Making Connections with our iwi and HPPS

Lots to highlight in this post:

Iwi Consultation:

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!