Robin Fogarty and Brian M. Pete discuss their visionary framework, referred to as Teach Less, Learn More, from their educational consultant work in Singapore. Their visionary framework consists of four parts: a vision for the nation, a vision for education, the vision for implementation, and a vision for collaboration. We will look at each of these visions and how these ideas could reform 21st century skills in the classroom.
Vision One focuses on the nation as an overarching philosophy for all of nation schools. This philosophy focuses on a commitment of prestige and excellence to the educational system. Embedding in this education philosophy are foundational life skills, attitudes, and dispositions. The skills include thinking, creating, problem solving. The attitudes include collaboration, wonderment, and the dispositions include tolerance for ambiguity, and persistence. These foundational life skills, attitudes, and dispositions are taught with the idea of creating a mindset focused on innovation and enterprise. The ideals of innovation and enterprise are national goals for prosperity and well-being of the individual. Vision Two transforms 20th century education towards 21st century education by focusing on global skills of learning and innovation. These global skills include career skills, information, media, technology skills, and practical life skills. These intrinsic skills promote an interest in learning. Vision Three considers the flexibility at the local school levels and focuses on how to accommodate the immovable constraints. Singapore's leaders encourage implementation using a tight-loose-tight formula, which advocated for change through innovative thinking from the school staffs. Vision Four completes Singapore's framework of educational change through professional development at varying stages of effectiveness. Through Professional Learning Communities, the schools are accountable by their Minister of Education. Thus, the nation is creating think-tanks at classroom level, which provides insightful and inspiring teaching and learning. The mantra focus of this teaching vision is simple. Collaboration at the basic foundation of the education system creates streamlined lessons that delivers authentic learning. As these lesson ideas translate to schools around the world, teachers are encouraged to think more creatively as they collaborate, challenge one another, and change teaching for the better. Citation: Fogarty, R. and Pete, B.M. The Singapore Vision - Teach Less, Learn More, Chapter 5 ![]() “The first stage of curriculum development, is creating a curriculum of care” …Harold Brathwaite One of the main reasons I chose to switch careers was that I love the challenge of encouraging students to build their own characters. I believe that we can effectively encourage students to build character by teaching the importance of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence includes all the interactive strategies that guide students with their character building. Too often, we focus on the importance of I.Q. results and we are not spending enough time teaching strategies for moral & emotional intelligence. Why should we teach moral intelligence? The answer lies in creating safe school environments with teachers who demonstrate empathy, reliability through solid morals, values and attitudes for ALL students. Many youth are at risk through high divorce rates, abandonment, and relocating families due to employment. Today's schools are working hard to help students build a solid model of moral intelligence. The last school that I worked in promoted the "Seven Habits". I noted that the "Six Pillars" from Character Counts is also still popular. I remember my own children watching these six pillars being sung by Barney. What made these six pillars memorable was the way the characters were presented. I believe that these prompts for moral intelligence are critical for character development. It does not matter which model you teach, but how you teach them. To teach moral intelligence, teachers need to talk about moral intelligence first. Implementing a program that celebrates positive attitudes, growth and development is key for students to learn moral intelligence. So, what would be some strategies to teach moral intelligence? As a school culture, service learning projects offer students a real, rich and relevant way to practice their moral intelligence! Another idea is to have students host monthly showcases or assemblies as an excellent way to promote healthy moral intelligence. Personally, I find value in a "pay it forward" program, where the students can give unanimous and random acts of kindness to one another. I also find value in personal reflection of moral intelligence through art forms that show self-expression, patience and moral preservation. One of the most destructive forms of moral degrading is bullying. I have witnessed this in both school settings and on-line. School environments need to continue to make bullying and cyberbullying a priority issue and address this issue through education, teacher awareness training, plans of action and student consequences. I believe that moral intelligence can be taught to students by keeping it simple and consistent. After all, the discouraged student is really looking for someone who gives a dam! If you or someone you know is struggling with their emotional health, find solid advice from BetterHelp, an online platform with over 780,000 followers. Photo credit: http://www.craveonline.ca/mandatory/1067023-weird-news-latvian-man-says-a-beaver-took-him-hostage “Fairness is everyone getting what they need in school”…Martha Kaufeldt
Inclusive education has come a long way, but we still have miles to go. There are many issues with the current thoughts around inclusive education. I believe that we don't completely know how to address students with ESL struggles, and special needs, simply because I believe that we stop when we identify these complex issues and we need to move to a deeper level of understanding and action. The way we often address inclusion echos the weakness the word "fairness". Frankly, it's a shallow term. To date, we can identify student learning styles, but we need to rethink that inclusive education is so much more than identification; it's the action of building positive environments that are conducive for learning. The key to building positive environments lies in the instructional practices to more effectively meet the diversity of today's learner. How do we build positive environments? As teachers, we need to get to know our students at a level of understanding that provides bridging towards identifying the supports needed for each student. How do we get to know our students on a deeper level? Student driven curriculum provides the platform of authentic learning, where students are no longer directly taught, but learn to share their new discoveries through cross-curricular projects. As long as we provide the framework of the learning through our student outcomes, I believe that project based learning trumps direct instructional teaching anyday. For example, in my IFX practicum experience, I facilitated a PBL in a grade 7 class. Guess what? Not only were the students completely engaged, but I had no behaviour issues in the classroom. Real, rich and relevant learning was exactly how I would describe the classroom. Sounds fairly inclusive also? PBL is inclusive because any classroom of ten or more students will have a variety of interests to provide balance to the challenges of PBL. I know that the magic number is ten because I ran Company Program for Junior Achievement of Southern Alberta for four years. It was remarkable how you would always have enough students interested in the various positions to run a company effectively. PBL models offer the pedagogical platform for everyone to receive what they need out of their learning. Take my advice and delete the word "fairness" from your vocabulary. So, Martha Kaufeldt, "fairness" is catering to the average. We need better than average. We can not be afraid to go the extra mile with our students. PBL gets messy, complicated and challenging. So does life. Only then, learning becomes so much more than fair. It becomes inclusive. "A good teacher makes himself progressively unnecessary" ~ Thomas Carruthers
I have to say that this quote is by far my favorite to date. Why? I believe that a good teacher should be progressively unnecessary for all students because the skill of teaching good habits in education is like teaching healthy eating habits. I know that this may sound funny, but I spent a few years in the grocery business and I have witnessed some funny ideas about how to be successful with diets and nutrition. I see some similar ideas about how to be successful with education. If we positively feed the brain, we will foster positive results. Feeding the brain not only includes healthy eating, but it also includes healthy education habits that builds skills. Strong education skills include discipline in reading, writing, critical thinking, communication, cooperation, collaboration, dependability, ability, confidence, independence, growth of network, and opportunities. These skills are developed by a consistent and a dedicated work ethic. Students who master these skills are no longer 'teacher dependent'. Strong education skills also require a positive attitude. I have tutored many math students at the college, and I often see that a negative attitude is all that is holding them back from their own success. Note to self: Next time I am having a hard time 'wrapping my head around a tough assignment', check the ingredient list... maybe I am missing my 'daily intake' of 'learning ingredients'... This week's quote is a gentle reminder of what our focus of teaching should be. Testing is one of many assessment strategies that tells the teacher not only how the student is doing, but how well the teacher is teaching. To me, the focus is really how well the teacher is teaching because testing should be fairly easy for your students if they are properly prepared. I understand that testing anxiety is a problem for some students, but this should be addressed in the teaching process. I also think that we need to spend more time on teaching students HOW to write exams before giving them an exam. Formative assessment before an exam should also include similar testing to help prepare the students for the summative exam.
Again, I believe most of the anxiety around testing comes from when the teacher makes the testing an issue. I believe that the real text anxiety problems can be a reflection from the teacher's attitudes. This happens when testing becomes a central focus because the PAT results reflect on the teacher's ability. How do we remedy this as a teacher? Believe in your student how you believe in your own teaching abilities. Teach your students how to study, prepare and write an exam. In plain language: If you teaching abilities are poor, how do you expect your students to do well on an exam? I believe that the PAT results are part of the teacher's performance review, not as a significant part of the students performance results. Again, it is our job preparing students throughout the year. PATs are exams to assure us, as teachers, that we have done our professional duty. I believe that we tend to involve the students too much in this process. The PAT results should be a focus between the teacher and the administration's performance. Our focus with the students should be on offering the students opportunities to grow by being critical, creative and curious learners. When our students become confident, so will their grades, their testing abilities, and their test score results. On January 12, 2017, our instructor Dr. Shauna Bruno from the U of A, invited Elders Roy and Judy Louis to teach us about a smudging ceremony. We talked about the process of the ceremony and the Aboriginal history and the beliefs associated with smudging. The following is my recollection of the dialogue and the discussions as they unfolded in the classroom at Red Deer College.
Smudging is a way of life for the First Nation's People. Once you have been taught by an Elder, you have the permission to teach others. The significance of smudging comes from various medicinal plants that we can find within the province of Alberta. The four plants that we were using are sage, sweet grass, tree warts and sweet pine. Each plant helps with healing. Elder Roy said that we can find at least one of these plants at all times in the natural terrain in the province. The smudge symbolizes the ritual cleaning of a person and the smoke rises and brings the prayers to the Elders. When we pray and smudge, we rub our hands together to clean our touch, our head to bring good thoughts, and our heart to bring good intentions. We offer a gift of tobacco to the Earth when we pick the plants and before we smudge. Kinninkinick is native tobacco. Other gifts can be two 4 meter lengths of a cloth with the tribe's colors. The Cree colors are red and white. The number four is very significant to the Cree people. It signifies the four souls and the four elements of the Earth. All actions, when smudging or talking, are done in a clockwise pattern. Smudging helps with attendance in schools and anxiety during exams for both FNMI and for the rest of the classroom. Dr. Bruno asked us to recognize the implications that happen when we make these types of changes in the schools. For me, the smudging offered me a warm invitation to cleanse my mind and my heart before we learn about the Aboriginal culture of Canada. The message that I heard from Roy and Judy was to sincerely listen to Dr. Shauna Bruno's lectures. I also heard the message of empathy through the visuals offered in the classroom. I truly believe that this class will not only foster a deeper understanding of the Aboriginal peoples' history, but will kindly remind me to appreciate all cultural differences that I encounter in the education system. ![]() During my IFX practicum placement, I was not convinced that I always needed to blow my whistle to communicate with the kindergarten students in my P.E. class. So, I begin to think of how I could I improve this process? Considering that many students are visual or auditory learners, I created two listening cues for my students. 1) I introduced the cues by talking about how important it is to address one another politely. 2) Next, I informed the students that we had some exciting activities to learn and if I need to give additional instructions as we learn these activities, I will say the following phrase: "I see" The students will stop and respond with "What do you see?" or I will say "I hear" and the students will stop and respond with "What do you hear?" (Remember to practice these statements a couple of times with your students.) My students responded exceptionally well using these listening cues! I liked these cues as they could be used to offer immediate assessment. In addition, I wasn't wearing out the whistle as I was only using it when we needed to switch activities or we needed to stop immediately. My advice: Save the intense tweeting for social media rather than in the gymnasium... Improving my instructional strategies gently reminds me to remember that I was taught mainly by assertive discipline many, many, many years ago. I know that this is not an effective way of teaching. First, assertive discipline does not allow for a relaxed and safe classroom environment; therefore, it does not encourage a higher level of student engagement. If we are to strive for the verbs at the top of Bloom's Taxonomy, then we need to focus on encouraging students to gain the skills and the attitudes to feel confident to compose, compile, design, generate, modify, organize, plan, reconstruct, relate, and specify the knowledge that we are teaching them. I know that effective instructional strategies are built from offering students learner-centered classrooms with positive classroom management. The key of choosing an effective instructional strategy is letting the student choose their own appropriate strategy and guide them to use their chosen task effectively to accomplish their goal. As long as the student's strategy helps the student to become an independent learner, my task of guided practice is successful.
Why must I remind myself of the differences between these instructional strategies? The reason is because we tend to teach the way we were taught. Quite simply, it's safe and I remember the methodology and the execution of this instructional strategy, BUT it's not a foundational way of building relationships. Relationships are built on the foundations of positive classroom management. This includes discipline with dignity. I must remember to protect the dignity of the students. I need to be fair and considerate of individual situations. I need to focus on rules that make sense to students and model the behavior that I expect from my students. I believe that through positive discipline, I can create a caring and learning environment. If students whole-heartedly believe in the intrinsic value of learning, mutual respect and encouragement, then the students will gain valuable skills for life after the classroom. Reference: https://education.alberta.ca/media/482311/is.pdf |