Learning and Change (March 2015)

I had the pleasure of attending a learning and change regional network meeting on Wednesday 24th March, 2015.  While we were not as far along the journey as many other networks were, it did help to provide a little clarity and the opportunity for some of our team to bounce questions and ideas of each other. What is more it was an opportunity to ask questions of Mary Wootton and Brian Annan, who were both more than willing to explain ideas in greater detail and provide clarification while answering our numerous questions.  Prior to this meeting I had been feeling slightly frustrated and at times confused, it felt like on one hand we were being told to go forth and conquer and discover while on the other hand to not do this and wait for the next words of wisdom.  Our mentors with the best of intentions I felt were confusing us more.  The journey that they had been on in relation to their learning and change was not necessarily going to be the same as the journey that we were embarking on.  It felt at times that choice was not an option, instead we were being  told what we were doing eg communication was our umbrella and it linked with the NZSL project. However when talking with my colleagues some valid points were raised eg only some off our team were involved in the NZSL project and exactly what did communication and more pointedly effective communication actually mean and look like? Added to this we were being told that it was a process and it took time and you had to have a hunch and so on, but when we asked for some guidance and support so as to not recreate the wheel it felt like the responses were along the lines of oh no we can't tell you that you will have to discover it for yourself...problem was in my mind this just didn't gel.

One of the strengths of the learning and change was that we ar all learning together and as LT's we  were encouraged to support all of our team having input into our agenda.  This was a different way for us to work but not necessarily a bad thing but what we found was that it was  bit like the blind leading the blind, we went round and circles and didn't get very far along the process of where to next.  This made me question why this was happening, my thoughts were it was due to a number of factor such as there was assumed knowledge from those who had been involved in the project from the start of us, some information such as the basic phases (Sage words from Olwyn) would have been useful for us to have had at the start. But also not everyone hadn't taken the opportunity to further their own professional knowledge by actively searching out professional readings etc in relation to what is learning and change and what is communication  and in turn effective communication.

http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/System-of-support-incl.-PLD/School-initiated-supports/Learning-and-Change-Networks-LCN

http://www.vln.school.nz/groupcms/view/879827/about-learning-and-change

No School is an Island


We needed to understand what the principles of learning and change are and how it could work for us in our situation.  We wanted to be linking across our network and supporting each other while also getting in and 'giving it ago' without someone say oh no don't do that or you should have done this first, which was a strong possibility as we weren't sure exactly what we were giving a go. We liked the idea eg learning maps as a tool to gain information, and the learning and change networks framework and linking it with inquiry cycle (inquiry cycle  or tki - inquiry cycle) as well as the concept of keep, stop and start.

Therefore I was keen to attend the regional network meeting in the hopes of clarifying a few things for myself, and valuable the meeting was.  Simple but powerfully learning such as with the learner maps, it is the child who analyses them and looks at the trends and what goals come from it, it is critical to have the team around the child working to support the child to achieve their goals, this means we need to have clarity about what our own goals are.  We want student agency. We want parents and communities involved.

So what does this mean now?  I think it means that those of us who went to the regional network meeting need to get together to discuss what our learning for the day was and what were the key points and then we need to stop worrying so much about do we have a definition for communication or effective communication and actual try a learner map and use the prompts to find out who our students communicate with, how they do this, and what tools and where do they communicate. When we do this we may find as Brian Annan said that this may take us of on a different tangent to focus on a different goal we need to support the child to achieve in order for them to have effective communication. But that is ok!