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10 things I learnt from moving our school

14/11/2014

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Picture
Old campus
Picture
New campus
The school I work at, Bradfield Senior College, moved at the start of this term after 20 years in our old location. The move was only 5 minutes up the road from Crows Nest to St Leonards.

We are fortunate to have moved into totally refurbished buildings and learning spaces that have been designed for teaching our vocationally focused HSC courses. Our old campus is being converted into a 7-10 High School.
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10 things I learnt from the move
  1. Moving is time consuming and exhausting.
  2. Things wear out. Schools are hard on resources. 
  3. "Stuff" accumulates in schools. It was a massive job to clean out the old campus, there was lots of material stashed in cupboards and rooms that was broken, out of date or would never be used. When teachers move on they leave behind "stuff" that is never used again.
  4. Don't wait 20 years to begin cleaning up and throwing out.
  5. Change brings energy. You need to be able to use and channel it.
  6. Change is stressful.. Staff and students react differently to change. Some struggle with change and you need to be on the lookout to support them through the process.
  7. Under difficult situations people pull together and can make extraordinary things happen.
  8. The physical environment influences people. "Nice" learning spaces have a positive effect on people.
  9. It is hard when planning and creating new learning spaces to think of all the requirements of the spaces.
  10. Learning spaces come alive when you put things and people into them.


What are your experiences of moving?

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    Author

    Name: Phillip Cooke
    Location: NSW, Australia
    Teacher of HSC Computing (15-19 yr olds), Software Design and Development and Industrial Technology Multimedia. Ex-Maths teacher
    Currently an Assistant Director (Dept Principal) in a Senior High School.

    Interested in: learning, leading, PBL, computational thinking, JavaScript, making maths real, social media works, getting students to code.

    sailing.

    Follow me on Twitter: @sailpip

    Teaching resources including Flash tutorials, multimedia PBL projects, programming notes and worksheets shared @
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