Term 1 finished last Friday. And boy what a huge term it was. I have looked back at the last 10 weeks and I really cannot believe how much we squeezed into the term.
- SharePoint 2010
- Office 2010
- Digital Profile Cards
- New Departments
- New Timetable Structure
- Large Amount of New Staff
Not to mention all the new things that happen year in year out by being a teacher – new classes, new students, new timetables…
As part of our review of the term staff all commented that there was just too much change this term and this year and that had made the term more exhausting than “normal”.
Looking over it there was a lot of change however at the end of the term I think it was all necessary change. Change is hard at the best of times… And a lot of change means that people are more resistant to the change…
My biggest project this term has been digitising all the Profile Cards. We had some staff who used pen and paper to fill the cards out right through to staff who were using mail merge to link Excel and Word together to make results entry easy. The whole point of digitising the profile cards was to allow for longitudinal tracking and a permanent record in the school data base of how students are going at any point in time. My biggest challenge with the digital profile cards has been the staff who used pen and paper previously as pen and paper work for them. One staff member proclaimed that I can see where the students are at any point in time. I challenged back that what if another staff member needed to see the results. The response “They can walk over to my filing cabinnet and take a look!” It is this staff member who has had the biggest break through. After all the kicking and screaming that they didn’t need digital profile cards on the last day of the term came to me to ask if there was a time next term we could meet so that he could recreate his profile card to better suit the new system of recording student results.
We all hate change but at the end of the day it is inevitable… Lets face it life would be boring if it was always the same!
