Inquiry catch-up conversations: my thoughts

I am going to record my reflections and progress in this blog format.

So far:
I have managed to get every student in my LA group who has technology to participate in a YouseeU session at least once. Exceptions - 2 students who have paper-based work exemptions and do not work online. I have a prompt question or 1 action/new feature online to show the students each time we have a session. e.g. news items on My Korowai, a prompt about one thing that could be done before the end of day on Friday, a self-reflection question - are they happy with their progress so far?

What isn't going so well:
Student motivation/engagement getting the more reluctant participants to turn up to the YouseeU session. 1 is busy with casual relief work at local ECE centres and this plus her commitment to church youth group events (several sessions per week) appears to be more of a priority than school work (was sitting on NR1 on Friday this week - now on NR2 despite having told me she would get the work completed and handed in). The other is avoiding work and our LT is of the opinion that this student is deceiving his supervisor by switching back to school work screens (away from online gaming sites) whenever the supervisor checks his work (which is quite infrequent).
There is an additional issue that the My Korowai process is quite cumbersome for students to amend/record their term goals and information and then share + upload into dropbox. I look forward to seeing how our new streamlined system of MTK/Google platform co-operation allows the number of steps to be reduced in this process.
I posted out a goal-setting sheet to one of my non-online students, along with a return envelope. It has not been completed or sent back to me. I'm going to consult with my TL are where to next with this student.

What am I doing next:
Continue onwards - be persistent with the YouseeU sessions, and visit the Putaruru advisory once or twice in Term 3 to keep the working relationships going. Investigate the poorly motivated student's situations - what are their barriers? what can they (and/or their supervisors) do to help themselves? I'm going to emphasise the concept of self-management; I am not the mama bird that gives them worms every time they go Cheep Cheep. Thinking more along the lines of "teach a man to fish vs. give the man a fish" ethos.

• Use every means possible to get in touch with my students, weekly, with a progress report and general chit chat about what has been happening for them.
• Attend 1 or 2 advisory sessions next term so we can work on their targets/goals and update these in their Google Doc.
• Trial Skype with interested students.
• Trial Video/voice calling using FB messenger for interested students
• Trial text message type contact with students who are averse to speaking/video calls.
• Get hard-line with the persistent lack of work; what can we do to help and what are they doing to help themselves?
• post out a target/goal setting sheet to the 2 paper-based students and ask our LT to check up on this when he visits.
• share the online personality test and ask LA's to complete this - might give them an insight into what barriers/self-sabotage they are setting up for themselves

I may need support from my TL if I end up having to take a hard-line stance with the students who are hardly submitting any work online. Both are over 16 and do not need to stay with us if they don't want to. I also have to impose a change of work hours on my husband if I need to attend the Putaruru advisory as the timing of this advisory and the travel commitment means that I work past my habitual finish time and can't collect our children from school. So attending this advisory impacts on my family also. This is not a problem, but requires more forward planning and organising of logistics compared to activities within my "normal" working hours.

No questions going forward.