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Resources Bag of chocolates to reward them for answering questions? Who: Kane & Roger

Note - Keep the Learning intention and Success criteria visible

Learning intention – To inform you with one or more pieces of knowledge that can be transferred into your core beliefs as a change educator - Kane

Success criteria - Roger
 * 1) Greater knowledge of who Sizer was and what his beliefs were.
 * 2) You are inspired to apply one or more of Sizers beliefs.

We want to connect you with Sizer. We believe an effective method to do this is through Backcasting. Backcasting (Roger to explain).

Kane
 * 1) Laydown, get comfy, close your eyes.
 * 2) Imagine what your ideal learning environment looks like

Roger || Firstly lets look at your schools current curriculum. Is it narrow and deep with learning in selected areas or is it braod and encompassing covering many aspects of learning or is it somewhere along this continum, find it along this continum? Roger || Sizer wants you to to look at reducing a broad curriculm and to focus on just the essentials, however, you would need to do these in depth. What are the essentials in your school? Roger || Kane || How is academia treated in your school, is it a high priority? Kane || Your new Sizer school needs you and your staff to be developing a strong academic base, that focuses on your mini school developing and achieving goals not on students flowing through subjects. The focus would be what Sizer has deemed the essentials: Mathematics, Science, the Arts, History-Philosophy, Languages other than English, the skills of expression, the techniques of inquiry, and study habits and insists that your team work collaboratively to integrate the outcomes of each how do you see yourself implementing this? Kane ||
 * **Sizer Principle** || **Your Current School** || **Backcast to Sizers School and connect to your current school** ||
 * 1.Focus – Reduce the breadth of the curriculum and focus on the essentials and do these well.
 * 2.Simple Goals – Student learning to focus on simple goals in the academic area as a strong base. Not on students flowing through subjects.
 * 3.Universal Goals – Have universal goals for the whole school. || Is everyone in your school on the same page, to what degree do you have a strong, shared, common vision and associated goals across the whole school? || In a Sizer school we have universal goals across the whole school.How do you develop these across your school, what does the process to do this look like? ||
 * 4.Personalisation – No teacher to have more than 80 students. || How many students do you currently need to develop strong relationships with in order to deliver effective learning opportunities? How may students do you teach? || Sizer looks to have a maximum of 80 students connected to any one teacher, consider the depth of learing you could achieve with this situation. ||
 * 5.Student as a Worker – not teacher as a deliverer (student to do self work). || What level of responsibility do your students have for their learning? || Your new Sizer school focuses on students as workers and the teachers as facilitators not content deliverers. Motivation for students to do self work is key here, how could you achieve this in your school? ||
 * 6.Diploma by exhibition – Students need to show a predetermined elementary skill level and knowledge of what the school is about. || Are there and hard barriers that students **must** pass through in your school? || All students in a Sizer school are working towards a ‘Diploma of exhibition’. The idea being that before any student graduates they need to achieve a Diploma of skills they have achieved. The assessment consists of students exhibiting the essential skills they have learned. How does would your parent community feel about this? ||
 * 7.Attitude – School has stressed values of in anxious expectation (I wont threaten you but I expect much of you) || What is the highest student expectation in your school? || Teachers in a Sizer school don’t threaten students but they regularly express high expectations around attitude - expect much of students. How does your school create this environment. ||
 * 8.Staff – teachers should be seen as generalist first, specialist second. || What subjects do you currently teach in your school, 1, 2 or 3 disciplines? Biology, Science and PE? || Look at yourself teaching in a Sizer school, you now teach many different disciplines as a generalist with other teachers, how do you transition to this as a secondary specialist? ||
 * 9.Budget – accommodate 80 students per teacher, collective teacher planning time, competitive salaries. Pupil costs to not be higher than 10% of other schools. || How do you currently plan your lessons, how many teachers are in your class and what is your mechanism for getting a pay rise? || In a Sizer school teachers collectively plan lessons as they will be teaching as a group, they will be paid in a competative environment. Could you see this at your school? ||

Bringing Sizer’s beliefs into your school 8.Staff – teachers should be seen as generalist first, specialist second 9.Budget – accommodate 80 students per teacher, collective teacher planning time, competitive salaries. Pupil costs to not be higher than 10% of other schools Hands up if your initial learning environment changed as we articulated the core of Sizers beliefs? Can some explain to us the major changes that occurred in your own learning environment after incorporating Sizers beliefs?
 * 1) How do your teachers feel about reporting now that they teach no more than 80 students?
 * 2) How would your ideal learning environment feel if you only saw a total of 80 students during each week?
 * 3) Everyone in your learning environment belives that giving up on a child’s mind is unacceptable. How does your learning environment look now?
 * 4) Your learning environment consists of generalist teachers working together toward universal goals and teaching as a team. How does your learning environment now sound?
 * 5) The focus of your mini school focuses on developing and achieving goals not on students flowing through subjects. The focus would be what Sizer has deemed the essentials: Mathematics, Science, the Arts, History-Philosophy, Languages other than English, the skills of expression, the techniques of inquiry, and study habits and insists that your team work collaboratively to integrate the outcomes of each. How do teachers now feel about attending planning meetings?
 * 6) Your school focuses on students as workers and the teachers as facilitators not content deliverers. Teachers don’t threaten students but they regularly express high expectations. What do your students look like when they are working?
 * 7) All students are working towards a ‘Diploma of exhibition’. The idea being that before any student graduates they need to achieve a Diploma of skills they have achieved. The assessment consists of students exhibiting the essential skills they have learned. How does your parent community feel about this?

Conclusion What Sizer’s beliefs are referring to is not a transformation of the current education model but a revolution. Sizer suggests that if we are going to ‘revolutionise’ our current education model the following answers need to continually asked and answered. a) What is it that graduates must display to earn our respect and admiration? b) How can school’s function so that all student’s display and achieve these accomplishments? c) What political, community and administrative context is required? d) How can distinctive concerns of students, parents, the state and the community be respectfully accommodated and yet still nurture schools and a schooling system that serve all adolescents?

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What is going to be the next key to a students learning?? and how are we preparing for this. - values and equity over the world. What does the next leader of a school look like (Baby Boomers going out) Intro Have you ever wondered which types of people we allow to lead us? Hands up if you like being told what to do? Hands up if you believe in something? Hands up if you tend to surround yourself with people that believe the similar things to you? In the words of Martin Luther King, “I believe, I believe, I believe”. King didn’t ask people to follow him. King was simply able to articulate to large audiences what he believed. King was able to articulate passionately. King was able to hit the heart soul of the majority of America. King didn’t tell people what do because like you, people don’t like being told what to do. Instead, King had a dream. King is famous for giving the “I have a dream speech, not the I have a plan speech”. Look at the like minded people around us, in this room right now. If we were not able to passionately articulate our dream we would not be here. Ted Sizer, (1952-2009). Former teacher and Principal. Sizer believed and had a dream of change.
 * What will a school I lead look like, sound like, act like and feel like?**
 * I really like this part where we get the participant to look at their thoughts around their perfect school, perhaps they could design one. Some of the parameters could be related to the core of sizers work (curriculum - breadth of, academic base - strong/diploma, whole school goals - purpose/community, student connectivity - 80 kids/staff across domains, high school expectations.) Could relate this to current thinking - effective schools model and Hattie. **
 * Citizenship and sustainability!!!! **
 * What were the main parts that could be referenced to todays schools. **
 * We are about to go in to a time where ther may be greater autonomy - thus you have licence over your school. What does your school look like - **Backcasting**

Activity one Please group the following questions into two categories. Effective leadership and ineffective leadership statements. Using one word describe how each statement makes you feel?

Effective leadership statements 1. Would you like time to continue to improve your teaching practice? Would you like to continue to improve student outcomes? I believe by making time for each other to observe each other teach that it will lead to an improvement in our teaching practice and improved students outcomes. 2. Have you ever wanted to teach less students and get to know more of them? Have you ever wanted all of your subjects to flow and have a related meaning? My dream is to trial a cohort consisting of generalist teachers who teach less subjects, less students and relate all their teaching to a common meaningful theme.

Ineffective leadership statements 1. We need to improve student outcomes. I want you to make time to visit each others classrooms with the aim of improving them. 2. They way we currently structure our school doesn't work. To make it work I want you to teach less subjects, less students and relate all your teaching to a common theme.

Leadership statements that fit with our beliefs are the ones we tend to follow.

Ted like us believes that giving up on a child’s mind is unacceptable. If you were to walk into Sizer’s dream you would see generalist teachers working together toward universal goals and teaching as a team. No teacher would be teaching more than 80 students. These teachers and students would operate autonomously depending on the cohorts needs in a mini school.

This mini would have designated time for collaboration and planning and they would be focussed on what they have deemed the ‘essentials’ for their cohort. The focus would be developing and achieving goals not on students flowing through subjects. The focus would be learning what Sizer’s research identified as the essentials: Mathematics, Science, the Arts, History-Philosophy, Languages other than English, the skills of expression, the techniques of inquiry, and study habits. You would see a ‘floating teacher’. This teachers Primary role would assisting roving from class to class assisting students and teachers where needed. If you were to sit in on a class you would see the students as workers and the teachers as facilitators not content deliverers. Teachers don’t threaten students but they regularly express high expectations.

All students are working towards a ‘Diploma of exhibition’. The idea being that before you graduate to secondary school you need to achieve a Diploma. They way to achieve a Diploma to exhibit what you have learned. My question when digesting this was, “What happens if the students never achieve the diploma to graduate to secondary school?”. The theoretical answer Sizer gave was through more vigorous teaching of the needed skill would occur until the desired outcome was able to be exhibited. My thoughts then lead me into a primary school model for learning. After working in Primary school’s I know that they educate through a very similar model as I have described in Sizer’s dream. Has any one else wondered how the primary school model of learning would work in a secondary school?

Activity two Please group the following questions into two categories. Effective change and ineffective change. Effective change 1. Collaborative transparent decision making. 2. Communication of key changes for discussion with stakeholders. 3. Allowing the for community views to be considered on whole school decisions.

Ineffective change 1. Making decisions without consulting those who the decision effects. 2. Allowing the community to find out whole school changes through the newspaper. 3. Making long term decision on the spot.

What Sizer’s dream is referring to is not a transformation of the current education model but a revolution. This revolution went on to prompt some good questions. Sizer suggests that if we are going to ‘revolutionise’ our current education model the following answers need to continually asked and answered. a) What is it that high school graduates must display to earn our respect and admiration? b) How can school’s function so that all student’s display and achieve these accomplishments? c) What political, community and administrative context is required? d) How can distinctive concerns of students, parents, the state and the community be respectfully accommodated and yet still nurture schools and a schooling system that serve all adolescents? What lessons can be gained from the shortfalls of Sizers work ( Difficult to get a shared common image of schooling, external feedback was was limited, lack of connectedness throughout the school)

This prompted our own questions: Is one model for the next X amount of time sufficient? When Henry Ford talked about his new cars he saw them models to improve on, not as models to persevere with because they did what people wanted today. If we don’t believe our students are models to improve on, how are we expecting them to believe in themselves? Sizer uses an aphorism of “less is more” should dominate: curricular decisions should be directed toward the students attempt to gain mastery rather than by the teachers effort to cover content. Mastery being the key word.

When discoveries your own self beliefs and core business, ask your self, what does my idea school look like, feel like and sound like? Before articulating your dream ensure you start off with the why. Start off, with the end in mind.

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