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Careers at DWC
> Information to Candidates About DWC
> Job Vacancies
Introduction
I was offered the position of Founding Principal of Day Waterman College (DWC) in December 2007, and accepted immediately and with alacrity.
Although my 'home' country is now Thailand (as opposed to the land of my birth, England), I first spent two fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable weeks in mid-January visiting Nigeria, meeting people, visiting partner primary schools and the huge campus that will house the Day Waterman College community.
I have recently arrived in Lagos to take up my post and am looking for talented local staff to form the team that will help establish and subsequently develop the school.
The most impressive features of that first visit, however, were the friendliness, happiness and warm hospitality of the people, regardless of their material prosperity, as well as the formidable team of talented and deeply committed colleagues who form the Founding Team, which has been put together by the Promoter, Tayo Aderinokun.
At this time, Day Waterman College is more a dream than a reality, opening as it does in September 2008, and what follows is more of a personal commentary than a statement of fact, more rhetorical than real, but it is a dream that will certainly become a beacon in the world of international education.
The Challenge of Day Waterman College
There are so many potential strengths that DWC is designed to build upon and develop into something very special. It is the vision of the Founding Team that I share wholeheartedly, as well as their passion that will ensure its realisation.
This is an opportunity for any career teacher and professional educator - whether relatively new to the profession, or longer-serving people such as me. It was an opportunity that I simply could not resist, and one that I hope you will also recognise and want to take!
The buildings will be of an exceptionally high quality in terms of design and facilities provided, and designed with my and your professional input in the first few years, as they are completed over time. The site is of considerable size, allowing us the opportunity to offer a wide range of educational opportunities within a green, peaceful and natural environment, not far from Abeokuta.
Students and Parents
The school seeks to offer aspiring and discerning parents a genuine and exciting alternative to sending their children to the UK and the USA for a sound education - and an alternative that also focuses on the preservation and development of their essential Nigerian culture.
More importantly, according to my core values, the school will offer an identical educational entitlement to students whose families do not have the economic and material means to otherwise access such enabling learning experiences and opportunities. This does not translate into one or two scholarship students, but eventually 30% of the intake at Day Waterman College.
The Curriculum
There has been much professional rhetoric about designing a balanced, relevant and coherent curriculum entitlement for young people of secondary school age, which offers progressive and continuously challenging learning opportunities. The practice has often been thwarted by factors such as government intervention and the pre-eminence of traditional, academic study, leaving little time or resource for offering genuine breadth in an educational entitlement.
Day Waterman College offers a real opportunity for passionate educators to work together to design a curriculum that is genuinely broad and balanced, with a range of learning experiences to promote the personal, social and spiritual development of truly 'rounded' young men and women, with the knowledge, skills and personal qualities to become talented future leaders.
The curriculum will be structured in such a way as to highlight, promote and foster learning experiences that develop meaningful links within and between the following key learning areas:
- Aesthetic, Creative and Physical; Practical and Vocational
- Human and Social
- Linguistic
- Mathematical and Technological
- Scientific
Students will be offered choice - but choice within and not between these curriculum areas. The challenge will be to enable students to experience success in all areas, AND flourish and excel in areas where they display a natural ability or affinity - whether this is academic, practical, creative or physical in nature.
I have waited all my professional life to date to have the opportunity to lead and work with a diverse group of talented colleagues to develop a truly dynamic and comprehensive curriculum entitlement for all young people.
The pivotal role of aesthetic and creative learning experiences will enable students to discover their real selves, and develop the self-esteem and confidence to feel valued and capable of achieving success in all that they decide to do in, and with their lives.
The school management structure will be designed to facilitate exciting and meaningful, cross-curricular learning experiences, with student guidance and staff development very much at the heart of our mutual endeavours.
Management Style
In my experience in education, Head Teachers and Principals are a strange breed of people. Indeed, for a long time, I was not sure that I wanted to be one and accept such a position.
For this reason, and at a time when potential candidates of the calibre we are looking for are possibly considering making several applications, I consider that it is useful for me to outline my management style, or the way that I like to work with colleagues.
I often describe my management style as flexible, depending on circumstances and situations. Overall and at most times, however, I like to work in a collaborative and open manner with colleagues that I have selected as having something special to contribute to our shared endeavour. It is a potentially risky strategy, as it depends in equal measure upon the loyalty, honesty and openness of colleagues - or mutual trust!
I am a firm believer in seeking consensus when making decisions, particularly when there is a correct, but elusive, solution to a problem. To this end, I firmly believe in appointing colleagues who are different to me in terms of character and temperament, so that we can work in a creative and complementary way when deciding on how to move forward. The only given is that colleagues must share a real passion for their work and the education of young people - not workaholics, just dedicated professional teachers.
What We Are Looking For
DWC can only live up to its promise and exceptional facilities if it can attract the quality of human resource to make the vision a reality. In short, we are looking for professional teachers who have a real desire to make a difference and to do something that extends what is currently on offer elsewhere in other schools and colleges in the World.
We are looking for teachers who:
Skill-share Programme
An integral part of our joint efforts will focus on sharing knowledge and skills between local and expatriate staff, to develop exceptional practitioners and facilitators of students' learning. This programme will involve training in the requirements of the English National Curriculum and, in time, those of the Cambridge International Examinations and such like. It will also involve sharing interesting practice with each other, through new teaching and learning materials, seminars and team teaching for example.
I honestly believe that while external training courses can be useful and beneficial, by far the best professional development occurs through in-school training and during the process of professional conversation and decision making. In short, learning from each other and bringing external trainers into the school to facilitate our own development as a learning institution.
Conclusion
I am conscious of the fact that this personal commentary may be somewhat unorthodox in such a context, but it is a genuine attempt to help you decide whether or not you should invest time in making an application to become one of the pioneering staff who will make Day Waterman College not only a leading school in Nigeria or Africa, but one of the most interesting in the World!
Bernie Gilman
(Principal - Day Waterman College)
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