ISHCMC Food for Thought

Dear all, 

Thank you for all you work this week through the rain and our flooding. For those of you who haven't seen the water pouring into to building on Monday evening here is the short video which will give you some idea of the speed that the water entered the building and the difficulty that this caused us trying to protect classrooms.

Many might see what happened as a disaster and be depressed about it. Not in our case, even though in the middle of a regional Health and Safety visit we were able to demonstrate how close we are as a community with everyone in primary working alongside each other to tidy up; secondary maintaining learning through MyISHCMC and our parents being overwhelmingly supportive of the day's closure. As the work continued during the week, we have removed carpets, unveiled lovely tile work, know how to protect the school in the future, successfully re-settled EE4 and KG classes in new learning spaces and generally shown our ability to communicate effectively, work as teams, to be resilient in face of challenges, problem solve and be flexible. Great skills to be modeling in the 21st Century.

This weeks Food for Thought is a mixture of videos and articles for you to be thinking about and applying in your classrooms and at the 3 Way conferences this week.

When Kids Have Structure for Thinking, Better Learning Emerges

"Amidst the discussions about content standards, curriculum and teaching strategies, it’s easy to lose sight of the big goals behind education, like giving students tools to deepen their quantitative and qualitative understanding of the world. Teaching for understanding has always been a challenge, which is why Harvard’s Project Zero has been trying to figure out how great teachers do it.

Some teachers discuss metacognition with students, but they often simplify the concept by describing only one of its parts — thinking about thinking. Teachers are trying to get students to slow down and take note of how and why they are thinking and to see thinking as an action they are taking. But two other core components of metacognition often get left out of these discussions — monitoring thinking and directing thinking. When a student is reading and stops to realize he’s not really understanding the meaning behind the words, that’s monitoring. And most powerfully, directing thinking happens when students can call upon specific thinking strategies to redirect or challenge their own thinking."

https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/03/31/when-kids-have-structure-for-thinking-better-learning-emerges/

People v the School System

When I watched this short video it made me wonder, could a parent sue us for failing to educate their daughter/ son adequately. Wouldn't it be an interesting world if schools that are failing to take into account or even recognize the changing world we sued by parents. Watch and make up your own mind how we would fair on his criteria.

Achieving our Dreams

With 3 Way Conferencing and " goal setting" this Tuesday, I thought that this video I was sent a while ago would be appropriate to have in our minds when we are advising students about their targets and passions. I am sure that there are many of our students who have dreams that are crushed by adults around them. This video is the story of a  "16 years old girl, Laura Dekker who became the youngest sailor to circumnavigate the globe single-handedly. During her 518-day voyage Laura took on six-meter-high waves, extreme weather, dangerous reefs, disturbed sleep, cramped living conditions, food rationing and absolute solitude. She also kept up with her schoolwork.

She ends her 10 minute talk by saying, " If you have a dream go for it, it might be hard, but the harder it is the more rewarding it is when you fulfill that dream." If we ware going to break the mold, redefine the system, then we must not hold our students back; we must let them have dreams and be their through positive words, encouragement and support to help them towards their goals. 

Have a good Sunday,

Yours
Adrian