Helen's Professional Blog

Our awesome design team at Manaiakalani are working on designing a common practice reading model.  Although I am part of the pilot group who is critiquing and reviewing the content and experience I am completing this reflection as if I am a teacher - moreover, a newbie teacher. Our WHY for doing this is equity for learners, especially those from disadvantaged homes, to increase teacher effectiveness and accelerate learning outcomes.  We want to grow reader self-efficacy - to have a big push on learner engagement and motivation.   Today we had a mini dive and overview into the Manaiakalani Reading model.  We covered the background & findings from longitudinal research that led to this being developed.  The model is a cyclical plan that is ambitious and it begins with planning and finishes with sharing. In terms of building my capability and confidence in teaching reading, I now realise the importance of being ambitious in my planning.  I also need to consider student voice - this is

 Like the silver fox that I have become, reinventing myself anew, it's time to drag this old blog and professional reflection methodology out of retirement - just in time for me to begin the Manaiakalani Reading DFI.

I haven't been on my blog for a while - not since completing my DFI last year.  My professional learning in 2019 was turbocharged & now in these troubled times of rahui during Covid-19 my newly acquired skills have come to the fore.  This week alone I have had online meetings with groups of principal colleagues, I've sat in on teachers having a google meet with their classes to set up learning for the day & I've also arranged a social session with teacher colleagues so that we can connect. This is stuff that seems so simple to me now.  I've also seen wonderful educators step up to share, collaborate & mentor others to improve their capability to deliver online learning.  It certainly makes me appreciate being in a collaborative profession that puts the well-being of it's learners at the heart of the matter. However, there is a dark side to this too.  More than ever, equity issues are revealing themselves.  Schools have students with no access to w

"Whew!" is all I can say!!! The Google Educator Level 1 exam was intense but, as the screenshot image above shows, I passed.  Completing the exam was two hours, 58 minutes and 33 seconds of intense concentration, intense completion of tasks and a bit of googling on the side to find out how to do tasks I couldn't automatically do.  The parts of the exam that got my blood pressure rising to places it should never go were:  creating You Tube playlists filtering data in descending order in Google Sheets  The final thing to stump me was performing tasks in the Google Omnibox.  What the #@%& is the Google Omni box?  I asked my facilitator & was promptly told to google it.  I thought to myself through gritted teeth 'What the #@%& do you think I've been doing for the last seven minutes!!' After reading and watching YouTube clips I discovered that the Google Omnibox is just the search bar - something I frequently use!!! Anyway, relief! 

Today I arrived a wee bit late after having flown back from a Manaiakalani Convenors' Meeting at Grey Main School in Greymouth.  Before boarding my plane from Wellington to Gizzy I completed the WWW in prep for today's session on Media & then flicked through Dorothy's slide deck on empowerment.  The whole Manaiakalani kaupapa of empowerment really resonated with me - especially when as a school leader I want education to empower not just our students but also our whanau - to give them rangatiratanga!! Being connected with digital technology, having visible learning & being ubiquitous (anytime, anywhere & global) empowers our tamariki.  This brings agency and also helps our students create their digital footprint and supports them to collaborate.  This is true for teachers too - utilising the kaupapa to empower them (us) too! I've had some new learning on using the Google Draw tool.  The wee animation above is an image I created on google draw.  I gro