MIT 2020: The latest iteration!

In today's GOOGLE HANGOUT  I got to share the latest iteration (draft version!) of my digital tool - named Get Ready! Kia Rite! Nofo Sauni! - my latest attempt to create a one stop site that  would be engaging and will support students' preparation for the upcoming Year 8 camp.

I started with all the practical elements for students and Team 5 staff going to the Year 8 Leadership camp e.g. key dates (camp and our annual fundraiser), permission slips, and the gear list as well as a map and a photo gallery with highlights from camp in 2019.

To get some benchmark data, I asked all Year 8 students to fill out a survey form - a self-assessment of their organisation skills and a set of questions to gauge their interest, excitement and concerns about Year 8 camp.

Survey responses provide valuable feedback for further site content. There were common themes in the concerns that student's had about their camp experience e.g. nerves around having to say a karakia at meal times, not having friends in their camp groups, feeling homesick and the possibility of getting hurt!

Using the template of the TAHA CHALLENGE site, I wanted to incorporate student videos into the site as way to deliver key messages. 

We are blessed with a rich diversity of languages amongst our Year 8 cohort. To celebrate this living resource and bring forth students who are not the regular student leaders, a group of Year 8s have been recorded reciting prayers in their mother languages.

Karakia - Cook Island Māori

   

Overall, I am feeling pretty confident about how I am tracking but still need to complete the student videos for the site and have it ready to launch by end of this term.

I really appreciate the feedback I received from MITers in my hangout session:

Sonali: Great archive for siblings of senior students as they come through to the intermediate block and see their older brothers/sisters/cousins 

Angela: Consider how to work in with local college and see if can link to Graduate Profile

Dorothy: Get in touch with Hinearau, COL Across Schools Support based at Tamaki College to see how this tool could be developed further into resource to support the Year 9 transition

Reaffirming my MIT 2020 Challenge

Reflecting back to the challenge statement (v2) from March - to provide a 'one-stop' shot for students, teachers and whanau to access a toolkit for self-management and staying connected that is based on Te Whare Tapa Wha - the Taha Challenge site was my attempt to meet this brief. 

I was not convinced that this tool completely hit the mark in terms of connecting students in a meaningful way so I decided to park my first prototype and explore other possibilities.

One suggestion was the PATH (Planning Alternative Tomorrows with Hope), programme brought from Canada to Aotearoa/NZ by  Katarina Pipi  over a decade ago. The idea is to tap into the dreams and aspirations of a person or organisation and with the help of a faciliator, create a plan of what they will need to do to/overcome to achieve their goal/s. Pipi has used PATH successfully with youth, whanau, hapu and iwi throughout the country.

 

I also came across the Te Rito Toi project, set up to support teachers to work with children when they first return to school following major traumatic or life changing events such as the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes but has since been used following the Christchurch mosque attacks and more recently COVID 19. This initiative inspired me to support students to build stronger connections between them and their whanau  (both immediate and extended) to record family stories/histories/events of importance to them.

In the end - I felt I was going off in too many tangents and I desperately needed to refocus! 

I am convinced the way forward to successful transition to high school is to figure out how to best support our intermediate students to manage themselves. With this in mind,  I found my way back to my original (pre-COVID) challenge statement!

Year 8 students need self-management skills to confidently manage the transition from the primary to secondary school learning environment.

The next iteration of my design project is to find a tool that will support Year 8 students to develop their personal capacity to manage themselves independently.

MIT 2020 - Reality checks are invaluable!

Reality Check #1: The last day 'in' school for our kids was yesterday, our lessons switched to distance learning mode as of this morning and we will enter COVID19 Lockdown Level 4 as of midnight tomorrow night.
Time is of the essence to get a prototype up and running. The mantra FAIL FAST, FAIL FORWARD is foremost in my mind. I was more than ready to make mistakes, find the learning, reset, and keep moving on!

Freshly inspired, I caught up with Matt earlier today and pitched him my new idea - I wanted to build either an app or site that will connect students during lockdown and bring together the Key Competency of Managing Self, the taha components of Te Whare Tapa Wha with blogging.

Reality Check #2: An app would be super appealing to Year 7 & 8 students however developing one would require a skill level and an investment of time well beyond the scope of our MIT project

This realisation was a blessing -  I would devote my time to building a site (not an app) as the digital tool to anchor by design project.

Reality Check #3: One of the core aims was to increase connectedness between students so the plan was to have as much of the site content made by and featuring students. How to make this happen given we had started 4 weeks of physical distancing?

I figured since I still had 3 days teaching before the school term ends, the best way forward was to invite a handful of students who I already knew from my Literacy or Maths classes to join my 'as yet unnamed' project team. 

MIT 2020 - A note of appreciation!

The past couple of days has been a gift - time out from the usual hustle and bustle of our daily routines to meet in person as MITers of 2020. We've used the time to put into practice a range of design thinking tools to unpack our proposals and get them into shape for the year head. 

Thanks to Dorothy and Russell for being gracious hosts in Kuaotunu, to Matt for being an able navigator and sounding board and to my fellow MITers for sharing your ideas, generous feedback and collaborative spirit! Looking forward to catching up with you all again later this month!

MIT 2020 - Step 8: Crazy 8's - IDEATE

The final step of our design thinking process was to use the CRAZY 8s technique to come up with eight different ideas or solutions for our newly improved challenge.

We each contributed to two cycles of anonymous feedback by:

Round 1: Placing stickers next to solutions we thought could fly
Round 2: Sticking googly eyes on the best idea 

We had time to reflect on which of our potential solutions the other MITers thought had traction and then took turns to present our 'findings' to the group. It was reassuring to see that six of my original ideas were considered viable. There was a clear 'winner' with five votes, however three other ideas also had support.

5 eyes 

An app/site page that provides a 'one stop' shop for students, teachers and whanau to access self-management toolkit based on a cultural model e.g. Te Whare Tapa Wha, Kete of Knowledge, Wayfinding

MIT 2020 - Step 5: Empathy Session

For this part of the design thinking process I teamed up again with my 5 WHYs buddy,Tina. Through role play, we got to bring to life the backstory that had inspired our respective MIT projects. Sharing our experiences with each other (and the rest of the group) helped build a sense of empathy and a deeper understanding of the range of different factors impacting our students and whanau we are seeking to address.

Role Play A: Context: It's week 4 of the new school year - a Year 9 student returns to primary school. He is happy to see his old home class teacher but eventually reveals he is not getting on with his Maths teacher (also the Form Dean) He says 'she thinks I'm dumb Miss!' He is acting up in class, he is on detention and the school will be calling his parents.

Role Play B: Context: A math's lesson in class - a student is trying his best to figure out what do with a maths problem. He shows increasing frustration - he is not able to understand the problem or how to figure out an answer. He complains that it's all too hard - he is convinced he cannot do the work and just gives up.

MIT 2020 - Step 4: Tweaking and redefining the challenge

Below is my original challenge statement which reflected my concern around figuring out how teachers could equip Year 8 with the necessary life skills to make the move to their first year of high school as seamless as possible

Taking on board comments from the from the School Hall scenario, I realised that 'life skills' was too broad and could legitimately include skills such as how to cook which although useful life-skill was unlikely to be a dealbreaker for a Year 8 transitioning to high school. Clearly, I needed to consider more carefully the type of skill set that would be both appropriate and beneficial to support Year 8 students in their move to secondary school.

For me, the logical 'next step' was to look to the New Zealand Curriculum document for inspiration, in particular the five Key Competencies..  I found myself gravitating towards the competency of  MANAGING SELF and re-worded my challenge statement to now read:

Preparing Year 8 students with the self-management skills to confidently transition from the primary to secondary school learning environment.

This one tweak has helped me drill down to where I need to focus my design thinking -i.e.  developing a Year 8 student's capacity to cope in new or unfamiliar situations.

MIT 2020 - Step 3: School Hall Scenario

With my moonshot proposal and 5 WHYs completed, the next part of the design thinking process came unexpectedly!

Matt and Dorothy took us through a role play centred around a fictitious School Hall scenario. Each of the MIT 2020 group were given parent personas  from the local community to act out (e.g a pizza maker, a lawyer, a bach cleaner).  The gathering was led by a senior staff member (Matt) with a representative from ERO (Dorothy) in attendance. Parents were asked to prioritise a series of issues impacting the school. There was a tangible sense of frustration as we progressed from one issue to another. Indeed, comments from 'the floor' got quite heated at times:

               "We need more information! 

                What do you mean my kid can't listen!

                Are you telling me my kid is dumb? 

                It's not my problem? 

                What are the teachers doing to fix this?  

                Why are we only hearing about this now?

The senior staff member (Matt - heroically sticking to character!) pretty quickly came under the pump. Due to circumstances out of 'his control', he could not provide any of the details requested by parents to help clarify each issue and figure out which were the most pressing.

At some point, the penny dropped. It turned out that the 'issues' we were hotly debating were in fact the achievement challenge statements from each MIT member.

GENIUS! 

Having each MITer in character as part of an audience dialled down any potential awkwardness or defensiveness that might have come up had we been asked instead to present our ideas in front a group of relative strangers.The role play was a way for us to hear an upfront critique of our initial musings and prompted each of us to go back and re-examine our initial problem statement.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:- was the issue expressed in concise language? was the issue actually worthy of investigation as a design thinking project?

MIT 2020 - Step 1: Moonshot Proposal

To kickstart my Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher (MIT) 2020 project, I needed to prepare a moonshot proposal. This is a working document which essentially lays the groundwork for my design thinking project.

Step 1: Identify the challenge impacting achievement that I want to focus on in 2020 through the MIT design thinking process?

As a Year 7 & 8 teacher, one of main areas of concern is around those Year 8 students who leave ill-equipped to adapt and cope with the move to secondary school, and so are at greater risk of dropping out of school before they have the qualifications (NCEA Level 2) that will allow them to build better life outcomes for themselves.

Keeping this in mind, I developed an initial CHALLENGE STATEMENT is shown below:

All ten of the MIT 2020 cohort gathered at Kuaotuna at the end of February and with guidance from Dorothy and Matt, there were plenty of opportunities to re-evaluate our initial statement (more posts to follow!) and craft it into challenge that would be worthy of exploring over the coming year.