Tag Archives: reading

Staff Wellbeing Challenge

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Term 1 had been extremely busy as we developed new curriculum structures and collaborative ways of working all whilst continuing to design great learning experiences for our students at AGE. Our teachers at AGE were starting to feel the strain of this as we approached the end of term. In recognition of this, I shared Te Whare Tapa Whā with the staff and talked about the need for maintaining all aspects of our wellbeing.

Image via Te Ara

For the holidays, I set a challenge for us all to think of what we could do to work on our physical, spiritual, mental and social wellbeing. Here’s how I set about rebalancing my hauora/wellbeing over the recent school break.

Taha Tinana – Physical health

The trusty steed parked at work

In the first week of school holidays I took advantage of the long end of Summer/fine start of Autumn to ride my bike to work each day. Having a bit less time pressure made this an easy way to add more exercise into my week. It isn’t a long bike ride to work but I really enjoyed starting and ending my day by cruising past clogged traffic as I rode along a mix of roads and bike paths to reach work. Now, I just have to find a way to make this happen more during term time! Continue reading →

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#edchatnz Reading Room

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Last year I shared a weekly reading with staff at my school to provoke thinking. As this was quite successful and lead to many great discussions, my good friend & #edchatnz founder Danielle Myburgh has asked me to share a weekly reading for #edchatnz. I hope that many of you will join us in the #edchatnz Reading Room this year, reading, sharing and commenting so we can all push our thinking forward together.

Also, if you read anything mind blowing, please share it with me so I can feature it!

Sir Gateway?

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Many people may get annoyed with this post, in fact it may even be considered sacrilegious by some. Sir Ken Robinson is extremely well known, liked by many and revered by some. His TED talk from 2006 has been watched almost 35 million times. Yet on finishing his most recent book I was left with an overwhelming sense of “meh.”

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Provoking Thoughts Every Week

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My role at Hobsonville Point Secondary School is called Specialised Learning Leader. Acknowledging that to most others outside our school, this title means nothing: the crux of the role is around curriculum and learning design. One of the tasks I have had in this role this year is to provoke staff thoughts around learning design each week. I have done this through sharing a weekly provocation: a reading, article, video that could prompt thoughts around designing better learning experiences for our students at HPSS.

Image courtesy of Brian Talbot

Image courtesy of Brian Talbot

Any of you that regularly read this blog or follow me on twitter will know that I read voraciously. This is a big part of my growth as an educator and this weekly provocation is aimed at encouraging all staff to grow by regularly reading and considering the implications on our practices.

The readings are shared via email each week and paper copies are placed on tables in the staff room. This means that we are providing for those happy to read on their laptops and for those who prefer hard copy to read or who may pick it up to read while having lunch or a coffee.

Initially starting with any article that linked towards our school’s vision for teaching and learning, we soon adjusted it to fit with our current SLL team focus: Continue reading →

What if you had 2 more hours in your day?

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What if over the next month you had 26 hours in your day? What would you use those extra 2 hours for?

Sleep?
Spending time with family?
Giving deeper feedback to your students?
Learning that new skill or tool that you have been wanting to learn but haven’t had time for?
Reading that great book your colleague/friend/cousin was raving about?

It only lasts for this month so you want to make the most of it! What if you had 2 more hours in your day? How would you spend it?

This post is Day 32 of My Question Quest

How Might We create the learning experience of a conference more regularly?

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Since my post on overcoming the conference to classroom chasm I have been wondering about maintaining the intense learning atmosphere of a conference when we are no longer all together.

Now, twitter is great for continually accessing information, ideas and resources but there is something all together different about the learning and networking that occurs at a conference. The Network for Learning Pond may be aiming to provide this for New Zealand teachers but at the moment is just a search engine, I look forward to seeing what the Communities function looks like when it is released.

Last year as we designed how Hobsonville Point Secondary School would operate we often talked about how it was exhausting even though we had no students. We realised it was because we were effectively living in a conference 24/7. We were given time to rethink education and were encouraged to read as much as possible (see here for readings that influenced us in our first term).

I still am privileged to work at HPSS and get access to amazing PD and rich learning conversations daily. We have, however, stopped sharing our reading as much as we used to and I miss those amazing conversations that developed as we shared and critiqued things we had read.

Then today, a great conversation erupted on twitter with @AKeenReader @chasingalyx @beechEdesignz @mattynicoll @shiftingthinkng @MissDtheTeacher and @mrs_hyde about sharing some of our edu-nerd reading we are doing. End outcome is that we are meeting/holding a workshop at the #EdChatNZ conference to organise a book chat to happen once a term where we read the same Edu book then meet up online (twitter or GHO) to discuss how we found it.

So now, I have my daily conversations, regular school PD, twitter chats, the odd Google Hangout (with long term critical friend Michael Harcourt or with new US critical friends Grant Lichtman, Bo Adams and Thomas Steele-Maley)  a new Edu-Nerd book club plus 2 conferences in this next term. Think I’m good for maintaining that conference feel, how are you going to keep the learning going?

 

This post is Day 19 of My Questioning Quest.