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...