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 5 Spotlight @MatuaNgaru

Tena kotou katua!

The site is looking very busy with lots of progress being made.

    

 

He waka eke noa - we are in this together!  One of our school whakatauki optitimises our Week 5 which embodied teamwork has left us with a feeling of accomplishment and a sense of anticipation for what has yet to come. Here are the highlights.

Diana and Wendy began to discuss the Mutukaroa program (originally developed at Sylvia Park School) which aims to accelerate learning in the early years while fostering fully engaged whanau who are assessment literate.  A great conversation emerged as they pondered what this might look like and/or morph into for our school.   As a result, we are looking forward to delving deeper into how we might use Learning Maps in association with our Linc-Ed Ubiquitous Learning Portfolios. Coupling these with assessment workshops for our parents to ensure that everyone is on the same page regarding our language of learning, assessment tools/practices and how we can accelerate progress while increasing engagement in learning is our ultimate goal.  Wendy represented our SLT on Wednesday and attended a 'just in time' WAPA (West Auckland Principal's Association) meeting to learn about potential approaches for streamlining communication about learners across schools.  There are some exciting prospects on the horizon.  We also had our Establishment Board of Trustees meeting on Wednesday.  It was fantastic for Di to be able to share our progress in alignment with the Project Action Plan.  Di has also drafted our Maori Consultation Plan for 2018-2019 which she will share with the Board at the next meeting.


It was wonderful to have Michael Davidson, one of our Lead Learning Coaches in for the day on Monday.  We were able to look at some creative ways to use the strengths of our leadership team and we spent time refining our role descriptions to gain clarity on our portfolios of responsibility.  We are able to use Michael as a coach for the team as he is a Google Certified Innovator and a Google Certified Trainer.  Exploration and ideation is also underway to digitise aspects of our induction process for our appointed learning coaches in Term 4.  Kirstin and Micheal will be leading this piece of work.

Wendy lead the team in a discussion around our future focused library aspirations.  This began with challenging our current name selection 'Whare Pukapuka'.  Since we want our library to act as an inspirational space for our community, as well as our learners, we decided to call it 'Whare Hapori' to signal this.  Wendy is working on an Action Plan to set up our amazing space.

Di was able to meet with the folks from Horton's Signs and CPB Con to discuss the branding and signing of our school.  We are very excited that each of our kāianga will have a lovely external sign of the animal design, Arohanui Special School and Matua Ngaru School will have some beautiful directional signage around the site and on the building, including our logos and the waka design (designed by Graham Tipene) and the safety glass will be a repeated pattern of our four learning values in Te Reo Maori, English and the 1/4 design from the logo.  In addition, there will be some vinyl overlays of our learning model and the kāinga animals in the tari area.  We were also proud to share the interactive map that Kirstin created of our kura.

Our 'mahitahi' efforts this week have seen progress made with our resourcing as Wendy and Kirstin make our lists as they meet with possible providers to discuss our foundation year needs.  Di has been networking with some educational leaders to support our induction and we are looking forward to having Andrew Cowie and Sue Smith come to work with our team around Digital Citizenship, Restorative Practices and Culturally Responsive Approaches.  This amazing duo come from Upper Harbour Primary- one of our favourite Auckland schools to visit. 

          

Kirstin is also liaising with Luke Sumich from OJC to coordinate some PL around the Hermman Brain Dominance Instrument and Whole Brain Thinking as part of our induction to aid our team in developing a greater understanding for how we can fully leverage our own preferences, while taking advantage of the preferences of each other to optimise our collaborative approach and increase our performance as individuals and collectively. 

Our first six fact sheets around the terminology often used when describing Innovative Learning Environments or as we like to call them 'Flexible Learning Spaces' are now complete.  These fact sheets explain our interpretation of each term with links to some research & articles.  It is our hope to add to the series, selecting terms that are potentially confusing, misleading or that we want to ensure are clear to our community.  The first 6 topics are: Self Directed Learning, Innovative Practice, Learning Through Play, Inclusive Learning, Collaborative Learning and Collaborative Practice.

This week, Kirstin and Wendy were able to spend a morning observing the collaborative practice in the Huapai District School Innovative Learning Environments.  They were inspired by the strategies and approaches that were observed and described by the educators and learners.  We feel so fortunate to have such a wonderful school hosting us.  It is our aspiration, together with John and his team, to work in partnership to serve our community.

For our weekly PLG we read the EdBookNZ 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 editions (accessible here).  These digital books were the brainchild of Sonja Vanschaijik from Newmarket Primary School.  AND we listened to the Point of Learning podcast featuring Sonja as well, all about how teachers need to be visible in their practice.  Both of these have left Kirstin, Wendy and Di with a number of wonderings and exciting ideas.  Watch this space!

What's coming up?

• Future Ready - Microsoft Event
• Whanau Interviews begin
• Arohanui Special School site visit
• Operations Meeting with Spotless
• Minecraft training
• Te Reo @ AUT - Exam #1

Term 3, Week 4 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tena kotou katoa!

Week four has come and gone and it was certainly a fantastic week of learning and designing.  Here are some of our highlights.

Monday and Tuesday this week saw Kirstin meeting with the Deputy Principals of both Kaipara College and Massey High School to familiarise herself with both schools and what they have to offer; to explore opportunities for reciprocal partnerships and to  discuss the process involved in transitioning our future Year 8 learners on to secondary school.

On Tuesday morning, Diana and Amanda attended training with Leading Edge, a company who provides financial services including support and professional development - this week the focus was on Xero.

During the week, the team also met with more before & after school care providers and we will be making a decision soon as to which provider we will be using at Matua Ngaru School. We also spent some time finalising the Staff Handbook (soon to have a fantastic and creative name!?) which we have been working on. This A-Z of Matua Ngaru document will support our learning coaches as part of their induction programme in Term 4.  It will also be an ongoing reference source in the future and will change and evolve over time as required.

A big focus for Wendy this week has been the development of our school 'library' (what will we call this magical space?) including: systems we will use, resources, learning opportunities the library will provide, etc.  On Monday she met with Esther Casey, the librarian at Sylvia Park School to look at the innovative ways in which their school library was meeting the needs of learners. Esther was deliberate at providing us with provocations around the nature of 'libraries' and challenged us to not call it 'Whare Pukapuka' as a future focused 'library' should be so much more than a book repository!  Then, on Friday, she met with Sandi from the National Library of New Zealand. Sandi was able to share lots of ideas and suggestions for developing our library, as well as making us aware of professional development opportunities and networks available to us.

Wendy was also lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend the matinee performance of Huapai District School's production of Aladdin. She was absolutely blown away by the talented performances of the young cast.

We have also be beavering away at creating some "fact sheets" around some of the terminology that is often associated with MLEs, ILEs, FLSs... whatever you want to call them.  Our topics include:  Collaborative Practice, Innovative Practice, Collaborative Learning, Play Based Learning and Inclusive Learning.  We look forward to sharing these in the near future.

This week our team read Core Education's 2018 10 Trends document selected by Kirstin and "Making Connections" (Dahlberg, 2004) a reading Wendy and Heike were given after their REANZ evening for our mostly weekly PLG (Professional Learning Group). Both readings gave us a lot to discuss and think about as we continue to explore and design the Matua Ngaru curriculum particularly around what is influencing future focused education in the 5 categories:   Technology- the cloud and blockchain, Structural- Kahui Ako and Virtual Learning, Process- collaboration and data science, Economic- automation and STEM and Cultural- AI and learner agency.  We are challenged in our thinking around designing a relational space that prioritises the making of connections through the senses and process of making/creating.  How do we avoid the constraints of the dreaded timetable?!
On Wednesday, Diana drove through the wind and rain to Taupo to attend the APPA Conference.  It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with other educational leaders and to be inspired.  A time to fill the learning tank!  Martin Sneddon, who's a bit of a Kiwi legend, enthralled us with his tale of leading the design of the 2011 Rugby World Cup here in New Zealand.  The ingredients for success include: a compelling story, developing strong relationships (he'll take EQ or IQ anyday!) and coherent decision making. 

Debbie Mayo-Smith provided us with a plethora of tips for learning to exploit technology to save us valuable time (presentation here). 

Roger Moses shared his learning from leading with us and reminded us to focus on the urgent,  get the right people on the bus and THEN decide where to go, that there is no harm in hoping for the best as long as you are prepared for the worst, be a servant leader, be available, open the door of opportunity and equip your team to be able to walk through them, don't accept every new idea as truth, practice the power of praise and identify your young guns and give them the ammunition they need to succeed.  What a man! 

The highlight of the conference for me was the few hours we were able to spend with Joan Baker who challenged us to focus on what she calls 'killer questions'.  Some examples include: How do we enable (not disable) change in our schools?  How are we making things better for our people/organisation?  How can I expand my impact?  How does our work have meaning for us? What values did I use to make decisions today?  What's currently harder than it should be? What must we preserve? Give up?  Are we proving or improving?  What am I learning?unlearning? and my personal favourite "why would anyone want to be led by me/us?" If people are afraid of blame not failure, what can I do to make our place safe to take risks?  There is certainly a lot to think on and put into place.

Amanda spent Thursday at a conference for Office Administrators. She was able to attend a variety of different workshops relating to different aspects of the administrator role and hone in on the different skills and understandings needed in each area. She said it was a fantastic day and has come back full of ideas and new learning that she can't wait to put into practice.

As Matua Ngaru will not have a swimming pool, Kirstin has been making contact with different swimming lesson providers in order to explore options for our aquatics programme. We will be able to provide more details later on once we have looked at what is on offer and determined which will best meet the needs of our learners and community.

Looking Ahead to What is Coming Up:

• Michael Davidson is joining us on Mondays for the rest of the term
• Meetings with reps from different educational resource providers
• Te Reo Session 6
• eBoT Meeting
• Decision around after school care providers
• Continuing work on curriculum development

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

And then there were 2 (+ 3 for a day)

Term 2 is upon us already and this week I was so excited to welcome Kirstin Anderson McGhie to the team.  We had a wonderful first day where I was able to share with Kirstin our progress to date and review the Launchpad (our action plan and initial induction space).  We spent the last of the day colouring in the marine animals that Graeme Tipane has designed for us for the external signage which will frame the learning spaces, to be called kainga.  On Friday, Wendy joined us for our first road trip for our Leadership PLG with Te Uho O Te Nikau, Taumata and Te Ao Marama at Rototuna Campus outside Hamilton.  This was the first time we all met together with our DPs.  It was a highly engaging day of sharing and learning nad involved:

• Sharing our story to date highlighting our vision, branding, developing themes and emerging curriculum ideas
• Time with Natasha Hemara who is the Foundation Principal of Rototuna Senior High (sharing her establishment and foundation journey along with advice and Q&A)
• Time with Fraser Hill and his lead team, Foundation Principal of Rototuna Junior High School
• A tour of the wonderful Rototuna Junior High School (the team shared a candid recount of their establishment journey and foundation year where they had 600+ learners on Day 1 and growing fast!)
• Time for Q&A and genral discussion around staffing, recruitment, PL, budgets, IT procurement and community consultation along with a discussion of 'ILE in the News' which we tabled as important given the amount and type of media coverage ILEs get and spent time ideating how we could collate the research, articles and general responses

See our shared presentation below (I gave Canva a go!).  Looking forward to our leadership retreat in July in Mt Manganui where we meet again and join forces with Mr Twinkly, Mark Osbourne:)

Te Kura Tuatahi o Matua Ngaru by Diana Wilkes

Powerful Connections and Purposeful Learning - New School Principals PLG @HPPS

A different kind of CoL!

Our new school principal PLG began in 2017 with the purpose of sharing and collaborating as we all move towards developing and opening our new schools.  Tony Grey- Te Ao Marama School in Hamilton, Gen Fuller- Taumata School in Tauranga, Mel Bland- Te Uho O Te Nikau and myself decided to join forces and share insights, resources and challenges along the way.


In Term 4 of 2017 we had our first face to face meeting which Tony coordinated for us at Endeavour School with principal Marcus Freke.  Endeavour opened the same year that Ormiston Primary (my previous school) did and he shared with us the journey that he, his leadership team, his teachers and his learners have been on to date.  Focusing of course on issues pertinent with opening a new school, emphasising the establishment phase, staffing and lessons learned. We also toured his school, Stage 1 (2015) and Stage 2 (2016-2017). As Marcus guided us on the tour he discussed the furniture choices, how the spaces are used and the rationale behind the changes made between the two stages.

In Term 1 of this year, on March 5th, I hosted our PLG at Hobsonville Point Primary School.  Tony and Mel stayed at Chateau Wilkes the night before and we enjoyed getting to know each other a little better before the 'mega learning' ensued.Daniel Birch, principal shared his highlights of opening a new school and provided sound advice on what to focus on and why.  He suggested that we make sure that we take time for ourselves to do some learning- we won't this this time again, but not to re-invent the wheel.  Focus on the two questions: what is powerful learning and what is powerful to learn with our foundation teams and gain clarity around what this means for us.  He also shared their collaborative recruitment process, use of the Hermann's Brain model to develop an understanding of each other and the importance of what the vision is, means and ensure all own it!  He also suggested some key thought leaders: Julia Atkin, Guy Claxton, Mere Berryman, Hattie etc. we could engage with and some stand out professional readings: enGauge 21st Century Skills, Literacy in the Digital Age https://pict.sdsu.edu/engauge21st.pdf . Lastly, he shared with us how his staff uses coaching. Ultimately, his big piece of advice is to be responsive to what's in front of us and get other principals (be careful of your advice Dan!) to come and speak to our teams.
We then took a tour of the school (it amazes me how much 'new stuff' I notice about their approach each time I walk around) to showcase their lovely school and the diverse, yet cohesive, approaches they use to deliver their conceptual, learning values and dispositions based curriculum while discussing how they have evolved since they opened 6 years ago.We spent the rest of the day discussing matters such as our school names, visions, logos, cultural narratives, property matters, staffing issues & future PL opportunities. We're looking forward to our next PLG - likely to be at Rototuna where Tony is currently based.