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This discussion forum is being moderated as an expression of servant leadership in teaching & learning. As a collaborative tool for brainstorming enriching experiences for students, teacher learning groups, and district learning teams, we can inspire and build experiences to help empower each of us to personal leadership in learning. Thank you, in advance, for your contributions and leadership to realizing outcomes for improving student achievement, equity and well-being.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

inspiring insights towards innovative teaching practices

7/10/2019

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Welcome back to Flipping the Focus.

As suggested by the title of today's post, ...
  • What inspires you towards being innovative in your teaching (or leadership) practice?
  • How do you come by inspiration?
  • And better yet, what do you do to move yourself and others FROM insight TO implementation TO staying the course?
Artist's blank canvas and paint brushes
A) Sources of Inspiration
This Spring and Summer, I've had the privilege of contributing my experiences in Education as a course instructor for Intermediate and Senior Math ABQs through the University of Windsor's Centre for Teaching and Learning. And I must say that this has and continues to be a source of inspiration for my own pedagogical practice and instructional leadership. I am both thankful and grateful for my students' leadership in learning for and on behalf of one another.

Of the many discussions and assignments that students engage in, most recently students completed some background research on gap-closing in Mathematics and shared and discussed their perspectives with one another. What came out of that discussion for both students and their instructor (me) was a deepened sense of learning for all--all of it made possible by the authentic engagement of each contributor. And the discussion went well beyond working to close gaps: the conversation guided us towards planning the actions we could take to prevent gaps from being created and widened over time.

Below is a response that was shared with students as general commentary and feedback to the insights evoked from their contributions--A Letter to Students: Gap-closing in Mathematics. At this time, I'm sharing it with you for your consideration and commentary.

B) A Letter to Students: Gap-closing in Mathematics

"Hello Everyone. What a lively discussion around why gaps occur, what to do when they do, and most importantly how to address closing them! From what I can see, as the conversation evolved, is a theme of pro-activity. Thanks so much for your contributions.

A number of keywords 'lifted' off the page for me, as I spent time thinking about your posts. Perhaps, this highlighting bears some implicit bias as per my experiences, but I hope that you don't mind me sharing. These words included the following:

LIST: diagnostic, extra support, learning styles, school/district support, SES, student engagement, novelty (interpreted), assessment (formative; interpreted), confidence & teacher efficacy (interpreted).
Interestingly, if other educators were to look upon this list without context, I'm not altogether certain that "gap-closing" would be the first response. So what does this mean? I'm going to refer back to a term/adjective that <student> has been using in some of their posts--and that term is "dynamic".

If you have a moment, perhaps you can scan the following Capacity-Building Series document on "Dynamic Learning" (2013) and see how the ideas presented there either square with your thinking, leave you wondering, and/or give you takeaways to apply to your pedagogical practice. The monograph aims to connect student learning with teacher learning--i.e., what it means to be a dynamic learner (either from the student or educator perspective). I think that you'll find it both inspiring and thought-provoking.

After I took time to scan the monograph and do some further reflection, I thought about re-grouping the terms into an overarching theme and sub-groups. 

RE-GROUPING: Over-arching Theme: Student Engagement | Group 1: diagnostic, learning styles, novelty | Group 2: assessment, learning goals, backwards design | Group 3: extra support, school/district support, SES, individual & collective teacher efficacy

Essentially, our role is to help students engage in learning--learning that is relevant and meaningful, as well as learning to becoming more assessment-capable over time. This is the over-arching theme I'm proposing.

Groups 1 & 2 refer to those aspects of pedagogical practice that fall within the domain of educators and groups of educators. Group 1 aspects focus on getting to know students early on, and the term "novelty" (interpreted from one of the posts) relates to getting to know our students, as uniqueness in the experiences we cultivate are paramount to student engagement. There is a fair amount of cognitive/brain science that relates to novelty and its importance in students transferring their learning to long-term memory and/or having facility in retrieving information. For additional reading, I'd like to suggest the following:

Book: How the Brain Learns Mathematics (2015) by David A. Sousa.

If you have the opportunity to purchase (or borrow) the book and study it with colleagues (e.g., a book study with a school learning team), I think you'll find some wonderful benefits there. Chapters 5 & 6 deal with the concept of novelty and learning for both the pre-adolescent and adolescent brain. It's a great resource to have in your professional library.

Group 2 is the "heart-and-soul" or "art of teaching" that we engage in daily, and from a macro-level, we spend significant amounts of time in terms of designing assessment plans that flow from the big ideas and curriculum (call this "Point A") to students identifying what's important to their learning (these very ideas; call this "Point B"). Although simply put, there's so much that happens between these points in time and is consistently influenced by the Group 1 aspects you've brought to light. And let us not forget the importance of students being a part of co-designing the assessment process (this has also been mentioned (interpreted from) several of your comments in different posts).

Group 3 elements are primarily directed from the domain of instructional leaders--be they teacher-leaders, administrators, supervisory officers or a combination of all three. The formalized, extra support examples in our discussion were tied to also boosting parent confidence in the supports being made available to their children. Certainly in these times (and historically), it's key that we are growing public confidence in public education, as "we're all in this together"--parent engagement...not just involvement...is important to student and school success.

As per the research of Dr. Ken Leithwood, adherence to school improvement, with a predominant focus on parent confidence and engagement  (what is referred to as the "Parent Path") will not effectively yield the sought improvements in student engagement and achievement, but it is one of several contributing factors. The greatest (most influential) factor upon a school's improvement is a focus on the teaching and learning that educators and their students do on a daily basis--teaching, as I identified earlier, being driven by student need. This is well-documented in the research literature (e.g., Viviane Robinson, University of Auckland) and is a key aspect of any leader's approach to school improvement. 

The mechanism for these improvements lies in what we refer to as Collaborative Inquiry--i.e., investigating a shared problem of practice that relates to pedagogical practice. For example, at the elementary level, we might focus on unpacking a continuum of additive or multiplicative strategies for operating on numbers. In the secondary panel, we might focus on formative assessment practices--i.e., what the use of conversations, observations and products looks like for both teachers and their students.

These shared problems change over time, as educators, schools and systems evolve with new student and societal challenges being identified as urgent needs. The collaborative study (as done by learning teams) is also a source of increasing both individual and collective teacher confidence and efficacy towards improving student engagement and achievement.

This brings me back to the theme mentioned at the outset of my response: pro-activity. Throughout this post, I haven't been referring to and/or using the term, "gap" or "gap-closing". This is not intentional: it's a product of what you've presented along the way. This, in no way, implies that gap-closing is not going to be addressed. Veritably, there are times where we need to provide tiered supports to students to help them draw closer to the goals of the curriculum they're working towards attaining--absolutely. My point, here (as you've inspired), is that which we do in preparation for (i.e., our own learning...as determined by student need), during (based on ongoing, formative assessment), and after (reflecting upon the monitoring of students' learning and our own) working with our students over specific intervals of time can and will go a long way to help close learning gaps (i.e., for students) and achievement gaps (for groups).

As for mitigating factors--SES, parent engagement, supports from districts and other sources, etc.--we will always be working alongside these (sometimes urgently, persistently, flexibly or a mixture of all of these modes), but amazing things can be accomplished with our most challenging students when they are motivated to learn--cared for, challenged and championed by the adults in their school.

Lastly, in addition to the resources I've suggested earlier (Dynamic Learning, David Sousa, and the work of Dr. Ken Leithwood), you might find the following helpful in your journey. I've included links to make them more accessible.

-Ontario's "Achieving Excellence" document (2014)
-Learning for All (Ministry of Education, 2013)
-Focusing on the Fundamentals of Mathematics: Teacher's Guide (2018)

I hope that you've found this post helpful and that you've been as inspired by your peers' contributions as I have been. Thanks again for your contributions...so appreciated. If you have any further comments to share to this thread, and/or have additional questions/comments you'd like to share with me, please feel free to do so.

All the best, Chris."

C) Inspiring Insights Towards Innovation in Teaching
Outside of accreditation being a source of external inspiration, what are the primary, internal drivers for a group of professional educators to generating insights towards innovation? Our purpose and intentions--to improve the conditions for both teaching and learning--are supported because our own learning involves the following drivers:
  • Relevant curriculum and meaning-making supported
  • Collaborative and supportive learning environments
    • Relational trust links being established
  • Building knowledge from places of strength and experience, as well as being research-informed
  • Accountability to learning on behalf of others
  • Autonomy through the group, as well as respect for individual choices, contributions, and self-pacing
These are but a few sources that come to mind, and perhaps there are more and/or specific examples of these drivers influencing innovation. If you are inspired by this post; that is, if you find yourself drawing nearer to the example and perspectives shared through this post, I would like to encourage you to comment to this forum by responding to the prompts shared at the outset:

  • What inspires you towards being innovative in your teaching (or leadership) practice?
  • How do you come by inspiration?
  • And better yet, what do you do to move yourself and others FROM insight TO implementation TO staying the course?

D) Final Remarks
In closing, I can't help but to think of the conversations that can be inspired when we take collective action to improving student learning. As this blog is a means for readers to network and gradually change the context for how they teach and learn, we all benefit by drawing nearer to the perspectives shared here and shared beyond with our professional learning networks.
​
I am more than happy to collaborate with you and make our learning visible, here. If at any time, you have questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to me at Flipping the Focus. 


Sincerely,

Chris Stewart, OCT
Education Leader at Flipping the Focus
CONTACT CHRIS
LET'S COLLABORATE!
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A message of thanks & gratitude for collaborative, professional learning in education

5/18/2018

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Welcome back to Flipping the Focus.

As evidenced by the blogposts made this schoolyear by Flipping the Focus, there has been a tremendous amount of work, productive challenge, learning, and impact from professional learning for myself, colleagues, school teams, and our district--all of it made possible by the collaborative professionalism exhibited by each of the "lateral units" of the instructional core one finds in Ontario's School Effectiveness Framework (2013; image below, PDF embedded for webviewing). A list of links to these posts has been provided for your convenience in the final section of this post.

With a clear vision articulated by both the Ministry of Ontario and our district of Upper Canada, leadership committees, schools and their learning teams have leveraged autonomy, choice, time, and instructional leadership to crafting and following collaborative inquiries in service of meeting both provincial and district calls to action--working to improve student achievement and well-being. 

Ontario's School Effectiveness Framework
The Instructional Core
Picture
School Effectiveness Framework
Video: Voices From the Field
Below, I encourage you to view the video, "Voices From the Field"--a great example of how the Upper Canada DSB (UCDSB) is responding to this call.

"Voices From the Field" summarizes deep reflections from UCDSB teachers & administrators regarding system-wide, continuous school improvement in the teaching and learning of mathematics. The video chronicles educators' experiences with school-level improvement practices through the lens of whole-school approaches to school improvement, supporting the vision of the mathematics learner, building math community, and growing success through assessment.

Following viewing, I invite you to ask questions and/or comment on highlights from your own district's improvement practices. Comment on this post and/or use the "Contact" form provided on this page.
A Note on Collaborative Professionalism
On the note of collaborative professionalism, and in the spirit of continuously providing authentic experiences for readers (thanks for your subscription to learning together through this platform), I thought that I would close out this year's formal learning with a personal note of thanks and gratitude. This note will be shared with the network of teachers, administrators, and teams that I have had the privilege of serving this 2017-18 schoolyear. 

I encourage you to take some time to share your thanks and gratitude for the professional (and personal) relationships you have in your educational "circle."

All the best for a great year-end and a safe & relaxing Summer.

Sincerely & Professionally Yours,

Chris Stewart, OCT
Learning Partner, UCDSB
Student Achievement Officer (New-Sep 2018; granted leave by the UCDSB to the Ministry of Education, Ontario)
​

Letter: A Message of Gratitude & Thanks for Collaborative Professionalism in Learning
Hello Everyone.

I wanted to take a few moments to share with you a message of gratitude and thanks—a message regarding our collaborative professionalism in learning.

I believe that we are better together. Our best ideas come through consistent and ongoing collaboration.

In part, talking with you about the teaching and learning that goes on in your classrooms is at the heart and soul of what I've been able to do as a Learning Partner. And on the other hand, collaboration has also come from both planned and serendipitous moments in the classroom, as students shared their thinking with us, and in our shared experiences through learning teams and participation in system-wide professional learning days (e.g., Renewed Math Strategy (RMS) Days). In these moments, I found that there was nothing more satisfying and productive than deciding how we, including our students, would respond to moving learning forward.

In closing, it has been a pleasure learning with you and your students this year.

Although we are not yet there, please accept my best wishes to you, your colleagues and families for a great summer. All the best for next year, as you continue to dig deeper—digging in as a system and school teams to exploring the intersection of the physical, mental, social and emotional domains of learning and how, together, we can further improve student achievement, engagement and well-being.

Although I will be in a different role moving forward (new Student Achievement Officer in the Ottawa Region; on secondment to the Ministry of Education), please feel free to reach out with questions and sharing what you would like to learn/have been learning. I deeply value the relationships we have built thus far, and as I stated earlier: ...we are better together. Our best ideas come through consistent and ongoing collaboration.

Sincerely Yours,

Chris Stewart

Blogposts re: Professional Learning in Education - 2017/18
Feb 2017 - REFLECTION & ACCOUNTABLE TALK: POWERFUL DRIVERS TO ENHANCING STUDENT & TEACHER LEARNING (PART 2/2)

June 2017 - LEARNING TO LEAD, LEADING TO LEARN (PART 1/3)

Aug 2017 - LEARNING TO LEAD, LEADING TO LEARN (PART 2/3)

Jan 2018 - LEARNING TO LEAD, LEADING TO LEARN (PART 3 OF 3): EXPLORING THE ROLE OF STUDENT VOICE IN SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PRACTICES

​Feb 2018 - GETTING TO & ENACTING OUR 'HOW': COLLABORATIVE SPACES FOR OCCASIONING THINKING ABOUT SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
​
​
Mar 2018 - CREATING CONDITIONS FOR OCCASIONING THINKING & SUPPORTING STUDENT WELL-BEING IN MATHEMATICS CLASSROOMS
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    I am passionate about leadership for learning and teaching and learning through inquiry. Through collaborative exploration of high-yield, pedagogical strategies, I have been able to further engage students to deepen their learning and fellow educators in continuously growing their practice--Flipped Learning, Thinking Classrooms, and culturing Student Voice as examples.  I hope that this site serves you well in your educational journey through teaching and learning by moving professional learning into your time ... your space. If you have questions or feedback, please feel free to contact me. Sincerely, Chris Stewart (OCT).

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