The beauty of teaching is that there is no one week which is like another.
Creativity
It was such a delight this week to see just how creative our students could get. Going around seeing the classes, one cannot but admire the dedication of the teachers. Milky ways in splotches of colour, craters and moons – all these were part of the KG space program. We’ll get them to NASA yet! And then there was the impromptu orchestra and jamming sessions also by the younger students who were tuning in to their natural rhythm. Older students, like the Year 8s, attended Brain Gym – an exercise to boost concentration. Then the Year 7s channelled their inner Superheros in the drama classes and the year 9s distilled their English literature reading into a script. This gave them an insight into the complexities of understanding and interpreting characters.
This is an integral part of the character building which goes on at the college. Creativity, while including visual arts, means that we get to experience a world beyond our usual ken, to empathise and to experience situations which are not usual.
Planning ahead
Work on the school’s strategic plan for the coming years is shaping up. The School Development Plan, SDP, is aimed to target the main development areas which the school aims to reach. Similar to a business plan, the SDP looks at where the school is and where it wants to be, the services it currently gives and the services it aims to develop, the achievements it currently boasts and where it would like its students to arrive. Then it sets the path accordingly.
Significant in following the model we have chosen is that all the information we received through parent, staff, student and Board of Governors surveys, will be incorporated into the plan. Correlation of the copious amount of data that has been received has been a mammoth task. Staff will be divided into working groups during the PD session on May 3rd and will look to develop action points. The whole process will take in the region of 2 years, there will be involvement from all stakeholders as we progress. Remember this will be structured as a cyclical process, we will constantly be referring to the plan, seeing what we have achieved and setting new goals.
More on that another time.