Haeata Week Ten

Took me a few weeks to get this finished, and then didn't post it, but here it is - the last of our planning journey blogs for Haeata. I started it in December but Christmas got in the road. Back into it now...

Here it is - the last week of our amazing journey, a term of developing ideas and planning. A time to get to know some amazing people and make some really great connections with staff, students and community. I feel very blessed to have been in this position and to have this opportunity. I know that next year is going to be full on and we won't have as much time to be able to ponder things and read and write as much as I have. But I am looking forward to being with the students and in our amazing new kura with the fantastic kaiako that I have the privilege of working with. My blogs will no doubt take a bit of a different flavour from here on in, but I am keen to keep tracking the journey we are on and sharing it with others.

Day One

We have had a few forums going over the last few weeks around some odds and ends like wearing hats - inside and out, staff dress code, duty, lots of every day issues. Today Andy went through these and pulled out the general consensus on what we are going to do next year. It's been good to have input on this as we all come from different angles and it's great to hear what others have to say. So, decision time and lots of these were nailed down. The Wonder Wall also got some answers, although many had been answered just in the course of time which was great.
Our Puna Ako time in our hapori was spent looking at NCEA yet again. It certainly has been the elephant in the room and still has us discussing how, why and what for. We are also aware of our own limitations as a hapori and how that might impact on our ākonga. How can we cover for areas of interest that we don't have expertise in? There are lots of options here and we will work through these once we have our students and identify their needs.
Mai time was time for some reading, and I had the opportunity to make a Chocolate Salami which I brought in to share on Tuesday. Well worth making - quick and easy, and delicious!

Day Two

A late start on Tuesday meant I had time to do some Christmas shopping bright and early - out of the Christmas rush. My lack of voice over the weekend meant I only felt like staying home and reading a book - probably a good idea - but I do feel a bit behind in the Christmas preparations!
The rest of the day was spent looking at our Learning process and NCEA, then preparing for a hui with our senior students. This was held after school and gave the students and their whanau the opportunity to come and talk about NCEA, the uniform and leadership in the school. It was a good afternoon and a great opportunity to get some student voice on all of those things.

Day Three

Starting the day with kapahaka practise is always a great energiser - except when you don't have a voice. Mine is only just coming back, so it was a mime session for me.
The last of this year's digital korowai were presented today with a few surprises, including the revealing of "Bad Fanta" among us. It's great to find out about people and one of our staff does roller derby in her spare time.
Wellbeing was a trip to the beach and I wandered collecting rubbish for a while then sat and chatted and relaxed. It was a beautiful day and nice to watch the surfers and all the people having a great day out. Mai time in the afternoon gave me the opportunity to finish my Week Nine blog! I also read this article which I enjoyed, talking about the move from child-centered to skill-centered learning and how play can help the move back to more child-centered.

Day Four

We started with some work on NCEA in our hapori, then a group of us went out to the University of Canterbury to support one of our kaiārahi who was being honoured at the Māori Graduation Ceremony. It was a fantastic morning and such an amazing feeling to watch and join in with the celebrations of all the graduands and whānau.
The afternoon was spent at one of the closing schools, packing up the Science gear ready for it to be moved to our new site in the new year.

Day Five

We had an extended kapahaka practise and learnt another waiata that we can practise over the holidays. A wonderful lunch was put on by the Senior Leadership team and the afternoon was relaxed as each hapori took the floor and danced, sang, played games and generally entertained each other. The evening had us enjoying some good food and drinks at The Bower as our year came to an official end.

Day Six

This day was very special as the new site was blessed and the carvings were brought in. It was a lovely morning and it was very

moving to be a part of it. Afterwards a couple of us went and packed up the Music equipment in preparation for it's move to Haeata. This was a very moving time for me as I was HOD Music at Aranui High School in the early 2000s and being there at the end of an era, packing up gear that I had purchased 15 years ago, was quite emotional. Watching the demolition going on around us as we packed gear was hard. It is the end of an era with the closing of the schools, but also the start of a new one at Haeata. It has been a difficult time for the community and all of those involved but also very exciting moving forward. I am pleased to see that there is a 3 part web series being made about the history of Aranui High School, called Te Tōnga ō Te Rā - you can watch the trailer here.

Day Seven

Just before Christmas the new kura was made available for the community to come and have a look around. Our staff took people on tours and showed them through the school. It was the first time many of us had been in some of the spaces, so it was very exciting for everyone. It is such an amazing space and I am looking forward to working in it. This article quotes a parent saying "It's like a resort".

It's been a term like no other. I feel like I have been at a conference every day for 10 weeks - full of learning, talking with people and reading and listening so much. It's been tiring but also very exciting. We have an amazing bunch of staff and amazing ideas. I am looking forward to meeting our students in a few weeks!

Haeata Week Nine

Day One

We had some time in smaller groups across hapori to talk about Relationship Management in our first block and together we worked on coming up with a statement that described relationships for us. Our group used this statement that was made by another staff member, but we felt it summed things up for us:

Building trust and respect and creating a culture of belonging where everyone feels valued and safe to be who they truly want to be and to have the understanding to allow others to be who they want to be.

Another comment which I found quite useful was about the difference between restorative practise and restorative justice. Restorative Practices are the way that you talk to students. The way you shame them, or not, in front of others The way you approach them in the classroom, the way you talk to them when they make a mistake, the way you interact with students. Restorative Justice is the way that you deal with issues after they occur, the way you talk through problems with students and find solutions. I felt this was a good way of clarifying the difference.

Some of the new staff presented their digital korowai today - just another reminder of how great these are to give us an insight into their personal life. We are very keen to take this idea into our hapori for next year.

The second block was around assessment and we had a list of articles to read and reflect on. I read some really interesting articles during this time and wrote quite a few pages on reflection around these, maybe they will all make it into another blog another time! Meanwhile, here are a few links to some I found particularly interesting.

Principles of Assessment for Learning

Assessment Literacy

Personalised Assessment (school stories)

Working Inside the Black Box 

Assessment tools for Maori learners

Blog on NCEA by Principal Possum

In the afternoon we met some more whānau at our enrolment hui, and once these had finished, I read more of the articles on Assessment as I found some of them quite thought-provoking.

Day Two

Our hapori had some time this morning to discuss assessment  and we wrote a large list of assessment tools that we could think of:

NCEA Unit and Achievement standards, STAR, Gateway, CTC, SiteSafe, MOOCS, Royal and Trinity Music exams, Services, Te Kura, Peer and group reflections, Portfolios, ITOs, First Aid, Spirit of Adventure, Outward Bound, AsTTLe - the list goes on. We are not restricted to just using NCEA and it is good to get an idea of other assessments and pathways that we can look at. When I think of assessment I am always reminded of the quote by Albert Einstein in this picture.

An interesting question came out of our discussion, "Is it our job to be a vocational transitional facilitator?". In some ways I think it is. As senior school staff, much of what our students are looking for is the pathway when they leave school. We need to have some tools to enable this and support them in their journey. So, what about those that don't know what they want to do? How do we help support them? I feel it is about exposing them to a range of opportunities and ideas that they might get a spark from that can set them on a pathway for life.

Our next block was working on our relationship agreement. Previous comments had been collated by Andy with all of our views put into one document. Many of our comments were very similar and some underlying common themes emerged. Some of these themes were:

• It is vital to form positive relationships with all, including whānau
• Restorative practice can help maintain these relationships
• We need to create a safe environment for all
• One size does not fit everyone
• We need to preserve mana
• Student perspective is important

We also had discussions about what we would do in certain situations with students, for example swearing, fighting, communication with parents. This really brought home how different things might look from one end of the school to another, but also how different it can be from one incident to another. So much depends on the individual but there are certain base line strategies that can be followed and we focussed on these. We then looked at pro-active management strategies that we could use, personally, in our hapori and kura wide. Some of these are really simple but can make a big difference to our students. Examples could be:

• Correct pronunciation of names
• Showing a genuine interest
• Learning about our ākonga
• Modelling good responses in an age appropriate way

Day Three

We spent some time working on NCEA and assessment today as well as how the timetable might work for us before our hapori took a break and met at my house for a swim and some lunch together. It's always good to spend some social time together as a group and we are really lucky that we all get on well together - well, I think we do!!

More enrolment hui in the afternoon, meeting our awesome whānau.

Day Four

Excitement today as we met at the school site for our site visit. We were given a safety briefing, signed for our key cards and were taken on tours of the site. So great to be able to actually see what the spaces look like. It's meant to be finished by next Friday so we were keen to see where things were at. Having watched the fly-through on the Haeata website, I was amazed at how accurate it was! Even down to the colour scheme!

The outside spaces were lovely, in particular I liked the small stage type areas outside the hapori, lots of uses sprang to mind. I got a sneak peak at the Performing Arts area and was excited by the practise rooms (yes they are soundproof - 2 of us tested that) and the recording spaces. My one reservation, which I had from the flythrough and was confirmed in the actual space, is that the sound/recording booth for the auditorium is on the side, not at the back of the space. We didn't get into the space itself, but the front of house lighting rig looks pretty cool. The technology area in our hapori looks amazing and I can hardly wait to see how everything comes together next year.

We dashed back to school in time for more enrolment hui and then spent the afternoon working on more assessment and timetable clarification in our hapori.

Day Five

A day out for Ihutai (our hapori). We travelled over to Living Springs for the day which was an amazing site to work from.

It was nice to get away to a space where we could focus on planning and have some in depth discussion without any other distractions. We were well looked after with fantastic food (the muffins were enormous!) and a tour of the area, which included a bit of rock climbing by our resident expert, James, as well as a bush walk to an 800 yr old Kahikatea, one of the oldest trees on Banks Peninsula. It was a lovely day out and a great time together.

Only one week to go - this term has gone so quickly. I lost my voice on Thursday - tired and needing a break. So many of us are feeling the "end of term-itis" drain and I know we will all be looking forward to a break.

Haeata - Week Six

Day One

Our first day this week didn't happen due to the large earthquake centered in Culverden. Our buildings needed to be checked before we came to school and so we had a day at home.
It really made me think about the earthquakes and the effect they have on us and our students. I feel for everyone in the affected areas and for people in Christchurch who had all of those memories brought back.

Day Two

We started with a mihi whakatau this morning for the new staff. Our group is growing and it is great to have more staff on board. After kai and mihimihi we had time to talk about the earthquake on Sunday night and how that had affected us and what we needed from our colleagues and for our students. Earthquakes are the weirdest things. There is no warning and you can't run away from them. Unless you have been in the situation of a large quake it is difficult to comprehend the impact on people.
We then broke into small groups and shared a precious momento with each other. This was a good way for our new staff to get to know some of us. We then had two digital korowai from new staff. These have been such a good way to get to know people and are really good for making connections.
After lunch we had a te reo class where we are split into three groups depending on our level of ability. We are so lucky to have such a large number of kaiako who are capable of taking these sessions.
I spent the rest of Mai Time looking at some of the presentations from the Global Education Conference - wishing I had more hours in a day!

Day Three

In our first session today we were given a choice of pictures and asked to relate them to learning. Our

pair had a picture of Hong Kong. We came up with the idea of fluidity - going in different directions, the different clouds showing our different types of learning and learning styles and then the city showing our connection to the world, the global picture, that also needs a strong infrastructure to support growth. It was interesting to see different perspectives on the pictures with some people having totally different takes. This reminds us that our ākonga will also see things differently. One of the other groups had a picture which they saw as a snapshot in time, a place to relax for a bit and not worry about what is around the corner - something we can all take a lesson from.
Using these pictures we then discussed 3 implications for us as educators - what do we need to do to make the picture come true. We decided you need to have strong systems and processes in place to support learning, connections and positive relationships between staff, students and community and you need support no matter where you are going.

Some of the other groups came up with the following after being inspired by their pictures:
Create a safe and supportive environment - be brave
Have learning pathway
Important for ākonga and kaiako to learn together
Individualised learning plans

Expose students to a range of knowledge

Building pathways through challenge

Having the right environment to nurture seeds

Important to have time to reflect

Celebrating success and failures

Constantly evolving - tear down the old for the new

In small groups we had short discussions on some questions, including:

How important are subjects?

What are the basics for 5 yr olds? 10yr olds? 15yr olds?

The NZ curriculum has 8 learning areas - which are the most important?

When we talk about change in education it becomes clear that we can't do this TO our community  - we  need to do this WITH them. It needs to be a collaboration with whanau, ākonga and kaiako having conversations around learning.

We then read an article on constructivist teaching. This was about learners, the environment and how they learn best.  One statement from this that really resonated with me was "If you are truly meeting learner's needs then how can you possibly plan for them 10 weeks in advance". 

Our next question was "What is the purpose of a Haeata education?". After filling a page with ideas we then had to choose one that summed everything up. Our group decided on the whakataukī

E tū ki te kei o te waka, kia pakia koe e ngā ngaru o te wā

Which translated from Māori means "Stand at the stern of the canoe and feel the spray of the future biting at your face" which we translate to a learner to be pushing their personal boundaries to achieve success.

Our Manakura (Principal) is away this week at the Singularity Summit and the statement and question he wanted us to look at, after having a day at the conference, was:

"The gap between school and life has never seemed wider. So much of what we do in school is completely irrelevant. How do we respond to this and how do we bridge the gap?" Our group decided not everything was irrelevant, but there were certainly some parts that we could do without. Lots of ideas were had around what we could do to help bridge that gap and make learning more relevant and forward thinking.

After this we broke into our hapori groups and talked about how we might package learning. This is really the first time we have started to dig deeper into what learning might look like at Haeata for next year, rather than the big picture. Our hapori found it difficult to stay away form the elephant in the room - NCEA. This became the subject of another session after lunch.

At lunchtime I reflected on this style of learning that we carried out this morning. We started out in pairs, then made groups of 4, then 8, then back to pairs. We had time to write on paper and then move around to look at everyone else's work and make comments, then back to discuss the comments made on our sheets. We also have time where we have statements to comment on for 1 minute only, without interruptions and then change groups to keep the information flowing around the room. We are continually working with different people, reflecting on comments and changing things around. It is a safe environment to work in and I really enjoy engaging with different people and hearing new ideas.
After lunch we gathered with the Year 7-10 hapori, Korepo, to discuss our visit to the closing High School for the next day. With the new staff there, it was a large group and it was exciting to have more input and ideas from a wide range of people. Our hapori then met with one of the SLT to discuss how NCEA might look for next year. I think we came up with more questions than answers but this is a work in progress and it was good to get some ideas out for discussion.

Day Four

I read this article "When does profound learning occur?" that we were given and it just reinforced my thinking around making sure learners have choice, are empowered and are involved in creating new things. Changing from teacher-centered to student-centered learning and not sticking to a timetable can be difficult for some staff to get their heads around as we have been immersed in this style of teaching and learning for so long.

From: https://dallasps.wikispaces.com/

We heard some feedback on the kaiarāhi trip to Melbourne where they went to a few schools to have a look at the way they worked.

• Wooranna Park Primary School
• Dallas Brooks Community Primary School
• Templestowe College
• Silverton Primary

I really enjoyed listening about their thoughts on these and then exploring the school sites for more information. This is a great way to look at how some of these things might work at Haeata and to see what others are doing in their communities. Some amazing things going on!
Our second session was going into the high school and spending time with students. We had a range of activities for them and rotated them through these. It was great to spend time with them and give them an opportunity to meet us and to ask questions and tell us a bit about themselves.
The afternoon was spent doing our own work and I went to a TeachMeet which you can read about in another blog.

Day Five

We started with a reflection on our time at the high school yesterday and then moved into our hapori groups. Our discussion was centered about NCEA and how this might look for students in our hapori.
The next session started with us in pairs finding a quote about education. We had to say what we felt the quote meant in our eyes. We came up with education not being siloed in a classroom or just at school, but about equipping the community to enable change as well. The implications of this on our day to day actions would be to have authentic, meaningful learning and for students to see that they are the ones that can change the world. This ties in really well to our Values, Principles and Dispositions. We then went on to look at a draft of our Learning Process document. We had a chance to feed back to the SLT around this and have a discussion about how this may look in our kura.
Andy talked about his time at the Singularity Summit this week and once again reinforced his thoughts around the divide between school and the real world. If we take the linear path we will be left behind by the exponential curve of development. He talked about the difference between innovation (incremental and linear) and disruption (changing the game). We used to be able to predict what would happen in the world up to 20 or 30 years ahead, but now it is more like 3-5 years due to technology. He mentioned Moore's Law which I first heard about yesterday at the TeachMeet and also talked about the need for humanness in this technology based world. we need to automate what we can so we can spend time doing the human part of our jobs. A question he was asked, and I think we all need to ask of ourselves is:

What part of your job could be automated so we could do away with you?

Interesting discussion from there about Qualifications and NCEA. Sue Suckling (the Chair of NZQA) said "the era of the qualification has gone". This has huge implications for us as educators and is something that we spent a lot of time discussing in the afternoon. A group of kaiako spent time throwing ideas around as to what success could look like at Haeata and whether NCEA was a part of this and how it could be. It was a robust and fascinating conversation with many viewpoints and many ideas coming through from a wide range of staff, not just those in the Year 11-13 hapori.

Another week gone - time is flying by. Looking forward to the next week with a trip to Auckland and a visit to Tuahiwi.