Tuesday, 29 September 2015

Comment on "Taking the Risk

#edblognz
So I am learning to link to link to another persons blog and make comment. I chose Ruth Duke - Norris  Taking that risk
I found the blog inspiring, and a reminder to  myself that we are always learning. You sound very confident Ruth, you remind me to enjoy the challenge and to be a little more patient with myself. It takes time to learn and experiment and I am always in a hurry which spoils the challenge and the fun of learning.
New resolution for a new term, slow down and bit, learn more, add more depth and enjoyment to the job.

Sunday, 27 September 2015

Over the last term our leaders team rated ourselves against the leadership component of the ERO Evaluation Indicators. We did pretty well, and we think we were honest. Just as a precaution against over optimism on our part we are going to get our teachers to rate us also.
Two key areas we identified for improvement were formative practice, including student voice and systematic community consultation.
We have delivered professional learning, time to observe, time to practice and researched the pedagogy of formative  practice for many years so its disappointing to find that we still have areas where thinking is summative and students are not actively participating and co-constructing learning. In saying that there are many areas of excellent practice, however as long as some students are not getting the best deal then we still have a great deal of work to do. I wonder if any leaders out there can give suggestions for a break through with the remainder of "die hard" thinking! How can we move forward from this point?
The second area we marked down was with systematic community consultation. We are really good at being with our community, sports, hangi, Kapa Haka, parent evenings and so on but we had to face the fact that its a bit ad hoc. One way around this would be to create a calendar of consultation activity and adhere to it, The  only reservation is that maybe this could become plastic and not real. What do others think?
Whew! this is my first blog in this forum. Not sure  if I am on track or not, but here goes.