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.

 

Various

Enjoyed my jaunt to a wedding over the weekend just outside Budapest. My cousin Stuart was getting married to Henrietta who is from a small town near Visegrad. Glorious weather, hearty goulash and stuffed pancakes and lots of cake. Loved all the traditions during the wedding and reception with the master of ceremonies. Just wonderful.

Busy couple of days at work we held an HMIe preparation event yesterday where “talking heads” who have recently had HMIe visit their schools talked about their experiences. As with anything, its all about making connections and sharing with others. Everyone got a pack with bits and bobs which might be helpful.

This evening Cathkin Primary hosted a talk by Ollie Bray. He was ably intoduced by Jaye Richards and has promised to embed his slides on his website. One HT phoned me afterwards to say it was inspiring, and I’d have to agree.

Quiet

The schools are now off on holiday, so it’ll be very quiet over the next few weeks in my office as much of the team are away. It’s me and the three support services staff who are now left . However the plus is the amount you can whizz through in preparation for the next session! Today’s list was a presentation for a  children’s services self evaluation workshop session, a vision and values CPD session on Inset Day1 with a school and a preparing for HMIe workshop for HTs at the start of the session. Got them all done and dusted plus finished off a Head’s professional development targets with her pm. So its been a great day, but it won’t take me long before I’ll wish the phone was ringing and I could be out and about in establishments. Luckily many of the early years establishments are 52 week places, so this time of year also gives me time to catch up more with them. The one thing I’m not doing yet is the establishment improvement plans which are already piling in for me to look through, this is a job which is a bit like when I had the forward plans set in at school, its ok when I start but at the moment its that thing you do when putting off studying – I’m making ticky checklists etc to avoid the graft of actually reading through and commenting on them. Heads and staff put such a lot of work into these that they deserve my spending quality time on them so I’m waiting till next week to start on them and getting bits and bobs out the way first.

Rich task update

We held our Learning Community’s Malawi rich task meeting tonight.

The outline of the Malawi rich task has been completed. The teachers used the handy blank publisher template from Argyll and Bute to write this up. Tonight, we all looked at how to set up a wordpress blog so fingers crossed we’ll soon have some blogging networks going on amongst our pupils in the eight different primaries. At the next meeting we will all agree how we are going to do the first mindmap/brainstorm piece of work in January with all the classes and agree the pre assessment format for the children. So far we’ve got a lot done (that’s the royal we..). What I should say is that this group of teachers have got a lot done!

Everyone has gone off tonight with some shared good ideas – thinking about sharing the criteria for the task, using various ways of doing this, peer and self assessment ideas etc. We’re looking forward to seeing materials Mossneuk are bringing back the next time related to sharing writing learning intentions.

If anyone is working on this too then just get in touch – the more sharing the better, is my motto! Sharing and learning from each other is the best way to learn! We’ve got on much faster because of what Argyll and Bute have shared on their website. It’s certainly made our task much easier to plan.

Prior to this meeting I had been at the lead officer network in the afternoon where we were sharing with each other what we are all doing and discussing action research. I met a visitor from New Zealand’s Education ministry who is over doing some research here for a couple of months. It turned out she is the New Zealand visitor coming to see us in a week with our HMIe district inspector to complete our HMIe process. This is to do the moderation of the Local Authority report on our action plan.

We are also having 5 visitors from Norway’s education service a few days after that. We are inundated with visitors since we moved to our brand new building and you’d think by now that we would be accustomed to working in our new environment. But I have to say that I pinch myself everyday as I still can’t beleive we work in such a beautiful building! So I’d show it off to people every day given the chance as we’re all so proud of it!

Tomorrow we are celebrating St Andrew’s day with various activities in class. In the afternoon parents and carers are invited to “family time” where they can wander and discuss with the children the work they have been doing on Scots Language. The books we have used for these book studies are , Katy’s Coo, Katy Morag and the Birthday, Scots FairyTales, Planet Perjink, Planet Fankle, Hercules Bampots and Heroes and Kidnappit. Some of our after school Scots singing group performed with other schools at Cathkin High last week and they will be singing to our visitors.

And somewhere as if by magic, Christmas has suddenly come upon us. We’ve been getting all glittery and sparkly, singing the nativity songs, sticking things together, making crafts for our fair  – the usual things that make Christmas so Christmasy in our school. I admit though that the nativity scenery making was weighing heavily on me until I went to the local craft shop and discovered these fab 50 foot long polythene sheets with stars and nativity back drops on them! Fantastic and then as the best plan in a while we recycled last week’s Anderson shelter into a stable! A roll of brown corrugated card and recycled oil drums can go a long way in our school!