Denise Walsh

Deidre provided three workshops for us in July 2015 as part of our teacher in-service week.

One workshop led the staff through a review of the Mission statement and our new tag line. This workshop fostered great conversations that have continued throughout the school year. Deidre organised the workshop in a way that was engaging and resulted in concrete outcomes that have continued to be beneficial for the school.

The second workshop was for middle management, both academic and administration, in leadership skills and challenges. This was a small group with very different cultural backgrounds and understandings of leadership. Deidre took on this challenge and supported each participant to grow in his/her understanding of his/her own leadership role in the school. This was our first foray into small, tailored workshops and it was quite successful and appreciated.

The last workshop was a two-day Board training workshop. Deidre immediately switched gears and led our Board to a deeper understanding of its function. She engaged both new and returning Board members and ensured that all members felt encouraged to participate. Her work with the Board helped set us up for our successful CIS/WASC visit that just occurred last month.

As you can see, Deidre is very versatile and can support many strategic PD aims. It was invaluable for us to have her with us for these days; covering so many of our identified needs.  This was done through a very thorough planning process and input from myself as Head of School, which I appreciated. Deidre doesn’t just take her same old presentation /workshop out of the closet and bring it, she considers the needs of the particular school and comes up with a differentiated program – modelling what we are asking of our teachers!

Denise Walsh
Bali Island School
December 2015