Category: Leadership

Up Here Where The Air Is Clear!

Breath in deep and taste that country air!

Up here at 600 metres above sea level you can see for miles, no wonder it has taken me so long to sit down and write a post!  I mean check out my view …

Though I guess I should admit to being a fairly slack blogger during the summer break (well in general really).  I am not actually a big fan of writing, I would much rather curl up and read a book, so I really must force myself to sit down write.  In fact the only real reason I do this at all is because I know I have an audience. An audience who is choosing to read my thoughts and opinions.  Maybe even gaining a bit of advice or a few new ideas from my natter about all things great and small in the world of eLearning.

Yep, I write this solely for a purpose, the purpose to connect with my ever patient and kind audience. This of course does make me wonder … do my students feel that there is a purpose behind what I ask them to write? Does ones teacher and class mates make an authentic audience?  And if I have answered ‘No’ to both question (which I have),  why am I making them do any writing at all? Hmmmm

This blog has helped me find a purpose and motivation for writing, it has given me an authentic audience.

If I give my students a blog, will they also find theirs?

I must say, all this oxygen deprivation is making my head spin!

A Maths Lesson for Mrs Tolley

“…almost one in five students are leaving school without the basic literacy and numeracy skills that they need.”

Wow, that’s pretty fantastic!  That means that over 80% of all New Zealand School children are leaving school with the basic literacy and numeracy skills that they need!

Of the 20% who are not achieving at the expected level for their age group, I will safely estimate that a quarter of them are  special needs or have been identified as having learning difficulties.  So we could probably bump that 80% closer to 90%.

Let’s put this into a real classroom, my classroom.

Fractions, Proportions and Ratios Stages 5-6:

I have 30 students – Year 3 and 4 (7, 8 and 9 years old).

(Well actually I have 28, but we will use 30 as a nice round number, I don’t want to make this to hard for you Mrs Tolley, I know that you are too busy to speak to or listen to us) (Also 30 is closer to the average class size in little old NZ).

1 out of 5 of them is below expected age levels in literacy and numeracy.

30 divided by 5 equals 6.

6 students are below – yep that’s my lowest reading group.

Of those six almost two of them have been identified as having learning difficulties.

(Luckily for me almost all of my students come to school after having a good nights sleep, breakfast, are well dressed for the weather and have a good healthy lunch in their bag).

Which means 4 of them are below.  So that’s 4 out of thirty? (correct me if I am wrong Mrs Tolley).

Yep I knew that!

That’s why I differentiate my teaching.  That’s why I get them as much extra help as possible from the funding that’s available to my school.  That’s why I have spoken to their parents and have given them strategies to help their children.

If the government wanted to know this, all they had to do was ask.

Hey! Brain Wave!

Instead of wasting millions of dollars on reprinting existing resources and renaming them as National Standards.  Why don’t you use that money to reduce my class size to 22 so that I can spend more time with my struggling students.

Makes sense to me …

Leading Change: 10 students and 0.5 teachers at a time!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I will be beginning a new position next year as a Sole-Charge Principal at Pukeokahu School (Pukeokahu means The Hill of The Hawk).  To put this into perspective for you non-kiwis out there – I will begin the year (Feb 2nd 2010) with 10 students aged between 7 and 12 years, with two 5 year olds beginning half way through the year.  I am expected to teach across all age levels with 0.3 release (one and a half days per week) to complete school administration.  One of the biggest appeals about this school is the extremely high level of community support.  The Board of Trustees (BOT) fundraises every year to employ a second teacher for an additional one and a half hours per day (0.2 teaching time) to focus on Junior Literacy (Yeah! I’m not alone!).

Soooo … I have a bit of a challenge ahead of me.  The teaching part will be as sweet as a nut, but I now need to learn all about the compliance stuff!  The paper work, administration, budgets, pay-roll (eek! I have heard many a horrible tale about pay-roll!), and water-testing will definitely be a challenge for me.  Yes, you did read that correctly, I do have to test the drinking water once a month!  But what is life without a challenge?  I say bring it on because I also get to do the exciting stuff, and by exciting I mean super-sized-geeky-fun exciting stuff! I now have a blank slate to create a personalised elearning environment for my school community. Woohoooo!

I thought I might share my ever increasing ‘To Do’ list with you:

  1. Obtain Domain Name details.
  2. Sign up for Google Apps.
  3. Sigh and stare at my tiny budget.
  4. Re-assess our ISP – InspireNet, Telecom, or Vodafone? (we have very limited options in Kiwi-land)
  5. Spend at least 17 hours fixing internet connection problems or just waiting while I am on hold.
  6. Create a new (official serious stuff) school website  – Self-hosted with Joomla or hosted by InspireNet with WordPress MU or use a hosted site like Weebly or Google Sites.
  7. Up-load all policy documents to Google Docs and link to school site.
  8. Write the elearning policy.
  9. Sigh and stare at my tiny budget.
  10. Start applying for Trust Grants to up-grade the current elearning infra-structure.
  11. Set up school accounts – Flickr, Voicethread, Delicious, Edublogs, GlogsterEdu, etc.
  12. Sigh and stare at my tiny budget.
  13. Decide if I should go to Learning @School or Ulearn10 and/or the NZPF National Conference.
  14. Create a school/class learning blog (for the fun learning stuff in edublogs) am thinking I might get the students to create a school mascot to host the blog.
  15. Create an ePortfolio for each child (in Edublogs) and set up their school email accounts.
  16. Clean out the old school room (currently used as storage) and turn it into an awesome Creative Art Space!
  17. Feed the chickens.

As you can see, I have quite a lot to do and a few decisions to make before the beginning of the new school year.  I will be blogging as I go to let you all know how I go.  Hopefully I will have plenty of tips and tricks I can share with you all as I bumble along.  I would also appreciate any wisdom and in-sites you could share with me 🙂

Images sourced gratefully under creative commons licence from:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33852082@N00/323568343/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sflovestory/3746500354/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/themonnie/2735689978/