MENTOR SHADOWING WELLINGTON SC PART 1

Mentor Shadowing Program (1)

30 Oct 2007 (Tuesday)

Wellington Secondary School 

By Rahinun Mohd. Noor

OBSERVATIONS

1. Counter service and the Principal's Office

We had an experience and clearly seen  a warm welcome, helpful and fast action worker at the counter. The moment we introduce ourselves to the staffs, they are ready to prepare the visitor’s cards for us. As they have already noted  that we will be in their school, so after getting our visitor's cards, she lead us the way to to Principal’s Office. We can see the Main Office were well set-up, and looks like corporate image.  The office is linked to the Principal's office, so it is easily access, just next door. As we take our seat, the Principal Mrs Putrino Jo welcomes us. We see the Principal's  Office is full of information with all the school's data.

2. Meeting the principal

We meet the Principal,  tall and pretty. She gives the briefing, to us, short and brief, together with her Assistant Principal Mr Hugh Blackie, and Student's Affairs Assistant Principal. After being sited we were given some school's  documents;  brochures, pamphlets data and books. At the office, for a few hours, we observed that the Principal had a very  effective communication  amongst the school population, teachers and staffs. We are very lucky that we can be together with the Principal during her meeting with Senior English Teacher. They discuss some programs for the improvement of English Language Unit. As we can see they are very serious to implement some programs for the benefit or the students especially overseas or international  students, which learned English as second language. According to the Principal the school has a very strong foundations of literacy and numeracy achievements of the students of Junior level, that is including English. Such good achievements is due to teacher's corporation and hard-work and also the school also get strong support by the parents, through Parents Teachers Association.

3. Tea break

During the tea break we were given sand wiches and hot tea, brought by the clerk to the Principal's office. And as I can see the other staffs, they had their tea break as simple as a cup of tea or coffee with bread or biscuits. They don’t seem to waste their time unnecessarily. During break time,  we can smell coffee or tea every where. They don't go to the canteen, neither have time to spend at the canteen. They had their coffee or tea while doing their work or having s short meeting. So if we go to the canteen, we can only see students at the canteen during break time.  

4. Three levels of students, and the school's motto

The Principal starts giving a brief explanation to us. The students are having three  levels – Junior, Middle and Senior School. Junior students are from Year 1 to Year 5, Those who are in Year 6 and  7 , is Middle Year Students. Lastly the Senior Students is from Year 8 and 9. So we can see they are having  a nine years compulsory education before going to Junior College

As we walk around the school we can see, as we can feel too, all the school community, master the school’s motto: Caring, Striving, Learning. We can see all the top management and most of the teachers and students are well-verse, mastering their motto in what ever they talk, and discuss. Through our interview, only a few of the teachers, students and staffs not really concern about it,  but they say 'we are working towards it'.

4.Strategic Implementation Plan and Curriculum meeting

The Principal gives me The Strategic Implementation Plan(SIP)  for 2008 as the year 2007 is ending. In October after the Middle Years students finished their exams, they had their holidays. So the teachers will do the management work, they  have time to discuss the SIP, curriculum programs and also students programs, for the coming year. We had a chance to attend their meeting for curriculum programs. We can see high skill and understanding of curriculum, when the Assistant Principal  chaired the meeting with the Heads of Curriculum, which is the Senior Teachers,  where they go into detail on the process of implementation  the programs that will be done through out the year.

5.Support Staff System Meeting

We had a chance to join the meeting of Support System Staffs (nonacademic staffs) for the school. The meeting was very short and brief, which took only fifteen minutes. All the staffs were ready and when the Principal arrived they started off. During the meeting they were informed about many important things. The Principal  inform the support team to make a proposal on the number of officers they want to engage in 2008. and remind them to apply again in the coming year,  if they are on contract basis. She  also gives a briefing about the criteria for the staffs  to be reemploy by the school.

6.Shadowing the school

In the evening after lunch, we had a wonderful time shadowing the school, looking around to see the school facilities. One very unique and new thing is about  transportable classrooms. It is just like cabin room, to cater for the increasing number of students every year.As we go around the school, we stop at International Students Department. The teachers are very busy doing the resetting of the students filing, to cater for the increasing number, which is around 80 of them at the moment.

We also stop at the library. We went to the two computer classes in  the library, and also stop at IT Center besides the library. One thing very practical, at the IT center, they have change permanent spot computer to a steel trolly, which is very convenient to transfer 20 laptops to any class they want to use them. At the center there are two ICT  technicians, being hires, and also there also two computer leading teachers. They are responsible to produce weekly school brochure, and it is prepared without fail every week.

Besides the library is the Special Needs Student’s Center. At this center, the students with the assistant of the teachers are having their activities. It is very convenient as the center is link to the library as one stop center. After that we were brought to had an experience in classroom teaching. In  one class the students are learning about sex education by watching television, with the teacher being a facilitator. We stop at another class, where the students are suppose to learn mathematics, but the  class  is having a  birthday party, for one of the students. It seems that the teacher is not having a lesson as he didn't do the teaching.  Actually teacher is on contract basis and with that incident, the Principal told us that she definitely want to stop the contract service for that teacher. Actually if the teacher really perform, they are having a good pathway program as a teacher.