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Posts Tagged ‘Westcot’

Words to End the Year . . .

Posted in SD45, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »

words

As the 2015-16 school year comes to a close I want to share the comments of my colleagues in West Vancouver who have been addressing their students moving on – both from elementary to high school and from high school to the post K-12 world.  You can feel the power of the relationships coming through . . .

Principal Judy Duncan at West Bay shared with her grade 7’s just how important elementary school has been for them and what challenges are ahead:

As you embark on the next leg of your learning journey, continue to do your PB (Personal Best). Continue to strive for excellence. Continue to follow your passion and seek that which makes you happy. Join clubs and teams at high school and make new friends, while holding onto the friendships you have developed at West Bay. Get involved in school life. Continue to develop communication skills, collaboration skills and that ever so important emotional resiliency.

Bowen Island Community School Principal Scott Slater reflected on his own grade 7 farewell experience at Caulfeild Elementary School and also about the important roles that both skill set and mindset play:

Your education is partly about skill set – writing skills, reading skills, being able to make use of numbers to solve problems. Your education is also about mindset – how you approach change, how you think about new situations, meeting new people and how you greet opportunity.

At Hollyburn, Principal Tara Zielinski also picked up on the importance of mindset:

You are Thinkers.  You are metacognitive and can explore various ways of knowing and understanding.  You have a ‘growth mind-set’ and acknowledge that making mistakes is sometimes the way we learn and grow.  You make connections between various subject areas and appreciate that our world is forever changing – for the better.  You have ideas to continue to support these positive changes.

The message from Chantal Trudeau Principal at Pauline Johnson, her final address at the school, as she transitions to principal at Chartwell, was focused on integrity:

At the core of a successful educational experience is the virtue of integrity. Make the right choices for yourselves. Knowing your needs as a learner is key to your success in high school and university. Surrounding yourselves with supportive friends is also crucial since it’s much easier to face new challenges when you have a strong network of support, which include your parents and close friends. If you make integrity your core value, you will be able to stay focused on your goals.

Cathie Ratz at Westcot Elementary passed along some advice to parents of soon-to-be high schoolers she once received:

Some of the best advice I ever received as a mother of three beautiful and socially motivated daughters was from a colleague and mother of four.  She told me to never miss an opportunity to tell my girls how much I loved them and also never feel the need to be quick with an answer to their social requests.  “ Let me think about it”  has saved us many a battle and given my girls time to make up their own mind as social plans developed and more often than not changed.

Jeannette Laursoo, Principal of Rockridge Secondary bridged the elementary and secondary school worlds, sharing with the grads comments she found on their grade 7 report cards and how five years later the same attributes hold.

You “continue to be an active participant during group discussions by listening to the opinions of others and contributing your own thoughtful ideas.”

 

You “enjoy challenges and are eager to learn”

 

You have “taken responsibility for yourself as a learner.”

 

You “treat all members of your classroom in a kind, caring, and respectful manner.  You have a strong sense of what is fair and deal with issues in a way that meets the needs of all involved.”

 

You “continued to tap into your creativity both technologically and imaginatively.”

 

You have “demonstrated a willingness to try new things and are comfortable taking risks in your learning.”

 

You have “continued to be a confident leader in the classroom and in the school.”

At West Vancouver Secondary, Steve Rauh focused with the graduating class on their solid relationships:

One of the things that I commonly share about West Vancouver Secondary School is that the students have an incredible amount of pride and respect for themselves, their school, their community, and their world. I expect that you will carry these attributes with you wherever you go.

I trust that you leave here with a series of strong and powerful relationships with both the students in your classes and the adults in the building. Hopefully you have known and felt how we have cared for you and that we have always had your best interests at heart above all else.

Our Secretary-Treasurer Julia Leiterman had the opportunity to address the graduates of Rockridge representing the district, and also as a parent of a graduate:

So if I asked any parent in this room what their greatest hope for you is, I wouldn’t come back with a laundry list of careers.  I can guarantee that the #1 hope we all share is that you are happy.  That’s it – we just want you to have a happy life.  This is not an end goal, it’s how we hope you will live every day.  My sister shared a pretty simple recipe for happiness that works for me, and it only needs 3 ingredients:

  1. Someone to Love
  2. Something to Do
  3. Something to Hope For

So someone to love – don’t be afraid to open your heart.  Honest, loving relationships lived with integrity will bring you great joy.

Something to do – get busy, get working.  Work is not a dirty word; it is the key to finding purpose in your life.  It doesn’t matter what work you do, just throw your heart into it.

Something to hope for – never stop learning, and exploring.  Never stop dreaming.

 

For me, in addressing graduates at our high schools I stressed the important role that graduates play as advocates for public education:

And we, me and everyone else in this room will count on you – to be unwaveringly committed to a strong public education system – the system that has served us well in this room and is the answer to the question about how we build a better world.  At a time when so many in our world are looking inward and dividing people, you need to remind people that it is education that brings us together in a world of fewer walls and stronger citizenship.

We have amazing academic achievements in our community.  It is interesting to see what our leaders are most proud of – it is not the marks they have earned but the people they have become.  I am blessed to continue to serve as Superintendent in West Vancouver. We have something pretty good going here.

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Something That Brings All the Learning Together

Posted in Assessment, Change, Personalized Learning, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 30, 2015| 9 Comments »

http://avaxhome.ws/blogs/igor_lv

You can call it a passion project, a portfolio, a capstone, a demonstration of learning – heck call it anything you want. More and more, as I see these type of expressions of student work at the end of school years or the end of school careers, I am becoming convinced they should be regularly part of our system.  And, in fairness, more and more they are the new normal in our schools.

Just over a decade ago there was a major push to move in this direction with the short-lived Graduation Portfolio.  There are numerous reasons why it was abandoned.  Two lessons I took from the experience, were 1)  at the time the technology was not good enough to do what we wanted in terms of documenting learning and it became a paper-heavy process and 2) a cumulative portfolio or project should not be simply the checking off of boxes as tasks are completed, it needs to be more meaningful.

There are numerous different examples of these demonstrations of learning in West Vancouver schools.  Some of these presentations are built into programs.  We currently have four International Baccalaureate (IB) Programs  in West Vancouver – two at the Primary Years level (PYP), and one at both the Middle Years (MYP) and Diploma levels (DP).  In each of these programs students have a structure to bring their learning together.  In the MYP Program, our Rockridge grade 10 students present an exhibition of their personal projects.

At Westcot Elementary, the Passion Projects represent seven months of exploration,  discovery and learning. Students are given one afternoon each week to pursue any area of interest. Nearly 100 grade 6 and 7 students follow their passions, blog about their progress and ultimately present to the school community in a culminating exhibition. Whether the finished product is a graphic novel, a fundraiser for school supplies for underprivileged children or an animated short film, students are encouraged to reflect upon the process each step of the way.  In this photo ( Credit – Cindy Goodman), Grade 7 student Rory Scott demonstrates the quarter pipe ramp for skateboarding he built for his project.

Westcot elementary passion projects

The most recent version of this type of learning I have seen in action in the Advanced Placement (AP) Diploma.  These grade 11 and 12 students take two courses – AP Seminar and AP Research. These courses see students doing team projects, research based essays, and public presentations – all in a context of student choice.  Students that take and score 3 or higher on 4 AP courses and complete the Seminar and Research course receive the AP Capstone Diploma.  The Capstone Diploma is being piloted in a limited number of Canadian schools, including Sentinel Secondary in West Vancouver.

As we look out over the next five years, it would be wonderful if all of our students get a chance to pull together their learning – ideally at least once in the elementary grades and again during their high school career.  As we work in the system to break down thinking of learning in content based compartments, there needs to be an opportunity for all our students to share their learning across curriculum and from inside and outside of school.

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Dr. Shanker and Self Regulation – Continuing the Conversation

Posted in Change, Health, Parenting, Personalized Learning, SD45, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 19, 2013| 7 Comments »

selfreg

Two of my most popular posts have been about Dr. Stuart Shanker and his work; each post has received well over 10,000 views.  To recap, the first post in November 2010 is here and the second one here  was written in April 2012.

West Vancouver is part of the first wave of school districts in British Columbia, along with Bulkley Valley, Coquitlam, Greater Victoria, Nanaimo and Surrey, who are working together on a project to implement and monitor the impact of self-regulated instructional models.  One of the greatest contributions to date has been a one-stop shop for resources on Self-Regulation (here).

Dr. Shanker’s work is clearly providing inspiration around the province, and we are seeing that in each of our schools in West Vancouver.  While the work models may look slightly different in each school, the impetus of having students in their zone for learning is district-wide.  A number of recent blog posts by some of our district educational leaders support this influence:

Westcot Principal, Liz Hill describes her school’s work with The Zones of Regulation:

We often make the assumption that children know how to identify their emotions, but akin to teaching reading, writing and math, emotional  literacy is a skill that needs to be taught to our children.  The Zones of Regulation framework teaches the language of emotions.  This helps children understand how one’s state of regulation impacts one’s ability to be calm, alert and ready to learn.  Using this framework, students develop  their own personal toolkit of strategies and learn when, how and why to use  strategies to help them  be “good to go” or “ready to do their best learning.”  These self-regulation tools may include breathing techniques, stretching, exercising, reading or simply getting a drink of water.

West Bay Principal, Judy Duncan, describes her school’s efforts to look through a lens of self-regulation:

Self-regulation spans all five domains (biological, cognitive, emotional, social, pro-social) and is really about the burning and recovering of energy.  As Shanker states, “optimal self-regulation requires a child to match his or her energy levels to meet the demands of a situation in a maximally efficient manner.”  More and more research is linking how well students do in school to their ability to self-regulate.  We are seeing this firsthand at West Bay, thus the excitement to improve our practice.

Our school’s Self-Regulation Team meets regularly to discuss how teachers and students can be supported in the quest to maintain self-regulation in the classroom. The team shares its work at staff meetings and in informal conversations; our teachers are keen on deepening their understanding of self-regulation and are open to trying new strategies to support their students. If you were to wander into our Grade Two classroom, you might see some students wearing noiseless headphones, some using cardboard study carrels (they call these “force fields”), others sitting on wiggle cushions, while others may be perched on stools at the side of the classroom.  These seven-year olds are beginning to figure out what they need to help them learn.  This metacognition piece is key.  As one little girl blurted out the other day, “I need to self-regulate!” Being aware of your own emotions and what you need to achieve a state of calm is very powerful!

Lions Bay Vice-Principal, Jody Billingsley, describes a number of ways they are fostering self-regulation including a series of classroom management techniques:

Classroom management techniques that have the children thinking about their levels of arousal when in a lesson.  We have “check ins” where the student self-assesses as to whether she is calmly focused and alert.  We call this level 4 – directly stemming from Shanker’s stages of arousal.  If they are at the level 3 stage (hypoalert) of arousal, they may be daydreaming, whereas at level 5 students may be over-stimulated and not able to focus (hyperalert).  If we see a child that is not at level 4, we give a friendly reminder to “check in” with themselves, or “give themselves a hug” as a way to think about where they are with being calmly focused and alert.  The idea is to have them see when this is occurring, reinforce behaviour with a verbal or non-verbal cue, and eventually watch how the students do this independently.

Irwin Park Principal, Cathie Ratz, has her school focussed on MindUP™ to help students be calm, alert and ready to learn:

It is a family of social, emotional, and attentional self-regulatory strategies and skills developed to cultivate well-being and emotional balance. Based on the notion that intellect does not exist in isolation from emotions,  connections to others or the rest of their bodies, the MindUP™  program is designed to address these components of learning for all students.

By teaching our students about the brain we make them more aware of their own thoughts and emotions. It can also help them to develop the ability to think about thinking, or metacognition. That awareness would then give them better control over their own mind—directing their attention more appropriate, or calming themselves down—in ways that could improve learning.

These are only four stories, but there are stories like these in every school in West Vancouver.  It is often a lament that schools and those who work in them, are slow to change.  Where, three years ago, there was hardly a person in our district who could describe the power and importance of self-regulation, this research now influences how we teach, organize our classes, and how we think about our buildings in every corner of the district.

Finally, I encourage you to spend some time with the wonderful resources being collected as part of the newly revamped website in support of the  Canadian Self-Regulation Initiative.

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Stories – From Current Reality to Possible Future

Posted in Change, Personalized Learning, SD45, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 16, 2012| 6 Comments »

I am trying to become a better storyteller.  While some may still believe our way to a new educational model will come through government policies and proclamations, the more likely successful route is through the development and sharing of educational models for a possible future. The models we develop and share can, and will, serve as guides as we move away from the current educational reality.  And, there is an appetite for evolution and transformation — almost everyone I speak with, be it student, parent, teacher or administrator, is excited about what is possible — call it 21st century learning, personalized learning, or just “learning”.

The power, then,  is in the thousands of edu-bloggers sharing their stories; the stories that lay the ground work for others to seek their paths to the future. There isn’t just ‘one way’ to the possible future with education and schooling, and it is also the reason why we need so many voices, (at times, seemingly at odds with one another) to offer a range of paths toward what is possible. The next education system will not come in a binder, it will come from teachers, schools and districts embracing new opportunities to grow and create more ‘new’ stories in our schools than there are ‘old’ stories.  As mentioned in my previous post, the system will become increasingly flexible at every level, and the role of education leaders will be to knit these stories and network together.

I have previously cited Dean Shareski (here) and what he describes as narrative champions.  In finding ways to become a narrative champion, Dean writes about subscribing. In West Vancouver, I see this happening as more people subscribe to the Principals’ Blogs (receiving alerts as new posts are published). He describes the retelling of stories, and something I try to do on a semi-regular basis through blogging, and as we also do through the district website and other venues.  Finally, he lists the recording of stories — and this is something we need to become better at — finding ways for those who do not have a public voice to share their learning, teaching and their messages more widely. I have also found Steven Johnson’s book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation to be very influential reading with the notion that radical innovation is very accessible for those who are able to cultivate it by stitching together the ideas of many.

Here is a short animated summary of the book:

In my bid to become a better storyteller, I will be adding three more stories that will continue to weave the West Vancouver story and build paths to the future. The three different, but equally strong, presentations at the April 10th West Vancouver Board of Education meeting included Zoltan Virag sharing what he is doing with iPads in Music (click on the link to find some fabulous iPad music resources) at Irwin Park Elementary School. Then, Jody Billingsley shared (his blog post here) his presentation on the ripples of influence of Lions Bay Community School, in the school, community, and in the world, with the final story of the evening from Liz Hill, Ryan Loewen and Amelia Poitras who shared some exciting findings from their first year of using Fast ForWord at Westcot Elementary.

Some of the most important skills of the digital age, are time-tested, but the power in telling stories has not only stood the test of time, it is more important in this age than ever.

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