Personal Reflections

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The family got back yesterday from a few days down on the Fleurieu Peninsula, basing ourselves at Goolwa. This is the third time in three years and it really is a nice part of the world to kick back and take things easy for a bit. We were looking forward to some nice weather but Wednesday was a bit cooler than expected so we changed our plans around a bit, trading in a day at the beach for a walk across the causeway to Granite Island at Victor Harbor, and to check out the Little Penguin centre on the island.

Recuperating little penguins from Granite Island at the Penguin Centre.

Here a small number of volunteers look after a small group of little penguins who have suffered injuries that prevent them from rejoining their colleagues in the wild. There was a feeding scheduled for 11.00 am and so we paid our money and shuffled in to see these little guys. The lady who came out to feed them their daily ration of pilchards was a passionate advocate for their welfare and shared a wealth of information about this unique bird with us, not all of it heartwarming. She shared with us factual information about their life cycle, how they spent their days fishing up to 50 km away from their burrows on Granite Island, returning at dusk to rest up before departing before sunrise to head out into the ocean again. I suggested to my youngest, Josh that we should sign up for the guided tour that night to check out the penguins as they came home for the night. I then got my next shock.

Ever since I can remember there have been little penguins at Granite Island. So going on a tour had been one of those things that I'd put aside for a future date - because there would always be another time in the future when I could do it. But the colony on Granite Island is in severe decline. Back in 2000, a census put the numbers of penguins on Granite Island at around 2000 - making good use of the over 200 human constructed burrows. Most of these are built into the cliff alongside the main road leading from the causeway around to the kiosk/bistro/souvenir shop putting their homes in very close contact with human activity. By 2011, that number had declined down to around 100 birds, but a recent 2012 census put the numbers to a really scarily low 26 penguins. So, the reality is that very few penguins can now be seen at dusk clambering out of the water, scuttling across the tram-tracked road and beating a hasty retreat to their burrow. When we went on the tour that night, we saw one solitary penguin make that trek back home. I had imagined dozens of them in my mind before being confronted with this fact.

The volunteers put down the severe decline in numbers due to a natural phenomenon - the New Zealand fur seal whose numbers in the area were on the steady increase. We were told about another colony of penguins (about 100) on a more remote island near Victor Harbor that has been wiped out by the fur seals moving in. The seals weren't being seen on Granite Island possibly because of the presence of humans, but were nabbing the penguins while they were out on their fishing trips. And based on the washed up penguin bodies, the volunteers concluded that they weren't being pursued as food but the seals were killing them as a form of sport, much like a cat kills birds sometimes, just because it can. The volunteers also said that something else unusual was happening with the Granite Island penguins. Normally, December and January are prime viewing times to see penguins before they headed into a two to three week feed up in preparation for the moulting season. The penguins hunt and consume enough fish to double their body weight so that they can survive a two week starvation period back in the burrow as they moult the old feathers and allow the new feathers to fully seal up their natural water proofing. But this year, they had headed out to sea two months early to start their fattening up process. Whether this was a response to their decline in numbers, no one is sure, but it is a sign that things are not as they should be. The little guy we saw waddling was certainly well into the gaining weight process.

So, it was good to do the tour while we still can. But there are a number of questions that pop into my mind. Is this a problem that can be helped by human intervention? Or is it just part of nature and we only care because this is a colony that drives visitors to a place? Why is that numbers have to drop to such a critical low before bigger bodies like local councils and governments take notice? I'm sure that the volunteers and researchers were waving the alert flag before now. And what about people like me who feel saddened now because it is in my immediate consciousness soon to be forgotten in due course as other issues vie for my attention and compassion? And what will the Granite Island colony look like next year when we head back to that part of the world for our family holiday?

Thanks to YouTube, there is a massive amount of archival content uploaded from the video vaults from account users all over the world. Amongst all of the new stuff, the viral videos, the VEVO new releases, the videobloggers and the gaming walkthroughs, people have been busy uploading the past - music, advertisements, lots of snippets of popular culture. This brings about an interesting situation where I can pick up on a memory from the past, and start to fully immerse myself in all sorts of video content that brings that time back into clear focus.

Here's a video that I found the other night:

It's fun looking back at a given year in popular music because it shows that being popular at the time doesn't necessarily translate into being popular for all time. I remember 1981 - Year 10 at high school - and running through this list of songs brings back interesting mental reactions. There are songs that make me glad that they didn't enjoy popular play beyond '81, some that make you think, "Oh, I remember this song - it was pretty good. Whatever happened to ...?", ones that I recall having on a mixtape or even shelling out the dollars for the cassette for and some that bring back an actual memory.

About midway through this video clip, a song from iconic British band, The Police, popped up and immediately I realised that I had bought a copy of Zenyatta Mondatta during that year. This realisation sends me scouring YouTube for other Police videos, looking for interviews with the band members and then finally onto iTunes, where I buy and download some tracks that had fallen off my immediate conscious memory. Even now, there is the urge to go and check out some concert footage from when they were in their prime (about 1983 in my opinion) and continuing this self indulgent trip down memory lane. In the past, this sort of scramble to re-activate my memory would have involved scrabbling around in my old cassette collection and that's about it. But the web makes it so easy to soak in digital memories - I know that the web is the world's biggest archive of digitised cultural artifacts - and all of the extra material from that era or place in time that I have never seen before all combine to give a feeling of "being back in time".

Nothing earth shattering - but a realisation that I felt worth archiving for my posterity.

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Here in South Australia, we have a pedagogical guide known as TfEL (Teaching for Effective Learning) which is the how that backs onto the what of the Australian Curriculum.

From the Guide:

What is the SA TfEL Framework?
Just as a compass guides navigation, the SA TfEL Framework provides an ‘internal compass’ for guiding our designs for learning  and decision making about our practice. It gives us confidence that  our professional practice incorporates the most recent evidence and  understandings about learning and teaching that maximise student engagement and achievement.

My school has a TfEL specialist teacher who has provided professional learning for our staff, conducted research and supported teachers in their familiarisation and implementation of the TfEL Framework. She has been incredible but like all good things, her tenure is drawing to a conclusion at the end of 2012 as the department re-prioritises some of its expenditure. As part of the project completion, all staff have been asked to write a short "most significant impact story" that tells of the Framework's impact on their pedagogy. As a new leader and someone coming in six months later than everyone else in the new school, I wasn't sure what to write. Only one of these stories will be chosen to tell a perspective from our school. So the likelihood of mine making any further than my desktop and the specialist teacher's eyes  are slim. I personally would want a story from a classroom to represent our school any way because that is the important place I would want TfEL to be making the most positive difference.

But for posterity and my own learning, I will post up my story for others to read and query.

Personalisation of Staff PD

Story of Significant Impact by Graham Wegner, Assistant Principal (Learning Technologies & Admin), Woodville Gardens School B-7

a.

My role includes the provision of Professional Development in the early of Learning Technologies for my colleagues. I have attended a lot of this PD during my career and delivered a significant amount of technology focussed training and Professional Learning sessions over the last ten years. It has always been ironic that as a classroom teacher, I would design learning that catered for individuals with multiple entry and exit points but teacher focussed PD still seemed to be a one-size-fits-all model where everyone received the same information or worked through the same activities using the same tools.

Earlier this term, I had a staff Professional Learning time allocated for eLearning which was focussed on having the staff explore the use of PBWorks as a wiki based tool which could be used as a linking off point of entry to the internet for their students. In the past, I would have designed a lock step process to lead the whole group paced so that no one got left behind. But this model, as with students, has problems with providing the right balance between support for the less experienced and freedom to move ahead for the more confident and savvy. So this year, I have moved to making staff PD closer to the way I would approach a group of younger learners. I have made conscious efforts to design the learning using tools like Understanding by Design in a manner similar to designing an inquiry unit.

I attended a PLC session earlier in the day focussed on Learning Intentions and Success Criteria run by our TEFL specialist, Louise Barker. As we discussed what these looked like in the classroom, it became clear to me that I needed the same thing for my staff PD session. As the PLC continued, I started to re-design my approach for later that day, rewriting the Learning Intention into a WALT “create links in an online space”. I added a second part to show the value of what I wanted the staff to engage with by using TIB (This Is Because) “we can then create and develop an online space for your students to easily access a wide range of digital resources.” Finally, I added in WILF (What I’m Looking For) otherwise known as the Success Criteria – (i) you can create and edit your own space  (ii) you can add hyperlinks to important digital resources & (iii) you develop and use a strategy for find, add and review links in your space.

Lousie had also used a road metaphor that categorised learners by comfort level and confidence which I seconded for the session. This way, the confident could move ahead without feeling constrained but the less confident could seek more structured and incremental help. These elements created clarity around the purpose of the session, and empowered the staff to find their own comfort level in engaging with the learning, and the purpose behind that learning. I received very positive feedback from many colleagues about the value of the learning and how it enabled them to be successful without feeling pressured. Other leaders complimented me on the session as a solid example of how to cater for a wide range of adult learners, and act as a template for other staff running their own PD sessions.

b.

I can see great value in carrying over these key ideas (Learning Intentions and Success Criteria) which we want to be integral in our students’ learning and applying it to the staff PD to show that these concepts don’t just apply to students but to any learners.

 

A teacher asked me to help with her class's work on "goods and services" where they were creating their own fictional business and researching the types of goods and services they would offer. We were creating a virtual town to post up on a wiki and one of the steps was to use TuxPaint to create a digital picture. However, on the day that they started I got sidelined with a behaviour issue that meant that the teacher and the kids worked on without me. They got a bit stuck because they were using the above mentioned program on the building's MacBook Pros and the teacher wasn't sure how to save the pics, let alone get them up on the wiki. In her desperation to ensure that the time wasn't wasted, she got the students to print their images as there was no obvious way to save them to the class network folder. It was a classic case of needing a workaround in order for whole thing to end up in the right place. She asked me to help.

I went to the computers where the kids had been working and opened up TuxPaint. In most cases, the last image that had been created came up on screen. On a Mac, it was a simple case of using the shortcut Command-Shift-4 in order to able to grab a PNG of the picture sitting within the TuxPaint screen. I could then rename the file from the Desktop, change the image to a easier to manipulate jpeg file extension and then drag the file into the right class folder within the network Common Drive. On a PC, the steps were similar but a little more involved. This time I did a Print Screen, pasted the result into Paint.Net, cropped the image and then saved it with the correct name and file extension to the class folder.

Now I haven't done anything technical here apart from a bit of good old fashioned problem solving and some basic knowledge about shortcuts and how files behave on a computer - some basic digital literacy. But plenty of teachers aren't confident in implementing a workaround - they look for a how to instruction sheet, seek out the "techy-man" or just put it in the too hard basket. Having the ability to create a workaround is an important life skill because the workaround mindset can be transferable to lots of life, non-digital situations. Now someone else might look at my workaround pathways and see a quicker, more obvious route to take. But the important thing is that I was able to solve the problem by myself, using solutions to get a step closer to completion.

So many educators have never clicked on a Help button, or Googled for a solution. In today's world, we need to get away from this learned behaviour of self-helplessness. At least, have a go at creating your own workaround. There is an incredible amount of self satisfaction in working something like that out for yourself.

At our Tuesday staff PD session, we had the privilege of hearing from one of DECD's African Community Liaison Officers (CLO for short) who had worked briefly at my school earlier in 2012 as a Bi-Lingual School Support Officer (BSSO for short) before being snapped for a much broader role. His name was Abdullahi Ahmed and he gave us an informative presentation that highlighted some of the issues that characterise a large number of students from an African background who are currently in South Australian schools. He spoke passionately and was hugely insightful in showing us what we need to know as educators. We have about 80 students of African background here at my school, and that is a broad stroke in itself because they represent a broad range of cultural backgrounds, religious beliefs and experiences that led to their arrival in Australia. There is no typical African kid but using the acronym CALD (students from a Culturally And Linguistically Diverse background)  he explained that the majority of students and families that are supported by his role have a refugee background, and that is what he unpacked for us. [My questions as they occurred in bracketed italics.]

He described to us the two different scenarios between an African village where there might be one water pump for the whole village, and at the same time that South Australians are getting their kids ready for school, children would be with their parents helping to fetch the water for the day. [What do we need to think about as educators about these students and the way they make a start to the day? What might we need to consider about the responsibilities older children might have in helping with chores and running the household before they get ready for a day in our school?] Now we know that many people in Africa live in larger towns and cities but Abdullahi pointed out that is typically vulnerable people who became refugees and many of these came from a rural village setting. When fighting or civil war broke out, many people walked very long distances to escape persecution and killing. Males were often targetted for this, so families separated in order to escape. It is not uncommon for a mother and children to be here settled in Australia while a husband or older male family members may be missing - and not necessarily dead, but just unaccounted for and impossible to trace.

He talked about the perception of race and impact of racism on CALD families. In the African experience, many people born after the 1950's were born in the era of many modern African states gaining independence. Therefore, people from other cultures that they would experience from a day to day basis were from outside agencies helping to get things running in the newly independent state - aid workers, planners, developers - and these outsiders were viewed by many Africans as "helpers", with much of the hatred that fuels the violence and civil war in the hotspots of the African continent coming from tribal hostilities. Therefore, Abdullahi pointed that CALD families generally have a positive attitude towards other races, but newly encountered and quite unexpected racism from non-African kids in the Australian school settings can quickly alter this positive attitude.

Another complicating factor for many kids who have spent time in refugee camps is the form of education they receive there is geared towards repatriation. Schools there have very little to no technology, overcrowded classrooms in very basic structures. Housing in refugee camps is in the form of tents, which is very different to the housing left behind in their home village or town and also very different to the housing now in their country of resettlement. He pointed out the countries that Australia has received refugees from - at my school they include but not limited to Liberia, Somalia, Burundi, Togo, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Ethiopia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. If you encounter students from countries like Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Ghana or Mozambique, they are likely to be the children of scholarship holders here to study, and not from a refugee background. In many parts of Africa, physical punishment is still part of the school experience so in Australia, so some students find a situation where poor behaviour only leads to discussion with counsellors and maybe a suspension [a few days off from school, hooray!] to be nothing to fear.

Abdullahi used some social research terminology to tie a lot of his talk together, and this was used in his description of the disparity between neighbourhood settings here and in the family's country of origin. There is a big difference between a village setting where everyone know each other by name and where kids were free to mix and spend time unsupervised together, compared to the Australian suburban experience where one can live for years next door to neighbours who are unknown and not part of their social fabric. He talked about the need for "social capital", the connections to people of similar backgrounds or interests (Fukuyama, 1997) and the building of a social network [not the digital kind] of support to strengthen those connections. Other issues that hindered students' progress within our schools include the high illiteracy rate among refugee parents who may speak a first language but not necessarily be literate in it. Add English as the new language and the propensity of schools to communicate a lot through text based mediums, and you have a lot of newsletters and notices lying around the house that are not able to be read. Using an interpreter is not always the best answer as the education system has its own sub-language of code words and acronyms that need someone trained, like a BSSO or CLO, in order for communication to be effective at times like parent teacher interviews. The illiteracy of some parents causes another side problem insofar that seeing their own child become proficient in English for communication has them feeling that their child has surpassed them educationally and that therefore their child is viewed as more knowledgeable than the parent, leading to an inability to set proper boundaries for their children at home. Educators therefore need to work hard to open lines of communication with these families so that they see the need to be in control of their child's routines and expectations, that mastering English is not a guarantee of success in Australia and that a lot of hard work is required to get through to Year 12, and possibly tertiary or VET in order to secure a future of meaningful life choices. A perception of "School does everything" for many parents hinders their direct involvement in their child's learning, and educators must work hard to show the importance of engagement in their child's learning. Simple things like showing an interest in a family's cultural background during interviews or conversations can go a long way towards making them feel welcome and less threatened by the school environment. Reaching out to families to build a partnership will mean that CALD students have a greater chance of being successful within our education system, and going on to making meaningful and important contributions to our society - or if they ever wish to do so, be able to return back to their home country one day and contribute there.

Abdullahi's talk held everyone's attention for the entire hour, and in conversation with many of my colleagues afterwards, they were constantly mentally referring to students under their care and making connections about why these kids act the way they do, and how things might be tackled differently now that our own awareness has been raised. I hope that my reflections here are accurate, do not read as patronising in any way, and can be useful for anyone else who might even only have one CALD student in their classroom.

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At this moment in time, there are multiple options for anyone in the learning game. In my case:

I could be writing a blog post (obviously).

I could be tweeting other people's links out to other people.

I could be having a go at being part of a large, loosely connected group in a MOOC.

I could be commenting on other people's writing - either to pat them on the back, to say "hear, hear", to divert their ideas onto a new pathway or to challenge their words with my own.

I could just be doing some good old fashioned web surfing, clicking my way from one interesting node to another. (YouTube is great for this and can soak up hours in an unproductive but highly satisfying way.)

I could be focussing in small, working out what I need to do in my current job at my current school for my current crop of colleagues and students. Or I could be wide open, solving all of the world's learning needs, re-imagining an education system that wipes all of the ills that we currently have.

But ...

I have to decide what is actually worth doing. I have to weigh up if anyone even reads what I write and whether it has ever changed anything for anyone else. I have to consider if yet another person tweeting out links, hashtags and retweets adds to learning or merely just adds more digital noise. Do I have time to commit to a MOOC? How can I expect anyone to leave a comment for me if I'm not prepared to put aside to do that for others? And does my online time have to be learning or education focussed all the time? Is it OK to goof off occasionally and watch anime, music videos or laugh at Rebecca Black memes?

At work, at home and in the spaces in between, I want to be doing something worthwhile. Not just follow-the-crowd and be-up-with-the-latest-from-my-PLN type but in a world with seemingly limitless options but seemingly decreasing limited time (I'm resisting like hell to avoid using the buzzphrase "time poor"), I'd like to think that purpose and meaning can be derived from online connections to others. At times to others , this comes across as negativity on my part but being critical of what others write, say, tweet, point to, reference, worship is an integral part of the whole deal.

Sparked by this.

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I don't know if it was my own education that got me to this point in life, or whether my ability to make sense of things is in spite of it.

One of my pet dislikes (and it happens often enough) is being asked about an influential teacher who was important in my learning. The assumption is that every articulate, independent thinking person with some measure of success must have had someone who lit the fire, who made the learning in school come alive. And most people in education can name at least one such person. Many will cite that person as being the reason for taking up teaching as a career.

But not me. I can't name one teacher who I would put above the crowd. Some were better than average, and a lot struggled to even remember who I was. I suppose I like to think that my teaching style and methodology is based on what that fictional teacher would have been like. But that does not automatically translate that I've become the "one teacher" for anyone else. Well, no one has told me that. A few ex-students have told me that they have fond memories of being in my class, but that's about it. Yet I like to believe that I've been a successful teacher, and that I now have something worthwhile to bring to the table as a leader.

So, there is a bit of an unwritten assumption that as a student moves through the education system, they will invariably encounter their own "one teacher" who will flip the switch and light the pathway to educational success. There is also an assumption that following that educational pathway also equals learning. I read plenty of smart people who believe that the system as it currently exists is broken and needs radical re-thinking, that it can't be fixed from within and that tinkering around the edges doesn't really help the disengaged and disadvantaged. Technology really does challenge how learning can occur - but maybe the system limits those possibilities to just digitising age old pedagogies.

I don't know. There are plenty of times when I'm not sure what to believe when it comes to learning within the paradigm of education.

But I do know this. Those of us who connect, put out our still-green ideas in blogs, tweets and comments, who have taken the time to explore and play in the many spaces of the web have an immense advantage over those who do not. The challenge is how do we move the spark of learning away from being dependent on one person provided by an institution, to being self provided. Learning how to learn has become a huge buzz phrase - and I sense many educators are a bit afraid of the concept of self motivated learners because in some ways it threatens the age old concept of teacher. But on the internet I get "taught" every day by people who freely offer opinions, advice and experiences of their own. They don't have me as their "student", and they don't have the responsibility of "assessing" my learning, but I learn from them at my own pace as time permits and as my interest deepens.

So, what does that look like to kids at the primary school level?

All I can say is that I envy those of you who have strong beliefs about what exactly should be happening to education in this country, because there are times when I feel like I have no idea. Like the cliche says, the more I learn about anything, the more I realise how little I really know.

 

 

Went out to MOC this morning with my principal for a meeting with a DECD group on Innovative Learning that my school is part of. Like Woodville Gardens, MOC is one of the State Government's new "super schools". For me, this is the third super school that I've visited (including my own) and it is a weird feeling to walk around a school that has some many architectural and design similarities but has a different student population and the purposing of the learning spaces always has a unique twist. For some walking around today, everything looks brand new but for super school leaders, the feeling of walking through a parallel universe is impossible to shake. There are in jokes about the company that services the grounds and buildings to share and it does seem that each super school has attracted a leadership team with innovation and progressive practice in mind, and are harnessing the majority of their staff member's expertise with their vision on board. So it is weird for me to see how each unique school is endeavouring to break the mould in facilities that are variations on the same architectural theme. But it is cool to see disadvantaged communities having new state of the art facilities provided for them - and a focus on rethinking and doing this thing called education a little differently.

Just to show the architectural similarities, here are two shots of both schools. Don't panic about the smoke in the background of the WGS pic - that was from a waste oil factory a few suburbs away!

 

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In reply to Kelly Christopherson's recent post:

My youngest son has nearly finished his first season of under 10 basketball in a team much like your first few seasons – they have only managed one win against a team in a similar spot to them. They are mainly beginners and even at this age group have come up against very accomplished teams who have had it over them in terms of skill. But we’ve seen two types of coaching – the first from a few teams who smashed our team by scores like 70 – 0. Their coaches had their team playing intimidation basketball, pressuring them at all opportunities and went all out to amass the hugest score – at the expense of any confidence my son’s team may have had. Our coach is very patient and said that he didn’t expect anything in terms of results from the boys for at least half the season as he would be teaching a lot of foundation skills and concepts. But those big losses took a lot of joy out of the team. I’m not too sure what the coaches in charge got out of those wins either.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47611288@N00/3222971810/

The last two games we’ve played have been against other teams near the top of the ladder. But their coaches were very different. After every score, they had their team retreat back to their defensive half so that our team had the chance to bring the ball back down the court. They weren’t playing the intimidation game – they could see from the first few minutes that they had our measure – so they concentrated on specific plays, specific formations in defence. And for a change, my son’s team felt like they could breathe, that they could work some things out for themselves without a gun player from the opposition swooping in and making them pay.

When they scored for the first time in the first of these two games, the opposition parents even cheered and applauded! Even they lost easily, they walked off the court feeling a lot better about themselves, felt like they had showed improvement and felt that the opposition hadn’t smashed them, and had shown them some respect even though they are a team of learners. The winners still got their win, got to improve by working on specific plays and left everyone feeling like the game was fun.

I really like our coach and he is great with the boys. But if we were looking to join one of the other teams in the competition, I know where I’d be taking my son. Thanks for sharing your story, Kelly.

Ever tried to keep on top of a school Network without a technician to call on. I am at the moment and every minute I spend creating Active Directory profiles or fixing an uncooperative wireless keyboard, I am appreciating their worth more and more. Even knowing the process for logging a warranty issue on a faulty laptop or restarting the server after a power outage is something that I normally can rely on to be technician's business so that I can focus on the bigger picture of improving learning outcomes for the students.

I was lucky to work with two really talented technicians over the course of 2011. The first is still back at my old site (as well as my own kid's primary school where he has helped agitate for some of the changes I've pushed for as a parent) but of course, I left there for a new opportunity at Woodville Gardens. There I was lucky enough to work with the second who did the leaving this time for an enticing position at another school (in an ironic twist). Between the two of them, I have seen the best traits of this crucial role in Australian schools.

A good technician is someone who says, "Tell me what you want to do, and I'll do my best to make it happen. I'll explain your best options but always allow your knowledge of learning priorities right of way."

A good technician knows how to translate technical jargon and processes into something that most educators can understand. A good technician is flexible and strives to minimise downtime in the classroom. A good techie knows how to self prioritise, to give suggestions and inside knowledge to the coordinator or AP, savvily stretch the finite budget and find the balance between troubleshooting and setting up stuff for the near and longer term future.

Unfortunately, we don't pay school based technicians much and many move on to more lucrative opportunities in private enterprise. In primary school, we ask them to be generalists and know a bit of everything but in contrast to much of the private sector, school technicians enjoy greater autonomy and less pressure from more understanding clients (the teachers!). Although as I juggle my AP responsibilities and the very basics of technical troubleshooting and early year network maintenance, I feel quite pressured!

So, if you're a technician in the Adelaide metro area looking for a challenge at a great school, let me know. I can't hold down this role forever. And you know you will be valued.