Thank You!
Greetings,
Our inaugural whole-of-system conference at the Mater Dei campuses in Wagga Wagga was a fabulous coming together of members of the Diocesan schools community. You came, you listened, you talked, you celebrated, you slept-over and you did it all again the next day! Your feedback was authentic and targeted, your mental models were obviously challenged and you overwhelmingly agreed that we should do it again soon! We at the CSO will have to re-examine our vision, adjust our mental models, tweak and fine-tune our systemic structures and patterns of behaviour before even thinking of planning and delivering the next event! We may be ready in 5 years!
Our conference theme, Celebrate, Innovate, Collaborate provided many opportunities for hearing new ideas, celebrating effective practitioners from within our schools and colleges, making new connections with ideas and colleagues and developing our understanding of our education community. With the input from our keynote speakers and workshop presenters we each had a wonderful opportunity to both deepen our understandings about the future needs of the students we teach, and gain insights into the ways of being which effective practitioners are currently using in their classroom practice.
A re-occurring theme of the conference presenters was the identifiable and measureable impact of quality teaching on student learning. The well-accepted measure of the success of a conference is the transferring of ONE idea into the practice of a conference delegate. More than one new idea has enormous benefit for delegate and student alike.
My call was to innovate on the scale of person, school and system. This call remains. I thank you for your engagement with the conference presenters and your presence at our inaugural gathering. The presentations which are being made available on this website will help you in your reflection on the conference and serve as a source of inspiration in the days ahead.
Warm Regards,
Alan Bowyer
Director of Schools, CSO Wagga Wagga
Conference Chair 2011