Reflective journal

Activity 8 Changes in my practice I have really enjoyed the last few weeks as part of the Mind Lab programme. Writing reflections each week, and being able to read and comment on other blogs, has helped me understand the value of self-reflection and personal growth.   I have often commented on how professional development needs to be more personalised to the individual needs of each teacher. I did not realise the importance of taking responsibility for my own PD through learning to reflect in a way that promotes positive development. The article by Osterman and Kottkamp (1993), where they compared reflective practice to the traditional professional development model, made sense. How many times have we come away from a PD session feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, brain dead?? Too much information in one session, and then we are expected to go away and implement some of what we have learned! We learn better through an awareness of our own needs rather than through a profe...

Week 31 My Interdisciplinary connections. What makes me who I am today comes from many different places. Putting together my map emphasised this and reinforced the need to keep up the connections I have. The knowledge and experience I bring to my teaching comes from the many relationships I have formed throughout my life, even the not so positive ones we learn from. This makes me feel unique and special, and I need to remember that what I have to offer is small in comparison to what I can learn from others. The biggest learning for me over the past year has been the realisation that my connections do not exist only near me - within my school and community. Through online connections my students and I can connect anywhere in the world at any time. We have been slowly developing this through sites such as Edmodo, and for me through Mind Lab (blogging, Google+, etc.). I see myself as striving to keep up to date with changes and innovations in Education, challenging...

Week 30 - PRACTICE - Professional Online Social Networks   This week’s blog is a great follow on to last week. For all my thoughts then, I do see how social networking sites can be very useful. I love the teacher’s pay teachers site, I am always reading from the New Zealand teacher’s facebook page. Pinterest is awesome and I enjoy spending time looking for useful ideas for me and my students. I guess the main thing for me with all of these is that I use them but I don’t share myself. Sometimes I will share a comment or information to support a question on the Teacher’s facebook page, but I am generally just a reader. The videos this week have really made me stop and think. I have been on this Mindlab journey for 30 weeks now and I need to show that I have learnt something!! I especially loved the video of the teacher who “invited the world into her classroom through blogs and twitter.” What awesome experiences for her students, especially the concern for the Brisbane stud...

Anyone who knows me will know I am not a great fan of social media. The one time I shared something sad over facebook (our cat of 18 years had died), my 80 year old parents were travelling in Europe. Mum happened to check her messages and saw the first words of mine “We are really sad…”. She read the rest, realised it was “only” the cat that had died, and laughed!! An example of how social media can be misinterpreted, or taken in a different way to how you feel. Another example is when I sent a colleague a text message about work and she completely took it the wrong way. I was accused of all sorts of things. My response was real annoyance – how dare she assume my meaning or tone? The situation was resolved with a heartfelt apology to me but these things all leave their scars. As a result, I will not become friends with present or past students, or their families, on social networks. My life is personal to me, and we are entitled to life away from our job responsibilities. I...

Week 28 – Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness in my practice There is no doubt that the learning gap between Maori and Non-Maori is there. Bishop in Edtalks (2012 ) made me think a lot about my own cultural responsiveness in relation to the students I work with. I am very responsive to the cultural aspects of Maori culture, but is this showing more of an awareness of indigenous knowledge over being truly culturally responsive? Where we come from historically helps us understand the importance of being culturally responsive in today’s classroom.   Bishop (2012) talks about the disparities, both economically and socially, that we need addressing. He used a metaphor to explain the accumulation of debt owed to Maori people. The fiscal deficits, New Zealand debt, is the amount of debt each person has because of our country’s debt. Through the years there has been an accumulation of achievement gaps between Maori and Non-Maori which can be seen as the debt owned by...