On making new connections

Research and practice meet face to face

Photo by Finn Hackshaw on Unsplash

The best part of having my own newsletter is that I’ve been able to meet some of the most passionate teachers and leaders in the country. Recently, I added Renae Watkins of the Association of Independent Schools (NSW) to that list. She is convening the Sydney branch Science of Teaching and Learning Australia Conference at Sydney University on Saturday 25^th February, where I will be speaking about leading change. I’m excited to share the highs and lows of my change management journey. I spoke to Renae about why this conference is so needed.

Renae is an education consultant and instructional coach and as with many teachers, she has a story to tell about how she became exposed to the Sciences of Reading and Learning. I asked if she discovered these early in her career.

I started out as a PDHPE teacher in Western Sydney. The school where I worked put in a large amount of effort into the process of moving ‘difficult students’ on with little concern for where they would end up. That didn’t sit well with me, so I decided to take up the opportunity to teach overseas. I worked at some tough schools England where many supply teachers wouldn’t go and the teachers were stunned if you returned the following day. I guess I didn’t find working with the students hard and I actually enjoyed that challenge. From the UK, I spent some time teaching English to salmon farmers in Chile. When my Spanish speaking students knew more about English grammar than I did, I realised I may have missed out on some vital explicit instruction over the course of 13 years of schooling and 4 years of university! After Chile I headed to New Zealand where I worked in a school attached to a juvenile detention facility and then returned to Australia and continued to work in Juvenile Justice and Schools for Specific Purposes.

Because I was working with students with complex behaviours, I decided I'd go and do a special education degree to make sure that I was equipped with everything I needed to support them. That's where I learned how to teach kids to read, because it wasn't part of any study or training I'd done before. A lot of the students I taught in England struggled with reading. They all enrolled in GCSE PDHPE because they were good at sport, but they didn’t have the skills to access the content they had to read. Seeing the literacy rates of those kids shone a light on equity for me. It shouldn't matter what your parents have done before you, or which suburb you live in – you should have the same opportunity in schooling as the next kid.

From there I went from working with students with challenging behaviours back to a primary school, and then I worked for MultiLit for a number of years. I came to the AISNSW to support schools that were part of the NSW Government’s Literacy and Numeracy Action Plan.  The project involved working closely with schools in an instructional coaching capacity and what started as a four-year program ended up being extended to six years due to the impact of COVID. I am grateful to have worked with dedicated leaders and teachers, and to witness their commitment to implementing changes that resulted in amazing gains in student outcomes.

I asked Renae why getting traction in Sciences of Learning and Reading was more challenging in secondary.

I think teachers need to be able to see how Science of Learning is going to relate to their subject area and their students. In the K to 12 settings that I've been in, some people have suggested that teachers watch high impact instruction in action in primary. It’s probably not going to be that helpful because teachers just think, ‘That doesn't relate to me.’ You would need to be able to show the year eight Maths teacher how that looks in their classroom and the Year 10 PDHPE teacher how that looks in their classes. And the other question is how teachers then embed that when they have so many different classes and so much happening in a really busy space.

You could look at models like Uncommon Schools, Doug Lemov’s work, and a lot of what has been done in the States has been done in the UK. It’s great to have demo videos, but even then, teachers think, ‘Oh, that's America,’ or ‘That wouldn't work here.’ But we’ve got organizations like AERO that are aware of the needs in the secondary space and they're partnering with schools to develop secondary specific resources to help. We've got Sarah Richardson from AERO speaking at the event, so that is a session I would recommend secondary leaders and teachers get to.

I asked Renae how much of these conferences like SOTLA and SOLLA are preaching to the choir? I notice a lot of the same faces, which I enjoy, but I do wonder how we can spread the word further.

It’s the networking that’s important. You’ve got to be on social media, and you've got to have the right networks. Some English teachers and leaders are starting to do this with the new syllabus coming in. It’s really important to foster those networks. The groundswell is there. I think the timing is right. I think people are open to change – and they've got to change with the syllabus. They might as well work out how that looks.

I agreed with Renae that the new syllabus has been huge because we are now having conversations about gaps in our own learning. It’s been very freeing because we can talk about never having been taught grammar at school or even during our initial teacher education. We can admit to being a bit rusty.

Not even a bit rusty. I was never shown any of this this at university. It’s not about a deficit model for teachers. It's about what we were taught in the universities. On the whole, they’re just not preparing teachers for behaviour management and teaching reading. They’re just not churning out classroom ready teachers. And then we lose them.

The reason why we're holding this event at a university is that it really starts in those universities. It’s a big ask for teachers to come along on a Saturday to get this information or to participate in after school professional learning on top of everything else. They should come out of the universities equipped with the foundations and then it would just be a matter of building upon that as they go, rather than building the plane as they’re flying it.

The lone-wolf is a common trope in evidence-based practice, although things are shifting. I asked Renae, if a teacher is the only person in their school attending, and they're coming on a Saturday, what is her advice for them?

If you work on your own students and classroom, if you get them humming and you get results, people will notice. And hopefully then you can have those conversations and you can have that support. If you've got a big school and you are looking at collaborating on resources to reduce workload, that's another way that you can possibly influence to a point: ‘Have a try of this’ or ‘How did that work?’ But I think if you are the only teacher in there, it is hard, particularly if your leadership isn’t on board. But, if you do have your leader on board, aligned with the evidence-base, then great things can happen.

In the schools that I've worked in where they've got really good results, the common thread was that the leaders were actively engaged and supportive. And so, I think that's the best way to go in terms of influence. It might be putting something in place and saying, ‘Have you seen this article or blog?’ It could also be valuable to ask them along to some of these network events where they can hear people like Dr Ray Boyd or Tim Shields who are turning things around. I think that's the way to go – start at the top.

You can only really control your own behaviour and when you know better, you do better. But it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone else is just as informed. We are creatures of habit and we’ve seen many fads and trendy classroom layouts come and go, often with a lot of effort and money for little outcome, so I get why teachers are reluctant to take on another thing. But I do believe that 99.9% of all teachers out there only want the best for their students. And so, when you take the sting out of it, it's not a criticism of the teacher, it's about looking at how we can get students from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible. And having those conversations centred around student outcomes may hopefully result in positive collaboration and actions.

I asked Renae about whether she thought there was a more macro shift in policy. Has the Science of Learning finally gone mainstream?

We’ve had so much change in the last few years. COVID saw a need for teachers to make massive changes to the way they have traditionally worked, and they did an amazing job, but it was hard for everyone. We've got some gaps to fill, but I think government initiatives to close those gaps has had a huge positive impact. We had the curriculum review which dropped right when COVID hit. Out of the review we are seeing a new curriculum being rolled out that is aligned with the evidence-base and has a focus on ensuring that our students leave school equipped with strong foundations and employment prospects.

So, whilst I don’t believe the Science of Learning has ‘gone mainstream’ just yet, I feel that the roll-out of an evidence-aligned curriculum may mean that some unsupported practices need to be let go and high impact alternatives implemented in their place. I think leaders and teachers are open to these conversations and to hearing from others who have the knowledge about what high impact instruction looks like and how to achieve this school-wide and state-wide, regardless of the postcode.

I can’t wait to attend some of the sessions myself, with big names like Daisy Christodoulou, Dr Lorraine Hammond, Dr Ray Boyd, Michael Roberts, Stephanie Le Lievre, Glenn Fahey, Dr Sarah McDonagh, Toni Hatten-Roberts, Kathryn Thorburn, Brendan Lee, Henrietta Miller, Sarah Richardson, Edward Demirdjian, Fiona Walker, Tim Shields and Renae Watkins herself presenting. It’s on a Saturday, you don’t need a cover teacher and it’s cheap! I hope to see some new faces like yours there.