My name is Garth Powell and I am a teacher at East Taieri Primary school in Mosgiel, Dunedin. This year I am completing the National Aspiring Principals Programme, and this blog will be a record of my year long leadership inquiry.
I have been teaching at East Taieri since completing my Bachelors of Teaching in 2004. Before this I completed a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Psychology. I started teaching Year 1 children in 2005, then I taught Year 2 and have now been teaching Year 3/4 children for the past 4 years. I also taught in the UK for a year which was a very interesting and soul searching experience. I have been the Dean of the Middle Syndicate for the past 3 and a half years which I have thoroughly enjoyed. For part of this time I have shared this responsibility with another colleague and we have found this team leading approach very successful.
My leadership inquiry is based around much thinking that we have had in our school over the past year or so. As a management team we have been considering ways in which we can encourage the children to articulate and drive their own learning. We had heard that Myross Bush school in Invercargill had been working on developing an approach that had the children in the driving seat of their learning. The management team visited Myross Bush school and were kindly received by Tim and his team. We were very impressed with what we saw (especially watching the older children knowing exactly what they need to do to improve or reach certain criteria) and also with the way in which they used technology (Google Docs) to enhance their learning and move it from something that occurs solely in the classroom to becoming a home/school partnership with a lot of collaboration in between. We were buzzing with ideas from this initial visit. Of course we had dozens and dozens of questions, and Tim did his best to help us. We were recommended a clip called: Start with the Why by Simon Sinek. This clip sparked a lot of deep thinking and conversation for us and formed the basis of a lot of where we thought that the direction of the school could/should be.
So from this I began to develop my leadership inquiry. The main aims of my inquiry are around developing Personalised Learning for the children. I want ALL children to know what they know, what they need to know, why they need to know this, how best they learn, what their next learning steps are and how technology can be used to help enhance their learning. Another aspect of my inquiry is around Team Teaching and in particular how team teaching can be used to develop Personalised Learning for the children through the use of enrichment activities and personalised workshops that are created and driven by the needs and the wants of the children.
Of course the purpose of being a participant in the NAPP course means that I need to consider how leadership plays an important role in my big question and inquiry. What can I do as a developing leader to bring about a sustainable change or develop a model that could be used throughout the school? This core theme of leadership will need to be woven through all aspects of my inquiry.
My inquiry big question was: Does a personalised approach to learning help student achievement, and can this be enhanced through the practice of team teaching and digital collaboration between students?
But, on reflection and part way through my Inquiry I found that this was far too big to research. So I have narrowed my question down to focus on learner agency and what it means to be a learner. This is because after researching learner agency it covers everything that I believe was in my initial big question. I am very interested in seeing how learner agency can be developed at my school and with my staff and children. It will be a challenging leadership journey, but I believe that the benefits are enormous.
My new inquiry big question is: What is learner agency and how could I develop this at my school?
My leadership responsibilities (from Leading from the Middle - MOE - pg12) are:
- Improve outcomes for all students - with a particular focus on priority learners
- Create the conditions for effective teaching, learning and curriculum delivery
- Explore and promote the use of ICT and e-learning to open up new ways of connecting, sharing and learning
- Develop schools as learning communities
- Build networks within and beyond their schools to enhance learning and achievement
- Develop others as leaders
Over the course of the year I really look forward to unpacking my big question, seeing what other questions and discoveries come out of it along the way and understanding myself as a leader and forming my own moral purpose. I am sure that there will be many unexpected twists and turns, and a whole lot of ups and downs, but I hope that by the end of this process I am able to see a significant and positive change in the learning and attitude of my students, as well as a change in the teaching culture of the staff at my school.
No comments:
Post a Comment