I love quotes. I have a huge collection of quote images stored in my google photos and a database in Notion of quotes from books I have read, videos I have or podcasts I have listened to.Throughout the school year, I post a daily quote on our staffroom TV display along with our daily staffing absences & replacements along with staff duties (yard duty, first aid, staffroom) for that day. Sometimes these spark interesting conversations amongst staff over recess and lunch breaks.

My old secondary school principal once said: "if you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there". For the past few years, we have used the first day of the school year as an opportunity to share our vision for the school year and to get buy-in from staff. We were fortunate our school review took place at the end of 2019 and provided us with some solid feedback and a clear direction about where we needed to focus our energy and efforts for 2020.

Not that I have ever managed a public transport system, but I imagine that co-ordinating the comings and goings of teachers and their replacement staff must be a bit like managing trains. The whole system needs to run like clockwork or else it comes to grinding halt and plunges the world into chaos. (And there have certainly been times where it has near plunged into chaos!)

I am fortunate that my school isn’t too large but I can only image what it must be like for larger schools. Below is my process for managing staff absences and replacement staff.

One of my first tasks when I became Assistant Principal was to create the timetable. Nobody ‘teaches’ you how to do a timetable or what you need to think about when you do it, so for me, it was initially a steep learning curve on top of everything else I was trying to get my head around. I hope that this post and the resources below help you if you are taking on the challenge of timetabling for the first time.

Backstreet's back!.... And so is my blog.It’s hard to believe that this blog has been around for 10 years. During that time, it has had a few attempted reboots.

So, why try again?

Since starting this blog, I have certainly grown and shifted locations and roles; moving from classroom teacher, teaching ICT (Digital Technologies), leading teaching and now into my current role as an assistant principal. I noticed that there is an abundance of resources online for teachers, but resources for school leaders and principal class were quite limited and often US or UK focused.

Ask anyone working in education what they never have enough of and the answer generally is always time. It frustrates me to see people working ‘harder’ but not ‘smarter’ when there are so many better and quicker ways of doing things.Text Expander is just one tool that can save you countless hours by reducing the need to type long strings of text over and over again.

The recent school holidays saw the end of the first quarter of 2018. At the end of last year, I spent some time reflecting on the past year and what I wanted to get out of 2018. After reading Michael Hyatt's book, Your Best Year Ever and from using his Full Focus Planner, below are some reflections on my quarterly review and what I've got planned moving into the next part of the year.

There are many who spout the benefits of an effective morning routine.

I sit here, trying to reflect on what was the year of 2017. My personality type dictates that there needs to be some order to this process. That it needs to be a logical, methodical process; not some random collection of sunshine, glitter, lollipops and unicorns. I noticed a post from a Tim Ferris somewhere (I think it was his 5 bullet Friday’s newsletter) where he talked about his process for reflection. As a big fan of Tim’s work, I thought if it was good enough for him that it was definitely good enough for me.

So, with my Google Calendar open beside my OneNote notebook, I went through and collated the highs and lows of 2017 in chronological order into my very orderly two column table.

In a previous post, I wrote about how I am currently tracking the activities and work that occurs each day. I started this task as I wanted to see what I was doing each day and where I was spending my time. Whilst I went into each day with a plan, I was noticing that the day rarely went to plan. I was frequently being interrupted from my work and wanted to see if there was any pattern or theme to these interruptions.

So.....  It's been a while between blog post and, as always, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since I last wrote.

The short story is that I switched schools (again!) mid way through last year to take on an Acting Assistant Principal role and at the beginning of term 2 this year, I was successful in obtaining the substantive role.

The question I have been asked the most often is along the lines of if I like the change; if I prefer one role over the other or if I miss the classroom. I find this a really difficult question to answer as the work and the role is so different.

I remember once having this idea that I wanted to start the year with a totally empty classroom.

No furniture. No chairs. No desks. No displays.

Nothing.

I brainstormed all of the items I would like in my ideal learning space.

So, in no particular order...

From the age of about six, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher. I would 'play school' at any opportunity. I would mark my pretend roll, write up 'work' on my little chalkboard with my toys or any friends being my students. I would mark their work with red ticks and crosses and write encouraging words of feedback on their sheets.

After developing a nice workflow over the past few weeks in creating and responding to posts for the #youredustory challenge, it all fell apart for me last week. I decided to change internet providers which resulted in some issues with our phone line. Given they could only send a technician during business hours (when I happen to be at work!) I had to make arrangements for them to be able to get into my house to make the repairs. Juggling the repairs meant a wait and going without the internet at home for a week.

Initially, I thought this would be easy; just think of this as a dictionary definition. Something along the lines of "the acquisition of new knowledge and skills". That seemed too easy. A little too easy.

How could something that seems so complex be summed up in just a few words?

Luke* hated writing.

He would be the first to give up and would then behave in a way that distracted other students from their learning and required intervention from the teacher.

Working with Luke to develop his skill as a writer was slow and painstaking work. In the beginning, he would tell me his ideas and I would madly try and keep up with him and get them down onto the page. After writing a paragraph, we would read back over his work. It took some convincing for him to believe it was his work; after all, I was the one that had done all of the 'writing'.

With school set to go back in a few days in Australia, I've been busy preparing my classroom for the start of the school year.

It's also been interesting to read a few posts from others who have focused on how classroom design and layout impact on pedagogy.

My process for setting up my learning space at the start of the year begins by moving all of the furniture out or into the centre of the room and starts with cleaning: wiping away the dust that has settled over the holiday break, removing pieces of old blue tack, taking staples out from pin boards... so that I have a 'blank canvas' to begin with.