You just never know

I was in Sarah's class during a writing lesson on recounts this morning. Sarah was doing a wonderful job of modeling a recount as the class co-constructed ideas based on the shared experience of going swimming yesterday. After an incident I saw this morning it led me to think about just how important it is to develop the skills of being able to retell an experience with accuracy. As I went out to my car on Papanui Road I saw a woman lying on the side of the road by a motor scooter with a number of people gathered around and an ambulance just arriving. The motorcyclist was not badly hurt but possibly had a broken foot. It turns out that she had been knocked off by someone in a 4 wheel drive. The connection to Sarah's lesson comes in the way in which people at the scene were retelling the events.
Everything at school is done with a purpose and you just never know when you are going to be called on to use the skills you have learnt. Not only the academic skills but the life skills and values we also cover at school. For example, the witnesses to the accident will need to draw on their compassion, resilience and social interaction skills to deal with what has just happened.
That's why we offer a fully rounded programme at Governors Bay. Why spending an afternoon discussing issues is just as important as an afternoon spent writing in books. Education these days can't be measured on how full your books are or how much homework you get, it's so much more than that.
At Governors Bay we are learning to live and living to learn and because of that the students will be well prepared for all facets of life in the years ahead.

In class this afternoon I put forward the idea that 'Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed to another form'. Everyone in the class thought this was a false statement. The ensuing discussion was a delight to behold, the thinking and reasoning that developed demonstrated why in education we have moved away from the days of learning and memorising facts in isolation. While I facilitated discussion, I worked on not influencing it. And the class still do not know if indeed the statement is true or false. I've asked them to think about it and to post any ideas or theories on Edmodo for the rest of us to see. I'm excited to see what develops as theories abound.