Activity Four: Community of Practise

Activity Four: Community of Practise

"It is life itself that is the main learning event."   

                                                                                                 (Wenger-Trayner, 2015)

What is your specialist area of practice? How does your specialist area of practice relate to the broader professional context?

Cornwallis Beach 

While my job titles are Classroom Teacher, Syndicate Leader and school wide Sports Co-ordinator, I believe my specialist area of practise is the organiser, or motivator for others to organise, Education Outside the Classroom trips and events, as well as events within the school that are a collaboration between the different stakeholders in a school community. The quote above resonates deeply because I believe that life itself is the main learning event, and so often we plan ahead only to have those plans changed because of an idea or event that just happens and needs to take precedence if we want our students to have real life experiences and learning. My strength is in believing in creating extra-ordinary events, having the energy to run with new ideas and to motivate others to agree and run with them as well. In 2015 our entire school went on a school picnic to a local (30min drive) beach with an emphasis on the community coming too. Over 220 students swam, cleaned the beach, built sand sculptures and 'hung out' with their families. This is now an annual event on the school calendar. 

Victoria Park Auckland 

We also took the whole school to the Rugby World Cup celebratory parade in Victoria Park in Auckland after the All Blacks successfully defended the World Cup. 
For camp, I took my syndicate of Year 5 and 6 students to Mt Ruapehu for four days. Of the sixty students that attended only five had ever been to the snow or skied before. All the students learnt to ski or snowboard. 

Mt Ruapehu 

These events bring communities together, allow for many many people to be involved or participate in others being involved through fundraising, donations, discussions, organisation and prior learning of expectations. They allow for students to apply skills they are learning to real life situations: creating posters, developing fundraising ideas, being student leaders, acknowledging the efforts of others and applying new learning to assessment expectations. 
For me it is about facilitating interconnectedness and creating events that are remembered with pride by a community that might not have thought it possible. Events that can be stepping stones to other possibilities, created by other people. One of the issues that arose with the ski trip in particular, was that children from a low decile school, that needs to feed it's students breakfast, shouldn't be sending them on an expensive trip to a place that isn't relevant to their lives. This is a mind set that keeps children from striving for the 'top of the mountain', whatever that may be for them, and is a prejudice or classism that needs to challenged. All students should be given opportunities to 'test' themselves physically, mentally, socially and academically. 

What changes are occurring in the context of your profession? How do you think you or your community of practice should address them?

Image Source. http://akohiko.org/

In 2015 our principle signed our school into the Ako Hiko Cluster of schools; an outreach of the Manaiakalani Community in East Auckland. With this decision was the agreement to start up 1:1 digital classrooms in 2016. The pedagogy of Manaiakalani is Learn, Create, Share and puts the student at the centre of their own learning. There is an expectation that students will constantly reflect on how well they are doing in relation to the Learn Create Share pedagogy. And that they move toward visible and ubiquitous learning. All three classes in the senior syndicate are now digital with chromebooks the choice of device. Later in the year our three classes will be shifted into an ILE building that is in the process of being built. This is a huge change in the context of my profession and that of my syndicate. Planning and activities now need to be considered in this context. While the pedagogy is not knew to teaching or even our Inquiry based style of learning, the level at which students share in particular is different.  And again although our classes have worked together as a syndicate in the past the level of change and collaboration needed when in a shared space is at a new level. For this reason we have and think we should continue to work closely together, sharing and reflecting on how we are progressing on an almost daily basis. 

Class Site 

Over the holidays we created class websites together and had many discussions about how the year ahead might look. Class websites are the anchor place for all student learning. From these sites students create copies of documents and file them into their personal drives. They have personal emails and are linked to the outside world. We also set up classroom blogs to start sharing work on a weekly basis. Later the students will have personal blogs.   

                                     Room 9 Blog   

Our syndicate is visiting different schools together and attending workshops together to gain insight into how we will successfully transition in both areas of change. 

What are the challenges that you face in your practice? How would you or your community of practise address them?    

Within these changes are definite challenges. Creating a website and blog was a huge learning curve for me. They were new systems I needed to learn quickly and efficiently, and become comfortable navigating on a daily basis. Becoming more savvy in the digital realm is another challenge and very important if I am going to be able to keep ahead of, or at least up to, the students in my class. Being honest with the students is important in addressing this. Having a culture of 'lets learn together' will help build relationships and student agency. To us as a syndicate, it is important that the integrity of the student's learning is maintained and that the systems are robust enough to engage them, challenge them and continue to move them forward in all areas of the curriculum. The challenge is that these changes don't become an excuse for a slowing down of core learning. As a syndicate we are changing how work is planned, accessed, completed and shared. Our planning is done more collaboratively and work is shared continuously, so all three classes cover very similar ground and each class benefits from three teachers being 'on the job'. Students mostly access their work digitally, not in hard copy, but have continuous access to it, as it will stay on the class site and be saved into their own files. When work is set it will be completed in a range of ways. Although most may be accessed digitally, we are mixing up how they complete tasks. Some is digital, some in books, some with physical movement that may or may not be recorded. Finally sharing, students can share their work with each other, other schools in the cluster and with their parents.

Hapara Dashboard

Student work is also accessed by teachers through Hapara. This system connects all student activity and work to the teachers laptop. Marking is done online through commenting on work that is saved into files. Finally another challenge is that a move into digital learning doesn't take precedence over practical or physical skills. To address this we are ensuring our planning includes robust systems of Fitness, PE, EOTC, The Arts, Technology and Community Involvement. Our students will attend a local camp this year that will focus on outdoor skills. For this they will be involved in their own fundraising, creating companies. 

References: 

eLearning Infusion. (n.d.) Student Agency. Retrieved from http://nickrate.com/2013/06/04/student-agency/ 

Manaiakalani Education Trust. (n.d.) Learn, Create, Share. Retrieved from http://www.manaiakalani.org/our-

            story/learn-create-share

Wenger-Tayner.com. (2015) Introduction to Communities of Practise. Retrieved from http://wenger-

            trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/