This n That

I’ve been pretty poor at keeping up to date here recently. So what’s to say? We’ve all been really busy since Christmas in our Learning Community and I’m not quite sure where the time has gone. A Holocaust Memorial Event one evening at the end of January in Cathkin High brought together pupils, parents, staff and invited guests from across the area. Stonelaw, Cathkin and Trinity High pupils were involved – putting on dramas, readings, music. Primary schools came together in a choir and Burgh Primary 7s produced a podcast which they added drama to. Displays were produced by Universal Connections and the local schools and nurseries. It was a lot of work for all those involved but the turnout was fabulous and as a parent said to the Head of Area “This is what its all about – everyone in the area coming together, the children working together.”

HMIe activity continues with several establishments involved in preparing for inspection, action planning afterwards etc. The changes to the process seem to be bedding in.

I’ve recently been involved in several class visits to establishments. There are green CfE shoots springing up everywhere building on the practice that is there and the work schools are putting in is remarkable.We need to sing the praises of what teaching staff are doing day in day out – I’m seeing active learning, use of glow tools, collaborative working, cross sectoral projects etc etc, so much I can’t even begin to explain.I do worry there’s a bit too much time spent developing similar things in different establishments and we need to think about how we can get even better at sharing with each other, to make our lives easier. Making time to do this can be an issue but using time doing the same thing as someone a few hundred yards along the road when we could work together isn’t the best use of precious resources either. How we can facilititate this better is something I’d appreciate ideas on. Yes we’ll use glow as we all get better aquainted with it but what about right now?

Their job is so challenging and also so rewarding at the same time but lets make sure everyone is aware of what teachers are already achieving and how much effort is going in on the ground to bring about improvement. It still makes me sniffle when I see some of the fantastic things going on. My new sniffling though, was this week to do with a visit to a HT ,who in the midst of lots of challenges, additional work, school refurbishment etc (the usual HT’s lot!) was so full of enthusiasm for the job that after visiting the school I spent 5 minutes afterwards in the car bubbling because it was so exciting to hear her talk.