Educating the Dragon: behaviour

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My reflections on the 7 myths of Generation Y

I was given an article to read the other day. Its entitled “The 7 biggest myths about generation Y” by Michael McQueen

Michael is an author, international speaker and social researcher on this very topic and the 7 myths he presents got me thinking.

Michael McQueen

Myth #1 They are self-centred.

There are a couple statistics presented here: 81% of youth aged 13-25 volunteered in the last 12 months and 69% consider a company’s social and environmental commitment when shopping. If these two are to be believed then there are a lot more engaged youth than I first thought.

Myth#2 They don’t think about the future.

Youths perception of the future is different and preparing for it has to be different. The key here is in the word ‘preparing’ rather than ‘planning’. Theirs is a vague future with ever shifting careers and skills required. Much better they equip themselves with the skills and contacts they need rather than trying to plan for a unpredictable future.

Myth #3 They have moral compass

From over here that may be the perception but McQueen talks about their understanding that there are no moral absolutes. Truth and morality and seen differently by each individual. This had left them being more tolerant and accepting of diversity than any previous generation.

Myth #4 The are disrespectful

I have heard this one time and time again. But reality paints a differnet picture. As far as Gen Y are concerned there is little respect for piverledge or power or authority. Respect is built out of being respected and out of a genuine relationship with the individual.

“being worthy of being respected is similar to being a nice person… If you have to tell them you are, then perhaps you really aren’t.”

Myth #5 They are lazy

This one is tricky. There is totally different mindset towards work with Generation Y. They have seen far too many heart attacks, strokes and failed marriages. They are being their careers with clearer picture about what work/ life balance is. They are committed to their work but not at the expense of family, friends and the relationships that truly matter.

Myth #6 They only communicate online.

It is true with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, Pinterest and other online communities there has been a huger connection being made around the globe. But with the migration of people and the connecting through the internet Gen Y’s mideset is shifting towards real relationships with real discussion. Making connections with the older generation.

Myth#7 They don’t want to connect with older generations.

They have often been referred to as the Fatherless generation, with divorce on the increase and the blended family becoming the norm its hardly a wonder that so many wonder where their roots are and are crying out to make genuine connections with adults they can trust, look up to and respect.

But Generation Y is getting older. They are no longer filling our Primary schools and they are fast vacating our High Schools too. Do some of these myths still apply to this next generation? Are they the truly lazy? How are we going to address the students in our care? There is much to consider and reason enough to look for the good in our youth rather than assume the worst. What now? But what next?

Child Protection Training Programme adds new dates

South Auckland – 18-22 July
Central Auckland 25-27 July
North Shore 7-11 November

Further details...

New Zealand is one of the only OECD countries that does not have mandatory child protection training for people working with children. Many of the key people in NZ working with children have not had sufficient training in knowing how to identify suspected child abuse and act confidently. Professional training in child protection WILL make you more effective in keeping children safe

Lane Clark Speaks about Teaching and Learning

Lane Clark spoke very powerfully at ULearn10 about the need to acknowledge how we educate being more important than what we educate about, and that we need to work with students on how to learn, how to think and the relationship between the two.

To support this Spectrum Education have a limited offer on Lane’s Books.

Where Thinking & Learning Meet - Lane Clark

Book and CD Rom

If it is our goal to see an increase in student levels of engagement and levels of high school retention, an improvement in student performance standards and learners skilled and ready to contribute to their world, then we have got to rethink what we are doing, and how we are doing it, in our schools.
We've got to teach our kids how to think and how to learn.
In Where Thinking and Learning Meet, Lane Clark challenges our individual and systemic educational beliefs and practices. She offers an approach to re-thinking and re-engineering how teachers teach and how learners learn.

Where Assessment Meets Thinking and Learning - Lane Clark

Book and CD Rom

A symbiotic relationship exists between thinking, learning and assessment. Criteria, void of thinking, result in little more than ‘quantity' statements or statements of subjective ‘quality' language. Neither stretches the learner in their performance, and the latter results in confusion and often a need for moderation.
When a learner is provided with criteria, but is not given the opportunity to develop knowledge and understanding of their elements, its use is compromised and the end result disappointing. This book is about the thinking and learning process. It's about the relationship between assessment, thinking and learning. It's where assessment meets thinking and learning!

Our kids should be choosing life

FEELING disconnected from Pakeha culture heightened the risk of suicide among young Maori, an international study found. Reported the SundayNews

click to enlarge

The article is written in such an emotive way as to enflame the debate over Maori youth.
Perhaps the figures indicating that Maori youth suicide is effectively double what it should be, representing 20% casualties. However, there was no reference to the remaining 80% and how they breakdown in terms of ethnicity.

Disappointingly, there is only quoted reference to the study carried out by Terryann Clark. I for one would have liked to have gone and read some of the source material.

I’m not saying Maori youth suicide is not a tragedy. Far from it. Youth suicide is tragic period. I mourn the loss of a single life from such a totally preventable manner.

There is clearly a disconnect between many youth and their parents. Without the feeling of unconditional love that we can only receive from our parents then life can be brutal. Friends are friends, but they still can let us down. Teachers play their role as do social workers and pastoral care workers, yet still it is the closeness of family that really counts.

Kids need to feel wanted and needed. Even during times when they themselves refuse to acknowledge that need. Through the good and the bad family needs to be there.

Today’s families look very different to those a few years back. But regardless of what a kids family is made up of they need that safe place to be alone. To be with those who will love them regardless. Provided that ‘home’ is a supportive place then we all can bear the trials of the wild-world outside.

Let us all love, support and care for those kids in our care.

Useful link:
Teenage suicides- OECD report (87.6k, pdf) Last updated 20/12/2010

Dr James Hansen - Tour

"Human-made climate change:

a scientific, moral and legal issue"

Dr James Hansen

Head of Nasa's Goddard Science Institute

Given the inevitible CO2 impact that would follow were the current focus on coal and oil exploitation to go ahead as a panacea for our nation's financial challenges, Hansen's visit is an opportunity for the local climate change/global warming conversation to have a champion of excellent scientific credentials who has been asked to explain the risks to several White House incumbents.

Questions arising about the teenage drink problem

Coroner Gordon Matenga said no one person is at fault for the death of the 16 year old who died as a result of alcohol poisoning following a party in Auckland's Grey Lynn on May 8 last year.

At what age should people be allowed to drink?
How much legislation should there be?
How much is it down to parental engagement ?
How much responsibility should be placed on the the individual and how much upon their peers?

There must be a thousand factors impacting upon the events surrounding the teenagers death. Some immediate and some from long ago.Where to from here?

Again this is a time for us all, from all sectors of society, to take a long hard look at our responsibilities.
Law makers, law enforcers, teachers, parents, social workers, off-licence owners, bars and puts and club owners, friends and relations.
We should all play our part.

Further reading:
Why Do Adolescents Drink, What Are the Risks, and How Can Underage Drinking Be Prevented?
Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand
ACT - Raising Age Limit Won't Solve Teen Drinking (opinion piece)
DRINKING IN NEW ZEALAND National Surveys Comparison 1995 & 2000

Dave Meslin on TED.com

I would have liked to have spent time reflecting on this TED Talk but to be honest I’m too selfish and frankly, have better things to do with my time than do your thinking for you. Besides, I only have rudimentary education myself, these are weighty issues and I’m too stupid to process them.
So feel free to open reflective discussion in the blog comments below, unless, like me you’re too lazy.

The Reading list you'll want to read

There are a myriad of books and plans and work to be read by the average teacher. The New Zeland Curriculum, Effective Pedagogy, What Literacy/ Numeracy looks like.
These are not the materials I am talking about today. The list of books below is a mere smattering of material that will not only assist you in the way you teach but broaden your understanding of the material presented. What’s more they are an interesting read.
Background and history, insight, personal perspective and personal motivation are the things that enrich the students lives and make teaching and learning much more engaging and fun. The books below are those that have packed out my teaching with fun facts, clever insight and enabled me to inject humour and perspective into my teaching.

Mother Tongue – Bill Bryson. It compiles the history and origins of the English language and the language's various quirks.
History of New Zealand – Michael King. It catalogues the history of New Zealand from the various theories of initial settlement right through to the previous government.
How to talk so kids can learn – AdeleFaber & Elaine Mazlish. With practical ways to help kids to cooperate, self-discipline, commit, and show creativity, this deserves to be on every teacher's bookshelf.
One Minute Manager - Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson. It is an easily read story which quickly shows you three very practical management techniques. As the story unfolds, you will discover several studies in medicine and the behavioral sciences which help you to understand why these apparently simple methods work so well with so many people; kids and adults alike.
Freakonomics / Superfreakonomics – Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime?

What would you add?

Bullying: Who should be doing the doing?

Photo credit: anitapatterson
from morguefile.com

"The Government have taken away any authority to bring up our children. Children need to learn boundaries and sending kids home on suspension is not adequate. Everyone needs to get together and start addressing this for our children."

A further call to action over addressing the bullying issue in our schools. I asked earlier “What you gonna do about it?”
And more to the point, who is doing the doing?
It seems that that the solution lies with all of us:

Principals and teachers need to foster such environments with the school which make bullying difficult to get away with and that remove the sigma of ‘telling’.
Parents need honest and open relationships with their kids which foster good communication, during the good times and the bad.
Students need to ‘look out’ for one another. Take the time to care. A strong, positive circle of friends means builds healthy and constructive self-esteem.

I tweeted “Thinkin this issue [of bullying] is born out of an overinflated avocation of Children's rights” – I want to qualify that by saying the pendulum has swung from the one extreme to the other. In my parents' day if the policeman clipped you around the ear and sent you home dad would say “What have you been up to? Let that be a lesson to you. Now, I don’t want to see you again until dinnertime, go to your room.”
Now? If the policeman clipped you around the ear and sent you home dad would say “Right, I’m going to have him up on charges for assault.”
I am in no way advocating violence toward children, merely highlighting the discrepancy in the perception toward ‘authority’.
It seems that every child has the right to be molly-coddled, wrapped up in cotton wool and told they are the centre of the universe. All this seems to lead to is an overinflated sense of entitlement.
As the declaration of Independence so eloquently put it - Everyone has the right to “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” - but surely there is a rider of ‘so long as it doesn’t blatantly and wantonly impede the same goal for others.”
I think bullying, fights and stealing come under the ‘so long as’ category.
What is at the heart of each may be similar... Is it a lack of respect? Lack of care? Empathy? Or something altogether fundementally different?

Do we need cybersafety agreements?

Tara Taylor-Jorgensen share her thoughts on cyber-safety and poses something interesting questions.

Why do we force agreements on students and their parents when we don’t do that for any other curriculum area?
Does it assume that students will do something BAD on the internet even before they are introduced to the media?
Is it relevant for the students when they sign these agreements on school entry at five years old?
Are we compromising student empowerment for the sake of wellbeing?
Is cyber-safety the new ‘stranger danger’? Even if it is, violence against children, more often than not happened within families and communities.
Is it about the victims? Or should it be about those that are hurting people?
Is there not more bullying in schools and the community than in the ‘cyber-world’?
Is web- filtering doing our students a disservice?
Is it not better to have real conversations with the kids while working with them online?
Does there need to be a national framework that school implement or will those decisions be left to the individual institutions?

Good questions...

How would you answer?

Jack: What you gonna do about it?

Something needs to be done. By someone. And soon. Am just praying that someone else will step up and that it doesn’t come down to me.

What is up with the kids these days. With figures identified below there is a serious problem with the youth of today. I sound like grandfather, but it appears to be true.
Remember as you read these figures we’re talking about 10 to 13 year olds:

Number of suspensions grown from 4800 in 2000 to 6595 in 2007.
From 1998-2008, the number of police apprehensions for grievous/serious assaults increased by more than 70%.
there had been almost 1,000 apprehensions for all violent offences, which include aggravated robbery, sexual violation, indecent assault, and serious assaults.

Its no good us all wringing our hands and tut-tutting. There is a major problem here that needs to be addressed. To say that it is the schools’ fault and they need to deal with it is short sighted and naive.
Does anyone know of groups or organisations that are doing a good job at engaging these youths?

"There are many factors that may be contributing to these statistics including the levels of violence in the media and games, the undermining of parental and school authority, the 'rights' culture being fed to young people, and family breakdown and fatherlessness," says Mr McCoskrie.

There may be some truth to that. But what are going to DO!!!

Safety Online: Are we making a difference?

Brett Lee, Closing Keynote for Learning at Schools conference says “Yes, we are.”

No longer will you see children jumping around on the backseat of the car but sitting, buckled up. The reason being is that if ‘dad’ were to have an accident then you could be seriously injured or killed. The other reason being that it is the law that everyone wear their seatbelt and ‘dad’ could get into a lot of trouble if you’re caught by police without a seatbelt on.

Two very good reasons; and so it is with Internet safety. Brett believes that students simply need the reasons spelt out.

From Brett’s keynote he identified that:

we can never under estimate the power of the screen in young people’s lives
the technology will change over time but our protective practises, responsibilities and beliefs should remain
we as teachers and parents only line of defence for our kids against the World-Wild Web.
we can instil quality online behaviours in our children
we must always believe we are making a difference to how our students interact socially within the internet.

Brett also identified the need for students to aware of the issue of cyber-bullying he share the video below and talked about the reality of the screen for young people.Interacting in an online space and/or through text messaging allows our students to create in minds a construct of reality that is not accurate but merely a projection of what others desire us to perceive.

Upper Coomera State College

Caught In The Crowd | Myspace Video

Useful Links:

Brett’s keynote on Learning at School blog

Netsafe’s myLGP

Cyber-safety discussion
Cyber-safety page on Educating the Dragon

Parents still control the future

Teachers can often identify (very early- late elementary school) students who will find legal trouble, sex issues, and early, unplanned pregnancy later in life.
So it’s finally acknowledged what we’ve all known for years. A kids future can be defined by the time they get to preschool. So this behaviour pattern is not really taught at school but suffered. The core behaviour habits have already been defined really too early for teachers to be solely responsible.
Parents attitude, ability, and genes play a much larger role in defining the adult their kids will become.
Who was it that said: Show the child at 7 and I’ll show you the man?

Useful links:
20 Tips for Parents from Preschool Teachers
The parenting place
Parents as first teachers
Reading material from Fishpond

Special Needs: Shuffling money for the best result

First diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome as an adult, Christchurch's CAROLINE HEARST believes everyone should be aware of the importance of acknowledging the condition.
There are such a wide variety of ‘special needs’ that sometimes it can be a little too much for any SENCO. But reality bites when there is not nearly enough funding to go around.
We, as teachers, become very good at picking up that there is something ‘amiss’ with a particular student in our class. We may not know the name for it and we certainly don’t have the qualifications to diagnose it but we are prepared to work with what we have and meet their needs as best we can.
Where a school is identified as ‘good or bad’ with their special needs programme often comes down to the quality and commitment of the Special Needs Coordinator. There is a huge raft of funding available to get students the support they need to succeed in today’s classrooms.
Not every student is entitled to one-on-one support, precious few are, but how funding is allocated within the school can go a long way to supporting students at their point of need.
Many primary schools weight the funding to the early primary years, often many classes have not one single teacher but often a Teacher Aide (TA) and other support staff that float between these junior years.
The rationale behind such funding allocation is that provided ‘special needs’ are heavily supported in the early years then the majority of students are ‘caught up’ by the middle and senior years in Primary school and support for additional staff beyond the class teacher is not needed.
Good sound theory that may be but reality is often very different, despite our best intentions let alone issues of transitory kids and supporting those teachers of Y5/6/7/8 who invariably suffer larger class sizes and arguably a heavier administrative workload.
Within military and business circles two people working closely together achieve far more than double their efforts.
This would translate to the classroom. If every teacher had their own TA their ability to support all the students would reach far beyond what would be achieved with half the students in a class with a single teacher. It is why so many ‘team-teaching’ scenarios work well. Sure the budget can’t stretch to two teachers to a class but an effective Teacher/ TA team could deliver an equally favourable result with student achievement.

Useful links:

20,000 New Zealand teenagers not in education

“There are 20,000 New Zealand teenagers of year 12 or year 13 age not in education or training.”
“The academy, which requires pupils to attend from 9am till 3pm five days a week, is a way for pupils to pick up NCEA credits while earning a practical tertiary qualification.”

“Wiremu is one of 60 founding pupils from 30 high schools around Wellington at Weltec – and one of 800 around New Zealand. They will be placed in classroom-style groups, through which they will continue with core NCEA credits such as maths and English.”

Students given alternative to study trade

A couple of point I managed to glean from this article:

I am assuming that the shocking statistic above refers to those teenagers NOT in gainful employ. Otherwise, I guess, we’d all be whooping and cheering for joy.
I’m wondering if replacing school with ‘school’ is anything like a solution.

Let us consider the evidence from the article:

Students will be expected to attend from 9am to 3pm.
Students will be expected to attend five days a week.
Students will work on NCEA credits.
Students will work on Maths and English NCEA.
Students will work within classroom-style groups.

Hmmm, sounding suspiciously like school to me.Perhaps it’s the location that’s different. Is ‘class’ in an aircraft hanger? In a mechanics workshop? Hairdressers salon? Perhaps it’s the tutors that are different? Perhaps they are younger and hipper than the regular high school variety, perhaps they know the funky songs or know the clubbing scene.

Whatever the secret ingredient really is I wish Weltec all the luck in the world.

Professionalism not persecution

he principal of a Kapiti Coast primary school is under investigation over teachers' complaints of sexual harassment and bullying.

Whether the allegations are true or not this may give us all a little pause for thought as we must be reminded that to “be a bit silly” as Marsden states is really not professional at all.
Teachers often take critism of their style and performance in the classroom very personally. The reason being that so much of teaching is about personailiy, relating others and sharing with students enough of oneself to develop a respect and a relationship which encourages learning and academic growth. But there is a fine line between allowing your personality out within a school environment and ensuring a level of professionalism is maintained.
We as teachers all hold a great responsibility. How and what we share with students is a balancing act we have to do - so too with staff within the staffroom it would appear.

All your friends could be colleagues but not all colleagues are your friends.

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