Welcome to the Learning Blog- Charting the waters

Welcome to my blog of learning. I established this as a reflective piece to look at my journey as a Principal. I started this journey in familiar waters. I joined the Lake family in 2010 as an English teacher, moving into Administration as the Vice Principal in 2011 and finally in 2013 appointed as the Principal. Together I have worked with the staff honing my skills as an administrator, setting the path towards the inevitable destination of the new K-12 Valour school. A former colleague described being the Principal as much like steering a ship. You have a destination in mind but winds, currents, squalls and the odd sandbar make the path less predictable. The advantage is that it is the trip that becomes more important than the final destination. This analogy seems particularly applicable to the journey I have undertaken. We started our trip year together discussing our goals for improvement related to the data we had collected from the previous year. The Kindergarten and Primary divisions meeting for conversations were focused on Language and the junior intermediate divisions focused on Math. From there the teams met and refined their destination to meet the needs of their individual classrooms and taking into consideration the profiles of the students. We met with each individual teacher to discuss their goals as they related to their classroom. We looked at the data and set clear targets. At this time we also self assessed our use of data placing ourselves on the ‘School Continuous Improvement Continuum’ evaluating our approach, implementation and outcome. (Education For the Future (http://effcsuchico.edu) As a Board our guiding principal is to promote a safe, caring and respectful learning environment and as a staff we looked at what this might look like and how we would deliberately promote character development in all that we do. We looked at our ‘Tell Them from Me’ data and created our action plan to promote the eight virtues, establish anti-bullying initiatives, participation in the Champlain Healthy schools initiative with a emphasis on creating opportunities for physical fitness, and finally promoting social change through our Free the Children initiatives. As the year progressed the course continued with some adjustments and refinements. Many of the teachers found as they began their set course with their classroom goals they realized they needed to adjust and refine and even in some cases book a different trip altogether to meet the needs of the students. As an Administrator, I began refining my skills using walkthroughs to monitor progress in student learning and school improvement. I documented the walls as evidence of the learning, as well as used the Observational Tool for Metacognition (Adapted from Leaders Connect Observing Literacy Learning Fall 2013 LiteracyGAINS). I have adapted this tool for my own purposes to observe classroom instruction and provide constructive feedback. Mid year we met with most teachers again as we examined their learning together where they had been and what they needed to do to reach their destination. One exciting developments came when our Early Learning and Primary teacher team in the English division met just prior to the March break to develop a focused intervention in the areas of language and math. The students were divided into three learning groups and programs were developed to meet their individual programming needs. It is now May and we have begun to gather our final assessment of learning as well as document the results of our Collaborative Inquiry Process as we make our final assent. We are gathering the evidence to co construct a plan to continue to meet the needs of the students as we move into Valour. Charting the waters for me was definitely a steep learning curve and one that I am excited to revisit again. I look forward to sharing the evidence of our learning, reflecting on our practice and engaging in more evidence-driven, focused professional learning conversations and set our course for more adventures.