A Principal’s thoughts on professional learning…..

I believe that the key to the success of our school as a learning community is the professionalism and open-mindedness of the staff. All of us here at St Peter Chanel School see ourselves as learners. We acknowledge that we are all on a learning journey together. That said, I also believe [...]

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Giving ALL children a chance to achieve

That was the title of UK Professor Iram Siraj-Blatchford’s talk given at an early childhood seminar today organised by the Lady Gowrie Childcare Centre in Erskinville. What an engaging, enlightened and deeply knowledgeable educator she is! She passionately spoke about her longitudinal research concerning what makes pre-school education effective. When you consider the research team [...]

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My wiki…..a new frontier!!

Now that I have the hang of blogging, I thought I’d start a wiki. It’s mainly for use with the teachers I am engaging in professional learning. Anyone can read it and contribute to the discussion, so I’d love to hear from you! But at the moment I am only inviting those teachers/colleagues working with [...]

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Innovation in education

While I saw some innovation in education while visiting classrooms at Regents Park recently, I came across this interesting UK website while browsing Andrew Fraser’s blog. It is called Futurelab and it looks fabulous! It is quite comprehensive in exploring innovative practice in education with many links to other useful sites for educators. One that [...]

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WOW! Regents Park shines!

I had one of those days yesterday where I was totally uplifted by seeing what other educators are doing – a direct contrast to my Melbourne conference experience last week!! Some brilliant pedagogy is taking place in the two grades that I visited, Kinder and Yr 1. The Kinder teachers are are really questioning [...]

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A place to call home

The Refugee Council of Australia website has information about REFUGEE WEEK which will be celebrated from Sunday, June 15 to Saturday, June 21, to coincide with World Refugee Day (June 20).
The theme for Refugee Week in Australia is “A Place to Call Home”. For World Refugee Day in 2008, the United [...]

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Is it just me, or am I on another planet?

This thought is not far from my mind as I struggle through Day 2 of the “Classrooms at Work” conference in Melbourne. The catch phrase for the conference is Teachers can make a Difference. So why is it that I can’t find anything here to excite me ?? Why are the workshops not making a [...]

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The good, the bad and the ugly of Web 2.0

Talking with my colleagues today at CEO Sydney, I came away thinking that there is still a long way to go before we catch up with the digital world in education. As a “newbie” to blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 tools, I am still on a sharp learning curve! So when I read informative [...]

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Innovation alert!

Chatting with the team at Haberfield this afternoon, I thought this is where the real learning counts. The Kinder teachers, Principal and Specialist teacher invited me to join in their discussion to evaluate Kinder’s early learning program in term 1. And what a discussion it was!! Simply brilliant! Reflective enquiry at it’s best.
Facilitated by the [...]

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