Delivering Cybersmart sessions during distance learning was an interesting experience. One of the biggest challenges was not being able to easily judge how the lesson was going by doing a lap of the room and seeing students' screens (although Hapara Teacher Dashboard made this a whole lot more manageable than it could have been). So back in class this week it was an opportune moment in time to reflect on the Cybersmart sessions I had planned for this term (it seems like a lifetime ago that I did this planning).
I read an extremely interesting blog post by Mark Maddren, a facilitator in Christchurch, which got me thinking about how I could differentiate sessions. I find planning Cybersmart lessons a challenging juggling act: trying to make learn, create, share visible while also offering multiple texts for students to engage and provide activities that offer choices. When trying to tick so many boxes it was often the differentiation that got left behind. I'm inspired by Mark's idea of having beginners, stepping up and confident sections for each lesson.
As a facilitator this also hammers home how important it is to develop relationships. By getting to know the learners as well as possible during the one hour a week I spend with them, I am more likely to know which learners will pick which option. And at the end of the day I will also have modelled how sessions can be differentiated for the class teacher who knows the learners far better than I do.
Another of Mark's ideas was including a learning pathway for each lesson. My first thought was that this isn't necessary but then I realised that I was thinking of the lesson from my perspective. Of course I understood the flow of the lesson, I'm the one who created it! It made me wonder what else works for me but isn't working for the students.
It was timely that I came across this article on Virtual White Spaces by Ann Milne. This got me reflecting on my Cybersmart resources more deeply. Milne quotes George Dei as saying:
“Today, Indigenous knowledge is about the struggle to retain one’s identity in the call for a global sameness.”
Milne also quotes the host of a webinar, who when discussing how schools are preparing for distance learning said :
"...(it's like) having these jig saw pieces, but suddenly this pandemic has removed the picture from the box."
She adds her own thoughts to this:
"That’s a really apt analogy, but even when we thought we did have the ‘picture’ in our learning environments prior to COVID-19, the truth is that many children—Māori, indigenous, and minoritised children world-wide were always absent from that picture and their pieces never did fit."
I'm now contemplating whether my Cybersmart sessions are just replicating practice which hasn't worked for many of our learners in the past. Is my planning culturally sustaining or is it culture-erasing (one size fits all)? I was already reflecting on whether I need to get feedback from students each session. Now I realise this is a necessity not an option. Why have I been asking for feedback about each session from the class teacher but not the learners? They are the people the sessions are aimed at after all.
One of the goals for the Ako Hiko cluster this year is to get whānau workshops up and running. I believe this is the ideal moment to collect voice from our communities. Coming out of distance learning I think we must be there to support families so that they in turn can support our learners. We must do this without making assumptions about what they already know or what their capacity to help at home is. This is why we are currently surveying our communities to see what they would like from these sessions.
Hopefully the more we listen to whānau the greater their capacity to support our learners will be while also providing an opportunity for educators to better understand the culture and context of our learners. This in turn enables learners and whānau to see their culture (and therefore themselves) in the curriculum.
I'd like to finish (thanks for reading this far) with a quote from Lessons From Lockdown. In this article Dr Nina Hood states that we should:
"...meet children where they are and give them what they need, both inside and outside of school, in order for all of them to have a genuine opportunity to be successful.”
To me this is super simple summary of what education should be. But are we currently putting enough effort into knowing where children are? And if we are not, how can we possibly be giving them what they need?
Moving forward I hope to stretch myself in these areas by:
- Differentiating Cybersmart sessions
- Trialing a learning pathway for sessions
- Collect more student voice and feedback about sessions
- Get whānau workshops up and running as soon as possible
