MIT 2022. The journey draws to a close.

This blog post is intended as a summary of my year as part of the Manaiakalani Innovative teacher 2022 cohort...and what a year it has been. Beginning under the shadow of another wave of covid and ending with a presentation of my project to over 100 Manaiakalani Principals.

I applied to be part of MIT with a desire to improve the achievement of my learners. I know this drives every teacher to get up in the morning! But I wanted the chance to devote time and a different way of thinking to an issue which was top of mind for me. This is the challenge I brought to the MIT project.

At our initial Kuaotunu Hui I was challenged to really delve into this issue and look at it from many perspectives.  Empathising with the people effected through role plays,  considering the Multiple Optimistic Viewpoints provided by my peers and brainstorming ideas. This was the real genesis of the design thinking process and lead to me developing this statement.

How might we raise the oral language proficiency of 

New Entrant Learners?  

This question consistently guided my thinking through the next phase of the project.   I spent a considerable time in term 1 researching the topic of oral language in the classroom.   I looked into many forms of assessment and tested some of my target children, to gain an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.  This was the aha moment for me.  I discovered that their needs were quite varied and a one teaching intervention was not gonna cut it!

So my focus turned to develop a resource which could measure the needs of students and then provide a variety of leaching strategies to address all of these. I spent time unpacking the various assessment tools and stitching parts of them together into one simple format which was easy and efficient to use. I then turned to thinking about how to address these issues. I found lots of resources and ideas which could support teachers. I began to develop a prototype to bring these ideas together.

The result was this website - you can access it by clicking on the image below.

This website contains the assessment tool I developed which can be downloaded for teachers to use and adapt to their own settings. It contains pages which include various resources and ideas which I had trialled and used in my classroom. It also houses a google form as a means of collecting ideas from other teachers to strengthen the site with the collective knowledge.

The next step was sharing this with the world.  We were so privileged to be able to take part in the Cook Islands Teacher Summit and present our work to the attending teachers.  It was a wonderfully supportive environment in which to unveil my project and I was so encouraged by the interest my site received.

The highpoint of this journey was presenting to The Manaiakalani Principals Wananga.

In summary this journey has been a wonderful opportunity to expand my thinking about an area of teaching. I have met and collaborated with some wonderful teachers, I have put myself out of my comfort zone and gained valuable experience in presenting. What a great year.