The Power of the GDST

Last week, we were fortunate enough to host the annual GDST Senior Leadership conference at Blackheath High School. 

You often hear about the direct benefits to students of being part of our family of 25 schools with student conferences, an alumnae of 75,000, sports tournaments and mentors but the part you don’t hear about often is the huge network of teaching professionals and how working together benefits your daughter immensely. 

Two days were spent working with leading experts in the field of education, discussing Design Thinking, leadership, curriculum design, being prepared for political obstacles, and the most exciting part for me, sharing ideas around Teaching and Learning.  Networking and working in small groups with colleagues has unlimited benefits to students and I am so pleased that the girls will benefit directly from new relationships forming and existing ones strengthening. 

I feel so very fortunate to work with the most talented professionals I have come across in my career so far and never take that for granted, but multiply that by 25 and suddenly more doors are opened than we could hope for. The session I led on Developing a Teaching and Learning Culture with Mrs Gunton resulted in creating a network between schools based on our priorities. This means I am now looking forward to meeting up with colleagues from three schools to see how we can develop feedback further and run our own classroom-based research.

Having these opportunities to grow professionally is entirely for the benefit of our girls at Blackheath High School and having such inquisitive and open minds in our students makes the job even more enjoyable!