Road Trippin'
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 daily timetable and curriculum structure as an academic curriculum. We questioned our emerging leadership structure, and looked at how we each might fit into the vision and direction of our school, and where we might best incorporate the skills of our newly appointed Learning Leaders. Maurie spoke about their unique appointments process in their establishing year, and how to clearly advertise what we are about to ensure teachers applying for jobs knew what would be required of them in their roles. We also got to see the school in action, the learners we always so engaged, could articulate their learning, and noise was never an issue.
The next stop was Papamoa College, which open in 2011, was designed by the same architect company as us, and also has Year 7 and 8s. From Papamoa we learnt the importance of having a moral purpose and courage, to know what we are about and to take our whole staff on a journey to collectively get there. This is something we think about often as a leadership team. How do we start travelling the road and developing a vision, without going so far we are not bringing the people who will be joining our team with us? We are going to have some amazing teachers in our team, some we have already met, and some who are still in the process of applying for jobs with us. They will bring their collective talents and ideas, and we want them to help us create the school, to have ownership of what we do and what we're about. So it's 3 steps forward, 2 steps back... not in the negative sense, but us purposefully taking 2 steps back to wait for the rest of our team to arrive.
Then we started visiting our major contributing schools so have a sense of where our students would be coming from and the values they would be bringing with them, so that we can acknowledge, harness and build on that work already done, rather than try to impose over it. Puketaha, Te Totara, Rototuna Primary, Horsham Downs and Fairfield Intermediate were so welcoming and I can see us having long and mutually beneficial partnerships.
Last week we visited Hobsonville Point Primary School and Mission Heights Junior College. Daniel and the team at HPPS shared with us, along with some excellent coffee and great professional readings, the importance of creating great teams, maintaining functional teams and growing a vision and culture as a collective. Again we witness real purposeful learning, targeted teaching and student ownership of learning. The MHJC visit was most exciting for us, as this would be the first Junior High School school we visited - same year levels, and the have grown to have the same roll number the MOE predict we will be opening with - so what does 800 students look like in an ILE? MHJC have decided to go down a more traditional education timetable route, with students timetabled in to classes specific to Curriculum Learning Areas with specialist teachers i.e. Maths with a Maths teacher in a maths room, Science with a Science teacher in another. There were shared learning spaces in the middle of each block that allowed students to migrate out and work independently, which we did see a lot of.
We have been blessed to be so welcomed in to these schools. We are in a unique position - on such a tight time frame and opening with unprecedented numbers, that we really can't build everything from scratch and re-invent the wheel with everything that we do. So for the hints, tips, deep and meaningful conversations and lasting connections we truly are thankful for all of you.
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 daily timetable and curriculum structure as an academic curriculum. We questioned our emerging leadership structure, and looked at how we each might fit into the vision and direction of our school, and where we might best incorporate the skills of our newly appointed Learning Leaders. Maurie spoke about their unique appointments process in their establishing year, and how to clearly advertise what we are about to ensure teachers applying for jobs knew what would be required of them in their roles. We also got to see the school in action, the learners we always so engaged, could articulate their learning, and noise was never an issue.
The next stop was Papamoa College, which open in 2011, was designed by the same architect company as us, and also has Year 7 and 8s. From Papamoa we learnt the importance of having a moral purpose and courage, to know what we are about and to take our whole staff on a journey to collectively get there. This is something we think about often as a leadership team. How do we start travelling the road and developing a vision, without going so far we are not bringing the people who will be joining our team with us? We are going to have some amazing teachers in our team, some we have already met, and some who are still in the process of applying for jobs with us. They will bring their collective talents and ideas, and we want them to help us create the school, to have ownership of what we do and what we're about. So it's 3 steps forward, 2 steps back... not in the negative sense, but us purposefully taking 2 steps back to wait for the rest of our team to arrive.
Then we started visiting our major contributing schools so have a sense of where our students would be coming from and the values they would be bringing with them, so that we can acknowledge, harness and build on that work already done, rather than try to impose over it. Puketaha, Te Totara, Rototuna Primary, Horsham Downs and Fairfield Intermediate were so welcoming and I can see us having long and mutually beneficial partnerships.
Last week we visited Hobsonville Point Primary School and Mission Heights Junior College. Daniel and the team at HPPS shared with us, along with some excellent coffee and great professional readings, the importance of creating great teams, maintaining functional teams and growing a vision and culture as a collective. Again we witness real purposeful learning, targeted teaching and student ownership of learning. The MHJC visit was most exciting for us, as this would be the first Junior High School school we visited - same year levels, and the have grown to have the same roll number the MOE predict we will be opening with - so what does 800 students look like in an ILE? MHJC have decided to go down a more traditional education timetable route, with students timetabled in to classes specific to Curriculum Learning Areas with specialist teachers i.e. Maths with a Maths teacher in a maths room, Science with a Science teacher in another. There were shared learning spaces in the middle of each block that allowed students to migrate out and work independently, which we did see a lot of.
We have been blessed to be so welcomed in to these schools. We are in a unique position - on such a tight time frame and opening with unprecedented numbers, that we really can't build everything from scratch and re-invent the wheel with everything that we do. So for the hints, tips, deep and meaningful conversations and lasting connections we truly are thankful for all of you.
Really enjoyed reading this Mel. I've linked to it in my most recent blogpost here: http://rosmaceachern.blogspot.co.nz/2015/10/critical-friendships.html
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