Term 3 - Week 1 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

This term sees us based in Room 6 at Huapai District School. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to collaborate with our neighbour school and to base ourselves close to our school community. The staff at Huapai have made us feel very welcome, and we are looking forward to being part of the community.

Our Strategic Leadership Team continues to grow, with Monday being the first official day for our Office Administrator, Amanda Culverwell. Amanda will be in touch with many of you as the term progresses, as we start to set up enrolment interviews later in the term.

Communicative:
On Wednesday morning we attended the second session of a 12 week course in conversational Maori, held at AUT. Each session is 3 hours long and provides us with an opportunity to build our confidence and competence in communicating using Te Reo. This week we focused on introducing ourselves and where we come from, as well as asking others questions to find out the same from them.  We also had an opportunity to learn quite a comprehensive list of words for expressing our feelings in answer to the question, "Kei te pehea koe?"

We also received some wonderful news from the Resourcing department at the MOE regarding our staffing.  We had requested an earlier start date for our Learning Coaches and this has been granted, with the opportunity to appoint learning coaches (teachers) for a Term 4 start.  For a primary school, this is unprecedented.  Historically the MOE policy has enabled primary schools to start staff 2 weeks prior to the school opening.  This news gifts us the time to build our team, develop our curriculum, establish our school culture, co-construct robust induction processes and time to honour our cultural narrative.   This also signals the need for us to adapt our appointment timeframe.  We hope to appoint our learning coaches as quickly as possible so that our successful applicants can negotiate and provide as much notice as possible to their existing schools.  We are so excited to have this time together with the candidates that are able to join us on our journey earlier than we had anticipated.

Collaborative:
Wednesday afternoon saw Diana, Wendy and Kirstin heading down to Mount Maunganui to join the leadership teams from Te Uho o Te Nikau School, Te Ao Marama School and Taumata School, for a Leadership Retreat. Each of these schools will be opening in 2019, which means that all of us are on a similar journey towards developing the different components required to bring a school to life.

During our time away, we had an opportunity to network with each other, share ideas and ask questions. The Deputy Principals from each of the schools met together on Friday morning to establish a Professional Learning Group (PLG). This will enable us to support and learn with, from and alongside each other throughout this year, as well as next year once our schools are open. The Principals, already working together in a PLG, also spent Friday morning engaged in professional learning and discussion, relevant to their role.

Curious:
As part of the Leadership Retreat, we had the privilege of working with Mark Osborne  on Thursday, to explore Managing Change. We began the session by each sharing our personal and professional histories, and it was really powerful to have an opportunity to learn more about our colleagues.

A key message was the idea that preparing for change and sustaining change are just as important as the change itself. An interesting point raised was that resistance to change is not in and of itself a bad thing, and that it may actually be pointing to an area you have taken very little care of. Mark talked to us about the importance of ensuring our systems and structures are scalable and sustainable, meaning that anything we put in place will continue to hold firm over time and as the school grows.

We looked at 5 features of organisations that have adaptive capacity:

• Name the elephants
• Shared responsibility for the organisation
• Independent judgement expected
• Leadership capacity developed
• Continuous reflection and self review

Mark highlighted the importance of building relational trust in order to develop high functioning, supportive teams. This includes taking the time to really get to know our people and to care for their well being, and involves respect, integrity and competence on the part of all involved. 

The final part of the session was spent looking at Organisational Culture and how we can define, build, support and sustain a robust school culture that reflects our vision and values.

Creative:
With all of the amazing new learning we gained during our time away, the next step for the SLT is to look at the different ideas presented, and identify the ideas and practices we can put in place as we build our team of educators and establish the systems and strategies that will help us to make Matua Ngaru School a responsive and supportive learning community.

Coming Up In Week Two:
Tuesday - Uniform consultation afternoon - see our Facebook page for details
Wednesday - SLT Te Reo Course Session 3