August 3rd
Have not published anything in here for a while life has been fairly busy with lots of school commitments.
Prior to the recent school holidays I was away for a week on Year 10 camp as the head chef for the 60+ students and staff that attended. Below are the Year 12's that went week 1 of camp without me as well as two of the senior leaders that assisted with the camp. It is always a tough job trying to organise and get the food correct with the different food allergies sorted, as well training up the Year 11's who I took away with me this time to ensure they were doing things correctly and getting things done on time. They certainly learnt a lot from the experience and now hopefully understand what goes into the planning and prep for this sort of event.

During the holiday i was lucky to head to Japan with nine of our school students we attending Tokiwagi High School which is our sister school that we have been visiting for over 20 years. I was lucky enough to stay with the Principal and his family. Considering i know very little Japanese it was good for me to be immersed in the culture and try and pick up little phrases and words as i can. It was a tough trip though as i was dependent on my college to help a lot with the translation and when one of our students got sick and ended up being admitted to hospital he had to be there translating and dealing with the insurance claims. This left me dealing with the other eight students and the day to day dealings with them.

Above is the photo of the kids at one of the temples that we traveled to, while the speech is my introduction that i had to do to the staff on the first morning, which was very intimidating and scary as. During my visit to Tokiwagi i also stayed with the Chemisty Teacher Minako and i taught her how to make the traditional lolly Hokey Pokey, she was so excited about it and said she will try and make it with her classes. Can't wait to see how it goes. I will put up a photo when i have downloaded them all.

I am now back at school and it's week two preparing myself for the Leadership Camp and the School Ball

A new year new challenges

Feb 29th
So we have been back at school four weeks and I was very kindly remind by a colleague, as she told all our staff that if they wanted a good blogging site re teachers reg to look at mine, eeeekkkkk. So I thought I better update it and reflect on what has occurred in the past four weeks.

Digital technology as a school wide development is huge, HHS is involved with maiakalani who look at getting BYOD up and running in schools. At the end of last year and beginning of this year I have used my time to develop a couple of sites, one linked in with PE and Health called HHS Lifestyles and one for my Hospo kids which you can see screen shots of below, and then with my junior classes getting them to create and design their own sites, where class work and reflections on their practicals can be stored. My reasoning for taking this direction with my students I feel like I wasn't getting enough feedback from them in regards to what they had learnt through their practicals and where they actually making those links from theory classes or not.

It has not all been smooth sailing and getting access to devices has seen the start of this process be a little disjointed and sometimes confusing but I think in the long run it will be easier for me to see just what my students are getting out of the practical lessons in particular.

Another development that I have made is looking at the actual questions I've asked the students to reflect on, rather than just getting them to state what was positive and what can be improved they actually have to look at different sections within their practical lesson, what skills they used, how did the team function, what has changed about their confidence etc etc. by getting them do do this I hope that they will  analysis their work more and actually take time to look at what actually happened in the period

During the holidays I did a little bit of professional development by challenging myself to try and cook new foods from a lovely Japanese cook book gifted to me by departing students. I decided to also keep me honest I would blog about it, if your interested in looking at it you can find it at the blog address below http://myjapanesecooking.blogspot.co.nz

Above is an example of my dumplings that I had a go at cooking which were delicious 

PD at Papanui on Thursday for Hospitality. This is the second of our cluster meetings and it has been so beneficial being able to get together with other staff from around ChCh schools to see where we are at in comparison.

We spent the morning going through moderation and checking to make sure our marking was okay. It was such a nice feeling to know that the doubts and issues that i was having were shared with the group.

The middle session was looking at units and having pair and group discussions with people doing similar units, seeing how they were run and sharing some of my ideas. I told the other schools about my blogging of the paper work for hospitality and many were thinking of doing something similar with their classes.

In the afternoon CPIT came in and talked to us about what they are offering at their facility today.
 http://www.cpit.ac.nz/study-options/our-study-interest-areas/food-and-hospitality
It was good to finally understand the links and see the pathways that my students can then move onto. Was really interested in the new Degree of Hospitality they are looking at running in 2017, some of us staff even volunteered to be tasters for the new course.

January 19th 2015

Holiday prep underway over mock tails and food. Everyone together learning 'Blogger' and getting their Google Sites underway
 

A Collection of Teacher Criteria

2nd December 2014
Teachers Council Criteria


1. Establish and Maintain Effective Professional Relationships Focused on
the Learning and Well-being of all Akonga

First professional development day with Mrs Clemence. How to start my blog. I will be using this blog to assist my professional development and help collect evidence for my teaching criteria. Here's me and Rowena setting up our blog pages.