On Children
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Recently a member of my extended family shared this poem with me. I remember as a young man in my early twenties reading Gibran’s work and somewhere at home I have his poetry book, ‘The Prophet’.

As educators and parents, the poem ‘On Children’ challenges us to reflect on how we deal with our children. Gibran suggests through the poem, that a child's parents should not be controlling toward their child; rather, they should give their children the opportunity to succeed on their own.

It is so normal and natural to model and impart your own values, thoughts and ideas to your children. In fact it would be impossible not to as children will end up ‘doing what we do rather than what we say’ as modelling is so very powerful. If we curse and swear around home, no end of cajoling our children not to swear will ‘wash’. They will of course speak to their friends with the same ‘lingo’ used around home.

As parents it is so tempting to step in at every turn to try and influence your child’s decisions. A classic example of this comes around the time of making decisions about which subjects to choose at secondary school. Many parents will try and influence their children’s thinking based on their own dreams and hopes for their offspring. Parents often see the pitfalls and limitations of certain courses and actively try and steer their children in the direction of what they think will be best in the end.

I remember being guilty of this myself. My son had just finished his science degree and was thinking about doing post graduate studies in micro biology. Knowing that the ‘risk /  future financial reward’ factor here was not as good as many other post graduate routes, I suggested he do a parallel degree in law saying if science jobs were not available, maybe he could use a law degree within the science industry. He saw straight through me and said, “Dad, I’m not in this for the money, I’m passionate about science.”

Yes, I was worried about his financial security. I didn’t push it, as deep down I knew he should follow his own dreams, not be influenced by the fear of his father. Isn’t it so true in life that we know what is right deep down in our hearts but fear of future security can sometimes get in the way of really ‘chasing our dreams’.

Serious problems can arise when a child’s abilities or interests are out of sync with his/her parents’ dreams and aspirations for him/her. If the parents by deed or implication put pressure on their child it can impact very negatively and be extremely counter-productive, often ‘shutting down’ the child’s self- belief.

Getting back to Gibran’s poem, the central point I take from it is to allow children to be individuals. In fact, foster and celebrate this individuality. In this way children will be more likely to blossom and realise their potential. If we do want to influence them, and of course we do, then maybe we should all aim to follow the wise monkey’s words: ‘Speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil’. In this way, our children will see good people modelling good ethics and values. It is so important we allow our children to be comfortable in ‘their own skin’, and support them with their aspirations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys

We are not going be around forever and we must help prepare them for being on their own, making their own decisions. It is their journey and the best thing we can do is be supportive of their dreams but also ensure they are ready to take the responsibility for their decisions as well. Part of all this is having high expectations of our children pitched at their personal best level and appropriate to their age and stage. A central part of supporting our children to be in a position to achieve their aspirations is to ensure they have the skills and values such as persistence, resilience, optimism and creativity. Life can be tough and we will be doing them a disservice unless we prepare our children accordingly.

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Being Curious and Inquiry Learning

For some years we have been promoting curiosity via our approach to inquiry learning.

 We want the boys to develop an inquisitive disposition to the point of it being second nature to them. The macro picture of inquiry can be deceiving and may be seen as simply fostering curiosity, which of course is a laudable pursuit.

Inquiry learning starts with curiosity and exploration and leads to investigation into a worthy question, problem or idea. It involves asking questions, challenging the known, gathering and analysing information, generating solutions, making decisions, justifying conclusions and taking action.

Our job as educators is to enthuse and encourage the curiosity within children and in parallel, build the skills of developing good questions for inquiry, seeking out answers, testing hypotheses and exploring other questions generated during the inquiry.  The skills of inquiry learning are the building blocks for all learning.

I recently re-read a powerful quote from a former Headmaster (Gardner Dunnan) of the Dalton School in the USA.

“All students need a realm in which they can feel ‘expert’. That takes time, attention and hard work. But in developing that interest, they gain a capacity to succeed that you don’t get simply by having broad coverage.”

Just over a decade ago we started a class of 11 and 12 year olds who had already developed a strong set of work and study skills and were already well on their way to becoming independent learners. We gave them an opportunity to select a topic of choice and over the year complete an extended study culminating in a presentation of their work in November/December. I underline the fact that the whole process, including the decision around the initial question/topic, was supported and ‘scaffolded’ by the teacher. An enormous amount of ‘skill’ teaching and mentoring was involved.

This is really the ‘short story’ of the concept, but believe me when I say, the boys in this class over the years have all leapt at the challenge and their engagement has been inspirational to observe. They finish the year incredibly proud of their achievements (incredibly impressive studies) and move onto secondary school superbly prepared as ‘independent learners’ with a love of learning.

The year-long study would not suit every boy’s learning style. For this reason, all classes at the same year level are involved in inquiry learning but not in this ‘extended study’ approach.

However through our experience and observations, we had a strong hunch that this model did suit a number of children, even children who found some of the basics of literacy challenging, so in 2012 we trialled this approach with another class of 11 and 12 year olds. The class was selected as any homogenous class would be, except we identified children who we thought would enjoy and benefit by the extended study style of learning.

On reflection it has been a great success and the engagement of almost all the boys went to another level. Staff, parent and the boys’ feedback has been extremely positive.

One of the boys completed a study around the subject of Lego! Many would question whether there was enough ‘meat’ in this topic to complete a year-long inquiry? No question, as the student completed his inquiry and exceeded all our expectations. At the end of the year I asked him to reflect on his year and this is what he emailed me:

·         I liked being in an extended study class because it meant that we could do 'in-depth' research of a topic of our choice, something that we got really excited about. I really enjoyed coming up with different options of topics to do.

·         I personally liked the fact that we got to make our own booklet AND do a presentation to the class.

·         The way that we decided the questions we were going to ask for our study was really effective (using the windows program 'Inspiration')

  

·         It gives you a feel of what college will be like, with deadlines, projects, etc.

·         I like how you have to do a lot of designing the layout of your booklet.

·         You learn how to manage your time.

·         The teacher doesn't tell you how you should do something, you come up with a solution yourself.

   

Now the negatives:

·         Sometimes you might feel a bit, 'lost'

·         There are no other negatives.

 . 

All in all I like the way our class this year was run. I would love to have the opportunity to do it again.

We had a fantastic teacher, and i will miss this class next year at college.

  

From: Noah

Inquiry learning is indeed engaging and empowering. Good questioning is at the heart of the inquiry process. It is often open-ended (has no right or wrong answer) and/or a provocative question which demands research.

Ideally this inquiry approach is authentic, real work that that someone in the community might tackle with the possibility of creating new knowledge.

We use various techniques and a thinking framework or taxonomy called SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) to structure a lot of our teaching and learning around the inquiry process. This powerful framework provides a range of tools to grow the boys’ thinking.

Our staff continue to reflect on the Wellesley teaching and learning approach, stretching ourselves to grow our own skill set via our active professional learning culture. ‘We are learners too’ and will continue to strive to enrich the boys’ learning environment.

Being Creative Can Be Plain Hard Work

During the school year I don’t have a lot of time to read apart from professional education reading but over the Christmas break I tend to plough through a few books. My son who is a scientist living in New York, came home for Christmas and gave me Christoph Niemann’s book called ‘Abstract City’.

Niemann is an illustrator, graphic designer and author. After his studies in Germany he moved to New York in 1997. Niemann's work has appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Newsweek, Wired and American Illustration and has won numerous awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Art Directors Club and American Illustration.

His book, ‘Abstract City’ contains the original sixteen essays from Niemann’s New York Times visual blog.  http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/

In an additional chapter Niemann explains why talent is over-rated and how yoga almost destroyed is design career.

Niemann’s book really appealed to me on a number of levels but mostly because he gives us all permission and encouragement to ‘back’ our creative thoughts. Most of us look upon the ‘creatives’ as people with special talents way beyond our own. Niemann very simply builds our creative confidence by his own admission that being creative is mostly down to plain hard work and a bit of luck and divine inspiration. Sure, some people have certain aptitudes for this and that, but fundamentally, these aptitudes mean nothing without graft. Usually it is not until we have dug very deep before we realise we have a nugget to polish. In essence ‘we are all better than we know’. K.Hahn (Outward Bound’s founder)

His graphic below tells the story. He says, “I hate it when people tell me, ‘You are talented.’ The word ‘talent’ implies a natural gift. As if there is a miraculous superpower that helps an artist produce decent work.” P258 Abstract City

The other myth Niemann debunks, is that working in a creative field is all fun and games. Like all things that are worthwhile, they take hard work and usually stress comes with this territory. This other graphic done by him is appealing. P262 Abstract City

A key message we keep hearing is that for New Zealand to improve its competitiveness in the global market place, we must foster creativity, innovation and enterprise in all aspects of society and particularly in schools.

At the heart of making a real difference to productivity is ‘smart thinking’ aligned with the courage to push the boundaries of our imagination and dare to do something different. We need to develop aspiration in our children. The desire to make a difference, tap into their self- belief and when appropriate work with others to build momentum behind their idea(s).

Schools have the responsibility to actively promote creative thinking and provide time for children to push the boundaries of their imagination.  If we can get young children practising thinking ‘outside the square’ and provide them with some thinking strategies/tools to stretch the mind, then anything is possible.

Being creative is hard work but immensely satisfying. It is a joy to see a child beam as they realise their work is of value. It becomes a self-fulfilling cycle as the positive feedback is the motivation fuel for more hard work.

Reading ‘Abstract City’ has been a real tonic as not only has it been a fun read but it has reinforced so much of what I and our school believes to be fundamental, and that is, our job as educators is to provide contexts for creative endeavor (be it in the arts, science, maths or any pursuit), expectations of ‘personal best’ effort and a warm, inclusive culture that supports risk taking.