Together, we can ensure that all children will be able to achieve at their highest levels despite whatever traumatic circumstances they may have endured

Children come everyday to our classrooms carrying their Schools bags. But what we don't seem to realise as teachers is what kinds of excess baggage they also bring with them to school such as  experiences of trauma. Children have their own expectations and views and oppinions which are shaped by what they are exposed to at home and the community. Those experiences are what also shapes them and their views when they arrive at School.

I read an interesting article on helping Traumatised children learn and it came up with some of the behaviours that these children may show in the classroom and there were a few which stood out.


 Defiance
Children who enter the classroom in a state of low-level fear may refuse to respond to teachers either by trying to take control of their situation through actively defiant behaviour or, more passively and perhaps less consciously, by “freezing.” Either way, the child is not receptive or responsive to the teacher or the demands of the classroom. Children who actively try to take control may be more overt and deliberate in their unwillingness to cooperate. This can be particularly frustrating to teachers, since these children can appear to be in control of their behaviour.

 Withdrawal
Children who withdraw in the classroom cannot participate effectively. Unsurprisingly, these children rarely attract their teachers’ attention. Feelings of vulnerability may foster reluctance to engage in the classroom.

These are two behaviours that I have noticed. I have experienced defiance where the child has been non-compliant. Analyzing this senario now I have a better understanding of this situation. Some thoughts that come to my mind are that the child possibly wasn't allowed to do anything at home, and wasn't being listened to, or their needs neglected. So in terms of the classroom context, this is the only area/place where they possibly felt they had the most amount of control in their life.

"Traumatic experiences in childhood can diminish concentration, memory, and the organisational and language abilities children need to succeed in school" (Helping Traumatised children learn, http://www.traumasensitiveschools.org)


Scientists have found that children who have been subjected repeatedly to trauma suffer from other social, psychological, cognitive, and biological issues, including difficulty regulating their emotions, paying attention, and forming good relationships—all of which make it very difficult for a child to succeed in school


Today for our staff meeting we talked about Vulnerable Children's Act and how it applies to our School. We talked about procedures and processes and what we should do if a child in our class confides in us and lets us know that they have been abused. 

School is usually the one place that a child that has been going through abuse or traumatic experiences feels safe. So I feel as teachers it is our job to be able to know the child and recognise any patterns or trends that we notice and document these.  We can do this by asking open ended questions and asking statement questions such as who was where, what happened, when did it happen  and so forth. 

It is also important to make sure that the principal is notified about your concerns as well as other people such as SWIS, Health nurse, previous teacher as they may have also noticed patterns and trends and are able to add to the documentation. 

Protecting vulnerable children is everyone’s responsibility. Working together we can achieve our goal.

 

"We don't learn by doing, we learn by reflecting on what we've done"

       Day One: University workshop


Today at University we talked about reflecting on our Teaching and Inquiry process in Schools. We discussed our highs and Lows, what worked and what didn't work.
Some of the highs that we came across were:

• Accelerated teaching-Where a target group made accelerated progress within a certain amount of time. 
• Having a supportive teaching environment where the associate was supportive and helpful.
• Having built really good relationships and bonds with the children. 

Some of the lows that we talked about were:

• Some teachers found that they loss their joy of teaching due to being in the classroom full time and the pressure of a full time teacher and the workload. 
• Associate teacher did not want to know anything about University work and didn't show any interest to the Teaching as Inquiry process-Not very supportive. 
• Not much guidance and mentoring support. 

We also talked about student lead learning-Where students take more ownership in their planning and learning-Where the task is in the learning. 

Setting rich activities and tasks where children have more ownership of what they are doing. 

An example is : Reciprocal reading model-Creating a culture of learning-Kids have roles to play and teaching and modelling to the children how to do these roles. 

                                    

We also talked about how learners all learn in many different ways. 

DESIGN THINKING PROCESS

1. Being a very active listener 
2. Ability to probe: digging deeper and asking questions
3. Paraphrasing-Say or talk about your interpretation about something-Clarification...If what these people are trying to say?...
4. Ideas -Thinking right outside the box/circle about the way you might do things. Be creative in your thinking. Taking risks.  

TASK: Talk to someone about the inquiry that you went through with another person about what you did. Then someone will PROBE you and then interpret that. Ideating: If that is the situation lets think of possible way we can deal with this? what can we do differently....(becomes your future question)

FOCUS INQUIRY:

Data

Culture

knowing about the students. 

TEACHING INQUIRY

Pedagogy

Strategies

Research drawn on. 

LEARNING INQUIRY

Impact

Your impact on the achievement.

Elevator pitch: Saying the most powerful thing in the shortest amount of time. 

"Embrace the ideas that people both young and old are forming a lateral network arrangements to learn and change what they think and do"

Using learning Maps 

Student engagement

Student agency 

Being agentic: What would it look like? 

Student agency: Students reflecting-understanding what reflection is and know what  they are reflecting on....visible learning, setting goals. 

Student being Agenetic: Being able to talk about it, able to have that dialogue, student lead conversations, whanau conferences. Training children to be agentic.  They need to have a criteria, clarity of the learning so kids know success looks like. Students to talk about what they are going to d next, next steps. 

Self assessment: Diagnostic maths test online-Opt into the clinic for that level (google classroom)

What student ownership of learning is?

Self management