Adventures Ahead

I feel like I have had many challenges as a principal and I recognize that I will continue to have them and that they are unpredictable and often out of our control. All of those challenges have helped me to grow and learn and I feel I have much more learning to do and I hope, many more opportunities to grow. This term has been one of pushing my own boundaries and challenging myself in and out of school. In my role as principal, I have been involved in developing a professional growth plan and sharing this with my staff. My goal was to visit each classroom once a week and see the learning that is going on. I have to admit that I have failed miserably at that; I have really only been in once a month to most of the classes. I am not discouraged however as I will continue to go on learning walks and find out what our students are learning and provide feedback to staff about what I am noticing. I am also quite determined to follow through on something once I have committed to a plan; so I will persevere. I am grateful for having a staff that welcomes me into their classrooms and wants to share their students' learning with me. I am noticing that we have wonderful learning happening and I feel I can speak with much greater integrity having been in classrooms. I also had the opportunity to go with one of our classes on a field trip and seeing learning in action outside and this confirmed for me that so much learning can happen outside of the classroom. In this particular class, there were several students who had never been in the forest before and they were amazed with everything they saw, touched, smelled and heard; and this was a Grade 7 class!

This year, we are also challenging our staff to begin a process of collaborative inquiry. I believe we are really all learners and that we all want our students to be successful and that we all want to develop our practice, and while it may be a little scary, it is also good to be a little scared and to be pushed. The challenge for me is to listen carefully, so that I know how much to push and encourage. I have also recruited some of the leaders at our school to help me gauge how the staff is feeling and if we are on the right track. I am very excited about this next phase for our staff and I know they will do amazing things. I am also excited about working with staff and supporting them with their learning. A resource I found quite helpful was the Edugains website out of Ontario: http://www.edugains.ca/newsite/plc/index.html  and particularly their work on PLC's.
Tomorrow, I am embarking on a big adventure that will stretch me as a person in every way. Scott and I are heading to Nepal to do some trekking from Jiri to Phalpu, and to do some work with a medical team from here and from Switzerland. We will be visiting a spinal chord injury rehabilitation hospital outside of Kathmandu where I will be delivering a talk on teaching principles to the medical and non-medical people at the centre.

I have a talk prepared, but I really feel incredibly challenged and out of my element in the medical world; but that's okay, remember I love a challenge! I will try to update my blog and to upload photos when I can. I have been telling the students in our school about my journey and hopefully they will learn a little bit about another part of the country. I feel incredibly grateful to my staff and particularly our vice-principal Joanne, for being such capable leaders that I feel very comfortable leaving the school in their hands. I believe we need to take advantages of opportunities as they arise and I will do my best to try to connect all the pieces of my amazing life when I come back and continue my journey here. For more information about the group I am travelling with and the work we are doing, please go to: http://spinepal.orthopaedics.med.ubc.ca/