Welcome to my Professional Learning blog.
My name is Matt Nicoll and I am a high school teacher in New Zealand, interested in improving the classroom experience for my students. I am open to trialing new approaches and hope to use this blog to reflect on my ideas and practices.

Thursday 21 February 2019

Sharing in a Busy School

We are in full flight at Rolleston College. We have welcomed a large intake of amazing new colleagues. We now have three Year Groups (Years 9-11). This means staying true to our vision while also accepting that NCEA is part of our world now. We have learned from things we implemented in the last two years, and made the place even better than before. But, most of all, we are BUSY!

I made a promise to myself (publicly here and via Twitter) that I would be more connected this year. I let my relationship with my PLN diminish. I was not sharing what we were doing at Rolleston College, despite my absolute pride in our successes, and the wonderful learning of our FAILs. I am already struggling with this promise to myself...but I am writing in here now, so I shouldn't be too hard on myself.

It did dawn on me this week that we have actually become so busy that we are not only struggling to share beyond our school gates; we are also struggling to effectively share the gold that is going on within different teaching teams. We are trying and we have a shared Google Drive, meetings, Thursday morning PLD opportunities etc. However, we are often too busy to make the most of all of these.

I also reflected on the task I led at the start of the year to get some colleagues onto Twitter. Could this be the solution? I have just sent an email out to the staff to see if they are keen on our first Twitter-based "PD in your PJs". So many of us work from home at night, why not share some of our gold, try to solve some of each other's challenges, and connect? It may be an absolute flop, but why not give it a try...?

Interested to see if it takes off or not? Follow #RollEdNZ on Thursday 28 February

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