I worked with Ms Swastika to work on the presentation about teaching Arts. We use several resources to prepare the presentation and get some work samples from around the school to be shown to the participant during the event. Below is the presentation that I use during the workshop.
- Home
- Education Philosophy
- Teaching Ideas
- Professional Development
- Learning Environment
- Achievement & Contribution
- Teaching Journey
This year I got a chance to work with other teachers at school in the School to School commitee. I'm excited to be involved in this event as it's my first experience in School to school to share my knowledge about current educational practices to other teachers who might need it. This platform is the right place for me to gain more experience and skills in sharing and presenting. I worked with Ms Swastika to work on the presentation about teaching Arts. We use several resources to prepare the presentation and get some work samples from around the school to be shown to the participant during the event. Below is the presentation that I use during the workshop.
0 Comments
As part of action plan we need to review how we see action element in the IBPYP and how we empower school community to put more attention to this important aspect of the IB PYP curriculum. Therefore we conduct a workshop about Action in IB by reviewing of what the school have done and plan for what we can do in the future regarding with Action. Below is the description of the workshop and also the powerpoint presentation that I use for the workshop. Aims: 1. To reinforce action in the PYP Sekolah Ciputra 2. To evaluate the implementation of this program across the PYP levels 3. To know the continuum of Action programme across the year level 4. To share some sample strategies for action empowerment from the school community Process
Below is the presentation slides that I use Our school is currently working on the review of POI for next school year. We’ve been through several steps to accomplish this and currently in the final stage of the process. Through this post, I would like to share some steps to do in the POI review seeing both from each year level (horizontal review) and analyzing the balance of POI based on each transdisciplinary theme (vertical review). I try to apply my current understanding of concept based learning as part of this review. POI Horizontal Review Here are some steps that can be done to review the POI by each year level team members. More details input will be more visible, especially regarding with subject specific coverage. 1. Evaluate the central idea using the pyramid suggested by Lynn Eriksson in her paper about concept based learning. 2. Each team may propose one completely new unit. They can include the propose unit in the note part.
3. Consider about the international or local events, timing of the year, period (how long it takes) when placing the units into sequence. 4. Evaluate each unit against the standard Significant, Engaging, Challenging, Relevant. Please see the evaluation questions underneath the review table. 5. Include subject related units. Please see the curriculum mapping from this year to complete this and consider about collaborative planning with single subjects 6. Cross reference with subject specific scope and sequence It’s suggested to the team to divide job for each team member to be responsible to see certain units and then come back to team to share and discuss and make last decision as team. POI Vertical Review When analyzing the POI from the lens of each transdisciplinary theme, this process should be done by leadership team and middle manager (year level coordinator / team leader). Below are certain things that you could consider when doing this process. ● On each theme descriptors - have we explored everything for the whole year. ● Have we included these relevant global concepts? See below taken from learners without borders:
● Is it concept driven or fact based? ● Age readiness? ● Is there any repetition of central idea and lines of inquiry? ● Is the key concepts are used in balance within each transdisciplinary theme? i.e. All 8 key concepts in Who We are To improve the delivery of IB PYP curriculum at our school, I’m doing analysis on how the school can improve the way we plan for assessment and learning engagement. I use thinking hats to analyze our current practices and hopefully find solution for future improvement. I hope this post could be useful for others who also concern about assessment aspect of the school and probably interested in the use of WALT and WILF. Facts ● Since being introduced in the assessment workshop WALT and WILF became a familiar term used by teachers to help them to design assessment task by using backward by design approach. ● Throughout the time, this is being used to drive the teaching learning and also the design of the assessment of the units. ● The WALT and WILF used in PYP planner cover knowledge, skills, concepts and attitudes; therefore in each of those element, teacher easily design learning engagement as well as assessment task based on learning objective (WALT) and success criteria or (WILF) ● Furthermore, we decide to split the WALT and WILF table (what so called) and PYP Planner. and due to this issue, we got recommendation on how we use the planner especially in terms of assessment (Stage 3) and learning engagement (stage 4) Positive: ● it’s been helpful to design the assessment task ● it’s familiar terms and easy to use for teachers and students ● it can be used to design comprehensive assessment task for knowledge, skills, concepts, or even attitudes ● it drives teaching learning in the classroom. Teachers used it as their lesson plan and somehow it makes the lesson more structured. Negative: ● The use of it is being misunderstood. Based on certain research WALT and WILF actually used for daily teaching learning, where teacher share the learning objective to students and discuss the success criteria with them. Instead of doing this, so far what happen at school is teachers already design set of assessment tasks with its fixed criteria for the students to do. This cause issue with the implementation of inquiry based learning, where students didn’t get chance to participate in designing assessment task. ● While the teachers felt being helped by the use of WALT and WILF, there is sense of fragmented learning happen throughout the unit. This cause teacher to lose opportunity to do more inquiry and to explore more conceptual understanding by students. This became worse when the WALT and WILF is set aligned with the lines of inquiry and it became timeframe e.g. we need to finish first lines of inquiry in week 3 of the unit. ● The existence of assessment tasks at the end of each WALT (learning objective) seemed like they are just mini summative tasks that happen throughout the unit. ● Many even still use WALT and WILF only for the sake of documentation instead of an effective tool to design learning engagement and assessment ● There are two separate planners being used the WALT and WILF and PYP planner. ● Teacher’s questions were not being addressed well throughout the unit. Possible solutions: ● We will still use WALT and WILF for daily lesson purpose. Teacher will share the WALT (learning objective) during the lesson and discuss the WILF (success criteria) with students when designing assessment tasks. ● We will try to use other format of designing assessment task and learning engagement by empowering teachers questions and more focus on the conceptual understanding of the units. ● Focus more on the conceptual understanding by mapping the key concepts and related concepts. We then create learning objectives, teacher question, learning engagement and assessment based on this mapping. Download example of concept map below:
By Alan Yip – Founder and Master Trainer of MINDEDGE
Does male and female learn in different way? Is male more intellectual and logical than female? Is Female more diligent than male? Why is female easy to get moody and angry? Why does male tend to be more physical? What does the scientist said about learning? This post is the answer to some of the questions above. I adapted some idea courtesy of Mr. Alan Yip, a trainer from Singapore. Brain Based Research We often wonder, does intelligence affected by the size of the brain. An average brain weighs 1.36 kilogram and Einstein’s brain weighed 1.23. As one of the most intellectual person on the planet, Einstein has smaller brain size than the average people, so we can conclude that it’s not about the size but it’s about how you use it. How about gender? In our brain we have what we called Corpus Callosum, a connecting tissue between both sides of the brain. Surprisingly, female has 25% larger tissue than male. It’s believed that female can do multitasking while man can only do one thing at a time. Male Pre-Frontal Cortext (the center of command in our brain) matures at the age 30, while in woman, this cortex matures earlier at age 25. It gives effect to male that they usually has short attention span, more impulsive and delaying things. Another good findings in the brain research is that female brain use two part of brain to process words, while man only use left brain to do verbal processing. Therefore female tend to talk and has larger vocabularies, while male tend to be more straight forward when talking. Social Emotional Differences Hormones play a vital role in controlling our emotion which will affect our social relationship with others. While testosterone is responsible to make boys not good in processing emotion, more competitive and express their emotion through action, Oxytoxcin hormones in girls makes them to be more social, is more emotional and use this to feel, see details and more expressive in words. As parents or educator, we can use this as strategy to be more effective with our approach to the kids or students. Boys like to to do active games, therefore we gave them active game that involves physical, teach them how to control feeling through competition and sport and use more pictures when introducing concept. With girls, it looks like a bit easier because the oxytoxcin hormone also create girls to be able to tolerate boredom, like to please others and like to bond with others. But once girls get hurt, then they will carry this the whole time, therefore teaching them to feel happy ab out themselves, others and everything around them is crucial for girl. Girls are more fragile with emotional feeling that is asily affected by what happen surrounds them. It’s important for parents to build more confident, self esteem, open communication, survival skills, to give safety for their insecurity. Understanding and Helping Our Kids By understanding these differences, we could take the best of them and give the best for them. Here are some things that we can do to help them learning. Association We can do this game by choosing one topic and ask the kids to call out any related words. It’s best way to start learning. This strategy is similar to what we called brainstorming. It starts with what styduents know (prior knowledge). This will enhance creativity, increase speed of thinking, activate prior knowledge. There are some rules of this game, where you don’t give judgement, play with them, and do not over do it. VAK (Visual Auditory Kinesthetic) Understand how they learn best. Based on research 70-75% percent of students are visual . if we use the right strategy then it will improve the students learning. Some of VAK strategy including Body spelling, use body gesture to write, flash card, draw first before write, use music to stimulate feelings, use all senses to boost our ability. Smart Learning This strategy related to language acquisition. It’s believed that people who have more words could have bigger chance to be more successful. Increasing word power is significant. Some strategies you can do is by having words journal to keep new words daily, have our kids to read aloud, listen to music also increase vocabularies. 3 Conditions to remember Respect your children As parents or teachers we need to respect our kids, as we expect them to respect us. When they have problem we need to hear without interrupting. Listening to them doesn’t mean that we always agree, we could say our concern after listening about theirs. Set Clear and Fair Rules When children making mistakes, avoid to give punishment. Giving logical consequences to things that they probably do wrong will be more effective and beneficial for their growth. To set the rules, you will need to have clear and open discussion about this and ensure that both you and your kids understand what are the expectation. Praise their effort Whenever student making effort give we need to praise them. However there are some conditions when giving praise could be misleading. Under praise could also be dangerous for our kids. When praising we should focus on their effort, instead of only focusing on their intellectual achievement like “Well done”, Excellent or “Good Job” . Effort praise may include suggestion for improvement i.e. “Keep trying, you may do …”, it’s good that you have started, you can do better if…” After all, all kinds of praise should be delivered using positive emotion. This post is based on research and study about gender and learning theory. We are aware that gender could be bias; therefore in this case we are more generalizing rather than stereotyping. Overall, it aims to help us as parents or educator to improve their learning. As part of school commitment to keep updating the staff with current knowledge and skills from the latest educational research, we conducted two days in-school workshop on February 14th and 15th, 2014. Besides, this workshops also aimed to support teacher’s professional development in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom. There were three workshops run in parallel on those 2 days,led by three official IB workshop leader coming from other IB schools across the region. We have Assessment in the Early Years led by Katie Bowen from Thailand; Concept Based Learning led by Jacqui Patrick from Jakarta; and Teachers as researchers led by Richel Dungit from Jakarta. Each workshop is designed specifically to address the needs for the development of the IB program in our school. We had these three options for teacher to choose which workshop that suit their needs at most. The format of the workshop is to engage the participants in active learning with some practical sample to be used and adapted in their classroom practices directly. Many things to learn from the workshop which help the school to improve the implementation of the program and have positive impact on daily teaching and learning process. This opportunities of professional development is an on-going process, as we are all a community of life-long learners. The concept-based learning workshop gave opportunities for teachers to deepen their understanding of concepts, as well as to review Sekolah Ciputra Programme of Inquiry to make sure that all Unit of Inquiry really lend itself to develop students inquiry and enable the students to share their learning through the conceptual lens.
By Yan Yulius
PLC stands for Professional Learning Community is one professional development program that a company should conduct in order to meet individual learning of their staff. PLC is mostly done in educational institution like school to empower collaborative learning among the teachers, school heads and administrators. Our school tried PLC this year with the main aim is to improve teaching learning practice in the classroom. After getting several reference and brainstorming our own definition of PLC, the school staff came up with this statement “a Professional Learning Community is a professional group of people, motivated by a shared interest to collaborate and inquire through supporting and working with each other towards achieving a common goal that will improve their teaching practice so that it makes a successful difference to their students’ learning.” On paper, theory about PLC seems ideal but in reality we did face some challenges throughout the process of the implementation. However I tried to compile several rules that probably you might want to follow when you want to conduct PLC and make it works at your schools 1. Make it as a part of professional development plan. AS part of the appraisal system in our institution, every staff needs to have professional goals as their continuous commitment for their own professional growth. However they should not have extra goal only to include PLC as their PD; make PLC as one of the goals instead. It’s supposedly not an extra works which is outside their roles and responsibility. 2. Have an appointed supervisor/ mentor or an expert on the PLC focus When you are working in a group, you must have supervisor or mentor who will help the groups to keep on track. The mentor ideally come from leadership team or senior management team. Basides, the group may also appointed someone to be their expert mentor for their PLC group e.g. school counselor if they are working on inclusive education. Another important thing to do is to elect a representative of the group who will help to coordinate the meetings. 3. Maintain a record or journal that details the PLC journey It’s important to keep the record of their learning journey in any format. I would probably suggested blog as the media to record this, but some staff might choose paper and pencil to record their learning journey. Other options you might use besides using school server is Google Doc or other online collaborative tool like wiki. This will be useful when they present their learning to others, or when it’s published properly it might be useful research findings for other audience too. 4. Have focused area of interests What we have on the list as options for area of interest include learning environment, methodology, instruction, management, communication and assessment. Initially, teachers wrote questions and leadership team sort them into focused groups based on the area above. However, it’s difficult when team tried to get an agreed focused inquiry, when everyone’s got something else in their mind. It’s the supervisor job to ensure that the group inquiry topic is not too broad to explore. 5. Celebrate learning and findings at the staff expo PLCs are based on a spirit of sharing what we learn. Each PLC is expected to share their findings with the wider staff in an informal expo toward the end of the year. This is important step as the culmination of their learning and to give chance for staff to celebrate their PLC journey. By Yan Yulius - Vice Principal at Sekolah Ciputra Surabaya
I read some articles in the online news website showing some teachers protested the government’s decision to approve the new curriculum to be applied in our national education system this year. One of the protestant mentioned that the new curriculum is only a political movement of M. Nuh in his last year as the Education minister of this country; so that he will be known as the revolutionist of the education system in Indonesia. Another protestant also mentioned that this could be a potential “killer machine” for lots of teachers in Indonesia who will lose jobs because of the idea of integrated subjects. Furthermore, the new curriculum will decrease the teachers’ quality because everything is already been set up and controlled by the government. The last statement maybe refers to the “buku babon” which is going to be published by government and will be the only resource teacher will use for the new curriculum. This phenomenon had been going on since the first semester of 2012 when the news about the new curriculum 2013 was first announced. But, if we are looking back again at this current situation what is exactly the main issue of our education system in relation with the curriculum. In this writing, I’d like to discuss a bit about it and share my opinion toward this issue which hopefully could give more perspective when dealing with the application of the new curriculum 2013. Early in March, Sekolah Ciputra held a seminar which was opened for public, specifically for parents. The main aim of the seminar was to introduce the new curriculum to parents and to give them more insight about what to prepare with their children education regarding with this change. Lots of parents and education practitioners attended the session which was held in one of hotel in centre of Surabaya. Dr. Anita Lie was the keynote presenter of the event and I was taking part to present about the possible application of the new curriculum into classrooms with my colleague, Diana Sumadianti. Early on the keynote session, Dr. Anita Lie mentioned that curriculum must be changed regularly. She quoted that curriculum meant to be a “vehicle” to deliver the content and competencies to pupils. By saying that, it means that curriculum should and must be updated regularly to suit the needs of the education system of a country. So if some people were questioning and being doubtful about why we have to change the curriculum too often, they need to agree and understand that it’s what it meant to happen. Considering about the constant dramatic changes to the world, we could not depend on one particular curriculum model which influences the actual teaching and learning into classroom. Education is not a static substance which can’t be changed; instead it must be dynamic and consistently developed to match with the constant changes of the world around us. Furthermore, she mentioned that the changes should come with consequences that it should be effective and thorough including the improvement of the curriculum stakeholders, which in this case means the teachers and students as the key points, school administrators and of course, the biggest community but often are neglected, the parents. In this case, government needs to reflect and be relevant that it would be very challenging to apply this curriculum without the investment on the improvement of the teachers’ quality too, because they are the tip of the arrow who hold most important role in the delivery of the curriculum into reality. So, what are actually the changes in the new curriculum? What would be the potential problems or the further issues which might come from the application and could affect our education system? I had a chance to read the draft of the curriculum in the public tested material by the ministry of education, and I found some positive changes towards the curriculum including the major shift in the teaching learning approach. Of course, I also found few absurd adjustments especially about the 4 basic competencies which include religion competency as part of the required expectation. I won’t discuss much and argue further about this part, since there were too many argument already happened during the making of the curriculum; in which Dr. Anita Lie was included in the curriculum developing team and she was in the position of against the idea. So I would like to discuss further about the positive changes or at least the good intentions to improve the quality of our curriculum. One major change from KTSP is the idea to have thematic integrated approach in teaching learning of all subjects in elementary level. Subjects like social studies and science will be merged into language subject, means the content of these subjects will be integrated and delivered in Bahasa Indonesia lesson. It will happen until students reach year 4 where they will have social studies and science lessons again. When seeing this idea, I must say that it was pretty ambitious idea, yet also brings good missions toward the movement of our education systems. This idea might work well, because many of disciplinary concepts are actually transferrable between subjects. It’s really possible to deliver science content in the language class, because language can be used as the media to learn. For example: when the students are learning about energy, they will read text about types of energy, write procedures of scientific experiment, and explain the result of the experiment orally, plus there are big possibilities to discuss certain concepts from other subjects such as: social studies concepts about the conservation of energy; and all can be done in language class. Does it sound like a brilliant idea? So, why it’s too ambitious? I could see that this new approach is intentionally developed to try to keep up-to-date and catch up with the latest educational trends or at least to be similar with international curriculum own by private global education organization like International Baccalaureate (IB). Just to clarify that IB had done this program in almost 40 years, the concept of integrated or what they called transdisciplinary curriculum has been rooted in the teaching learning practices in all IB schools around the world, including Sekolah Ciputra, of course with all its own downsides and challenges. Now you can imagine, how long will it take for this curriculum to be settled and effectively applied in our country, considering the teachers’ quality, professional development and resources investment, and of course the demographic aspect. This theory of integrated approach is far easier to be discussed and talked about, rather than to be applied in the actual teaching learning process, especially when the teachers still have old paradigm of education system. So, I would suggest that the government need to focus and to invest more on the development of teachers’ quality as well as the provision of the resources, which cannot depend on one “buku babon” only. Another big move for teaching learning approach in the curriculum 2013 is that its application should be students-centered; means the learning will focus on what students’ need to learn instead of teacher become the sole leader of the class. This movement is something that I and many other educators around the nation have predicted and waited for. It was mentioned in the curriculum workshop presentation that one of the problems with the previous curriculum (KTSP) is that the learning process was still focused more on the breadth of knowledge which led to so many misinterpretation of the purpose of the curriculum itself and finally it ended up with teachers leading everything happen in the class. Once again, I will use IB curriculum as comparison of this idea. In many international curriculums standard, including the national curriculum used in superpower countries, this education philosophy had been believed by many education practitioners around the world; that learning should be holistic, students centered and must be constructed from what students’ needs, not from what the teacher wants. This ideal movement will open the door for many possibilities of better teaching learning process, lead to higher thinking levels more than only memorizing facts, and also the development of character of the student as human being and as a long-life learner. Besides it is relevant with inquiry based learning model which is promoted in lots of countries for their education system. For example, when students learning about human rights, instead of asking them to memorize the human rights charter, the learner could observe a real life issue around them and try to make connection with the Human rights charter; in that case, the learning will be more meaningful and real life context. International Baccalaureate facilitated that needs by publishing curriculum frameworks which can be applied in schools around the world with strong support of professional development of the teachers and also a well-built IB community as forum to share experiences, resources and ideas for the application of the curriculum; of course it comes with the price. But, I think that what the government should do by investing on those aspects and empowering all educators to build learning community as place for their informal professional development too, because we all know we learn best through sharing. There are some other changes in the new curriculum which I might discuss in my next writing, probably with some tips what teachers and parents should do to prepare. For now I might just say that change is inevitable and is never easy. Without the necessary changes, there will be no growth is evident in the development of a country. We must completely realize that change comes with consequences; either positive or the negative ones. And I would say that the best thing that we can do at this point is by keeping our positive attitudes toward this change. Teachers, like myself, must be proactive in adapting with the new curriculum and must take initiative to learn; not only waiting and depend on the government’s support for providing the professional development and other necessary incentives. I always believe that, teacher is also a learner who must never stop learner and stay up-to-date with the latest educational trends; to ensure that we are ready to apply the new curriculum that will be released soon or even any other changes that waiting ahead of us. So are you ready with the new curriculum? Keep up the spirit and stay positive, Indonesian teachers! By Yan Yulius If you are an educator, have passion in writing and sharing knowledge and are enthusiastic with technology, I recommend you to join this workshop. We will discuss some basic information about writing, blogging, teaching and learning through online media; plus some tips and testimony from a teacher writer of kompasiana.com, harian Surya, and many more. Please follow the instruction given below and feel free to ask any question to the presenter during the course later. Before we start, you may write any queries about blogging in education in this inquiry sheet document -- NOW, Let's start the session!! -- TASK 1 >>> Click this >> link << and follow the instruction to do the task. Be ready to discuss! There are lots of other top earning blogs in the world ; if maybe profit is one of the motivations that can encourage you to start writing blog posts. Now a question for you as an educator, What will be the benefits that blogging could have for your career as a teacher? TASK 2 >>> Brainstorm the benefit of blogging in education using this document Brainstorm Benefit of Blogging -- Discussion Time!! -- TASK 3 >>> To get more information about the reason why blogging is important for you as individual or as an educator, you can study the resources below, chose which one suits you: -- Discussion Time!! -- TASK 4 >>> Now, if you already feel motivated, let’s learn how to create a good blog. You can read some tips below by choosing which one that best describes your need:
One and only suggestion from me is simply “Just do it” . I know that it must be hard to start writing for the first time but trust me, once you start writing in a blog you will get used to it and develop a sense just like writing a diary. When writing, you might think about it as your ongoing reflection. You will be surprised by the outcomes later, only if you do it consistently. TASK 5 >>> Final task for you is to write a post under the theme "Blogging in Education". You might discuss more specific topic based on that general theme. Don't forget to publish and share it with your colleague via email or social media, once you finish your blog post. -- This is the end of the PD -- Before you leave this page, you might want to have a look at some links below which might be useful to help you building your blog. You can also post your comment or question about this PD in the comment box. Finally, I would like to congratulate and welcome you to be part of a "true" community of learner. Resources and References: To help you building your first blog or website, here are some platforms to use:
Below are some of my blog posts:
To post an article on mass online media, you might refer to this websites: More list of great educational blogs: A Recap from IB Asia Pacific Conference 2013 in Kuala Lumpur: Summary from Keynote Sessions By Yan Yulius PYP Coordinator at Sekolah Ciputra, Surabaya, Indonesia Recently I had a chance to attend another regional conference held by IB Asia Pacific office and this time it took place in Kuala Lumpur. The venue was chosen for the first time after Singapore held the event for several years already. It definitely gave different atmosphere and vibe to the event, especially people who come to the conference can also do tourism visits to some interesting places around Kuala Lumpur. It’s a nice city, better if I had to compare to big cities in Indonesia. However, I saw lots of Indonesian around the city and made me felt like home. Talking about the conference itself, I think I would rate it as an average. There were some factors that made me think like that such as: the rooms/ venues for the breakout sessions, the compact schedule which I think there were too many sessions in one day, and also the quality of some presenters. In this writing, I would like to share my notes and thoughts of the keynote sessions that I attended. Thursday, March 21st 2013 Keynote speaker 1: Prof. Sohail Inayatullah Shaping the future: Visioning 2030 The first keynote speaker is Professor Sohail Inayatullah who is an expert of future studies. I never heard future studies before but I think it would be interesting to see how IB education will see the future from the perspective of this expert. He opened his speech with some facts about today’s society which is sometimes overwhelmed with too much reality and starts to think about entering the unknown of the future. He stated many times that the future is asset, resource and narrative. There were so many changes happen nowadays and will continue to happen in the next following years or decades such as: more women lead important role/ organization , climate change (which relate to one of UOI theme at most IB schools), and the possibility of animal rights to protect biodiversity. Animal Rights…? Yes, animals will be projected to have its own rights and protected by law in the future. So how do we learn about the future? He proposed some ideas, firstly of course we need to predict, then to be interpretive or to understand perspective. The next step is to be critical with the current issue which might affect future and the last one is do action learning for shaping the future, at least our own future. Now, can you imagine what will happen in 2030? Imagine these: library in the future 2025, where human can directly download content to the brain; development of vitro meat- human-made protein in food; flat world where people connect to each other easily; artificial intelligence; chealthy cities; demographic shift; transparent brain where you can use your brain to control technology; everything is hyperlink; and of course the rise of Chindia for their science and technology. So how the school will be in 2030? If I use metaphors the school with industrial terminology: it should be like smart shopping center where learner could choose and has so many options for their learning. School should apply customer co- create system, where the learner could negotiate the curriculum with the school. So how do we prepare for the future. First step, just imagine, because imagination matters. Presenter’s suggested site: www.meta-future.org Friday, March 22nd 2013 Keynote speaker 2: Ben Walden Inspirational Leadership: an inspiration from Shakespeare's literature On the second day of the conference, Ben Walden was chosen to open the day with his keynote speech. He is an English actor who is currently promoting leadership education through the screenplay of William Shakespeare’s literature. In this session he used Henry V, one of famous Shakespeare literatures, to deliver concept of inspirational leadership. Once again, he started his speech with a quote "Imagination is more important than knowledge" – Einstein, which I thought that imagination has strong emphasis in the conference. He mentioned again that imaginative quality is vital. As educator, teachers have to understand what we are educating them for. He also stated a classic quote “Managers do things right, Leaders do right things”. In relation with school community need to be inspired with the act of leadership by administrator and by teacher. At this point, the core of leadership according to the talk is spotting talent of others. So what is the different between vision and strategic target? In vision you should not have measurable target unlike the strategic plan. This target can be deficit to inspire community. Somehow, I think that this statement is correct, if we only targeting the school community to do things just like what we plan then we are only bunch of boring managers attempting to achieve targets. Without vision, school community would not courage, motivation and inspiration to go forward. Another interesting ideas proposed by Ben Walden was 4 Concepts of Leadership Potentials divided by two masculine and feminine qualities: Good King – who works based on order, Warrior - who is action oriented, Great Mother – who is nurturing, Medicine Woman – who works for change. He asked audience to reflect which one style that we most and least prefer with. I got myself as Great mother for the most preference style and Warrior for the least. Well, I was worried that I am too feminine, but Ben mentioned clearly that these qualities are not merely for specific gender; instead these qualities are general and can be applied to anyone of any sex. Then, we discussed about the problems that might come up if we are having too much preference in one learning style, which I found also interesting. This idea could tell us that if we are conscious of it and aware the consequences, we have choice. At the end of the session, he told story of Henry V about his leadership qualities who could inspired his army to fight against the opponent whose much more army (which I found similar with a movie “300” by Zack Snyder). One thing that I remembered the most is that a leader could take some times alone to think and reflect, without a need to be always there and fight in front. Finally, Ben Walden acted the inspirational speech of Henry V, which was touching and really inspired me to apply these leadership skills and shared with others when I come back to school. Saturday, March 23rd 2013 Keynote speaker 3: Prof. Paula Barrett Teaching for Resilience “You wander room to room hunting for diamond necklace that is already around ur neck" Rumi - 13th century, Persian poet That was a quote that Prof. Paula used to open her keynote. She is a an expert in the field of child psychology and owned FRIENDS program which propose the prevention and treatment of anxiety and depression. She used the quote to emphasis the idea that most people don’t have confidence to share their mental health problem with others. One thing that I agreed about her statement was that physical health problem is not stigma; but mental illness is. Common people would think that mental health problem are not the subject that you would share with other people freely; unlike the physical which is easier to share even to people who we don’t really know. Surprisingly, bsed on her research, there were 1 of every 5 pole experience anxiety or depression. She defined anxiety as excessive worry which also relate to physical disruption such as stomach ache, headache. Some people called it “perfectionism”. Somehow, I could use this knowledge to reflect to myself and felt like really helpful for me to understand more about my mental health. In the context of school, you can say that 1 of every 5 students in your class experienced anxiety and definitely it needs prevention which is long term. The best investment that you can do for prevention will be embedding social and emotional skills in the school curriculum. Again, the presenter asked the audience to have vision to the future; Prof Paula mentioned that in the next 30 years, peole will spend more money to deal with mental problems/ anxiety and obesity/ diabetes. To overcome the mental health problem, she proposed an idea of resilience, which she defined as the ability to bounce back in the face of adversity. Furthermore, she discussed about the factors that could affect mental health. The risk factors are physiological sensitivity, neurological growth and Life events. She mentioned that the growth of children from teen up to age 21-25 is the most risky age for experiencing depression and anxiety. While I couldn’t agree more that life events really have significant impact on someone psychology. These include breakdown family, peer pressure, marriage, work problems and much more daily life experience which happened day to day. The good news are there are protective factors. One important thing that I got is about attachment means that every human being needs affection from at least 1 person in their life. In school context, teacher is one of the closest person who students could attach to, though teachers still needs to have professional space between him/herself and the child. Another thing I learn is that we can definitely teach attention style or mindfulness by looking at the detail of students habit in learning and doing their daily task. Thing that I found a bit cliché is be positive thinker; it’s true but it’s extremely hard to do. It’s interesting to hear a statement from Prof. Paula about how you can identify and determine people happiness from the wrinkle on their face when they gets old. Physical and social enhancement would be the next factors that might affect mental positively. And the last one is prevention program which can be embedded in school curriculum, in this case she proposed a program to teach about resilience called FRIENDS program, which is used worldwide. Professor Paula Barrett ended he session with another quote ”Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising everytime we fall” - Confusius 500 BC, China. Suggested site by presenter: www.pathwayshrc.com.au and a movie www.thehappymovie.com |
Yan YuliusAn IB PYP teacher, PYP Coordinator at Sekolah Ciputra International School, Surabaya, Indonesia Archives
May 2016
Categories
All
|