The rain and sunshine combined for a beautiful weekend, even if it was a bit windy. I hope you were able to enjoy your time, whether it was starting your spring cleaning or just spending time with your family. We are now into April, which is hard to believe, and are on the way to our Easter break. April also brings Spring Arts, and Joanne has been working tirelessly with the students to create what I am sure will be a wonderful experience, thank you Joanne for everything you are doing. Just a reminder that the gym is now closed for the next week and a half so your gym time will be impacted. Please feel free to take your students to the MB Church, however they would appreciate a heads up call prior to coming over (945-2149).
This is going to be a busy week with a lot of adult learning taking place as we go into our second round of peer observations. Hopefully you were able to come up with some clear targets for your peers to observe and give you feedback on and this process will prove valuable for you. I’d love to hear about your targets and what some of the feedback was that you received. As you know, we are spending some time at our next staff meeting to debrief, but please feel free to have these learning conversations whenever it suits you. Something I’ve been thinking about is having a principal from another school come and observe me and tour the school, hopefully leading to some reflective questioning. While I was in Prince Albert, I lead a break out session on peer observations, and one of the keynote speakers (@casas_jimmy) challenged me to think about doing this. I’m paraphrasing, but he said, it is important to be open to having others walk beside us on our learning journey, giving us feedback along the way. This way we are modeling to the students the desire to constantly improve in our profession. I really hope you enjoy the peer observations!
As I walk the halls and visit classrooms, I am excited to see a lot of feedback occurring. I’ve seen this in the form of teacher-to-student, and student-to-student, and the focus has usually been on celebrating things done well. This is great, as people always like to hear about a job well done, but what about the feedback on the failures? The following video highlights the work being done at an art school in the United States, and it emphasizes the importance of embracing failure. Have a look, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Video
Here is what lies ahead this week:
Monday:
- Day one of our peer observations
- Krysten at secondary science ILO
- Welcome back Dwayne!
- Spring Arts practices in the gym begin
Tuesday:
- Bruce & David away at ALT meeting
- Sharlene at literacy ILO
- Day two of our peer observations
Wednesday:
- Day three of our peer observations
- Joanne at Resonate
Thursday:
- Grade 9 – 12 progress reports & comments due to the office
Friday:
- Day in lieu (enjoy!)
As always, create a great week!
