 I'm going to give you a two slide haiku. So here's the first one. And think about this with respect to the networking and the inquiry around young readers. So I just love this quote. We're no longer evaluating methods as good or bad. Wasn't the value of this program or that program or what you were doing or what I was doing. But instead, we were wondering, tweaking, applying, revising, sharing, and wondering some more. And to me, that's what this is all about, that we're entering into this work through that spirit of inquiry. And then this one. So for us, our invitation to you is to think about how can we take a disciplined approach to inquiry so that we're all using the same language. We're all making meaning in similar ways so we can really get the depth of the impact. And here's another, what I think, is a really interesting piece of information. We worked in the design of the spiral and in the ideas that are underpinning it. It was a collaboration between Linda and me based on our work with schools over the last 13 years in BC and Helen Temperley's work in New Zealand with the Literacy Network. So there was from 2004 to 2010 a literacy professional development project in New Zealand. You may want to Google this because it's very, very interesting. There's some real similarities to what's happening here. And so their goal was to improve literacy by supporting schools in engaging in evidence-based inquiry, both at the macro, at the school level, and also at the classroom level. And schools engaged for two years. There was a research component to it that has resulted in a number of studies that are easy to access and they're really, they're well written and they're good resources. So one of the first ones was it's all about students. It's about putting the kids at the center of this work. The second one was around assessment for learning. If the teachers clear about it, the students will get it. So they were really looking at that impact. And the third was around effective facilitation. So these are all available on that website. But there was a fourth one, a fourth study that they did. And we were particularly interested in this one. What happens when the funding dries up, and the project is over? Because we are extremely fortunate to have had the investment in this project. We also know from our collective experience in BC that sometimes the funding doesn't go on forever. So when the funding ended in 2010, then Helen Timperly and Judy Parr went in and they took a look at what was happening in the schools two years after the project. And there were two big findings. This was the name of their study. So this is the first one. If teachers applied what they'd learned in systematic ways, this appeared to be a sufficient threshold to support outcomes for new cohorts of kids. So they got the same results by applying the same strategies. So if you've learned something through this project and you continue to do it, it will have a similar impact on new kids coming in. That's pretty good, right? Resources have gone, same impact. But there was a second finding. When the schools engaged in an iterative inquiry, refocusing on persistent issues of underachievement that still existed, because this isn't going to solve all of the problems for all of the kids in our school, and they continued to invest in knowledge building and establishing coherence of instructional practices across curriculum areas, the achievement increased. So the difference between the schools that maintained the gains and the ones that increased the gains was the degree to which they were involved in inquiry. So we think that that's a compelling reason for us to continue to pursue and to persist and to stick with it. So we said last year that our goal, our personal mission, Linda's and mine, and shared by many of you, is that this work is about helping every learner cross the stage with dignity, purpose, and options. And inquiry, there's loads of evidence that that's going to get us there. I just want to share another piece of information that I think that we should, we all take collective ownership of, and it's a very good story. And that's this, that there's increasing global interest in what's going on in BC. This is a picture of, can you recognize us? Who's the guy in the middle? Rod. So who's the one on the right? It's Linda who's in Grand Forks right now and having a great time there and is feeling torn not being here. Anyway, Linda and I, in 2009, with the support of the Superintendent's Association, we hosted an international conference in Vancouver. And the ministry was supportive of that and they provided funding for 25 BC teachers to present their inquiry work at this international conference. Unbeknownst to us, the head of the OECD, which is the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, was at the conference and he was so impressed by the work of BC teachers that he invited Linda and I to go to a meeting on innovative learning environments. And this was three years ago. So without any official support, which means we paid our own way to go, we went to this meeting. But it was great because then we were able to get a much broader appreciation of what was going on around the world and we submitted case studies from BC to be part of what they call the universe of innovative learning environments. And you can go on the OECD website and you can find that. And as a wonderful treat to our grad students, they'll be studying some of those cases this year. But the work has evolved and now it's in the third phase, which is how do we sustain innovation? And the five countries have been invited to be part of that in-depth focus over the next two years. The five countries are South Africa because of the incredibly interesting work taking place in some of the townships. Peru, which is a rapidly moving into a middle class country and how do they scoop up the kids that have been so disadvantaged? Belgium, because it's a very traditional system that is trying to move to a more inclusive system. New Zealand, which has no school districts. Everything is at the school level and they're using a cross-country networking strategy. And the fifth country is British Columbia. Okay. Now, how many knew Canada was, or British Columbia was a country? But it is now. But for us, the reason that there is interest internationally in what's happening here is because of the focus on inquiry, because of the focus on literacy through this work, because of the work around leadership development, which looks different here than in a lot of other places, and on our use formally and informally of networks to really transform the system. So we're excited to be part of this and to have this work put onto an international stage. And next May, there will be a conference, and we're going to try and link it with this, where the other four countries are going to be coming here. So it's kind of, you know, it's just a neat opportunity. And what else was I going to say about that? Nothing. It was fun going there with Rod. He knows how to have a good time, and so do we. So it was all good. But it was just kind of a moment of pride. I think that for too long, the dominant narrative internationally about Canadian education has been Ontario. And this is not to denigrate the terrific work that is taking place in Ontario, and the strong investment that they've made in literacy and numeracy there, and secondary completion over the last few years. But the BC story is really particularly interesting, because even with the gains Ontario has made, they're still not as strong as BC. So let's celebrate a little bit. So hands up if you're a BC educator. Okay, give yourself a round of applause. So last spring or last August, we introduced the spiral of inquiry for the first time. We had just finished getting the design. We actually didn't finish writing the book until the end of October. And we didn't really understand, you know, you have to work with it for a while to really understand it. So I want to tell you just some of the things that we've learned from working with the spiral in an intensive way over the last several months, and also to hear what you've learned as a result. One of the key things that distinguishes the spiral of inquiry from other more traditional forms of action research is that we always come back to what's the experience of the learners. And that is actually really challenging because we've all got things that we're interested in, that we're pumped about, that we're curious about, and that's good. We're not saying don't do that, saying for this purpose, we want to take a look always at starting at what's going on for our learners, our individual case study learner and the whole whole group of learners. Then we need to ask how do we know what's our evidence for that? So it's not just our opinion, our chat in the staff room, but we're really taking a look at what's the evidence around what's going on for the kid. And then why does it matter? Because not everything that we're going to learn about the child matters equally. There's six phases to the spiral. There is sort of a logical sequence to them, but you may not all start at the same place. Just know that we want to ensure that over the course of the year that you pay attention to each of them. So the first one is scanning. Now, it's our observation that September is a perfect time to scan. You're getting your new classes, you're getting your kids, you're getting your new setting, and it's a chance to really take a look at what's happening for those learners. And we really want to invite you to think broadly about what's happening. And to build in some of the indigenous ways of knowing, build in the self-regulation, build in the social-emotional learning. So you're asking questions like, is to what extent are the kids in my class anxious? Are they confident entering into this situation? Do they have an opportunity to tell their stories? Are their passions known? One of the schools that we worked with in Australia, and I'm delighted that Hallie is here, one of the schools after they'd been thinking about this, they went back and surveyed their kids. And the first question, can you name two adults who believe you'll be a success in life? Why don't we reframe that and say, can you name two adults in this school who believe you'll be a strong reader, or a successful reader? Just see what they say. But then they followed up and they say, does your teacher know what you're good at? Does your teacher know what you love to do? And does your teacher know what you're struggling with? And they were pretty shocked by the responses, and it moved them immediately to thinking differently. So we want to take the time to really scan what's happening. In the book, there's a series of questions related to Aboriginal ways of knowing and evidence-informed practice, and more innovative approaches to tweak your thinking so that we're kind of really being expansive in our scanning, okay? So we're going to spend some time doing that. Then we're going to focus. We're not going to be able to deal with everything all at once. So I'm going to give you an example from a school in Coast Mountain. They had been working quite hard on strategies for a few years, and they actually saw that their kids were fairly competent readers at primary. When they asked the kids, do you read for pleasure? The answer was no. The kids actually hated to read. And so it was an interesting aha moment for the staff that they had been pounding in the strategies, and they forgot that reading is supposed to be joyful. So their whole focus last year was how can we bring the joy back into reading. And one of the really interesting things about that is the teachers had more fun too, as they planned together to ways to bring joy in. Imagine just thinking about joy makes me feel better, okay? So we're going to put our focus and our attention on an area that's going to have a big impact as a result of our scanning. Then we're going to bring our intuition to this, but it's intuition that is shared and it's put out on the table. And this is the point at which we have to ask ourselves, or we'll ask ourselves as the adults, how are we contributing to this situation? What is it that we're doing that's making kids excited about reading? What is it that we're doing that's turning them off? Again, another example from an elementary school that they were really concerned about the kids coming late in the morning, elementary school, and they were starting their reading program right at nine o'clock and the kids were struggling in and they weren't doing very well. And so let's just do it harder and let's hammer those parents to get the kids to school on time and it'll all be good. Through the putting the hunch part and putting it on the table in a trusting way where they were actually able to say, maybe it's how we start the day that we need to take a look at. Maybe it's the way we do reading starting at nine o' one that's not compelling the kids to be here on time, that move them to changing the whole way they start. And you heard, at those of you that were at the network seminar last spring, heard from Sewell Ox, it's an elementary school in Terrace, that now they start with dancing, they have a story, they have a snack, and then they read. But it came from their questioning their own practice. And this is a place where it's really easy to blame and that's not the point. The point is to say, what is it that we're doing? And what is it that maybe we could try differently? Does that make sense? Okay. Then we're going to learn something new. I loved being a facilitator last year and seeing the range of learning that in the three districts that Linda and I were working with, the different ways that people were coming at it. And that the learning was connected to their focus. I know that sounds a little bit weird, but sometimes the learning can be triggered by, oh, Joe Blow, the latest guru was in town. Why don't we latch on to that? Or, oh, I've heard that this book is really hot. Why don't we do that as a book study? It's got to be connected. And I really saw the consistent thinking about making that link, which is very encouraging. As someone who I'm sure not unlike Fay, we get the odd call saying, are you free on October 26th or 5th and would say, sure, what's the focus? It doesn't matter. Just can you come? Or next Friday, are you available? And would say, no, we're not available. Let's make sure that there's the link. Okay, so I think we're getting a lot better in this area. And then we're going to take some action. We're going to try something. And we want to make it okay for it not to work. Again, we loved one of the things that we learned from Australia was Flop Friday, a school that said, let's get together and celebrate what we tried this week that was an utter, unmitigated, horrible, screw up disaster. And say, what can we learn from that? And what are we going to try as a result? We have this perfectionistic tendency as teachers that if it doesn't work the first time, well, clearly we're not going to do it again. It takes actually what we know from the assessment for learning research. It takes 40 hours to change your practice. It doesn't take 10 minutes. So we want to make it safe that we're going to try things. We're going to get together again when we meet monthly, hopefully more often than that within our schools, and say, what have you tried? What hasn't worked? What did you learn from it? And hopefully some things will work too. Then we're going to check and say, have we made enough of a difference? And then we're going to do it again. And then we're going to do it again. And then we're going to do it again. Because inquiry isn't a thing. It's not a project. It's a way of being. It's a way of being as a professional. It's a way of being as a human being. So we want to make this just a natural part of who we are and what we do. So I'm going to tell you one quick story. And it's a secondary one from Australia. And then we're going to hear from Hallie. And then we're going to wrap this up. Linda and I met with quite a large group in November in Sydney. And then we had a chance to go back in June. And to visit 13 schools that agreed to work together in a really concentrated way. And this was one of the schools. It was Punch Boy Boys School. It was a school that had the reputation seven years ago of being the worst and the most dangerous school in Australia. Two young, gorgeous female vice principals at the school were told that they were putting themselves in physical danger by taking on the job. It's a very different place now. They've really been using. They didn't know they were using the spiral of inquiry. But now they are in an intentional way. I want to just show you the scanning questions that they have up on their staff room wall that they refer to every day. And this is what they say. We open our hearts and minds to open doors to learning. We never judge a child. We ask ourselves. And I know it's hard to read. I'm just going to pull out two of them, but the slides will be available to you. But I like this one. Is that defiance you think you're perceiving or a cultural difference? You haven't taken time to understand. And this one, does he know that someone cares about him? And this one, has anyone smiled at him today? Those are really powerful scanning questions. I know there's a spelling mistake, but you know, what the heck? It's the feeling and the direction that they're moving in that is so important. So this is a school that has gone from a very discouraged place through teamwork and through inquiry and really through focusing on their learners. It's an inspirational story, really. And the principal said that when he talks to the teachers, he says, I don't want you to be the best teacher in the school. He said, I want you to be the best teacher for the school. What a difference a word makes. So secondary. And now Hallie is the principal of Middleton Grange. And this sign means it's a brand new school that's just growing. I'd actually like to begin by acknowledging country, by respectfully acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today. I'd like to pay my respect to elders past, present and future, for they hold the traditions, stories and culture, and extend that respect to any Aboriginal people here with us today. At my school, Middleton Grange Public School in the southwest of Sydney in New South Wales, we respectfully acknowledge the cabrical clan of the Derek Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which my school is built. We also acknowledge the Gandangara Local Aboriginal Land Council as the present day caretakers of the land, for our school always was and always will be on traditional land. I asked you if that would be okay if I started that way today, because if I was chatting at home, that is what we would do. Any events such as this in New South Wales, whether it be with staff or with students, begins with an acknowledgement of country. Today, you're getting my acknowledgement of country. If I was at home, it would be an Indigenous person to the land on which we were meeting who would share their welcome to country. But this is partly my country. The reason I'm here is Mum's Canadian, but has been in Australia for the past 47 years. But her home province is Ontario, and my grandmother at 94 is still with us as our four aunts, uncles and a variety of cousins. So this is not my first journey to this part of the world. I'm a frequent visitor. I've had an aunt and uncle here in Vancouver for over 30 years. So yes, I fly home tomorrow, and I have only been here for two days. But it's been a serendipitous opportunity to reconnect with Judy, having been with her in my part of the world in November and June this year, and to get a context of you guys here in BC. So I thank you for the opportunity to gatecrash your party a little bit. I've got some notes which I wrote this morning because I came to chat, and Judy said a little while ago, oh, you're actually going to talk. So I've scribbled some things down. My school is new. It's in a growing area in the southwest of Sydney. We only opened in 2009. So it's my second year as, sorry, my second school as principal, but it's been the first challenge of establishing and opening a brand new school, and we're into our fifth year. The housing is growing with us, so my capacity will be in excess of 500 students, probably a lot more, but at the moment we're only at 170. So we're growing together. My population of students and learners is quite diverse. There is a range of learners who come from a variety of cultural backgrounds. 60% of my current 170 students represent over 32 language backgrounds at the moment. We have a great diversity in socioeconomic background, and likewise my staff come with a variety of experience, and the majority at the moment are early career teachers, which we define as in their first five years of teaching. Our founding vision at Middleton Grange Public School is to foster interdependence and a sense of hope, and we do that through collective wisdom, collective responsibility and collective action, and all of those words have been a part of what you guys have been doing today, and I have been hearing lots of similarities, which has been awesome for me to take back and share with my colleagues. So we've been working with what Judy and Linda term as the strong ways for quite a while in New South Wales in education, the irrefutable evidence, particularly coming out of New Zealand from John Hattie, Helen Timpley, and Vivian Robinson, about the greatest in-school influence and impact on improving student outcomes is the quality of teaching, and therefore the quality of the teacher. And for us, the way that we look at that quality of teaching is through the quality of teacher professional learning, and that's very much the focus of what New South Wales is doing at the moment. So we're in our infancy with our spirals of inquiry for us, inquiry for you, so I probably will forget to say inquiry and use inquiry lots more. We were privileged to spend some extended time in June with Judy and Linda, and it's reaffirming for us that we're on the right path. So what the spirals of inquiry are doing for my school at Middleton Grange is enabling quality teacher professional learning for our school. It's facilitating and transforming our action to the right place so that we've got a clear and shared direction, and that's in a strategic focused way. So for my school at this point in time, it relates to reading comprehension improvement and social emotional development for all of our learners. Spirals of inquiry is giving my staff a shared language across the school, and capacity is being built that we're going to be able to sustain. We're looking at this concept of collective responsibility for change to improve outcomes, and my teachers are expressing engagement but also improved confidence through and with inquiry. We're talking lots, we're talking deeply about what we do, but more importantly, why we do what we do for our learners and with our learners. We're working hard not to use spirals as a tool, but we're developing a way of ongoing thinking, reflecting and doing that is evidence-based. Rather than that concept of what our judgment or our assumption may have been. So having a young staff, one of my teachers is addicted to Pinterest, and she's printed a quote, they line my school, but there's one on my office wall that she printed off Pinterest for me and decided I must read every day. It says, the best thing about teaching is that it matters. The hardest thing about teaching is that it matters every day. So for us at Middleton Grange Public Schools, spirals of inquiry has us on a journey that's enabling our teaching to matter every day. Thanks. When I asked Hallie to say something this morning that she would just nail the points that we're trying to make, so I'd like you to join me in thanking her for giving up a day of her holiday, for coming and for showing how this work is universal. So Hallie, thank you so much. And at the very least, there'll be a good bottle of BC wine for something. Maybe a wand, you never know. So I want you to let's take a few minutes at your table and just kind of talk about the notion of inquiry and how you're making it alive during this process. What are you learning from it? What are you hoping for this year? Where are you going with it? And how are we going to sustain the energy and the focus through using inquiry? So let's take five minutes, have a buzz, and then we'll come back. If we were true to the spirit of formative assessment, at this point, I would move the mic around and hear from some of you. But we're not going to do that because we've got lots of time for conversation over lunch and in an ongoing way. But this is also an invitation. If you're having thoughts about the spiral of inquiry, what's working for you, what you're finding is sticking points or maybe as hiccups, suggestions, any of that just to please email Linda and I. So we're currently writing a second book. We're writing with Helen Timperly. And it's around leading through the spiral of inquiry and really trying to identify what are some of the places where we can get derailed and how can we work through those and around them. So we'd love to, it's a very sincere invitation. We'd really love to hear from you. Now, as I said, that Linda is in Grand Forks right now, but I was there yesterday. And there was, who are my boundary new best friends? It was Joan, a Metis person who did the welcome to the territory. And I can't remember her last name. I had to leave to catch a plane. So just bear with me. Joan was really great. And she used the image of, what's this? A gross. Okay, now when I hear gross, I think of gross grind. Which is, for those of you, it's an incredibly boring hike that is popular because all of the, testosterone-infused people think that, let's see how fast I can go up. In fact, there was one guy this year that was trying to set the record for how many times he could do it and just about died doing it. So we've got the image of the gross, the gross grind, but I didn't realize that the gross was the image of the sacred spiral. Anybody else know that? No. So I'm just going to read you this little bit. And this is what she read yesterday because I just thought, wow. So I want you to, okay. So the gross once flocked in abundance throughout North America, but now even on the plains where these birds were so plentiful, there is an absence of them. Many plains, Indian tribes dance the gross dance. We could develop the spiral dance. The gross dance to honor these birds. This is the point. The movement of the dance follows a spiral, which is the ancient symbol of birth and rebirth. The spiral is one of the oldest known symbols for personal power. The spiral is a metaphor for personal vision and enlightenment. So we had no, no idea about that, but I'm now going to think about the gross and say, let's make the spiral more of a gross dance than a gross grind. Okay. And let's see if we can take this year and just enjoy that place of curiosity and that place of opening up our thinking and not being afraid to, to put our hunches out on the table. And I'll end with a couple of quotes. This is Dorothy Parker, one of my favorite authors, favorite humorous, satirist writers, funny person, irreverent. And we started the spirals of inquiry with this, with this quote. We see too many kids that come into school bubbling with curiosity, overflowing with questions, and those questions sometimes change by the time they hit grade five, grade six, grade nine to what are we doing today? Are we going to learn anything today? Are we doing anything interesting? Is it on the test? Okay. We have bored them silly, in many cases, through what's happened in school. Not intentionally. Sometimes we feel this enormous pressure to cover the curriculum. We now have the freedom not to do that. I want to say, you know, point to the ministry, maybe it's that way, and say thank you for providing this space. There's no excuse for us now, not to bring our own curiosity to, to what we're doing and to make it exciting for, for all of us. Laura Tate shared this picture with our grad students last week. And I just think it, it just is such a wonderful image because it reminds us of why we're, we're doing this work. So let's just, you know, I just wish you a wonderful year and that the smiles at the end of the year are as big as the smiles that you shared yesterday when you came into the room. So thank you very much and definitely a to be continued. We have set 2017 as our goal. We really want to reach that. We're getting tired, although I know it's hard to believe, but we really believe that if we work together in the spirit of inquiry and collaboration and applying everything that we're learning through this project, that we can make BC the strongest learning system in the world. And that's what we've signed on to do.