When I left school, I was not sure what I wanted to do but I was very sure that I was not going to be a teacher. 

The main reason for this was a teacher’s comment to my mother in a parent teacher conference:

‘Michael would make a good teacher. He can do many things but he is not particularly expert at any one thing.’

Looking back I think this teacher was trying to say that those who have had to work a bit harder to learn something are often better equipped to teach it. 

At the time I took it as a challenge to become an expert at something other than teaching. 

Now I consider it to be a pretty accurate reflection of how I think many of us are feeling at the moment. It is hard to feel like an expert at any one thing when you are learning multiple new things each day.

We might not feel like experts but today’s assembly was a chance to remind ourselves that we are now good at many things that we did not know how to do at all just a matter of months or weeks or days ago. We could have chosen to stop learning new things so we could feel like experts in the things that we knew how to do a year ago when we first went online. Instead, we continue to choose to learn new things for the sake of our students even if we constantly feel like beginners.

We live in a world that seems to value specialisation and expertise in one area above a more general understanding of many different things. There will always be a need for specialists but we must not forget that generalists will always play a major role in solving complex problems. Generalists are the ones who will make connections between different disciplines that specialists in one discipline are unable to make.

It is good to strive for expertise in everything we do and to encourage that in our children. However, we cannot be an expert in everything and it is actually good if some of us are not experts in anything which, according to my High School English teacher, works out very well for someone like me.

Epstein, David. RANGE: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Riverhead Books, 2021.

NO MORE TRANSITIONAL DAYS THIS YEAR

QUARTER 3 PROGRESS REPORTS

INCLUSION SHARE OUT

Rewordify – An Online Tool that Makes an Easier Version of Text

We all know that an important differentiation strategy is having the “same” text for different levels of English comprehension. 

What about those times when you have the perfect article to share with your students but you know that it is too difficult for some students to access? Check out http://rewordify.com/; a free site where students can copy and paste text into a text box and it instantly produces an easier version for fast understanding. The reworded words are highlighted and the students can even change how the words are highlighted to best match how they learn!

PRIDE OF THE PRINCIPAL

If you have any student (or students) that you would like me to recognise for living the ISY Attributes send me an email with a sentence about why they are to be recognised and a time that I could come on Zoom and say hi. Any time or day is OK – If I have a meeting I’ll suggest another time until we get one that works. I will jump on your Zoom and then I’ll get you to put the student or student(s) into a break out room with me. I’ll have a chat with them and take a screenshot that I will send to their parents.