Learning on Purpose

I have had an exciting opportunity this term, as a deputy principal.  I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy the role, because I am passionate about learning, and my job was the Deputy Principal of Assessment and Reporting.  Learning and assessment are not mutually exclusive, but there are times as a teacher that I feel like assessment eclipses the importance of learning, for learnings sake.  I feel like you value credits and grades more than learning, and what it means to your development as a person.  Don't get me wrong, I know gaining a qualification is important, but it shouldn't be the only reason you turn up to school in the morning. So today I am going to share with you why I love the act learning, and why it should be valued by you. I love being an informed person, being able to have conversations with a wide variety of people, on a wide variety of topics.  And when some those conversations become confusing to me, I love that I have the confidence to say &

I am in my second year of teaching an accelerated year 10 science class. They complete 1 term of year 10 chemistry, then terms 2 and 3 on 3 Biology context L1 achievement standards, and term 4 on a geology internal. While trying to cram 2 chemistry topics into term 1, I gave the class a lot more independent home learning than I would usually do for a year 10 class. And they seemed fine. So in term 2, I thought I'd try something different with them. At the beginning of our micro-organisms unit I gave them the SLO's, my previous teaching notes, interesting newspaper articles, online resources, TED Talks etc And then I said "You have a test in 7 weeks"....... you can imagine the tumbleweeds rolling through the room....... then the explosion of sound as reality hit. 29 teenage girls can make a lot of noise when they put their hearts into it. So I explained that I would still be there and if we needed to stop at any stage and do some traditional teaching, we could