A bit of fun

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

ramblings

I am beginning this post without a clear focus which may be a very bad thing, or therapeutic depending on how it all works out. Planning for next year has begun in earnest, with our first session on developing rich tasks and fertile questions on Friday. Unfortunately only four staff members from my team turned up but the ones that did managed to get a lot of great ideas down, for working on at a later stage. I have been working on a brainstorm in inspiration to try and collect my thoughts on organsisation of BYTES next year, curriculum development, resource collection and other ideas. I think it is important to keep assessing, keep thinking, keep planning. I think it is soon time to make a few decisions about the organisation for next year so that we can start getting things done. The fact that we are moving into the new centre next term, and that all of our bad habits will move in with us is not something I have forgotten. Before we can really start dealing with next year, we need to first put in place some structures for this year because the way we are currently doing things will not easily translate into the new centre. The curriculum, despite the original brief, does not really fit the model of rich tasks and fertile questions, albeit close, and so when we move into the open plan centre (all 125 kids and 6 staff members) there will have to be some careful organisation to avoid a disaster. This is the main reason that things have to change for next year. Next year there needs to be structure instead of improvisation, facilitation instead of teaching, and mentoring instead of marking. We are already well on the way to achieving these goals, but there is still a significant journey ahead of us. Sometimes though, like now, I lose all motivation for anything other than sleep. I find myself wasting valuable time blithering about when I should be planning, constructing, creating. Sometimes I find that I just can't be bothered. Is it because I didn't get enough sleep on the weekend, because of the Parent/Teacher interviews that have taken up 2 of the last 4 school nights? Or the short days that before an interview (where the students finish at 2,30) or the short days that follow (where the students start at 10) that are designed to give us a sleep-in but which only rob us of time in class so that we spend our days rushing through things and feeling like we have achieved nothing? Or am I just tired because I am not getting enough sleep or because I struggle to switch my brain from thinking mode to relaxing mode. Now I am rambling... bring on the hols!

multiple intelligences test

This one is interesting and would work well in a classroom - getting the students to do this test and actually trying to incorporate their preferences into your classroom would be a really interesting experiment (not one that no-one has ever done mind you, but interesting nevertheless).

my personality test-more to follow

One of the blogs I read had one of these and we have talked about personality types in one of the leadership courses I have been doing.

This is what it says about people with my profile:
INTJs are introspective, analytical, determined persons with natural leadership ability. Being reserved, they prefer to stay in the background while leading. Strategic, knowledgable and adaptable, INTJs are talented in bringing ideas from conception to reality. They expect perfection from themselves as well as others and are comfortable with the leadership of another so long as they are competent. INTJs can also be described as decisive, open-minded, self-confident, attentive, theoretical and pragmatic.

Interesting. Let me know what you think. I looked up the personality type that I got from the quiz in the leadership course and it was very similar but this one seems to be more accurate.
Next is the mutiple intelligence test!

I am at an interesting stage in my career. I feel like I just want to push on to new and bigger and better ventures and test myself and push myself in new positions with new challenges. I fear however, that I am missing the little things, the details and perhaps the reasons I am here in this profession in the first place. Perhaps in the pursuit of new endeavours and new horizons I have forgotten what my primary focus should be and that is on first and foremost being the best teacher I can be in the classroom. Sometimes I feel like I don't have time or energy to plan properly. When time and energy is also being taken elsewhere with other programs and other ideas, it is sometimes my classes that get left behind. That is not to say that I think that I am an awful teacher. I think generally I have a good rapport with my students, we have fun and we also learn together, but I feel that I am not innovative enough in my own classroom. I research and plan and speculate when it comes to programs on a whole school scale, but then I fear that I am not doing anything particularly exciting at all in my classrooms. When did I stop focussing on the classroom and start being an administrator. Not that there is anything wrong with admin - in fact that is where I want to be but at the moment I can't forget about the classroom. I need to remember that I have so much more to learn and stop trying to have everything yesterday. I need to relish the little moments and the little victories and have this be enough for me. I need to stop trying to conquer the world before I'm 30. I need to work on what I can achieve and realise that I can not do everything - at work or at home.

I think sometimes you get to this part of the year and you think about all of the things that you would have done differently if you had the chance but you dont have that chance. The same 150 kids come into the same classes each day and the systems that you set up at the beginning of the year and have positively or negatively reinforced remain. At the moment I just need to take some time to stretch my head above water and realise what I can still do and how I am going to do it. I need to refocus on the remainder of the year and what I am going to do differently. Then I just need to do it.

Looking out to see within

So in the process of looking outward to see what else is out there in the world of education and in my impatience to get somewhere fast, I have actually, inadvertantly, learnt a lot about myself. Lately I have been restless and looking for a new challenge. When I feel this way I generally look for a total change and that is what I have been doing - checking out what else is out there and working out my options. I have visited numerous schools this year due to the TPL funding and I am looking at building design and pedagogy as well as curriculum innovation. Travelling to different schools has opened my eyes to two things. The first, how much more we could be doing at this school to provide innovative curriculum to our students by introducing some diverse and engaging activities. This is not to say that we are not doing anything - the BYTES program is going well, and many other schools are looking to this program for guidance in their own schools. But when I see what some of the truly innovative schools are achieving with their students, it makes me want to push for more here too. The second is the fact that it will be difficult for me to find a position in another school that has the sort of school culture and opportunities that I am used to. I want to be able to continue working in the area of curriculum innovation, ICT, learning spaces and program development, but there are not many opportunities out there in these areas. I am an impatient person and I want everything yesterday in some respects but I need to ensure that I don't cut off my nose despite my face. The opportunities that I have had lately at my school and the possibility of more to come have made me content to focus inward again and set my own plan into action, rather than looking somewhere else for motivation. I have taken stock of where I am, and in deciding that this school is where I want to be, at least for the next couple of years, I have been able to refocus my goals and my attentions to achieving change and innovation as best I can.
So the first goal, and it is a 6 month goal; is to re-develop BYTES so that when we move into the MERC (which is still not complete) we will be making the most of the learning space, making the most of the staff/student mentor relationship and making the most of the learning opportunities for the students. I am working on more of a fertile question/rich task model to redevelop the curriculum so that students are given the opportunity to explore learning for themselves and develop those skills we want them to have by the end of their schooling, that they are not really developing any other way.
So my plan is to:

• Get together with staff and look at the qualities and attributes that we want our students to have in BYTES by the end of the year.
• Have a workshop with current year 8 students to work out what it is that they are interested in learning so that we can develop fertile questions and tasks around these areas.
• Present our findings to the entire staff body so that we can get others on-board to be part of the curriculum rewriting and planning phase if they are interested and to keep people involved.
• Get together a curriculum writing team to plan and write the curriculum
• Work out the redesign of the organisation of BYTES to move us into the new facility

and the list will go on...

As well as that there is the possibility of the new building. If that goes ahead there is the possibility of having a major role in the building design and curriculum design due to the fact that I have been researching these things for the last 6 months. So rather than feeling stifled at the moment I feel that the possibilities are endless and that they really are what I make of them. It is all up to me.

After weeks with no posting (okay make that months) I am now going to post several times in a couple of weeks! How inconsistent is that? It's good to be unpredictable I think. I have a lot on my mind at the moment and I feel like after 4 years of teaching this is the time to make some decisions. I am confused about what it is that I want to do. Actually I guess it is not so much that I am confused about what I want to do, it is more that I do not have any guarantees that I am heading in that direction. Everything is uncertain and it is difficult for me to work out what it is that I should do.

In my perfect world, I would like to be in a position where I was working on innovative curriculum design, ICT innovation in the classroom and designing buildings for 21st Century learning. This is where my interest lies. I have been lucky enough that I have been co-ordinating the BYTES program last year and this year and it has started really well. The next challenge with BYTES is to overhaul the modules to make them more integrated and less teacher-focussed. Aside from the new focus in BYTES, I feel that I am ready for a new challenge. The school has been investing in me in terms of PD, the trip to NZ and has been involving me in the projects and building designs and curriculum designs for the other year levels that we are currently working on. This is the stuff that I am really enjoying at school at the moment. I would love for this to be my entire focus and to be able to research, go to PD and visit schools to allow my contribution to school to be one based on information and knowledge to avoid the last-minute-lets-slap-something-together attitude that becomes all too prevalent because schools are time-poor.
I enjoy teaching, but I wouldn't mind if my job involved purely administration and curriculum design rather than teaching because that is where my passion is. I also wouldnt mind doing consultant sort of work, or working for the department if something came up that was suitable. I guess that for me being challenged is important, and always learning. I love to learn about new things and increase my knowledge and I guess that is why I keep thinking about going back to uni all the time - because I really like learning and challenging myself. If I could find a position like that it would be great.
Although I love where I'm working, and I think I lead a pretty semi-charmed life there, I think that my new challenge is going to have to come from outside this school, in another school, because it seems there are no guarantees at all when it comes to promotion and leadership positions at my current school, and as much as it is tempting, I cant hang around waiting for a position that may never eventuate.
So I was thinking of going back to uni to do honours or masters to research in that area but I would still want to be working full time so I'm not sure if I want to take on such a committment. I feel like at school at the moment I have so much to offer and so much that I want to achieve, but I do not have a defined role that allows me the time and the chance to do these things. It seems like the school's leadership structure does not really complement the way the school is moving and growing and there are lots of areas that are not being covered that are desperately in need of some focussed attention. So that is where I am at I guess. Looking around for opportunities that will allow me to follow my passion and hopefully are also a little closer to where i am living in Ferntree Gully at the moment too. I will keep you posted!

New Zealand

I am trying to make this a more regular thing. It seems that there is a lot going on at the moment. School has been hectic as you can imagine with reports (and the new VELS reporting to boot) and exams and marking. Things were made even more hectic for me due to the fact that in the middle of report writing time, I went to New Zealand as part of a study tour for 6 days to look at schools over there. It was an amazing experience. Aside from the fact that it meant that I had to mark 2 classes of exams and a class of essays in 2 days in order to get my reports done 4 classes in said 2 day period, the 6 days in NZ opened my eyes to the interesting things going on in education, not just in NZ, but in Victoria as well. The trip involved 13 principals and leading teachers from Victorian schools, and the aim of the trip was to look at some schools in NZ, and see how they were designing their curriculum, incorporating ICT, and designing their buildings. The majority of the schools we looked at had only opened in the past 5 or so years and were aiming to provide education for 21st Century learners. They focused on personalised learning, individual learning programs, creating community, integrated curriculum, self direction and reflection, and had designed programs that catered for their students' individual needs, learning styles and allowed them the freedom to cater their own learning program to their needs and preferences. Their buildings were also designed with this premise and they included lots of glass for high visibility, student breakout areas of varying sizes and varying quietness, meeting rooms for student groups, accessible technology or laptops for all, and classroom spaces with flexibility to be resized. All this and they still claimed to prepare students for the rigours of external assessment at Years 12 & 13.
So the NZ system is different from ours in Vic, but there are some similarities in the approaches they took to the approaches of some of the other schools in Vic who are being similarly innovative. They seem to have looked at the curriculum documents they are made to work with and stripped them back - eliminating the content to leave only the key learnings and the student skills that they would like to see as an end point, and then designed their curriculum to incorporate and work towards these skills and learnings. In doing this they are allowed a greater freedom to incorporate rich tasks, fertile questions and integrated learning, rather than teaching all these skills in distinct classes for different learning areas.
At the moment we are thinking about BYTES, including what is done well and what can be modified or improved and at the same time thinking about changes to Year 10 to incorporate a more authentic careers program and Digital Portfolios. We are also in the process of applying for funding for a new building for Year 7 students in order to get rid of some of the portables and to try and increase the Year 7's connectedness to the school. At the moment the Year 7's are split up as a year level between the last two blocks of the school, in ageing portables, a long way from the rest of the school. We are also looking at ways of improving learning for the Year 7's and this trip gave me so many ideas about what we could do.
It is important to remember that these NZ schools had all been either purpose built or purpose designed for the curriculum initiatives they were trying to develop. So our journey will not be without blockers. We have an intense focus on VCE results at this school and so anything done at junior year levels must not be seen to be losing the rigour and the focus needed to prepare our students for VCE. We also do not have the ability, due to timetabling etc, to totally rejuvinate the way we do things and begin from scratch. There will be no clean slate at our school to work with, only a chance to incorporate some of these learnings of other schools into the way we do things in order to help improve student connectedness and student learning outcomes. In some ways I see the amazing possibilities that a total reform would bring about but I am realistic about the chances of that happening.
I think that this is a really interesting time to be working in education and it is this sort of stuff that really interests me - curriculum and building design, innovation, and ICT. This is the path I would like to folllow in my career and there are a lot of exciting things going on to get involved in. It just also reinforces for me my confusion at where to from here in my career...

Still Here...

Yes, I am still alive and well but I haven't really been motivated to post lately. I think that this year I have been just as busy as I have been before, but a lot more contented with the way things are going and I tended to use this as a way of venting more than anything. So with nothing to vent about I have been relatively uninspired. But not so anymore. Saturday I went to the ICTEV Conference. I presented at two of the sessions, the first with Lynn Davie on Digital Portfolios and the second with Di Morwood on the Year 9 BYTES program and our Digital Portfolio program. Whilst these were affirming experiences (including seeing filmed footage of myself for the first time in front of 30 people which was actually quite mortifying) the real motivation and excitement for me in the day came from going to one of the other presentations. It was a presentation on Digital Storytelling that really inspired my - digital storytelling has been something we have been dabbling in with the year 9s in their digital portfolios but it is not something that we think we are doing very well. This session gave me not only the inspiration to continue (and also to try and develop a similar activity for the Year 7s) but it also gave me some of the know-how by including a copy of the booklet they give their students in order to get them properly focussed on the task. Another presentation I went to was on a particular school and their use of technology and was really interesting. Whilst some of the schools uses of technology were really good, there were other technologies that they had not taken on board and were quite cynical about which I found interesting. He also talked about VCAL IT which sounded really interesting. I reckon if we ran it at our school there really would be a lot of interest. It is really great to go to these sessions and come out inspired. Lots of the things that were presented were really practical and had been successfully incorporated into the curriculum at the school that were presenting so you know that it is tried and tested.

In fact something I have been doing a lot of lately is presenting at, and attending conferences and it is really through conferences and PD days that you get some of the most valuable inspiration.