From your Chapter President
Dear Members,
This is my last newsletter for Educate Plus as I am stepping down as President at the AGM in November. I would like to thank all institutions for supporting our WA Chapter as members, and I encourage everyone to continue their membership in 2021. It has been a wonderful experience, and I would like to invite you to get involved as a committee member of our branch. You get to work with some amazing people from within our industry. The Commitment is not large, and the team we have is fantastic and love to try new ideas. If you are interested in knowing more, please do not hesitate to contact one of the Committee Members or me. Please click on the button below to access the online Nomination form. We would love you to come on board.
What a year! This year COVID has provided us with many things – firstly the overuse of certain words and phrases, and I have to say that I cringe every time I hear them used. Here are some of the most used terms. I have to say I thought ‘unprecedented’ would have been higher.
Jokes aside, it has been a year we will never forget, and unfortunately, we are not through it yet. What I have loved, from a school perspective, is that it has forced us to improve our digital skills, especially in the teaching and learning space. We have had to be agile, creative, innovative and be able to pivot quickly in a new direction. It has shown us what opportunities technology can provide, us, and in some cases, we will not be reverting back to our old ways.
For me, in the Community Relations Department, we have been using Zoom for Parent Engagement. We use Zoom Meetings for our parent book clubs and Zoom Webinars for parent presentations; for example, we did one on Anxiety. What I found was that the attendance grew, and we were able to engage our boarding community more. Also, with the ability to record the sessions easily, we have added this to our parent resource library too. I don’t believe that we do everything via Zoom as we need in-person interaction, but I definitely think that some events will continue to run this way.
I look forward to seeing you at the final event this year, our AGM on Wednesday 11 November starting at 2.00 pm. This will consist of some PD, the AGM (10 minutes) and then a celebratory glass of wine and lots of networking. Please save the date! More information to follow soon.
Margo Bastow
Educate Plus WA Chapter President
