MIT 2022 Project Summary

As I reflect on my participation in the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers project (MIT) project throughout the year, I realize the growth I went through.  Through the design thinking process, I developed a formalized question about the problem I experienced and grew brave enough to put my project out there in the wider community to receive feedback in order to make it better. Here is a summary of what the process looked like. 

When our leadership team looked at our data we realized that the data was particularly low in classes where Beginner Teachers and Overseas Trained Teachers taught. I came up with the question, what could I do to help these teachers, so that they don't waste time trying to figure out what to do, as in the time wasted, our students are either taught at the wrong level or taught the wrong topic, or not taught at all, which puts them at a disadvantage. Through the design thinking process and the help of my MIT colleagues, we refined the question to this: How might we support teachers starting at a new school where there is a complex array of new learning needed to be effective in the classroom. Then the question arose, what tool could I create that will actually be of use to these teachers.

I came up with the idea of a site where new teachers could find the most important information in order to speed up their adjustment to school life. After receiving feedback on my survey that I shared on the Teacher's FB page, I determined that the 3 most important areas of concern are assessments, planning, and resources.

My prototype was very boring, had no images, had too many contrasting coloured bars, and had some very old youtube videos. In order to make my site better, I shared it with as many people as possible and took on the feedback and advice. I tried to bring in an element of fun by changing the name to Survival Kete for New Teachers, With the change of name, I could bring in some elements of a kete, therefore the drop-down menu on the images of the kete's.

I even asked for feedback from a Reading Recovery Facilitator. She reviewed my Youtube demo videos on Running Records and gave me feedback on how I could do that better. All in all, I was able to refine my prototype to what it is now, due to lots and lots of feedback from people. I had to be brave to take the feedback on board, and willing to rethink and refine my project. So how can new teachers use my site? 

When teachers open the site, they can make a copy of the tracking sheet to keep track of the new learning they have completed. 

They can then choose from either the kete drop-down menu or click on the images to take them where they want to be, either assessments, planning, or resources. 

Then it's pretty straightforward, they choose what they want to learn about. And read up, or watch videos. 

 

The site contains the following information: Information on Running Records, PAT Maths, PAT Reading, Writing Vocab, Jam, Gloss, Online assessment and data, the process of planning, online resources, and abbreviations and acronyms.

The final stage of the program was to present our projects at the Principal Wananage. Luckily we had a practice run a few weeks before in Rarotonga at the Teachers Summit. The feedback was phenomenal. One team leader came to me and said she immediately shared my site with her Beginner Teachers. I had a principal book me for PD at her school to share my tool with her Beginner Teachers. I wish I had known about the Google Analytics tool so that I could see how many people did look at my site. 

I am looking forward to sharing it with new teachers in our school, and to getting feedback from them.

Here is my presentation. 

                   

                                                                         

                                                                       Me in action.

Was it worth being part of the MIT program? Yes, 100%. I learned so much about myself and my thinking processes. I made new connections and experienced being part of something bigger than school. And best of all, I created something that can be useful to somebody and hopefully ease the feeling of being overwhelmed at the start of their teaching career. 

A massive thank you to Dorothy Burt and Matt Goodwin, for taking us through the process step by step. And thank you to KMPG for supporting us throughout the year.  

As well as my senior leadership team, colleagues, friends, and family. Thanks to your support, my project got refined into what it is now. 

If you are considering if you should apply for MIT, my advice would be to have an authentic problem, that you genuinely want to have a solution to, and not to try and come up with a solution before you designed your HMW question, and then...enjoy the journey. 

MIT 2022 Survival Kete for New Teachers

 Here is my site https://sites.google.com/parkestate.school.nz/teachers-induction-template/home

MIT 2022 Project Survival Kete Tracking

On my site for new teachers, I have a tracking system, where teachers have the option to keep track of their learning. The initial idea was to have it light and add a bit of light humour while teachers earn items for their survival kits. 

This was my initial tracking sheet that was drafted: Survival Kit for New Teachers 

Some suggestions from my principal led to this: Survival Kete for New teachers 

Some more suggestions from my principal led to this: Survival Kete for New teachers Slide (Option 1)

After feedback from an MIT Colleague: Survival Kete for New teachers

And then the final product: Survival Kit For New Teachers Tracking (Option2)

This process reminded me of Austin's Butterfly.  Through feedback and more feedback I was able to come up with something that looks more professional. A massive thank you to everybody that took the time to give me feedback!

What do you think? Option 1 or 2?

MIT 2022 KPMG Meeting 3#

 Today we had our 3rd KPMG meeting. We looked at how our project was progressing. 

I am at the phase where I am getting feedback from my colleagues. I have had great feedback from my principal where she is scrutinising the content. One of her feedbacks is that one of my videos under Running Records (RR) is a benchmark video and not good practice. I had to first figure out what she meant with a benchmark video and got the info from my DP. My solution to the problem is to video one of our Reading Recovery teachers doing a RR. Then I know the video is authentic. 

The second feedback was from my colleagues Simon. Here is a copy of his email There were 2 of the things he mentioned that I took to the team for advice. The first was another word for 'unit', to soften it a bit. The team came up with the word "kete", as teachers will gain information that they can add to their kete which I thought was very appropriate. This then created the opportunity to use a kete as an image or border. I'm not very keen on images on the site as I want it to look professional. So the images that I use will have to be chosen well. The team suggested that I rather use real photos. Some advice was given on how to take a photo from the back of people to avoid having their faces in the image. So I will have to take some photos to spice my site up a little. 

We then worked on our Pecha Kucha  (this is still a work in progress) slides for Raro and the Wananga. These slides are timed and run automatically. 20 seconds per slide, 20 slides long. 

The trick is to keep your slide neat and clean with minimum words and catchy images. Prepare just enough for 20 seconds, so that you don't go over your time and/or end up not saying enough. So I will need to practice this a lot. It was suggested that we arrange to present at a staff meeting to get the feel for it before we leave for Raro.

I'm hoping to get more feedback from my colleagues before I share my site on the Teacher's FB page to get their feedback, which will be my next step. 

MIT 2022 Where am I up to now?

I am now sharing my site with my colleagues and on my FB page in order to make sure the information on it is correct. Further, I will be sharing it on the Teachers FB page in order to determine if new teachers in NZ or beginner teachers think this will be helpful. 

I am also currently preparing my draft Pecha Kucha Slide Deck in preparation for my presentation at Raro and the wananga. While creating the slide I have to reflect on my MIT journey. The initial problem, who was affected and how I can solve it. I am hoping to get positive feedback from colleagues and staff as an early indicator that it is successful. My biggest hope will be that principals will find it good enough to actually add a link to their school sites in order to offer extra support to their beginner teachers and overseas trained teachers. 

When I looked at previous MIT teacher's videos, including a dear friend of mine, I realised how many great ideas there are out there, and wondered if teachers are aware of the great work MIT is doing and that they can tap into it. I will take the time to bring this to our teacher's attention so that they can know there are trialled and tested ideas out there that they can tap into. 

My next step is to write what I want to share while looking at my timed slides. I can't talk too long and not too little. Preparing to talk in front of a big audience. Wish me luck!

MIT 2022 - Design successes and failures

 New Teachers Site 

I have had the opportunity to talk through my prototype with Mat in a one-on-one session. I found this was very helpful, especially to pull me back to what my priority should be. I was getting distracted by worrying about the look of my site, possibly out of fear of having to go back and fix everything and through that creating more work for myself. However, I was losing focus of what the most important part was and that was the content of the site. Matt advised me to finish off by collecting my content information, and later in the design thinking process, there will be space to work on what the site looks like.

He shared with me some examples of sites and advised me to try and look at as many as possible sites to get an idea of what I like. 

This site of Mrs David's had a really nice layout on the home page. You can clearly see what you will find on the site, the colours are not screaming at me, and I didn't have to scroll down to figure out what is on the page. Everything was easily visible in one glance. 

On this site, there was uniformity in the heading format. I didn't particularly like the colours, but I can see the consistency of the headings that could be valuable. 

When I am done with my content, it will be really important that I do a paper layout of what I want my site to look like. Concentrating on what will be headings and what will be subheadings, then going back to my site and adapting my layout. 

And as Matt said numerous times and remembering from my DFI course, embrace white. 

Next, I shared my progress with my principal and DP. This was a very helpful session as well, we quickly discovered that I was adding things to my site that were not relevant to my initial idea. As I was searching on the web for information I would stumble upon things that I thought could also be helpful, and ended up adding things to my site that has the potential to blow up and confuse new teachers. So they helped me to come back to my initial idea of sharing important information well, in order for new teachers to "survive" the first 6 months of their time at a new school.  They also highlighted to me that I need to look at copyrights as I made some copies out of books with the correct information, I am not 100% how I will check that and will seek their guidance on this. Michelle also shared the NZSTA site with me. I really like the neat clean look of this site. The photos are not overwhelming in colour and you can also see at one glance what is available on the site. 

Lastly, I shared my progress with the Kootuitui leadership team. The feedback was positive and sounded like it was something they could see the value of. Immediately there was a suggestion to add the Observation Survey, but I highlighted that this site has the potential to get really big, but that I want to focus on my initial main points in order to present a completed site by October. After October, I can add more and "grow" the site gradually. The leadership team will help me with feedback as soon as I have my prototype completed. 

The honest feedback from colleagues and leaders is what makes my site better. It's so easy to get distracted and move away from what I really wanted to achieve. Having the conversation and sharing my progress helps me to really think about what is the most important information. What do they see as valuable and what is dead weight. 

My goal is now to tackle the harder part of my prototype, and that is the planning unit. I want it to be really clear for new teachers without overwhelming them.

KPMG Meeting 2

 During our second KPMG meeting, we presented our progress with our prototype. This phase is calles the testing phase. "In the testing phase, you will gain feedback and insights that you may not have been able to recognize without testing your prototypes. Through these tests, you will identify aspects of your prototype that did not work well or the end user did not find functional or pleasing. These “failures” give you the opportunity to fix and improve aspects of your prototype"es.

I presented my Running Records page. 

What we discovered through the feedback process was that my initial idea was not going to work. I had the idea that I would create a template and then make a copy of it in order to adjust it specifically for my school. In this way schools could make a copy of the template and adjust it to their own school's needs, however, the red flag was raised to what often happens. When you create a copy for your own school, you only work or updated the school site version. The template get's forgotten and outdated. 

It was suggested that I create my site as an additional piece of information that can be linked to school sites. 

So focussing on the information that is applicable to all new teachers and cutting out customized information such as principals messages, school sites and contact details for specific people in the shcool. 

This makes so much more sense, because then the site will be practical and can be updated as time goes, and everybody that uses the site will see the changes. 

So the new layout on my sites first page changed to: 

Purpose of this website

Induction Tracking

    Assessment, 

    Planning,

    and Resources

Professional Blog

Classroom Organisation

I really hope this tool will be of great help to all new teachers and that it will be practical and accurate. 

As soon as I have most of my information on my site, I will send it our to colleagues to get more specific feedback. 

Testing Prototypes

MIT 2022 Progress towards prototype

During our first KMPG meeting, we drew up a plan for our prototype. We then had to go away and refine it. I presented my idea to my principal and DP just before I had to urgently leave for South Africa as my mum fell ill. I took my MIT work with me in case I had time on hand in the 48-hour flight journey and could fit in some work. Unfortunately mum passed away while I was on my way so I didn't look at this for a couple of weeks. As the dust settled and I shared about my life in NZ, MIT always came up. I shared my ideas with family members. Especially the ones involved in IT or management, herefore all the wrinkles and tears on my sheet. And when I came back to NZ and managed to go to school for 1 day before being diagnosed with COVID, I presented my idea to my Kootuitui leader. Each and every person thought my idea was good and added to it. They helped me to refine it to make it practical and user friendly. These were the inputs that stood out for me. 

Principal: It was so helpful to talk to Michelle as she had the overall knowledge of what new teachers struggle with. 

- We added how teachers can plan by tapering down from the curriculum, achievement objectives, LPF's to learning intentions in their daily planning. 

- We clarified which assessments are applicable to Manaiakalaani schools. 

- She suggested that instead of just giving links to teachers to sites that could help them with their planning, to add a little video of how to navigate these sites.

- We clarified which sites would truly be helpful to teachers in order not to confuse them.

- And lastly, she suggested that I could embed a calendar of when Manaiakalaani assessment data is due.

DP: Gretchen was my reality check. She thought the idea was great but cautioned me at it could easily get really big. We talked about what my focus or priority should be, in order to present to the principals at the end of the year. 

Anthony: Anthony is an addition to our family, he works in IT in South Africa and runs his own security company. He added that I should have a place where teachers can see who they can talk to if they get stuck. Like a helpdesk. So I decided to add emails of subject leaders or contact persons with their email addresses.

Jono: During our last MIT meeting at KPMG, I asked Jono if he had some ideas of resources that could be helpful to teachers. He gave me a few names which I wrote down. I went through each of these to determine if they were easily accessible, whether they were free or whether it was appropriate for our curriculum. I eliminated one or two.

Kootuitui Leader: Cam also liked my idea. She suggested that I could use Google Forms instead of a Google sheet for the induction track. She also offered to help me clarify my understanding of how to navigate some of the sites I suggested, in order to make Screencastify video clips. The first one we looked at was Edpotential. I realised how easy it was to navigate and understand after only a few minutes, whereas when I was just given the link and had to understand how to use it by myself, I found it quite confusing to read the data. And all it took was the clarification of what TMP01 meant, and how to find the different reports for the cluster and the school. This confirms what Michelle suggested, that a little navigation video will be very helpful to new teachers, instead of just giving the link to the site. 

This was a really interesting part of my journey as I loved sharing my idea with everybody that was willing to listen, and getting their feelings on it. Everybody felt that it was something that will be helpful and can prepare teachers better. 

Next step: I am now starting on my prototype. Creating my site and collecting all the information I need to link. Also, identifying all the abbreviations or acronyms that are important to know, I. will do this by asking the teachers and management at my school.

MIT 2020 Collecting Data

I collected data using a survey that I sent out on the teacher's FB page. Up to today, 9 April, I had 62 responses from a variety of teachers, however, most were NZ trained. 

My goal was to collect Teachers' Voice of newly appointed teachers across the country. 

With collecting the data on when teachers started teaching in NZ, I was hoping to get data around if this feeling of being overwhelmed affects a specific age group of teachers, or whether it is something all new teachers experience. 

Of the 62 teachers participating in the survey, 56 started between the years 2019 to 2022. 6 teachers started between 1997 to 2018. 

On the question What is the hardest thing about being a new teacher in an NZ school, I had a variety of answers. Most of them indicated how hard it was to get used to the workload, understand the curriculum, planning and assessment. How to cope and plan for a digital class, learning new systems and lack of support. There were a couple that referred to how what they learned at university did not prepare them for the teaching profession. And finally, teachers struggle to get work-life balance due to all the new things that they have to learn. 

It was interesting to see what they felt they needed more help with. I thought that understanding the curriculum would be the hardest thing, but then I realised it might the case for overseas trained teachers, but not necessarily for teachers that are used to the curriculum from experiencing it as a child and working with it at uni.

The 4 highest areas where they felt they needed more support were: 

Planning, Assessment, Finding Resources and Grouping Students. 

The question where I felt the most empathy was: How would you describe how you felt about all the new learning when you started as a new teacher at your school?

Of the 62 participants, 32 felt overwhelmed. Some felt frustrated, disheartened, lost and that everything was tiring. 7 still felt excited and fantastic. 

When I How do you think student achievement was impacted in the time period when you were getting your head around the curriculum, assessment, planning, etc, most answers were a bit vague. I got the sense that teachers don't want to acknowledge that their lack of understanding might have had a negative impact on their students. Answers varied from heavily impacted to not impacted at all. 

And in my last question, do you have ideas for how a school could support the orientation and induction of new teachers more efficiently and effectively, there were a few great suggestions and the following caught my eye: 

Returning teachers could have a minor pct for a year... Eg like once per month you get a chance to go watch others or have an obs taken of them

Take them through the assessment process and ensure they have access to all the information they need.

Have a structured BT program (e.g., who provides what support, requirements, same expectations of each BT/consistency), and provide all school procedures and protocols. Be open, supportive and receptive to questions, feedback and concerns from staff to management.

Supporting more with assessments and understanding the curriculum

yes, structured induction would be really good

Have PDs on school-specific programs, sites, timelines and expectations BEFORE the start!

If one could get something to read before you actually start your first day at school whether it's online or hard copy, will make you feel more at ease and will also help you to ask the right questions when you do not understand how things work at the said new school.

Have a guidebook or a scavenger hunt type list of things to find and ask about.

Perhaps orientation/induction before term starts for teacher aides and teachers. Where to find resources etc.

Was my survey useful, yes definitely, did I get all the correct data? No, unfortunately, I forgot to let the teacher's email addresses be visible, so I couldn't determine whether they were in a Manaiakalaanie school or not. 

Moving forward, I will get in touch with the Manaiakalaani MIT teachers, and create a focus group with whom I will bounce my ideas. 

Survey Responses