Angus MacRury’s Weblog

I think the type of music you listen to in the morning can have a positive effect on you for the day. On Friday I put Dido on the CD and had a Dido sort of day. Some real low points and some real high points. The high point was the excellent in-service once again from Norma McPherson on Problem solving. I find Norma a very inspiring person who has the ability to inspire confidence in the staff to take a new direction in a very positive way.

The low point was a mixture of poor communication and a lack of control of a situation. The details are irrelevant, but the learning curve has been steep and I have convinced myself that even the most negative of things can be made into something positive. I also now know that a problem shared is a problem solved.

7:50 am Monday brings a new week with new music on the CD player Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine, and more school issues to consider. A phone call later and some very sound advice and I am ready to face the problem head on. By the afternoon things are clearer and I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel. I manage to e-mail the Cluster Heads regarding agenda items for Thursday. I spend the later part of the afternoon working with our NQT on arrangements for National Assessment. This is very worthwhile and a good reminder to me in how difficult it is to criteria mark a writing paper. This is despite Mary Howie taking the staff and me through moderation of writing last session. At 7pm I am still at school attending a PTA meeting. At 8pm I attend a School Board Meeting where I go through the main focus of the School Development Plan and take questions from Board (or should that be bored) members on the plan. I finally arrive home at 9:15pm.

On Tuesday I am playing New Order, Blue Monday, on my CD player, could this be reflective learning in progress? After a staff meeting, enrolling a new pupil and starting the day in class with Primary 5/6/7 I have a very productive early meeting with a number of people and things are very clear now. After break I continue in class with P5/6/7 We are working on problem solving and the session is very productive, the children are relaxed and motivated and are enjoying the challenges they face. By lunch-time we have sorted all the problems( and created some new ones) and reviewed the session very positively. In the afternoon we work on ICT. The class are learning to use a search engine effectively and how search engines work. I give them some examples and explain what a Sponsored Link is. We review the photographs that the class are currently putting together as a home project with our digital camera. The results are very good indeed. We are going to use the images as part of an Enterprise project linked to ICT. The day goes really well, by 5pm I am home. An early day home.

Wednesday. This morning I am listening to Embrace, Gravity, on the CD player and feeling a bit strange.The Bee-Gees are on the radio as I get to school and it is Staying Alive, full volume. Last night I lost a bridge in my front teeth due to an overenthusiastic son. I look like a cross between a Pirate and Wurzel Gummidge, lovely. Today I am taking a group of P7 children to East Linton as part of P7 transition prior to camp. After the grand tour from Richard I find the girls again to return back to Innerwick armed with the scores of the Standardised Maths Test from Last Session. On my return I find that I need to sort out an incident that occurred while I was out. Parents are called in to assist. This takes me up until 1pm. All the issues are resolved and the meeting is very successful.

After lunch I get back to Ann at Longniddry about the Learning team meeting on 5th October and talk to Personnel about the Childcare vouchers scheme. I also start working in earnest on the planned trip to York with West Barns Primary School.

At 3:20pm I speak with the bus driver about his route which due to a new pupil has now been extended. This has a knock on effect for the later bus. I will put a letter out to parents tomorrow.

The ministerial address that never was: Due to illness Peter Peacock was unable to make his ministerial address to SETT. However Phil Ryecroft stepped into the breach and did his best not to be too controversial. The big issue is the number of children leaving school with no qualifications and not continuing in education. The question I asked myself on leaving the address was: Are we delivering a good enough learning experience in our schools to equip children for life outside school? I got my answer very quickly. This in part was due to listening to Marc Prensky, CEO of Games 2train, New York. He convinced me that our learning environments and ways of pupil engagement are outdated. He used the phrase (referring to PPP and school rebuild projects) “ We are currently building new “old” schools. I think he is right on this one. I think that Marc may have answered Peter Peacock. Are we engaging all pupils in our schools? Are we engaging them as much as a video game? A great deal of food for thought.

I then went to a Literacy seminar from LTS. A great deal of potential once the site is fully up and running, especially the Edwin Morgan material that they are going to publish. It was then on to Masterclass AGM and a pile of Statistics about Masterclass from George Street Research. Is it me? Does the Scottish Executive spend more money on data gathering than the projects themselves?

We then crossed to New York where Alan November gave us more food for thought on the way we approach education.

After the AGM we went on to dinner at the Moat House. Very nice. (I am prone to exaggeration.) But if you are feeding 800 delegates what do you expect?

Thursday Morning. I attended the SSDN launch. Very Interesting…. No seriously it was, maybe it was the way it was presented, or maybe I am getting more cynical but the dreaded NOF nightmare kept jumping into my head. Who is going to train every teacher to use this potentially brilliant and groundbreaking resource? Me? You?

And will the technology we have in school be able to cope with it? The majority of computers at Innerwick are over 4 years old. I will wait and see. I discuss this with my ELC Masterclass colleagues once they have woken up from the presentation and attended counselling.

I spend the morning going round the exhibition Zone ad talking to Ex-colleagues from Western Isles and Edinburgh.

At 11:30am I attend another Keynote by Professor Guy Claxton who talks to us on Learning to Learn and whether we are training our children to be all round, real-life learners ready for the 21st century. Well are we?

More time spent around the exhibition in the afternoon then a brief meeting with ELC master classers over coffee. I think it is time to go home. A great couple of thought provoking days.

Today I am in Glasgow at SETT. The wonders of technology mean that I am writing this on the BECTA stand. I am going to listen to Peter Peacock at 2pm after lunch. I have already seen a demonsration of a Gaelic version of Word. It is very busy at the exhibition but I have yet to spot an East Lothian colleague, I know they are here but I can't find any of them. I will try to return to the weblog later to update you on things I have seen or heard.

After a busy weekend visiting my niece in Glasgow, making up flat pack furniture and doing my back in I was all ready to face the rigours of a new short week. The day began with a 2-hour meeting at Dunbar Grammar School. This was a very productive meeting. The support to pupils available in DGS must be some of the best in East Lothian if not Scotland. I was as ever very impressed with the commitment of the team at the meeting and went away feeling secure that the needs of students at DGS are well catered for. Back at school. Time to go through the newsletter to parents and add some final items. Plough through my in-tray, reply to 4 letters. I decide to check the quality of food on arrival to the school dining hall. This is an important issue for me at present as I consider the food at Innerwick to be of a too variable standard. I witness food being delivered in inappropriate containers, as do two Environmental Health Offices who are in the kitchen monitoring water quality. A brief discussion with the EHO ensues. I then work through lunch on Care Commission stuff prior to the Inspection next Monday. After lunch I have a meeting with my PT to discuss the Care Commission Inspection and we collate our evidence portfolio. At 2:45pm I am in class teaching P5/6/7 ICT. Today we are taking digital pictures and downloading them to I-Photo. The children are going to start taking the Cameras home tomorrow. This lesson is just a reminder of how to use the camera and how to compose a good photograph.

After the children go home I order novel sets for the middle of the school and run off material for the NQT on how to administer National Assessments. Just another quiet day at Innerwick. Off to SETT for a couple of days I will keep you posted on the events on my return.