Mr Johnston's Profile
About me
Me on Hoy with the Second year trip
A keen traveller it was my desire to explore that brought me to Orkney to take up a temporary 6 month contract - that was 2 years ago and counting.... I am still exploring and really appreciate the long summer holiday which allows me to venture further afield than I would be able to in many other professions.
I have spent some time in and around the UK and Western Europe as well as some time in China, Kenya, Canada and Russia. It is my overwhelming desire to spend my 30th birthday on top of Machu Picchu and the rest of that summer exploring Peru.
I am a teacher of Mathematics and still learning everyday. I am studying an OU course in computing, my first distance learning module. I am on the Executive Committee of Orkney's local EIS branch.
I have spent some time in and around the UK and Western Europe as well as some time in China, Kenya, Canada and Russia. It is my overwhelming desire to spend my 30th birthday on top of Machu Picchu and the rest of that summer exploring Peru.
I am a teacher of Mathematics and still learning everyday. I am studying an OU course in computing, my first distance learning module. I am on the Executive Committee of Orkney's local EIS branch.
A Brief Education and Work History.
I attended the university of Edinburgh and studied Electonics and Electrical Engineering. After that I spent a year as an Electrotechnical Officer with P&O Princess Cruises before returning to university to do my PGDE, this time attending the University of Strathclyde.
I succesfully completed my probationary year at Balwearie High School in Kirkcaldy before taking up my current post at Kirkwall Grammar School.
I succesfully completed my probationary year at Balwearie High School in Kirkcaldy before taking up my current post at Kirkwall Grammar School.
My Pedagogical Beliefs
If I picture my perfect classroom it's a dais in ancient Greece where teachers and students congregate to discuss ideas and in doing so learn from one another. Where age is not a factor and subject is not restrictive. Where the ideas and connections of maths, philosophy, science and theology flow and inspire one another. I had high hopes that some of this inter-disciplinary learning would be structured and progressed through CfE in a way that has not yet happened. I have strong beliefs that making connections between disciplines and have students encounter problems in a single context but across multiple disciplines will not just aid their depth of learning but improve their ethos and enjoyment of a subject too. In my classroom, this perfect ethos and IDL work and collaboration is still very much in development. So far I have trialed a joint English-Maths-Literacy project, developed resources for a joint Maths-Science project that (in maths) is now on the course schedule and I am very much on the look out for new ways to bring real-world maths into the classroom in a way students can understand.