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Weekly Reflection: The Last Post
New Zealand Graduating Teacher Standard 7.c “Graduating Teachers are able to articulate and justify an emerging personal, professional philosophy of teaching and learning.” What my Diploma in Teaching...
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Six weeks teacher training? Our neediest kids deserve better than that
I’ve been scratching my head for sometime trying to work out why people think it would be a good idea to put a bunch of untrained yet high achieving university graduates into low-decile schools. But...
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Too many teachers, not enough jobs
I graduated today. This should have been a happy occasion, a celebration of slogging out a tough course. But instead the mood was a mood of despondency among many of the those who graduated today. Many...
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Is Teaching a Creative Profession?
A few weeks ago, I was at meeting where the presenter remarked to the largely teacher audience that we would have to excuse her creative right-brain tendencies during her presentation. I’ve been...
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My verbal submission to the inquiry on 21st century learning
This is a copy of my verbal submission that I made to the education and science select committee into digital learning. I was inspired to make a submission after attending the ignition unconference at...
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Weekly Reflection: #ICOT2013 Takeaways
Leave your clever at home – Conference presentations are often a great opportunity to highlight something successful that you’ve undertaken which can be applied to my class. But what is more awesome...
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Weekly Reflection: The importance of play
On a sunny afternoon this week I ventured out with the rest of the teachers in my school to take part in a cricket skills workshop. I wasn’t particularly enthused by the prospect of spending time...
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10 Tips for student teachers on placement
I was recently asked by a reader if I could give my tips for surviving teaching placement, practicum, teaching experience. Having gone through the experience myself and having watched two sets of...
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Singapore bound – so long NZ and thanks for all the fish
Next year sees a change for me. I’m off to teach at an international school in Singapore. My current school has been really, really, really good to me. I’ve been afforded some incredible professional...
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10 tips for First Year Teachers
1. Don’t talk over the kids If there is one piece of advice I could give you, it is this. Never talk over the kids. You might have to wait a long time for their attention and on occasion you might...
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Future-focused teacher education 33/365?
Last week Claire Amos wondered if New Zealand’s Graduating Teacher Standards were future-focused enough. Having come to know the standards well both through being a fairly recent graduate and having...
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Who watches the people watching teachers?
A few years ago I was in the room with a very senior member of the teaching profession who joked they used so little modern technology they didn’t even have an ATM card. That comment bothered me for a...
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We can’t all be right all the time – why a little bit of online conflict is a...
Early in my career I had a team leader who had a reputation for being highly critical. Other teachers thought this teacher was hard to work with. My team leader could harpoon an idea at any meeting big...
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How could the PYP workshop be better?
One of the aspects that excited me about teaching in a Primary Years Programme school is an ongoing commitment to professional development of teachers. An integral part of PD for PYP teachers is...
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It’s time to stop being the ‘techie teacher’
A few years ago I was having a conversation with someone when they made an off-hand that ‘us techie teachers need to stick together.’ The language really bothered me because it was the language of...
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#pzc2015 Day 1 Taming the Wild
“We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience.” John Dewey. This week I am taking part in Project Zero Classroom- a week-long course run by a research group at Harvard...
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Doing something outside my comfort zone…
We are two days into our in-service training week and this morning I co-led a session on restorative practices for the teachers of Years 3-6 as well as classroom assistants. For someone who has mostly...
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Where great learning with iPads really starts…
Today was like Christmas at school. Each member of the primary school teaching staff received an iPad mini. For the amount of time and effort we put into technology, the most important person who needs...
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10 tips for managing shared iPads
This was a brief presentation I gave for the elementary teachers at my school on managing iPads in a classroom environment where children are sharing devices.
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That time I forgot my lesson observation…
Lesson observations. The very thought of them often elicits, headaches, nausea and stabbing feeling on the right side of the forehead. Perhaps I exaggerate. But no matter how long you’ve been...
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