Has AMOS been a visitor at your school? When AMOS appears, do you instantly worry about where it will take you, or do you find ways to embrace AMOS? AMOS is the acronym for what it is most commonly known as ‘ At my old school’. New teachers in schools are often aware that AMOS can strike at…
Are you steering the next Titanic?
Are you steering the next Titanic? Two things have occurred this week that have made me think about how some schools in the global education system have an awful lot in common with aspects of the Titanic. Firstly, an act of deliberate leadership growth and development. Earlier this week, as part of our Middle Leadership…
The Impact on Practice – the ‘So What’
It is hard to believe that here I am, on the tail end of what can only be described as one heck of a journey. If you had told me back in November 2015 that this Postgraduate journey was going to be this busy and this ‘fast and furious’ I may have had second thoughts….
Professional Interdisciplinary Connections
A snapshot of the busy life of a school leader!Via Coggle As I was putting together the Coggle brainstorm of my interdisciplinary connections above, I confess I stopped ‘mind dumping’ once the page started to get super busy, figuring the reader would ‘get the picture’. It is quite tiring to look at that dump of…
Social Media – A Connected Educators Utopia
I am a fairly prolific user of social media. I am an active twitter user, involved in a number of online forums and a member of a number of professional groups that interact on Facebook. My online professional community one of my main methods of professional sanity and in addition, it helps me keep up…
The Influence of Law and Ethics – A Cautionary Tale
Tweet, like, comment, share, follow, unfollow, hang out, Skype, snap, chat, trend, connect, upload, download, instagram, pin, activate, login, create, consume, poke, hashtag, emoji, share, post, notify, message and code. The above is just a small list of ways to interact with social media, which,…
Cultural Responsiveness and Self Review
This post is quite timely. We are currently undergoing an in-depth review of all things bicultural at our place right now. A systematic, no stone left uncovered, review of all that we do, how we do it and how effective our ‘doing’ is. By knowing what we do well, we can strengthen this and learn…
A Col, Staffing and the Auckland Housing Market
Contemporary issues impacting on my practice: There are two contemporary issues in education that are currently having an impact on my practice. 1. Communities of Learning This issue is at the forefront of my current practice. It would be fair to say that I have had concerns about this policy from the offset, however, I…
Professional Communities and School Culture
School culture is a little like the proverbial iceberg (Stoll, 1998) – what you see on the surface is not necessarily representative of the whole story. Often what lies beneath is a complicated network of emotions, traditions, rituals, values and relationships that can be as tricky to navigate as the London underground system! It is…
Defining Practice
Thinking about my practice as an educator, and defining it, is an interesting thing to reflect upon. I thought it would be easy, after all, I should know what it is, because I ‘do it’ everyday, sometimes 24/7 according to those close to me! On the surface, I am a leader, a teacher, and…