Brian's Blog

Within the scope of education, leadership plays a crucial role in shaping the future of students, educators, and the broader educational community. True leadership goes beyond administrative tasks and strategy; it embraces the character traits of integrity, humbleness, and faith. These virtues, when embodied by leaders, nurture a culture of trust, accomplishment, and celebration, promoting a sense of flourishing among all stakeholders.  In this longer blog post written to honour the work of a dear colleague, I will explore the significance of academic knowledge and its integration into high-quality teaching and learning curricula. Additionally, I will examine the essential elements of social-emotional wellbeing and the value of offering unwavering support during times of change and innovation. I invite you to continue reading! This article draws upon the extensive experience of a long-standing friend and colleague and is influenced by six other critical educational leaders that I h...

Today has been another packed day of inspiration, presentations, networking and great take home practical ideas. Check out the Gafe Summit website for future events. Big shout out to Chris Betcher , Anthony Speranza , Matthew Wells , Daena Scheuber for some amazing presentations.

Over the past few months I have had the privilege to learn under Simon Breakspear a world-class educator and leadership consultant. Pairing this learning with the books from George Couros, Carol Dweck, Eric Sheninger, Matt Miller, Tom Whitby and Steve Anderson, I am convinced the system of education we have is sitting on the verge of a major paradigm shift. This shift is one both in the structure of the teacher/student relationship and how teachers carry out their teaching tasks. Without a doubt we can observe this revolution, the speed of change in education is rapidly growing. More and more experts are stating that we need to build the capacity of teachers to be agile in embracing the new and developing freeing them to navigate the disruptions well. It has been often noted by many educational organizations change had been implemented in the past because it was driven by novelty or the next great “trend” thus not gaining traction and creating a causal effect. George Couros ...

I was recently asked by a group of preservice teachers what has been the most powerful professional development strategy that I had undertaken during my career? This was a profound question because they had give me permission to share with them a practice that had revolutionized my world as an educator. My response initially took them by shock but as I explained my reasoning and philosophy they discovered an untapped supply of experts, experience and resources. Social media once was just thought of as a means to connect social stories, updates and status but in recent times there has been a professional revolution with many educators taking up Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest etc. as a means for quality professional development. It has become a form of "Guerrilla Professional Development" where educators have access to professional conversations happening around the world anytime, anywhere, without cost and restriction. For me my choice in social media has been Twitte...

Recently I was asked at a conference why was I encouraging my teachers to have a class blog and also begin professional reflective blogs. My response was something in the lines of - one of the greatest desires of parents is to get more information about how their child is doing in class. Their key questions are often: What they are learning?  What is the social climate of the classroom?  Are they really happy? It is not that class blogs can definitively answer this but they do give a snapshot. They allow parents a portal to see in on the classes learning as a whole and help them facilitate discussions at home. The second reason I have been encouraging the use of blogging is that it provides a portal for students to have learning curated. My students whenever they need to go out on the internet always go via our classes blog . Parents have commented that this is a common routine at home also. I have the key topics tap with learning resources behind these. The blog bec...