Improving Our Team Play

I couldn't believe how good I felt as I walked away from our last School Community Council (SCC)  meeting of the year last week.  It was fun to look back at our year and have some laughs over the good moments we had. So many good moments! It was hard to believe that just a…

The Longer We Wait…

The longer you wait, the scarier it gets. I think we have all felt this way some time in our lives. Right now we are making a huge and scary jump in our school to digital portfolios for all. Staff first and students in the fall. As a first step toward this goal we met…

Getting off to a Positive Start

We are almost a month into the new school year and I am feeling motivated by many things.  I love the fresh start of the new year when everyone is rested and full of energy.  We can forget about our mistakes of last year, re-celebrate the successes and plan for a fantastic year ahead. The…

January 2015 #pdale Teacher Twitter Challenge

  As many of you know when I was taking my master's degree I learned so many things that changed my entire philosophy of education.  Learning from people like Alec Couros and Dean Shareski opened my ideas to many ideas that I had never even thought of before.  My first experience in an open education course…

Attendance Does Matter

There seems to be so many reasons why our students miss school and in some cases, school attendance is becoming a chronic issue.   Everything from being sick, having appointments, attending sporting events, taking family holidays and many other reasons,  seem to be contributing to a growing idea that school attendance does not matter. Although we realize that our…

My Take on Teachers

Two things have prompted me to choose teachers as my topic for blogging this week.  The first reason was the fact that it is World Teacher Day today and that is worth talking about.  The second reason, and much closer to my heart, is because I had the privilege of spending Friday talking to most…

Strong Relationships for Student Success

    We have just completed another round of 3-way conferences and in some cases teachers are still meeting with a few parents who needed rescheduled times. As I was leaving the school on Wednesday evening when conferences were finished,  reflecting on how things had gone, and feeling very weary, I must admit,  I also felt lucky to…

Loading the Teacher Bus

  I have to admit that I find this time of year both frustrating and exciting.  It does not seem to take long for the current school year to crash into the next school year.  Decisions are needed for budgets, staffing, ordering and spending and time-tabling, all while business as usual is going on around…