Week 7 Progress...

Goals:
To make time for my mental and physical health. 
To carry out all my roles (teacher, HSA director and Across Schools CoL) to the best of my ability. 
To support staff wellbeing. 
To actively maintain a positive personal outlook.

• Visits to the gym this week: Zero again. 

• McDonald's eaten: four separate visits.. two deluxe cheeseburger combos and a BLT bagel combo.. not a great week for the ol' saturated fat. 

• Casual sports games played this week: 1x 200m sprint against the Y13 girls during athletics. Early morning walks now that I'm more organised with my teaching.

• Books read: Still chipping away at Mud Sweat and Tears. If it's not finished this week I'm going to put it down and move on to something more entertaining. 

• Teaching highlights: 
• Getting on a roll with Year 12. We started the year learning a Y13 exam (Human Evolution) and the standard was high. Now we're back in Year 12 learning they have settled and are still straining to work at the higher level, which should set them up well for their first L2 internal.
• The second round of reading comprehension worked better with 9PKr. I think they're almost at a place where there's enough routine to get my Mum in to help groups with their reading. If I could have Chris reading to Stanley and Apete, Mum working with the girls and extending them, and me working with the two groups of boys, that would be pretty amazing for them. Lots of support. Lots of emphasis and importance on reading and understanding.
• Discovering https://readtheory.org/  

• CoL things:
• Had a Friday 7am meeting with Fiona, Russell, Donna and Clarelle around how we give support to the in-school CoL teachers and make ourselves accessible to teachers across the cluster. 
• You can book time with me to help with science (in the Primaries, probably mostly the Y7/8 teachers but can be anyone!) or with literacy (in TC - I'm no expert but I try my best!!)
• Here is the link to book any of us: http://www.manaiakalani.org/our-schools/col/col-teachers-across-schools

• HSA things: Period Zero launched with only 4 students of 11 arriving and studying with me for an hour before school on Monday. During tutor the rest of the week I tried to make it really clear that attending Period Zero is one of the only things they are required to do to be in the HSA - and if they don't attend then they won't be going on the leadership trip coming up. "You have to act like a leader to be given the opportunities of a leader." Furthermore, if they want to work in the Health Science field then they need to start showing they want that dream enough to get out of bed at 7am once a week! We'll see if there's an improvement next week. 

• Teacher well-being support: after Athletics news of the terrorist attach in Chch hit, so softball was cancelled. A weekend of reflection with my friends followed, up in Paihia.   

• Gratitude emails sent: a few thank-you's here and there for little things. 

Week 5

Goals:

To make time for my mental and physical health. 
To carry out all my roles (teacher, HSA director and Across Schools CoL) to the best of my ability. 
To support staff wellbeing. 
To actively maintain a positive personal outlook.

• Visits to the gym this week: ONE! Largely because Kurt headed in there to see a client, so I toddled along too and amused myself for an hour, trying to copy instagram fitness model workouts.

• McDonald's eaten: alas, a new high score of 2. One BLT bagel combo at 6.15am before work, and one Ham and Cheese pocket and coffee - again WAY too early in the morning.

• Casual sports games played this week: 2 games of touch, tag has finished :( 

• Books read: I've started on Mud, Sweat and Tears by Bear Grylls. I've been looking for this book in Op shops for YEARS - since a friend told me that it was the book (recommended to him by his high school English teacher) that kick-started his love of reading at age 16. 

• Teaching highlights: 
• Giving a Year 9 student feedback across multiple days with her creative writing in Science. Granted, she hasn't reached the science part yet.. but it was nice to help with her writing.
• You can read it at the bottom of the post if you're interested :) 
• I also received an email from another student in the class to remind me to send him the creative writing blog instructions so he could do it as homework!
• Helping my Year 11 tutor class (also with their creative writing), after talking to their English teacher about their first internal and.. 
• Trying to get students to "show" not "tell" in their writing.
• Christie's blog from tutor here
• Paula's blog from tutor here

• CoL things: Added in data analysis of writing and maths as well, so staff can identify their top Year 9 students. Sat with Marc a while to work out how the Staff Briefing will work next week. This week I'll have to sit with Russell to send principals emails, and then book time to attend Staff Briefings after school across the cluster.

• HSA things: This week we had our first guest visitor - the lovely Dr Susan Reed - to speak to students on Tuesday after school about being a female Polynesian in the Health field. I also had another meeting about the HSA opening fono for whānau, and called home to all the parent's about next Tuesday evening at 6pm. 
• Fusi's very short blog of Dr Susan's visit here.

• Teacher well-being support: organised backyard cricket on Friday after school. 17 staff members turned up to have a go! In case you can't read the scoreboard, Doris won by approximately 412 runs. 

• Gratitude emails sent: none BUT I gave out a RISE voucher to two students who I overheard have this responsible conversation: 
• "Can we get a basketball out please?" they asked a PE staff member.
• "No, sorry boys, there's only one minute left before the bell," replied the PE guy.
• "Oh only one minute! Ok I guess we'll go to class now, then" said one of the boys, while the other nodded his head - and off they went. 

Here's the creative writing story for those who want to read! I think it's great. 

This is a story about a superhero whose name was “Captain Kindness.” He loved helping other people and giving back to his community. On a sunny Saturday morning by 9am, the young superhero had completed all his tasks; visiting a resting home, reading a story to kindergarten children and lastly helping those in need of a healthy breakfast.

Once he had completed all his jobs he sat down in his “lucky chair” and searched for anyone in need, but - strangely - no one was in danger. His tally-phone and chart alarm weren’t beeping either. Captain Kindness gazed strongly towards his soft-screen and wondered why nothing strange was happening. He then came to the conclusion that all burglars, graffiti artists and wedgie-givers were on a break and didn’t need to disrupt the “Town of oz”!

He pulled out his journey book and searched for an activity he could do in his free time. The first thing that came up on his list was “search the Earth.” He thought to himself “what could I search, I’m a superhero and I’ve already seen the majority of the Earth!” On top of his adventures, he had also done some quick research on Google and had found some amazing things about his “Planet Earth”.

The Captain then came to the decision of going to visit the center of the Earth. He packed some fuel and jumped in his auto-invisible car. He wasn’t too sure how to get to the middle of the Earth so he called up a few of his friends, “Dr. Wolf”. It turned out Dr. Wolf wasn’t the best person to turn to for advice about the Earth - Dr. Wolf was actually a magician and not a scientist!

Luckily Captain Kindness knew two more friends who he was certain could help out. He searched his tally-phone looking for his long lost friend Professor Stanley.

Once again Captain Kindness was let down - it turned out Professor Stanley worked in a laboratory with chemicals and sadly he wasn’t able to help out with Captain Kindness’s adventure to the center of the Earth.

Captain Kindness almost gave up until he remembered his very close but distant best friend. Now I say best friend because Captain Kindness and Captain Red had done many activities together when they were young, until they set off to high school - they hadn’t seen each other in a while. His favorite color was red and he was exactly who Captain Kindness was looking for. Captain Kindness hit ‘dial’ and rang his old close friend.

As the phone rang, Captain Kindness was as nervous as a child receiving a big present; his arms down to his fingertips were shaking as fast as a cheetah on a hunt, and his palms were sweating so much they would have been able to fill a large glass cup! As much as Captain Kindness was afraid to talk to his long lost friend he built the courage to stay on the phone and speak to his long lost friend.

After four rings on the phone, someone answered the phone… “Hello, Captain Red here. How can I help?”

“Um... Hello, this is Captain Kindness” Captain Kindness replied with a silent and calm yet loud enough voice.

Captain Kindness was shocked to hear his friends voice after so many years. Captain Kindness slowly started speaking with more confidence into the tally-phone.

“Yes this is… Captain Kindness, but you may know me as Joshua Bandshell!” Captain Kindness knew his best friend as Kyle Maximus

“Is this you JoJo?” Captain Red replied “I’d recognise that squeaky voice anywhere!”

After a 45 minute phone call ‘JoJo’ had all the answers he’d been looking for and an extra 20 he hadn’t asked for! In his car her packed Magma Repulsors, his Super Cooling Suit, night vision goggles, an in-car air Pressuriser (vanilla flavoured, of course).

By 1.15pm he was ready to go, and backed his auto-invisible car down the gravelly driveway. Within minutes he was circling over Mt Etna in Italy, preparing to nose-dive down through the lava in the volcanic vent.

Down, down he went, passing through the magma chamber and into the crust of the Earth.

Now you can continue with:

Describe what they saw and touched, and how they used superpowers to survive the journey!

Include lots of scientific vocabulary such as mantle, dense, continental crust, iron, degrees celsius, solid, iron, inner core, magnetic, oceanic crust, convection.

Quick Summary from Week 1

We're back into it again for the year!

It's Saturday morning at 4.24am and I couldn't sleep because there were too many emails left unsent. Usually I'm good at switching off but.. apparently not tonight.

This year my goals are:

To make time for my mental and physical health. 
To carry out all my roles (teacher, HSA director and Across Schools CoL) to the best of my ability. 
To support staff wellbeing. 
To actively maintain a positive personal outlook. 

Here is the snapshot update on how that is going:

• Visits to the gym this week: 0
• McDonald's eaten: 2 kiwiburger combos.
• Casual sports games played this week: 2 games of tag.
• Books read: finished the third Orphan X on Tuesday night. 
• Teaching highlights: 
• Building and using a 'reading corner' with a large mat for Year 9 to gather on at the start of lessons. I'm trying to give an introduction, set expectations and have discussions with them there at the start of the lesson. There's a lot of them though. They overflow.
• Creating a booklet for 'introduction to science' for the Year 9's which they appear to have thoroughly enjoyed so far!
• Marking that booklet and using the small amount of evidence in it to create literacy groups named after ancestral waka. 
• Creating 5 different versions of the same reading for those literacy groups.
• Getting feedback from the three (of 10, the rest were at a spontaneous leadership course) Year 13s present during Thursday and Friday: "this makes sense Miss, this is all good." 
• Running a 'pads and tampons' investigation using a very poor-quality fake blood that I whipped up with gelatin, cornflour, water and red food colouring on the very first day of biology with my Year 12 class, which is a class of 25 girls! 
• Results: tauira were engaged, surprised, and thoughtful - they learnt that super pads absorb a lot more (about 20mL more) than super tampons.
• One group created a striking visual of tampon absorbancy as the tampon expanded and blocked an upside-down measuring cylinder full of fake blood.
• Another group tested different brands of liners stuck on paper towels, and found out which brands would leak first. The thickness of the best liner seemed to also be assisted in preventing leakage by imprints of flowers in the pad. 
• I wish I had taken photos!!
• Had a CoL meeting and came out knowing what data I need to track down to begin with, and knowing I have to think of a project and inquiry outline before the next meeting (Valentines Day). 
• Teacher wellbeing support: ran a "Holiday Book Swap" in the staffroom on Friday afternoon.
• Gratitude emails sent: 4, subject line is simply :)