Diocesan School and onwards...

Well, it's been extremely difficult to get online over the past few days, so I think we've all got a bit behind in our posts. I want to talk a bit about Diocesan before moving on. Diocesan is an all-girls, decile 10, private school in Epsom, Auckland. The roll is about 1450, with students from New Entrants to Year 13. We mostly focused on Years 7-13, specifically on an area called the LEC (Learning Enhancement Center). I was most impressed with this. The LEC deals with all kinds of learners: those with identified needs, those with as-yet unidentified needs, gifted students, and self-referred students. In other words, ANYONE who wants or needs enhancement with their learning. Girls can make appointments and receive help in any area, often in literacy related things (e.g. reading and understanding science texts). Some girls are part of a literacy program that they can elect to do in place of one of their subject options, others make appointments to see an LEC teacher at appropriate times. The gifted program was neat. I got to see about 12 girls in Years 7 and 8 working on an inquiry project about creating technologically based clothing. The girls had already discussed the ethics involved with this, and were now designing an outfit that would suit a particular group of people. They had a kind of design brief, but they had a lot of freedom. The discussions the girls had (they worked in pairs) were outstanding. Here's the really interesting thing. The girls in the group can be selected through testing, parent ID, teacher ID, or self-appointment. The program is always run as a high level gifted program, so any girl who really doesn't "fit" will drop out after a short while. In other words, it is a program available to all, focussed on gifted (not bright learners), and seems great fun. Some of the girls in the group are not in the top groups at school for math or English, but are working with the gifted - because they are. I thought this was fantastic! h After Dio, we took a plane to Christchurch where we spent the night in jail. I shared a cell with Jody, and the girls were next door. Next day, we took a train trip to Greymouth and it was amazing. Such scenery!! We spent the following day in Greymouth and Jody and I rented a car to drive up the coast. The girls opted to stay behind and go to the beach. We drove up to the pancake rocks and then to a seal colony just south of Westport. It was a fantastic drive (ranked one of the 101 (?) things to do before you die by the BBC!!!). Saturday had us returning on the train and again spending the night in jail. On Sunday we went up the East Coast by bus (the train is not operational because of the earth quake), then over the Cook Strait by ferry. We spent the night in a motel and today we went to Victoria University. Had a great day talking to different people who work there, including several advisors. We learned a lot, but I can't go into it quite yet as we're all attempting to share the same Internet code! LOL