[MUSIC] What did you learn in school today? Remember that story about the school in which the head teacher went round asking young people what did you learn in school today? And the episode at the end of the day when a child came up to the head teacher and said please sir, what did you learn in school today? Well, what did you learn in school today or what have you been learning over the weeks in which you've been involved in this course? If you ask the question how do teachers learn, here are some of the ways. By teaching with others, what we might call co-teaching, by mentoring other people, providing an opportunity for you to talk about your teaching, coaching perhaps even, a more experienced teacher coaching and giving advice. Critical friendship, having someone who's there to give you feedback in a friendly but also challenging way. Learning with and from your own students. Can you learn something from your students? Learning conversations with your colleagues. Sharing and discussing with them the work that you're students are doing in the classroom, or homework for example. In this example from Malaysia, teachers are talking about reflective diarying, keeping diaries of their teaching, reflecting on it and sharing it with others. It's something that you're doing too in your portfolios. Reflecting and keeping a record of some of the things that you're learning, some of the challenges you're meeting, some of the obstacles that you're able to overcome. Peer observation: do you ever invite someone to come into your class to observe what's going on and give you some feedback about that? Or do you observe in other people's classes? What about as used in a number of commonwealth countries, collaborative lesson planning? Working together before a lesson, that you both conduct, and then you get feedback on how it's gone. Or sharing assessment, how do you look at children's different work within the classroom, whether it's Mathematics or language, or Science? Or any other form of student activity, do you assess that and share assessment with other teachers? For example, at secondary schools, a child might meet a number of different teachers, each for different subjects, and then those different subject teachers connect together and saying look what the child's doing in my class and look what the child's doing in my class and often they're quite different and you find teachers having the discussion: well, I didn't know he or she was capable of that because in my class, that child isn't particularly involved or engaged and not doing very well. So how is it that you're able to get the best out of him or her? This is what is sometimes referred to as deprivatizing practice, opening your own classroom to enquiry. It sends the signal that it's acceptable and desirable to see your colleagues teaching, encouraging an ethos of collaboration, creating a no-blame culture. This is said to be the root of peer and school self evaluation, preparing the fertile ground on which teaching and learning improve and on which schools improve. Here's an example from an English school in which there was what's called a learning wall, and teachers would write on a small post-it and put it up on the wall in the staff room showing what they had achieved. Something they were quite proud of or sometimes, a problem they were encountering, and they were looking for advice or help from their colleagues. It was just a way of sharing both the successes and problems that teachers were facing. Well, as Geroux writes, there is no grand narrative, he says, that can speak for us all. The teachers themselves have to take responsibility for the knowledge they organise, produce, mediate, translate into practice. because otherwise there was a danger that you simply become to be seen as the medium through which the curriculum is delivered, decided elsewhere. All of us is better than one of us and what we know about successful schools, as Lauren Resnick says, the best schools, the most successful schools, are those where people are sharing. Socially shared intellectual work, joint accomplishment of tasks. Every single teacher's ability to function successfully depends on what others do, and how they are able to share their ideas, share their practice, share both their successes and their failures at times. If at first you fail, try again, fail better. So in your school, in your case, think about the nature of the classroom conversations that you have. Who do you talk to and share problems with? Who in your school or in other schools do you share your successes with? Who do you talk with about your own professional development in a way that is open, frank and collaborative? Teachers do need friends. It can be a lonely and tedious activity, as one teacher wrote a number of years ago, behind the doors of your own classrooms or schools, very often which have no doors, but have classrooms in which teachers spend their lives without having that kind of concourse, that kind of dialogue, with their colleagues. Teachers need friends, so a critical friend is one who will sit down with you, agree what you want to do, what you want that person to observe. Discuss a focus if you invite them into your classroom to look. I want you to look specifically perhaps at how I ask questions, I want you to look specifically at the extent to which students in my classroom are engaged. I want you to look at the nature of how they assess themselves, and then we need to find a little time to sit down together and get that feedback and that dialogue, and try to observe the four to one rule, which is four positive things, before you address the negative things. And then you might discuss what might be different. So we talk about resilience and reciprocity. Resilience, being able to rise above the problems, being able to go back, try again, fail better. The reciprocity means what teachers invest in their work and the way they get, in return for that, thanks and recognition that helps them to explain and meet the range of demands and expectations placed on them. Ability to rise to the challenge. So ask yourself now, and think about three things, What am I going to start doing that I didn't do before? What am I going to stop doing? Things I've done for a long time but I don't really need to do. What could I stop doing? And thirdly, what do I know is succesful and productive, and what should I go on doing? And it's the balance among these three, starting, stopping and going on doing, you may want to take time to reflect on that or perhaps with a critical friend, to discuss in your own classroom situation, what that might be, what the balance among those three things might be. [MUSIC]
