How My Spring Field Study Was Created....
During our field study presentations Olivier gave me a copy of a classroom survey that he had used. I tried it out on my class and the data was interesting because the majority of the questions we open ended. This is great because I ended up getting very unique and personalized resposes from my kids.
There were some questions that were more direct, yes or no or a scale, and these questions did reveal a pattern. The questions about class climate had a range from great, good, ok, bed, to terrible. Everyone student circled ok or great.
There was four other questions that asked the student to rate themselves on a scale that was yes or no, and varying degrees inbetween. The questions were: I feel like I belong to the class, I feel like the students in my class know me, I like the students in the class, and students in this class like me. The question about "feeling like you belong in class" everyone agreed strongly. The question other three questions had a bit of a range, but the pattern was that the students in my class agreeded to these statements.
I was happy to get feedback on what isn't working and happy to hear that the students feel the community that we have worked hard at creating.
I signed up to do a Learning Round and April is my facilitator. I had my first meeting with April to create my POP or Problem of Practice. I had no idea what I wanted to focus on at the beginnning. I brought my surveys and the classroom norms that our class created.Above I posted examples of the survey data and just below is example of the norms, and the notes that April recorded during our session.
April was asking me questions and helping me realize what my POP needed to focus on. After looking at the data and talking with Josie and April, below is the POP I have come up with. I want to use the supportive and inclusive classroom/school culture to create a structure that will allow Josie and I to work more intensively with students in need and create independant learner workers.
* This is the POP that I created and brought to the first meeting wiht April**
Problem of Practice:
If we design a structure that makes use of the community that we’ve built, can the students support and challenge each other so that we are free to “be there” for all of our students?
Context:
I teach at Sea to Sky Alternative School in Squamish. My days are spent with the most sensitive young people who have lived through diverse and sometimes traumatic experiences. I want to model personal growth, the joy of learning, and perseverance to my students. Our school has students from grade nine through to grade twelve, and we also have a couple Adult Dogwood students who attend our school. This year I am with the junior group all day, every day, all year. This means I am teaching English. Social Studies, Planning, Art, Foods, PE, Math and Science. I team-teach with two different teachers. I don’t mean “team-teach” in the sense that we share the classroom on different days, but that there are two teachers in the same classroom at the same time. The “Humanities” courses together for half of the day, and the “Math and Science” courses the other half. We plug in the electives during these half day sessions. The junior group is a mix of grade 9 and 10 students and there couldn’t be more of a gap between their academic skill levels, mental health, maturity, time away from school, economic status, or family/community support. The junior group consists of 6 Intensive Behaviour, 2 Moderate Behaviour, 2 Learning Disabled, 1 Moderate Intellectual Disability, 1 Chronic Health/Intensive Behaviour. There are five students without any designation, but whom have social-emotional issues. I have 9 boys and 8 girls in this multi-grade, multi-curriculum classroom.
I work with students who learn differently, and that is a hopeful thing. Traditional education classifies students into groups by one and only factor: the date that you were born. My goal is always “to find a student’s spark.” I know without a doubt that as humans, we are curious about the world. I believe that it can be life changing as a young person to have a teacher-mentor who you can be attached to, who sees you and your “spark” clearly, and who will help guide and differentiate your learning. I strive to model personal growth, the joy of learning, and perseverance to my students. The Squamish Alternative School’s Mission: That together we can make a difference.
April and I tried to follow the POP protocol (Photo below) to tweek and tune my POP and we were able to focus and create further questions.
Questions to help guide my problems of practice:
How will my high flyers feel about helping my struggling students?
Can I build a structure that all students will be able to use?
How can we use the community giveback day the piggy back as a model for helping each other?
How can students be involved in the creation of the model of support?
From “data” survey- How can we build on the notion that students enjoy doing stuff at their own pace.
How can we connect this POP to the student created classroom norms.