It has been fascinating watching the rapid evolution of social media recently as a professional development tool. I bring experiences in school leadership as a Vice Principal and then Principal from a self paced secondary model, a small school which contained both a middle and high school and now a middle school with a very diverse population. I believe that a strength of mine is hearing a good idea, evaluating it and making it happen with buy in from others.
At Frances Kelsey Secondary, we had the experience of being a very innovative school whose self paced system was one of only two in the province. The conversation there became "how do we stay innovative, while keeping to our philosophy?"
I then moved to Lake Cowichan Middle/Secondary where I came in as part of a brand new admin team with Peter Jory. A stroke of good fortune was that we lived very close to each other and were able to carpool out to Lake Cowichan every day. Those drives were some of the best professional development a new team could ask for as we bounced ideas off of each other and made plans for LCSS. If you read Peter's blog http://peterjory.blogspot.com/ (the Wed, Dec 21 2011 posting) you will see the list of many changes that occurred under our watch.
My latest move has been to Quamichan Middle where I have assumed the Principal's chair. It is a wonderful school that serves both the highest and lowest socioeconomic areas of the Cowichan Valley and has a vibrant First Nations program to enrich the 20-25% of our kids who are of Aboriginal ancestry. The staff has been on an AFL journey to improve the instructional practice in the school for a number of years and one of my missions has been to continue promoting and supporting that work.
More to come, but there it is... an introduction as to why I have set up a blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment