Start of Year Preparation

Well 2014 is underway and in my role as Deputy Principal there are a number of things I need to get started.
My year always starts with connections to make with my colleagues. This has to be a priority as we know how important building relationships is. It is not just important to build new relationships... maintaining them is essential too!

Administratively, I have

• Classroom Release Timetables (CRT) to arrange.

This involves me liaising with class teachers to give them a chance to select the days that suit their administrative work load. After all, these days are meant to reduce work load! this is a bit of a misnomer because you can't actually reduce the work load, but what the CRT does is give teachers the time  to get their work completed during class time. this is a valuable asset to a busy teacher and goes a little way to shortening one day. Each teacher only gets 2 of these days a term, so the reduction in work load is often around significant bottle neck times such as assessment, report writing and the like.

• Teacher Aide timetables to arrange

This takes a lot of co-ordination! I have to consider not only teacher needs, but the learning needs of the students. This all has to be balanced across the hours that teacher Aides are working, the budget we allocate to Teacher aide Salaries, the amount the Ministry allocates in our Special Education Grant (SEG) as well as ensuring equity across all areas of the school. Each year, the learning needs change, and our commitment to learning has always to be the priority.

• Teacher Only day planning

This involves meeting and collaborating with my Principal and any other stakeholders who are highly involved with our priority areas. This year, we have Mathematics as a priority curriculum area, along with our continued priority in Learning involving digital technologies. We are in the process of dropping the 'e' as we acknowledge that 'learning' continues to be the priority while our focus on the pedagogy was shifting.

• MUSAC Updates

I have to update all teacher dossiers and ensure that any class changes are reflected in the system. This also involves updating any data tables for the learning and achievement data we collate. Deleting old ones and a general tidy up of the documents we store in our system.

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