Collaborative Teaching and Learning in Flexible Learning Spaces

This afternoon we attended a seminar held by Neill O'Reilly at Waitakiri school. The topic - Collaborative teaching and Learning in Flexible Learning Spaces.

It was great for the whole Leadership team to attend together and I look forward to hearing what resonated with the others in our team; what challenged their thinking; what were the takeaways that they will trial with their teams...

I liked the style of the workshop - I liked the way it caused me to reflect on my practice and where we are headed at St Francis of Assisi School. And reflect I did and continue to do hours after the seminar has finished.

Does co-teaching improve learning outcomes, hauora and self regulation?  

My initial reaction was Yes! Of course this is the case. However I can see that if teachers don't believe this, if we don't have buy in, if they don't have a positive approach, a growth mindset, a learning disposition, if they don't know how to use the flexible spaces - then the answer to this question will be no.

What does this mean for us?

- Professional Development - building teacher capability is important - but it is a shared responsibility. Gone are the days where professional development happened to you at staff meetings. It is our personal responsibility to seek out the professional development we need, or activate our own PLD as Neill put it in the seminar. 

- It is our job, a teacher's job to cause learning - I love this statement - I do see this as our core business.

Does our teaching team have  a clear understanding of what effective pedagogy looks, sounds and feels like at our school? in our flexible learning spaces?

Do we have a shared understanding of what "students at the centre" means?

These questions really made me think - we haven't spent time on these questions as a staff - I can articulate my understanding of effective pedagogy and "students at the centre" but we really need to visit these topics as a staff. We need to move forward with a shared understanding. 

I found that I needed to remind myself that we have only been together as a staff for 10 weeks - small steps ... things take time. We need to stop and celebrate how far we have come in such a short time.

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Other things that resonated with me... to be revisited at some point

- Private honesty - public unity

- Homework (Year 1-6) If you are sending more than reading and some basic facts home - you are ignoring the research.

- worksheets - don't cause learning

- planning needs to be shared with all in the team - when will we make this non negotiable at St Francis?

- be prepared to take risks, trial the different co-teaching collaborative strategies, talk about how it is going with team, modify, try again

- read the research, do we actually believe the research that says that teacher collaboration will make a significant difference to children's learning or are we waiting for someone to prove this to us? And if we do believe it - is that reflected in our practice?