Thursday 4 November 2021
Ka mua, ka muri Walking backwards into the future Understanding our local histories and stories is an integral part of the new Histories curriculum, and an exciting journey that we can embark on together. As we look to the past, it can inform our future, giving us context, understandings and agency to make a positive difference in our world. Ihaia Puketapu from Te Atiawa was our guest speaker at this Teach Meet - and unlocked a treasure trove of historical knowledge - taking us right back to early arrivals to New Zealand - long before Europeans arrived on the scene. We enjoyed hearing a rich narrative about the different stages of Te Ao Māori history, changes in thinking and behaviours and ways in which early Māori responded to this land. Ihaia was able to link together historical architectural knowledge alongside narratives handed down from kaumatua through the generations. Ihaia generously shared a document with us: Kōrero o ngā Tūpuna - Whanganui-a-Tara. This is well worth a read, and will be a useful resource for anyone wanting to know more about the history of Te Ao Māori. It is well researched, and contains many links to historical records. A strong theme of the Teach Meet was the concept of being “Kaitiaki” and looking at the impacts of our actions on our local environment - for example the extinction of the Moa and the Huia and what was learned. We look forward to continuing our learning with Ihaia Puketapu in 2022.
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Ma te kahukura, ka rere te manu.
Adorn the bird with feathers and it will fly. This whakatauki reminds us of the importance of knowledge and understanding - recognising that as we consider and reflect on our teaching practice with the end goal of strengthening the ways in which we build relationships and impact learners, we are creating conditions for our tamariki to fly - to experience success. The journey in our Community of Practice has deepened this term, as we have taken time to move from a Matairangi perspective (big picture) to a Matainuku perspective (personal). We are challenging ourselves in the ways in which we are enacting a culturally relational pedagogy in our own teaching spaces. In this session we did a deep dive into an excellent reading: A commentary on Ngā Pou Here, ERO’s framework for reviewing early childhood services. Whilst this is in an ECE context, it is full of rich descriptions that help to inform our bicultural understandings. It is exciting to consider our Māori learners and the ways in which we can partner with them in order for them to experience success. Claire O’Fee from Poutama Pounamu led this workshop in response to the needs identified from earlier transitions workshops, our transitions survey, and the Transitions Tracking document. Discussions were rich and highlighted the shared needs, and foci, across all our centres from ECE to senior secondary students.
Groups focused on how the cultural relationship metaphors (whanau, whakapapa, kaupapa) are aligned with deliberate acts of teaching to foster friendships. How do centres and schools facilitate friendships? How do these actions reflect a Te Ao Maori view? A strong theme that emerged was that of walking alongside others to support and nurture relationships – and the significance of modelling relational strategies with students. Knowing students, using their names when around others, promoting shared interests / activities, inviting-in fringe participants to group work, and sustaining shared engagement were identified as key factors of building relationships. Claire shared a reading 'A Commentary on Ngā Pou Here, ERO's Framework for Reviewing Early Childhood Services' exploring themes of whakapapa and whanaungatanga - both themes from the Poutama Pounamu work, and relevant to all centres and schools. Some big questions emerged from our mahi about strengthening the networks between centres and between schools, and ways of working to best meet student needs in this important space – particularly, how do we know what is working for students? We hope to explore these questions in future sessions. At our Learning Services and Support Hui held on 4 November we confirmed the next steps we wish to take in to address our learners' needs across our schools, before continuing to look at how we identify learner needs within our schools and provide tiered intervention. A huge thank you to Miriam Gaynor from Houghton Valley School who explained how they provide Tiered Instruction to support their learners. Miriam shared written guidelines they use to provide their teachers with clarity around how to help their students depending on their needs. This spring boarded discussion about how we do this across our schools. The effective strategies highlighted across our school will be used to form the foundations of an intervention framework that we can use across our Kāhui ako.
Our session ended with Alison Evans (RTLB) outlining how RTLBs are now organised and working with schools, followed by Victoria Parsons (MOE Service Manager). Victoria introduced Te Mahau as a more locally responsive, accessible and integrated and way of working together to support our learners and highlighted the pivotal role of the liaison person in the new He Pikorua in Action Practice Framework. This was really helpful and leads beautifully into the focus of our next hui, "External Support for Learners" outlining how we can access external support as individual schools and collectively as a Kāhui Ako. This will be held on 25 November, from 2 - 3.30pm @ Ridgway School. At our final community of practice for the year, we discovered that while we think we know what ‘relating to others’ and ‘participating and contributing’ mean, it is worth taking a deeper look at these two key competencies: what they mean, how we can teach them and the progressions as students move through the school pathway. Have a look at the slide show if you too would like to delve more deeply into these two components of functioning well in complex environments (e.g. classrooms). We would like to congratulate the following kaiako who have been appointed to the Kāhui Ako Across School Lead team from the start of 2022.
We would also like to recognise all those who participated in the application process — we are extremely fortunate to have such a high calibre of staff in our community. Finally, huge thanks must go to Libby Hainsworth (based at Ridgway) who finishes in her ASL role at the end of the year — we look forward to celebrating her work at the end of term. In Week 9, despite the challenges of returning from lockdown, we held our termly hui for our ASLs and WSLs, to provide on-going support for their change leadership. We shared the progress in our in-school projects, and used a couple of change leadership frameworks to reflect on:
The team can access the slides here I liked the chance to talk to others, sharing and discussing different but tricky challenges. Community of Practice #5
I orea te tuatara ka puta ki waho A problem is solved by continuing to find solutions This whakatauki has a literal meaning of using a spear to probe a tuatara from its hole – this imagery reminds us of the importance of being persistent and creative in the journey of success! In our latest Community of Practice session we spent some time reframing our work - moving from a Mātai Rangi (big picture) perspective, to a Mātai Nuku (personal) perspective. We took time to listen to student voice - Ngā Huatau Taiohi and asked ourselves the following questions, which you may also like to reflect on:
We then took time to dig deeply into an excellent article from Education Hub: Seven Principles to effectively support Māori students as Māori. In our response to this article we worked with a critical friend to refine our actions - what will we do in our classroom to make a positive difference for our Māori students? It is encouraging to see the bravery and honesty of the participants in our session - and their willingness to go deeper for the sake of their students. Ngā mihi maioha koutou! “The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives”. – William James (1842 – 1910)
Two weeks ago Suzie Harcourt presented on anxiety. She spoke about recognising behaviours associated with anxiety and how to support students out of these heightened states. In the Emotional Self-regulation workshop last week we looked at:
“Between stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” - Victor Frankl Teachers shared some of the challenges they face with students, personally, and relationally. The ability to just ‘feel our body’ is something some students have great difficult doing so they may be missing some of the more subtle cues associated with behaviour regulation. How does the body respond to threats physiologically? · Heart rate increases · Temperature increases · Adrenaline then cortisol levels increase · Breath shortens and quickens George Johnston from the Pause Breathe Smile mindfulness programme provided insight into the importance of:
Pause Breathe Smile is a mindfulness programme developed in NZ and fully sponsored by Southern Cross Health Care – so it is FREE to NZ schools. We hope to bring George back into our Kāhui Ako next year to provide some in-depth training for kaiako. You can view the slides for the session here. In the week post-lockdown, it was tricky to take the time to think about developing key competencies in a science context. Many thanks to all those who attended and contributed their knowledge. It was a provocative and useful session.
We began with a walking debate that initiated thoughtful discussions about these three statements:
The three readings we shared allowed the opportunity to deepen our understanding of science capabilities, mātauranga Māori in science; and the OECD’s big ideas in science. As always the stories of what schools are doing were fascinating. From the local curriculum and geology inquiry at Owhiro Bay to X-files discovery learning about life in space at Ridgway to meteorological learning at Island Bay the opportunities teachers are providing for science learning were inspiring. The division in the science curriculum between the nature of science and contexts was a recurrent theme in our discussions. Prue MacFarlane, a science teacher at WHS, shared with the participants how spending time developing the skills of a scientist at primary and intermediate is arguably more important than having specific content knowledge when students begin at secondary school. She had put a massive amount of work into tracking the development of these skills through the pathway from years 0-13 and for the last part of this session asked for feedback on her document. You can view the slides for the session here. |
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