As the Average White Band plays along I am sitting thinking about where the month of January disappeared to! I know that we are all busy and we live in 24/7 world but I need things to slow down! I suppose that is an element of Curriculum for Excellence that I feel we should utilise. We have the freedom to design our learning with our young people for them. Yes, we have the elements of learning to cover but the main components that I appreciate are the flexibility, personalisation and choice.
There could be a train of thought that thinks great, we do what we like, when we like but of course it isn’t that simple. Designing the curriculum that best supports and challenges the young people we work with is complex and multifaceted. However, it is key to all we hope to achieve. In our school we continually revisit, discuss and debate where we are going as a learning community, why and how and where are we going next? Learning is a journey and, as yet, I have found no end point. Learning is for life and that is an important way of looking at learning. It is one we hope to practice and exemplify by all we do in our school. That is why I always smile when I hear the “teachers only work until 3.00pm each day and then have loads of holidays” cropping up in conversations. I have learned over the many years of being in the profession to not get into any discussion about it. Working with our young people is only part of what we do; albeit the heart of what we do! Our own continuous professional learning sits alongside it and is vital to our effective contributions to the development of all our young people no matter their age or stage. We have the advantage of the awfully clever DHT who keeps us interested and engaged with the wider world of education (SQH has a lot to answer for as someone muttered with a smile the other day). We agreed with staff to include professional reading and debate in our collegiate calendar this year. This was partly because it has steadily become part and parcel of our routine in school as HT and DHT as we have worked together; but also because more and more staff were talking about wider issues, our own focus areas and these snippets and chats at the end of the day or over coffee really needed a platform. It has been very successful and the participation levels have been high. As a staff we like to talk (show me a bunch of teachers that don’t!) and we are sociable and humorous, supporting each other through the rich tapestry that is a primary school! It is a long held view that if a teacher writes their memoires it would be put in the fiction section because folk wouldn’t believe half of it! The awfully clever DHT has harnessed this engagement to widen our horizons and make us really think about our key roles and vision for our learners and ourselves as lifelong learners. The inclusion of sweeties has helped too. Looking at our next session priorities we would hope to continue this collegiate professional debate aspect and build on it; it can only make us stronger as a learning community.