Building Communities Online

I recently presented at Canopy Live on building communities online. This is a session I trimmed down from a full day's training that Dr Lou Mycroft and myself offer colleges and schools ( happily discuss more about this with anyone interested, anytime).

“Students said they were more likely to engage when they felt that staff valued them, were reliable and consistent in their engagement with online work, and had set up effective support measures.” 

(Palmer et al., 2017)

I purposefully include this from 2017 as I think anything pre pandemic is interesting. Not that what we learnt in the pandemic isn't interesting, but I like to highlight that online teaching happened pre pandemic and we learnt a LOT from that time too.

I don't think this quote is telling us anything unusual. Students want to feel valued. We all do. That is the practice of care (if you ever spend time with Dr Mycroft you will hear her speak to this often) that is education. How do we show students we care? What conditions for them to excel do we create? When teaching online how do we check in?

Also at Canopy Live was the wonderful Cat Lamin. She shared about how important it is to check in on others and your own mental health. She used this duck scale to ask us how we were.

What I like about the duck scale is that it is open to all, everyone can relate to the stages. This is one type of check in, there are others. What is important though is that we check in. I tweet regularly that the algorithms on social media show you what it thinks you want to see. To build community you have to go beyond the algorithm. Seek out people to connect with, topics that interest you. Scrolling isn't the way to build community on social media. Active dialogue is. Engaging with others, seeking voices different to yours to learn from. We rely a lot on platforms to deliver what we need. Think about a VLE. It shows you what you want to see, who has done the work and when. What it doesn't show you (instantly, agree that this is possible with back channels and extra interventions) is how the work went for students? How did they feel? Was it appropriately challenging? That's the human conversational part that we need to add in as an extra to our work. Likewise on Twitter, it delivers the information it is required to deliver. Scrolling until your hearts content, but the human interaction and connection is the work that you have to do.

If you are serious about building communities online, you might want to consider checking in, with a duck or without. The feeling of value you will show another in doing so cannot be underestimated.

Once you have checked in, how do you let students know that you value them throughout the lesson? I am reminded of a colleague who was once upset that a student failed to acknowledge her lovingly crafted feedback on each page of a students work. The student wanted to know the grade and what to do to improve in summary and disregarded hours of teacher feedback. Had the teacher asked what feedback the student had wanted there would have been a different outcome. Think yellow box marking where one section of yellow boxed work is marked intently. I have seen this include students self selecting the section to be marked also. The student has owned their work and indicated that they only require this section to be marked. The teacher marks that section with the level of feedback the student has asked for. Recognising whole college and school policies often dictate how we mark, but I think there are elements in this that can work and I have seen work well.

Teaching online, we can replicate this by indicating the yellow box. But that verbal feedback as we would traditionally circulate the room are slightly trickier. Sure we can verbally offer feedback, perhaps not whole class and maybe in breakout rooms? My go to technique is to use comments in student work live. I take a helicopter view of one slide deck. Each slide has the task, space for student work and each student's name on top. I then share one doc with the class with edit rights. Version history helps reinforce my expectations of etiquette and respect for others work in the doc. Each student navigates to their slide in the deck and works. I can see the colour code for each student as they work. I can then add comments live.

I can toggle my view to grid view (slide sorter view in PowerPoint) and see everyone working at once. I can see work appear live and dive in to slides where I think students might need help. Students feel safe to contribute, we have established expectations and I have reminded them of version history. Students feel valued that I can give them feedback quietly and as I would if I were circulating the room. Students could see each others work in the room normally, online they can too. If this were an issue for my students I would maybe move this quick, instant verbal feedback I am replicating online to Google Chat or private comments to students. I am showing students that I value their work and I am supporting them in their learning. We are all connected and building a learning community online.

Referring back to the initial quote, the value students perceive is also in expectations and support. Backchannel chats are a supportive measure my students enjoy. Our backchannel is via Google Chat. Students can privately message me live with how they are feeling, issues, ideas and I can support. Something like Backchannel Chat is also appropriate. That immediate support of knowing that your teacher is there and will be able to help is an effective support in itself, just the knowing. My students mainly share emojis at the level of challenge they are experiencing and my job is to support them to overcome that fear or work through it to achieve their potential in that class. This is time consuming and mentally taxing for me as a teacher, but since when was teaching not either of those things? We do what we need to do to help our students. I find setting a self marking activity for the class useful whilst I manage the back channel at key points in the lesson invaluable. Otherwise students would be left looking at my thinking face whilst I manage all the communication modes.

The Uphill Struggle

 The marking stacks up, the need to make sure your tracking and data input is up to date, internal verification sampling, chasing non attenders, pastoral admin, this is just a snippet of the roles teachers play before they even get to think about planning and delivery of learning to students. Teacher workload is spoken about all the time but little seems to be done about this challenge. There have been initiatives and reports but has the finding of these made their way to the frontline? The huge increase in 2020 for digital online teaching has left teachers on their knees in many cases. But, could this move be the answer to reducing teacher workload and making the profession more sustainable?  

I would describe teaching in the further education sector as constantly being in the path of a tornado. Tornadoes generally have wind speeds up to 110 mph. You can see them due to the condensation funnel they travel for a few miles and then disappear. This metaphor I believe is a good way to describe the ever changing landscape of FE, the new initiatives with some sticking and some disappearing after a few miles. This constant change, pressure and lack of time to adapt causes many teachers to take a long hard look at their jobs and go “is this really for me?”

Tornado alley is a term penned to parts of North America such as Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana where tornadoes occur most frequent. Teaching in FE is somewhat like living in one of these states, you know the weather can be unpredictable and at certain times of the year your home could incur damage or be destroyed thanks to mother nature. Although an extreme example, the pressure that FE teachers face at different times of the year is quite immense. This year the use of technology and blended learning has provided the latest tornado, but this one isn't going away and actually we need to learn to live with it.

 

Perhaps the biggest challenge we all face, not just teachers is a lack of perceived time. This has been dramatically increased this year due to the requirement to plan, teach and deliver online learning. But as a result how much innovation do you think has occurred? Teachers trying things they might never have tried before and potentially failing and trying something new again. Amazing. Technology really can be our extra pair of hands if we know what's out there and how we can leverage it to our advantage. Moving away from the fear and resistance to make it work properly and developing our knowledge working with it in partnership. The road isn't smooth and there will be lots of challenges. 

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

Henry Ford

The celebration of the volume of innovation in my own opinion has been overlooked throughout 2020. There has been so much great adaptation and practice to the way we deliver learning it's like ten years rolled into one. So could this new found innovation and practices support teachers on managing their workload in the long term? I believe the answer has to be yes….. And I will tell you why.

When you learn to drive, let's be honest it's tough. Most of us would have been passengers in a car but there is nothing quite like getting behind the wheel for the first time. 10mph feels like you are driving a racing car; it's such a weird feeling. After years of driving it becomes second nature you don't have to think about what you are doing, your subconscious basically does the job. Have you had one of those journeys where you arrive at your destination and you remember nothing of the journey? At present many teachers find themselves at the learning to drive stage. We have gone through various amounts of lessons, we might have also completed our hazard perception and now we are looking forward to the test. Everything is a process, getting our heads around new ways of working, learning and living will of course take time, provide us many barriers and challenges but as a result help us grow. As with every new skill the key to mastery is consistent practice and self discipline. It is key we maintain the progress made as I believe the use of technology will have the greatest impact on making teacher workload sustainable.

If you have read any of John Maxwell's books on leadership you may have come across his uphill and downhill metaphor. Uphill is very hard, it's challenging and everyday we have to take a few steps in that direction, tackling head on the challenges before us. Downhill is easy, we can slide away with very little effort required. But if we slide down hill we lose all of our uphill progress. Now, for many, times are hard, it's a challenge we may even hate it, but it is forcing us to grow and develop. We must continue the uphill struggle, because when we get to the top the view is magnificent.  

The next 12-18 months will be key to our uphill struggle. Teachers who are confident with digital tools are going to need to work with colleagues to support them and their upskill up the hill. The driving instructors to the learners. Together is better, learning is messy but many hands will make light work on the clear up. If the digital capabilities of teachers improves, it is my belief so will the ability to develop working practices and save time in administration and workload that occurs outside of the classroom. There is so much information and resources out there that there is almost too much. My advice to teachers would be to look at what you know and what you think would benefit you in your journey up the hill. Talk it over with a colleague, ask for help, open the door on your practice and reap the rewards. 

The tornados will keep appearing in FE, who knows what the next ones might be, but over time we can predict, monitor and overcome these challenges. Working together is key and making sure we do not start sliding down the hill. Let's keep talking, working with one another, sharing our uphill struggles and keep moving towards the summit.

Thanks for reading.  

The muzzle effect

Let me start by saying, I am not being muzzled but I recognise some of this and wanted to share my thoughts. I blogged about #JoyFE and the power of communities of practice. Then I was presented with my cringe question..."yeah...and so what?" I cringe because it is so powerful. If you don't have an answer that you 100% believe whenever you answer "yeah...and so what?" it quickly becomes clear that there are flaws in your thinking and you cringe! But I do 100% believe in #JoyFE and communities of practice so this should be easy to answer for me, and it was. But for another member of the group they talked about feeling muzzled. Instantly it cut right to the core. I know that feeling, I have experienced that muzzle before in education. 

Have you ever been on a training day, teach meet or an event and felt a buzz from it? The enormity of the power you now have with the new skill or idea you have just learned pulsing through your veins. You can't wait to get back to work and get started! Then someone pops your balloon. Perhaps now isn't the time for your department to try this. Perhaps someone tried it before and it failed. The muzzle is that someone has stopped your buzzing pulsing idea because they don't have the appetite or they are treating you with mistakes from the past that they expect you to make. They have judged your idea and it is going nowhere. 

In this scenario I ask one question. Who's responsibility is it to drive the change that you want to make? The person applying the muzzle or yours? If it is your idea and you 100% believe in it then try it. Obviously never go against rules/procedures or do anything that will get you into trouble. Try to negotiate the time and space to try your idea, short term, one group, one lesson, one starter activity. Whatever the size you can negotiate that is the win and the starting point. From there you can learn and build.

Imagine you try an idea and it gets stuck. It dies. No one joins in. You make a mistake. The muzzle is then applied by others to you or from you to yourself. Again, who is responsible for this idea? If you believe in it 100% drive the change, be the change. Now this is easy to say from here but one thing I can think of that may help you at all stages of trialling ideas is a community, a collective or a support network. Take your school or college blinkers off and look external for these people as they will bring fresh ideas to your thinking as to how best to remove the muzzle. If they are from the same team as you they may also have a muzzle and then you have a whole bunch of muzzles to remove! 

You may naturally have this network through participants from the event that gave you the original idea. I was never a fan of swapping phone numbers at meetings or events but I always do now. I collect a network of people who may want to try the idea that I have in their place of work and together we can muddle through. You may find this network to support you via Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. You may see someone posting and like their trail of thought. Connect, don't just like and scroll through, retweet, follow, send a DM, be personal! You may find this network through a community of practice that meets in certain spaces. Don't be afraid of asking for an invitation to groups you see and think I would love to know more. Generally people are welcoming and supportive and, if I am honest a group or collective that is a clique and doesn't welcome new people in isn't somewhere I would want to be and I doubt you are missing much from such a closed set.

Now if you do find yourself in a community of practice you may find yourself with more ideas and things to try more regularly and your community is called upon more often to help you remove the muzzle. There is no shame in this but it would be nice if those applying the muzzle gave you a little more room. I never understand the idea behind applying the muzzle. If someone wants to try something new, one of 2 things will happen. 1 the new idea will be brilliant and everyone will be happy. Or 2 the new idea fails but everyone learnt from the experience. To me this is a win win, hence why I don't understand why you would ever apply the muzzle. SJ

Communities of Practise

Reflecting on my frustrations at the quality of recent reading material. See my post on wider reading. I began seeking out opportunities for real. No longer do I want to read or see what a good one looks like, I want to read or see what happened, what we hope to happen and how we make changes in the classroom. Boring I know, actual real teaching. This led me to join JoyFE. JoyFE is a collective of FE practitioners looking for the everyday joy in what happens in FE. And let's be honest, the whole concept of FE is joyful. Further education (FE) in it's very nature is one of the most welcoming education experiences around. No matter what age and stage you are in life or education FE welcomes you in. Vocational, traditional academic subject or workplace upskill FE has an option for you. So by it's very nature, once you are openly welcomed you can't help but feel the joy.

Like many things though waters get muddy and there are times where FE has lost its way. Time pressures, OFSTED pressures, results pressures and everything in between mean that sometimes FE isn't as joyful as it should be. I remember the day I joined JoyFE. I messaged the wrangler of the joyful rabble, the unbelievably strong and brilliant Lou Mycroft. When I messaged Lou I said "I need to get back to thinking about why we do what we do". And I stand by it. At the time I was lost in a distance blended learning delivering planning storm. I was CAG ing students and the whole word was in lockdown, or so it felt. The joy of being in FE had disappeared for me.

Joining the joyful rabble collective I popped into the ideas room. If you are unaware of the thinking environment then Lou is your lady and she can give you a great insight. The ideas room gave me an energy like I hand't experienced in a long time. A virtual collective supportive hug from a group of strangers had made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Now I have been lucky in that my boss has twice weekly checked in as a team and on individuals since lock down. I have felt connected but the ideas room was different. It was different because there were no limits. This group were and are in a mission to make change. Not just for them but for everyone.

Colleges across the country have little gemstones of members of JoyFE. Practitioners who hold people, thoughts, feelings and joy at their heart. Joyful moments celebrated as a collective. Difficult decisions thought through and discussed as a collective. And that's how the joy starts. The collective nature of the joy spread through you and you can't help but feel energised. Then you feel empowered to make a change and change yours and others ways of looking at problems. Take my stress about CAG. CAG is CAG. We have never been asked to do it before. We are all trying our best. The joy is that we are trying to help students in the best way we can in the circumstances we have found ourselves in. Once I was able to accept that and recognise the joy the stress dissipated.

A community of practice enables me to hear the real, see the real and actually talk to the people living the real. A perfect example is the COVID impact on the beauty teaching staff members of my community of practice. I thought CAG was bad. Imagine having cohorts of learners legally blocked from completing their course. How do you keep those learners engaged waiting for the latest COVID update? Imagine going to work in full PPE just to help keep those learners engage and deliver part of your course. Through the community of practice I hear these stories. I see the photos. I learn how motivation can be created even in the darkest of times. I can then put it into my practice. Even though subjects are wildly different, there are elements I can learn and embed into my teaching. This is the joy of a community of practice and the joy of FE.

Blended and distance learning planning stress kept coming in waves. Staff were panicked. How would delivery work, what would delivery be, how much work was needed. Listening to others experiences in JoyFE, collaborating on working through scenarios. Evolving ideas and creating visions made all the stress fade away for me. The joy is that we will be back. We will be back educating. We will be back building relationships with students. The joy is that we can together share best practice and learn. The joy is that we can build opportunities to develop our own digital skills at a pace suitable for us. No one is expecting every lesson to be perfect. And if we hold onto the joy of that and reflect, no one ever did. SJ

Changing education

There are few things I love more than hearing laughter of children, my own or others! The babies who laugh at peek a boo all the way from the tips of their toes to the older ones who fall about laughing after humpty dumpty. The bit I love most though is that pause just before. That anticipation with your face covered before you reveal a boo. The sharp intakes of breathwaiting for you say humpty had a great.......... Fall!!! Magical, all of it!!!

Children grow and humpty falls even more, all the way until he is a memory. Other things steal those moments, school, revision, sports, devices, friends and we move on seeking new ways to connect. We move on from being the sole carer of our child to part of a collective team of teachers, sports leaders and family who all contribute to shaping our child. It's a team we didn't choose, similar to our workplace teams but here we have no manager or leader. I'm not sure it's an effective team, do we have regular team meetings about the best way forward? Do have a shared road map of where we are all heading? The end goal is the same for every child though, achieve your best grades at GCSEs, the start is when humpty fades away and the bit in the middle zig zags around. Have we, as guardians, appointed ourselves as team leader? Have we, as educators, appointed ourselves to a senior role? If so do we check in regularly on the rest of the team and how they are getting on?

Parents evenings are not enjoyable things. As a parent and a teacher I find them awful. As a parent I go with a list of questions and seek answers to them all but struggle to fit them in in my 3 minute slot. As a teacher I find myself repeating my comments through no fault of anyone other than you can't say a lot of personal things in 3 minutes and go through recent and future assessment data. Does every child need a parents evening though? I know there is a judgement made on parents who don't engage, I once heard a head of year say "nah don't worry about it her mum doesn't bother mate stick her in detention with the other one if you can't work out whose to blame" (!) but I can't help wonder if some parents, like me, find them awful and not of value so that's why they don't engage? I could easily be one of those parents. I find it easier to email 3 or 4 times across the school year my question list. I keep it in my phone and as one is resolved or healed by time or one pops into my head I can update my list. I therefore don't need to go to parents evening. If my child's work was on display or there was a performance by the students I would love to go! But to go just to gather assessment information is not reason enough. 

I am my children's appointed team leader. I do check in regularly and gather information for teachers, sports coaches and other parents. I know how well or not so well they are doing academically. I know how well or not so well they are doing in managing their friendship groups. I know when the next big fixture is and what coaching looks like until that deadline. If I have a question about any of these areas, I will ask. That's the beauty of email, I can instantly send my enquiry and at the teacher or caches convenience they can reply. Technology enables teachers to share videos of the way they explain red words in phonics and I can learn it at home to support my children. Technology enables drills and sessions to be captured by the football coach, so when it's bad weather we can drill passing or sprinting indoors too. Technology enables me to be in a group chat with other parents and if I have wind of an incident I can investigate even out of hours. Technology connects my team, my team management has moved on since my parents managed my team for me. Have parents evenings? Or do they follow the same linear pattern of my childhood?

As a child I would eagerly await parents evenings. For no other reason than there would be a takeaway for tea! My parents knew I was doing well academically, they knew I was fluent in Spanish, they saw M! me do some homework. They knew I was in trouble for answering back but they didn't know why or what was happening. Not because they didn't care but because there was no email, no phone call, no texts. There was an annual written report and 2 parents evening a year and at those 3 parental contact points there was nothing happening at that moment. Parents evenings are like a snapshot, a balance sheet of the child at that moment. Is it useful to see that snapshot? It's not possible to reflect on a whole terms activities in 1 parents evening. It's not realistic for SLT to expect teachers to do that either. With the age of technology, is there not a better way, a way to communicate regularly and effectively with parents? 

My end goal for my team is to help my children reach their potential in their exams. I am not passionate about extending the classroom at home, I add value in other ways to my team. We bake, we cook, we sing, we play, we read for pleasure. I don't sit battering the curriculum into their heads, sorry! I rely heavily on school to help them prepare and deliver content. The assessment at the end of this content delivery also falls to school, I will not be forcibly preparing my children, we will continue to play and sing, this time I am not sorry! Yet I'm not sure the exam is the best assessment for my child. If this was a workplace team I would organise a meeting to come up with alternative ideas. Yet how do I address this with my team? What are my options? If I stand screaming in school about exams being unfair, teachers will unconsciously or consciously form opinions of me and ultimately my child. If I remove them from the school system, what are my choices? None!!!! Wait, let's pause, hang on a minute.... I can legally educate them out of a traditional school setting and be their teacher, but I cannot assess them? I cannot say how they should be assessed, we must all sit the same linear exam? 

In a world of topsy turvy thinking there are some immovables. I'm not against a linear exam. I teach maths. I'm not against everyone sitting the same exam. I'm a parent. I want a fair and equal world for all. But, I can change and influence every aspect of my child's education if I so choose to home school but I must still enter them into the same exam. At some point someone decided that we measure the success of our children's education on their exam results. That seems OK, we spend all this time teaching them all sorts of topics, we need a record of how well they have understood what they have learnt. The problem I have is that our exam system doesn't assess understanding, it assesses recall. Like I said, I teach maths. I am scowled upon for my emphasis on teaching revision techniques, note taking skills, retrieval practice. Unless I teach the exam structure repeatedly, the next best thing that I can give to my students are revision skills that not only apply to maths but to other subjects also. 

Exam boards have a tough job, on one hand they have to embed real life problems that assess application of skills, and on the other an exam must cover and assess a 2 year curriculum in 240 marks. These real life problems cause the most problems, firstly they are the unknown, teachers cannot literally prepare to the exam because of these style of questions. Secondly they're not real life to all our learners and the context throws them from the beginning. Imagine teaching in a remote part of rural Northern England, imagine teaching in an inner London school, how can you relate to the learners in both of these settings  with the same questions? How can students in a historic grammar school relate to the context of your exam along with the students of a highly deprived inner city school? We can only relate to what we know. We naturally gravitate towards people who are like us or share familiar traits. Yet our exam system is a one size fits all approach but for some the size is too small and for others the size is too large. 

Technology has enabled my team and I to share so much. Technology enables my children to learn at home. Technology enables teachers to demonstrate and connect with ideas and people from all over the world in the classroom. How exciting to learn about geysers from someone who is on a scientific expedition to learn about them and they show you them in action? Education in action. Imagine learning about the rule of law by interviewing the main players in a courtroom via a video call. Education in action. Technology facilitates this. Yet come the end of the course, gcse or A Level how are students assessed? Using the technology that has enhanced and supported their education journey? Nope! On a paper booklet in an exam hall in a linear style the same as of my childhood. It's almost like we see the world moving on and think, we can't let go of this way of doing things because it works and it's easy to manage. In any other industry when the world moves on businesses either move on or fail. Education cannot fail. 

The whole process for exams is exhausting. From the all staff emails and meetings about exam arrangements and invigilation that begin in December to the breakfast clubs and teatime revision sessions that begin in April. We cover the content quickly to leave enough time to adequately revise. We build the tension. We don't mean to but children can see their education has moved on from content to revision and they feel that change. It goes one or too ways from this point. It's like a huge round of humpty dumpty. We're all waiting for the good bit where he has a great fall, we are all holding our breath. We wait until August to exhale. The joy when he does fall brings the same joy as a babys laughter a peek a boo. The sadness when humpty stays on the wall can be devastating, like a baby's cry. It's at this point we hope our team, the team that was put together by circumstance, is strong and can pick themselves up and rally around the student with care and love to help them work through and build again to another round of humpty dumpty. 

In our teams, as appointed leader or teacher, we are all held accountable. The Alan Sugar character is waiting in the boardroom. Our children and students will ultimately review the success and failures of the task at hand. They will ask us questions about why we made certain decisions and ultimately someone will have to be fired. I hope to affect change for my children and my students so that when the time comes I can defend my position in the boardroom with rigour. SJ

Being Personal and Staying Connected

We are now firmly in the new world. Distance learning and remote working are the new normal. We are used to video calls for meetings and lessons. That morning coffee shop visit has become a distant memory. We can't remember the code to the car park at work. We have become closer to our family in Canada as they join the group family video call on a Wednesday. This is us now.

But what about that morning coffee shop visit? Why did we do it every day for so many years? Yes the coffee was good but there was something else. We were with people. Whether we walked as a team to get coffee together or we sat on our own people watching for 5 minutes whilst they made our brew we were with people. 

We still see people, we see a lot more of some people! Managers that were floating in the higher floors of our building are all of a sudden available and interested in what we do. Why? Because they have the time. Meetings have become more efficient, we are working smarter but most importantly of all our managers are seeking that personal connection too.

The power of being personal was easy to underestimate before. We probably thought we went for our morning coffee because we liked the coffee. We maybe didn't notice the interactions we made with people on our walk there and back as well as in the coffee shop.

How do we be personal now? I don't mean joining a call, I mean being personal. Being personal is about putting that personal touch on things, making things yours, letting someone else almost feel your presence. If someone is going through a tough time we would maybe tell them it will be alright, offer guidance and maybe a hug. Having that conversation virtually will maybe use the same words but a very different experience as we are not there in person. We are not being personal.

We give feedback on work regularly. We have adapted to the new world and we add comments to documents. But we can be personal in this. We could add a voice note instead of typing comments. We can use our own speak, make the author know we have personally read their work. A tool like Read and Write or Kaizena has a voice note feature, or simply recording your voice and inserting the file will have the same effect, you will have been personal.

Our new challenge in the new normal now we have accepted our new way of working is to seek opportunities to be personal. SJ