Workhorses of education | An article for DPs and APs

Have you ever tracked each moment of your day? From the 6am start to the 6.30am check of emails. Teacher relief organised by 7.00. A check-in chat with a colleague before lead team meeting at 8.15 and all staff briefing at 8.30. By the time most office workers are cranking up their laptops, most DPS […]

Of policy and practice

Nature abhors a vacuum, so the saying goes. And right now, we are in the calm eye of the storm when it comes to education policy in New Zealand. While some policies have been abruptly swept to the wall (such as National Standards, charter schools), others are still waiting to hatch. With no fewer than 16 […]

Critical Pedagogy: How to respond to ‘future-focused’ discourse

“So it was an instrument of radical change, that’s what they thought it was. And then around about the middle of the 1980s …this computer got into the hands of school administrations and the ministries and the commissioners of education, state education departments. And now look what they did with them … The establishment pulls […]

Why we need a fresh view on ‘future-focused’ education

“Education… is a process of living, not a preparation for future living.” — Dewey, 1875 I want to talk about what we frame our intentions — our purpose — when we talk about ‘future focus’ and ‘innovation’. I want us to consider how central motivations for educational change have been conflated with technological and economic […]

Five starters for a new Deputy Principal

Welcome to Newbie. Population: Me. I am 15 days into my new role as Deputy Principal, having been in other education roles for a decade. A DP role alone is a big step, but after years of being employed as a professional facilitator, it feels even bigger. It’s a weird spot to be in – […]

Moving on …

After twelve years as a consultant, facilitator, project leader, director…., I am going back to school. At a time when it is common to hear of educators leaving the profession or moving out of school into other kinds of roles and careers, I’m heading upstream, back the other way. I’m excited to have been appointed to […]

ULearn16 | My closing keynote …

Ehara taku toa, he takitahi, he toa takitini My success should not be bestowed onto me alone, as it was not individual success but success of a collective. Standing on the shoulders of giants. Well, better late than never — but it is with much pleasure and a mighty dollop of relief that I share […]

Growing digital smarts? Check our biases…

‘Tis the night before the #edchatnz conference and I am mulling over the session I am hoping to facilitate… It’s been just over a month since I joined NetSafe as their new Director of Education, and I have thoroughly enjoyed getting my head around a ‘same but different’ view window on education. The ‘same’ being broad, effective […]

Five tips for holding ideas lightly

Note: This post was my final piece for the CORE Education blog, published last week. I will be exploring these ideas at their ULearn16 conference in October. Join me? Go on — it’ll be fun:) “One should never bring a knife to a gun fight, nor a cookie cutter to a complex adaptive system.” — […]

Watershed

Today marks my last day working at CORE Education—Tātai Aho Rau. For over five years (which is a long time in a job these days, so I’m told;), my worklife has been a never-ending ride that has offered a heady mix of professional ‘push’ in terms of practice, knowledge and research, all in an environment […]