Bernie Leonard

PLD Consultant

Bernie is a PLD and leadership consultant, based in Timaru. She can help your school or kura in her areas of expertise:

  • student agency and engagement

  • local curriculum design

  • mentoring team leaders

  • assessment for learning

  • student-centred classrooms

  • principal appraisal and mentoring.

Bernie has had many years in education as a classroom teacher, team leader, deputy principal and ICT cluster leader. For the last ten years she has been the principal of St Joseph’s School in Temuka.

Her passion lies in mentoring teachers and students to inquire into how they best learn and setting up the ideal environment for this to happen.

A recent highlight as a school leader has been in leading teachers, students and whānau to a more self-directed model of learning. This has been developed as a result of inquiry through observations, student, teacher and whanau feedback, research and collaboration with other schools. This model is based on all stakeholders’ understandings of “learning to learn” research, then developing a shared understanding of what an “active learner” looks like and then implementing as an evolving learning model. The development of the key competencies/capabilities underpinned this move towards a self-directed learning model.