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You be the leader
A personal reflection ‘You be the leader.’ This is a phrase that we may have heard, and used, in equal measure over our lifetimes. From the very earliest days when playing games as children, to moving through group work experiences, to being nominated, or nominating others, in the workplace to take the ‘lead’. Translate ‘You…
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“Oh, you know what I mean….”
Photo by Colin Maynard on Unsplash Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides. Rita Mae Brown Why language choice really matters and what it means for us in our communities. Take a look at the collection of images above. What impressions do these conjure up for you? What emotions or senses are…
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What if…. we redesign our approach towards Professional Learning?
I once had the pleasure of joining an online author workshop with Grade 3 students and the author, Mo O’Hara. One of the many perks to being a school principal! During her talk with students, she inspired us all to pause, look around and constantly ask the question ‘What if..?‘ to fire up our imaginations…
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Elevating Portfolio Practices to Honour Multilingual Learner Identities
Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash I recently wrote about shifting our mindsets towards ‘honouring all languages’ in our learning spaces and communities. As with much that is connected to mindset this can be viewed on a continuum. Sometimes it requires small tweaks and finding ways to elevate current practices, other times it can result…
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Cultivating ‘calm’.
The Impact on Learning ‘Calm is a Superpower’ this has somewhat become my mantra over time, and naturally during the pandemic years became even more of something to lean into. It has led me to think more deeply about how we find calm amidst storms. How we both instil, and nurture, calm in learning spaces,…
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Language Matters: From ‘being inclusive’ to ‘honouring’ all languages
Why we need to go beyond being inclusive to honouring. There are about 7,000 languages in the world. Being multilingual is now the ‘norm’ for the majority of the world’s population. It is more ‘typical’ for learners and their families to have knowledge of more than one language than to come from a strictly monolingual…
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Learning from Learners
Elevating Student Leadership What a privilege it is to be a teacher and school leader. For me, at the heart of this is empowering and enabling students to see themselves as leaders. When I started out teaching I realised pretty quickly that I found my happy place in those moments when you observe others finding…
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Nurturing a Sustainable Culture of Active Thinking
As the school year launches, teachers prepare for their new and returning students, school leaders to welcome new and returning staff and the focus turns to designing ways in which learning communities can come together, develop and thrive. In my experience this often means that team building activities are dusted off and there is a…
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What’s in a name?
I miss the puzzle of learning names. As a School Principal I used to love greeting families, learning student names and being part of the early morning routine welcoming everyone into school. I struggled, I got names wrong, I mixed up pronunciation, put the accent in the wrong place and from time to time muddled…
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Agency, Advocacy and Multilingualism
Empowering young learners to share their voice, to take action, to advocate for themselves and others, and to engage in all aspects of learning in local and global issues is crucial. Communities hold space for this agency and are central to creating and fostering a climate in which this can thrive. It seems logical that…
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Jenny O'Fee 