Week+Seven


 * Week 7 - Who Are Your Students?

Guest Lecturer: Prof. Tanya Fitzgerald**

//Week beginning April 27th 2009//

It is Ian here welcoming ‘Team Riskfactor’ to the week seven summary. This week’s lecture was given by Professor Tanya Fitzgerald who is the Academic Director in the Faculty of Education at La Trobe University. Professor Fitzgerald posed the questions, **who are your students and how do you know?**

Professor Fitzgerald got us thinking by showing us a list of names and numbers. This list was shown to an actual teacher at the beginning of a school year. As the numbers ranged from 92 to 140 the teacher assumed that they were the IQ scores of the students in the class. In fact the teacher later learned they were the locker numbers! This example highlights an important point that was repeated throughout the lecture:


 * Do NOT make any assumptions**!

She then outlined briefly, the expectations of teachers and also what we need to understand and consider as a teacher. This was followed by a quote from Hermann Hesse that highlighted us to remember to ‘recognise each other’ and ‘learn to see the other and honour him/her for what he/she is.’ Professor Fitzgerald explained that we need to engage with issues. By partaking in ongoing reading of journal and newspaper articles we can form our own opinions.

Professor Fitzgerald then raised some critical questions about getting to know your students. She was critical of teachers falling into the trap of making initial assumptions of their students on issues of background and culture. She asked, **“What strategies will you** **use?”** and because we will be spending a lot of time getting to know the students, **“Why is this important?”**

An important quote to remember came out of the ‘Unity Project’. This was a research project undertaken by Russell Bishop in New Zealand:


 * ‘School matters to me now because the teachers know my name and pronounce it correctly!’**

The question of what is not known and how might you use this information was then illustrated by Professor Fitzgerald through the example of a teenage boy called Roni. It showed how complicated a student’s background can be and the deeper questions you therefore have to ask yourself as a teacher.

The next section of the lecture concentrated on disrupted schooling. An interesting statistic that Professor Fitzgerald commented on was that 100,000 children are truant from school a day in England. Is this a case of the children failing the school or the school failing the children? It was discussed that there is a need for schools to reach out to the community. This includes addressing standards of uniform, asking the students what rewards they want and engaging with parents by making phone calls or visits to the family homes of the students.

The final section of the lecture concluded with the topic of diversity and complexity. Professor Fitzgerald summarised by inviting us to celebrate diversity and also, very importantly, to tolerate ambiguity. The final comment was a plea for us to ask if we don’t know!

I hope the summary of the lecture has given you all plenty to ponder and reflect on. I am also interested in hearing your reflections on the various ‘getting to know’ activities mentioned this week and especially the one we tested in the workshop.

Well good luck in your fieldwork everybody. Looking forward to hearing about your experiences and adventures over the coming weeks!

Hi Team Riskfactor, this is Nick here. After one week of fieldwork this lecture has taken on a particularly strong relevance for me. I am at a school in New South Wales with Year 6. The class has a wide ability range and a mix of individuals, some requiring individual in class support from teacher's aides. Several points have been reinforced to me.

The first is the need to set clear boundaries. The majority of my class has been together for the whole of primary school however they have not had the same teacher for one complete school year until now. The impact of this is that they do not have clear limits to work within so effectively each new teacher must set new boundaries which will inevitably contrast with those of the previous teacher. My feeling is that the boundaries must be set clear with known consequences. I have been very fortunate to see first hand the disruption that rules without consequences have on a class and the erosion in discipline that occurs.

The second is to get to know your students. We have many students from difficult backgrounds eg. divorced or sole parents, low income etc. which means that there are often reasons why they are having difficulty concentrating on a learning task which appears to them to be less relevant than their home issue. My impression is that you need to do your best to get to know and build a relationship with your students so that you can read their moods more clearly.

I hope everyone is having a good time at their pracs, I'm learning LOADS at the moment, the most important thing for me has been the opportunity to learn how to communicate with young people. Primary school has not changed at all since I was there except the technology is cooler.

Cheers everyone, I'll look forward to a catch up when we're all in the same town again soon, Nick

Hi all! Bec here with my Week 7 Issues reflection. Well, as Nick said, what an eye opener it is to have actual experience within the classroom and see the way that the theory relates to the practical! In regards to this week's topic, I have found it quite an interesting journey to be working with students and learning the importance of not making assumptions. I think as humans we all make assumptions as soon as we meet people - its natural as we like to be able to define the world around us and our place within it. HOWEVER, this practice is so dangerous as a teacher! I found myself subconsciously making assumptions about a particular child's behaviour, or their abilities immediately after meeting them, I suppose so I felt I could do my job, and relate correctly to the child in the classroom context. But of course I was suprised by most children during the time I worked with them - students have moods, good days and bad days, and outside influences upon them just as adults do, and I started to realise that to truly get to know a student, it requires a much longer and insightful commitment to them than one or two days of time in a classroom!

I personally very much enjoy working with lots of different personalities (in any job I've had) and I was delighted to find out that primary age children have more personality than the average adult (!) and a classroom is a colourful display of all these personalities working together. This is fanatastic, but it raises the question of how to sensitively engage with each personality and teach them effectively without negecting your general day-to-day responsibilities as a teacher. I think this is a big challenge, and to speak a little out of turn here, I also saw it was something that perhaps some teachers do not see as important, or at least they neglect to address the idea that there is no way every child in the class will respond or learn in the same way.

So how to create a comfortable, fun, calm classroom with boundaries that works for all children? I'm not exactly sure yet! But I do feel that I want to begin as a teacher with the idea in mind that the reason I'm embarking on this is to affect people's lives in a positive way. To do this as a teacher I feel now is only possible by understanding that the environment is complex and ever-changing. As professor Fitzgerald told us, we need to celebrate diversity and tolerate ambiguity!

Although it is clear to me now addressing these issues will be a daily challenge, I look forward to it, as I never wished to be in an environment where things are predictable, remain the same or god forbid, are boring!!! I don't think there'll ever be a danger of being bored as a teacher, and I'm eternally grateful for this!

I look forward to catching up with everyone and hearing how prac has been!!

Hi, everyone. This is Ken Nee. Students come from a wide range of cultural, socio-economic, spiritual/religious backgrounds, not to mention a whole bunch of other factors and variables that have helped shape and form their personal identities, as well as their learning abilities and capacities. To cater to their needs as individuals, and as students, is a huge task. I quote Bec's comment: "So how to create a comfortable, fun, calm classroom with boundaries that works for all children? I'm not exactly sure yet!" Is it possible? Perhaps we just have to aim at the middle range of students, and do our best for the lower and upper levels the rest of the time.