1. Blog about an educator or mentor that has inspired you and maybe helped shape who you are now. What impact did they have on your life?

Professor Angus Hikairo Macfarlane

I first met Angus when I was Principal at a little rural school, called Galatea, near the Urewera Mountains. Angus, niece Nancy was Deputy Principal and that is how we made the connection,

Angus took professional learning for the team; his message stuck and we had a different mindset about behaviour.

Later on as Principal of Taupo Primary School I asked Angus to work with us again. We spent the day at the Marae learning how to improve our manner and attitude when working with our students . Ka Hiwa Ra, the book Angus wrote had a profound effect on me, and to this day I still have in my head when thinking about managing students. 1. Get them in. 2. Get them on with it. 3. Get on with them

4. Get them out.

His stories are punctuated with great care, humour and most of all a love of our tamariki

Wow I just read the article on the Core Education site where Mark Osborne a talks about a Maker Culture...making something yourself that is a solution to a problem, You can access his article here Discover    Then I watched the vimeo   https://vimeo.com/139988334 and listened to Kimberly Barrs and how she uses a Maker Culture in her classrom. So exciting to see such authentic learning and all the students so engaged.
And scary at the same time. I am thinking about resources, teacher capability, in my case Principal capability. This is compelling. I will be sharing this with the team and as Kimberly advises I will start small...I suspect some of the team will be ready to start big.