Tuesday, September 24, 2013

More Songs About Buildings and Food

This truly outstanding album by Talking Heads came to mind when thinking about a title for this post.

Food certainly features strongly in a lot of our activities at school, though not so much today as it was a fasting day. But it is forever present. I have posted about Steve and Sarah's Live Below the Line project this week and also mentioned the scones and lunch from yesterday.

The More Songs bit seemed relevant as our starting the day with a ukulele performance has become a ritual.
Today we attempted a couple of new songs including Amy Winehouse's Rehab but much more work will be needed to nail that one. We had to finish off with another rousing rendition of Folsom Prison Blues to get our confidence back.
Had to comb my hair in a special way to get this look going!

I then headed down to our site to meet up with the architect who was hosting a visit by another school which was looking at Modern Learning Environments. I was there to talk about the pedagogy that had prompted the building design. I soon realised the lens through which our visitors were looking at teaching and learning spaces was quite different to ours so I just dropped into the background and wandered around with a senseof increasing excitement about how our building was unfolding.
 Looking into my (I mean our) office

 Student cafeteria/gathering space outside gymnasium

 Looking from Main St into Learning Commons
Breakout areas as part of Learning Commons

I raced back from this to the ERO report back from their visit the previous day. Alan, Di and Lea and I (Claire was getting emergency dental treatment!) had the privilege of hearing the reviewers speak very highly on the leadership, governance, coherence of vision and direction, community engagement and curriculum planning that was evident to them. I liked the way they talked about the patient urgency with which we were going through our work.

Well done BOT and staff!

It was great to spend the last hour joining a LOL conversation that was making the first tentative steps towards agreeing on how a timetable might be put together. I couldn't help but reflect on the ERO comments about coherence because through this conversation you could tell that everyone was motivated by keeping the learner and their needs firmly in our focus. Differences were being expressed but everyone was singing from the same song sheet. I am convinced that if we had tried this conversation a few weeks ago there would have been more polarised views.

After appointing a PA and two further enrolments to close out the day I found myself heading home, once again, feeling content, confident and privileged. I was even more pleased that I hadn't had time to eat my apple which meant that was caloric capacity for a whiskey for a quiet celebration.

So, the third term is coming to a close and all seems well in our work!

No comments: