The First Day

It was quite a hectic first day – although I’m assured by some of my new colleagues that it was actually quite quiet.

Managed to get around to all of the new first year classes in Seton House to welcome them to the school and wish them luck on their first day. This is something that I hope to continue and as I start to find my way around the school a bit better I should get faster at this in the mornings.

Ronnie Summers (The Headteacher of MGS) ran a number of one-off assemblies for all the year groups. I thought this was excellent and a good way to set the tone for the year ahead. I was interested to hear Ronnie use language from the draft Learning and Teaching Strategy including, ‘unconditional positive regard’. I was also interested to hear about his 5:1 rule and particularly liked the analogy between smoking at the school gates and being involved in an accident (more on this at another time). Making things sound simple to students is something that I need to work on. I often end up making things more complicated and I normally end up confusing myself.

Between assemblies managed to sort out quite a few ICT problems (mainly new passwords and logging a number of help desk calls). The lady on the other end of the phone now assures me that she can recognise my voice! I have to say Iain Turnbull has been superb in sorting out our network problems. Thanks Iain.

I have also been learning the ropes and been grateful to the other DHT’s for pointing me in the right direction when it comes to lunchtime and break time duty. I still have a lot to learn – but I think I will get there.

Briefly met my new S6 Social Education Class – we had a quick chat about UCAS and university entry requirements. I also spoke about the importance of choosing the right university.

After school I spent a bit more time getting my head around Phoenix (the school management software). Luckily, Sheila McIntosh’s office is just up the corridor and I am sure there is nothing that she doesn’t know about Phoenix. I have started to record some of her advice on a wiki. This should help the person who eventually takes over my role.

I have been set a task to analysis the results. In particular I have been asked to check if there are any students currently sitting a course (eg: Int2) who could potentially stretch themselves further now the summer results have been published (eg: to do Higher). This is going to be quite a long winded task (involving just under 400 bits of paper – don’t ask!), but I managed to complete about a third of it before heading home.

One last thing. Finally ran into Brian Cunningham and was able to put a face to the blog. We managed to chat about a couple of ICT ideas which I hope we can follow up in a bit more detail soon. Brian was also kind enough to show me where the toilets were!