schooling for soccer, you have an equally
  unconventional depiction of an educational
  organization.
• (Attributed to Karl Weick)

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Recurring Organizational Challenges of Schools

• An uncertain technology
• Unpredictable participation
• Low interdependence of parts
• Low agreement on goals

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Effectiveness Facilitators a Beginning
Teacher Survey

• (Renihan Renihan, 2007)
• Strong leadership
• Staff collegiality and support
• Supportive parents
• Sense of belonging/safety
• Community involvement
• Commonly held, clear vision/goals
• Student involvement and attitude
• Clear expectations and feedback

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Effectiveness Inhibitors

• Problematic parents
• Poor, unsupportive leadership
• Low or inappropriate expectations
• Facility limitations
• Unprofessional staff attitudes and divisiveness
• Limited resources
• Poor student attitudes
• Inconsistent goals

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Cultures of Responsiveness
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Nurturing student voice

• What would happen if we treated the student as
  someone whose opinion mattered?
• (Fullan, 1993)

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Examining our Assumptions
Students respond in kind to professionals
assumptions about them. Educators have witnessed
all too often the immaturity and disconnectedness
with which students can respond when viewed as
the objects of school decisions. On the other
hand, it is striking how enthusiastically they
can engage, and flourish in their school lives
when assumed to be partners in their own
learning. Professional reflection concerning
these assumptions is not merely a matter of good
relations. It is a critical prerequisite to
school success.
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To My Teachers Wilfred Wees
Goodbye my friends I leave you now I regret I
cannot call you all by name But then, you knew me
but as that boy Outside row half way down who
took to Education as a hen to water We really
didnt get to know each other did we? You, I
shall remember When I was a little boy you
willowed my mind I Swung like a little bird with
a red breast on the top of it The day was the
night was the year I was the unfolding bud of
spring And every sweet minute of your love was
the bloom of it I shall remember you.
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To My Teachers
And you, I shall remember, when I was twelve you
whipped my with the lash of wonder You opened a
heaven of freedom to my grasping mind In each
half hour with you the stars outshone the
sunrise I shall remember you You my friend, the
third of three, I shall remember Just last year
it was, drugged with the miasma of words that
schools exhale, I stumbled into you You gave me
first your arm of confidence to lean upon And
then so quietly the antidote I hardly knew that I
was waking up You listened, not just to me, but
to all of us And soon but not too soon The sludge
that was our minds began to clear And we could
think I shall remember you
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To My Teachers
As for you others, What shall I say? I do not
wish to hurt you as some of you hurt me We
werent really people to you were we Just the
furniture of school slightly animated Your
painted on the varnish that you call
education Coat after coat but forgot the
buffing Smeared on the thin veneer that you call
culture Now you truck us off to the market rooms
of the economy For sale to the highest
bidder Shall I tell you about people? Maybe
not I doubt that you would understand Its just
that I am me and you never even saw the me thats
I Would you see my now, one quarter of my lifes
span spent Behind the bleakness of the
unfulfilled Ahead so little between me and
time Oh I will find a jobIll live! For
what?
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Nurturing student voice What democratic schools
do well

• They extend membership and engagement to all
• They differentiate compliance from partnership
• They question their assumptions about students
• They elevate dignity and respect
• They value student opinion
• They invite and affirm student commentary
• They start early, inculcating skills of voice in
  the early years

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Student Voice

• I like the way that some of the teachers try to
  be our friends and just not a teacher all the
  time.
• I would like to see some of the textbooks
  updated. One of my textbooks is from 1972! My dad
  recognizes it!

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Student Voice

• The administration is a joke. Detention has
  drastically increased over the last 2 or 3 three
  years. Ever heard of the saying If it aint
  broke, dont fix it?
• I like the teachers because they make learning
  fun.
• I like that we get Jim one hour a day.

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Student Voice

• I hope that our school will stay as it is and
  not get any worse.
• This school should be egged once, so teachers
  understand we want to have fun.
• Im not exactly sure if bullying is a problem,
  but I want it stopped.
• This school rocks! I feel welcome here.

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Schools Commitment to Membership

• A healthy, respectful, and caring environment
• Strong communication
• Active assistance in helping all students
  experience success
• Active help in assisting students make the link
  between school and society
• Positive relationships with adult professional
  role models outside of formal classroom
  interaction

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Learning Conditions ENGAGEMENT

• Includes all of those actions and interactions
  which enable students to become focused on
  academic pursuit
• Preconditions for Engagement
• Strong academic focus
• Commitment to improved student learning
• Commitment to results
• Commitment to evaluation

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Teacher-Learner Reciprocity
There is an urgent need for reciprocity in our
schools and classrooms. Without such
reciprocity, without some form of mutual
emotional satisfaction between teacher and
taught, the curriculum remains simply an idea in
the mind of the teacher it lacks relevance even
though the teacher teaches and the students go
through the motions of scholarship
activity. Michael Marland, Pastoral
Care
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Impediments to Educational Engagement

• Non-motivating course work and instruction
• Dissonance between learning and teaching styles
• Unremitting preoccupation with course coverage

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Effective Content-and-Language-Rich Instruction
We do a terrible disservice to low-income
children when we narrow our curriculum to its
most procedural elements. There is no joy in
learning about the letter N, despite any protests
to the contrary. (Neuman, 2006)
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Professional Leadership, Values, and Empowerment

• We need to be clear about what empowerment and
  what it is not
• Empowerment is not necessarily a top-down
  leadership phenomenon
• Empowerment is not kidding teachers into thinking
  that preplanned initiatives were their ideas.
  That is entrapment

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Empowerment
Empowerment is Rather Giving teachers a share
in important organizational decisions. Giving
them opportunities to shape important
organizational goals. Purposefully providing
forums for staff input. Acting on staff input,
and giving real leadership opportunities in
school-specific situations that really matter.
(Renihan Renihan 1993)
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Culture of Internal Accountability

• Elmore (2004) Internal accountability precedes
  external accountability and is a precondition for
  any process of improvement.

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Modes of Parental Partnership (Henderson,
Marburger Ooms, 1986)

• Parents as passive audience
• Parents as supporters
• Parents as advisors
• Parents as collaborators

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Affirming Parents

• Meaningful involvement
• Recognizes the value of the spectator
• Appreciates the efforts of the supporter
• Provides an opportunity for dialogue to the
  advisor
• Provides time and receptivity to those with the
  desire to collaborate

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A Question
Our assumptions about parents, teachers and
students dictate the way in which we work with
them. Given this, what things should we be doing
in order to provide more equitable learning
opportunities for all students?
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Parents and Schools Seven Partnership-Building
Principles

• The principle of flexibility
• The principle of inclusiveness
• The principle of variety
• The principle of opportunity
• The principle of openness
• The principle of clarity
• The principle of monitoring

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Synthesis Cultures of Responsiveness

• Responsive schools nurture
• Cultures of parent and community partnership
• Cultures of professional empowerment and
  collaboration
• Cultures of internal accountability
• Cultures of distributive leadership
• Cultures of mindfulness and care

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Extending Learning Into The Future

• The powerful learning community
• Focuses thinking on long-term solutions
• Emphasizes interconnectedness of issues
• Places learning and assessment literacy at the
  centre
• Provides continuous support for the
  instructional core of school activity
• Strives for a deeper understanding of those being
  served by the school
• Nurtures leadership capacity within the school
• Celebrates the work and commitment of teachers

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Teacher
By Rabbi Zev Shostak I am that most fortunate of
men for I am eternal Some people live in the
world of today. I live in the world of
tomorrow Some feel meaning in the temporal and
transient I find purpose in the eternal and the
enduring and the eternal For I am charged with
that most sacred of missions To transmit all that
our parents lived for and loved for and died
for the next generation
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Teacher
By Rabbi Zev Shostak I span the
generations Making the wisdom of the past live
now so that the future will have meaning I make
wisdom live For I am no mere bearer of
knowledge I do not simply teach the mind I
reach the heart And when I reach the heart I
touch the soul
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Teacher
By Rabbi Zev Shostak To those who say two
generations hence what shall I be if but a
distant memory I respond Though the mind fades
memories linger Though the body fails the spirit
prevails Though the scroll burns the letters
dance in the air