Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Moving On

It may seem gentle being a Principal of a school with no kids and only a handful of staff but reflecting on today I'm not sure how a day could be more rigorous.

Following on from yesterday's great day with Julia Aitken (see Sally's views on that activity) where we inspected our brains we came together this morning. Our LOLs were set the task of taking our Hobsonville Habits and drilling down through them to create a series of 'I' statements which will end up forming the basis of our learner and teacher profiles.

While they were doing this the SLT had the privilege of interviewing 4 of our candidates for our next round of teaching positions. The calibre of the candidates is outstanding. We finished this about 1.00pm. As I walked past our LOLs quite regularly to collect the next applicant I was observing them in action as they had worked out a process for them to deal best with the Hobsonville Habits.

Just before lunch I checked my computer to find a shared document they had created to which they had all contributed. It made excellent reading. Steve's blog gives a neat description of that process through the eyes of Steve who joined us late last week after his Japanese excursion.

After a roundtable where they shared how they were going we were treated to the background stories from Jill and Sarah, after having heard from Megan and Yasmin on Friday. These stories have been a great process in learning about each other. Can't wait to hear from the others in the coming days.

From there Claire and I headed into the city for a very stimulating 2 hours with the ChallengED crew at Cognition. We were treated to a great presentation on Personalised Learning from Western Springs College and a very stimulating presentation from McAuley on Authentic Assessment.

After a trip home via school to bring in some of the primary school kids' painted wood things that had been left outside I got home just before 8pm feeling very satisfied with another great and varied day.

Now to re-read 4 CVs before tomorrow's interviews and write a referee's report for a colleague to make the day complete.

You should also check out this great video on our school zone created by our LOLs in their first week.

See you, apopo.

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