Module 9: Activity 3: Thinking about the whole school

With the exception of the timetable, every area mentioned on the Whole School Improvements Framework is in need of improvement. It is the first time that my school has invested in timetable software. This has proven to be rather beneficial since many of the clashes that occurred when timetabling is manually done have been eliminated.

Administration, financial management and fundraising are areas that have been doing pretty well and can continue without my intervention. However, on the other hand, curriculum and assessment, leadership, physical resources, critical reflection, partnerships, behaviour and codes of conduct, teamwork and staff appraisal and development can definitely be helped with the integration of ICT.

My vision for the areas that would require my constant attention is as follows:-

• For curriculum and assessment – the inclusion of 21^st century elements of learning. This will help to make the students responsible for their own learning. It would also help educators to become facilitators rather than information givers.   The IT, home economics and visual arts educators are known for integrating ICT in their lessons and there has been a vast improvement on the quality of work that is produced by the students. Through workshops, interactive activities, collaboration and communication, other leaders in my group can learn from my example.

• For physical resources – I wish that the entire plant would get a face lift, improvement in security, installation of ICT infrastructure in all the classrooms and erection of a fence.

• For critical reflection – Avenues would be made available for  educators at my school to do this. The inclusion of collaborative tools can aid in this aspect. It would help the staff to practice this in their classes which would aid in the students learning to think critically.

• For leadership, partnerships, teamwork, staff appraisal and development, behaviour and codes of conduct – I would incorporate the help of experts in these fields to have improvement sessions with the staff. The importance of these aspects would be made clear since in my opinion, these aspects are not deemed as important to a good percentage of the staff at my school. 

Closing comments: the PPT presentations put forward by my collegues were quite interesting and informative. If we could could bring into being the visions that we have for our schools, Antigua educational system will be the envy of many and all stakeholders will benefit greatly.