The future and Cambodia

Over the Chinese New Year holiday in February, my family and I were lucky enough to spend two weeks in Cambodia.  It was not hard to fall in love with this beautiful country.  I will happily go back any chance I get.  It has a tragic history that I am embarrassed to say I still don't know much about, but it was striking to see the impact that history is continuing to have today.

I didn't think about a connection between Cambodia and my interest in inquiry until Clive Elsmore said he'd like to hear more about my trip.  Then I started to think about what it was I loved so much about Cambodia and its people.  Resilient, smart, highly adaptable: these are three ways I would describe the Cambodian people I met.  When we spoke to tour guides, tuk-tuk drivers, hotel operators, students, they all had a version of the same tragic story to tell: families torn apart, parents killed, lives and livelihoods lost.  Yet, they smile and carry on.

After a day of visiting the gun-shot pocked temples at Anchor, we brought rice to an orphanage outside Siem Reap.  I commented to the lovely man from the U.S. who was running the orphanage that it was good to see so many NGOs working in Cambodia, from organisations retraining street children to those restoring ancient temples.  I wondered why.  He explained to me that the Khmer Rouge had effectively wiped out the professional class, so all these NGOs had stepped in to fill the vacuum.  That certainly gave us pause.

So, how is all this connected to inquiry?  Well, it made me think about how quickly our current way of life can be ripped from us.  We may go along thinking life will always be the way it is now, but that is just foolish and dangerous.  None of us know what the future holds, so we are obligated to prepare ourselves and our students in the best way possible.  If we are not innovative and adaptable, we will not be ready for the future.  If the Cambodian people were not willing to move forward by taking advantage of every opportunity offered to them, they would not be in the process of moving out from under the tragedy of their recent history.  They are not forgetting the past; they just aren't getting mired in it.

I've seen what happens to a community that gets stuck in its past in Canada's Arctic.  The people suffer from substance abuse, sexual abuse, suicide, and hopelessness.  I am not naive enough to think this doesn't go on everywhere, even in Cambodia, but I think there are those people who embrace the past and those who embrace the future.  If we are able to teach our students to inquire, think, question, innovate, they are much more likely to want to embrace the future.

Blog or Tweet? Both, I guess.

It's been an embarrassingly long time since I've done an entry here, but in my defense I've been distracted by Twitter.  There are so many amazing people out there who clearly have more time or energy or both than I do, and it is great to be able to take advantage of their skills at locating resources.  I really can't keep up with what I'm learning from others on Twitter, let alone try and figure out a way to contribute myself.

On a trip to Cambodia over our Chinese New Year holiday, I realized just how serious my addiction to Twitter could be if I lived in a country where social networking sites weren't blocked or the internet wasn't slowed every time the government felt nervous.  It was great to stay updated on Twitter just by using my iPod, and to connect with others through Goodreads.com also (which is blocked in China for some reason).  TweetDeck was a revelation too!  Having a VPN makes it possible for me to get on these sites in China, but the connections remain unreliable and I'm not technologically-gifted enough to find another answer.

I think, though, that I've been making excuses for myself.  I really need to be taking the time to write on my blog.  It isn't enough to just respond and react like I tend to on Twitter: I need to reflect and write at length to further understand my role in inquiry.  Otherwise, I think I run the risk of not properly developing my own practice as a teacher.  I may just fall into the trap of grabbing onto ideas that appeal to me and not reflecting on my choices.  I love research, and I love to gather information.  I can sometimes be guilty of not taking the time to synthesize.

Thanks to Clive Elsmore for giving me the nudge I needed to get back to reflecting on my practice!

Illustrated Talk...maybe next time

I wanted to follow up on an earlier post.  The illustrated talk I had planned for a Grade 4 class didn't work out the way we planned, but that wasn't a bad thing.  The teacher I collaborated with and I had perhaps underestimated our students.  I'm sorry to admit this, as this is what I've been accusing others of doing!  Very embarrassing.

It was not necessary to offer visual support for our discussion, since the students were ready, willing, and able to express their questions and thoughts without much help from us at all.

I've been lucky enough to try out many of my ideas in Grade 3 and 4 classrooms over the past few weeks.  I have to organise my thoughts and put them in posts, so I can trace my learning and see what next steps make sense.

It's certainly easier to find time to Twitter than it is to Blog.

What do I do anyway?

I have followed the advice of Dianne McKenzie in Hong Kong and tracked my working days. I used Dianne's activity chart that she so very nicely put on her blog. After gathering all the data for two weeks, I consulted my Tech Ninja (copyrighted term: Adrienne Johnson at Rainbow Bridge International School, Shanghai) who also happens to be my 14-year-old daughter, and created a pie chart of my work.  A link to the charts is at the end of this post.

I was disappointed but not too surprised by some of the results. The worst piece of the pie, in my opinion, is that I spent only 1% of my time teaching during those two weeks. I used Dianne's definition of teaching which was that I was the lead teacher in a lesson. Otherwise, the teaching I did fell under the categories of Cover for GLCs (Grade Level Coordinators) or Working with Students.

I was pleased with the amount of collaboration, but really that has just been attending meetings and helping homeroom teachers to identify what resources are available. On the bright side, I am able to attend grade level planning meetings! I have heard from many TLs that this option is not built into their schedule, so I am pleased to have this entry into what is happening in the classrooms.

After creating the chart, I realized that the next step was to identify exactly what I wanted my job to look like. I made a new chart that shows my dream job. I have a feeling that will change with time, but for now, my dream chart reflects my understanding of what my role should be within a PYP school.

This was a very useful process for me, so I highly recommend it to others. Track what you do, and you might be surprised! Thanks Dianne!

Teacher Librarian Activity Chart

Illustrated Talks?

I posted the RSAnimation of Ken Robinson's speech because I thought it was cool. I've watched it several times now and shown it to a few other teachers. Everyone seems intrigued by it. In talking with one Grade 4 teacher about it, we realized that he was already working on something similar with his students. He likes to doodle, so he was making some drawings to help communicate to his class of ESL students complex ideas about human rights, fairness, discrimination, prejudice, etc.

I've been speaking with his class about what they've been learning in their Sharing the Planet unit on Positive Change. They are a truly interesting group of students, but I don't think they are unusual. I mean, they are able to discuss these ideas and have opinions, and I am not surprised by that. Some are goofy, of course, since they may not be used to the idea of adults valuing their opinions or speaking seriously to them about such "grown-up" issues. They have a strong sense of fairness, but they also see the hypocrisy around them.

So, that's for the students who have developed enough English skills to communicate their feelings to the class. What about the rest of the students? If they are unable to speak in English about their ideas, do we just leave them in silence? Of course not, but how do we open things up to allow them to speak? Well, we are going to try illustrations. I am going to speak with the students while their homeroom teacher draws the conversation. Crazy? Maybe, but I'll let you know how it goes.

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

Classroom full of mini-me's

I had been out of classroom teaching for about 7 years when I took my current job. Perhaps getting out of teaching for so many years has delayed my development or perhaps it has made it possible. Maybe since I’ve been outside the classroom, it’s helped me to avoid getting bogged down. I know what it’s like to be a teacher responsible for a large group of noisy, active, indifferent students. Most days, you’re just trying to make it through without a fight breaking out or losing your dignity. When I taught in a small community in Canada’s Eastern Arctic, it was a good day when the kids showed up before noon, and no one threw a chair.


I hadn’t been away from education during my time outside the classroom. I was working as an academic advisor at a university. Also, I had been involved in the education of my two older girls. Like everyone else, I had opinions of what made a good and a bad teacher, but nothing had really hardened in my mind regarding what kind of teacher I was. If pushed, I suppose I would have said I was just your run-of-the-mill, typical English teacher. Not bad, just not particularly inspiring either. I would see a spark in a few students each year, and that was enough to help me carry on.


For a while I read about home schooling and thought about doing that with my own kids. What intrigued me about home schooling was the self-directed learning. I certainly did not like the vision of a mini, pseudo classroom in my home I read about in some books and websites. I wanted to give my daughters the space and time to examine and investigate their own interests. Financial reality set in though, and off they went to French Immersion (something I can’t help them with anyway) and off I went to part-time work at the university.


I have no respect for the type of teacher (and I’ve known several) who teach subjects not students. You know, the ones who have their lessons in a folder with the date on them and can whip out the plan for the day because they’ve been doing it that way for the last 5 or 10 or 20 years. In my experience, most teachers are not like this, but we generally do have a hard time with letting go. We like to have control in a classroom. We like to know what’s going to happen next. No surprises, since that might lead to chaos. Who can blame us with a room full of kids to deal with if we want to ensure a sense of order?


However, I think we need to shake things up. Well, I don’t really know what “we” need, but I know what I need. I need to know that as a teacher I’m not just filling in holes. I don’t know enough about anything to call myself an expert. I’m always just learning. Why do I need to pretend that I’m an expert teacher? Who says I have to have all the answers before I go in front of a class? I think it would be a dream come true for students to ask a question for which I don’t have the answer. It means they are thinking for themselves and asking their own questions, not just shooting back at me the questions they think I want them to ask.


I don’t want to produce a classroom full of mini-me’s. I just finished telling you I don’t have any answers, so why create more people like me!?