Term 3 Week 10 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tena kotou katoa!

Week 10 has arrived so quickly! We've had a very busy term and accomplished a lot and this week was no exception.  We have been working diligently to prepare for the arrival of our new Learning Coaches in Week 1 of Term 4!


Communicative....


Diana and Wendy are continuing to conduct whanau enrolment interviews. Our extended whanau continues to grow with seven new families having interviews this week. We're thrilled that we are meeting more and more of our future learners.

Wendy also visited Kereru Kindergarten this past Thursday to meet with more prospective families and tell about how we're going to be an amazing place for their children to attend.

Diana, Kirstin and Wendy all continued their Te Reo course at the AUT Northern Campus. They are coming up on the end of their course and have become very confident in their Te Reo and continue to practice and reinforce what they've learned every day with both Amanda and Michael.

This Wednesday also saw an EBoT meeting, which Diana attended and reported our progress to.



Creative....

We had another visit from Mandy, our uniform provider. She came with some great uniform prototypes. They are starting to look really amazing, and are getting close to being completed. This has been a long process and it's fantastic to see something close to the finished product.

The blue colour on the uniforms is not going to be the final colour. We have had a very special "Matua Blue" mixed just for our school which the final uniforms will showcase. You can see a similar blue in the polar fleece, which also feels very soft.

With the new learning coaches coming so soon, Amanda, Diana,  Kirstin, Michael and Wendy have been busy planning the first couple of weeks of Term 4 so that we will all get a chance to become a team. We will be focussing on being Communicative so that we can "go from ME to WE." It's looking like a very fun-filled week filled with lots of new learning. 



Collaborative...


Kirstin and Michael spent the bulk of the week working together to develop a badging system for our Induction. The two have been feeding off of each others' ideas and have come up with some innovative solutions to practical problems that have come up in the course of their design. Together, they are very close to completing this mammoth task so that our Learning Coaches (and SLT!) have a engaging and motivating way to both learn what they need to in order to work at MNS but also to grow as an educator in a way that is personalised.

The team also joined in with Huapai District School for their weekly Friday morning tea. We value our partnership with them and wanted to show support for what they've done for us by providing them morning tea.

Diana also met with John Petrie, principal of Huapai District School, to discuss communicating with the families that have a choice between our two schools.

Curious

This Friday also saw Amanda, Diana, Kirstin Megan, Michael and Wendy take a visit of the new site. The progress from our last visit has been massive. Both our admin block and Arohanui now have walls in place and we can get a clear picture of the layout of both areas. The Kāinga are looking incredible and we can start to see what each space will look like. All in all it was a very uplifting visit and makes this whole journey seem more real, now that our space is nearing completion. Here are some photos of the visit:

What's Coming Up?

• Mauri Stone Ceremony
• ERO Visit
• More Whanau interviews
• Learning Coaches Start Day 1 Term 4 

A progress update with ERO Visit #3 - June 27

We were thrilled to host Cynthia and Graham from ERO on June 27th at HPPS to share our progress to date.  Again we used the 12 areas they supplied to us in November 2017 but added what we shared in our March visit and our next steps.  It was a rather interesting day of sharing as I had laryngitis, but my amazing DPs demonstrated how successful their induction has been as they took over various aspects of our sharing when my voice gave out!  Talk about #DreamTeam.  See our slides below:

ERO was particularly impressed with the depth and breadth of our integration and alignment with our Cultural Narrative and it was wonderful to have Te Rongoapai, Megan, James and Alan from the Board reaffirm much of what the SLT shared in the morning.

We shared with them photos of our site visit as we weren't able to arrange one for them this time but we look forward to joining Cynthia and Graham on a site visit when they return in September.

Site Visit & Community Consultation Evening

We have had to very significant and special events this week.  First, we had our first official site visit where the #DreamTeam plus James did a tour of the building in it's current state.  It was so valuable to be able to get a sense of the floor plan and the size of the spaces.  

We then went to Huapai District School to set up for our second Community Consultation evening.  A lot of preparation went into this evening, including a mail drop in the school zone conducted by Kirstin, Wendy and I (plus our whanau), advertising in the local papers and newsletters (thanks Sam!) and preparation of the resources and presentation on the night.See our slides from the evening below:

See the thank you email I sent to our EBoT and team below:

Yesterday was epic.  The Matua Ngaru team of educators had an amazing site visit with Andrew.  It was very exciting to see how the build is shaping up and for us to begin to visualise what our kura will look like when finished.  It was the fuel to fire me up!  See the photos here.

Then what followed was an outstanding team approach to our Community Consultation evening.  Micheal King reckons that we had around 100 guests- a great turn out for sure.  This wouldn't have been possible without John and Sam from Huapai for being the most accommodating hosts (soon to be roommates)- thanks to you both for the venue, the IT kit and Sam for organising the creche/early advertising as well.    

I  can't thank you all enough for your contributions to a very successful and insightful evening with our many prospective Matua Ngaru parents (and potential future Learning Coaches).  I can easily align our 4 Vision Principles to the night:

• Curious-Mahirahira:  the community was full of curiosity and had the opportunity to learn from our presentation.  They really enjoyed the opportunity to question us at the 6 stations

• Collaborative-Mahi tahi: the collective effort of the EBoT and SLT (including Amanda) was organic and I must say we make a great team!  Thanks to Wendy and Kirstin for getting our supplies, Michael for getting me on the wifi and Alan for coordinating catering and Micheal for blessing the food.   

• Creative-Auaha: our SLT pumped their creative juices into the evening through the displays, activities and the fab media Kirstin prepared.

• Communicative-Whakaro: this was our goal for the evening and... tick!  We were able to convey clarity around our vision and big picture ideas/approach and the essence of Matua Ngaru.  We are committed to using our 4Cs, adaptive expertise, the NZC and Te Reo/Tikanga Maori.  We will be adding the slides (with the community feedback) to our social media next week.

Finally, an extra special thank you to Michael, Heike and Amanda for taking the time to contribute to our evening- this is very much appreciated.

Heike, Wendy, Kirstin and I visited the Forest School today (and Heike's collaborative magic at Windy Ridge) and we were able to discuss the evening.  We are feeling really positive and invigorated.  

Thanks again everyone- he waka eke noa!

Sharing our journey -ERO Visit #2 March 12

We hosted the team from ERO- Deb Jolly, Cynthia Manion and Graham Tregaweth on March 12 at Hobsonville Primary School.  We had lots of news to share with them since Alan and I met with them in November of last year.  The Board and I spent a number of hours with them sharing our progress to date using 12 criteria that they had suggested last year.  You can see these slides below.  We are confident that we assured them that we are very much on track to a successful opening.  Thank you to Alan, Megan, Dianne, Te Rongopai and James who supported me while we shared our progress report.