Our PATH to our North Star

I always love the start of new school year.  Buildings are shiny, we're all well-rested.  We've been thinking about ways to tweak our practice and collected some new resources we can't wait to try out.  I especially love energy that results from the reunions of educators gathering together to renew collaboration and get things started.

For me, the first "real" day of the school year is the Thursday afternoon of the first week of school.  As a District Principal, I'm still busy with the behind-the-scenes stuff the first couple of days while things get underway at the various sites.  But Thursday afternoon of that first week, at the first Learning Services meeting of the year, I get an opportunity to re-connect with the amazing group of educators that I work with, to share some of my summer learning, and update everyone on district directions for the year.

This year, it was also time to renew our vision statement for Learning Services.  With a new BC Re-Designed Curriculum to consider,  and our ongoing commitment to create the most inclusive classroom opportunities we can for the students we support, I really wanted to make sure we were starting the year in the same place.

Having been at a summer meeting that used a graphic artist to collect our thoughts, I had seen the benefit of a visual representation of our thinking, and wanted to try it with my team.  I have a number of colleagues who were trained in the PATH process a couple of years ago, and I knew this format to be a really exciting, positive way to visualize some goals and determine the initial action steps toward them.

If you're not familiar  PATHs, the North Star Paths, two masterful educators from Saanich School district near Victoria, BC, have put together some great resources to support things.  They're website is at:  www.northstarpaths.com.  This short video is a great overview of the PATH process.

 

We began our session by watching this clip to set the stage for everyone, then read Peter Reynold's story The North Star, to help everyone think about what their "North Star" is for working with the learners on their individual caseloads.   It's a great story for working with all ages, in considering thoughtful and personal goals.  

After that, we turned to our large page for setting goals and brainstormed what "Success for Our Students" would look like.  I'm super proud to be working with a group of people who kept such a clear focus on the whole-child.  We talked about everything, from academic success, to friendships, to self-regulation and self-advocacy.  

The list kept going, until we decided we'd better start turning this "technicolor dream" into some action steps, if we were going to help make it a reality for our learners.  I love this group.  We could have gone on celebrating successes all day long!

The next step was to define where we wanted our learners to be at by the end of the school year.  It's an ambitious list:

• to have strategies
• to be engaged, self-regulated learners
• to be connected
• to have good self-esteem
• to see possibilities

To decide where we were going, we next thought about "Now."  How are things for our students, what do we notice about them at this time of year?   This quickly brought us to a focus on relationships, and on collecting baseline information regarding our learners' strengths and lagging skills.  We also needed to decide who was along this journey with us.  This is the "enroll" stage. 

 

 The following step was to figure out what we needed to do by November, then by April, to help us reach our goal by the end of the year.  We agreed that knowing our learners super well, and fostering solid relationships with them and between them, was our greatest shot at helping them make significant progress this year.

 

We're going to word-smith our list of goals into a vision statement, and bring out our larger sheet again in November and April, to see how we're doing.  In the meantime, it feels to me like we've done a great job recognizing that regardless of where we work, or who we are supporting, They Are All Our Kids.

Correcting Course

Wow.  I knew things got a bit away from me at the end of the school year, but I didn't actually realize it had been this long since I'd posted a blog entry.   It's a fact of life in education.  We get going with the busy of our day-to-day roles, and the personal professional learning and reflection gets harder and harder to sustain.

So, how do we give ourselves permission to ebb and flow a little bit?  How do we keep moving forward as the to-do list whips by?  How do we sustain enthusiasm and commitment to our own learning when the fatigue of the onslaught of special events and year-end wrap-up tasks sets in?   And most importantly, how do we keep students at the center of our learning along the way?

At the BC CASE spring conference this year, I was introduced to a tool that I can't actually believe I hadn't encountered before.  Laura Tait, from the Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District, developed this Aboriginal Understandings Learning Progression rubric, which for me, is very honoring for educators, regardless of where they are on their personal journey.  While it was originally developed as a tool to support people with embedding indigenous beliefs and practices into teaching pedagogy, I believe it is just as valuable for other aspects of adult learning and professional development.

To consider new ways of approaching teaching and learning, and new ways of knowing, doing, and understanding the big ideas and core competencies of our new curriculum, the four levels of this rubric offer everyone a way in for everyone, and provide a structure for nurturing next steps.

I was really excited to be exposed to this rubric first at a BC CASE conference.  For those of you who aren't familiar with the group, it is the "BC Council for Administrators in Special Education."    Don't worry.  We're getting ready to look at our name, and our mandate, in the coming year-  for some time, CASE has been exploring the ideals of inclusive education and differentiated learning.  For me, seeing this rubric for the first time at a "special education" conference illuminated just how far we've come.   No where on this tool does it suggest a "special deal for special teachers,"  or suggest that some of us will be fully on the journey, while others will have an adapted or modified way in.  But even more importantly,  it includes an inherent assumption that we are engaging in the work.

For me, this rubric is a triple-play.

1.  It's a way for me to start thinking about indigenous understandings, and where and how they fit into the work that I do.  I'm not currently in a classroom role, but I do work with teachers and students all the time in developing IEP goals and in supporting inclusive classroom environments.  While I believe I am at the developing stage in terms of knowledge, I am only at the awareness stage of learning how to embed aboriginal content and cultural understandings in the work I do with students and teachers.   That's a hard thing for me to say.  After being on the First Nations' Liaison Committee in our district for almost 5 years, it should have occurred to me long before now that this wasn't just the domain of classroom teachers and our First Nations' team in the district.  At the same time, I'm excited to think about possibilities.

2.  It's a tool I can use when working with school teams and learning services teachers this coming year.  We've had a few years to start practicing deep differentiation, and to encourage and support a more inclusive approach to working with ALL students, and I think using this rubric, and the metaphor of approaching the water, boarding the canoe, raising the paddle, and journeying into deeper waters, can help us further discussion with respect to our own practice.  We know that our colleagues are in different places in terms of their beliefs and skills in working with diverse groups of students.  What language can we develop around this metaphor to support teacher beliefs, knowledge and skills, and how can this approach support our day-to-day work?

3.  It's a way to give myself permission to move forward with my own learning in my own pace and time.  All four bits of the journey are critical for a successful voyage.  I actually do a fair amount of paddling with our scout group, and we have kayaks as a family-  but they get used a lot more in fair weather than they do over the winter.  Some of the trips are for an afternoon, others for a week or so.  I know that I'll get out on the water when I can.  I certainly anticipate and appreciate each outing as it comes.  I learn new skills and gather information about routes and paddling skills in between the big events.  Which has left me thinking that it's ok if I go deeper with exploring new ideas and engaging in professional reading and blogging more at some times of the year than others.  I actually tried to write a post about this rubric a couple of times when I first saw it, but couldn't quite connect the dots into something coherent enough to put out there for others to see.  I'm ok with that now.  I'm rested, and excited about getting started on the stack of books I've amassed over the last couple of months-  and I know I will be ready for the new year and the learning that comes with it, at the end of the summer.

I might stock-pile a few draft posts though.  I've certainly learned how easily time can get away from me, and creating a bit of a structure to keep me moving forward may help me paddle toward deeper waters more often.

It's important for me to keep thinking about the skills and knowledge I need to work with students.   After all, THEY ARE ALL OUR KIDS....