Thursday - Fuller, Hudson and our last full day in Tempe

Annie headed off to Fuller for the day with Crissi and I headed to Hudson with Janice. I spent the morning in several classes, including the PE special session. Specials are things like PE, Music, library. They are subjects outside of literacy and maths which have a very high focus in classrooms. Children continued to be intrigued by our accents and fascinated by stories of New Zealand. Annie stayed at Fuller for the day. Time to get last minute photos inside schools.
Janice and I meet Dustin, Caila, Jude and wee Norah for lunch. They are such a lovely family. It was so good for them to take time out so Dustin could meet me, particularly as he had a one man show that night. After lunch we headed for a PD session in the district boardroom. There were a lot of people there from nearly all of the schools, principals included. The district board was announcing a new initiative that partnered the schools with a company researching the usefulness of its digital assessment of Dibbles burst and teaching programme. Dibbles is the assessment tool used in most schools to gauge reading fluency. Half the schools were treatment schools using the programme, targeted PD and software package, including the use of iPod touches (4per school) and the other half were control schools who had some PD and the software including iPod touches. It was an interesting session and reminded me of the differences between the two countries approaches to learning to read. This was particularly noticeable when the presenter for Dibbles burst said a child had asked her when they could read a real book? Her response was when you can decode. Her thinking was, If you can't decode then you can't read - right. It is important to remember children learn to read in both systems, it's just that they are very different. Teachers in both systems sit somewhere on the whole language - phonics continuum. The presenter was strongly at the phonics end. Crissi's school is a treatment school and Janice's is a control school. I got to meet up with Christine and Marybeth again and this time got photographs.
After this we headed for Clifton and Mairi's as Declan had made a sun catcher for me. It was a saguaro cactus with a cactus wren inside it. I was really touched. Back at Casey and Janice's to say goodbye to Heather and Adi. I had found a crocodile soft toy the day before and bought it as the mascot for Heather's school is the gator. How lucky was I to meet all of Casey and Janice's children and grandchildren during my stay and then so many of them on my last day - thanks guys and come visit me!
From there we headed out to Janice's masters class. Her lecturer, Dr Delecki, was great. To become a principal in Tempe requires specific qualifications. They asked me what was needed in NZ. I said a teaching qualification and a board willing to employ you. Again the differences in our systems were underlined.
Back a Janice's place to share what was left of our final evening, Caila, Dustin and Norah were there as Casey had been baby sitting Norah. After they left it was present time, last minute packing and bed. Thank you Crissi for organising Fed ex for us.
So hard to believe it is almost all over.