Reflection of End of Term 2

My goal for leadership this term is about building (learning/professional) relationships with my team, but also to bring purposeful action by having clarity of what our goal is.

The last two terms have been a huge success for lots of reasons. We have keep learning relationships an absolute focus and have refereed to it as our why in many decisions. For example we agreed to keep our class for reading, writing and maths to help build learning relationships, which was fantastic. Over time, team members have been very honest across a variety of issues which tells me that we have built a safe environment as we are understand that we want what is best for our students. 

Our goals of building learning relationships has overwhelmed our other goal of leadership. This has been frustrating, but the focus was necessary as the behaviour of the students and feeling amongst the team was that we needed to. As our timetable became more unpredictable with many distractions, the students behaviour started to revert to the past and it was quite obvious that we needed to get back to basics and go over the Expected Positive Behaviours and ensure we are as a team, on the same Waka. Being on the same 'Waka' is included in every meeting. 

Our focus/inquiry has started to move into engagement through providing effective feedback. This was based around our new school report which was going to be written by the students and shared live to parents so information is shared as it happens. This would be supported by a 'Learner Led Conference' which gave the students a 20 min opportunity to share their learning which included analysing their asTTle results. 

We made the classic mistake, as Mark Treadwell, noted - caught between the old and the new. Although the students wrote most of the report, very well through explicit teaching, we agreed with Years 5 & 6 to write teacher comments too. This was too much for the team and it was a stressful and hectic finish to Term 2. Which was a shame and it feels like a step back in trust. However, we will do our very best to make the complete step forward and ensure the students are continued to be taught how to write effective reflections so we do not need to write any teacher comments. 

Our next small step forward with 'engagement through effective feedback' is inquiring into leveraging digital tools. We are exploring Digtial Tools with Rob Clark and we are starting by ensuring we are on the same Waka with 'See-Saw.' We also found out if there were any other Digital Tools that we were not comfortable with and how much we are using them.