The best feeling!

The best thing about being a QIO is not much different to working in a school. Its that feeling you get when you see someone (whether a child a parent or member of staff) really developing their skills. A lot of my job is to do with supporting establishments – nurseries, primaries, secondary – in their whole improvement agenda. Part of this involves all the  ongoing work towards preparing for HMIe. As far as I’m concerned thats just part of the whole self evaluation, improvement agenda within an establishment.This should be work that is done all the time, not in the three weeks after the box appears… Over the past session I’ve seen some fantastic examples of how, fully engaging with HMIe, really leads to  sustainable improvement within establishments. The other day I had the delight of listening to the dialogue session at the end of a follow through report. The pleasure of seeing the pride of the establishment in the focused work they had undertaken, the increase in real concerted talk about learning, the teamwork that had blossomed was something special. So I’m taking a stance, I’ve seen too many positives come out of HMIe visits. Its maybe time some serious myth busting was done about HMIe. Like so many things we listen too much to the negatives about the process. I think part of that negative bit is the natural process of learning after a visit, but sometimes thats the only bit we listen to. Like principle 1 of CfE that time can be pretty challenging, it can make people feel low etc but just like that challenge and enjoyment bit, the challenge of planning, improving, developing can give a huge feeling of achievement once the real journey to improvement gets underway and the buzz of what I saw the other day was probably one of the best experiences I’ve ever had at work.

 

Back to school

The best bit about a week off for me is the chance to do some reading. Have particularly enjoyed Carol Dweck’s book mindset the new psychology of success. Got it after being really impressed by her talk at SLFO9. Worth reading and reflecting on. Doug Belshaw has pulled together a variety of bits off you tube here very handily!

Also found a couple of hours at the LTS Optima offices listening to Greg Whitby very inspiring. Lots of other who attended are much more conscientious then me and have written about what he said, in particular Neil Winton.

Still almost squeaking with excitement after my phone upgrade was due and I got an iPhone. I said it’d opened up a whole new world for me, Ollie Bray says its a way of life… Anyway the best thing is I can now twitter whilst at work. I’ve only been playing with twitter for a wee while but have already found its providing me with huge amounts of CPD activies, for instance… trying to play about a bit with Google Wave, thanks to Dave Terron for invite and thanks also for his update on the e-assessment conference in Dundee which you’ll find on his blog. Have a look at his wiki  Bold Girls which is a great example of what you can do with wikis using a bit of imagination. I pledged at teachmeet at SLF09 to get some more twitter starters in the Rutherglen Cambuslang Area, so I’m going to push for this using my pester power over the next wee while

Got a good week ahead, particularly looking forward to visiting Loch Primary for a day to visit classes and observe writing lessons. PT/Faculty Head drop in session this week is on coaching and mentoring and Barbara Lyndsay HT at West Coats PS will lead this. Looking forward to pubmeet on Tuesday and hearing more great practice.

Loss

I’ve taken a week off next week. It’s the one year milestone since my husband died. Strangely in many ways the year has passed very quickly. I made a decision last year that my best route to coping would be to get busy to get over the worst times at the start. Loss is something we all deal with at some time or another, its a leveller which puts everything in perspective. So looking back, for anyone else with loss like this to deal with, what helped me? Probably for me its been about having a positive outlook more than anything else. Look for what’s good in your life and hold onto that.

From day one do things your own way, offers of assistance from  friends and family are always made with the best intentions, but deal with things in the way that you find comfortable, don’t make decisions or do anything because its the way everyone else does it

Don’t be surprised that the friends who you now have most rapport with are different from previously, you’ll become closer to different people, sometimes thats to do with  mutual life experiences

Don’t let how others behave around death upset you, everyone finds death difficult and some people won’t be themselves around you, thats ok

Start with the basics – remember to eat, sleep etc, that gets you through the first few days

Keep busy, to begin with tasks and chores  help your mind. I went back to work very quickly and it was my saving grace. Get into new routines, you can loosen these up as time goes on but its important to have some kind of schedule going so you don’t just stop functioning.

If things like sleeping are hard, then just rearrange your sleep routines. It doesn’t matter how long you stay up and guess what you can get lots of stuff done in the middle of the night!

Keep time just to be by yourself. Take time to be alone and just be, think and order your thoughts. I try to get half an hour or so every day to clear my mind, a bit of breathing

Live life to the full. Life is too short to worry about minutiae, do the things you want to do, remind yourself of what your dreams are and go for them.

Possessions and things are best to be dealt with quickly. When you lose someone their memories are with you, deal with clearing clothes etc quickly, it becomes increasingly hard as time goes on

Force yourself to go out. I often don’t want to go out but if I’m invited to things I make an effort to go. It gets easier every day. Don’t worry about doing things on your own, who cares? Go to the pub, go for your lunch, there won’t always be someone around who wants to do things at the same time as you, just do them.

Realise how important your children are. You can see every day in them how you and your partner have worked together.

Tackle firsts (Christmas, birthdays etc) head on – they won’t go away by worrying about them. Shoulders back, deep breath – things are always a bit easier than you think they will be.

Organise holidays, breaks etc. You’re the only person who is going to organise this, so do it.

When you’re feeling off, admit it to yourself, no-one is infallible, there’ll be good and bad days, with time there are fewer bad days. The most important thing you can do for yourself is be really aware of when to stop and when to remove yourself from situations

Be really thankful for your own coping strategies and resilience, they are I think pretty much linked to how your marriage was within itself, if you coped well with things together, then you’ll find coping with grief easier.

And last but not least I’m  keeping  trying to listen to music – and sometimes its not just a chore but because I want to…

Relaxing Saturdays..

Where did they go? Did I imagine them? How come despite cleaning and washing all week everything breeds and mutliplies in time for Saturday? Ah well. Onwards and upwards. Everything has been  moved kitchenward. Can’t get in the kitchen door but another push and it’ll be sorted. For another week…

So what?

I keep asking the question so what? In our haste to implement CfE are we asking so what enough? What do I mean? It’s all about the self reflection thing. Self reflection isn’t just about HGIOS and the umpty twenty other tools we use. It’s about knowing what your key purpose is in a school, clearly understanding that and taking a stance. Looking at what is going well and having an impact on learning and asking – so what will change if I implement such and such. I think we need to stop and ask this at the moment. An example? Take sensory spelling – we understand the basics behind that, but are we asking the question in our classrooms about progression in our lessons? Are we sometimes just asking kids to carry out additional activites because we feel thats what expected? If they can spell a word in context shouldn’t we move on and ditch some planned activities? My plea at the moment is that as professionals we remind ourselves of challenge, pace and always ask so what? Don’t do things to impress AN other - do things because you believe it will make a difference to learning. Don’t stick an add on in school if it won’t have any impact. Keep asking questions! Does active learning always mean playing a game and fun? I’m all for enjoyment but real enjoyment of learning isnt always without pain…That deep learning zone that we all want to  reach involves deep reflection, deep thinking, practise and sometimes that’s hard. And if we lose sight of that check and balance we won’t do any favours for the children in our care. Rant over!

Learn to Learn

I’m not at all sure what my oldest son does at his work. He’s twenty two and it has something to do with money. Anyway this evening he said its time I sorted out what people learn at schools. I think he overestimates my actual role and abilities….Also understand here that he’s had a lifetime of switching off when I go into school chat mode….

We’ve had a hoot over the past few days with Derren Brown’s exploits and for years we’ve watched repeats of many of his shows over again, working out the minutiae of what he does. Both of us enjoyed his book with memory training stuff in it – all the visualising stuff etc, but the bold boy puts it into practice. So at the moment he’s been studying for some investment type exams – really dull stuff (to my mind at least) and he’s been waxing lyrical about how helpful these techniques have been to his studying. The point he made was to do with practising any such technique (which he’s been doing and I haven’t), and he referred me to Gladwell’s Outliers (which I reminded I’d bought him!). He asked why he hadn’t learned this stuff at school. Now I think his schools did a great job of developing his ability to learn, but I also think we’re getting even better at it now. What he suggested we need to do is help people learn how to learn and really push that! Is that not CfE in a nutshell? And does it maybe not also remind us that what we’re trying to do is build on the great practice out there, becuase they did a pretty good job with him before CfE? When quizzed further on this he said that they had done stuff similar to this at school but the thing was they never got to try it out – so maybe in primary he’d been taught some mnemonics but they never got to make up their own and he reckons that’d have made a difference. Active learning maybe?

Meanwhile I’m feeling busy at the moment lots of HMIe follow through activity, training, improvement plan visits and the like. But finding, thanks to a wee push from Jaye Richards and Ollie Bray that I’m loving twitter. It’s really helping my job and helping develop my personal learning network further. I don’t think you have to use such things to develop your pln and learning but I do think (and this becomes an even more embedded thought as time goes on) that the technology itself is not just a tool, or add on to what we do as teachers. The act of using the technology develops something quite different and important in our learning and gets us right to the core of what our key purpose is. Have a look at J Connell’s recent article, his way with words is ever so much better than mine. But also his article talks about the “creepy treehouse” syndrome and I do think we need to consider that really carefully. When the younger son spies me cavorting around on my laptop – he and his pals snort and say – aha “Momma Reid on twitter, Momma Reid on myspace..Momma Reid playing with i google” and they see my efforts as the worst kind of that syndrome, because for them anything I am catching up to understand is for them already past tense….

Early Years News

Nice article about Cathkin Community Nursery.

Had great time at Glenburgh Nursery today. One of the EY workers who I used to teach (how old does that make me…) is about to set up a blog for the children to do emergent writing on. Another thank you to Ollie Bray who has inspired all sorts since his talk the other week here! Lots of nice things going on in Glenburgh. It was a hive of activity today with their individual achievement booklets getting put together for the new starts – lots of nice links within these showing movement in their CfE implementation. Its always great to visit Glenburgh.

Yesterday I had a really good time meeting with secondees who are working on assessment for SLC. They were so up for the challenge, looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

Interesting talk with HT at Bankhead PS the other day, they are always innovative and this year are revamping their dialogue meetings re forward planning – they are calling this process their triangulation meetings. It sounded like real reflection and a focus on ,improvement was already happening through this process. They also showed me their new things in their grounds, from handmade places who had made them the most beautiful, sturdy outdoor play things. They were rightly proud of what they had in place, made me wish I was little and running about their playground.

Learning

Just a wee thought here, in my sad QIO way I get quite excited by standards and quality reports, improvement plans and the like because I think they are great tools for focusing attention on improvement in terms of the impact on children’s learning and meeting their needs. So again in a sad wee QIO way I stuck our recently completed area Standards and Quality report into wordle.net and nearly cheered when a big huge word came out in the middle after adding about 50 pages of text.

The word was LEARNING….

Ollie Bray talk at Camglen Area

Ollie Bray has uploaded the slides he used with area staff recently in the Canbuslang Rutherglen Area re 21st Century teaching tools. Lot of very positive feedback from his talk and Jaye’s warm up routine.

Hmmm

So I’m trying hard to twitter…