This week I have the privilege to attend a conference in Melbourne at the Mt Scopus College upper primary campus. The first two days has included inspiration talks about “Unleashing Learning” and workshops about pedagogy and chats with other professionals. Today I am at the campus with the students and teachers. I’ve floated around. I’ve been in classrooms. I went to the kitchen garden and saw a class working there. I saw a read aloud. I saw discussions.
This morning I had a talk with the literacy leader and a look around the library. We talked about planning for integrating literacy in the units and thoughtfulness of the chose of texts, grouping, literacy ideas, etc. They too have a lot of different materials around that who knows where they came from. The librarian has done an amazing job of organizing the library around displaying the books/mentor texts.
I found myself noticing similar difficulties and similar stumbling blocks. Time seems to be a big one. Students are popping in and out to go to different things as well as running off to kitchen garden or swimming or language. Another is people on different pages of their development with what they believe and what the school is doing. Another is the separation between the roles of SSS and classroom teachers. The understanding of co-teaching and collaboration.
We want education to be different. We want learning to fit the rapid change that is happening in the world. We still want to use the principles and understandings of PYP. We all want to see growth in students and see everyone getting everything they need. I just was hoping that I would see some ah-ha moments where I could see they are doing it better than us.
School is school. We all have problems. School is dependent on people and change. As well as someone knows somethings, there is always more to learn.
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