From the Principal

Bonjour à tous, and Wanju

Well, the weekend held a little for everyone.  Some wintery weather, some sunshine, wins for our West Australian AFL teams and I finally caught something on my fly-fishing rod (a very small brown trout that was released).

“Teacher Collective Efficacy” is a term that you may hear often but its meaning and what it looks like is complex. Simply put, it is the beliefs that we individually hold about our combined group’s capacity to achieve the goals that we have set for student learning.

The more I read and reflect on us as a group, I see that Bunbury SHS has a very strong Teacher Collective Efficacy – and we continue to reinforce the practices that build it.

The leadership of the school plays an important factor. I have said numerous times before that the leadership must

• Inspire a sense of common purpose – our mission
• Buffer teachers from disruptions
• Analysis and focus on data that provides evidence of the collective impact
• Thoughtfully design staff development activities
• Enable teachers to observe one another

I hope that we have been doing these things. Please let your PCs know if you think we can improve here. There are some things that I think the leadership of the school can do to build our collective efficacy further.

• Provide teachers with detailed feedback on the quality of their work
• Facilitate other activities to reduce teacher stress
• Intellectually stimulate the curiosity of staff

I hope that this fuels discussions in your learning area as you are preparing your PC for their “fireside” review meetings. Like the three questions that we frequently ask to check on our performance: How are we going? How do we know? and What next? There are several questions that we can ask ourselves about Collective Teacher Efficacy.

• Do we engage parents in ways that promote student learning?
• Do we support the development of literacy and numeracy?
• Do we develop or adjust programs where students are not engaging?
• Do we use data from students to evaluate teaching strategies and learning programs?
• Do we use a range of assessment strategies to assess student learning accurately and meaningfully?

My own view is that we are doing all these. This explains why we have a collective view that we can make a difference. However, the questions are good to keep in our mind as things to focus on to keep pushing our beliefs of the capacity of our group to impact student learning.