‘Setting the sails for success’ Marsden High SDD July 2011

At Marsden High we need to Administer and communicate about our business..The STRUCTURES WE HAVE….IN PLACE.

1. EMAIL.. it is a serious communication tool for  you to  stay informed about our CORE BUSINESS teaching and learning… if you don’t check it regularly,  you will eventually be left on a raft boat… without a paddle.

a place that has all relevant staff information and staff handbook online.

JOIN wikispaces… the search for the Marsden High wiki, it is set to PRIVATE.. so you need to join the wiki.

The big advantage is that we can all edit as we need. I encourage faculties to have a representative that keeps their page …on the right PAGE.. so to speak.

Links through the portal or you log in straight from the website.

All staff have permissions to edit.. it will be a powerful tool.. for us to communicate to our school community.

5. Lastly, not sure if you have had a chance to investigate the new DEC .. social networking tool.. MAANG.

It is linked through from the portal. It replaces Yammer…so no more yammering.. it has many opportunities to network with colleagues, pool resources, gather resources, talk anything, ask to know anything, it is an ocean of answers to your questions.

https://www.maang.nsw.edu.au

2. Vision and personalised learning.

This is the profound section. I refer back to Hugh Mackay.. “everyone wants to be taken seriously”.

It is very important that we align the school vision with  teachers personalised learning journey. One cannot exist or progress without the other.

Targets from ASR

• To improve student performance in writing.
• Student Engagement in quality teaching  using technology in learning – Authentic Implementation of Netbooks in classrooms.

Further development of School Management Priorities will be established at the exec conference.

Personal Learning Networks, Leadership density, blended learning and streamlining of administration processes to support quality teaching, managing student diversity, engagement and curriculum differentiation, implementation of the national curriculum.

For this point I would like to time for thought and reflection.

I take some words from Paul Brook (“21ST Century School Education: Looking Forward Looking Back?”  Keynote address June 2011)

and Slim dusty..

Looking forward, looking back 

I‟ve come a long way down the track 

Got a long way left to go 

Making songs, from what I know 

Paul makes the point that teachers are for  having to make the educational up and up.. into a spiralling pinnacle of creativity, collaboration and embracing 21st century nuances, constantly teachers are urged to continuously set the highest expectations both for themselves and for their students,yet in the next breath politicians are heralding ‘the back to basics’ mantra. Paul goes onto say..In other words, our scope as educators must always be broader and deeper than limiting ourselves merely to the necessary “basics”.

1. If someone asked you today, what is your educational philosophy or your personal vision of learning, what would you say?

2. If you have a vision of education.. what steps have you taken to make that happen…. have you developed a path or a sense of journey.

3. Are you a specialist? have you developed yourself an area of expertise? How do you align with the whole school, region vision?

In mind’s eye you have answered some of those questions.. then you have the beginnings of a professional learning journey.

Jot them down, as they will serve for the conversations you have with your HT and myself.

3. Quality teaching, explicit expectations and reflection. “CARE” factor….

The 3 dimensions of the Quality teaching Framework. 

Intellectual quality : active construction and higher order thinking.

Quality learning environment  : setting high and explicit expectations and develop positive relationships

Significance : learning meaningful, clear connections to students prior knowledge and identities, outside contexts, multiple ways of knowing and cultural perspectives. 

FITS so well into our CARE School focus…

• C  Cooperate (Quality learning environment)
• A  Achieve (Intellectual Quality)
• R  Respect (Quality learning environment)
•  E  Engaged learners (significance)

We need to be explicit on how our CARE Classroom should look like.

We need to have a unified idea how we want our Care Classroom to feel and then we need to explicitly teach the  CARE  classroom Values.

CARE values need to taught, we assume nothing. Quality teaching, is explicit teaching.

Students are provided with explicit criteria for the quality of work/behaviour they are to produce/display and those criteria are a regular reference point for the development and assessment of students progress. High expectations of all students are communicated, and is encouraged and rewarded.

Once, we have in-place explicit, high expectations of CARE behaviour, that has been explicitly and consistently taught.. we then reflect on how ….we balance this with a system that consistently reinforces explicit behaviour and as system that then endeavours to meet the needs of those who choose to not fulfil high expectations..

How, we begin is by building the picture of what explicit teaching of CARE values looks like… then how we consistently implement across the school, this is our group challenge today! Monday DAY 1.

Activity:

Part one: Individual Reflection on my ‘ Classroom self assessment checklist’

Part two; Group challenge, from individual reflection to GROUP FEEDBACK…