lizzzyyy051

I am planning for the coming year and as I am doing so the impact of my learning about the brain is evident in the choices I am making… The brain grows and develops from the bottom up, the brain stem first, followed by the limbic system and then the cerebral cortex, with the prefrontal cortex doing it’s major work during puberty. It occurred to me today that my planning reflects this process using Glenn Capelli's Magic Brain model, along with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.   ( For more about the Magic Brain model check out this link )  I start with addressing the basic needs first. Belonging: It is said that belonging is an innate human need and so it is the first thing that we work on together. Learning chant: Room 5 has a name, it is called The Place to Stretch and Grow. We start with a class learning chant which encapsulates how we will work as a class together and our school values. This is now a tradition in Room 5, so the poem is passed to each new group of students that j...

Now I am no great gardener, but as I was pruning back my grapes earlier this afternoon (I can now feel some of you are nodding ‘yes, you are no great gardener, way too late!’) I was struck with a small epiphany that I needed to put into words. And now I am sharing this with you… but first I need to give a little more context… You see I didn’t just wantonly run out to the glasshouse with my clippers and start hacking willy-nilly, not at all. I know enough to check (and already had an inkling that the best time to give the vine a good hacking was in the middle of winter dormancy) so I did what I often do in these circumstances, search the net until I find someone else who has done things not quite at the right time and got away with it. Invariably, I always find some obscure chatroom that provides me with the green light, and often a little sage advice to go with it. Today, I found my green light (obviously, although I was fairly committed to the course of action anyway) and also a possi...

As I write this we are in the last days of the end of the second term of the year, in the middle of winter where it is cold and miserable and the flu/bug season seems to be incessant. Many schools have mid-year reporting happening, so there is the added stress and it shows for many of us. Let’s be honest though, teaching as a profession is inherently stressful. We are working with people all day and human beings are complex, sometimes tricky even. And relating to people is only the start of what a teacher is doing as you all know, but I am not going to spend time talking about what stresses us for two reasons; 1. There is plenty of research and anecdotal data to confirm that teaching is stressful and 2. Spending energy on talking about what stresses us often feeds the problem and doesn’t necessarily provide any solution to it. In the last year I have conducted a small study as part of my masters in education qualification exploring positive wellbeing for primary teachers in their mid-c...

I remember sitting opposite my boss in a little coffee shop having my quarterly appraisal review and we got to the final KPI (Key Performance Indicator), the same KPI that I had had on my appraisal for a couple of years. I remember the conversation starting, as it always did, "So, how are you getting on with your work-life balance?" It was almost a script that we ran at the end of each appraisal meeting where I'd sigh, my shoulders would slump and guiltily I'd respond with "not quite there yet" and then a conversation would be had around my inadequacy in this area. This particular day however, for some reason, I changed the script. Instead of sighing I looked at my boss and said "I'd like to remove that KPI from my appraisal" and when asked why I responded that I was sick of feeling bad for working the way I did which was passionate and outside of the hours others worked, but it gave me joy to do a good job, it fitted with my optimal thinking t...

In Aotearoa/New Zealand there is much wisdom carried in Maori whakatauki or sayings. One that is in mind at the moment is: Kua hinga te totara i te wao nui a Tane The totara has fallen in the forest of Tane The totara is a tall and mighty tree and when it falls it leaves a great gap in a forest. This whakatauki acknowledges when someone of importance has passed away. In the last two months two mighty 'trees' have fallen and I write to acknowledge them, honour them and in some way take heart from the gifts they have left behind. Both my friend, Liz Bowen-Clewley, and my uncle, Ted (Neil Edward) Gallagher, were champions of those who did not have a voice. They were tenacious and unyielding in their pursuit of justice for others. They did not go around trying to please and placate, they got out there and did stuff and made a difference in this world. They worked between employers and employees, bridging what is sometimes a treacherous divide to reach solutions that met the needs o...

This weekend I have been involved in a lively twitter chat about the New Zealand Curriculum and how we can use it to re-engage our teaching community with the front end of the document in particular. The front end is where the principles, values and key competencies are explained. I believe that they were put at the front because we put the first things first, meaning that these are the foundation blocks of all that we do within our curriculum. I believe they are aspirational, broad and challenging, they give us scope to be bold and brave (thanks Wendy for those words) in establishing learning cultures in our schools that support our learners to aim high, think deep, connect and contribute. We are required by law to teach to this curriculum (the whole curriculum not just the AOs), we are required to report against national standards in literacy and numeracy but here's the key thing we are NOT required to teach to the national standards despite what we might be led to believe in som...

It's been a long time since I last wrote, the excuse is that I am doing my masters research this year and any time I go to write something that isn't related to my research I feel guilty! Crazy huh?! But today I am putting my guilt to one side so I can share a wee thought that has been rattling around in my brain for a little while now. A few months ago I read a headline for an article on behaviour management called Be Curious Not Furious and it was a great read and supported a lot of the stress and brain development material I have spoken about previously. But it also sparked another thought and this was about the power of curiosity in my wider teaching practice. Curiosity for me as a teacher means not constantly anticipating and predicting children's responses, losing the predetermined nature that can sometimes feature in classrooms especially when our planning is too tight, too rigid. It means letting go of the tension built from trying to squeeze every last educational ...