It was one of those 'OMG' moments. You know the ones. You see something and think 'that has to be the coolest thing I have seen' (using whatever language your generation uses to express utter delight).
I was doing a walkthrough of our learning spaces (as I often do - it's my reconnection with sanity when the admin ** gets a bit tedious). I walked into a Year 7-9 wānanga session being run by one of our team of secondary trained English teachers (shout out to you, Mr Taylor).
Wānanga time places learners with a 'learning advisor' for 7 hours a week in Years 7-9. In that time they will cover a wide range of activity, from that simple but vital relationship building, to cybersmart, to community impact and passion projects, to literacy and numeracy work, and a whole lot more on top of that. The teacher was standing next to a mobile whiteboard, and he had drawn the numbers 1 and 2 on the whiteboard in large numerals, with a space between them. Had he taken a leaf out of the book of Dr Seuss?
I watched as he asked this simple question: "how many numbers are there between 1 and 2?" Students came to the front and wrote numbers on the whiteboard, or offered their best guesses about how many numbers there are between 1 and 2. There was quite a degree of curiosity amongst the students.
I was frankly gobsmacked, excited, overwhelmed.. why?
Here was a humanities teacher teaching maths. There was, I thought, a clear understanding from the teacher that he was teaching students, not a subject. His connection with the students was deep, positive.. it was profound.
I talked with the teacher the next day, and he commented that the discussion then went on to what we mean by infinity. (Here is some information in the concept of infinity, and here is some information on this idea that regardless of how close two points re on a number line, there will always be a point in between them) For example the students asked if there were different sizes of infinity. This teacher loves philosophy, and there he was engaging 11-13 year olds in deep philosophy. In an email to me Luke Taylor said "I'm loving the opportunity to weave philosophy through Wānanga."
Students were engaged, interested, curious, happy to have a go, to try, and come up with an answer. They did not have the usual reluctance to offer ideas, they were 'doing maths'. I'm not sure that they knew that they were doing maths, and that in itself left me wondering if therefore they had lost the typical 'fixed mindset ' that we so often see towards mathematics. You know the one .. 'I can't do maths', 'I was never any good at maths'. Yet actually we can all do maths, we all have the necessary mental ability to do maths. It's just that we tell ourselves that we can't. I know from personal experience that this is true. It took one good teacher to shift me from abject failure in the old School Certificate maths early in the year, to a stellar mark at the end of the year. We can ALL DO maths. That's what I saw in this wānanga class.
Here's another observation: the teacher was de-silo'ing secondary education. He was crossing those traditional 19th century artificial subject boundaries. This makes learning real for learners. I hasten to add that he was following the guidance of our HOD Maths, a maths specialist , who has set up a wodmnerful Google Site to support teachers and learner. This is a basic component of our Manaiakalani work, in which all learning is made visible. Maybe that is a future evolution for the traditional Head of Department, maybe that role might morph into a learning advisor for non specialist teachers? Maybe the HOD will be the one to ensure the integrity of traditional subjects? Mind you, that is a very euro-centric view of learning. maybe schools will structure themselves in a way that respects and values traditional knowledge accessed in traditional ways? After all, that traditional knowledge saw the earliest Polynesian navigators crossing the largest ocean on the planet.
And I saw all of this in part because (I reckon) the teacher realised that he wasn't teaching a subject, he was teaching children/pupils/students (choose your own word, there).
This is another example of 'creative excellence' in action, creative excellence in the ways in which we are evolving learning to be more fit for purpose for our young people.
Ka mau te wehi Mr Taylor!!!
