#UbiquitousLearning
We can't believe how fast the year is going! It has been another jam packed week of making, doing and ubiquitous learning for the team.
On Tuesday, the wonderful Mandy Bishop from Argyle joined us for 2 afternoon uniform discussions with our community. It was great to meet some our of our tamariki and their mums (plus one dad!). Here are the highlights Kirstin has already shared on our Facebook page:
The key points raised by families included:
- A preference for a bright colour, but one that is still dark enough to hide marks and stains
- A colour that differs from those of our neighbouring schools
- A future option of a jacket that could be worn either as well as, or instead of a polar fleece
- The preferred fabric choice was cotton backed polyester
To begin with we will be offering a polo shirt, a fleece and a sunhat. Bottoms, shoes, etc are your choice. We also shared that staff will encourage the children to wear their uniforms with pride, however, they will not be enforcing uniform. We are looking at adding a PE uniform at some point, however, we'd like the learners to design this, so are not including one at this stage. From our discussions on Tuesday, we have narrowed the colour choices down to two possibilities. A poll has been posted on Facebook for you to select your preferred colour option out of 'Steel Blue' and 'Turquoise Blue' and with 89 votes- steel blue has the lead! Amanda, Wendy and Di also spent some time with LincEd in a Google Hangout learning more about how to capitalise on the affordances of using the our online enrolment form. This was valuable and timely learning for us as we begin to make contact with our whanau next week to schedule family interviews.
Wendy has been refining our Enrolment processes this week- updating our Enrolment Information booklet and ensuring all of our processes are connected and clear for our whanau. Kirstin, Wendy and Di also attended their third three hour Te Reo lesson at AUT on Wednesday morning. We are learning a lot about how to introduce ourselves, our families and ask about others. The opportunities to practice having conversations with our classmates has been useful and we are having our first 'mahi korero' next next. I'm glad our kaiako has the motto "Na mai te hapai" ~ we welcome mistakes! We were also delighted to dine with the wonderful teams from Ararira Springs who were visiting schools in Auckland, along with our mates from Te Uho O Te Nikau on Wednesday evening. Claire Howison, Mel Bland and Di had time to have an informative first time principals chat where they shared our progress to date. 
Our team spent some time this week designing our induction for whanau. We are also in the process of collating our learning around the research and hype about Innovative Learning Environments...Modern Learning Environments... Flexible Learning Spaces... into some Fact Sheets that will help connect our interpretation to the research and hopefully provide some clarity around our vision for what teaching and learning will look like @MatuaNgaru. Watch this space....
Amanda and Di were graced with some time with the amazing Kerry from Leading Edge who is facilitating our learning as we set up and refine our processes around finance. Both are thrilled to be learning with such an expert! Di had the privilege of spending Thursday at a Professional Learning workshop by Evaluation Associates about Appraisal. Dr Wendy Moore took the room of curious educative leaders on a learning roller coaster! It was absolutely fantastic to have time to ideate with other principals and consolidate some embryonic ideas around our appraisal process. Appraisal is about learning and achievement of learners and teachers and requires: open to learning conversations, evaluative capacity, responsibility and performance management with the ultimate focus on 'what we are trying to do as a school'. Our areas of priority for designing our appraisal processes are: coherence, alignment with both the strategic direction of the School and key documentation (eg.NEGs/NAGs, NZC, Ka Hikitia, PEP and BES), keeping the Code & Standards from the Education Council and Tataiako at the heart, ensuring it is evidence based, grows capacity and is robust. An appraisal conversation, in our view, is about an educator sharing their story about their growth. Di is very interested in exploring teacher led appraisal and including educator 'passion projects' so the focus is on the teacher (read Learning Coach!) as a learner and not on compliance.
Perhaps this week we were most curious about our prospective Learning Coaches as we visited our applicants in their schools. We are so grateful to their gracious principals for enabling us to do so and we really enjoyed seeing their schools. Our candidates all presented to us on "As part of a collaborative team, how might you include our 4 Cs- curious, collaborative, creative and communicative, in learning design?" and we were blown away by the quality and creativity that unfolded before our eyes. This made our choice very difficult as all were excellent candidates. Designing the #dreamteam is our ultimate goal and we look forward to announcing soon.
#WaveofChange - Coming Up...
- An Evening of Reggio
- Uniform decisions with Mandy
- Announcing our newest additions to the #dreamteam
- More Te Reo on Wednesday
- Arranging a visit for our team @Arohanui Special School - our @MatuaNgaru flatmates!
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