Vocational Pathways

Vocational Pathways

Vocational pathways link

I have been getting my head around Vocational Pathways for a while and I do understand the premise.  We have to as a Nation (and probably other Western Countries too) know how to educate ALL of our young people while they are at school not just the less than 20% of them who go to university in the Matamata Piako District, New Zealand;   I have thought this for a long time.

Our pastoral team had a really good presentation from the Ministry of Education about how to use Vocational Pathways in relation to careers guidance - as all teachers are career teachers. I totally agree with this. The presenter was very thorough and I like the way it now links to Kamar and therefore much easier to use.  The easier it is to use definitely increases the chance that people are going to use it!  It also gives everyone a common language which is again a good thing.

I very much agree with the idea of the form teacher of the being the first port of call in a pastoral sense - as this is the set up at our school and Vocational Pathways does give a clear path to helping this process.  Everyone needs at least one "warm and demanding" person in their life (thanks to Maurie Abraham - Principal at Hobsonville Point Secondary School) and this might be a form teacher or a mentor of a smaller group.  

But as I said before everyone should be a careers teacher – we should all be always asking students what they are planning for the future and how we can help them reach their goals and dreams.  It doesn't matter if they don’t know but just by discussing likes and dislikes can be an excellent start!  

I also find that when I am dealing with students with behaviour issues I always try and link them into their future plans and how what happens now can affect these plans.  When people have a goal it can make them focused and really help them “get through” the subjects they don’t like or even school in general.  This is another one of the reasons Vocational Pathways, linked to Kamar, is a good idea.  You can look at what pathways the students might be strong in and this can give them career ideas at a click of a button (thanks Kamar - very good!) and this might kick start ideas for students.  You can also discuss the students’ career plans and then see if they are doing subjects that link to their individual education and career plan.

So far, so good!  But I went away from out presentation last night and I have been thinking about it a lot.  Yes it is great for all the reasons that I have stated above but I am not totally sold.  

Education is about many things and your career is only one part of your life.  Yes you might want to become a mechanic and should be strong in RED "manufacturing and technology" but is not just as important to develop your creative (industries) side too (YELLOW) or be part of the discussion in the "social and community services" (PURPLE)  so you know how to be a NZ citizen in a global world?

I am not saying that Vocational Pathways isn't a good tool. I think it could be but we can't forget or get hung up on perhaps an "easy" way to look at education as it is a tick box idea about how we steer people into careers.  According to this model our job as High School teachers will be complete - we have helped guide our students into a career - we will have reached the Government target of 85% of all students receiving NCEA Level 2 - JOB DONE!  

However, learning is complex and  therefore what we do as teachers is complex and can't just condensed to a set of tick boxes. This is what is so great about the NZ Curriculum and why at NCEA we have aligned our standards to link to it.  Perhaps the next step at the Senior end of the school, as well as more focus at the Junior end is a greater focus on the NZ Key Competencies

• thinking
• using language, symbols, and texts
• managing self
• relating to others
• participating and contributing

We need to do this if we want to ensure that we create a society where people use the competencies to live, work, and contribute as active members of their communities.  The issue is that Key competencies are not as straight forward as a tick box and therefore are not easily linked to Kamar - they are more complex to assess and difficult to track.

Therefore I believe that Vocational Pathways need to be just another tool in our teachers' tool kit along with things like elearning, literacy and numeracy strategies, Ka Hikitia, SOLO, being creative Creativity is the key to education etc etc that we use to engage our students so that they attend, learn and achieve in a wide variety of areas of life. 

Let's not got so hung up on this as the be all and end all to our senior students' education - it is not.  It is A tool not THE tool. 

#edchatnz conference

#edchatnz conference at Hobsonville Point Secondary School

8-9^th August 2014

What is #edchatnz and why as a teacher should I know more?

I discovered #edchatnz (don’t forget the hashtag #) earlier this year when I finally decided to give twitter a proper go.  I had had an account for a couple of years but never found my calling – I was already using Facebook personally and loved to try new technology but couldn’t see the point of twitter.  However, a couple of young teachers at school had been singing its praises for a while and they seemed to have lots of innovative exciting ideas around pedagogy, so I thought that I would try again!

My attempts to connect with the twitter world would have failed again but I found the #edchatnz community which meets specifically on twitter every second fortnight from 8.30 to 9.30 pm.   It is a time to be challenged about a number of issues in education with the central question always– how can we do the best for our students? This is led by the remarkable @MissDtheTeacher otherwise known as Danielle Myburgh who is the host and founder.  Although Danielle had been tweeting on international education sites she had found that there was no way to connect to NZ teachers on twitter so she decided to start her own hashtag and #edchatnz was born in 2012.

Danielle told me that she loves twitter because when she uses it she is not limited by her immediate surroundings and has 24/7 support – she is a true global citizen.  It might surprise you to know that Danielle has only taught for three years but this is the great thing about true leadership, especially at the grass route level, anyone can do it and she does it in style. She also has the support of her school leaders, including her Principal Mauri Abraham who believes that everyone is a leader, who give her the freedom and support to fly – a message to all school leaders out there.

#edchatNZ conference

The conference was born out of a discussion between Danielle and some of her fellow tweeps (a person’s followers on twitter) a number who had been interacting for two years or so but most had never met!  It took the steering committee (from Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton and Christchurch) just 20 weeks to organise the whole conference using Google Hangout and Google aps for education meeting for 30 minutes before #edhchatnz kicked off on a Thursday night.  They had decided from the beginning to make it affordable – you could go for $20!  All of the presenters, through the steering group’s connections, gave their time freely.

350 people gathered at Hobsinville Point for the opening Keynote.  One of the key themes of the conference for me was the idea of the lone nut, check it out on youtube Leadership Most of us don’t work in new build schools with handpicked teams who build and live the school vision but we can still initiate change in our schools – not change for change sake but to improve the learning of our students.  We might be the lone nut for a while until we can hopefully encourage someone else to support us or just as importantly we might be the first follower who sees someone in our school trying to be innovative and then stands by them as support.  

The conference was about, as Karen Melhuish Spencer from CORE said in her closing remarks, “growing purpose ready learners.”   Technology itself is not innovation in schools it is a tool to help create a transformative curriculum.  Yes, technology was abundant at the Hobsonville Primary and Secondary schools and we saw students use it (both had a normal school day on the Friday) but there were two common themes in the conference for me.  Firstly, social justice through making a real difference and by keeping it authentic and secondly, ways to enable students to critically think and make connections in their learning.  I was lucky to see a number of HPSS teachers discussing how they do these things through Project Based Learning, cross curricula themes and SOLO taxonomy to name a few.  I also loved Pam Hook, our NZ guru, talking about SOLO and inspiring us all to give students the tools and a common language to improve their critical thinking skills and understanding.

Seeing the political debate between Labour, the Green Party and National, chaired by Claire Amos, was very stimulating.  Danielle told me that she loved hearing teachers coming out of the debate saying that it had increased their interest in politics as she believes that we must have a bigger influence in politics if we want a bigger change.  However, my own highlight was listening to Kelston Boys High School talking about their Year 12 Health class’ anti bullying programme – it encompassed all of the themes of the conference – what a fantastic group of young people.  Follow them on Defeat the Label Facebook page

Final thoughts

It was great, although I must admit slightly strange, to meet other twitter folk for the first time who I follow and who follow me.  I think it will make tweeting even better as I can put a real person to the handle.   I was especially impressed by teachers who took a day of unpaid leave, paid their own travel accommodation and conference fee because they believed so strongly in #edchatnz and what it stood for.  I thank these teachers who care about our young people in NZ so much.

I would also like to thank Danielle and her steering committee for the conference and the Thursday night discussions.  I can only say how much I appreciate the intellectual stimulation, innovative initiatives (I have initiated at my school Techie Breakie and students teaching teachers from ideas on twitter), the support when I try to implement ideas and the total positivity.  It is great!  Thanks to the PPTA ICT committee for paying for me to go – very much appreciated.

If you feel like the only lone nut in your school and/or you’re just looking for a challenge and ideas on how to improve the learning of your students I would encourage all teachers to try twitter and more specifically #edchatnz and its subsidiaries for English, Science and education books and maybe more by the time this article is printed!  It doesn't have to be an extra and you don’t have to do anything at first, just watch the Thursday night debate for example.  As Danielle astutely said we have to start encouraging and connecting to each other in our own schools and with all schools in NZ if we want to make real change.  Give it a go!

Samantha Mortimer

Te Aroha College

@sammortimer70