Who will tell the real story?

This week, a revamped MySchool website was launched alerting parents to various chunks of data related to NAPLAN test results, finances and the wonderful variations within your cohort of students and their families.

With it, comes the usual avalanche of media pieces appropriately titled, such as:

• The Top 20 Schools In Your State.
• Your Kids Falling Behind.
• The Ultimate Guide to Picking Your Child’s School

Whether you are from the public or independent sector, the MySchool website does not tell the story of your school.  So who will then?

You.  That’s who. It has to be you.

You need to be the Teacher or School Principal who is talking about progress and improvement about standards and benchmarks.

You have to explain that in your school you value a child’s inquisitive nature ahead of the stressful experience of attempting a test where many of the questions are not only above his zone of proximal development, but even beyond his ability to read.

You have to let parents know that the variables of NAPLAN scores, whether they flatter or flatten your school’s image, are too large for them to be a school comparison tool.  You have to let them know that NAPLAN’s purpose is diagnostic and not judgemental.

You have to let them know that it’s creativity, collaborative skill, problem solving capacity and strong citizenship behaviours that make your child ready for the future workforce – and that’s why you focus on them.

You have to let them know that choosing to stand in your yard at lunchtime for 10 minutes will tell them more about your school culture than an hour on data laden website.

You have to tell them that you’re students are not data – that they are kids.

So … YOU have a big job to do this week in telling the real story of Australia’s schools.  My experience is that you’re more than up for it.

Free WEBINAR – Unlocking Student Motivation

It’s a very real question that far too many Teachers are posing for it to be a myth. “What happened to Student Motivation?”

While it’s always been a challenge to harness the attention of students who’d rather be outside having fun, they now have a plethora of distractions to keep them from the critical task of learning.

 

Register here for this “don’t miss and completely FREE” opportunity on Thursday 16^th March at 3.30pm AEDT

The online world, issues with peers, physiological conditions, family circumstances, resilience and self-esteem all contribute in their own ways to make the task of improving motivation one that is complex and ever-changing.For that reason, it stands to reason that some of the old methods of getting in an entertaining speaker or running a “team building” event are letting us down. 

In this webinar, we’ll be matching very real, practical and implementable strategies to the challenges of:

• increasing engagement and on-task behaviour.
• capturing the attention of today’s distracted students.
• elevating and rewarding higher levels of effort.
• choosing instructional modes that are productively preventative … in preference to “putting out spotfires”.

This Real Schools Webinar is aimed at Teachers, School Leaders and Administrators of all phases of learning.