Social Networking @ School

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My school is embracing a range of tools to empower staff and students in the new direction of a forward-thinking learning community. The new internal ‘Learning Portal’ encourages staff to share and connect with current literature and research in the areas of 21st Century learning, ‘Culture of Thinking’ and ‘Classroom Care’ which encourages all staff to take a vested interest in Pastoral Care. This support community for staff has encouraged discussion around pedagogy, resulting in a significant rise in the use of ICT to support the educational needs of 21st century learners, particularly in the Middle School. Teachers are currently trialling an iPad, utilising technologies familiar to our students, engaging them in new and exciting ways.  Teachers are personally working on developing their Professional Learning Network (PLN), primarily through Twitter, where connections have been made resulting in shared Skype and Twitter classroom experiences between teachers and students. Encouraging teachers to understand, embrace and utilise web-based tools such as Twitter, Twiducate, WallWisher, Weebly, WackWall, Skype, YouTube and Glogster in their classroom has dismissed many taboos around the link between social networking and education and we have seen students come alive and produce outstanding work as teachers look to utilise their new knowledge and brave new ways of assessing student understanding. Middle School student are, for example, ‘Tweeting’ reflections of their lesson to classes in the Junior School, building peer relationships and using Twitter to engage with their learning.

While teachers become more savvy in the world of social networking, our kids are still pushing boundaries, and while this is happening outside of the school, as educators, we know that the effects travel with them into the classroom.  One site, Formspring, which is the online version of the bathroom wall inschool, the place to scrawl raw, anonymous gossip, is arelatively new social networking site that has become amagnet for comments among the Facebook generation came to our attention recently.  Although Formspring is still under the radar of many parents, ithas become an obsession for some teenagers. While socialnetworking is part of our digital culture, and the associatedliteracies are being explicitly taught, with much success inour classrooms, Formspringappears to be a place for out and out cyber bullying.  When discussing the negative feelings and emotions that arise from the use of such sites with our Year 8 cohort, many girls expressed their concern about the content of the site and have started a grass-roots revolt against it, and this quickly caught on throughout the Middle School. On the Year 8 noticeboard, there is now a version of ‘Formspring’, where girls have posted comments and quotes for girls to take and share, such as ‘you are loved’ and ‘smile, you matter to me’. This is a wonderful outcome after delivering a stern message, and opening dialogue with the students about social networking misuse. The whole school has enjoyed the wall, which has transcended the needs of one Year group. We, the adults in their lives, want them to be happy and are devoted to caring for their wellbeing. In this vein, we need to help them to reset the moral compass and celebrate what we can. As Dr Megan Poore aptly pointed at the AHISA Pastoral Care Conference earlier this year; we need to work with these social technologies, not against them, as they are here to stay. Shutting down access to theinternet or social networking is not the answer to combatingthe issue, and in fact guiding students through this highly emotion-charged journey through the social networking jungle is an important lesson in digital literacy and Pastoral Care.

Letter to my Middler Parents

Pre-pubescent, pre-teen or early teen, pre- adolescent. These very terms used to describe the period that your daughter is in suggest these years are merely a prelude to something else not worthy of focusing on for too long. Yet this phase of life entails changes as dramatic and significant as the toddler years. Gianetti has coined the term ‘middlers’ in her book ‘The Roller Coaster Years;  raising your child through the maddening yet magical middle school years’. This term emphasises the unique developmental tasks and situations that emerge during these years. This is a tricky age. Here are just a few of the frustrations they must contend with:

·         They yearn for independence when they are still being told what to do by their parents, teachers, and older siblings.

·         They are the target of many advertising campaigns, yet have little disposable income of their own.

·         They worry about their appearance while nature is wreaking havoc with their bodies.

·         They long for peer acceptance while some of those same peers make life miserable for them.

·         They worry about doing well in school while their workload and responsibilities increase.

·         They are on the brink of adulthood, yet have trouble controlling childlike impulses.

·         They are eager to voice their opinions, but they still have difficulty formulating coherent arguments.

·         They maintain a hectic schedule-between school, sports, social events, and extracurricular activities-at a time when their physical development demands they sleep more.

There is scientific data to prove that these children, because of better nutrition, are reaching puberty at an earlier age. But in many ways, the intellectual and emotional maturity of these children has not caught up.

The Life of a Ten- to Fifteen-Year-Old

For a moment, imagine what your life would be like if you encountered some of the same difficulties in your own life as those being endured by your daughter:

Congratulations! You've been promoted, moved up another step on the ladder. Initially, you're euphoric, expecting you can now operate with more freedom. It doesn't take long, however, for you to see that there are many negatives and few positives resulting from your new position. Your workload has doubled. Your added responsibilities now require you to toil at home an hour or more every evening on projects you regard as little more than busywork. And your boss doesn't seem to trust you. He is constantly second-guessing you, listening in on your phone calls, going through your papers when you're not looking. Nothing seems to please him. Yesterday he reprimanded you because your desk was untidy!

Your co-workers aren't much help. There is an in-group and you are decidedly on the outs. No matter what you wear or how you comb your hair, someone manages to make a snide remark. Would it be paranoid to say that they are out to get you? The other day, one of them criticized your proposal in a meeting, embarrassing you in front of the client. Work is difficult enough without having to worry about being sabotaged by your peers.

On top of everything else, you feel lousy these days. Maybe it's the flu that's making you so tired. You can't seem to get out of bed in the morning. And your appearance! Your face has broken out and nothing seems to help. You've put on maybe two kilos since the holidays, all in the wrong places. You looked in the mirror this morning and couldn't believe what you saw. Too many sweets, no doubt. Nothing in your closet fits. Time to diet again.

Doesn't sound like much fun, does it? Welcome to your daughter’s world! These young people are living life in a pressure cooker. Is it any wonder they occasionally explode?

But I’m keen to talk to you about the good news, what I see every day. For me, the very best thing about your daughter is she makes me laugh! You see, Middlers are funny and I have 146 giggly, funny, sparky girls to greet me each day. These are the years when you daughter will acquire a more sophisticated sense of humour.  I am in a profession where I get paid for having fun. Everyday, Year 8 are all about corny jokes and uncontrolled laughter. Just today, I walked into my Year 8 class to find the girls in fit of laughter after putting these pictures onto the whiteboard (You Rock, You Rule!). 

In the same lesson, about Polar Bears, these girls expressed not only a vast amount of prior knowledge about Polar Bears, indicating they really engage with the media around them, but also were thinking in abstract, very adult ways. When making comparisons between polar bear habitats and those of orang-utans one girl stated the following;

“I was on the couch with my sister eating TV snacks chocolate biscuits the other night, when I looked at the box and saw an ingredient is Palm Oil “(as a side note, the orang-utans are losing their habitat of the rainforest as palm oil plantations are taking over) Anyway, she continued by saying “ and when I saw that I felt sick thinking that I was contributing to the slaughter of orang-utans (middlers are also very dramatic) so I stopped eating them, but my sister kept eating them, and so I’m not talking to my sister anymore, because she is an orang-utan killer!”. Wow! (ps, I hope that geography lessons are not tearing family’s apart!) Your daughter is beginning to develop sophisticated reasoning powers. They are fascinated with the outside world and how it affects them. They still seek out the approval of adults. They are developing their own set of personal values, based on yours and other significant adults in their lives. Middlers believe they can make a difference, and they can if we let them. They are a wonderful blend of naïveté and budding sophistication.   Did you know that a recent survey found that 93% of students in this age group consider being part of a loving family to be much more important than owning material things? (a surprising revelation from our material girls!). 88% also credit family as their greatest source of self-esteem.

The National Middle Schooling Association of America surveyed a vast amount of middle schoolers, just like your daughter. Apart from the usual body and friendship issues, the results found that middlers worry intensely about the future. 67% worry about getting a good job. 62% are concerned about making enough money to sustain the lifestyle they have become used to. They worry about finding their place in the world, and they worry about you. One thirteen year old responded ‘I worry about my parents getting sick. Of 8000 students surveyed 47% confessed to this worry. Although we think childhood stress is an oxymoron, it’s not and we need to make sure we properly address their anxieties, often by trying to manage our own.

10 -15 year olds are the most vulnerable age group in society. They are struggling with identity issues and cannot help but be swayed by what they see, hear and read. Technology is moving at such pace and now dictates how we learn, communicate and entertain ourselves.  Middle schooling has encouraged the use of ICT into the curriculum.

You will see from perusing the Year 8 Course Booklet, many tasks and assignments require the use of IT, whether it be in research or presentation. I was (or so I thought) introducing my Year 8 class to the idea of blogs to undertake long term group work, getting them to really think and reflect on their work and processes.  Your polite daughters let me show them short ‘how to’ clips from you tube, model how to access and build a wordpress page and show examples of great blogs in progress. I was very pleased to (again, or so I thought) have a technological one-up on year 8. This was of course until one girl walked up to the smart board, typed in a few words and said ‘is this the sort of thing you want us to do?’ revealing her already polished, analytical website about global citizenship and inequalities based on class work. I don’t want to harp too much on the ills of social networking tonight, we know the perils of that domain and will certainly be addressing this later in the year, but perhaps rather than always assuming the internet = bad news for your daughter, have a look at the amazing ways she is also using it.

I want to thank you for entrusting your most precious asset to me and others in the middle school pastoral team. I really want to you get a good sense of what she does during our 8 or so hours together each day. Enjoy your experiences with your bright, entertaining and energetic child, I sure do!

The Middle- Jimmy Eat World

A message for Our Middle School Girls?!
Hey, don't write yourself off yet
It's only in your head you feel left out
Or looked down on
Just try your best, try everything you can
And don't you worry what they tell themselves
When you're away.

It just takes some time, little girl in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything it'll be alright

Hey, you know they're all the same
You know you're doing better on your own
So don't buy in.
Live right now
Yeah, just be yourself.
It doesn't matter if it's good enough
For someone else

It just takes some time, little girl you're in the middle of the ride
Everthing, everything it'll be just fine
Everything, everything it'll be alright
It just takes some time, little girl you're in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything it'll be just fine
Everything, everything it'll be alright

Hey, don't write yourself off yet
It's only in your head you feel left out
Or looked down on
Just do your best, do everything you can.
And don't you worry what the bitter hearts, are gonna say

It just takes some time, little girl you're in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything it'll be just fine
Everything, everything it'll be alright
It just takes some time, little girl you're in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything It'll be just fine
Everything, everything it'll be alright