Term 4 - Week 8 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tēnā koutou katoa! A Wild Week 8 .it was...

We have had a wonderful week together. Curriculum, teaching in the Huapai District School Flexible Learning Spaces and our amazing collaborative retreat with Te Uho o te Nikau Primary School were the highlights. It has been an affirming week as well and we met with 5 more families. We are growing bigger ever week!

We are anxiously awaiting moving in to our new school next week. Handover is expected on Tuesday. We are also looking forward to hosting our next Whanau Focus Group next Saturday, December 15 from 2-3pm - details to come via Facebook and email for enrolled families.

Communicative...

On Monday and Wednesday we worked on developing our curriculum. It is shaping up beautifully and we are designing a model to make it visible and cognitively portable. Diana met with the Establishment Board of Trustees for lunch on Wednesday to celebrate our epic establishment year. We also made a decision to move our official opening to the 30th of January as this is the first day of school for James Le Marquand, his team and their learners from Arohanui Special School. We will begin the day with an official welcoming from our mana whenua partners and follow that with our first of two Open Days for our learners. The Open Day will enable our tamariki and their whanau to spend some time in their spaces and hang out with our awesome team of educators. More details will come via Facebook and email.

Collaborative...

On Tuesday, our team worked in the flexible learning spaces at Huapai District School and made a lot of wonderful noticings and even connected with a few of our future learners. The highlight of this week was of course the amazing retreat at Vaughn Park in Long Bay. Our team reveled in the opportunity to connect with and collaborate with the team of ten from Te Uho o te Nikau. We began the retreat with a collaborative scavenger hunt and some speed dating to get everyone talking.

Then Mel Bland, Principal of Te Uho o te Nikau Primary School and our very own Di swapped teams to share our journey to date. Other activities included a Smackdown of innovative pedagogies, a World Cafe on collaborative practices, a session on Play Based Learning with Heike (aka Play Guru), Bonnie and Eva, some Tinker Time facilitated by Michael and Kate and an Appy Hour of wonderful digital technologies. There was also time for some fun and games including a Riff Off (a singing competition) and the epic Quiz Night hosted by Wendy and Kirstin. We are looking forward to connecting with the wonderful Te Nikau again in the new year when we get to visit each other's kura.

Curious...

Wendy and Amanda began training with AccessIt which is the software that we will use in Whare Hapori- our future focused library. They are in the process of stamping all of the books that we have procured to date and eagerly await the scanner and bar codes to begin accessioning our initial collection. We have also had one of our wonderful parents begin to collect some previously loved books from families in the area for our collection- we wonder what great reads there will be?! We also did some work with Jenny and Del from the Ministry of Education again on our approach to PB4L. We are thinking of calling it our 'Kahui Character' program as it will involve identifying and teaching our expectations for learning in our school with a system to support all learners to reach these. We will use a tuakana-teina approach in our weekly Kahui Character time where our tamariki are places in one of our four school wide vertical groups named after our learning values - Curious, Collaborative, Creative and Communicative to learn, practice and apply these expectations. We will also revisit them as needed within our hapu (aka: guardian or home group). We are looking forward to further developments of this when they return next Monday.

Creative....

Michael got our creative juices flowing with a session on designing rituals to build our school culture. Four very special ideas are germinating.

There is also some exciting work being lead by our team of learning coaches with our interactive turangawaewae map and their projects (supported by Wendy and Kirstin):

• Hauora at Matua Ngaru- Heike, Nush & Yasmin
• Travelwise - Yasmin & Wendy
• Whare Hapori - Wendy, Kate & Kelly
• Kahui Character - Heike, Wendy
• Te Ao Maori - Amy & Heike
• Enviro - Amy, Nush & Wendy + STEAM- Michael, Kirstin, Kelly & Kate (combining where appropriate)
• Linc-Ed Progressions - Kate and Kirstin
• Digital Ecosystem - Kirstin
• Sports & Clubs - Amy, Nush & Kate
• Digital Citizenship - Yasmin, Kate and Kelly

We continue to connect with our families in our Whanau Interviews and can't wait to lead learning with them in 2019.

What's coming up:

*** relocating to our wonderful school on Tuesday - thank you to Huapai District School!

*** PB4L part 3 with Jenny and Del on Monday

*** Spotless Induction on Thursday

*** Meeting the Arohanui team on Thursday

*** 12 more whanau interviews (and counting!)

*** Whanau Focus Group: Assessment, Strategy, Curriculum and Te Reo & Tikanga Maori

*** ENROL Training on Wednesday

*** AccessIt Training on Monday

*** NZSL with Margaret Patrick on Friday

*** 3 birthday girls: Yasmin, Anoushka & Kirstin

*** end of year xmas BBQ

*** and a whole lot more! eg. Curriculum, Assessment, Projects, Kainga set up

Term 4 - Week 7 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tēnā koutou katoa!

Week 7

What an action-packed week this has been! And, to top it off, we’ve been lucky to have lots of opportunities to work on site at our school and get a feel for the spaces. As with any kind of learning, the 4C’s have been ubiquitously woven through our week which was full of collaboration, communication, curiosity and creativity!

Communicative...

On Monday, we started off the day by sharing our ‘Blind date with a Book’ professional reading summaries. We got to present our summaries and hear a snippet about how each of these books would help us extend our practice.

Some examples of the books were “Teach like a Pirate” - Dave Burgess, “Play like a Pirate” - Quinn Rollins, “The sacred urge to play” - Pennie Brownlee with Kimberley Crisp and “Mindset” - Dr Carol S. Dweck, just to name a few! We then spent the afternoon with Crispin from Microsoft, getting to know our Microsoft Surface Pros and how to maximise their usage. The possibilities are endless!

Collaborative...

On Tuesday, the lovely staff at Huapai District School allowed us to shadow them until Lunchtime, to let us get a feel for the ILE workspace. We were able to pick their brains about what works and what doesn't and how best to move forward and learn from their experiences. We talked about the importance of providing various provocations and the value of play-based learning. We all walked away with tonnes of new ideas and ponderings about how to move forward.

Curious...

Wednesday morning had the entire staff meeting Te Kahui-iti and Te Rongopai from our local iwi, Ngati Whatua, at Maukatia Bay by Muriwai for a Hikoi to understand the history of the land and the journey of the mana whenua. It was an enlightening morning that allowed us to connect with the land. We then drove further North to Helensville or Te Awaroa (The Valley of the Long River) to see the serpentine river from up above.

It is truly an honour to be able to have a strong connection to the land and its history from the moment we open the doors to our new school.

Thursday brought on a very busy but exciting day! First, Jenny and Del from the Ministry of Education came to talk to us about PB4L (Positive Behaviour 4 Learning) and how it will benefit our learner. A wonderful picnic was organised on Thursday afternoon to allow the New Entrant learners from the community to come and meet the Matua Ngaru Crew. Lots of fun and games were organised and we even had a great view of our new school as a backdrop to the event. It was such an exciting time, getting to know some of the community and allowing the learners to break the nerves of starting in a new place with new people. This was followed by a Curiosity Quencher that allowed any families and whānau that are curious about our school, to learn about our kura, ask questions and meet some of the Learning Coaches.

Creative....

Jason from Mindkits kindly joined us for a few hours on Friday and introduced us to the world of Robotics using these nifty little Edison robots. A number of us have used different types of robots in the past but Edison was new to us all. It was a lot of fun and we were able to be creative with the codes we put in to see whether the robots would follow what we were trying to do. So much to learn with these little machines. We used a whole lot of collaboration, communication and curiosity to make them work.

What a great way to end such an amazing week. There are some very exciting times ahead and after this week, it's fair to say the whole community can feel the buzz.

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 

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

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.

NZAIMs

NZAIMS  is an organisation that focuses specifically on learners in the Intermediate/Middle School years, and this event was an opportunity to explore issues and ideas relevant to our older learners. Two key presenters, Steve Francis and Alison Mooney,  facilitated the learning and discussion over the course of the day.

Adapt or Die:Thriving in Times of Change - Steve Francis
Steve suggested that we are reaching a tipping point in education, where change of some time is almost inevitable. With this in mind, we need to consider the implications for both our school staff and our parent community, as school is different from what they have previously experienced.

He talked about there being predictable stages of concern when people are faced with change (Ken Blanchard). These are:

• Give me all the information
• What does this mean for me?
• How will we start implementing?
• Impact (when you start doing)
• Collaboration (best done with someone experiencing the change alongside you, or a little way ahead)
• Refinement

It is important to keep in mind that you need to take time to address the first two points, before you can successfully address the others. Steve noted that there are two factors to successful change; your attitude and your ability to learn. Keep in mind that things tend to get worse before they get better.

When it comes to implementing change initiatives, you should only focus on 3 big areas per year (Steve referred to these as the 'big rocks'). It is important to communicate these clearly and consistently and monitor progress towards your goals. As a leader, you need to be clear about what it will be like after the change, paint a picture so that you have a clear and compelling vision. A suggestion was to priority plan and break the year into 5 week chunks, and to display this in the staff room so that everyone can see where they are heading and the progress made to date.

Motivation is the key to successful change and there are three key drivers for motivation:

• Purpose - people like to be purposeful
• Mastery - people like to be seen as good at what they do
• Autonomy - people like to have the power to make some choices

However, it is also important to be clear with everyone about the flip side of each of these:

• Responsibility - because we change lives
• Change - be willing to tweak and refine
• Accountability - yes you have choices, but if these are not leading to outcomes for our learners then this is a problem

In order to achieve desired change, you need to have a compelling vision or you will get confusion. Change needs to be planned and staged or people will feel that the pathway is unclear. Training needs to be provided, if required, or people will feel anxious. You need to ensure the necessary resourcing is in place or people will feel frustrated. Finally, momentum needs to be established or people will get 'change fatigue'.

Four Things Great Leaders Do and Three They Don't - Steve Francis

Leaders need to make sure all of their 'moments of truth' are sending the messages that they want to be sending. This includes when meeting with members of the school community, online interactions and all of the usual home/school communication. 

Great leaders focus on their teachers; they ensure they are doing everything they can to make them feel supported and valued, while also ensuring they are on the same page with the school's vision and beliefs, and that they are accountable for themselves and their learners.

There are four key criteria for identifying a great leader:

• They expertly manage staff, students and parents, keeping in mind that all 3 groups are interrelated and connected
• They make decisions based on what their 'best people' will think
• They focus on people, not programmes
• They ruthlessly invest their time and do what only they can do, delegating other tasks as appropriate

Fostering Intelligent Relationships - Alison Mooney

This was an exploration of 4 key personality types: Playful, Powerful, Peaceful and Precise. Being aware of an individual's personality can help with responding and interacting with others in a purposeful and productive way. 

Alison identified a key word for each personality type:

• Playful - People
• Peaceful - Steady
• Precise - Thorough
• Powerful - Action

Each personality type has a specific leadership style:

• Playful - Inspirational leader. Loves to encourage
• Peaceful - Diplomatic. Cares about people
• Precise - Strategic. Sets goals and works backwards from them in order to work out steps
• Powerful - Visionary. Loves achieving things

Finally, each personality type has a different set of needs:

• Playful - attention, affection and approval
• Peaceful - respect, value and harmony
• Precise - space, quiet and sensitivity
• Powerful - credit, loyalty and appreciation

To explore the four personality types further, read Alison's book "Pressing the Right Buttons"

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

3 Brains Overflowing - NZEALs Conference with Mel and Bev

On April 18th to 20th I was fortunate to attend the New Zealand Educational Administration Leadership Society conference at the Pullman Hotel in Auckland. This organization supports leadership and innovation in education sectors in New Zealand. They have strong networks across primary, secondary and tertiary education institutions and are known for sharing research as well as quality practice while supporting aspiring and existing leaders.

I attended the conference with the lovely and lively Mel Bland and Bev Aerenga from Te Uho O Te Nikau. We thought that the conference was well organized with a range of inspirational think leaders as presenters providing us with a smorgasbord of learning around reconceptualusing leadership in Aotearoa. It was clear to us that a lot of thought had been put into the design of the three-day conference as each day had a different Focus.  For example Wednesday was about leadership for cultural inclusivity Thursday focused on leadership for collaboration and Friday was all about leadership for sustainability. 

My thinking was challenged around how we engage Maori and Pacifika communities within our New Zealand education sector. We were provoked as educational leaders to consider how we could should and need to enact change in our schools to ensure equity while remembering that the context of each individual school and surrounding community is central to how we do this. Organizational change requires leadership, relationships and project management skills and in order to enact this change we need to be transformative servant leaders. 
See all of my notes here and my Synopsis below. 

Kicking things off we were immersed in the aspirations of Chris Hipkins, Minister of Education who reminded us that educational leadership, not governance, will make the biggest difference for our learners and that we have the responsibility to empower the teaching profession by unleashing the potential of the NZC without the constraints of National Standards. And closing the conference was Professor Martin Thrupp from U of W emphasising the importance of policy and being brave leaders through our individual and collective leadership voice. Tahu Kukutai (UoW) challenged us to consider if we are working towards diversity or divergence and proclaims that Maori have been removed from the conversation at the policy level for too long.  The professor asks how are we addressing racism and colonialism in our education system when more than 10% of people identify with multiple ethnicities and more than half of Maori identify with another ethnicity? If Te Tirit o Waitangi is essentially our first immigration policy, how are we honouring this? Do we as a nation view Maori as a problem to solve and migrants as a resource?  What is our vision for national belonging and how can we embrace an indigenous disposition? A lot of questions with little time for discussion on possible solutions. Fortunately, Professor Melinda Webber (UoA) reminded us of the aspirations within Ka Hikatea and the 8 characteristics (Ka Awatea) for realising Maori potential. Local leaders Deidre Alderson, Laurie Thew and Di Cavallo share how their schools embrace and respond to cultural diversity highlighting the need for cultivating a sense of belonging through visible values, strong educator-learner relationships, effective transitions to school and how doing what we do when we don’t know what to do (as leaders) sets the tone for our school community.  Additionally, Sue Dockett, ECE expert from University of Australia suggested that effective school transitions are seamless, invisible, peaceful and to achieve these we must examine the: opportunities, aspirations, expectations and entitlements of those involved.  How do we develop social respect, personal regard, competence and perceived integrity as we induct whanau into our schools? Damon Salesa charismatically provoked us with the fact that future Pasifka leaders are here in NZ, and we have segregated ourselves socioeconomically and ethnically, so how are we growing this leadership resource?  If we know disruptive innovation occurs in areas of disadvantage and every single Decile 10 ten school outperformed every single Decile 1 school what does the future hold? Noelen Wright shared her research on how educators and learners make sense of an ILE (Rotouna), the nature of collaboration and involving community in learning authentically, calling for leaders to think and act differently.  Her learning identified the difficulties and struggles of leading in ILEs which aligned with the message from Rachael McNae (UoW) who highlights the importance of relational leadership- why is change so unnatural in human organisations? Ross Notman, University of Otago, outlined his research on what effective principals do→  1.Leading T&L, Support for staff PL 3.Care for our OWN personal and PL 4. Collaborative Leadership Strategies  5. Intrapersonal leadership. Dr Bruce Barnett, University of Texas shares explores the differences between mentoring (expertise, longer)  coaching (skills based) and counseling (emotional) and how these feature in our development and induction of emerging leaders. Dr Howard Youngs proclaimed we are human beings not human doings and asks “what’s damaging the conditions of learning, teaching and research in your organisation?”  While Murray Fletcher reminded us that the hardest thing to shift is a person's beliefs. What do I/we stand for? How can we go about connecting head, heart and hand because modern leadership needs integrative thinkers and thinking!  What are the cognitive, psychological and social aspects of effective leadership?

From our values and beliefs to our principles and practices...early work with the SLT

#Dreamteam

Our team has been spending a great deal of time (their own time I might add) enthusiastically contributing to our curriculum development.   Kirstin, Wendy, Heike, Michael, Megan (EBoT) and I worked together on two Fridays after school in Term 1 to begin this very important work.  I am very pleased that I was able to appoint all four of these amazing educators last year so that they could contribute to this pivotal and foundational work before they are employed.

This of course begins with a firm grounding and shared understanding of our vision, uncovering our beliefs about learning to form our learning values and this will then lead to the construction of our curriculum framework which will underpin our approach to teaching, learning and assessment.  We used the following slides to guide our process.

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.