Dear Parents,

You just returned from “Back to School Night”. Your child’s new teacher seemed kind, passionate and knowledgeable but there was one thing they mentioned that has left you feeling uneasy, “Agency”. The teacher talked about giving your child “voice and choice” in their routines, their schedule, the classroom set up, even learning activities.  

I’m a parent too. I get it.  You love your child more than anything and are proud of him/her but they are only a child and the last time you gave them choice on what they would like for dinner they asked for a dish of donuts and candy canes with a side of ice cream. You need the adult in the room to teach your child what to do. They don’t have the knowledge or self-control to make good choices on their own.  Your child doesn’t need choice they need structure. You worry that all of this push towards agency will mean your child always gets whatever they want whenever they want it and will leave your child feeling entitled.

Let me ease your doubts a bit.  The first thing you need to understand is that “Agency” isn’t just about “Voice and Choice.”  It is about building up your child’s self-efficacy. It is about “Ownership”. “Voice and choice” are just a pathway toward ownership.

What your teacher is going to help your child develop this year is self-efficacy.  Psychologist Albert Bandura explained self-efficacy as.

The higher the self-efficacy a person has the more agency they will display. The more they own their choices. For your child, it means they will not be a passive participant in school. They will set meaningful goals and work hard to achieve them.  Eventually, they will develop lifelong skills that help them through future life challenges and opportunities.

Picture it this way.  Your child’s life is like being on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Sometimes the wind will come and push him/her along quickly in the direction he/she wants to go. At other times the waves may come crashing hard in the wrong direction. As a parent that may sound scary. But this safe school environment is the perfect place to learn to navigate the waves.  Your child’s classroom is more like practicing in a pool. The teacher will be right there to direct your child, push them forward and help them up when they need it. What your child will begin to learn this year is that they not only hold the oars to the boat. They have the ability to build their own sail. Without efficacy, your child will grow into an adult who is tossed and turned by whatever waves life brings but with efficacy your child has the ability to adjust to those waves and push forward. 

But how exactly will the teacher help your child develop self-efficacy and agency?

 Every classroom will be different but in a classroom truly focused on developing agency there are some common components. Keeping with our boat metaphore I visualized the PYP’s approach to developing agency below.

Your child’s teacher will get to know your child and their strengths and areas for growth really well and they will work to structure and adjust the learning environment in a way that pushes your individual child to meet their goals at their own pace. Your child’s learning will be personalized to their own needs. This is because if your teacher wants your child to own their learning then they need to be able to guide them towards what they still need to learn and to truly build efficacy they also need to build on their strengths. Building on strengths and overcoming challenges is one of the quickest paths to developing agency (Bandura 1994).

Or it might be other simple things such as asking the class to design a solution to a problem within the class such as “We keep losing all of our pencils behind the bookshelf. Does anyone have any ideas on how we could solve that?”

The important thing is that over and over again your child will receive messages that they own their choices, that they are capable students, mistakes are important learning opportunities, all students in the class have strengths and they can all help each other achieve their goals.

Your child is going to love learning this year.  The reason is not just because it will be fun but because it will be purposeful to them. Your child’s teacher will make sure that he/she is not just setting goals and doing work because he or she is told to but because they care about it and want to improve at it.  Some ways they might do this are by finding and building on your child’s interests and questions, giving them choice in their learning, maker-centered learning opportunities and project-based learning.

The idea of goal setting is not new but this type of authentic goal setting might be new to you. Your child won’t just sit down twice a year and fill in a goal-setting sheet of paper and then forget about it. They will combine feedback from their teacher with their own knowledge and interests to develop personally meaningful goals on a regular basis. For example, they might set a new Math goal each week and then at the end of the week reflect on how they did at their goal or they might set a goal that they want to improve at a particular skill and then work with their teacher to create a plan of action for achieving that goal.

Choice is definitely a big aspect of developing true agency. This will look different in every classroom but the Voice and Choice should be meaningful to the students and it should impact their learning. It might be choice in how to set up the classroom or where to sit or how to solve a class problem.  For example, I build choice into my weekly routine by having my students help create their schedules each week. Every Monday my students have a schedule filled in with the times that I will be teaching set lessons and empty slots for when various workshops are offered. Students can then sign up to attend workshops that they would like to attend based on the goals that they set and other interests. They can also sign up to lead workshops to each other.

Remember when you first heard the word agency and pictured your kid choosing ice cream for dinner and you knew your child needs guidance. You were right, your child does need structure and guidance. In order to develop agency, your child will be given consistent and purposeful feedback on their choices, their goals, their achievements. This feedback will take many forms, from conferencing to peer editing to self-reflection. The important thing is that it will be timely and specific so that it builds your child’s self-efficacy and therefore their agency.

After reading all of this, agency still might sound a little scary to you. That is alright, it is a little scary. It means letting go of control.  Every time I have to let go of my child’s hand and watch them go it squeezes my heart a bit. We are parents, we can’t help it. We just want to protect our kids and take care of everything for them and we want the other adults in their life to do the same.  But trust me on this one and trust your child’s teacher. When we hold our kid’s hand too tight in the end we are really just making them work one-handed. Let go and see what amazing things they can create with both hands. It might just be a sailboat.

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I laced up my shoes, grabbed my water bottle and took off running. I needed to get in some fast kilometers so I set my mind on that.  I took off on my usual route but needed more kilometers so I turned a corner, then another and another, my heart was racing, my legs were beginning to get tired. It was a good hard run. But at one point in the middle of my run I stopped. I turned around and realized I was lost. I was so busy concentrating on running hard that I had lost track of where I was going.

This year for me was like that run. I started out the year wanting to better meet the needs of each of my students. So I set off on the hard run of carefully tracking each students progress in reading, writing and math.  I wanted them to own that data so I created goal setting books for each student with rubrics, checklists and weekly goal setting sheets. I would regularly assess students  conference with them and give them feedback  They would then use this information to set weekly Math, Reading and Writing goals.   Then I would have workshops and activities available to them to teach them whatever it was they were focusing on.  I created detailed updates for parents so they could further support their child at home. It seemed great at first.  Everything was very personalized. It was hard work. I was running hard.  But I was lost.

When I stopped to take a drink of water and reflect. I realized what this whole system was like for my students. No matter how hard they worked, there was always some new problem I could find for them. There was always something else they didn’t understand that I needed them to learn.  I owned the learning.

I was teaching in the old school hospital model.  I was treating my students like patients. “Here is your diagnosis. I have identified all of your problems. Here is your prescription.

I realized I needed to make some major changes to how I was teaching.  I will get in to more of the changes in other posts but one of my most important changes was pretty simple in practice but profound in mindsets. It involved shifting the focus from all of the things students couldn’t do to what they could.   I needed to build on their strengths. So I started asking students to teach.

Student led workshops on simple circuitry, basics of sewing, designing scale models and how to use Tinkercad. pic.twitter.com/em2bLxvnmz

— Mindy Slaughter (@mjslaughter) November 15, 2017

At that time my students were beginning a unit inquiring into Heritage. They had each chosen a site that they thought should be preserved and were making scale models of those sites. Students could choose to make models in any form they liked. Some students were interested in using Tinkercad and Sketchup to create a scale model on the computer and then 3D print it.  A few of my students had been working with these programs at home and during I-time (Genius Hour) so they volunteered to lead a workshop to teach interested students.  It went brilliantly. The very next week 4th graders from other classes requested the same workshop, so my students taught it to them.  A week after that my 4th graders were leading the workshops to interested teachers. The surprising thing about it, was it wasn’t just my typically outgoing students leading the workshop.  One of my most shy, quiet students was leading the workshop as well. You could literally witness his self confidence grow before your eyes.  After his workshop he reflected on his experience,

-4th grade student

I wanted all of my students to have that sort of opportunity so I opened up workshops to all subjects. First I started with Math topics and this was  an easy starting point. It was simple to have students sign up to lead workshops in concepts that were a review but students wanted more support in. They were also very interested in workshops in areas they needed help with in order to complete a project they were working on.

Some examples of workshops my students have led are:

• How to calculate ratio
• How to find the least common multiple
• How to model multiplication with arrays
• How to use estimation to solve division problems
• How to sew
• How to create a website using Wix
• How to write music
• How to draw action figures
• How to write a great introduction to your story
• How to write good transitions for your narrative.
• What happens to your muscles when you exercise?
• Why do we sometimes double a consonant in the base word when we add a suffix?

There are many things I have loved about having students lead workshops but one of my favorites is the role reversal.  The students get to experience being both the teacher and student with their classmates and that builds a beautiful classroom culture of shared ownership of our learning.  One example of that happened last week when one of my students patiently taught another student a Math concept she was stuck on.  The very next day that same student became the teacher and she patiently explained a Science concept to her teacher from the day before.  These types of experiences completely shatter any notion students had that only some students were “smart.” Everyone in the class is seen as capable. Students are often seen high fiving each other as they learn a new concept or sitting side by side helping each other work through something they are stuck on. One student explained,

Workshop leader and participant showing off their success

Student leading a workshop on how to write a good narrative introduction. Amazing to see how well students respond to other students teaching. #agency #ibrebelalliance #pypchat pic.twitter.com/YoXg44gefH

— Mindy Slaughter (@mjslaughter) April 10, 2018

I have seen many benefits to having students lead workshops. Attributes and Attitudes students have developed from this process:

• Empathy for other students and the teacher.
• Risk Taking
• Growth Mindset
• Shared Responsibility of learning
• Motivation
• Metacognition

This is still very much a work in progress. I have been learning from my mistakes as I go.  Some of the questions I have fumbled through have been:

How do I schedule this?

• At first I just wrote workshop topics on the white board and had students sign up.
• Then I moved to nicer looking erasable sheets that students would sign up for on a Monday but this presented a logistical nightmare as I would try to quickly schedule the workshops on Monday morning for workshops occurring that same day.

• I have moved to a digital system where I list some possible workshop options for Math  and Literacy  on a Google Doc and share that doc with students on a Friday. Students can sign up for workshops they are interested in attending or leading and or they can add a new topic they would like to attend or lead. Over the weekend I assign times for each of those workshops and share it with the students on Monday so that they can set  goals and create their weekly schedule.

  

  sign up to lead and attend workshops

  

  Set weekly goals

  

  create weekly schedule

  
  

How do I manage student behavior?

• There is some sad part of me that giggles when my students are leading a workshop and turn to me in exasperation “Ms. Mindy, they signed up for the workshop but they aren’t listening. Teaching is hard.”  Generally the more opportunities students have had to lead workshops the better they behave when they attend workshops.

One of my students explained the experience well when they said,

How do I know if they have learned the concept if it wasn’t me leading the workshop?

• I check in with participants after the workshop to quickly see if they understand. I also require them to show evidence that they have achieved their learning goal by documenting it on their blog.  The blogging part is a work in progress. Some students forget to take a picture of their work or don’t have much to show.
  

  Student’s blog reflection on his Math goal for last week.

How do I ensure quality teaching?

• I touch base with the leaders ahead of time. Sometimes they are leading a lesson I taught them the week before in a teacher led workshops. Other times it is a brand new workshop. In that case we discuss  how they will teach it and what materials they will need.

One participant reflected on what it is like to attend a student led workshop.

How do I get all students involved?

• Some students won’t volunteer to lead workshops unless you ask them. I look for any opportunity to ask them. For example I might lead a workshop one week then tell my participants “I notice you really understand the concept.   Would you be willing to lead a workshop next week on it?”  Or I might notice a kid writes excellent introductions so during a writing conference I ask if they would lead a workshop on that.  In some cases I just say, “Hey you have so much to offer the class, I would love for you to lead a workshop.  Do you have any that you would be interested in leading?”

How do I manage the time this takes?

• To be honest it doesn’t take much time to set the workshops up. But I needed to find a system that would work within the framework of my classroom. Start small. I started with the one workshop. Then open it up as you are ready.

It is still a hard run and I don’t always know my way but at least now I know I am on the right path because my students are running hard with me.

It is easy to talk about being an innovative school but it is harder to  take the  necessary  risks which allow you to truly be innovative.  I am lucky to be in a school that not only allows teachers to take those risks but encourages them to do so.  Last year, under the guidance of our principal Megan Brazil, the school implemented a new model for teacher development.  Using the idea of Google’s 20% time, teachers were encouraged to choose something we would like to inquire into for the year.  Similar to an action research project. We were expected to come up with a question that we could implement and study in our classroom and then spend the year collecting data in order to improve our classroom practice.

Once we chose our question, we were then grouped with teachers who had similar questions. These groups were called our personal inquiry communities or our PIC. We met with our PIC regularly throughout the year to  give feedback  and move each other forward.

Start of professional inquiry project. Excited abt our “I time” professional group. #unishanoiexcellentlearning pic.twitter.com/tapiWNsrzV

— Mindy Slaughter (@mjslaughter) November 25, 2015

My question was if I could increase differentiation by incorporating more constructionist learning opportunities into my classroom. In other words I wanted my classroom to be more personalized to my students needs by having my instruction be more “Maker” (learn through making). I implemented this through having a weekly Genius Hour/I-time in my class as well as incorporating “Maker” style learning activities into as many lessons as possible. The results I observed in my class were amazing. I will blog about those another time.

The reason this was not only successful in my class but sustainable for the school was that I got to work with a team of passionate teachers throughout the school. In this way we were able to build off of each others ideas. For example, I remember being stuck one week on how I could incorporate this into a UOI.  MY PIC group (Jenny, Michelle, Tianna and Claire)  sat with me and helped me problem solve until I had some useful ideas. Another example is when I had the opportunity to observe Claire Grady, my  PIC team member introduce Stanford’s Design Framework in her class. I then went back to my classroom and introduced it in a similar fashion.

Because our PIC group had teachers from grades 2,3,4 and 5. We also took the opportunity to map out how constructionism could be developed from grades 2-5.  We looked at how we would introduce different elements of design thinking at different ages and how we could develop that through using the PYP framework. In that way we were able to map out how Genius Hour, introduced in Grade 2 would lead up to the PYP Exhibition in Grade 5.

We grew even more excited and passionate as we shared our results with each other and saw the positive affects it had on our students.  We wanted to share this with the rest of the elementary staff so our group planned an Elementary Teacher Maker Play Date. We gave some background information about Making then we set up a variety of Making activities for teachers. It was awesome to watch the teachers reacting with the same type of excitement that kids have as they discover how to make a project. It was even more awesome to later hear stories about how they took ideas from this day back to their classroom.

An inspiring afternoon of teacher led PD. #unismakers pic.twitter.com/g7GSj1Jzhz

— Megan Brazil (@brazilmeg) April 14, 2016

At the end of the year I had the opportunity to learn from other PIC groups when we had our first Professional Learning Summit. During this, we got to hear presentations from our colleagues as they explained what they had been working on and what they discovered from their personal inquiries.  It was truly inspirational to hear presentations about subjects ranging from how to better track student data to how to create a more suitable learning environment through purposeful use of space. I walked away from the afternoon with new ideas and questions that changed my teaching practice.

Teachers teaching teachers – so exciting to be at the first Professional Learning Summit at UNIS Hanoi #unishanoiexcellentlearning

— Nitasha Chaudhuri (@Nitashac) June 8, 2016

 

Schools are full of passionate, talented teachers but too often we get stuck in our little classroom bubbles and we don’t have a chance to build on each other.  What a shame it is when we don’t have the opportunity to learn from each other.  Too often I have seen examples of schools that claim to be innovative but really the teachers are working on an island. For example, often schools brag about coding but when you scratch the surface you realize it is actually just one classroom teacher coding and no one else. The school has failed to give teachers the support they need to learn from each other. Coding in those situations never has a chance to catch on with the rest of the school and become embedded into the school’s culture because it only happens in pockets.

On the other hand.  When you do give teachers the time and support to pursue their passions and to learn from each other, amazing things happen.  That is true innovation.

I think we may have got that right yesterday #unismakers #unishanoiexcellentlearning
https://t.co/5NiXqosWgD

— Nitasha Chaudhuri (@Nitashac) April 15, 2016