Heard on the Hill Term 4, Week 4

From the Principal

Bonjour à tous, and Wanju

Thank you to all the staff who have supported me over the last week.  It has been a difficult time for my family. My mother became ill and passed away Friday.  Many of you picked up the pieces and ran with things, or put up with me not being at my best. I am so grateful for your enthusiasm, tolerance and patience. It is a testament to the quality of the people and our culture of doing what we can to support each other.

Last week was the official launch of the Department of Education’s – Teaching For Impact.

It is a fantastic resource that clearly describes what effective teachers – believe, know and do.  It goes further than our Best Teachers Poster but shows that we have been on right path in describing what we believe to be effective teaching at Bunbury SHS.  I have attached the overview poster here.

We will soon distribute professionally printed versions to each learning area. The poster is great to get an overview. There are videos and more resources here.

I urge you to explore the web page and use the resources.  Like CMS gave us a language and specific strategies to describe good classroom management this work will do the same for effective teaching.  It will make a great resource to use with Peer observation for improving our practice.

Have a great week.

En Avant

Mike Sinagra

Nuts and Bolts

Ed-E-Mail

I hope that you had a chance to read the recent ed-e-mail, there are some significant changes to the composition of school development days that we will be making for 2023. Specifically, to allow for the exploration of curriculum materials.

Events

The Alumni Open Day was a great success; again, thanks to the efforts of staff and our 2023 Prefects who volunteered to assist. I would like to specifically mention Xan, Andrew, Kelly and Deon who helped on the day and Ellie for all the planning that went into such an event. On events, the Year 12 Presentation Night occurred last week on Thursday. Although I was unable to attend I did watch it via the live-streaming option. It was fabulous. Congratulations to Ellie, Tim, Andrew, Danelle and the team.

Leadership Minutes

Please click the link below to access Leadership Minutes from last week.

Survey My Class

It's that time of year again, when we offer teaching staff the opportunity to survey their classes to get some feedback. We offer this twice during the year, in Term 2 and again in Term 4.

The process is simple. During the dates the survey is open (21 Nov – 2 Dec) you send the link to your students. They click on it and off they go. It is a good idea to actually give them some class time to complete it. They can use their iPads to do the survey.

The survey data for each individual teacher remains private to those teachers. The combined data of all staff is compiled into a report for the Executive Team, which is simply another piece of data used to inform our school improvement plans.

Participation is not compulsory, but it can be a useful process to do for your own professional development.

If you have any questions about the process, please contact Kelly on 78902.

Staff Wellbeing

Are you a Giver on the verge of exhaustion?

“The road to sustainable leadership” – Dr Marcia Devlin - Australian Educational Leader magazine Term 3 2022.  Whilst this is about school leaders needing to be mindful of their giving nature, it really applies to all educators.

Key points:

• Current context – Covid disruption has exhausted everyone
• People working in education are usually givers
• Givers get exhausted if they don’t protect themselves

What to do:

1. Find ways to give and keep giving, without exhausting your own energy
2. Do more of what replenishes and energises you
3. Say no to some things, so you can be available to say yes to the more important things, and
4. Ensure that the benefits of saying yes and helping others outweigh the costs to you of doing so.

Staff Fatigue and Self Care – online PL – this session on the 16 November is being offered by Be You.  It is free, but does require you to create an account with Be You before you can register.

https://events.blackthorn.io/en/7F5Ucke7/g/kc139hN7az/educator-fatigue-and-self-care-4a2V2eCDm8/overview

Staff Wellbeing Committee

Lauren Dragon – School Psychologist – is leading the focus on staff wellbeing – she will be setting up a committee at the start of 2023, then with the committee she will use the staff survey data to determine key strategies for support, and then implement strategies put forward by staff.  Please consider joining this committee next year.

Workload

Workload is often the main cause of staff stress or anxiety.  Our school has a workload advisory committee, which was set up as part of our focus on Staff Wellbeing in our current business plan.

Workload Advisory submission link - https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/M5NWMXV

Year 12 Presentation Night

A huge thank you to all involved in the organisation and planning of the Year 12 Presentation Night. The night ran smoothly and was a success. 

We farewelled the class of 2022 and the students enjoyed the night.

Well done to all involved on another successful event.

Download SZapp

Download the SZapp to keep up to date with all our school communications.

It's a very easy-to-use app with links to all of our school platforms, including the school website, newsletters, Facebook, calendar plus more!

Watch the video below on how to download and some of the features.

BUNBURY SHS INSTAGRAM

BUNBURY SHS FACEBOOK

Is something interesting happening in or around your classroom? Having an incursion or excursion this term? Please let me know!

We love to share updates from the school with our community and would like representation from each area of our wonderful school; no matter how big or small.

Please submit stories for our Facebook page via the wufoo link below and include as much information as you can, plus a few images to accompany the article. If you are having trouble with the wufoo form, you can email the information to me directly.(ellie.mackay@education.wa.edu.au)

Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and check out what our students and staff get up to.