Bursts & Bubbles 2022

 Malo ‘e lelei, my name is Christine Tupou-Fonua.

My Inquiry focus for 2022 is: 

TEACHER & STUDENT WELL-BEING - HOW DOES IT INFLUENCE ACHIEVEMENT, ENGAGEMENT & ENJOYMENT?

What was happening for my learners?

• The speaking frame we are provided asks us to inquire into the learners. I inquired into my teacher practice, and what changes I should make to positively impact student learning.

• The beginning of the year was rough. We transitioned from face-to-face teaching and learning, to virtual learning and then to hybrid learning.

• My thoughts were: Is this another new norm? How are the students feeling? What about the teachers and staff? Some voiced they were nervous, excited, anxious. Some just wanted to come back to the classroom. 

What evidence do I have to support this?

• To name a few : Teacher, Student & Voice, Assessment Data, Student attendance summary, staff attendance and my own recollections of talanoa with teachers within my school and across the cluster.

• From this I was able to analyse the findings, and identify some common key concepts that were evidently important in students and teacher well being. 

• These key concepts included: Well-Being, Collaboration, Adaptability, Empathy and Patience. 

• The process also highlighted important factors that included “Relationships, Mental-Health and Resilience”, to name just some.

What changes did I make?

• The planning of this intervention was co-constructed by my team of teachers and our Y7&8 students. It was practical, authentic and culturally relevant to all.

• It involved changes in Teacher Practice, driven by student agency and the primary importance of Well-Being.

• It included weekly sessions of talanoa for students and teachers, collaborative planning, cross-group teaching for the learning areas, flexible learning spaces, Multi-modal resources and culturally authentic learning experiences. 

• It improved interpersonal interactions and relationships between teachers & students, enhanced empathy, collaboration and adaptability throughout the school.

• This holistic approach has actually enhanced delivery of the academic outcome and attendance for our Senior students this year. 

Some literature that helped me along the way were:

• Tapasa, Ka Hikitia & Tataiako Cultural Competencies Framework

• Scholarly articles on Teacher Well-Being

• Pasifika methodologies

• Scholarly articles on student agency, assessments & Teacher Practice

The hardest things for me to change was:

• Myself. Changing my mindset from what we considered important to teach - to something more in-depth and powerful, a way of practice to motivate and engage learners, students and colleagues, to promote their own agency.

My wonderings?

• How do I ensure that my practice uplifts and prepares my fellow kaiako, kahui ako, whanau and communities for the challenges of today and tomorrow?

Blogpost #10: Aspects of the intervention...

 Collaboration!

Here's a video of my Team Tui Tongan Language Week arts collaboration. Students were given the choice to choose out of 3 options - Tapa Making, Fan Making and Lose Making (Tongan accessories). The 3 teachers in my team taught the above option for a week long and produced some amazing artefacts.

This video shows what the students created during a fun week of authentic learning with cultural relevance to most of the students. Non-Tongan students also voiced that learning about Tonga and it's culture makes them want to learn more about their own culture and others, because they enjoy the new knowledge, the cultural food, the performances and more.

#StudentAgency #Collaboration 

Blogpost #9 - Monitoring of new approaches continued

My Journey with this Inquiry so far...

This years inquiry was very complex! I struggled to think of what else I could further inquire into based on evidence of student learning. Let's be honest, the beginning of 2022 was unprecedented...yet again. Schools went into Hybrid Learning as students and staff fell victim to covid, again.

I was one of the few who struggled all year round with my health. I had finished with Covid BUT some of its symptoms chose to stay with me much longer than I'd anticipated. I was "diagnosed" with Long covid and I coughed for months on end. 

I started to think to myself "I am unwell, I've missed school quite a bit, some of my students attendance has dropped also (due to covid & the flu), what am I to do to ensure these kids are still learning and I am doing my job?" For the last couple of years,  Teacher "Well-being" plummeted. One of the major consequences of covid-19 in educational settings has been the transition from face-to-face instruction to home learning and now hybrid learning, in order to maintain teaching and learning quality standards.

Studies have shown an increase in stress and burnout in school teachers (Pellerone, 2021). Teaching staff are not coming back to what was considered a "normal" teaching environment. I therefore decided to refine my inquiry and focus it on Teacher & Student Well-Being - How does it influence achievement, engagement & enjoyment?

My intervention looks at how we can ensure our teacher practice involves practical strategies that improves interpersonal interactions. These include emotional intelligence, empathy, assertiveness, compassion etc, which can influence socio-emotional classroom environment and improve relationships between teachers, staff & students, eventually leading to an environment that fosters accelerated achievement, engagement and enjoyment of learning,

Changes were made in my usual "way of Teaching". The depth of collaboration and flexible learning spaces became a new normal at school and both teacher and student relationships soared. Our team took on the pedagogy of cross-grouping between the 3 classes in my team. Maths & Literacy were taught at the same time, and students would move to their designated classrooms with different teacher for the learning areas.

When teaching Maths & Literacy, we took on a Reciprocal Teaching approach and fostered Multi-Modal resources in our planning. We would often start each week with a school Karakia, then we'd meet as a Team to go through our learning for the week. We'd often start our meetings with an inspirational video, sharing the message that reinforces our PB4L focus for the week, along with some mindfulness sessions.

 The students also requested the weekly meetings because they were front-loaded with information on what was to come. Our teaching assistants were also present and liked knowing in advance, what the week ahead looked like.

The changes we made to our practice helped put teachers and students at ease. No panic, no stress if a teacher was down, because the learning content was the same across the syndicate. Anyhow, I will continue to share evidence of how my inquiry intervention has helped both teacher & student (occupational) well-being and it's impacts on the learning this year.

Intervention in progress...

Reference:

Pellerone, M. (2021). Self-perceived instructional competence, self-efficacy and burnout during the covid-19 pandemic: a study of a group of Italian school teachers. Eur. J. Invest. Health Psychol. Educ. 11, 496–512. doi: 10.3390/ejihpe11020035

Blogpost #8 - Evidence about the monitoring of YOUR implementation

 Evidence: Some evidence I have about the intervention and how it's going:

• Cross-Group Teaching: At the end of Term 3, my team decided (with the input of the students) to cross-group teach in Term 4. Reason being, we followed cross-group teaching in Term 1, during the time of Hybrid learning and we found it very productive. We went back to single cell classes for Terms 2 & 3 because we needed some normality back in our routines and expectations. Because this term is crazy and super busy, we thought we'd go back to cross-grouping and flexible learning spaces.

Below is how our groups look like for Reading/Writing. In these level specific groups, we break them up into smaller flexible groups and use those groups for our guided sessions. We use the Murray Gadd 'thumbs-up' approach. "Thumbs up if you understand, thumbs to the side if you need support and thumbs down if you have no clue what to do". We found our students to be honest and use integrity and there is no shame if your thumb is to the side or down. Through teacher observation, we did notice those who would *hide in the corner* and we make time to conference with them too.

• Collaborative Planning: In my team, we plan collaboratively. We're a close knit team with different strengths and we utilise those strengths to the best of our classroom programme. Ronil would plan our Maths/Science, Mary would plan our Art/Inquiry learning and I'd plan Reading & Writing. Evidence is available on my learning site GTS Room 11 and also on Mary and Ronil's class sites.

• Teacher Observation: Through constant teacher observation, I noticed how the bond and relationship between Teacher/student and student/student manifested into something positive and empowering. Because of how the year started, my focus was on "Occupational Well-Being of the Teacher and how this impacted the students' learning". Having flexible learning spaces and cross-grouping really helped with ensuring the teacher did not have "teacher guilt" if they had to stay home due to having flu like symptoms. Reliever shortages was also an issue and often the classes would be split. But because of collaborative planning, even when we were a teacher down, the learning continued because planning was accessible online and they knew what the students were learning.

• Student Engagement - Because the learners were able to work alongside their friends from other classrooms and continue to develop the relationship in the team throughout the year, Team Tui became united in everything we did. Often the attendance award would go to our team because we found attendance and punctuality to improve. The termly overview was often shared with students at the end of each term to give them a heads-up into what next term would look like. Students voiced they wanted to learn more about history and science so we turned that into practice. Manaiakalani voiced 'Extended Discussion' as a focus for reading, so we approached RTLB support for Reciprocal Teaching and we ran with this programme for Reading. Books were selected by students and according to their interests and Inquiry topics. School trips were intentional and were planned according to the learning of the term. Sharing of student learning included mini exhibitions at the end of each topic, Team presentations and whanau involvement. 

• Attendance - According to our Principal, our Year 8 students have had the highest % of attendance in the whole school. (Graph to be shared shortly)

Blogpost #7 - Causal Chain

 My Causal Chain for my intervention

Blogpost #6 - Intervention: Implementation & monitoring of new approaches

Before talking about my intervention, I want to make clear that the focus of my inquiry has changed, yet again. My inquiry focus is: How does a teachers 'Occupational Well-being' impact the learning of their students.

The reason for the change is because 'Well-Being' is a broad concept and as CoL teachers, we cannot save the world in a day. I also found it challenging to come up with an intervention because of how broad my inquiry focus was. After a talanoa with Fiona, She helped me refine my thinking to understand how huge Well-being is. I will continue to shape my inquiry to an achievable focus, so that I know my 2022 intervention is successful.

Share: 

What I've done differently this year is collaboration. I feel my team have hit the nail on the head when it comes to collaboration. We also do cross-grouping between the 3 classes in my team, that enables all learners to experience learning with the Team Tui teachers.Due to the previous 2 years consisting of a lot of home learning, we hadn't had much opportunity to ensure that this way of teaching and learning is executed effectively. 

Describe: 

Something I'd like to share from this change in practice is evidence of our planning. We have a team unit planning where we link in resources of what our students will be learning in the weeks of the term. We have resources for all levels (differentiation) and because it covers all the levels of learning in all 3 classes.

For Reading and Maths, we did cross-grouping, each teacher in the team would teach a level. For instance, I would teach Level 2 learners from all 3 classes, Mary would teach all the Level 3 students and Ronil would teach the Level 4 learners. We took into consideration our strengths, planned explicit whole class and guided group lessons and students in the team are able to connect with others outside of their classrooms, build trusting relationships with other teachers and work collegially with those at their levels.

Explain:

Some of the tweaks we made along the way was to ensure we planned for guided group teaching too. We did notice that when we were teaching the students all at one level, we tend to fall into whole class teaching and neglected group teaching. It wasn't until I was doing observations and I was being observed too, that this reflection was picked up. 

Blogpost #5 - Academic Research & Readings

 Reading #1: News Article Staff Absences due to Illness surge, Gaps in learning, Behavioural Issues..., Teachers Catching Covid at a faster rate

- All these articles have highlighted the issues around covid and other related illnesses that have affected students and teachers. This also brings awareness to the stress and worries that Principals, schools and staff have been battling the last two years.

Reading #2: Educational Article The Importance of Teacher Well-Being

- Research in NZ shows that Teachers have higher burnout scores than the average for workers in the human services sector. 

- Individuals may interpret well-being differently depending on their culture, their character and their situation.

Reading #3: Patterns of Teachers' Occupational Well-Being

- This reading was based on a study that examined profiles' of teachers occupational well-being during the Covid-19 pandemic. The data was collected from Finnish teachers, however, I am certain that many teachers here in Aotearoa could relate to this study. Some evidence from the research highlights that teachers around the globe experienced an increase in occupational stress in just the first 4 months of the pandemic. 

Blogpost #4 - Hypothesise & Research

 1. Share your findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge. Make sure it is clear what evidence from your inquiry supports each finding.

- From the 5 Achievement challenges, it was difficult to hone in on ONE particular challenge that I felt, best fit what my Inquiry is this year. I've decided to go with Achievement Challenge #1 because of the keywords "Cultural Visibility and Responsive Practices across the Pathways". 

My inquiry this year is on the importance of 'Student and Teacher well-being' and how it impacts the learning that takes place in the class. It's a broad focus, but I feel it holds power, especially in the times we're living in. The reason I made this decision, is because I have seen how chaotic it's been with student/teacher absences due to covid, the winter flu and other illnesses. Days of recovery take up to 2 weeks. The absences and even the returning to school after it, can take on a toll on everyone.

So, my hypotheses for my inquiry this year is: Schools need to consider HYBRID LEARNING as a new form of teaching (in this day and age) and should further implement it and not use it as a one-off mechanism. Taking into consideration the health and well-being of our learners and teachers and being well aware that the recovery process for covid and the flu, can easily take up to two weeks.

Some of my Findings: 

1. Student Absences may not seem like a big problem. But, absences add up quickly. And, these missed school days can have a big impact on the child's learning. 

Link to website: https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/gradeschool/school/Pages/School-Attendance-Truancy-Chronic-Absenteeism.aspx

2. Staff Absences 'through the roof' at schools due to illness surge. This year, covid and the flu have hit hard, particularly in our schools.

Link to website: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/468695/class-cancelled-staff-absences-through-the-roof-at-schools-due-to-illness-surge

Blogpost #3 - Preliminary Findings

Begin to collect evidence and data and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence

With my inquiry this year being on "Teacher and Student well-being", I will have a mix of concrete and abstract evidence for my findings. 

My target group (teachers and students) is my team of teachers and my class as a whole. My team did partake in the 'Occupational well-being' survey and my students have completed a learner voice survey that I will conduct on a termly basis. 

I aspire to conduct the learner voice every term to ensure there is consistency but also to affirm the results are not just based on a one off experience. The most recent learner voice was based on Teacher expectations and Teacher-Student relationships. Here are the results:

Standards & Expectations:

-Believes I can learn

-Is sad when I not do well

- Tells students off if they have been naughty

- Students are well behaved and do not get in the way of my learner

-Is very good at treating everyone in the same way

-Is ready & organised to teach us there is no time wasted getting things ready

Teaching & Learning - Relationships

- Cares about me

- Trusts me

- Is excited about teaching me

- Is interested and listens to my ideas

- Takes time to find out things I am interested in

- Knows what I can and can't do in my learning

- Is someone I look up to; I think very highly of them.

Another piece of evidence i'd like to share is my class winning the Glen Taylor School 'Alan's Class Attendance Award'. Since the beginning of Term 2, Room 11 has won this award EVERY WEEK (that's 5 weeks). I consider this evidence because it shows me that my learners enjoy school. They are attending on a daily basis, the sound of laughter and chatter ripples through the class and the student work displayed around the class reciprocates this.

Blogpost #2: Tools, measures & approaches

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

Well-Being.

A term that encapsulates so many things that it needs to be broken down, layer by layer.

Prior to our GTS Teacher Only Day in the first week of this term, my understanding of well-being was as broad as many others. It revolved around the contentment and state of happiness of an individual.

Well-Being is one of our school goals. How to ensure that the school supports the well-being of its staff and students. I somewhat understood that well-being counted for many things, such as emotional well-being and feelings, physical well-being, social well-being etc. 

However, I had only just learnt that 'Occupational well-being' was something of existence too. What does that mean you ask? Occupational well-being is a term that was introduced to our staff by an outside facilitator named Tony Burkin. He usually works with management and staff on how ensuring that our teacher practice is effective and top quality. He challenges us to challenge ourselves.

One of the tools he introduced to our staff was the 'Occupational well-being' survey. This survey helped us analyse our own 'occupational well-being' in 4 main areas: Cognitive, Subjective well-being, Physical and Mental well-being and Social Well-being. Basically, we had 62 questions we had to answer by a grading system, 0 being disagree strongly, 1 = disagree, 2 = agree and 3 = agree strongly. When the staff had gone through the set of questions, we then had to add up our score. Tony would say "ok, please add your score for questions number 2, 25, 42, 1, 6 and 12. If you totalled 5 or below you are in the lower division, 6-10 is average, 11+ is high.

What this survey helped me realise was the need to balance things out in life. We can't let what happens in our personal life, affect our professional life. It's very complicated to manage this because as teachers, many of us are emotional people and part of our life, outside our profession helped shape us into who we are.

So what?

I'd love to use this survey on other teachers - rather than having my own group of 'target students', I feel like my group could be made up of staff members instead. I believe that in order for student achievement to occur, teachers are key to making this happen. If the learner is not learning from how the teacher is teaching, the teacher needs to change his/her practice to best cater to the learner and their needs.

Blogpost #1 - 2022 Journey and what lies ahead

Another year to continue inquiring into the phenomenon of TEACHING.

As with the previous two years, 2022 had an agenda of its own. We are currently teaching through a HYBRID-LEARNING model due to covid and the unprecedented times we are living under.

The year started with teachers and students having to isolate, which brought attendance down to as low as 33%. Hybrid learning came in as an approach where management thought would be most effective, to cater to our learners who were at school and for those who were learning from home.

I, unfortunately fell victim to covid and had to isolate for about 2 weeks and to date, I am still suffering from the symptoms. I refuse to take any more days off because as teachers, we have a responsibility and that's to teach the students. Subconsciously, we overlook our own well-being, to look after the well-being of others.

Is this healthy? Does this come as part of the job description? Many a times, teachers feel a sense of 'guilt' when we need to take a day or two off, due to health and personal reasons. So, who looks after us?

This year I want to focus on something that does not link to an achievement challenge. I want to inquire into the well-being of our teachers; mentally, emotionally, physically and socially. 

In addition to this, I want to further inquire into TEACHER PRACTICE and how we acknowledge and utilise documents such as Tapasa and Ka Hikitia to teach our Maori and Pacific ethnic-specific identities; such as Tongan, Samoan, Cook Island, Niuean and more.  

So I ask myself, "HOW CAN WE ENSURE A TEACHERS' PRACTICE IS EFFECTIVE, IF THEIR WELL-BEING ISN'T TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION?"

Both concepts are important to me and I want to find a way that enables me to inquire into both as ONE entity.

Watch this space...my inquiry question is still a work in progress...and it may change next term because of the uncertain times we live in.