Today I
attended a beginning teacher course called 21 Century Learners and Beyond –
Focusing on the MOE’s Priority Groups (Maori, Pasifica, and children with
learning difficulties). This was taken by Gaye Vartiainen who is the manager of
ADDI (Advocating for Diversity Difference and Inclusion) Consultancy. Here is a link to her website: http://www.addi.co.nz/
The lecture
was started off by Gaye telling us about her journey to get to where she is –
she started as a classroom teacher then moved to a principal role and is now a
Consultant. Her path changed when her son was at school and he could speak like
a normal child if not better however he wasn’t ‘acting’ like a normal child and
this is where she started her research of differentiated learners.
We then looked at our own classroom and the reasoning behind why we do something. This is where she brought up the saying ‘That’s The Way We Have Always Done It’ (TTWWHADI). We can’t keep doing what hasn’t worked in the past and hope that things will change. The best example that I found was the concept that we still use desks like they did back when school first started, and I guess this stood out to me the most as I have seen the amount of learning I can get out of my class when they are comfortable. This lead to the discussion of why not let learners work where they are most comfortable and I really believe this is true and I am going to be implementing it into my class. Gaye showed us this YouTube clip which shows that we are more productive when we are comfortable. I am really going to starting thinking about everything I am doing in the classroom – am I doing it because TTWWHADI?
The next part
of the day was spent looking at ourselves as teachers and how we present
ourselves. I am aware that I am quite a quiet calm teacher but I do notice my
voice level rising as the behaviour becomes undesirable. The advice she gave
was to talk low and slow and this will gain the attention of any learner – I am
keen to try it. She also had us think about our body positioning and how we can
show authority through our body we don’t need to voice it. However we need to
ensure we are not over powering the children rather getting down to a level
that they respond to.
She
explained that if the children see we are stressed (which we shouldn’t be – we shouldn’t
let their behaviour stress us as teachers) then they are likely to respond
badly to it. She gave me heaps of tools to deal with undesirable behaviour in
and out of the class and to sum it up instead of yelling at a child, work
through the problem to solve it still ensuring there is a punishment. I know
that all of my students will respond well to this type of behaviour management
as I have a lot of ‘sulkers’ who automatically shut down because they think
they are going to be yelled at. It is also important that if a child is really
worked up or stressed to give them time to cool down before approaching the
situation (which I know as an adult I can relate to and say it is best to enter
something with a level head). I think this also ties in with making students
responsible for their own behaviours and giving them tools to deal with
situations that stress them out.
The
afternoon session was spent looking at the different learning need signs shown from
‘normal looking children’ which was really interesting as I could probably
identify some of the children in my class demonstrating some signs. This doesn’t
mean that they have Autism or Dyslexia but I need to be aware that there are
often at least 2 children in every class that are.
Because my
class mostly come under the Maori strand, all of the techniques and ideas I
learnt today help them in their learning one way or another.
Overall I learnt a lot, now its time to trial it. Gaye is an amazing person with a wealth of knowledge and she is doing a follow up course next term which I hope to be lucky enough to attend.
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