Principals' Meeting.

Friday 12th: Meeting all day of the Southern Zone Principals' Group in Warrnambool CEO office. Set agenda and some speakers addressed us on 'Coaching', 'Religion' and 'Critical Incidents'. Officers elected for next year. Much ground covered and great debate and banter. All funded and supported by the CEO. The support that schools and principals get from the CEO is phenomenal. In St. Mary's Trim we have prioritized numeracy among other areas this year. We had a facilitator for one day's planning but we had other areas to plan for also on that day. Then we try to use a portion of every staff meeting to continue with these priorities. In St Patrick's Koroit, we have a numeracy facilitator coming in on Wednesdays from 8.30 to 5.00. She will do model lessons and mentor the teaching of numeracy in the school as well as holding a meeting after school. Not bad but the amazing thing is that she will come to us every two weeks, all day for the whole year! At the meeting today they were trying to organise training for teachers in the schools to become coaches so that they could coach the teachers in numeracy (or literacy) in their own schools because once every two weeks was not enough!! The coaching is a brilliant idea but it is difficult to see it working because of time and financial limitations. Two sub teachers would need to be employed to cover the coach and the teacher and it would need to be done at least once a week. Teachers are already doing an amount of Professional Development (PD) and each time a sub (E.T.)is employed to cover their class.
Set out at three thirty for South Gipsland where the International Teachers' Association have organised a weekend for us 'fellows'. About nine of the fourteen have turned up and we all stay with ITA members in the area. It took me over five hours to drive from Warranbool but it was like a reunion when I arrived. We had not seen each other since the orientation and it was great to swap war stories. Great fun day planned for tomorrow.