Perhaps I am still naive to think that I could carve out some time in my day for reflection, introspection, looking back on the learning that took place... If nothing else, I have learned in the past four years as a vice principal that time is precious, I rarely spend it in ways that I plan. In my former life as a classroom teacher, I blogged with my kids all the time. I even taught teachers to blog and it was amazing to engage in the process of communicating and publishing thoughts and ideas. So I thought with the upcoming school year and the new challenges that lie ahead - working with a new principal, potential job action and all it entails, helping staff through a major technological changeover, to name a few... - there would be much to reflect on and a whole lot of learning going on. I am fortunate to have a great partner in the other vice principal I work with but sometimes there just isn't the time or energy digest all that is going on. I figured this was just as good a platform as any. Will anyone read it? Don't know. Would be nice. I would love to hear from other school leaders. No one else knows what this job is like, and in the grand scheme of a school system, no matter its size, administrators are so few in comparison and our role is quite different. So! This year the plan is to commit just 10 minutes each day looking at the learning going on all around me. We seem to spend a lot time telling students about the importance of metacognition but I don't that we do enough of that work for ourselves. 10 minutes...
Tomorrow marks the beginning of Catholic Education Week. It is truly a gift to be able to work in a publicly-funded Catholic school, where we can be free to express our faith so freely and unapologetically. It's a bit sad that we are presently in quarantine and cannot gather in community to celebrate this wonderful gift but my staff and I decided to capitalize on the marvel that is social media to stay connected to our students. We wanted to inspire hope and encourage them from our homes, to theirs. I challenged my staff to select a favourite Scripture passage that they felt evokes a great sense of hope and each day on our school's Twitter feed, I feature a staff member with their quote. I also posted these photos into all of the Google Classrooms that the staff were running for distance learning. In our special community, where relationships are so key to student success, we thought it was important for the kids to see our faces. We called our little project #motivatedbyfaith...
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