Fish Finding Feet

On Monday morning Annette reminded us of 8 key aspects of effective teams that she had gleaned from her coaching network:
Leadership
Common Goals
Rules of the game
Action Plans
Risk taking
100% inclusion
Celebrating success
Creating ... (something I can't read from my handwritten notes!)

The first session of the week was the SLT working with the LOLs to plan both the first four weeks of the new year when we would be based in the primary school inducting our students into our ay of learning and the orientation day we are holding later this term.

After morning tea Sally worked with staff on further planning around orientation day while we in the SLT gave and took through a process of planning the professional learning programme through to the end of the term.

The final session of the day was me introducing the new Ka Hikitia and Pacific Education Plans to the staff which resulted in some great discussion about our obligations as leader educators to the Treaty of Waitangi. The neat outcome was 8 staff volunteering to be part of the team to bring ideas for enhancing education outcomes for Maori and Pacifika to reality.

This morning we were introduced to Georgi the Search Engine our wonderful Library Leader who inspired us with her description of her vision of what being a librarian at our school meant.

Georgi talked about her role as being one to help lay the foundations for our learning programmes and encouraged us simply to .....

Simple, really!

Megan then ran two sessions on effective goal setting and feedback, the subject of her recently completed thesis.

It was during this session that Danielle introduced the metaphor of fish finding their feet. She talked of big fish in small ponds, then moving to a pond with lots of big fish and then trying to find your feet in that environment.

Later on over lunch Georgi and I explored the metaphor further agreeing we preferred the idea of fish within a lagoon rather than a pond of fishbowl as, rather than being self-contained, a lagoon is refreshed with nutrients on a regular basis from the ever-washing tide and fresh water streams flowing into it!