Humble brag

I have always been of the belief that my responsibilities as a teacher include:

*cementing meaningful student-teacher relationships

*providing learners easy access to a variety of meaningful resources to help build their knowledge and confidence in the subject

*creating a class culture including high expectations regarding both behaviour and success

*allowing learners to work through their learning programme at their own pace while asking for help/feedback when they see fit 

*empowering learners to track their progress and not be solely reliant on me and

*sitting assessments when the learner is ready as opposed to being dictated by a year planner

I do not usually claim learners' success as my own as it is up to them to manage their behaviour, progress and subsequent success after I have provided the tools to help them be successful. I also involve the whanau by sharing progress or lack thereof and below are a few responses from my parents after only 2 weeks of their child being in my class.

Parent 1: Happy Friday and thank you for your email. I must say though, all credit goes to you with Trinity's work ethic. She has always struggled with maths and finds it even harder when she can't connect with her teacher, or get the help and support she needs. After her first maths lesson with you, she told me about how amazing you are as a teacher and your determination to get all kids to pass. Thank you for helping 

Parent 2: Thank you for this email Nolene. I have always had faith that Zayn can achieve amazing things if he had the right people around him in education to support him. So I thank you so much for the care you have shown my son. We have been battling the education system since he was in pre-school and are finally gaining some benefit from all of the headaches. He is now seeing that he is more than capable too!

Parent 3: You have no idea how delighted I am to hear this …always knew there was great potential there .. Just the other day he told me his favourite teacher was maths teacher because no matter how hard it is you always have a shortcut to do it. 

Thank you for this amazing feedback.

Have a great weekend

Parent 4: Awww 😥 Noelene, words are not enough to express how happy I am. Thank you so much for this amazing news and the process Elijah has been working on towards his learning.

Thank you, so much for teaching and helping Elijah with his learning and may God's blessing be upon you and all the teachers.

Thank you so much, Noelene.

I might juuuuust claim some of my learners' success this time; hence the humble brag, but still feel that it all up to them and their success is theirs alone....

Success with 24% attendance

One of my students with very poor attendance (24%) recently managed to work through her learning programme, sit the practice test and summative test and gained NCEA L2 mathematics credits. I was keen to hear how she did it so asked her to share her experience which I have pasted below.

The suggested videos were a big help because I was able to rewind or skip ahead basically learning in my own pace, I don't really like asking for help Infront of the class especially being called out to answer an equation on the board, and so learning in such comfort and stability made it so easy to focus.

Pink Shirt Day 21 May

Pink Shirt Day is an antibullying campaign that celebrates diversity and creates environments where all people can feel safe, valued and respected. RESPECT is our term 2 school value so Pink Shirt Day was an ideal way for us to live that value...... I'm sure your staff came out in full force and were all glammed up in pink - this was our contribution............small yet mighty.

High Expectations Pay Off Big Time

My term 2 Elective class usually does a Physics standard worth 4 credits. On the last day of term 1, we were given the go ahead to pilot the new NUMERACY standards in term 2, but the course preparation was not quite complete and I did not want to offer something that still needing major editing. I set a challenge for my term 2 Elective students......

Let us wholeheartedly commit to the Physics standard for 2 weeks, so that when we start the NUMERACY standards we already have 4 credits under our belt.

I was fortunate enough to have half my class in both my Elective course and Maths course, so we spent all our time on the Physics Elective standard and to date 83% of them have successfully completed the course and sat the assessment. They now know what happens when great things are expected of them, so hopefully we have similar success piloting the new NUMERACY standard

Going against the grain

Early in the term, we were advised to work from home as our community was hard hit by Omicron. My principal went against the grain and made the call for our campus to remain open for business as he felt our learners do better when teaching and learning is done onsite. Despite our attendance being low due to staff and students either isolating as close contacts or as a result of testing positive or for other reasons, we have managed to justify going against the grain and remaining open. I have done an analysis of term 1 attendance and data and we still have 2 more weeks to go.

11MAT Lowest attendance is 26% and highest attendance 85%

7 of the 9 students have sat at least one assessment (78%)

12MAT Lowest attendance is 44% and highest attendance 97%

6 of the 11 students have sat at least one assessment (55%)

11ELE - Physics Lowest attendance is 38% and highest attendance 46%

All 3 students have sat their assessment (100%) 1 has already completed an additional maths standard which was not part of the programme, the other 2 are still working on an additional standard. Attendance in this class defies success.

Success depends on the second letter

Due to students self-isolating, we have had small rolls this week. On Friday morning, two of my learners walked in and verbalised that they were not in the best frame of mind to commit to their learning. One of my learners had been upset in their previous class and the other said he was too dumb to do maths. After a general chat to both, I realised that a motivational talk would not cut it, so I wrote the word SUCCESS on my board and said "Success depends on the second letter" One of my learners got it immediatley while the other needed more time to digest it. It seemed to work a treat as both produced work to a high standard. My take away is that transferring responsibility onto learners usually ends with the desired outcome as smart students make smart choices - have a fabulous Friday

THANK YOU

To all my colleagues and students (both past and present) over the last 30+ years of teaching, I would like to THANK YOU for helping me live my passion on a daily basis. I was recently awarded the Teaching Excellence award at Manukau Institute of Technology and could not have done it without you. Special mention must be made to Tamaki College and Manaiakalani for being a leading light in education and to Manukau Institue of Technology for giving me permission to do things my way aka the DUNN Way. My application highlighted my use of rewindable learning resources in the form of short, teacher-created screencast videos which learners could watch repeatedly and at any time as opposed to being solely reliant on my physical presence if they needed help. If you would like to watch the video which was used as part of my application, please feel free to click on this link...... and THANK YOU, once again