Barry Smith - Stuff and things

Having had an extremely encouraging Friday morning, both from the point of view of the first tentative steps along the road towards creating an Alternative Curriculum provision at PLHS and with the Pre-Vocational strategy group meeting, I was full of enthusiasm for taking the plunge into the ‘wikisphere’! 
At our early morning meeting we had a great turnout from both [...]

Having spent this evening pulling together my information and ideas for the Alternative Curriculum project I’m raring to go for our first working group meeting tomorrow.
I’ve split the main areas for work into three, the programme content, consultation and selection.  My plan is to use a SWOT analysis in small groups for each section and [...]

Today has been a day where the potential we have, as a profession, to positively influence the lives of others has really been writ large in my mind. I had some excellent feedback from parents about the positive influence attending a pre-vocational college course has had on their youngsters.  This was a heartening message to hear given that it has [...]

This attention grabbing title was the subject of our in-service day today.  Sue Palmer ex-headteacher cum educational writer and researcher gave an extremely thought-provoking session on the subect of how boys learn and why we may be expecting too much of them at an early age in terms of the mastery of spoken and written language. 
She [...]

The title of the blog today is inspired by a comment/question that I’ve recently heard a few times in conversations about blogging. I know other people have talked about this in various blogs but until recently I hadn’t really had much cause to consider the question, ‘who are the blogs actually for?’, because for me [...]

I was fortunate enough to attend a meeting chaired by Sandy Paton of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce today, to discuss work experience for S5/6 youngsters in businesses who employ Maths and Science graduates. The idea is to give prospective University students a ‘taste’ of the types of companies and jobs that they could potentially be [...]

We made further progress towards getting ideas and input for the Alternative Curriculum today. I had an encouraging conversation with Stevie Siegerson of the
Columba 1400 project and despite them not, at the moment, working directly with youngsters of the age of our S3 students, he was upbeat about the prospects of putting something together in [...]

Have just finished two incredibly inspirational SQH taught days at Moray House. The focus was our Unit 3 Comparative Study(CS). We have to take some facet of leadership and management and compare our school situation with that of another organisation, either a business, public body, school from a different sector or not-for-profit organisation. The aim [...]

I sit tonight feeling somewhat bewildered at the task facing me. I am attempting to analyse the school’s capacity for change and improvement usisng Barbara MacGilchrist’s ‘Nine Intelligences’ model. I have to submit a section of this analysis along with the school improvement project rationale and plan in draft form on Thursday. [...]