Halfway through Term 1 already, where does the time go? This was going to be a long term, and there's still a long way ahead, but it's been so busy and exciting that it's just flown by!
Setting up a department in a new school is always a challenge. Try doing it in a school you've been in for 6 months. You are "existing staff" so everyone expects that you know everything, but you've never done half the things before, and the rest you're used to doing a different way. The solution? Listen carefully and ask LOTS of questions. Don't worry about looking daft for not knowing the answer, it's far preferable to looking dumb when you do it all wrong! There are lots of people who can help you, SMT, fellow Faculty Leaders, and the people in your department who've seen it happen before. just because they aren't in charge, doesn't mean they don't have a good idea about what/how/when things need doing!
In addition to setting things up a for a new year, I've got 4 new members of staff and two new courses to support. The newbies are great. Energetic, enthusiastic and bubbling with new ideas. My goal is to keep them like that as they settle in and not crush them under the workload of a PRT (Provisionally Registered Teacher).The new courses are even more exciting, and I'm teaching them both. Level Three Science using the new Earth and Space Standards. A great, contextualized course using scientific skills of information management and data processing to develop understanding in new areas. The facts that it does this by studying exoplanets, volcanoes, oceans and the atmosphere is almost irrelevant. It could study anything and still meet the same goals. But these topics are exciting, engage the students, and we don't study them enough in the "pure" separate sciences!
The biggy for the year is the start of the new iLearn program. A group of Y9 and a group of Y10 students who have been identified as struggling in mainstream classes, but not really Learning Support students. Lets try doing something different and see what happens. A class set of iPads should allow teachers to be a bit different. So I have a dozen Y9 students, with a variety of needs, and a teacher aide to help with the technology. The first lesson was great. Reviewing stuff they'd already done in their "normal" science class, they used a comic book app to make a poster about Lab Safety. If I'd given these kids a piece of paper and a pencil, I'd be lucky to get either of them back at the end of the period. But today I got 6 posters of students acting out various safety issues in the lab, with captions explaining what was happening, how to do it better and what the hazard was. A stunning success for students who generally struggle with completing tasks. Two weeks in and they are able to remember their username (their NSN, so quite a big number) and password, and are getting into the routines we are establishing to enable them to get straight onto learning as soon as they arrive in class. No more issues with missing books or dry pens. Enter, sit, start. Moodle and Google Docs are the main tools we've used so far, as these can be accessed from any device with internet connection, not just an iPad. So they can continue learning after school. Hopefully. Eventually. The only thing I'm not quite sure about is who's learning the most!
It's a long road ahead with these courses, but I hope that they both allow students success where they haven't had much before, and give them options and open up pathways where before they felt blocked and restricted. We don't know where our students will be in 10 years time. All I want to do is give them the tools to deal with whatever life throws at them. It's a small start, but a positive and exciting one.
