Summer School 2010

Sometimes you stumble upon concepts and ideas in discussion with others. I ramble on but a grain of insight can sometime emerge.

Yesterday it was this statement that stuck - "You have to stay focussed on student outcomes if you are to maintain inspired".

Frustration can set in if you lack time, materials or ability to satisfy the needs of your students no matter your success in other areas.

It follows on from what I was saying about students the other day. Students only stay motivated if they experience competitive (real) success.

Similarly for teachers - if courses that we run do not amount to student success we too become demoralised. Big picture approaches are good where we know systemic/school success will come once a project is developed, but we still need the day to day success at a student level to maintain our enthusiasm, else we risk a jaded and compromised implementation as we focus on finishing the job at hand rather than seeking improvement as we develop an idea (and if you lose focus from the student you lose the opportunity for continual improvement).

When we finally reached the discussion on the summer school focus for this year it was eye opening the changes that we need to make from our successful course last year.

Focus 2010 Summer School
Algebra, Quadratics and linear equations
Bearings and Vectors
Trigonometric Identities and Exact values
Functions, continuity, domains and range
Moving Averages, Residuals and Seasonality

Hi ho, it's back to work I go!