Skip to main content

Your Professional Context - Reflective Post Week 26

Current issues in my professional context
At Grey Main School we have a very contrasting socio-economic environment.  We are a Decile 5 school that is surrounded by State owned housing on one side, privately owned homes on the other and the local High School is 200m down the road.  We have students who range from wondering where their next meal is coming from to students who have regular oversees holidays with their families.  
The dynamics of our school has changed markedly over recent years but more so over the past 2 or 3.  We have a large amount of families who have moved here with Government assistance as living in cities was no longer affordable, on the other hand we have families who own and operate large community businesses and smaller community centred businesses that are vital to the progressive economic growth of our town.
Last NZ  census results show: 
Image result for socio-economics in education
  • For people aged 15 years and over, the median income (half earn more, and half earn less, than this amount), in West Coast Region is $26,900. This compares with a median of $28,500 for all of New Zealand.
  • 39.3 percent of people aged 15 years and over in West Coast Region have an annual income of $20,000 or less, compared with 38.2 percent of people for New Zealand as a whole.
  • In West Coast Region, 25.2 percent of people aged 15 years and over have an annual income of more than $50,000, compared with 26.7 percent of people in New Zealand.
At Grey Main we are extremely lucky to have a predominantly supportive school family and parents are as a rule very supportive.    We have an on going community problem with the use of illicit substances and this has had a massive impact on our students.  We are now seeing a lot more young parents who's children often are struggling academically, socially and behaviourally.  Things have noticeably changed since the Pike River tragedy and the subsequent closing of the Solid Energy mines.  The profile of families involved in these mines created hard working, 'family orientated' families, this demographic is certainly missed within our school now. Values education is needing to be taught to these students through school - this used to be the role of parents.  Some parents however do still see this as their role.
At Grey Main we strive for strong values where the well being and education of children is put first.  We will often have families in need for a variety of reasons and our school family are amazing at rising to the occasion and offering whatever assistance they can.  During book week our school librarian culled out old, well read books and these books were donated to every child in our school to take home and grow their own personal reading collections - for some children this was their reading collection.  The norms described by Stoll (1998 ) are embedded within the culture of our school however we must work consistently to maintain this. We have high expectations of ourselves as teaching professionals and of our students. We seek to build strong relationships first and to educate the children in both academic areas and the key competencies. We are on the Education Review Office (E.R.O.) reports with a five year review cycle and consistently receive excellent reviews.
As a school we deal with a wide variety of agencies, not just for those in need but also for those students who are excelling in a specific area.  We offer the services of a school counsellor.  She is not just for the students but also family and staff members and if extremely busy. At Grey Main we very much run on an open door policy and we believe in having an open book policy where information is easily shared between different agencies and sectors.
As a staff we are seen as professionals and this is reflected in our dress code and also the way we conduct ourselves within school and also within the community.  Being a small community people know who we are and we are always being 'watched' by the community.  It is important for us to uphold a high level of professionalism.    Within school there is a chain of command that is adhered to and everyone of us is approachable and we take ownership for all children.  When their is a behavioural or social issue it is not left to the classroom teacher of that child, we are all there to offer support.  We are a team.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 7 3 May 2017

Digital - Blended Learning Flipped Learning - discussions around it.  Do they have a device?  Can they access the learning at home?  How do we ensure the students do the flipped learning before hand?  Flipped learning means nothing other than the complete redesigning of the learning to take place.  Flipped does not have to be digital.  The difference is the way in which you design the intervention.  There is a wide difference in understanding on what the students understand from the task. InClass Task - Collabrorate using our chosen tool and create an blended learning lesson. Blended Learning Collaborative Task Rotation model  Station Rotation Lab Rotation Flipped Classroom Individual Rotation  Flex model A La Carte model Enriched Virtual model Leadership Distributed and Online Leadership Is there such a thing as a digital tattoo?  How does it affect teachers and students.  Talking to students about how things they...
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 6 26 April 2017

Week 6    26 April 2016 Leadership Theories and Styles Discussion about what we see make a good leader. Assignment a smaller change initiative may be easier to write about rather than a bigger task.  Provide evidence where possible or more than one theory and leadership attribute and style.  Look at something that has happened to analyse.  Look at sports planning within the school and how successful then moving on to using the site for future. David Parsons -   Leadership theories Use cite button on Google scholar which has direct APA referencing Situational leadership need to say according to whom in quote  In assignment remember to reflect on our own style of leadership.  What style did I use to make it a succeed of fail Leadership theory vs leadership style - How do they relate to practice.  It is important to say that we either agree or disagree with the statements. Leadership Theories As time has progressed a number of l...
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 5 19 April 2017

Week 5 - 19 April 2017 Digital - Computational Thinking Computational Thinking   Means... Solving problems Applying abstraction and decomposition Thinking algorithmically - what’s the process? Thinking conceptually - what’s the model? Understanding how things repeat and scale Dealing with errors ...among other things (depends who you read) Computational thinking is a way humans solve problems; it is not trying to get humans to think like computers. Computational thinking is taakin an approach to solve problems Computational thinking means... Decomposition - breaking down data, processes or problems into smaller manageable parts Pattern recognition - observing patterns, trends  Abstraction - Identifying the general principle Algorithm Design- Developing the step by step instructions to solve this and similar problems Apply recipe(algorhythm) to solve problems.  Strategies solve problems Coding is the universal language of this generation. U...
Post a Comment
Read more