I tried to tie in all of the things I wanted to reflect on in this blog post into a single thread that would unite all the narratives, but I had neither the time nor the creative inspiration on how to do it. I could have connected them to my Media Part 2 AQ, which I'm currently taking with the talented trio of Neil Andersen, Carol Arcus, and Michelle Solomon facilitating the course, but it doesn't quite capture all the nuances. Therefore, bear with my "3 topics in 1" approach to this glimpse at my current thought processes.
SMART Goal Irony
This year, a small percentage of my schedule is devoted to "guidance". Honestly, the true guidance lead at our school is the irreplaceable Farah Wadia, our Grade 8 classroom teacher. My role is to support and relieve her when she had to complete guidance-related tasks, particularly those related to Grade 8-9 Transition, such as course selection forms, high school applications, and so on. She recently attended a workshop where she received some training on how to implement the whole-school online portfolio requirement that must be posted twice a year on either BrightSpace (if you are K-6) or MyBlueprint (if you are 7-12). While she prepared how to disseminate this information with the staff, she asked me to conduct a lesson with her Grade 8s on what counts as a SMART goal. (SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.) We didn't spend time creating personal SMART goals yet, but we played with those adjectives to solidify our understanding of those terms by generating examples and non-examples.
A brief note in our school's general updates reminded us that our ALPs (annual learning plans) are now expected to be submitted online, and that they will be due October 31. I didn't consider this to be a big deal, since I have a digital copy of the ALP file that I modify year after year.
I. Was. Wrong.
Only the first portion of the ALP, the background data that informs the formation of the plan, matches the old template. The new, online version is a lot more detailed. In fact, instead of a four-column list of goals, goal strategies, rationales, and action plans, each goal (minimum of one, maximum of ten) have multiple sections to complete with specific timelines and metrics to determine success. In other words, we have to write our ALPs more like SMART goals.
Well, dang! Creating a SMART goal isn't a quick endeavor. The other challenge is that some of these goals of mine are ones I've been working on for years because it's about progress, not perfection. I've always scoffed at the IEP's (Individual Education Plan's) insistence that a number be attributed to the objective. It felt artificial. Each year brings different challenges. These were the goals I had originally chosen for this school year:
1) Participate in leadership opportunities (AML as a vice-president, The Mentoree as a mentor, York and Queen’s University as an AQ instructor); in-school leadership will focus on renewed exploration around Equity.
(Leadership Role)
2) Continue to focus on accommodating and modifying lessons for ELL students as well as improving my assessment practices (especially related to kindergarten) to give timely feedback to students and parents about their progress in the reportable subjects I teach. I also aim to re-examine my “tried and true” practices to see if they could be improved with revisions.(Instructional Role)
These don't qualify as SMART. They aren't specific enough. I have no quantitative measures linked to them. I don't declare at what point I will have "succeeded" with these goals. I will go back to work on my online ALP after writing this blog post, but I've deleted some of these, separated and expanded some of these so now I have five goals, and now I need to iron out all the nitty-gritty. Is it even possible for some of these education goals to fit the SMART criteria? Will I be able to say "yes, by the end of June, I will be 80% better at modifying my lessons for MLL students"? By forcing them into a SMART framework, will they become ridiculous? (For instance, I feel like I can morph my timely feedback goal into something I can "count" by saying that I'll reach out to parents via the agendas or a note or a newsletter once a month. However, I see everyone from Grades K-4 - this may be Specific and Measurable, but is it Realistic?). Hopefully, you can see my dilemma here. However, that "time bound" deadline of October 31 looms, so I'll try my best to make it work.
Land Acknowledgement Loose Parts
I've been working on our School Improvement Plan update. It also is phrased in terms of SMART goals, but for some reason it feels slightly more possible to fit these items into a SMART framework. Weeks in, we are still working on the phrasing of these goals (reinforcing the point above that you can't just whip up a goal in an hour). The board has shifted some of the focus from three goals related to Academic Success, Equity, and Well-Being to equity infusing all three goals and the new subtitles of Academic Success, Indigenous Education, and Joy/Belonging.
Meaningful Indigenous education is a focus everywhere, including my Media Part 2 Additional Qualification course where I am a student. We watched a fantastic, inspirational 11 minute video and every participant will be required to share the way to present or address the land acknowledgement. Last week, I mentioned how I'm trying to incorporate my learning from my Kindergarten AQ I took in 2019-20, especially loose parts. I did a bit of an experiment with the junior-intermediate students during their short book exchange time in the library. I usually have STEM challenges or playful provocations set up on the table for them to use when they have finished their book exchange and if they have extra time. You can see some of the set-ups in this post. This time, I used a phrase from the video we watched in the Media AQ as a loose part prompt. "What does it mean to acknowledge the land?"
Students in Grades 4-8 were encouraged to use the loose parts to symbolically represent their thinking and potential reflection on that question. I took some video of their explanations. Here, below, are just a few of the photos I took of their work. These are just the samples from the Grade 8 class. I plan on compiling the images and commentary into a video that we can play over the announcements and at the Media AQ as a sample of an interactive way of making the daily land acknowledgement meaningful and relevant. The first image is a visual pun. (Tree-T = treaty).
Photos as Biased Texts
I enjoy taking the Media AQ, even though it takes a significant portion of my time. I like how it gets me to think and rethink. For instance, I feel like I am gaining a deeper understanding of some of McLuhan's ideas and of the Key Concepts of Media Literacy. For instance, a foundational idea behind Key Concept #2 (Media construct versions of reality) and #3 (Audiences negotiate meaning) is bias (and side note: I really wish I could commit to memory the 8 key concepts in numerical order. I have to keep looking them up. Do you think that'd be a valid SMART goal for myself?). The bias in KC#2 comes from the producer and the text itself. The bias in KC#3 comes from the audience.
It's been said multiple times so far in the course that it is impossible to take an unbiased photograph. I whole-heartedly agree. I rely on photographs a lot as an assessment tool, but not only are they my views, they are my views at a very specific set moment in time. They don't capture what happened just before or just after the photo was taken. (This is why, back to Farah Wadia, she likes taking a "live" photo because she can then grab one of the frames of the photos in which a student isn't blinking or looking away.)
For drama, I'm taking photos of the students doing "face acting" and portraying different emotions. I count down before I take the photo, but what if their expression was "better" in the split second before I captured the photo? I try to let the students look at the photo I took to get their approval, but when you consider I'm taking 3 photos per student (of the 9 feeling word options they generated as choices as a class) and there are about 20 students in each class and I'm doing this with 4 classes, 3x20x4 = 240. That's 240 photos I'm trying to take within a short period of time, while ensuring that the rest of the class is safely preoccupied with something else so I'm free to take the photo. (Yes, I know the students could take each other's photo, or they could do a selfie, but there are reasons why I'd like to take the photo myself, even though it would add more student agency to this task.)
A photo is a version of reality and not reality itself. I wish I could capture what I hear or my thoughts and reactions at the time more effectively. I've had this talk with the kindergarten teachers about pedagogical documentation. It'd still be a mediated version of reality, but it might help me recall the moment better. Problem is, video take up a lot of space on devices, and I have to watch the video afterwards.
There's lots here to unpack. You can see why my mind is abuzz and I'm a bit tired.
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