Term 4 - Week 2 Spotlight @MatuaNgaru

Tena koutou katoa!

Week 2, a four day week after we all got treated to a sunny and relaxing long weekend with last Monday being Labour Day. Great that we had that time to catch our breath as well as letting the amazement and magic sink in of the terrific journey that lies ahead of us. We returned on Tuesday with anticipation to continue our #ubiquitouslearning on a wave of change.

Communicative....

More time was dedicated towards unpacking our school vision and values by deliberating about the implication and significance of these. What do these mean to us and what principles and practices will we incorporate in our learning space? The level of engagement, the thoughtful questions and the quality of the responses were an encouraging sign that all of us are owning the stake we have in this. Time is always sparse, still we must ensure that we get this right.

Wednesday we engaged with our Mana Whenua. We greeted Te Rongopai, Dawn and Te Kahui-iti Morehu by singing our school waiata “Ko Matua Ngaru Te Tira Waka” and they responded by singing the waiata “Te Aroha”. Te Kahui-iti Morehu shared her knowledge and gifted us insight into her historic recollection. We learnt about the whakapapa of the school location and the wider area by listening to interesting anecdotes told in a charismatic style. What an absolute privilege it is for us to work with these wonderful wāhine - members of the Ngati Whatua iwi.

We are looking forward to connecting with our Whanau Focus Group on Wednesday afternoon and consult with them as we cultivate their ideas of how they envision Mataua Ngaru School connecting with the community. Wendy and Di have continued to engage with and meet our wonderful learners as part of our enrolment procedures.  Our whanau interviews have been a wonderful face to face way to begin a strong home-school partnership and we now have 50 learners officially pre-enrolled!

Creative....

The team has kept the momentum of engaging into the innovative Digital Induction Badging programme which has been so brilliantly designed by Kirstin and Michael. What a great podium for our Learning Coaches to exhibit and share their professional learning as well as to cooperate and collaborate. Gauging the wide variety of talent as well as the eagerness the team brings along to engage in self directed learning, reflecting and connecting the learning from week 1, the learning coaches collaboratively created mind maps that really display the vast amount of information and learning and perhaps more importantly, how all the concepts are interlinked with each other.  

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Again, the team engaged in Tinker Time exploring and playing with a variety of e tools creating outcomes that will surely find their use in our learning space.Wendy organised this week’s team building challenge #dreamteam by tasking us to create an original advertisement for two or our upcoming community events. However, the project scope expanded and we will complete this task next week.

Mark Osbourne joined us for a “Ponder” conversation discussing and playing around with ideas what our Makerspace could look like, what resources we want to engage with and what learning will happen in it. Kirstin and Wendy were busy taking notes for the resource wish list. Obviously, this will all depend on the learners we are going to have in our school, though it was brilliant to have this expert input and someone to challenge our thinking!

Collaborative...

Further co-constructing and conceptualising our behaviour management approach was a major focus throughout this week. Jenny Barker from MoE helped us to dig deeper into understanding restorative practice and the PB4L framework. Through voting we decided that we are going to be a PB4L School. Sue Smith and Andrew Cowie shared with us the Upper Harbour School way of implementing restorative practice, cultural responsiveness and digital citizenship. Some valuable thinking prompts sparked productive conversation within the team such as being aware of making assumptions, digging deeper and understanding culture beyond ethnicity as well as going beyond greetings and food when making cultural connections.

Luke Sumich presented the Hermann's Whole Brain Model and revealed our profiles. While there may be pros and cons about this framework, the leadership team thinks it will be practical to recognise the unique way each of us processes information and then, use this information to accommodate the way we communicate accordingly. Amazingly, our team has a reasonable spread across all four quadrants, but there is a tendency towards yellow, the experimental and innovative quadrant. Innovative ideas are beneficial when involved in founding a new school and shifting the paradigm, however, we need to make sure we hold ourselves accountable on this ubiquitous learning journey. For that reason, the blue, green and red quadrants are equally important. In particular, fruitful will be implementing the common language that this thinking tool offers which we will engage in throughout the coming weeks.

Michael also engaged us in a presentation about designing rituals and routines to foster a culture of innovation.  We are looking forward to our next steps with this.Diana, Kirstin and Wendy worked with the Establishment Board of Trustees to begin the process of ideating towards our 2019 Strategic Plan. They began by unpacking the NZSTA Strategic Planning document and the brainstormed ideas for goals around what we want for our learners, interrogating these along the way.  The Strategic Leadership Team will continue to evolve these ideas into a draft plan to be shared with our stakeholders for feedback. Diana also attended a workshop run by the Ministry of Education, facilitated by Rebecca Cook, on school finance.  Dianne Cook from our board attended with her.In addition, gauging the talent and strengths our learning coaches bring along, Michael engaged us in a strengthsfinder session. This information will support us in delegating & co-constructing responsibilities and forming project teams as well as getting all involved in the planning of #ubiquitouslearning.

Curious

An important part of our induction programme will be visiting schools and see innovative practice implemented. On Tuesday the team visited Hobsonville Point Primary School. Before inquisitively wandering throughout the school, Daniel Birch, the foundation principal, shared his experience and reflections about 5 years of Hobsonville Point Primary School. While it is difficult to pinpoint the most valuable piece of information, being prepared to unlearn and relearn as well as ruthlessly engaging in critical reflection is definitely ranking very high. Whenever we engaged with the HPPS children, we were impressed with their ability to articulate their learning and the process they were involved in. Kate, who was the lucky recipient of our free conference registration, shared her key takeaways and insights from this year’s ULearn conference 2018.

 

To finish, we wonder if you are all curious to learn more about our school?  We have a fantastic Community Consultation Evening planned for November 22 at 7pm in the hall at Huapai District School.  We will share our progress, seek feedback and have many of our partners present such as SKIDs, Jellybeans Music, Argyles, Office Max, Dorothy Butler and more.  We hope that you will join us!

Coming up:

• Whanau focus group - Community Connections on Wednensday

• Minecraft Training

• Visit to Stonefields

• Resource Procurement

• Our Emerging Curriculum

• A visit to Hobsonville Point Secondary School

• Designing our digital korowai

• Strategic Planning for 2019

Term 3 Week 9 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tēnā kotou katoa!

Week 9 has been another busy week full of new learning, networking and getting stuff done. We are all so excited that our Learning Coaches are soon to be on board with us full time!


Communicative....


The Monday morning Admin meeting was a little different this week. Amanda, Michael, Diana, Kirstin and Wendy all completed activities reflecting on our journey so far. We shared what we love about our job, we then filled each others compliment buckets with lots of warm, genuine fuzzies, we ended the reflection exercise by being courageous and sharing our frustrations and pressure points, a great Team Building exercise!

Bright and early on Wednesday morning, Diana, Kirstin and Wendy headed off to AUT Northern Campus to attend our Te Reo course. We were experiencing mixed feelings as this was our first session after our mid semester break and we needed to perform our second oral assessment (Mahi Korero 2) in front of our classmates. We had been practicing consistently, even in Melbourne! The good news is we all passed and we received the results back from the Mid-Semester Test (Mātaitanga), again we all passed, Kirstin with full marks! Ka pai Kirstin!

Whanau (family) enrollment interviews have continued this week with Diana and Wendy, it is a real privilege getting to know our prospective learners and their families and we now have another 7 families pre-enrolled.

On Friday afternoon Diana met with Michael Hand from Torque-IP to discuss, plan and update our digital infrastructure.





Creative....

Friday morning saw Kirstin and Wendy heading off to Learning Network in West Auckland to attend a Makerspace Workshop led by Mark Osbourne. We found out about a little of the history of the Makerspace movement and how in our time of shrink wrapped technology people don't know how to fix things, the Makerspace philosophy is about building and making things not always about the technology. This is the link to Mark's presentation http://bit.ly/2RKHdak

We got to spend most of the session using and exploring the materials in Mark's Makerspace suitcase such as littlebits, polymorph plastic, conductive tape and thresd, Edison and Mbot robots, makey makeys, scratch cards, a bridge making challenge with string and popsicle sticks, and Wendy's favourite the 3D printer!

Wendy was fascinated by watching the 3D printer create a business card sized bicycle with panniers in a flat pack style. The components are then popped from the card and a miniature 3D bike is constructed, very cool!


For Friday afternoon Diana, Kirstin, Amanda, Michael and Wendy got creative with the itinerary for our first full team meet and greet. We started off the afternoon with a presentation from Otako Kaufusi who works at Microsoft.

Otako showed us the wonders of the Surface Pro and Surface Go and some of the practical applications of the interactive pen, the inking tool and touch screen features. This was to help the team decide on their TELA device so we can have it all ready for them at the beginning of Term 4. After some refreshments we moved onto a presentation from Diana about building the Dream Team. Diana also set us a challenge of  matching a Te Reo word or phrase to someone in the team based on their Bio or what we had learned that afternoon, we weren't allowed to go home until the challenge was solved!

A game of Human Bingo followed which gave us the chance to mix and mingle and find out a little more about each other. It was a great networking, connecting and relationship building afternoon!




Collaborative...


Kirstin and Michael on Monday were continuing to work on the Digi-badging induction programme for our Learning Coaches in Term 4. We are very excited about this innovative way to induct our new staff.
Thursday saw Diana, Kirstin and Wendy travelling across Auckland out to Flat Bush to take part in the New School's PLD at Ormiston Junior College. The day was hosted by the Te Uho o Te Nikau team of Mel, Bev and Leanne, who all did a great job of keeping us fed and on track.
The DPs of the four new schools had as their guest speaker Viv Mallabar who is the foundation DP at Ormiston Junior College. Viv generously shared her knowledge and experiences from OJC's establishment and foundation years. Viv emphasised the importance of turning values and vision to principles and practices and using this as a foundation of turning "I believe" into "We believe", developing a common language and group norms is the key to successful collaboration. Viv also talked about some of the challenges that can occur such as rapid roll growth, staff turnover and the rapid induction of new staff. A very thought provoking session.

The Principals of the four new schools had Luke Sumich, the foundation principal of OJC as their guest speaker, Luke was very informative and strategic as he took the principals through his start up journey at OJC. Luke was also the foundation principal for another new school so had a wealth of knowledge and expertise to impart.
This was the last scheduled PLG for the four new schools and we have all found the learning, sharing and networking from these PLG's invaluable as we all work towards our common goal of opening our schools in February 2019.

Curious

As part of the New Schools meet up and PLG, Diana, Kirstin and Wendy met up with the others Wednesday evening for a meal at Daikoku Restaurant in Botany Downs Shopping Centre. 

This was an informal occasion where we were all curious to hear about each others' journeys since the last time we had met. We were also curious to see what the Daikoku dining experience was about and we certainly weren't disappointed with a display of BBQ tool tossing, flaming hot plates and sparking onion ring volcanoes! 

A fantastic evening with fabulous company.

What's coming up?

• Whanau (family) Enrollment Interviews
• EBoT Meeting
• Parent Q & A session at Kereru Kindy
• MNS site visit

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