NEWSLETTER August/September '22

Educational Coordinators Induction Programme

We had a very successful 3-day induction programme for the Educational Coordinators of Lumina Educational Institutions. We started with a very fruitful discussion about our mission, what we do and how we work with the schools.

Our sessions included "Setting SMART goals for personal growth and school development", "Planning School Development", "How to start with CPD and Performance Management", "Leadership Team Evaluation", and "Effective Collaboration". We loved the energy and passion of our colleagues!

We work with 13 Lumina Schools in Romania and each school has one or two educational coordinators assigned to work along with the Lumina Education Team.

Boosting Synergy Before the School Start

Building team bonds are essential for schools to engage teachers at work. After a long day of induction, our educational team enjoyed the time together at an ESCAPE ROOM (captive.ro) followed up by dinner. We learnt more about each other and boosted our synergy before school started! It was also a lot of fun joining our colleagues from Spectrum Ploiesti where we practised our bowling skills. Thank you for the invitation!

Setting SMART Goals and the Power of Feedback

Setting SMART Goals makes you focus on what matters the most, motivates, and keeps you accountable. After carefully considering our priorities and the reality of our school contexts, we have set our SMART goals for 2022/23, and each goal's success criteria/indicators in detail. We believe that this practice will allow us to measure the progress throughout the year.

Our team joined the ICHB Induction Week Programs at Pallady and Colentina campuses, and we presented the essence of setting SMART goals for professional growth and the power of feedback.

Our Collaboration with Edusoft Technologies

We continue to have productive meetings with?Edusoft Technologies SRL?team and discussed the progress on the development of our new behaviour management and learning modules of myEDUcare.

Newly Qualified Teachers Training

We had an exciting start to the learning journey with our Newly Qualified Teachers. We talked about: Setting expectations and SMART goals, Active Learning and Students' Voice, and the details of their microteaching tasks. The motto our participants came up with was about connections, empathy, open-mindedness, creativity and hard work. Thank you everyone for your involvement. Our monthly training sessions are designed exclusively for the newly qualified teachers joining from 13 Lumina schools across the country. The programme will cover the basic components of the "Framework for Teaching" and allow the participants to apply their learning in "microteaching" sessions.

Mentorship Training

We completed two-day online synchronous sessions for Mentorship Training. The programme covered “Mentors' roles and responsibilities”, “Mentorship Timeline”, “Setting Smart Goals and Action Planning”, “Using MyEducare”, and “Learning Walkthrough with a focus/ Discussions and setting actionable goals”, and will introduce the new “Framework for teaching” self-paced online. Sessions were hosted in English by Mr Vugar Babayev and Mr Sinan Ko?ak and in Romanian by Mrs Raluca Dinu and Mr Serdal Uteu for our mentors. As we always aim for growth, receiving feedback is essential to us. At the end of these two days, we shared a survey and successfully answered all the concerns or questions addressed by the mentors.

There are over 30 mentors joining our training programme this academic year.

Consultation Meetings

Our Education Consultants conducted monthly consultation meetings with each school leader and the educational coordinator, to discuss this new academic year's goals related to the school development plan and professional development and the performance management of newly qualified teachers and mentorship programme. Huge thanks to our colleagues for their commitment!

wantED programme - Visiting Quantum Robotics

We have just launched a new educational programme - wantED. It is designed to share the best practices and to boost collaboration among Lumina Schools. The first wantED event took place at?Liceul Teoretic International de Informatica Bucuresti, and the student-led Quantum Robotics Club members shared their success stories with the educational coordinators of other Lumina schools. Participants were fascinated with the students' dedication, hard work and collaboration. Their teamwork, helping other schools and project management skills were exemplary.