Simon Cossey Professional Blog

  I liked this thought from the introduction... Teachers need their own good practise modelled back to them.  The introducer said that the Quality Circle Time model reflects back to teachers much of their best practise... many of the things they already do within a framework.  To be honest, I came into this book thinking that Circle Time is a bit cheesy. I didn't have a chance to do the professional development last year, so I've got a bit to catch up on.  Possibly Jenny Mosley has done a very good sales pitch. Or otherwise she is really onto something that connects with a lot of things I've been thinking about lately.  Dialogue. An open forum. Listening. Routine. Feedback circles.  These are some of the key components that I have taken from the book so far.  I'm interested in how it interacts with the Golden Rules and Golden Time. At our school we have focused on Quality Circle Time, we have school values which are similar to the Golden Rules, but we don't include

                                                                            Who's story?? Stories are powerful.  To hear a story is to interact with it.  Stories invite us to find ourselves within them.  Stories invite us... they put forward ideas such as...   "think of yourself this way,"  "this is how the world works..."   And we accept, reject or change these ideas.  I think creation narratives are some of the most important stories that frame how we see ourselves.  I've noticed that in NZ we live in a very secular culture and the dominant culture (as a whole) shows little interest or understanding of creation stories and world views. As a whole, NZ society seems to accept a scientific 'creation story' of an evolution of matter and energy devoid of any 'outside force' that might be considered spiritual. (I think this leaves us aching for meaning, feeling very lost in the universe.) I think this also creates a very interesting environment f