Phi Delta Kappa - University of Alberta Chapter

Welcome to Phi Delta Kappa University of Alberta Chapter

Phi Delta Kappa invites you to our Our Next Dinner Meeting:


Stay tuned for upcoming dinners which will be held at the University of Alberta Faculty Club

Cost: $40.00 member; $45.00 non-member (payable on arrival – cheque, credit card, cash)
Parking in Lot V (access from 116 Street, ½ block south of Sask. Drive)

Email dolainekoch@shaw.ca to reserve your seat or call 780-477-0170 and leave a message.

Not A PDK Member?   Not a problem.

The U of A Chapter of PDK would like as many local educators as possible to attend this dinner topic and special induction of new members - so we are offering seats at a price only slightly above what members pay. That said, we are currently in the middle of a membership drive and would really like more Edmonton-area educators (teachers, administrators, students, researchers, teacher educators, ministry officials, and post-secondary instructors) to consider joining our organization. We are a small but vibrant organization of local educators from every role and experience level and we are dedicated to educational leadership, service and research.

Interested in Joining Us? It’s as easy as 1, 2, & 3.

Visit PDK International
Contact Charlotte Rode to learn how you join our group and make an immediate impact. charrode@shaw.ca
Complete the online registration process and to start receiving our updates and invitations, our newsletters, and the Kappan Magazine.

Feel free to forward this email or the attached poster to other educators who may be interested in participating. You are also welcome to print the poster and share it/post it.

February 2018
In this report I hope to catch your interest about the upcoming dinner meeting (March 6th), touch on the continuing concern we are having around membership, and share some of my experiences and reflections from a recent trip to Tanzania where I was able to take part in an ongoing CICan educational project.

Next Meeting: March 6 the Honourable David Eggen
One thing that has developed very slowly in Alberta (Poli, poli – you’ll get that later!) has been the work done around leadership standards for school and district leaders. Our very own Dr. Bob Garneau (President PDK 2013-15) was very much involved in the development of these standards with Alberta Education over a decade ago. If you have been in a leadership position in the past decade or so, you might know how important it has been to get these standards “right”. As such, it is thrilling to know that the standards have finally been approved and released.
If you’d like to know more about this development, here are a couple of links:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/teacher-standards-principals-superintendents-eggen-alberta-education-1.4524857 (News story on the release)
https://education.alberta.ca/media/3739619/standardsdoc-sqs-_fa-web-2018-02-02.pdf (Superintendent Leadership Quality Standard)
Knowing that this approval was imminent, Duane Plantinga and Bob Garneau came up with the idea of inviting the current Minister of Education, the Honourable David Eggen, come and speak to us about the new standards and what they might mean to the rank and file teachers and administrators in this province. As you may know, before his current role in the legislature as a member of the New Democratic Party, Mr. Eggen was a teacher. So, unlike some of his ministry predecessors, David has some prior experience with educational leadership.
Minister Eggen has agreed to speak to us at the March 6th dinner meeting. He will be joining us for the dinner and then he will give a short presentation on the new leadership standards. Following this presentation, Minster Eggen would like to take questions from the audience and is willing to spend considerable time doing so. He is excited to meet with a group of dedicated educators and wants to get our feedback. We have scheduled the Q and A session for 45 minutes. Get your questions ready, and remember, the focus of the night is on leadership!

Membership Concerns…

This has been a theme for many of my messages in the past few years. As you well know, our membership is “aging out”. The number of practicing teachers and administrators who are active U of A PDK members is dwindling. And, just how we are going to deal with this reality is a standing item on our executive agenda. We are at a crossroads. If the membership does not get infused with some newer/younger members, it will be difficult to continue as an organization.

Right now we are making a membership push. We are sending out emails to anyone who might consider joining our group and we are inviting them to our next dinner. We have also submitted an article to the ATA for their magazine and newsletters explaining who we are and why we are a good group to join.
We are also asking for your help. The upcoming meeting could be a real turning point for our organization. It presents an opportunity to showcase who we are and why we make a difference. For my part, I am hoping that we can make connections with thoughtful and committed educators who want to network; promote and share effective practice; and contribute through research, service and leadership (PDK’s three essentials). I think there is so much potential in an organization like ours, but, as a group we need to get yanked into the present – using social media platforms to reach our membership, to make them aware of local and provincial developments, and to engage them in meaningful collaborative work.

Do you know educators who could make the kind of contributions and commitments that would allow our group to continue and thrive? Invite them to our March 6th dinner!

Tanzanian Reflections
At the beginning of this calendar year I went to Tanzania as part of a CICan project to work with the faculty at a vocational college in Mwanza. It was my second trip this year to Mwanza, the first was back in April of 2017 when Jeanne Ratzlaff (NorQuest College) and I helped government officials and college staff in developing a curricula for a remedial/upgrading course. The focus on this second trip (January 2018) was on implementing the three week course as a pilot with the intention of eventually rolling out the course to all of the 26 state-sponsored vocational colleges in Tanzania. On this trip I was accompanied by Jackie Bender (Lakeland College) and we had a great time team-teaching with four of the staff from VETA Mwanza. We worked with twenty-six students, ranging in age from 18 – 29 (most were in their mid-twenties). The pilot program focused on four essential subjects: Math, English Communications, Engineering Science and Study Skills. It was an intense but very rewarding experience.
The trip to Tanzania gave me an opportunity to step back and make a few observations about the differences between the educational approaches espoused in Canada and those that are favoured in Tanzania. In many ways, a community or country’s orientation to teaching is a reflection of their overall cultural orientation. Here are some of my observations and reflections when comparing Canada to Tanzania.

Observations
Much of the teaching that Jeanne and I observed when the project began in April was based upon rote, recitation, and repetition. It was very controlled. The focus was on the content and upon the delivery of content from an expert. In the eyes of a North American educator, it was very teacher-centered. There was little or no student initiated learning, individual inquiry, small group discussion or even paired work. Students were expected to memorize definitions and procedures.
· Teaching seemed to be a process that was aimed at the class as a collective and not at learners as individuals. There was little evidence of formative assessment and personalized feedback.
·  As the pilot began, the assessments given by the four Tanzanian teachers were very focused on content recall (not skill or application) and students were challenged not only by the content, but by the fact that they were being asked in a language that they were not that comfortable in. (For most students Swahili is their first language and due to a lack of adequately trained teachers in the public schools, the level of English instruction to this point in their schooling is less than complete.)
·  Most of the students were shy and deferred to the teacher. They hesitated to show their lack of understanding. Only two or three students were good at making their needs known; they were not hesitant to ask questions or seek further support. As such, there was still much work to be done to make the students feel secure and empowered during the weeks of the practicum.
·  Towards the end of the pilot, the students remarked that the approach and activities they experienced in the weeks we were there were much different from what they had experienced in grade school. Apparently their experience with schooling had been focused largely on sitting quietly, copying notes, and chorally repeating important definitions.
· As a separate outcome related to the CICan project, project themes related to career paths, gender discrimination and environmentalism were touched on in several lessons in English. Students read scripts for role-plays and had staged conversations on all the three topics. That said, the students only just touched on the issues and lessons were hampered both by the challenges in speaking English (and knowing the appropriate vocabulary) and in the level of background understanding needed in coming up with arguments regarding gender issues, environmentalism, or career choice. Such inquiry and student-centered work was not something that many of these students were ready for.

Reflections
In Canada there is less distance between the student and the teacher, especially at the college or university level. In my experiences as an instructor at the University of Alberta, King’s University and NorQuest College, the familiarity between instructors or professors and adult students is very obvious. You are not seen as Professor X or Doctor X but as Ted or Linda. It is quite the opposite in Tanzania where teachers and professors are highly respected and students would never think of addressing them by first names. Or, if they did, it would be as “Teacher Ted” and “Doctor Linda”.

This element of respect for elders and superiors is not just something confined to the classroom in Tanzania. They would never think of their political leaders as “Justin” and “Rachel”, in fact, at every hotel, every government office and every office at the college hang two portraits; one of Julius Nyerere (the first president of Tanzania) and one of John Magufuli (the current president). I remember seeing the same kind of thing when I was in elementary school when we had pictures of Queen Elizabeth and Lester Pearson or John Diefenbaker in the classroom. And that shouldn’t come as a surprise. In the 1960’s Canada was not so multi-cultural and modern in its outlook. We were still very much attached to Britain (like Tanzania). But unlike Tanzania, we have moved on from many of our traditionally British attitudes.

In Canada, the trend in education for the last thirty years is to promote engagement; asking teachers to make their lessons dynamic, interactive, practical, and varied in approach. The thought is that students will learn more when they are challenged visually, kinesthetically, emotionally, academically, individually, collaboratively, etc. In Tanzania, there is less emphasis on this, although that seems to be changing.
In Canada there is also an emphasis on teaching students problem solving, critical thinking, and entrepreneurship. We are to be challenging our students to apply their knowledge and skills. In Tanzania the emphasis is more on conformity and “rightness”. All students should have the essentials and all should be able to give the correct answers when called upon.

In Canada we stress student-centered teaching, which includes differentiating educational approaches, providing individualized feedback and working to ensure each child gets their needs met. In Tanzania the focus is more on delivering a set content. The teacher’s role is to show expertise and the student’s role is to show diligence in applying themselves in learning this content.

When I was at the World Educational Research Association Annual Conference several years ago I met an educator from Syracuse University in New York State who lamented the fact that so many sessions about education pushed the idea that the teacher is the most important factor in the classroom. We have listened to people like Bob Marzano advocate for skillful technicians who know how to use “best practices” to promote accountability and engagement and ensure academic achievement. But my colleague from New York said that this is bunk. In his mind, the most important factor is the student. What kind of motivation does the student bring to their studies? Just how are they willing to apply themselves? And will they persevere when they encounter academic challenges? I know that my colleague would not advocate for boring lecture-like lessons or educators who fail to consider interactive instructional approaches, but he was concerned that we have put too much stress on the role of modern educators and have made them accountable for what is essentially the student’s responsibility.

My friend from Syracuse asked, “In considering individual student needs and in being responsive, could North American educators actually be spending too much time catering to and enabling their learners?” Already there are rumbles in the teaching community that the changes resulting from differentiated instruction; formative assessment (early feedback, second chances, best evidence, etc.); and standards-based, competency assessments have led to “mark inflation” and a lack of rigor. Some might say that today’s students are no longer challenged to do the work to prove themselves to the teacher or to compete against the rest of the pack and that it is actually the teachers who are asked to do the heavy lifting as they work to respond to thirty students rather than one curricula.

Now, of course, this is just one man’s perspective. And, as an educator who has been at the forefront of many of the changes to instructional practice here in Alberta that foster student-centered learning (through my work with AISI and in teacher education), I can mount any number of arguments against his position. The fact that so many of our students in Tanzania had difficulty in taking on student-centered, inquiry-type work shows how important it is to build move away from one-size-fits-all content centered approaches.

At an AISI conference in 2012 I attended a session from Dr. Yong Zhao who explained that, while many educators in North America look with jealousy to the success that Asian students demonstrate on International assessments in Math and Science, these educators should appreciate what the North American model fosters. He pointed out that the real titans of change, emerge from North America. The “Steve Jobs” of the world, are not successful because they could memorize and reproduce, but because they had critical thinking skills and were not afraid to take calculated chances. So while we looked across the ocean for answers to our falling PISA scores, Asian educators were looking right back at our system to see what they could learn about problem solving and risk taking.

Nevertheless, my colleague from Syracuse does raise an important issue. When I was in Mwanza, the students I encountered were hungry to learn. Even though the days were long (8:15 am to 5 pm) the students arrived early and stayed late. These students are quite different from the ones I have encountered in my teaching experiences both k-12 and at the colleges and universities. How do we continue to build learning experiences for our students that will challenge them to be self-motivated, inquiring, critical, skillful, and perseverant?”

Lesson Learned
While my colleagues and I went to Tanzania to provide some expertise and coaching, we also found ourselves learning many things. If you are interested, I’m sure I could share quite a few with you, if you pay for the beer! Here are three of our most important discoveries:

1.  One thing Jackie and I were reminded of, over and over again, is that the remedial program developed with the Tanzanian instructors is not ours - nor should it be. We needed to learn how to “back off” so that the faculty at Mwanza would step up. The moment that we (as foreign “experts”) might start to take over and try to make the program what we think it should be, we doom the project to fail.
2.  A second thing we learned is that things take time. The Tanzanians have two expressions that they like to use when approaching difficult tasks like hiking Kilimanjaro or building a curriculum: “poli, poli” (slowly slowly) and “haraka, haraka haina baraka” (hurry, hurry and God will not bless). It will take time for the teachers to develop the comfort level and the confidence to become champions of the remedial program. Pushing teachers to show innovation and expertise when they may feel insecurity about the extent of their content knowledge and their English competency is unfair and unproductive.
3.  And the third thing we learned is that we, as Canadians, have been shaped by our cultural constructs around education, authority, gender roles, competency, efficiency and timeliness. So a big part of the work between our two countries is in learning to set aside our personal, professional and cultural biases and instead, trying to gain more understanding of the specific context and the practical and political limitations in making such a change to how students are supported.

Stay tuned for more information regarding the upcoming program.
To register: Contact - Dolaine Koch dolainekoch@shaw.ca

Click here for more information on Chapter meeting dates for this year!