On Saturday, May 26 our #DreamTeam banded together to amplify our learning at an exciting event at Ormiston Junior College called "Next Practice Assessment". This day was inspired by the removal of National Standards and the presenters shared a range of research, strategies and thoughts on where we will go next as a country. What a real opportunity for us to think and act differently in our new kura. Some takeaways for me included:
transdisciplanry versus interdisciplinary and how this impact assessment practices
need to unpack the 'essence' of the learning areas int he NZC
use of the NZC levels, not NSs, will we also use progressions?
designour approach to give our educators 'permission' to try new approaches
look at relationships BEFORE timetables
revisit what we VALUE frequently, it's about our learners being happy so they can learn (sing, laugh, move and love)
integrate Maori values authentically, teach through Maori culture
consider our approach to andragogy- digital badging for our staff nduction
Valuable time needs to be spent establishing NORMS and embedding our beliefs about learning- need to align mental models
Fix, clarify or LET IT BE
Share levels of consultation with staff, they only need to know and participate in some things, yet keep it all transparent to make BETTER use of EVRYONE's time
Perry Rush says we need only to look at our learners- THERE is our curriculum. Powerful pedagogical tools 1.Questioning 2.think aloud, modelling this 3 research yourself-third person
Learning to learn grows the learning muscle
Investigate 3 pedagogies- problem based-Hattie, primary experiences (Brooks and Brooks, 1993), memorable (Nuthall, 2007) to have a clearer picture of our approach
Induction by fire for Wendy! We had the lovely Glenys join us for a full on day of learning around how to set up our LMS Linc-Ed. We have all come from schools who have used alternate systems and are excited about the affordances that Linc-Ed will provide our kura, having been developed by a principal. The features that excite us, and which framed our rationale, include:
intuitive and styly!
usable by learners, parents and staff as a truly interactive, useful LMS
unique to NZ and simple, secure
enables our educators to add links, embed artifacts and provide feedback to learners
empowers our tamariki to share their learning process and products digitally
parent portal capable- creating a unique home-school partnership that enables whanau to engage in real time and have ubiquitous access to their children's learning and assessment and this all aligns with the #ubiquitouslearning component of our vision
Have the ability for us to design a badging system should we wish to gamify aspects of our curriculum
As part of a symposium hosted by the West Auckland Principals' Association, the Strategic Leadership Team had an opportunity to listen to American educator, Pete Hall, share his ideas around creating a culture of reflective practice within a school setting.
When there is a culture of reflective practice, the commonalities define the culture, whether it is good, bad or mismatched. Hall identified the following fundamentals or building blocks for reflective practice:
Relationships, roles and responsibilities (based around interpersonal safety and identified strengths)
Clear expectations and communication
Celebrating and also calibrating - when things go ary
Goal setting and follow through
Professional learning communities (PLC) and teacher leadership support
Transformational feedback
Differentiated coaching strategies
There are 4 stages along the continuum of Self Reflection - Unaware, Conscious, Action and Refinement. Pete walked us through the tool he has designed for self reflection, it is part continuum and part matrix, but is a comprehensive tool for exploring where you may be sitting in terms of your development as an educator.
The video below provides a metaphor for understanding the Continuum of Self Reflection.
We need to consider that when we categorise people, we often miss the important details, both the good and the bad that give us a fuller picture of that individual. We have an obligation to recognise people's strengths, to name them and to build upon them. As a leader, it is important to pay attention, to know what motivates and inspires an individual, and how each team member wants to be celebrated and acknowledged.
An interesting point to keep in mind is, the way each of us teaches is a reflection of self. Observable behaviours and actions are just the tip of the iceberg. Below the water, the unseen, the driving forces include each individual's decisions, feelings, thoughts and beliefs. When exploring choices made by educators, a useful question could be to ask, " I noticed you did this...What other actions/options did you forgo in order to do this?"
Building teacher capacity needs time. We need to consider how to increase collective capacity - through robust professional learning communities, and also how to increase individual capacity - differentiate supervisory, coaching and feedback practices. You can't just work on a team, you need to work on both the team and individuals. We need to ensure we match our teachers needs and work deliberately towards point B.
The Cycle of Reflective Teaching
"The more reflective you are, the more effective you are." Hall & Simeral.
Reflection is thinking with purpose, that leads to outcomes. There are 4 key steps in the reflective cycle.
Awareness: keeping ideas, goals and outcomes in mind
Thinking intentionally
Assess impact: pay attention. Ask "Am I getting better?"
Responsiveness: make adaptations
The reflective cycle is like going up a spiral staircase, there is a little more expertise with each iteration.
Awareness
"Leaders don't change people. They create environments where people change themselves" Justin Tarte.
Educators need to know their why - why is it that they are in teaching in the first place? They need to know their learners, what they are teaching and the most effective pedagogical approaches to convey this.
Thinking Intentionally
Clarity precedes competence. Visionary leadership supports this when there is:
a common language - so everyone knows what is meant by 'buzz phrases'
common goals
a clear plan for communicating these goals
4 Key Questions:
What does success at our school look like?
What are we truly trying to accomplish here?
Why all this emphasis on reflective practice?
How is reflective practice going to help us improve our results anyway?
Know your why. It makes a difference, as illustrated in the video, when we are connected to a purpose (the why). We often experience burnout when we've forgotten 'why?'
Assess Impact
"The applause is a celebration, not only of the actors, but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight." John Charles Polanyi
Celebrate what you value. Constantly assess the impact, results, effectiveness and short comings of anything you try.
Responsiveness
This is all about goal setting. Never mistake motion for action. Keep in mind that planning allows you to be adaptable, as opposed to blindly following the plan. We looked at SMART goal setting, with some tweaks and adjustments:
S: Strategically aligned to each other and our clear, compelling vision
M: Measurable
A: Attainable -Aggressive - Audacious (going from a low rung to a running jump)
R: Relevant
T: Time bound
Teachers need to reflect on:
What are we focused on as a school or team?
What is my personal, professional goal? What do I want to get better at?
So overall, a thought provoking day, with some useful tools and questions to apply to change leadership at Matua Ngaru School as we support our learners, educators and school community to ride the wave of change.
NZAIMS is an organisation that focuses specifically on learners in the Intermediate/Middle School years, and this event was an opportunity to explore issues and ideas relevant to our older learners. Two key presenters, Steve Francis and Alison Mooney, facilitated the learning and discussion over the course of the day.
Adapt or Die:Thriving in Times of Change - Steve Francis
Steve suggested that we are reaching a tipping point in education, where change of some time is almost inevitable. With this in mind, we need to consider the implications for both our school staff and our parent community, as school is different from what they have previously experienced.
He talked about there being predictable stages of concern when people are faced with change (Ken Blanchard). These are:
Give me all the information
What does this mean for me?
How will we start implementing?
Impact (when you start doing)
Collaboration (best done with someone experiencing the change alongside you, or a little way ahead)
Refinement
It is important to keep in mind that you need to take time to address the first two points, before you can successfully address the others. Steve noted that there are two factors to successful change; your attitude and your ability to learn. Keep in mind that things tend to get worse before they get better.
When it comes to implementing change initiatives, you should only focus on 3 big areas per year (Steve referred to these as the 'big rocks'). It is important to communicate these clearly and consistently and monitor progress towards your goals. As a leader, you need to be clear about what it will be like after the change, paint a picture so that you have a clear and compelling vision. A suggestion was to priority plan and break the year into 5 week chunks, and to display this in the staff room so that everyone can see where they are heading and the progress made to date.
Motivation is the key to successful change and there are three key drivers for motivation:
Purpose - people like to be purposeful
Mastery - people like to be seen as good at what they do
Autonomy - people like to have the power to make some choices
However, it is also important to be clear with everyone about the flip side of each of these:
Responsibility - because we change lives
Change - be willing to tweak and refine
Accountability - yes you have choices, but if these are not leading to outcomes for our learners then this is a problem
In order to achieve desired change, you need to have a compelling vision or you will get confusion. Change needs to be planned and staged or people will feel that the pathway is unclear. Training needs to be provided, if required, or people will feel anxious. You need to ensure the necessary resourcing is in place or people will feel frustrated. Finally, momentum needs to be established or people will get 'change fatigue'.
Four Things Great Leaders Do and Three They Don't - Steve Francis
Leaders need to make sure all of their 'moments of truth' are sending the messages that they want to be sending. This includes when meeting with members of the school community, online interactions and all of the usual home/school communication.
Great leaders focus on their teachers; they ensure they are doing everything they can to make them feel supported and valued, while also ensuring they are on the same page with the school's vision and beliefs, and that they are accountable for themselves and their learners.
There are four key criteria for identifying a great leader:
They expertly manage staff, students and parents, keeping in mind that all 3 groups are interrelated and connected
They make decisions based on what their 'best people' will think
They focus on people, not programmes
They ruthlessly invest their time and do what only they can do, delegating other tasks as appropriate
This was an exploration of 4 key personality types: Playful, Powerful, Peaceful and Precise. Being aware of an individual's personality can help with responding and interacting with others in a purposeful and productive way.
Alison identified a key word for each personality type:
Playful - People
Peaceful - Steady
Precise - Thorough
Powerful - Action
Each personality type has a specific leadership style:
Playful - Inspirational leader. Loves to encourage
Peaceful - Diplomatic. Cares about people
Precise - Strategic. Sets goals and works backwards from them in order to work out steps
Powerful - Visionary. Loves achieving things
Finally, each personality type has a different set of needs:
We have been so fortunate to have such high quality support and engagement from the local iwi Ngati Whatua O Kaipara. It began with the gifting of our school name, alignment with our school vision and continues with support in aligning the cultural narrative to our school approach including our logo, branding and learning hub names. Tracy Davis and Te Rongopai Morehu have been hugely instrumental and generous with their time and knowledge. Tracy also connected us with Graeme Tipene who is a talented designer who worked with us to develop our logo, which will also begcome the framework for our learning model. Te Rongopai and her colleague Dawn Piper have also gifted us PL time this term working with our SLT to ensure we are honouring the history of the local area, including appropriate tikanga in our process development and in selecting our whakatauki for our kainga (learning hubs). They have also gifted us the names and stories of four animal with significance to the iwi to use symbolically for our kainga. We'd also like to thank both Dawn and Te Rongopai for translating our mihi and planning ahead with us for Term 4 PL (we have applied for MOE PLD Funding to heighten our Te Reo and Tikanga knowledge- fingers crossed).
See all of our work in our Cultural Narrative document.
Growing our Team
I have been working with Alan Curtis to develop our process for recruiting our Office Administrator who will start in Term 3. We have had a lot of interest and applications and interview our shorlist of candidates on Friday.
First Time Principal Support
My FTP support continues as well with meeting with Brian Gower who has provided me with essential advice and support with connecting at the MOE level. Highlights from our March Hui included Appraisal with Dr Wendy Moore, Julien Le Sueur- Getting to Know Your Ministry, Carmel Riordon- Financial Mgmt and Patrick Ikiua from the NZSTA on Governance tips.
Here are my notes from the useful FTP Huis as well.
Immersion in our Current Context
Opportunities abound here at HPPS to learn from and with the team. Kirstin and I joined in on a TOD session led by Daniel and Lisa that both inducted, grounded and guided their team into their approach to conceptual curriculum design. So much goodness to borrow from their approach. We also had an in depth tour of HPPS with Lisa who provided highlights of their leadership and learning journey as they have grown from 50 to 500 since opening. She talked about how they are working to infuse more play based learning approaches to enhance their learner centred, dispositional approach to T&L. There was also talk aout how they are focusing on HOW devices are being used in the school to maximise the impact of device use, while increasing exposure to and use of other media for learning. We were also gifted some time with Kristyn, one of the DPS, who delved deeply with us into their coaching approach- including some very useful advice and some questions we can use to frame our MATEs (Mutually Agreed Team Expectations) which we will develop for the SLT in Term 2. Kristyn is an absolute think tank and we will be hounding her for more insights along the way!
Term 2 is upon us already and this week I was so excited to welcome Kirstin Anderson McGhie to the team. We had a wonderful first day where I was able to share with Kirstin our progress to date and review the Launchpad (our action plan and initial induction space). We spent the last of the day colouring in the marine animals that Graeme Tipane has designed for us for the external signage which will frame the learning spaces, to be called kainga. On Friday, Wendy joined us for our first road trip for our Leadership PLG with Te Uho O Te Nikau, Taumata and Te Ao Marama at Rototuna Campus outside Hamilton. This was the first time we all met together with our DPs. It was a highly engaging day of sharing and learning nad involved:
Sharing our story to date highlighting our vision, branding, developing themes and emerging curriculum ideas
Time with Natasha Hemara who is the Foundation Principal of Rototuna Senior High (sharing her establishment and foundation journey along with advice and Q&A)
Time with Fraser Hill and his lead team, Foundation Principal of Rototuna Junior High School
A tour of the wonderful Rototuna Junior High School (the team shared a candid recount of their establishment journey and foundation year where they had 600+ learners on Day 1 and growing fast!)
Time for Q&A and genral discussion around staffing, recruitment, PL, budgets, IT procurement and community consultation along with a discussion of 'ILE in the News' which we tabled as important given the amount and type of media coverage ILEs get and spent time ideating how we could collate the research, articles and general responses
See our shared presentation below (I gave Canva a go!). Looking forward to our leadership retreat in July in Mt Manganui where we meet again and join forces with Mr Twinkly, Mark Osbourne:)
On Saturday, May 26 our #DreamTeam banded together to amplify our learning at an exciting event at Ormiston Junior College called "Next Practice Assessment". This day was inspired by the removal of National Standards and the presenters shared a range of research, strategies and thoughts on where we will go next as a country. What a real opportunity for us to think and act differently in our new kura. Some takeaways for me included:
