The output of collective teacher action

 I've already written about what it looks like when teachers get together and share practice. I was sitting in a staff PLD session this week and our leaders of learning referred staff to the collective output of two terms of 'Teacher Summits', of two terms of teacher sharing.

I clicked on the link to the web page on which we have accumulated the outputs of these two terms of sharing. (Notice that I use the word 'output', because this is what our teachers from across Uru Mānuka have produced. To use the word 'outcome' would mean to talk about the impact on student learning.)

I was profoundly struck by what I was seeing: the distillation of just a little bit of the teacher wisdom, experience, and skill, just a little of the net result of years of that wisdom and experience in how to be more effective in. causing learning. A bit like 'creative commons' on the web.

This is ABSOLUTE GOLD. It is a resource of immeasurable value. It captures what I suspect almost every teacher in training might hope for: a direct statement of what good teaching practice might look like. Of course you don't need to be a teacher in training to see the value of this resource. All of us can find something here that we could apply almost immediately in our daily practice - the holy grail of teacher PLD, the thing that leaves every teacher feeling that their time has been well spent.

And this web page shares the output of just two Teacher Summits, of just one year's work in sharing practice. Wow!!!

This output is one of the many results of our participation in The Manaiakalani Programme in which we have clarity over our pedagogy, an agreement about what we believe matters, about what we believe works, in causing learning. It is the net result of our overt commitment to the pedagogy 'Learn Create Share', our commitment to ubiquity, visibility, and equity, in education. It reflects shared beliefs about what works, supported by strong positive achievement data. That is the Collective Teacher Efficacy I have discussed previously.

And it's deeper, even, than that. These resources are the collective wisdom of teachers cross all age groups. They represent the cross pollination of ideas and strategies across the primary/secondary divide. I hope that this mahi might well mean that we are on the way to eliminating that divide. Because we are all teachers of children.

The power of teachers sharing beliefs, practice, and data

That the Manaiakalani kaupapa works is hard to dispute. The data keeps accumulating: writing progress at twice national averages. As we also know, reading and maths less so (only 1.5x national averages).

Look at the fluency of writing from Jordan, of Year 7. The visual expression of Sofia in Year 10. The list goes on.

I tend to overthink things (too often) and often therefore wonder why this stuff works. I ask the question 'what is it about Leaner Create Share' that creates this acceleration? Is it the pedagogy itself, or is it the fact that we have a clear visible pedagogy that we promote, that is clear to all staff across the kura engaged with this Manaiakalani kaupapa? We should not assume that this is universally so. I have seen many (I suggest most?) schools that do not have a clear pedagogy, and far too many teachers who do not know what they stand for, nor how they will achieve it.

I settled on the view that it doesn't much matter, because it works, and that is the most important thing. I tend to use a phrase that a former colleague would often use, and I say of myself 'I'm not over bright, you know'. 

It was a comment by colleague Gary Roberts (Principal, Hornby Primary School) that generated another of those 'aha' moments for me as we talked about our Teacher Summits run across our Uru Mānuka kāhui ako. He said this is what Hattie calls 'Collective Teacher Efficacy'. Some will no doubt say 'what the ** is that?'

Easy:

The concept of Collective Teacher Efficacy itself is much older. It was introduced in the 1990s by Albert Bandura and is rooted in his concept of self-efficacy, Bandura (1993, 1997). He defines collective efficacy as “a group’s shared belief in the conjoint capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainment.” Bandura found that the positive effects of CTE on student academic performance more than outweigh the negative effects of low socioeconomic status.

(Ref: https://visible-learning.org/2018/03/collective-teacher-efficacy-hattie/ )

In a video interview clip on the same page Hattie (https://visible-learning.org/2018/03/collective-teacher-efficacy-hattie/) makes the point that collective teacher efficacy is not only a matter of believing that students can achieve, that what we do makes a difference, but it is also a matter of backing it up with the data to show that it works. The 'effect size' of CTE is 1.57, the highest of any of the potential impacts that the Visible Learning team has investigated. As a point of reference the effect size of simply leaving learners to do their own thing is 0.2 i,e. that would be natural age related improvement.

We have the shared view of a consistent pedagogy, we are building this collective view that all learners are capable of being successful in their learning, we have the data to show that what we do works. We share practice across our kāhui ako, and across Manaiakalani's 100+ schools, practice that we have established works.

Collective Teacher Efficacy? Yup!!!

How do you eat an elephant?

It might be a generational thing, but this was a saying my parents used to use when talking about tackling really big projects .. How do you eat an elephant? And the philosophical answer is of course 'one bite at a time'. 

I was reminded of this on Tuesday afternoon as I walked from presentation to presentation during our second Uru Mānuka Teacher Summit. The summit brought together 106 teachers from across the Uru Mānuka kāhui ako to share great ideas and good practice. It is one of the many many benefits of our membership of the Uru Mānuka cluster, and the Manaiakalani kaupapa that we embraced six years ago.

My ffirst response was a sense of excitement at the incredible range of ideas and practice, and the passion of the presenters presenting. The list was sufficiently long that I had to take three screen shots scrolling down the spreadsheet in order to capture them all. I did so to illustrate my point. Look at the diversity of presentations.

I was also excited by the number of our secondary colleagues who felt sufficiently confident to present to a diverse audience that spanned both primary and secondary sectors. Ka mau te wehi e hoa mā!! That's a tough gig, and I am incredibly proud of you all.

This is the second cluster wide Teacher Summit we have run. How is my Mum and Dad's saying relevant? The summits are a great example of how we crack this problem of improving student achievement across our kāhui ako, across our whole community .. we share practice one idea at a time. 

I keep repeating the same statement, we have many of the answers within our community of teachers. Our best 'bang for buck' in trying to improve achievement is to share the wonderful practice that already exists. 

There is a time and a place for external providers of professional learning, without a doubt (and Hornby High School has been lucky to have worked with an outstanding provider over the past five years). However we can tend to assume that we always need to go to external providers to find the answers.

These summits allow our teachers to come together and share these wonderful ideas. They cross fertilise the primary and secondary sectors, which in my head has always made sense. After all regardless of sector, regardless of shoe size of our akonga, we all share the same core business: causing learning.

The one piece of the puzzle which I feel is missing is the early childhood sector. In my opinion teachers in that sector have some of the best practice of all. We now need to evolve our Teacher Summits so that we engage more effectively in this pedagogical layer with our ECE colleagues. We have slowly been working to bring our Hornby ECE's into the Kāhui Sko. Maybe engagement in our future Teacher Summits is the logical next step.

If we truly want to support community wide change for our akonga, then I think this is an essential next step.

Do I think this just happens by accident? Hell, no! Do I think it happens in all Kāhui Ako? Possibly, I don't have enough knowledge of other kāhui ako to judge. Do I think it is highly likely to happen because Manaiakalani is a community building initiative? Hell, yes!!

How do you eat an elephant?  'One bite at a time'.  How do you secure improved educational success across a community? One good idea at a time.

Relationships and technical skills: the synthesis and creativity of teaching

I love this whakataukī:

He aha te mea nui o te ao
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata
What is the most important thing in the world?
It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

If we were to paraphrase that for education, perhaps it might say:

'What is the most important thing that causes learning for the learner? 

It is the teacher, It is the teacher, It is the teacher'. 

Professor John Hattie, in his meta study that culminated in 'Visible Learning', states:

Teachers–     who  account  for  about  30%  of  the  variance.  It  is  what  teachers  know,  do,  and  care  about which is very powerful in this learning equation. (Hattie, Page 2).

I'd go as far as to say that a teacher's work can be reduced down to two major components: the ability to build and sustain learning focussed relationships with learners (which by the way I think must include a full kete of behaviour management techniques), and the technical ability to cause learning. In saying that, we have to be careful not to suggest that this is a binary thing i.e. it isn't one or the other. It is BOTH, simultaneously. I would go as far as to suggest that causing learning is a 'synthesis' of the two, a synthesis that I think is unique at every moment. As an act of synthesis, perhaps the act and the art of causing learning is in itself an act of creativity as we combine relationship building and technical mastery in our craft in order to cause learning.

My concern with that notion is that it may be interpreted by too many both in and out of the profession to mean that it is not possible to systematise the process of causing learning, and the corollary that to do so is to stymie this act of creativity. Reference to the work of Dr Kevin Knight, and Lois Chick, of the NZ Graduate School of Education, would show such a view to be the lie that it is.

With reference to the issue of teacher technical skill (perhaps better referred to as pedagogy, a word that I am not that keen on, if I am honest), as teachers we have been (if I may generalise) too poorly equipped by much of our initial teacher education. I know that my own initial teacher education 43 years ago included NOTHING about how to support low level readers. I am not seeing much of that in newer grads either, with the exception of one ITE provider. Therefore it is important that as professional educators we are supported to develop those skills. We are all teachers of literacy. How do we do that?

On the subject of reading for example, you only have to read the paper published in late 2020 by Professor Stuart McNaughton, Chief Education  Scientific Advisor (McNaughton, 2020), on the matter of reading, to see that well-espoused. To simplify his paper down to its simplest form, he states that there is no systematic, coherent, and consistent, approach to teaching reading in Aotearoa. Teachers in my opinion simply do not have the necessary skills (again, a huge generalisation, but one that I make on the basis of repeated observation).

Yet we have to 'know stuff' if we are to go about our daily work, and in teaching 'knowing stuff' doesn't just mean knowing about supply and demand diagrams of past participles as much as it means knowing how to cause learning. 

Take Professor Peter O'Connor's Creative Schools Index (well, I refer to it as his, but I know that the index is the result of significant work by a large team, my reference is one of convenience). The index uses eleven dimensions in order to assess levels of creativity in schools, and one of those is Mastery. Learners and teachers need to develop, and to show, mastery of their subject matter as a component part of the act of creation. Reframed, that might be interpreted in this way. Jane Gilbert in her book 'Catching the Knowledge Wave' (Gilbert, 2005) redefined knowledge as knowing stuff, AND doing something with the stuff. Contrary to some claimants at no stage did she say knowing stuff was unimportant. Au contraire!! As I have often said, thinking, and creativity, are higher order skills. However to think, and to create, requires 'stuff' to think about, 'stuff' to create from i.e. you have to 'know stuff' to be able to able to think about it, or to be able to 'create' from it.

To briefly shift the focus to another currently contentious learning area, that applies equally to maths. You have to know about columns and place values, you have to know tables, if you are to think about mathematical problem solving. Similarly you have to know how to support and develop reading in learners if you are to cause learning.

Criticism of teachers sometimes suggests that teachers resist change. I reject that notion. While in my career I have met the occasional teacher for whom that might be true, my over-riding experience is of teachers who essentially say 'I understand what you want to change, and why, but I have no idea what that looks like in my daily work, and so how to do it. Show me and I can change.' I recall that personal revelation and revolution in my own teaching and literacy practice when I attended a number of sessions of what at that time was called the 'Secondary Literacy Programme'. It was game changing for me, because it showed my HOW to support reading development  and required only a limited amount of synthesis on my part to be able to adapt that for learners in my subject area. I was learning how to cause learning.

So when I saw the latest work coming from the Manaiakalani team supporting the teaching of reading I was overjoyed. They have by observation identified specific examples of good practice in how to teach reading and literacy across curriculum levels,  from across the network of Manaiakalani schools, on a series of web pages titled 'Literacy exemplars'. They have brought these together as a series of resources, tagged within our "Learn Create Share' framework, organised in a way that is consistent with our high leverage practices in reading, and made them freely available to teachers. The resources cover the whole range of years and curriculum levels, and an increasing range of the specific subjects that students tend towards in middle and senior secondary school.

What's more (and this is the 'piece de la resistance' for me) they are accumulating video recordings of good practice via the Manaiakalani 'Class On Air' programme, video snippets of good practice, open to all. So teachers can see exactly what it looks and sounds like to employ good pedagogy.

This is the very best of sharing practice. Again at the risk of being highly repetitive, none of us individually knows all the answers, but between us all we quite possibly know most of them. I have seen a number of attempts to do this in the past, at least one sponsored by the Ministry, and one sponsored by my former subject association, but I am not aware of any that have lasted the distance. This is revolutionary. This is a game changer. In our hands we have (in my opinion) the means to liberate teachers and learners. This approach offers teachers the 'what it looks like' answers they crave, it offers the ability to create more consistent and coherent approaches to teaching reading in a more systematic way. It offers a level of creativity to teachers and learners while also supporting that more systematic approach to teaching reading.

It won't be the whole answer, and of course it won't be any answer at all unless Principals show strong leadership and encourage, support, and nurture, staff as we attempt to embrace the resources and the opportunity that this represents. Effective change always requires strong, positive, moral, leadership.

What would happen if we did the same with maths?

That's not a bad piece of thinking from a day at the Manaiakalani Cluster convenors' day .. a true tāonga!!

References:

Gilbert, J "Catching the knowledge wave",  2005

Hattie, J  "Teachers make a difference, What is the research evidence?', 2003

McNaughton, S  "The literacy landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand What we know, what needs fixing and what we should prioritise",2020

Creativity, 'Learn Create Share', and reading

Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini 

My success is not my own, but from many others

I don't think this is the first time I've made reference to this whakataukī on my blog, and today was another great example of why it is so apt. Today 191 teachers and support staff from across our Uru Mānuka cluster came together to upskill and make progress on the very tough nut of improving student reading. Improving the educational outcomes for our learners, and so improving their lives, is a collective endeavour. It represents the greatest opportunity to have a positive impact on a whole community, and as I have written before, there is very little in the way of answers that we don't have somewhere within our community, within our collective kete of strategies that cause learning.

However today we took a firm grasp of the issue of reading, and spent the day with reading expert Sheena Cameron and her colleague Louise, working together to upskill on how we can do this better. As Einstein is reputed to have said "insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result" (or something like that anyway). Our actions today (and increasingly consistently over the past decade) across Uru Mānuka, show the lie that was the neo liberal right wing reforms to education that tried to tell us that the market would give the best results. Markets work best (if they work at all) on the basis that each one of us is out for ourselves, and be damned to everyone else.

It is just possible (isn't it?) that one of the results of that approach has lead to the observation of Stuart McNaughton (Prime Minister's Education Adviser) in his 2020 paper "The literacy landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand, What we know, what needs fixing and what we should prioritise" that there is no consistent approach to teaching reading in Aotearoa. We are seeing the consequence of that in declining literacy standards across the country.

So where are we at across the Uru Mānuka kāhui ako? We have made great progress on writing. Our students are on average accelerating writing progress at twice national averages. Reading however is accelerating at something less so, so now it's time...  time to focus on reading. This focus began last year, and our teacher only day this year (postponed from March 2021 because of Covid) is a large building block in this work, expanding staff capability to improve reading. It is bigger even than that though, because it offers learners coherence and consistency as they progress on their learning journey through their years at school as the educators use a common or shared language in their work.

At Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School our own focus on writing has been pretty intensive, both at the junior level, and at the senior academic level. This is because we have the belief that great readers don't make great writers, you have to write to learn how to write. However similarly you have to read to improve your reading. 

Several specific reading strategies stood out for me. The first was the development of the skill of inference, the relationship between the author and the reader, the ability of the reader to read into the author's words the connections and meanings that the author intended.

This took me back to my own learning around creative writing (I do a bit of that as a past time, after completing a Massey Uni paper in 2010), where the basic approach is best described as “Show don’t tell” For example, don't tell me 'the sun rose'. Tell me that the 'growing daybreak bathed the landscape in a warm orange light that brought the bare branches of the trees to life'.

You can't write that sort of thing (I think) until you have learned the skill of inference, and that skill is what makes the relationship between the author and the reader so special. There is a cross over between the two. So teaching students the skill of inference might be expected to help them to write more creatively too?

Of quite obvious relevance to our Manaiakalani kaupapa is the reading strategy of activating prior knowledge. This caught my attention as well given the importance of cultural knowledge and the cultural lens that the child brings to the text. Valuing each child's culturl world view is essential to supporting them to make sense of any text. 

The biggest 'aha' moment for me was the discussion of the reading skill of synthesising. 

"Synthesising is when the student merges new information with prior knowledge to form a new idea, perspective, or opinion or to generate insight. Synthesis is an ongoing process. As new knowledge is acquired, it is synthesised with prior knowledge to generate new ideas

Synthesizing is the most complex of the reading strategies. It lies on a continuum of evolving thinking. Synthesizing runs the gamut from taking stock of meaning during reading to achieving new insight.” Stephanie Harvey and Ann Goudvis 'Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Understanding', Stenhouse, Portland, ME, 2000. .. 

The first paragraph could easily be a restatement of our own definition of 'Create' from our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy. It emphasises the importance of creativity for our learners. Every act of connection is an act of creativity, every time learners create meaning for themselves this is an act of creativity, every time our learners add new knowledge to what they already know this is an act of creativity.

The universality of our pedagogy, and the strength of our moral imperative to improve outcomes for our learners, are drivers so strong that we see teachers every day giving their best, and running at 110% in terms of their energy and their input. You can't do that forever, but you can sustain that for a period of time. It is a testimony to the 190+ educators across our kāhui ako (and across the motu, I reckon) that they do this day in and day out, often in the face of significant headwinds of deprivation, and (increasingly) of helicopter parenting.

The challenge for our staff now is to develop a hunch about what to do next to develop literacy skills, regardless of their curriculum area and specialisation, to think about something that might make a difference, try it, and see what the resulting data says. We are all teachers of literacy.

In the meantime, this is what collaboration looks like. This is the power of clustering schools together. This is what 'system change' looks like, at least for our Uru Mānuka community. It is a privilege to be a part of this group of professionals supporting our great community.

Our educational purpose: compliant economic units, or creative human beings?

I was recently privileged to attend the ‘Long term Insights Briefing; Youth employment, the way forward’ organised by MBIE, MSD, and MOE.  There was an interesting cross-section of people and organisations in the room (there were no young people in the room, but we were assured that there were to be separate hui designed to capture their voice, a collective sigh of relief could be heard and felt across the room when we heard that).

As you’d hope, it had me thinking (there would have been little point in going if I hadn’t been prepared to think about the issues!!). I listened to the discussion from around my own table, and the feedback from the other tables in the room, and some themes were pretty evident. There was a general view that education didn’t meet the needs of the group of young people who are most at risk.. There were also views about the willingness and ability of employers to take on young people, to mentor and support them in the work place, and many many more. The views on education were the ones that (understandably) most caught my attention. 

I heard the view that young people ‘graduate’ from secondary school lacking both the technical and the (so called) soft skills to take their place in the workforce. The general tenor of the comments was that schools are not fit for purpose.  There, I’ve said it!!! That sentiment fascinates me. It’s not one I’d disagree with for a single moment. What fascinates me is this. We now live in world in which see young people (actually people in general) as little more than economic units rather than as human beings. In my opinion this is very likely to be the result of thirty five years of market driven economics, and what I believe has been the ‘idolisation’ of the free market. A corollary of this was a discussion at our table that maybe young people at age 13 or 14 aren’t yet ready for the sort of ‘learning’ that we try to deliver, that they are not yet ready for such vocationally focussed learning. How many 13 year olds know what they intend to do in the economy as 20 year olds? How many 13 year olds know enough about themselves to be able to start thinking about that issue, let alone resolve it?

Now an understanding that we are economic units may might not in itself be bad, but I reckon that this has been to the exclusion of other far more fundamental things. I hold the view that being human, being allowed to be human, feeling culturally located and culturally safe, and being capable of forming strong and meaningful human relationships, are all things that are essential before we can learn. These are essential prerequisites before we can be the best that we can be and, if you are wedded to the free market paradigm, before we can be the ‘most efficient economic units that we can be’.

These things are the basis of the so called soft skills that people at the hui were talking about. They are also the same ‘soft skills’ that NZ employers are talking about. Take a look at the ‘Employability skills’ listed on the CareersNZ website. We are assured that they reflect what employers want in employees. Here is the list of the seven essential skills.

The seven essential employability skills

Here are the seven essential employability skills with examples:

1. Positive attitude: Being calm and cheerful when things go wrong.

2. Communication: You can listen and say information clearly when you speak or write.

3. Teamwork: You help out when it gets busy at work.

4. Self-management: You get to work on time every day.

5. Willingness to learn: You want to learn new things to improve your skills.

6. Thinking skills (problem solving and decision making): You try and solve problems or can see where something won't work.

7. Resilience: You get an angry customer but you keep calm, keep working and laugh about it later.

I don’t see any mention there of such things as ‘can differentiate an equation with two variables’ or ‘can draw a circuit diagram’ or ‘can illustrate the impact of an increase in income on a demand curve’. Now I’m NOT suggesting that specific knowledge is unimportant. It most certainly is. I am however suggesting that much of that specific knowledge has less importance than the capacity to be human, to communicate, collaborate, empathise, and think creatively and critically. I am making reference to the key competencies listed in the front half of the New Zealand curriculum. That document aligns really well with what employers want. And what they want are functioning human beings. Functioning human beings are most likely to be the highly productive little economic units that employers want, too.

I am often amused by the contradiction between what employers tell us they want, and what the right wing political pundits often (not always!!) seem tell us they want in terms of ‘standards’. That ‘free market’ mantra lead us down the path to ‘national standards’, and also drives our common assessment of the effectiveness of secondary schools by looking at their NCEA results. Such ‘data’ fails completely to identify those ‘damaged’ young people whom we foster and bring through to near adulthood as functioning humans. Yes they may not have the literacy levels we hope for, but if they are caring compassionate humans, that in itself may have been a massive shift for them when compared with where they began life’s journey. We all too often find ourselves simply trying to overcome the incredibly traumatic beginnings to life that our rangatahi bring to the educational table.

This brings me back to a paper that has resonated very strongly with me, Professor Peter O’Connor’s paper “Replanting creativity in post normal times” (October 2020). From that paper:

“The future of work is human. This inspiring insight follows Deloitte Access Economics’ analysis of changes to the nature of skills in demand since 1988, and extrapolations to 2030. From work of the hands (manual labour), to work of the head (cognitive labour), Deloitte Access Economics has identified an emerging need for work of the heart (i.e. soft skills such as judgement, resolving conflict and customer service).”  (O’Connor page 13)

However I am suggesting that even that position is far less important than the contention that what we most urgently need is human beings. We need people who are kind, empathetic, and can think, both creatively and critically, which of course brings me right back again to my regular hobby horse of creativity.

Even a brief read of Professor Peter O’Connor’s paper “Replanting creativity in post normal times” (October 2020) will show that supporting the development of creativity supports wellbeing.

“Upitis (2014) discusses how ..fostering creativity in students helps them to develop resilience, resourcefulness, and confidence—preparing them to address life’s challenges. Creativity also carries its own intrinsic value. Developing creative sensibilities and habits enhances quality of life for teachers and students. (p. 2).”  (O’Connor Page 17)

Another of my ‘fave’ educational thinkers and writers is Yong Zhao. In amongst his many profound observations and reflections is the notion that our current education systems (globally) are narrowing rather than broadening human talent. I’ve used this diagram before, and it warrants revisiting.

It ought to be our fundamental role to broaden creative talent, to amplify the diversity of human thinking and creativity. The benefits of such a broadening are potentially profound. And there is one of the many strengths, the may promises. that the Manaiakalani kaupapa offers with our "Learn Create Share' pedagogy, that possibility of developing and enhancing creativity amongst students and teachers alike. 

It begs the question of exactly who we are serving in education? What is our main purpose in education? Is it to produce compliant economic units? Or is it to support humanity to grow, to thrive and flourish? I’ll wait and see if any of that filters through in the ‘Long Term Insights Briefing’ material that goes to ministers.

We teach children, not subjects

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!!!