It’s been a really intense school year, what with the onward march of GLOW, a couple of research projects, ACfE, and the ‘BrainBoosters’ primary/secondary games-based learning project. Lots of interesting work so the  feeling of moving slowly towards the summer break was really kicking in last week big time. Add to this another knee operation, and the recovery, as well as a job interview and you have a recipe for exhaustion. So it was really a great feeling to get a phone call to let me know that I’d been successful at interview been offered a new job.

So, from the start of the new school session in August, I will be the Principal teacher for the Cathkin learning community. Its a new flexible PT post with quite a wide remit. Some of the key tasks and duties of this post are…

1. To contribute to raising attainment and achievement through the dissemination of good practice within establishments and across the Learning Community.

2. To facilitate the delivery of In-service training as required.

3. To ensure that the work undertaken is compatible with current educational thinking e.g. A Curriculum for Excellence.

4. To focus mainly although not exclusively on the P7-S1 interface.

5. To be flexible and adaptable in promoting current innovative practice.

6 . To support a culture and promote a range of strategies to raise attainment and achievement within establishments and across the Learning Community.

I’m really excited about this new job, as it means I can carry on much of the work I’ve been doing on a small scale over the last couple of years, still keep grounded in my own classroom, and continue to support colleagues with their own development, particularly with ICT and the use of games to enhance learning, but in a more ‘formal’ capacity. I sure that my own progress from completing probation in 2005 to this promoted post has been due in no small part to my own professional learning network, and all the advice, help, and ideas that such an extended community of practice can bring to career development.

I’ve always been a big supporter of the learning community concept as a way of supporting a seamless journey through a learning program for our children and young people that’s holistic, skills-based, individual and appropriate, and as far as possible, uninterrupted by the somewhat artificial and constructed ‘stages’ our education system currently throws up as potential barriers to learning – we label them as ‘transition’ stages. I believe the joins between these stages need to become much less visible, and hopefully, I can help the process of smoothing some of them down in my new role.

Of course, the learning community is good for staff development as well, and over the past few years, as I’ve worked in the different establishments, I’ve felt a real sense that the Cathkin Learning community is coming together as an important and very real community of practice – people with shared aims and visions coming together to further their individual and shared learning journeys. Many of these establishments feed into our high school and we owe it to the young people to ensure that they have a positive learning experience which continues the good work done by their primary schools, is free from fear and uncertainty, and that’s appropriate for their own individual needs, both in the academic and emotional/social aspects of their time at school and teachers can play such a significant and influential role in this journey. . I look forward to further supporting colleagues through promoting innovative and cutting edge practice, and developing this aspect of our work in the learning community over the next few years.