It is so exciting to see the amazing work the Within School teachers are doing. Here is a bit of a taster of what some of them are up to.
Maeve Ried, Natalie Bell and Roger Mantel from Wellington High School have recognized the importance of teams of teachers taking the time to understand each other and build a team kaupapa. To this end, they have been meeting with the teams of teachers who work with the year 9s and 10s. Typically four teachers (English, maths, science and social studies) work with two classes in these Herengatahi groups. Maeve and Nat have facilitated conversations, asking:

• Who are you? (Where do you come from? Who are your whānau? What’s important in your culture?)
• What motivates you? (could be non-teacher-specific; we’re humans!)
• What are your strengths and challenges for this year?
• How can we create a team culture to promote hauora and the values of herengetahi?

The aim is that the teachers will then be able to take this process through to their classes to share a kaupapa and be working towards common goals.

Kyle Webb from Wellington High School has also been planning for the year 9 and 10 Herengatahi classes - to increase the opportunities for meaningful integrated learning. The plan is to suspend normal subject timetables for three weeks. In preparation, Kyle is creating exemplar integrated units and processes to encourage teachers to co-construct topics of interest with their students that will lead to real-life engagement and actions with the community. He is documenting an example process with his team that can be shared with others.
Julie Hanify from Ridgway school has been working on transitions for students into new classes at the beginning of the year. Last year she organized vulnerable students to have STEM classes with their teachers for the next year and set up a tuakana-teina system. This year she has been interviewing the students. Her question has been: How can we share good practice?

Debbie Purves from Newtown School completed an inquiry process last year, investigating how to build capabilities through co-curricular activities called ‘time to thrive.’ Her new investigation will include more co-construction with teachers and students to build activities from the ground up. She is enjoying slowing down and taking more time to hear the stories of both the teachers and the students. Her question to teachers signing up students to activities is, “Why those kids?” and her gentle challenge is to ask teachers to be aware of their assumptions and reflect on their decision making processes.

Paul Cooper from SWIS is putting together an inquiry based on his school’s wellbeing data and how to support wellbeing and hauora in the school. At this stage, he is still in the scanning phase of an inquiry.

Lauren Sims from Houghton Valley School has been at the school and in the WSL role for a whole three weeks. She has established that wellbeing is the priority for her school and meeting the needs for the diversity of the school – especially the rainbow and gender diverse families. She is going to be doing the online Potama Pounamu course and will be sharing with staff how they can improve wellbeing through better cultural responsiveness. At this stage, she is still in in the scanning phase of an inquiry.

Jo Sciascia from Owhiro Bay has gone ‘meta’ inquiring about inquiry learning. She is focusing on building an Owhiro Bay inquiry method and progression through the school based on curriculum levels. They have a skeleton framework now and will be building on it over the year with the new team of teachers at the school. Jo's next step will be to talk to the students and get their feedback, as the tools they are building are for the students to be able to talk about their learning and need to be age-appropriate. She also wants to create a sustainable process that will survive changes in teachers.

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It was fantastic to see so many of teachers from across our schools representing the Year 0-10 learning pathway at our first TeachMeet session yesterday afternoon.  We kicked off with a refresh of the focus and touched on a new paper that schools can use to self-review progress with the curriculum rollout, the ERO Report  - with the 'get ..set..go! rubrics for self-review.

The TeachMeet unconference-style suited a sharing of ideas — and there was rapid exchange of ideas and questions for each other. Importantly, it was a chance for teachers in the same area to connect, which will sow the seeds for future conversations and supports.

Here are the links to the docs that were shared - and we have created a shared space to capture our first ideas:

• Slides from the session
• Shared doc/notes from the session

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We look forward to further support in the coming months and thank all the teachers for their generosity in sharing their practice.