The School Corridor Tatler

I was SO excited when I saw how Hillwood Primary School In Lavender Hill has beautified their entrance to the school.  The clinical look was gone and in its place, an inviting space that welcomes you as soon as you set foot into the administration block of the school. From left: Ms Powell, Ms Johannes, Ms Williams and Ms Adams, the SGB chair. Three teachers - Ms Powell, Ms Johannes and Ms Williams were the project managers. Mr Klein, the caretaker principal at the school explained that these three teachers worked after school and over weekends to complete the project. I wanted to know what prompted the makeover of the foyer area. "The area looked drab. We wanted a bright, sunny colour and wanted the foyer to be warm and welcoming," said Ms Powell. "We recruited painters from the community, via Ms Adams, the school governing chairperson, and roped in Tarno, a talented artist who is employed at Levana Primary School. It is the first time that he has attempted t...

Today Eugene Daniels, gave a powerful talk at our SMT forum about the deep change we need if we want to turn schools around. Eugene Daniels's message is clear: Let's teach beyond teaching to targets. Let's teach to each child's dream".  If children do not succeed, adults have to take responsibility for the children's failure. This is a 360 degree turn, flipping traditional thinking that blames the child for not achieving. Eugene Daniels having a meaningful conversation with our school leadership teams You must experience Eugene Daniels to benefit from his evidence-based talk about deep change. Besides drawing on literature, Eugene's shared how he is implementing the model of deep change and he gave us a few practical tips on how schools can deepen their own transformation.  These are a few of the insights that I gleaned from the talk. We must learn to do things differently. We should move away from doing more of the same. If we don't l...