From the Principal

Bonjour à tous, and Wanju

It is great to be back. My leave was to visit my daughter who lives in New York City. It is a busy expensive place. As well as visiting my daughter I got to visit other friends, practice Aikido, fly fish in the Catskills and sample the culture of life at the “centre of the universe” with visits to the MOMA, Times Square, Central Park, the Apollo Theatre, take in a Minor league baseball game and much, much more.

Thank you so much to Kelly Anderson, who did a magnificent job back filling for me during my leave. There were many challenges she had to contend with while doing this – including the teachers industrial action.  She handled them all professionally. Also thank you to Mark Woodland who filled in the Deputy Principal role and Renee Chapple for helping in English.

I read a book while I was away about the transformation of the New Zealand rugby team the All Blacks. Sport teams spend a lot of time practising. In fact, more time practising than playing a game. They have a result each week to be able to evaluate their performances. They have video to analyse their skill level. They have coaches and team meetings. If this idea was applied to business or education what could that do for our performance?

Teaching and leadership is like sport, it is a skill-based practice. Soon students will take exams and they will get results, we also have attendance and behaviour data and student feedback surveys to help us review our performance. There are structures for meetings and coaching at all levels throughout our school. Although industrial action has limited our opportunity to access these structures and work on improving our teaching/leadership practice it is the heart of why Bunbury SHS is the best school in the region and the 2019 Secondary School of the Year. 

At this time, please don’t forget who we are and how we got here. Sometimes, the words data analysis has an officious undertone. Our data is all the bits of information that we have that gives us feedback about our practice. It is a natural part of being a Bunbury SHS teacher. Our instructional leadership team and Coffee Club can also give the coaching support required for you to move specific parts of your practice to the next level. If there is anything more that I can do to provide: more data, coaching, or support the opportunity for review please don’t hesitate to ask.

Have a great week,

En Avant.