A manic two weeks of planning and learning!

Week 2 and 3 have been manic!

What the haps highlights:

• Budget- continued work on the budget in preparation for the Board Meeting
• Met with Georgina and Paul from Spotless to begin the FF&E review
• Updated the Team with the events and plans for the first month
• Engaged with TELA to procure a device for myself and the DPs
• Worked on the creation of a vision media to share with the communicaty
• Visited Ken White at the MOE to discuss some queries around staffing and funding
• Met with Phil from Torque IP to discuss the IT infrastructure that will suit our needs
• Met with Roy Fletcher from NZEI to learn more about how to engage with this organisation
• Communication with School Docs to set up our school with a site for policies and procedures
• First official Board meeting of 2018 held at Huapai District School

Key Learning:
FTP Meetings were fruitful.  First meeting with Brian Gower (FTP Leadership Advisor) to discuss how the support will work with the First Time Principal's Programme.  It turns out that as I am in the establishment year of my school, I will receive three years of support.  Brian suggested that I hold off on enlisting an official mentor, and that aligned well with my thinking, as I am currently being unofficially mentored by Daniel @HPPS, Luke @OJC and Heath @OrmPS.  I will likely be in a better position to identify an 'official' mentor next year.  Other items we covered were my appraisal, tips and tricks for leadership info gathering, collaboration with other schools, budgeting advice, the leadership dimensions, the role of the Board Chair and Governance Facilitator and suggested professional learning/readings for me.  We will meet twice a term and I keep an agenda/notes of these.

I have also spent a few days with Mel Bland (who is anything but!) from Te Uho O Te Nikau.  We visited Ken White at the Ministry to gain clarity on how our schools are funded, to gain access to the associated policy, to get copies of the 'blue dot' map for our schools and to pitch for increased staffing.  Mel, Tony, Gen and I, along with our Boards, are all keen to have the Ministry review their policy around how new primary schools are staffed to gain equity with junior colleges/high schools.  We would like to be able to recruit and hire the Learning Coaches for Term 4 of this year.  Ken has suggested we contact Resourcing and that is our next step.  In addition to this, Mel and I met with Phil from Torque IP to review the maps of our schools and discuss IT infrastructure and procurement. I am very excited about how we can align our vision, the needs of our learners with future focused digital technologies.  Procurement will start in Term 2.  Other points covered in our meetings included:

• Planning our trip to Sydney for the SingularityU Conference
• Planning our trip to Christchurch to visit recommended schools
• Isthmus planting designs for both schools- lovely designs for both schools
• PL Plan- we are keen to band together to share PL costs for some 'retreat weekends' in Term 4 (if we do not get our staffing requests approved, we do get funding to release the teachers we appoint for 5 days in term 4) and we identified a number of other local, national and global PL opportunities that could be enlightening 
• Shared and discussed the Principal Report formats that each are using with their EBoT

But... the standout learning highlight of the past two weeks for me was joining in (crashing?) the Flat Bush Schools PL at Ormiston Junior College that featured Tony Burkin from Interlead.  Tony challenged us all to unpack and strive for Stretch Collaboration in our quest to lead "Metanoia".  Moving from Conventional Collaboration where we Force- Adapt-Exit to Stretch Collaboration involves us accepting that there cannot always be harmony within relationships:

• Stretch #1 recognise that people have different ideas- dialogue and fighting take place and are preferred to silence.  (Leader- foster DISSONANCE)
• Stretch #2 Adapt- experiment with finding a way forward, take risks to see what works rather than trying to build the ultimate plan in advance before committing (Leader- cannot be people pleaser)
• Stretch #3 we cannot control what other people will do.  Shift in how we understand our role (Leader from director to contributor) in the problem-solution.   "Ïf you can't see how you are part of the problem then it follows logically there no way you can be part of the solution except from the outside through force".  

So whatever the problem is... well-being, culture, accountability-responsibility, work-life balance, providing thinking space, educator voice, building team, PD vs PL, grit/growth mindset, failing is learning, expertise, defining our role... we have to use Stretch Collaboration.  This will take considerable learning and discomfort to embed as standard practice within our teams in our schools.  See my brain dump from the day in my blog post here.


What's coming up:
Looking forward to Sydney!

(see the next blog post for the awesomeness from SingularityU !)