Hi all,

My name is Caroline Mathews. I have 17 years teaching experience at Ashbourne Community School, in the areas of Business and ICT. I have been involved with Business, Enterprise and ECDL in the TY Programme; Vocational Preparation (VPG) and ICT in the Leaving Certificate Applied Programme; and Link Modules in the Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme. I have been Business Department Coordinator in a voluntary capacity for 14 years. I have been Young Entrepreneurs Coordinator for many years and been involved in the AIB Build a Bank Competition last year. I am lucky to have worked with, and still work with, supportive and diligent colleagues, in my subject areas and beyond, who have taught me a lot. I am, as we all are, ALWAYS learning. I certainly do not have all the answers!

I enjoy learning new strategies and getting ideas from my colleagues, new teachers to the school and PME students – so if any of you are starting new to a school, a subject or a programme, approach your colleagues for advice and take it from there.

I do have a few points to help you start off the year – I am sure you all have many more to add to the list!

The start of the academic year can be daunting, for all staff. The to-do-list gets longer by the hour and there may be new subjects on your timetable. Take it a step at a time, and look for advice and support from those around you.

We are lucky at ACS to get 1-3 Department Meetings in the first few days of the academic year – this is valuable time, so needs to be used well. In our Business Department, we have a lot of subjects to look after, namely Business Studies, TY Business, TY Enterprise, Accounting, Business, Economics, as well as LCVP and VPG (in the LCA programme). For us, the following are the priorities at the start of the year:

1. We make a list of who the subject teachers are for each year group. This is placed on the door of our Business Department resources press and online in our Business Department files on SharePoint in Office 365. It helps teachers of the same year groups to link in with each other throughout the year.


2. We generally complete an evaluation at the end of May where teachers give feedback on the scheme of work or specification that was been followed the previous academic year. This is important to do in late May if possible, in case there are changes in teachers – it really helps for a smooth handover of classes for the next academic year. It also helps to update or alter the schemes or specifications for the coming year. Teachers can say what they feel needs to be changed, or moved to a different time. For the TY subjects, this can mean substantial changes and perhaps writing new modules or units to cover. For exam subjects, it is imperative that the scheme or specification is covered across the 2-3 years – look for help or advice from a colleague if you are having difficulty following the agreed scheme or specification. Each teacher of a subject prints a copy of the scheme or specification and keeps it in their teacher folder. As each chapter or unit is completed it is ticked off, as well as the month it was done if different to the plan or specification, again to help with next year’s planning. We have non-language groups in Junior and Senior Cycle, so their scheme or specification may differ from the one used in our mixed ability classes. This non-language group is very much mixed ability also, but it can go at a slower pace. Where we have 1 teacher teaching a subject, they will generally do this in their own time, and look for advice if they need it. We generally meet in the computer room, although most of us have Surface Pro devices so we can all be working on documents at the same time if needs be. The schemes or specifications are stored in SharePoint on our Office 365 accounts, so it is available to all teachers and management when needed.


3. We evaluate our Leaving Certificate results and look at the national statistics. Each subject teacher gives a comment about the results in their class, for each subject area. It is important to conclude and made recommendations for future success, whilst remembering that each student and each class group are unique – it does not always turn out the way we or they had hoped. From these comments, we come up with some strategies for success – just to remind all classes what is needed to succeed in each subject area. These have been mentioned to students already but sometimes they need reminding of the importance of attending classes, keeping to deadlines, completing homework and project work, etc. It sets a focus for the year.


4. For PR purposes, we encourage all Business Department teachers to take photos and type up a few lines of different activities throughout the year. We try to keep our school website pages, and all the school’s social media outlets updated with activities that we are doing, e.g. a local entrepreneur visiting an LCVP class, TY students organising a Road Safety Campaign, etc. Our school PR team are great at uploading information and photos quickly, keeping our news current. Importantly, these articles and photos then are readily available at the end of each academic year when our school year book is put together.


5. At the start of each year, if teachers in the Business Department have classrooms of their own, we have posters, and files of key words and formulas ready to print, to display in the classrooms. If you are sharing a classroom with other teachers, try to get at least a small space on the way for your subject. These can be changed as the chapter or unit changes. Also displaying the student’s own work, and retaining the best pieces of work works well.


6. As our school’s Open Evening is in early October every year, we look to how we can promote our subject area at this event. Involving students is important as the incoming 1^st years will relate to them best. Young Entrepreneurs, for us, is a vital part of the Open Evening. It is definitely hard to get companies up and running for this, but it is worth the effort. It brings our subject area to life. We have run Young Entrepreneurs for many years as an extra-curricular activity. We meet interested students every Tuesday at lunchtime for about 20 minutes. We link in with the Meath Local Enterprise Office who run the Student Enterprise Programme. They connect the school up with a Business mentor who comes to the school to do 4 workshops between September and January, during school time. We try not to hit the same days for these 4 workshops (which are 80 minutes long), so students are not missing the same classes. The students in ACS have a later start on a Tuesday, so this is also an appropriate time to have 1 or more of the workshops for us. Enterprise is also part of TY Business and/or TY Enterprise – we encourage TYs to get involved but it is not compulsory that they set up a company. Their enterprising experiences can range from selling cupcakes, to fundraising, to organising campaigns. One of our biggest school events is our annual charity Variety Show at the start of May each year, which involves all years in the school and is organised and ran by TY students. We have had tremendous success at the Student Enterprise Awards. Our TY company togl.bags won the Meath County Final in 2016 and represented ACS at the National Finals in Croke Park. We had 4 companies in the Meath County Final in 2017 across the 3 categories, of Junior, Intermediate and Senior. We won 5 awards and were delighted to bring back 5 trophies to the school. Although the mini-company is predominantly done in the student’s own time, there is a lot involved in coordinating each company, particularly with 1^st and 2^nd year students. They need a bit more guidance. We think the effort put into it by the teachers involved is worth it, as the students get so much out of it, making themselves, their families and their school, very proud – regardless of whether they win.

Once we are settled back to teaching classes, I would always start a revision timetable with 2^nd, 3^rd and 6^th years to cover the work completed in the previous year(s). Exam questions and/or papers can be great here for assessing if the students are revising the work. This is done outside of continuing with the course. A folder to keep these revision questions in works well, as does an A4 refill pad.

We encourage our students to use the Office 365 school email system and to save their work and documents sent to them in the OneDrive of this. This works great for emailing work, solutions, notes, reminders, links to useful resources, etc, to students. I do accept emails on this school email from students who have queries between classes, particularly as I only see most of them once or twice a week. I also use this email system to email short paragraphs of information or interesting facts I come across, e.g. marketing mix for a product, effects of Brexit on Ireland, etc. For the students who actually check their emails, they are reminded about key business terms between classes. With my LCVP classes, students use their OneDrive to save their portfolio items. They share the folder with me. This means that I can keep an eye on their progress completing their work. I can give them guidance and correct drafts this way too. It also reduces the risk of their work being copied by another student as only the student and myself have access to the folder – once they log out correctly from their account every time.

I hope that you have found this information helpful.

I wish you all health and happiness as you begin a new academic year.

Regards,

Caroline Mathews