Back into it!

We are back!

What a pleasure to stand at the front entrance to school and meet so many children excited about being back at school!

What a pleasure to hear from parents that they are excited about the partnership with Windsor and all that they see happening for their child (actually conversation day 1!)

What a pleasure to go into classes and see children learning, laughing and interacting and to see teachers laughing with their children and focussed on starting the term in a positive way

What a pleasure to have a first few staff meetings and seeing and hearing teachers talking about what it means to be a successful learner in 2010 and how to improve teaching in writing so our children can achieve more, are more engaged and want to write.

What a pleasure to be at Windsor as we finalise our 2010 Curriculum!

Have a great week!

Exciting times in New Zealand Education

In the last week of the term I had the pleasure of attending the New Zealand Principals Federation Conference in beautiful Queenstown with over 600 leaders from NZ and overseas. What I saw and heard confirmed some things for me:

- New Zealand is a stunning place- such beauty

- We have one of the most exciting education systems in the World

- Research confirms it- things have changed for our children, their world is so different to that of 20 years ago and schools need to be responsive to their needs

- Our children are resilient, innovative, creative, and intuitive learners all we need to do is open up the right learning pathways for them and they will fly!

- Our children want to lead their learning, they want to communicate their achievements and their mistakes (Facebook can attest to this!)

I head back to Windsor to put the finishing touches on our "Windsor Curriculum". It is so exciting to be involved in Education when we have the mandate from the Government to create a community based curriculum. The electronic document we produce will be the culmination of 4 years work with staff, children, the Board of Trustees, the PTA and our community. It will be a organic electronic document (if there is such a thing) in so much as it will be able to be updated in response to new developments , new research, new resources and our growing understanding of learning in the 21st Century.

I look forward to sharing the "Windsor Curriculum" very shortly.