3 April 2017

Newsletter Articles

Principals supporting Principals… Principals supporting Principles!

Kia Ora

Please find this week’s Monday Mailing below.

You can access all previous Monday Mailings by clicking here or going to http://www.wpa.ac.nz/1/newsletter_sets/1-monday-mailing/years/2017 in your web browser.

Kind regards
Pat

Schools' Challenge - Trots Night

Help!! Play-based Learning

A teacher from a Hamilton school would like to talk with other teachers and maybe even visit their class/school if they are working with Play based or Discovery learning for junior tamariki. If you can help, please email principal@deanwell.school.nz and I will pass the information on.

WPA Dates

Schools' Challenge - Trots Night

April 13, last day of term 1.

$150 a table of 10.

To book go to the WPA website below.

For further information email johnc@cdh.org.nz or phone John Coulam on 0272 538 634.

Reminder: Pay Your WPA Subs…

Please pay your WPA subscription as soon as possible by clicking here. This is even more important if you wish to take advantage of the subsidies provided on the WPA Road Trip, NZPF Conference, etc.

WPA Road Trip – Auckland!

If you are thinking about going please book now. We have only a limited number of rooms available for our accommodation and these are filling up. Once the rooms are filled up it is unlikely we will be able to book more. We do need to know the final numbers by the 7th of April. Go on to the WPA website to make your booking.

Visit a range of Auckland schools from Wednesday 10th to Friday 12th May 2017.

NZPF Conference Queenstown

Tuesday 19th September - Friday 22nd September 2017.

The WPA is subsidising this trip by $35,000.

Accommodation

Flights

Scholarships

Registration

NZEI Rural & Teaching Principals Conference

The Waikato NZEI Principal Council has 2 scholarships to cover the registration costs to attend the NZEI Rural and Teaching Principals conference in Christchurch this year.

Available to any U1 or U2 principal within the Waikato area and who is a member of NZEI and is planning on attending the conference held June 21-23.

Each scholarship is worth $600 to cover the cost of registration. Transport accommodation and meals are the responsibility of the attendee.

Please email your interest in the scholarship to Scott Wilson from Puahue School by 8 May 2017; swilson@puahue.school.nz

Subject line: NZEI Rural and Teaching Principal Scholarship
Your Name
School Name
U size

Results of the successful recipients will be published in the WPA Monday mailing 15th May 2017.

Tech Tip – Password Manager

Passwords are a nightmare, especially on systems which require the user to change their password at prescribed frequencies.

I have been using an app for Android phones called aWallet to keep track of my passwords. It is excellent… and free! Highly recommended.

The free version does not sync between devices… but that is not an issue for me.

It is also available for Apple products. I have not tried this version.

Hmmm…

Hauora… Health & Happiness

A Reading…

Carol Dweck Explains The ‘False’ Growth Mindset That Worries Her

Carol Dweck has become the closest thing to an education celebrity because of her work on growth mindset. Her research shows that children who have a growth mindset welcome challenges as opportunities to improve, believing that their abilities can change with focused effort. Kids with fixed mindsets, on the other hand, believe they have a finite amount of talent that can’t be altered and shy away from challenges that might reveal their inabilities.

Dweck believes educators flocked to her work because many were tired of drilling kids for high-stakes tests and recognized that student motivation and love for learning was being lost in the process. But Dweck is worried that as her research became more popular, many people oversimplified its message.

In an interview with The Atlantic, Dweck explained to reporter Christine Gross-Loh all the ways she sees growth mindset being misappropriated. She says often teachers and parents aren’t willing to take the longer, more difficult path of helping students identify strategies and connect success to those strategies. Instead, her complicated psychological research has gotten boiled down to, “praise the effort, not the outcome.” Dweck also explained what she means by a “false” growth mindset:

False growth mindset is saying you have growth mindset when you don’t really have it or you don’t really understand [what it is]. It’s also false in the sense that nobody has a growth mindset in everything all the time. Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets. You could have a predominant growth mindset in an area but there can still be things that trigger you into a fixed mindset trait. Something really challenging and outside your comfort zone can trigger it, or, if you encounter someone who is much better than you at something you pride yourself on, you can think “Oh, that person has ability, not me.” So I think we all, students and adults, have to look for our fixed-mindset triggers and understand when we are falling into that mindset.

I think a lot of what happened [with false growth mindset among educators] is that instead of taking this long and difficult journey, where you work on understanding your triggers, working with them, and over time being able to stay in a growth mindset more and more, many educators just said, “Oh yeah, I have a growth mindset” because either they know it’s the right mindset to have or they understood it in a way that made it seem easy.

The interview is full of tips for parents and educators, including the differences between young children and older ones.

A Thought…

A Laugh

Accidents waiting to happen…

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