PRACTICE - Changes in Practice

Wow! My learning journey at Mindlab, has been exciting, challenging, thought to provoke and at times really, really hard!! The hardest part was re-learning how to be a student again, write formal essay’s in university-speak, AND  use correct referencing. Oh my gosh! The referencing! I know this is super important, but on my list of priorities, this just wasn’t up there for me, even though I got marked down on it in every single assignment.  If it wasn’t for the support ( and at times, giant push) from my colleagues. I’m not sure I would have completed the course- Thanks, Mindlab Buddies!!!

Criteria 7: Promote a collaborative, inclusive, and supportive learning environment:

The best part of my learning journey was having the opportunity to do this with 4 of my colleagues. I really enjoyed our Wednesday night Mindlab sessions, that we continued until the end of the course. Unfortunately, in the busy world of school, we don’t have enough ‘protected time’ where we are able to think deeply, reflect, research, discuss and debate the things that are happening in our school and what drives our teaching practice. We worked collaboratively on all assignments, even the weekly reflective tasks we had to do in the second half of the course. We would go through the readings and videos together, discuss how it fitted with our school vision and our own teaching practice, before writing our reflections independently. Kate and I often shared stories about our learning journey at Mindlab with our students, as it was a great way to role model collaboration, lifelong learning, what it feels like to be in the pit and how we had to persevere to get out of it. Because this has been such a collaborative, inclusive and supportive learning journey we are hoping to keep Wednesday nights as our ‘protected ‘ Learning time where we can spend more time working on our teacher inquiries, sharing ideas/ best practice and discussing the latest research.

Criteria 12: Use critical inquiry and problem-solving effectively in their professional practice:

Mindlab has also provided me with an opportunity to record my teaching and learning inquiries, especially the change initiatives that I have helped drive and lead, in a professional and engaging way that can be shared with others, as a learning tool. It has also helped us to plan future change initiatives and inquiries and how we are going to implement these and get others in our school onboard the waka. One of the biggest changes for me and my co-teacher this year has been how WE and our student's problem solve using the same model of inquiry. We have realised that we don’t have to follow the model as a spiral or move in any one direction, but instead, you can move fluidly between the stages of inquiry and are continually reflecting to know what your next step is. This has definitely created a much high level of engagement and excitement from students and staff about how we learn.

As a staff, we are really excited about our next learning steps. We will be continuing to develop our knowledge and practice of PBL and focusing on how we improve whanau and community engagement, as well as cultivate global citizens.