Was Inspired

It was a Special Day for me yesterday.
I get inspired again after many days......

I was moved to see the little ones dance to hip music...
I was happy to see many government schools being highlighted on their various innovations to develop our pupils....
I was delighted when the applause gets louder when we see Northlight School gets the ODA ( Character Award)...... This shows strong recognition amongst fellow colleagues within the fraternity
I was excited that networking helps in getting assistance in curriculum.....
I was heartened that the speech touches on the matters on the grounds, to the hearts of the pupils and teachers....
Two words that caught my ears during the satellite sessions. "Thinking skills", "communication skills"
I was proud to see my ex-student, a National shooter on the slides in the closing speech.
Did I transform lives? I guess I did... in different ways, on different students. Not that I worked towards that as a goal but it just happened. The hard work was worth it.

These words keep ringing in my head now..... student centric, values driven education.....

I was watching "The X Factor" just now.... And what glued me to the TV, was not the performance of the participants.... It was the Audience and the Judges.... how they supported, lifted and embraced the human spirit in that show....  
And I am very sure the talented participants who were from disadvantaged background is going to spur themselves forward even more... with all the validations that they get.
Affirmations. That's what everyone wants and is a great driving factor.

It is without doubt that in driving values  and character education, the pupils will be more self driven and self directed to push themselves harder towards higher goals.

Moral Literacy. Moral Identity. Embracing the Human Spirit.

Now, how do I get them to get there?

Leadership

I have always been in awe (in fear to be precise) of the word "Leadership".

Two weeks ago, a speaker, Mr Viswa Sadasivan, CEO of Strategic Moves Pte Ltd, at the 3rd Educators' Summit, left a very deep impression in me. I believe he has captivated the whole auditorium of participants.
The title of his talk was "Leadership Role in Crisis Communication". He illustrated his points with how the respective leaders responded at events such as the MI185, SQ006 air crash, BP and Exxon Valdez oil spills and one of Johnson & Johnson's crisis.
The main points that keep ringing in my head:

• composure & clarity
• moral compass
• putting others before self
• strategic thinking 
• confidence vs faith
• adversity quotient

Clutter must be gotten rid of to have space to think, strategise and lead. Leaders are being put to high scrutiny as they are expected to be accountable and one of integrity. Every word that a leader says, every action he takes spells a lot about his ethos. Leaders must use his moral compass to make judgement calls and do the right things. Takes responsibilities; not to lay blames. This way faith in the leader is being built. Viswas has wisely differentitiated the words "confidence" and "faith"

confidence = sure of the person's competence in doing things right.
faith = trust in the person in doing the right things

Viswa has illustrated in one of J&J crisis that because of the leader's action in doing the right thing. This has led to public faith in the company which help the company survived another similar crisis years later as the public gives the company the benefit of doubt.

Surely, there is no instructional manual on how to be a leader. It takes a lot of moral courage and high adversity quotient to do the right thing. I cannot expect everyone to listen to / follow me but I need to stick to my guts when the judgement calls needs to be made. I think that is the most difficult part. On hindsight, in my earlier teaching career, I was not afraid to "bang tables" when needed. But as I grow older, I seem to lose that courage a bit... or is it because I have shifted focus?
A leader also have to withhold emotions that will block logical thinking.

In every sense of the word "leadership", one has to rise to the occasion and exhibit all the qualities as stated above. A leader has to to be constantly critical of self and keep improving himself for respect and the larger good of the organisation. A leader has to become a being larger than self. I think that is what's driving the fear in me about leadership. To become a much better and powerful person than myself. To stretch the limits of human potential.

However, I strongly believe that moral leadership is a must in every leader. We can see many examples of leaders who failed, lack moral leadership. Viswa believe that moral leadership is an innate ability. It can be and must be developed. I think so too.

To sum it up,
"easier said than done"
But I will keep trying. So what do my team mates think of me?
Do they have confidence in me? or do they have faith in me?
I would like to believe it's the latter.

There is another thing that Viswa said that struck me and I want to record it here.
Personal conduct is a reflection of his ethos and that of his organisation.
Principals have to be very careful with what they say in media. Because of public perception, his/ her words will be representative of his/ her school and all principals!!!
How true!
This spells out why I have been struggling with certain issues about professional conduct!
Likewise, a teacher's conduct will be a reflection of his/ her ethos and that of the school in the eye of the public (parents).

Managing new projects

The following words from Mr Peter Seah, our trainer in facilitation, shook me: "A facilitator need not be a content expert. The expert knowledge lies within the team members and the facilitator's job is to sieve all that out."
I want be a facilitative leader in the Curriculum Development Unit. However, I realised that neither me nor my team members has the expert knowledge on curriculum design. No wonder I feel inadequate in leading the team.
Upon that reflection, I approached Peter for his advice. To my awe, he is able to find out my challenges and issues that I face by asking me questions. The Power of Questioning!
In short, he summarised that I face 3 issues:
1.  clarity in the project outcomes
2. Project management ( creating the timeline for the project cycle, roles and responsibilities and boundaries and limitations, small trials hence successes)
3. (I cannot remember what he said ...;p)

Anyway, I agreed with him that many KPs are not trained in project management. He volunteered to help me facilitate a few sessions for me (F.O.C.)to help me resolve the above 3 issues. And Mr Chin gave his blessing that we engage Peter's help.

I also have a "selfish" agenda; to learn from Peter the way to facilitate a team to kick a project that is going unchartered path.

So far, this is what i have observed in the 1st session:
The basic process involve:
1.  The use of "Open Space" as a tool to get the team members to warm up to putting down facts and sharing ideas. The topic is putting down the various events on the timeline... is cleverly used to help us see trend in the changes in education along side with changes in society and global issues.
2. Then the use of ORID for the conversation on the open space.
Objective – fact finding
Reflective – emotional reactions (I learnt that projects can fail because of this not voiced up and handled)
Interpretative – meaning & impact
Decisional – identify actions or decisions

Through clever questioning based on the above 4 purpose, he drew out concerns, issues, challenges, limitations from us.

3. During the conversation, he helped us map all our responses on a contextual diagram which he said will be useful in coming up with the project framework and boundaries.

There after, the project timeline / cycle can be created. And this will be carried out next Thursday.

Throughout the whole facilitation process, he asked clarifying and critical questions  in the hope that we clarify our project outcome/ objective. For example, what kind of skills are we looking at? the ones that help pupils to pass O level well? or the ones that can help pupils survive beyond school education?

In some ways, I feel that he has posed his questions in a way that we get to a certain answer that he wants.... probably because he is also a stake holder himself as he is also a parent.

On retrospect, i am aware of the concerns and issues during my previous meeting with my members. But I didn't document it down and work on it to see and set the boundaries. Partly because I do not know how to. And this session gets me to hear more from my other members. I must give credit to Ashley for her candid and honest responses and comments about education, skills and pupils.
I will try and apply these facilitation process when I start other new projects.
Now I am eagerly looking forward to learn from Peter how to ask good questions. He will consolidate his thoughts and share with us and our teachers to help us engage our pupils in their thinking.
I think that will help us in many other areas too, mentoring and coaching etc.

What are my Big Rocks?

I like the sharing by Fredrick about the PD lessons on Big Rocks.
As I am still adjusting to a new phase in my life, I realised that I am not as productive as before. And I cannot function properly if I have less than 6 hours of sleep the night before (not like when I was younger). That sharing got me thinking. Have I set my big rocks?

Here is my reassessment.
My previous Big Rocks has become small rocks. I have yet to rank my Rocks!

And I thank you Thiam Lye for that article on Big Rocks on his Blog.
For each week, these are my Big Rocks in decreasing order of Size.
1. Caring for and Educating my Baby (The most important being in my life now)
2. Duties of a Classroom Teacher ( I am first and foremost a teacher in school, my position is secondary)
3. Time with Hubby.
4. Facilitative leader in Curriculum Development (I have contributed to the CCA results (Shooting Club), O level Sci/ Chemistry results. Now I want to leave behind another legacy)
5. My Role as a People Developer.
6. My role as mentor to Beginning Chemistry Teachers (I want to leave behind as much of my knowledge of chemistry teaching as possible)
7. My Role as a daughter.
8. My personal well being (facia/ SPA/ Exercise) (This is a smaller rock. Sad but true for most teachers)

Still.... what set of skills???

Finally,
We have come to the stage of compiling the lists of skills after distilling them from the various CPDD curriculum guide. It is not meaningful if we are just accumulating the skills on one list.
How to make it meaningful to the teachers?
We tried looking at the 21st century skills to see if we can have some broad strands that we can use and then compiling the list according to those strands. But even then I realised that we have a few problems during our discussions.
1.   We have problem distinguishing between tools and skills. We are not specialists who have in depth knowledge of the curriculum, skills, knowledge, tools, etc.
2.   The terminologies used in the different subjects may not literally mean so. Eg. Investigation in science is totally different from investigation in History.
3.   Some of these strands or skills do overlap each other. Eg, thinking skills and communication skills. A substantial amount of comprehension skill, analytical skills etc is need to perform good communication skills.

So how about just compiling the thinking skills (based on Blooms Taxonomy) across the various departments? Then skills like managing information, communication skills are just ways of exhibiting the thinking skills *.

After having a brief look at an article on Blooms Taxonomy and the skills distilled from the CPDD curriculum guide, it seems that all the subjects would have covered all the thinking skills, based on my assumption above *.
Then why are the students not applying the thinking skills across?
Is it because the higher order thinking skills are not explicitly taught in the school?
Is it because the teachers are competent enough to teach the higher order thinking skills? (me included)
Is it because the students need to be explicitly shown the linkage and cross application of skills?

Only when we have the key leverage question, then the curriculum development team can gear towards the right direction to help. No answer yet.
We have to research more and talk to more people before we can synthesize the ideas.

But one good idea that the team came up with is that a suggested list of tools is to be given for each skill, so that the teachers will find that list complete and useful for implementation.

What skills to look at?

What is curriculum? It varies in different countries.

To me, curriculum is a binding cycle of Content(knowledge, skills and attitudes), Assessment of these intended content to be learnt and Pedagogy/ programes that allows the content to reach out to the pupils.
Assessment should be aligned to the content or intended learning outcome.

Through the process of talking to various Head of Departments, teachers and VP, I begin to have many doubts in my curriculum development work this year.....
1.  all departments has documents from CPDD and SEAB. However, the learning outcomes that are listed in the SEAB's documents is not exactly aligned to the CPDD's. At the very least, some of the skills suggested by CPDD are not tested.
2.   Most departments focus on the SEAB's learning outcomes as that is one of our core business; to help our pupils to pass with flying colours at O level exams. SOWs are crafted out based on the SEAB's documents. Hence the CPDD's document in these departments are often ignored.
3.   C2015 and 21st century competencies will be the next wave of focus. They are not really something new. They are skills that many teachers knew are important and had subtly delivered in some lessons here and there. More conscious efforts needed to teach these skills on top of delivering content knowledge. Are our teachers up to it, within this few years? The delivery of content and the SEAB's learning outcome will remain as our key focus for the next few years to come as we need to get better O level results.
4.  for the same skill, the assessment criteria is different for different subject. For example, the requirements in drawing of graphs in maths, physics and chemistry is different. The various subject teachers holds the expertise on how best to teach their subject, not me.

Seeing all the above factors, how can I value add to the school's curriculum to benefit the teachers and pupils? I was naive and ambitious with my intitial intention to audit school's set of skills that is actually being taught against the ideal set of skills based on the C2015 and 21st century competencies. To add on to the challenge, the skills set in C2015 and 21st century competencies are not clearly spelled out yet.
The last thing I want to see, is the hard work of my team members go to waste in the end as their work is not useful to the teachers and pupils.

I have come to this conclusion at this point. My team members and I will gather the ideal set of skills that comprise of the essential skills ( from the CPDD and SEAB documents) that will help them pass the O levels as well as some core skills derived from the 21st century competencies that we deem as very important.
Then we start to audit our school's set of skills actually taught against this ideal set.

Another Random observation and thoughts

SRP, starting next week.
Teachers told to select pupils based on diagnostic tests.
But why?
If SRP is a means to help close the learning gap (AfL, 3rd question), the "diagnostic" (AfL 2nd question) should be done at the end of last year.
Since SRP is an ongoing thing for every year,
If the SOW is a continuous flow from sec 3 to 4, and
If the end of year exam was analysed in a certain way (itemised, etc),
the key topics for revision during SRP for the can be structured and planned out. The students for SRP would have been selected by the end of the previous year.

Dream Potter - Are You One?

I have a weakness.

I always cry when I see another human being being abused or disadvantaged. My heart always goes out to the less fortunate. I was crying while watching Dream Potter on channel 8. I was sad when I see that one's dream cannot be fulfilled within his ability. I was touched when I see the kind hearted souls come forward to lend a helping hand and fulfill his dreams.

Everyone has dream. Everyone has plans for the future. Every parent has high hopes and big plans when their babies were born and wants the best in everything for their child. I can really understand this after my dear Nicole is born. So when I searched for an infant care centre for her, I made sure that it is a care centre that I can trust and put my heart at ease while I am away working. I chat with the care givers at the centre to check their knowledge in caring for infants and observed how they work as a team to take care of the babies.

Trust is something that the parents give when they send their children to our school (either by choice or not). So what will ensure that this trust exists or sustain? When the parents know that their children are in good hands. Meaning, good facilities, good educational programs and more importantly care givers who have sound knowledge of teaching and learning, care givers of good moral standing who are good role models for their children. Not much different from choosing an infant care centre, isn't it?
Since trust is bestowed upon the staff in the school, the staff should be the children's dream potters. But have all of us been truely the children's dream potters?
"With great powers come great responsibility". I truely felt this way today due to an incident in school. That is another story.
We know we are dream potters when we feel worn out at the end of the day, when we bring a smile to their face, when they are able to pursue their dreams when they leave school, when they continue to further study the subjects that we taught.
We fail to be dream potters when we stop reflecting deeply on our teaching practice, when we stop mentoring and grooming the young teachers, when we act in contradiction to our core values, when we stop encouraging them when the children falls, when we see them cry at the release of results.

Have you been a dream potter today?

Random Observations and Thoughts

While working on the teacher's load in preparation for the relief duties, I realised that one third of our teachers are heavily loaded. All our beginning teachers are heavily loaded according to the MOE guidelines. To date, we have a lot of young teachers. This is not very healthy as there may not be passing on of good teaching and learning strategies to these teachers, their content knowledge may not be very strong and their fire may fizzle out very fast.
If these continues, the body of knowledge of teaching and learning within the school may not be as rich and it may spiral downwards.
They must have good mentors and these mentors must be told their responsibilities to getting the teachers acclimatised to our school culture as well as keeping their fire burning.

It is painful to see my hard work goes to waste. But upon reflection, I realised that I must not be the only one clear about it's objectives and rationale.  The ones using, the one executing must be clear too. And of course the high utility will follow. If nobody is using, then forget it.
For my new team, I must bear that in mind and for my new work, I must make it user friendly. And lucky me, I have a good team who constantly seek clarity of the work involved and the whys....