Learning on Purpose

In our recent round of interviews for our teaching staff, we asked only a few, but quite in-depth, questions.  One of them was on how applicants viewed successful collaboration between teachers in an ILE and how it enhanced student learning - because it needs to, otherwise there is little point in doing it. Most of the responses spoke about collaboration in the way it was currently done in traditional schools settings - what Farjana Ferdous (Jazan University, K.S.A.) describes as Grade Level Collaboration "Teachers working with other teachers to develop and implement instruction"  We think that in our environment where 3 teachers will be working together on a curriculum module that covers 2 learning areas of the curriculum, collaboration must be much deeper than this.  Their responses were understandably a product of their environment, as most are coming from traditional schools. Ferdous goes on to describe Co-Teaching/Collaboration Teaching and Cross-Curricular Collaborati

One of the most privileged parts of our job right now is having the time to visit other schools during instruction time, to see them in action.  While we have learnt different things from, and focused on different things within each school, a common thread throughout each visit is the warmth with which we are welcomed, and the generosity of people's time when there is already so little of it. We spent 2 days visiting Hobsonville Point Secondary School.  The welcome and (again) the generosity of time, resources (and food and coffee) was amazing. Maurie, Lea and Di each spent time with us sharing their journey, their ideas and their vision (Claire was in Wellington - but I'm sure would have been just as generous). The most value, though, came from Maurie standing at the whiteboard wall asking us "So what are you about? What do you want to be?" It made us articulate how much we valued a dispositional curriculum and wanted to give it as much essence in our dai