Day 30 - Our journey towards change

“If you always do what you’ve always done,

you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

At the end of last year our senior management team took a good hard look at what was going on in our classrooms and decided to embark on a journey of change. It’s not that anything drastically bad was occurring, but we noticed that our students were not being given enough chances to make independent choices about their learning.

We wanted to change that.

We enlisted the help of Bek Galloway, an education consultant based out of Blenheim, who helped us form four key outcomes that we wanted to see happening within our learning spaces.

• A class culture where our students are regularly thinking, questioning & collaborating
• Teachers encouraging deeper thinking
• Ensure students are using their own questions
• Enable student voice, reflection & independence

To achieve these outcomes we all had to take a step back and challenge our ideas about teaching and what it looks like. What is best practice? What is the purpose of school? What skills do we want our students to leave our school with?

We are very much still in the early stages of this new approach to teaching, introducing bits and pieces at a time to ensure that it is done successfully. Our next step is moving away from timetabled curriculum designated periods and into flexible blocks of learning with multiple tasks and projects on the go across all areas of the curriculum at any time.

The idea of students designing their own learning tasks and plans has been a big mindset change for some of our staff but we are very fortunate that everyone is onboard and committed to the journey.

Any change always comes with a risk, But without risk there very rarely is a reward.

We know that our students will greatly benefit from our new approach to teaching and learning as they become deeper thinkers and lifelong learners. We look forward to the journey ahead!

Cam Gordon

Day 29 -Connections - Past, Present, Future

CONNECTING WITH THE PAST TO MAKE SENSE OF THE PRESENT AND READY YOURSELF FOR THE FUTURE

It is often said that we learn from the past, but how often do we take the opportunity to reflect on years gone by? With all this talk of connecting in education, do any of us take the time to connect with ourselves, our past, our present and our possible future, and the impact that life has had, and will have on our identity?

At a recent boarding school reunion, I reconnected with many friends and was able to reflect on the impact that boarding school had on my identity. One friend, Soo Bee explained to me how she had always felt that she didn’t belong anywhere. She no longer identified strongly with Malaysia her country of birth, and had always felt like an outsider in Melbourne her home for nearly thirty years. It was through returning to the boarding school that was her home in her formative years and connecting with her past, that she was able to make sense of her identity and through this gain a sense of belonging.

Soo Bee’s journey enabled me to connect with my past and through this connection I came to understand how boarding school had influenced me and my identity. In brief boarding school was  a crash course on the key competencies. I had to manage myself, I had to learn to relate to others from diverse backgrounds, I had to participate and contribute, thinking was essential, as was understanding language, symbols and texts. I discovered that my identity was strongly linked to my time at boarding school and the independence that I gained through living away from home.

I spent two nights with old friends at my old boarding school. It had been a very long time since we had all gathered together to share laughter and fun. I took away with me a better understanding of my identity and a clear direction for my teaching. If I can embed the key competencies through my teaching, I will provide an environment where my students can connect with their own past and develop their own strong identity thus enabling them to achieve success in whatever future they choose for themselves.

Day 18 - Haeata - Connections in week 1

I have been so excited about starting at Haeata Community Campus and was very keen to keep a diary of what I was thinking and what we have been doing and so I decided I would write a bit each day and publish at the end of the week. This is an amazing opportunity to be in at the beginning of a new school, and the process is very different from when you change schools at the end of a year. I have been lucky to be part of this new venture and I am finding it fascinating.

The day before...

After meeting with #ChchEd Educators @paulinehendog, @mattynicoll, @karyngra and @ginippi on Sunday afternoon, I had more questions than answers and the excitement started to build. We had a good discussion about uniform in schools and I found that I hadn't even given a thought as to whether there was a dress code for staff in my new school. I just assumed that I would wear what I normally would for teaching. It was good having Karyn there, so I did get to ask. Interestingly, she said it wasn't something that they had thought about. There are so many things that a new school has to think about, it has been interesting to see what the priorities are as another school had stipulated what they wanted their staff to wear. As Matt was also going to a new school this term, there was talk about the balance of getting to know staff, but also getting on with what we need to do for planning and I look forward to seeing how this pans out in our induction weeks. I am sure my social media accounts will be busy over the next few weeks as I learn new things and get more excited about meeting our students next year.

Day One

Some nerves this morning as I drove over to the old Burwood School site ready for our mihi whakatau. Great to meet with some new staff first thing and then we were welcomed to Haeata.  After our mihimihi Mana Whenua facilitator Corban Te Aika and Mel Taite (SLT) spent time to teach us the waiata that we would be mainly using. Our day was spent getting to know each other. We spent time in small groups, doing the usual icebreaker type activities and the SLT ran some excellent activities. We went outside and did a treasure hunt in teams - a great way to get to know a few of our colleagues and show our true colours (maybe I am a little competitive). There were lots of laughs and a lot of talking. We also got to see the new uniform, which looks really practical and low cost for families. Over lunch, a few of us decided that the getting to know people was quite exhausting. You are continually listening, talking, asking questions and trying to remember names and details. It really was a tiring day.
During the day we were encouraged to ask questions and a few came up over the day, checking if we can blog/tweet, uniform questions, dates and times as well as talking about going into our contributing schools. Many things are still in progress and will take more discussion over the coming weeks.

Day Two

I presented my digital korowai this morning and challenged myself to present something in a way I hadn't done before so did my first Office Mix and made it into a movie. It was good to push myself out of my comfort zone - something I feel we will all be doing over the next weeks. Each day a few of us are presenting about ourselves - a really great way to get to know one another and learn about some of the interests we have.

We then had a presentation and discussion around our values at Haeata. Andy, Cheryl and Haneta from the board talked us through what the school is based on and how the values came about in consultation with the community. There was discussion around PPP - Public Private Partnership which is what this school has been funded by. You can read more about that here.
We watched The Future of Learning and we had discussions around what this meant for us as a school. We watched it again and were encouraged to take notes in whatever way we wanted. Really interesting to see the range of ways people wanted to record their thoughts. My note-taking lives in OneNote and I love being able to write and draw and highlight as I note take. Being able to put pictures in and links is just the best. I would be hard pushed to find another tool that would do all of that!
After lunch we had a "Passion Unconference". This was the opportunity to experience learning about other staff member's passions. We were treated to workshops from playing cards to baking and writing Chinese characters to making Samoan ula lole. A great opportunity to learn more about others and also experience something a little different for ourselves.We were then split into groups and given a packet of pipecleaners and had to create something that was representative of learning at Haeata. Ours showed chaos, infinity, connectedness, strong foundations, collaboration and thinking outside the box.

Day Three

The day started with our karakia and himene (I have been learning a lot in regards to Tikanga Maori and Te Reo)and then moved into a session on Unschooling. We had a lot of opportunities to talk in pairs and small groups about our experiences and in one part to discuss failure and success and what the conditions were to make us meet these two things. Why do we try again and again and then give up? Or alternatively why do we try and try again and keep trying until we succeed? We came up with a lot of conditions that make these things happen. A really good way to see how we can support our learners to succeed. I realised for myself that I often don't risk take for fear of failure and things outside my comfort zone often don't even get attempted. We are all too quick to make excuses - not enough time, not interested and so on.
Andy Kai Fong talked about the cynefin framework by Dan Snowden (place of multiple belongings) and we looked at what each of these areas could look like in a school situation. I felt this resonated as I know I have been in all four quadrants over my teaching time.
We had some time in our hapori today which was good to get to know each other a little better. We played games (cards were a definite hit) and chatted about ourselves.
I had an interesting discussion with some staff at lunchtime around student well-being and was introduced to theCircle of Wellbeing and Achievement which Haeata is using when interviewing parents of new students. This has a really good framework to get to know students and plan goals and strategies to help with the transition into the school.
We had more digital korowai today and it has been great learning about our staff who have been very open in sharing information about their family and their teaching.
The afternoon was about our personal sites that had been set up for us which have our contracts and information and documentation about our reflections as well as space for working towards our Registered Teaching Criteria.

Day Four

Our first session was on the principles today - Authentic, Connected, Culturally intelligent, Inclusive, Social, Open, Personalised. These are what Haeata is based upon and it was great to have time to learn about and unpack these. Firstly we had blank sheets of paper to write our ideas and unpack each principle. Then we gathered in groups and were given photos that we felt represented those principles and it was interesting to see how people interpreted those pictures and the different ways of thinking. We shared a story each that related to one of the principles and looked at how we would show success in that area. This was a good exercise in working out how we define success. It made me think more about what success is and how our students show that. In groups we also made a slide show with a quote, definition, song and slogan about one of the principles. This let us unpack them a little more as well as get to know more staff. I felt that the principles are all interconnected and felt good about how they would impact on our teaching and learning at Haeata.

Day Five

Today was a different day. We started with a shared breakfast and then had an Amazing Race. We were split into different groups yet again and sent off around Christchurch to find a range of items, build sandcastles and meet people in businesses. The highlights would have to be one of our team removing the required chicken feather from a dead chicken, pretending to be sheep on the side of the road, meeting some amazing people and convincing tourists to have their photo taken with us. We came back for a BBQ lunch then worked together on a presentation for the rest of the staff on our excursion.


This week has been like a huge week of professional development. My daughter thought it sounded like a school camp and in some ways it was. We had time to socialise, to connect with one another and learn about others as well as ourselves. We are very lucky to have this opportunity.  I certainly felt that my brain was about to explode a few times. However, it has been a very rewarding week and I know that I feel connected to staff and to this amazing new school, Haeata.

Sue McLachlan