#pypchat

Parents and teachers. Teachers and parents.

After each PTM (Parent-Teacher meeting) at our kindergarten, along with the class teachers, I participate in the process as the third person, trying to see and understand both sides.  According to my observations, there are several types of parents.

Some parents who  put a child in private school, expect their baby to be a genius, pushing him/her into different contests, forgetting the thing that every child needs his/her own time. The worst moment is when they start to compare their own kid with the development of others.

My observations give me the power to say that most of the children who are natural talkers (freely and constantly talk everywhere about everything), have some difficulties with drawing and writing neatly. I was among those who love to sit and do all the precise work, such as writing, reading and drawing and got all the high rewards for that. Later, step by step I excelled at speaking, and now I can’t imagine my life without talking.

An other type of parents nurture their child. They find time in their busy timetable and spend quality time with their toddlers, even coming up with their own approaches. Just recently, one father shared with us, that they brought alphabet magnets and put them on the fridge. From time to time, they ask their baby to go and bring some specific one. Isn’t it simple and incredible?! (Just thought about making some meeting parents to parents, where they will share about their approaches) Sometimes these parents send notes of gratitude or photos captured of the child taking action to teachers, making teachers feel on the ninth cloud.

Talking about the third type, sadly, but there are some parents who just don’t show up to PTMs, or make a visit only for a couple of minutes, having more important things to do. In such cases, I’m just always wondering, then why did you decide to give a birth to a child. A Russian proverb literally states “Job is not a wolf, it won’t run to the forest”, meaning the child won’t never be at the same age again.

Now, as I have a chance to watch this process from the other side, I have some thoughts about parenting and teaching as well.

One day, one wise woman, named Ferzine pointed out something, which felt to me just brilliant: “I don’t have students, who are in the middle. Only who already knows this or just don’t get it. And it’s not about child’s brilliance, it’s just about time parents dedicate to their children. Now they know about numbers or letters, tomorrow it will be words, then sentences and after various concepts. And this little gap now will remain till the end of school and influence the rest of their lives.”

PYP usually gets a bad rep for being shrouded in mystery. A tactful way of putting it would be saying that the core of PYP is usually a tad bit elusive for the uninititated. Reading MPYPH can only take you so far. I really feel, as I’m sure many others do, that MPYPH only makes sense when it becomes a lived document. My first PYP workshop was a lot like meeting a virtual friend in person.

The workshop was helpful in clarifying many aspects relating to planning, creating and reporting through assessments. I found it inception-esque that the workshop was modelled on the inquiry-based PYP classroom. My biggest takeaways from the workshop include many ideas for the early years, why summatives need to be simpler, how differentiation needs to be incorporated into our assessments (you can never really differentiate enough, can you?), new thinking routines, and the importance of planning and mapping assessments well. I’ve realized that the key to a good assessment is a good balance of the five essential elements. I also feel that our single-subject assessments need to happen more often.

I think that overall, the take-away for me personally is that assessments in the early-years need to be more fun, hands-on and a celebration of the students’ learning experiences. We brainstormed with Archana about ways to actually translate that into practice, bowl rubrics et al and I really enjoyed seeing her mind at work. Some of her ideas about bringing in joy and humour into the classroom really resonated with me, I guess it has always been my pet project of sorts. Other tangential ideas to catch my fancy include Jay Shetty’s take on ‘changing rooms’ if you find yourself the smartest one there (wink, wink!). I’ve also walked away from the workshop with a really long reading list, Archana helped me reconnect with a long-lost friend of mine (who I had no idea was a PYP daddy), John Dewey. I’ve admired his work on aesthetics in the past, and am really excited at the prospect of exploring more of his ideas. Bottomline? Assessments and learning are inextricably, organically, joyously intertwined. It’s just up to us to figure out the mess we’ve all made of it all, trying to rip them apart for analysis. Hold on while I get some bowls.

“The power to change the future lies in our hands. Use it well!” 

A couple of days ago our school’s staff  had the pleasure to participate in the workshop conducted by Archana Prashar, who started her career in our city and currently stays in Singapore.  Her sessions were organized in the way that participants could find the answers to their own questions which participants brought here with them.

There are a few interesting things which I would like to share:

Once we were given completely new blank sheets of paper (which is always like a thread for me) and then task, which consists of few words, like “Draw a plant”. “Which plant, there are so many types of them in this world? Should I name some parts or should I just leave it and try to draw it as beautiful as I can? Shall I color it? Which color? What size should it be? Should it be big on the whole page or shall it be small, leaving some space for my explanations or assessor’s feedback? So many questions… and even not all of them are written here. All in your head at once, just because you are always used to be one of the top students in the class and you don’t want to stop being it now. And every student wants it. Succeed with that task.  But there is a lion on the way. No clarity. So you, confused student, spend most of your time, guessing what is the perfect drawing for this. And not only you actually, poor student, but I would say it seemed to me  the whole audience full of professional teachers felt that way.  Eventually, I draw a young tree on the way to blossom. And my colleagues’ trees, flowers, shrubs.  As you might have understood, our students feel in the same way, when we, teachers, don’t give them clear explicit instructions and tasks, not telling what we are exactly looking for in their works. I just love it!

“Be firm with criteria and task, not students” and “Give a time, when it’s needed!” There was a question from an audience: “What to do when some of students are not completing the task in time?” - Just give them some!

“The power to change the future lies in our hands. Use it well!” Faci reminded us true nature of a teacher, which is “agent of change”, the person who is constantly hungry for learning something new every day of his/her  life and bring/share that feeling with surrounded ones.  My connection from exercise connection/challenge was that recently I’ve read one interesting quote: “If you’re not learning something new each and every day you don’t have a right to be called a teacher.”

“Reading is essential skill for a teacher”. Archana points out that 21st century should read more and more, due to most of the information is given in text way. And which is more importantly, she exclaimed:  “Till now, English written sources are prevailing, so we should enhance our knowledge of this language and be aware of all innovations which are happening here”.

In the months before the Exhibition, students were asked to collect local and global issues related to the Transdisciplinary Theme of Sharing the Planet.  Over the span of 6 weeks, the students collected a variety of key issues they identified from newspapers, photos, Units of Inquiries, and discussions.  We created a Key Issues gallery, and began identifying connections between issues, combining similar issues, and identifying the big ideas.  The next step, the students identify the top three key issues they would want to either hear more about or research themselves.  I collected all their issues and put them into a Wordle.  The result was stunning.

It was clear that even though two years had passed since the Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima, the students in Grade Five were still trying to understand what it meant to live in a Nuclear Age.  Thus we came up with the central idea: "People have various rights, responsibilities and relationships in the Nuclear Age."  Based on their personal inquiries, there were three major areas the students wanted to inquire into: Uses of Nuclear Energy, People, Government, and Communities in the Nuclear Age, and Nuclear Energy and the Environment.