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!

It's all Hunky Dory (Bowie)

I've been thinking about leadership a lot recently and there is no doubt that, like any major change, this new model of secondary education that we are planning to introduce requires different leadership at all levels.

One of the big concentrations of our work has been in the area of I of GPLISEO (Institutions) as we have been working on creating new institutions of schooling in our minds and then constructing them in reality. As my previous post mentioned, along with the many posts from our staff (access them in my sidebar for the various perspectives), one of the highlights of this week was the revealing of the institutions that will support the Specialised Learning Modules element of our curriculum.

The L of GPILSEO (Leadership) has been vital in getting to this point. A new way of schooling definitely requires a new way of leadership.

I have been a principal for 11 years. All of those years have been tough and challenging, but also very rewarding. Despite the absence of students and all the teaching interactions and relationships that go with that this year has been no less challenging. Every aspect of leadership has been open to scrutiny, which is how it should be, while trying to assist and guide others as they develop their leadership.

I would definitely call all of our staff leaders though all have come from environments with traditional leadership structures. As well, very few have been involved in leadership of major change across  a whole school. But leadership is blossoming at our school!

Di's team of SLLs certainly has shown what happens when people assume the elements of autonomy and accountability in areas that they aspire to lead. Lea's team of LTL's have also exhibited the same in running hands-on workshops on how to know our learners. Claire's team of Professional Learning Leaders has begun to hit its straps with awesome plans emerging for teaching inquiry, library development and staff appraisal. And Sarah's work in developing the Big Project aspect of our curriculum is benefiting from her leadership and passion.

But leadership is at all levels and I'm convinced more and more that leadership is a diposition and not a position and true accountability comes with the sense of our collective responsibility to get this right for the learners of Hobsonville or as Maliina so beautifully put it ....

The strong sense of whanaungatanga that is driving our teams is truly impressive; whether that be in planning innovative curriculum structures or compiling budget requests. Everywhere there are leaders:

But just as importantly all of these leaders are happy to allow themselves to be led by their colleagues:

We're working hard, but we're also having fun!

Well done to Team Tahi for winning last Friday's Masterchef!

What does the coming week hold? There will be some stunning leadership and whanaungatanga will strengthen further. We'll have completed the first part of our budgeting processing (adding up what everyone has asked for!), settled on our IT services contract as well as our printing and photocopying, prepared for next Monday's all important ERO visit, had a BOT meeting at which I hope to get permission to spend some money and appoint some more staff, enrolled a few more students, formed teams to plan to address achievement of Maori and Pasifica students and to prepare for Consent to Assess against NCEA, planned Orientation Day, visited Marina View Primary, continued development of our school Charter, participated in workshops and presentations delivered by several of our wonderful leaders and had some fun!

A weekend of kayaking on a choppy Waitemata, mountainbiking in the Woodhill Forest, going to the movies (Rush), finding a new craft beer pub, eating great food at a new (for me) Malaysian Restaurant (Selena) has me almost ready for another great week.

Transformer (RIP Lou Reed) def: an agent of change

The structure of modules which exposes students to new learning and then allows for personalisation being presented by Di

Kylee explaining our innovative timetable which incorporates Learning Hubs, Big Projects, Specialised Learning Modules and MyTime

Di explaining different inquiry models that have informed her team's thinking

Steve describing a student's application of the timetable

Lisa outlining the planning steps we will follow to develop modules that support the big concept for the term

Jill explaining the various modules (Big, Small, Spin, Hoops) with excellent visuals

Expectations were high leading in to today as the SLLs were planning to reveal how the Specialised Learning Modules would be constructed, planned, resourced and fitted into the wider curriculum plan and timetable.

Expectations were exceeded!

I had already had a good picture of the design of modules as a result of my involvement in discussions but I was blown away by the clarity of explanation, the quality of the presentation and presentation material, the activities for us to participate in and the openness to response to the many questions asked.

The atmosphere was exhilarating. Over morning tea and lunch everyone was buzzing with excitement as we could all see that the realisation of our vision for learning was coming closer. The exciting thing is that we're going to experience the same excitement with the upcoming presentations on Projects and Learning Hubs.

The next few hours of meeting with Budget teams and then analysing their submissions was a bit surreal as I was still on a high and just felt like, quite uncharacteristically, saying "yes, yes!" To all requests!

Just Another Day of Awesome

It was a funny day today; a day when I couldn't fit lunch in until 2.48pm! It started with another enrolment, which is always a great task as I get to meet the parents and students who are committing to our school. From then I met for about an hour with our BOT chair as part of my performance review. It's always great talking with Alan as he has a vast range of experiences in the education sector and models life-long learning.

I managed to squeeze in a few minutes with the staff where Steve and Lisa were taking them through an exercise of identifying the key concepts and skills in the Learning Areas. It's always great to see the passion, knowledge and leadership on display when the LOLs are in full flight.

Lisa and Steve leading the team

Megan then ran a shared reading discussion with the new staff. I felt really privileged to sit back and see staff taking their turn to comment on the professional reading they had been doing and sharing it on our Google Site.

From there Claire and I met with Euan from Hawkins to confirm our AV installation requests. Megan and Pete took the opportunity to talk about the performance spaces in the school to help them with the budgetting. Shot, you two!

Then the first part of a three part meeting Claire and I had with a range of people re our phone and internet connection provision got underway. The technical stuff was over my head but the tension and conflict between the players was clearly evident. I think we made progress.

It was now 2.48, time for a quick lunch before heading off at 3.00 to take the primary staff and a few hangers on through the secondary school building. I was there last Wednesday but was still impressed with the further progress. 

Looking into one of the many social learning spaces

Robotics, electronics, small machines Learning Commons

So, it was a hectic day.

But it all came right when Lisa emerged from the cave in which her team had been working with the words, "Just another day of awesome!" And as I was about to leave, thinking I was the only one left at the late hour and doing a bit of air guitar to some pumping Talking Heads, Kylee and Megan emerged from their workspace and chatted about budgets and things. Just another day of awesome!

Mr Excitement! (Jackie Wilson)

"Exciting and scary". These were the words used by a staff member to describe the work that she was playing a key part in to bring a doable structure to our vision for teaching and learning; a structure that could give us some ability to plan and organise but that which would not compromise our commitment to personalising learning. Without even thinking I replied with something like, "Correct! That's our job."

Reflecting on that later I felt pleased with how much more comfortable we had all become in that scary and exciting place.

The day started with great personal story presentations:
Liz began by using a collection of framed sketches, student work and family photographs to share part of herself with us. She also used a netball to explain the importance of loose elbows in both shooting for goals and sketching!

Danielle followed by centering her story around a collection of images that depicted her family and their shared interests.

Then Georgi shared a great video showing the many aspects of what it means to be Georgi.

The rest of the day was spent assisting staff with the budgetting process, completing 2 more enrolments, meeting with a couple of dudes who are offering their services to assist with international students, discussing timetable developments and beginning to get a working relationship set up with my new PA, Maliina.

A couple of IT/AV issues have arisen, but as with most issues solutions soon start appearing. Late in the day Claire shared the work she had been doing on Hobsonline, our on-line LMS thingy. Looking very cool!

Today lived up to this post's title (an album by the way I am still looking for)

Tomorrow brings an appraisal meeting with my boss, a further enrolment, a series of IT meetings and another site visit. Hopefully a couple more personal story presentations!

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

It was 2.07pm on Monday 21 October in a Learning Commons 8 cave when Kylee and Steve and I agreed that we had created a timetable structure that looks as if it could deliver on the exciting vision for our school. Of course, it wasn't created by us three, but we had certainly pulled together ideas shared between Claire, Di, Lea and I over several months, ideas discussed at length by all of the SLLs and feedback from all of the LOLs.

We left confident that we had a structure that would go a long way to supporting our goal of truly personalising learning with lots of opportunity for flexibility and responsiveness for both teachers and learners. I believe it to be a very innovative solution and one which will contribute to the growing level of excitement amongst our team. We've still got a little bit of work to do on it and still need to test it with the rest of our team. I'm looking forward to moving through that process and then sharing it more widely.

The day started with a great rendition of Folsom Prison Blues on the ukes and during the Kitchen Table session (which we start every day with) Sally ran a great session on introducing the key elements of effective coaching and mentoring which got all of us to draw on our personal experiences.

After this the SLLs ran a session describing the processes they went through in their previous cave as they deconstructed the NZC so as to design what learning will look like at HPSS. Staff were asked to identify one of the most important sentences in the NZC document which they agreed was:

"All learning should make use of the natural connections that exist between learning areas and that link learning areas to the values and key competencies"

I had to be out of the room for a bit completing an enrolment and when I returned I spent time sitting and observing what was happening in the room. The two things I saw were great collaborative leadership from the group of SLLs who were relishing the opportunity to lead, as all the LOLs have been doing, and a group of 20 people listening respectfully, allowing others to contribute and being able to contribute themselves.

Steve sharing the SLL journey

We then formed teams to begin the truly excellent process of budget planning for 2014!

Yeehah. Timetabling and budgetting in the same day! Hence the title of this post inspired by Kanye West.

Giant Steps

John Coltraine's great jazz album from 1960 has inspired this post's title. While giant steps have already been made, this term will require several more as we bring life to the vision we have been unwrapping over the last several months.

Our new team, who were introduced with ukuleles in the previous post, had a busy day on Tuesday when they had a session with Di doing some Blue Sky thinking drawing on their own schooling experiences and sharing their vision of a dream school.

Ros, Martin, Maliina, Cindy, Pete, Liz and Georgi sharing their Blue Sky thinking

Their next session was a shared reading activity with me going through the Innovations Unit's 10 Big Ideas for 21st Century Learning. After reading about one of the ideas each the new staff shared the main ideas so that by the end they had a thorough understanding of each idea and all were able to bring some of their perspectives to each.

Pete sharing his thoughts on the big ideas

Wednesday was just as busy. It started with our LOLs sharing their thoughts on their experiences when they first started. They talked of how strange it was to be comfortable with slowing down and taking time to deschool and not be worried that it was an atmosphere of patient urgency rather than just urgency. They spoke of their excitement about being able to push the boundaries and of their fears of wondering how they could prove they had a right to be there and the struggles on leaving their former students behind.

This was followed up with Claire, Di, Lea and I revisiting the vision, values, principles and dispositions for our school to ensure we were all at the same place with our understanding.

 Claire presenting on our values

Getting myself in the picture

After this session I had the neat job of taking the new staff to visit our school's building site for a tour.

 Looking down into the student cafeteria area

The team on site

On our return the new staff shared their thoughts on the building with the rest of the team. They spoke of its sheer vastness, the interesting shapes, the framing of the landscape through the glass walls, the special combination of defined areas but also being open and cosy, the enabling nature of the design (around every corner was a learning space which brought meaning to our korero and the flow between spaces and to the outside. I think they were happy!

By Wednesday night I was feeling the urge to bring things to a head in relation to a definite structure to attach our learning design thinking to (think timetable). This was important for several reasons including driving our thinking around budgetting (rapidly approaching), ensuring staffing resource could do what we wanted without having the wrath of PPTA visited on me (urgent), and, most importantly, establishing the frameworks needed so that specific learning programme planning could take place while we still had time to do that. Consequently that night I created a model that allocated staff to kids and provided for the coverage of NZC in a way that maintained flexibility and provided elements of student choice.

I decided to share my thinking with my DPs one at a time because I often find it difficult to explain my thinking and respond to issues which might arise with 4 strong minded people in the room. I asked them to think it over and to share it with their teams.

After a neat session with the staff where they shared their personal sculptures I headed off to the airport to pick up my daughter who had been in the UK for 2 years.

Sculpture sharing in progress

 The next morning I discovered a high level of concern/questions from the SLL team in particular about the timetable plan I had presented. I quickly realised many of the reactions were a result of them not seeing the thinking behind and the flexibility within the proposed structure. Since the new staff were out on a community familiarisation exercise designed by the LOLs I took the opportunity, after more feedback from the DPs, to present the structure and to talk it through with the LOLs. While many of their questions and concerns were answered or addressed by this process they welcomed the opportunity to take time over the weekend to tutu with my ideas and to create improvements.

I spent Saturday amending my original plan based on the feedback they had provided at the session and it is certainly an enhancement. During Sunday I received a detailed outline of an alternative, though similar in many ways, from Kylee. At the time of writing this post a couple of questions I have are still to be answered but I definitely like what I see. While I was working through that some thoughts from Steve arrived.

We're all on the same page and all taking giant steps. My intention last Wednesday night was to nail this by Monday. This will still be achieved, but it will be the end of Monday rather than the start. I'm trying to think of the song or album that will best encapsulate  the feeling when this bit is nailed. I'll ponder on it.

Of course, lots of other stuff gets included in the week as well. Enrolments are continuing (about 110), we're signing off heaps of money for IT network solutions and digital signage, allocating areas of leadership for the full range of operational matters important to a school, attending the roof shout for the secondary school and the NEAL breakfast where Danielle was presenting

and of course finalising uniform.

The only way to cope with a week like that was to go and take giant steps amongst the giants in the Waitakare's

and to dine out with the whanau at Diwali celebrations in the city.

Hanging on for another great week!

22 Strong Ukulele Orchestra

Official staff photo of Foundation staff of Hobsonville Point Secondary School, minus Annette who is in India!

Day 1 of Term 4 the SLT (Maurie, Lea, Claire, Di) and LOLs (Sarah, Sally, Steve, Megan, Jill, Lisa, Kylee and Yasmin) were joined by our new staff of Bryce, Pete, Martin, Liz, Maliina, Danielle, Cindy, Georgi and Ros.

What a great day!

More Songs About Buildings and Food

This truly outstanding album by Talking Heads came to mind when thinking about a title for this post.

Food certainly features strongly in a lot of our activities at school, though not so much today as it was a fasting day. But it is forever present. I have posted about Steve and Sarah's Live Below the Line project this week and also mentioned the scones and lunch from yesterday.

The More Songs bit seemed relevant as our starting the day with a ukulele performance has become a ritual.

Today we attempted a couple of new songs including Amy Winehouse's Rehab but much more work will be needed to nail that one. We had to finish off with another rousing rendition of Folsom Prison Blues to get our confidence back.

Had to comb my hair in a special way to get this look going!

I then headed down to our site to meet up with the architect who was hosting a visit by another school which was looking at Modern Learning Environments. I was there to talk about the pedagogy that had prompted the building design. I soon realised the lens through which our visitors were looking at teaching and learning spaces was quite different to ours so I just dropped into the background and wandered around with a senseof increasing excitement about how our building was unfolding.

 Looking into my (I mean our) office

 Student cafeteria/gathering space outside gymnasium

 Looking from Main St into Learning Commons

Breakout areas as part of Learning Commons

I raced back from this to the ERO report back from their visit the previous day. Alan, Di and Lea and I (Claire was getting emergency dental treatment!) had the privilege of hearing the reviewers speak very highly on the leadership, governance, coherence of vision and direction, community engagement and curriculum planning that was evident to them. I liked the way they talked about the patient urgency with which we were going through our work.

Well done BOT and staff!

It was great to spend the last hour joining a LOL conversation that was making the first tentative steps towards agreeing on how a timetable might be put together. I couldn't help but reflect on the ERO comments about coherence because through this conversation you could tell that everyone was motivated by keeping the learner and their needs firmly in our focus. Differences were being expressed but everyone was singing from the same song sheet. I am convinced that if we had tried this conversation a few weeks ago there would have been more polarised views.

After appointing a PA and two further enrolments to close out the day I found myself heading home, once again, feeling content, confident and privileged. I was even more pleased that I hadn't had time to eat my apple which meant that was caloric capacity for a whiskey for a quiet celebration.

So, the third term is coming to a close and all seems well in our work!

As ERO sees it

I've struggled to start writing tonight's blog post because I'm not sure how to write about the day.

ERO was here for the day to begin their Readiness Review. Last week the SLT met briefly to discuss the visit and quickly agreed that we didn't need to do anything special and that we were confident that we could talk confidently about what we had done, what we were doing and what we still had to do. I spoke briefly with our LOLs to let them know that ERO would want to meet with them and talk to them about the work that they were doing.

So what happened today?

After a short mihi we burst into a fine rendition of Folsom Prison Blues on our ukuleles which I suggest would be the first time this was used as a waiata to support our mihi. Claire, Lea, Di and I, with BOT Chair Alan, then talked with them for an hour on how we were bringing the board's vision to reality. We talked about the very strong relationship we have been forming with our community and contributing primary schools, the processes we followed to appoint our stunning staff and how we were shaping up our curriculum delivery processes, structures and practices.

Claire, Lea and Di were then taken off by one of the reviewers each (Di, Deb and Anne) and talked with them about their roles in leading the development of the curriculum and growing the leadership of their teams. I have never felt so relaxed about ERO talking to staff without me "keeping an eye on things".

After a lovely morning tea of Lea's homebaked scones Deb and Anne then had an hour with the Learning Team Leaders (LTLs) and Specialised Learning Leaders (SLLs). Once again I had no fears about our people, who have only been with us for 8 weeks, being able to speak confidently about their contributions to the development of our school. While this was going on Di was quizzing me about the exciting topic of 'documentation'.

After lunch, which was another great banquet, Deb, Di and Anne spent 2 hours comparing their notes and pulling their thoughts together. I was able to act like a ninja and take a stealth photo of them at work.

Ninja Photo

While ERO were having their hui our team just kept working.

ERO Reviewer, Di, later admitted that rather than reading through the documents I had left with her she kept an ear on the team in the photo above as they were developing their professional learning ideas for the full team next term. She was moved to comment very favourably on the way in which members of the team were  putting their views forward while remaining open to the views of others.

ERO then asked if they could give their initial feedback to the whole group as they were not sure if they would get the opportunity to do so tomorrow as they would only be in briefly. Their feedback was outstanding. They all commented on the vibe they were feeling and that they saw total coherence across the team about the vision and how we were moving it closer to practice. It was totally affirming for the team and I was rapt that they were sharing their thoughts with everybody.

The biggest struggle of the day was poor Sarah and Steve who had to miss out on the scones and lunch banquet because of their commitment to the Live Below the Line project whereby they have to live off food that costs no more than $2.25 per day!

Steve's cup of mint tea with mint plucked from his garden

Go Steve!

You can support him at https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/stevemouldey

Let's hope ERO's more formal feedback apopo supports what I've put up here! I'll let you know.

Sharing food, ideas and company

The last 3 days seems to have revolved around sharing food, korero and each other's company.

It started on Friday morning with me, Claire, Di and Lea hosting the Principals and Deputy Principals from Hobsonville Point, Hobsonville, Marina View and Whenuapai Primary Schools at the Catalina Cafe. We took the opportunity to congratulate them on the quality of the kids we had been enrolling and to thank them for hosting our staff in their schools. There was a strong, positive vibe amongst everyone there with a strong commitment to maintain a strong relationship.

The SLT returned to the Catalina for a planning lunch (seriously) where we laid out the key planning stages for the remaining term of the year. We returned to school to complete some of the details of the planning to see our LOLs in action sharing their work from the last couple of weeks with each other.

 

At the end of the day we then headed to Casa del Amos where we enjoyed the company of our staff and their families, a few drinks and beautiful tapas.

Saturday was largely spent getting ready for our ERO visit on Monday and Tuesday and finished with a great meal at BOT Chair, Alan's, place with Leigh and Daniel and Alan,s wife, Liza, and their daughter and her husband. The food was outstanding (I even had beet root for dessert!) and the company and conversation was superb.

Today we had the traditional lunch at the Riverhead Tavern (Hallertau was closed for refurbishment) for our newly appointed staff who start next term. Once again the food was beautiful but the company and excited buzz from Peter, Danielle, Liza, Bryce, Cindy, Martin, Ros and Georgi was a real pleasure to experience.

I'm really looking forward to the ERO experience apopo. I fully expect they will find things that we should be more on top of than we are, but I really feel as if we have been getting this part of the journey right. As well, we have organised a shared lunch with them as well!

Like a worm through the mower

Every week seems to be chock full of highlights and if I don't blog regularly it's hard to keep track of them all so it's great that in the team we have plenty of people who are putting their thoughts out there. I really enjoy reading their posts and reading their views  about what is going on.

One big highlight was having Mum and Dad here for 3 days.

On Monday they visited school and met the staff. On Tuesday they ferried into the city with Leigh and did stuff which involved a lot of walking, then we headed into the city for a great Malaysian feed at Sri Penang on K Road. On Wednesday morning Leigh took them to the Arataki Gateway to the Waitakares before a lunch at Sushi Tomi (see above) with Eryn before off to the airport.

A group of staff and BOT members from Waiheke College visited to look at Modern Learning Spaces and talk teaching and learning. It was great to talk with the students they brought along.

Our LOLs, on Tuesday, spent the morning at Whenuapai and Hobsonville Primary Schools meeting teachers and doing some work with their students. They have established some great links with those schools. Early next term they will be doing the same at Marina View and Timatanga Schools. Some of their reflections have been blogged.

The highlight on Wednesday was signalled by another whoop from the SLLs from within their cave. They had discovered a paragraph from p44 of the NZC which clearly underlines the freedom that the NZC creates for teachers and schools to deliver learning programmes in quite a different way:

"When designing and reviewing the curriculum, schools select achievement objectives from each area in response to the identified interests and learning needs of their students"

You can read Steve's thoughts on this discovery in his blog.

On Thursday I ventured into the cave and saw sticky notes, that had been attached to every flat surface possible, now being removed and discarded.

Even the windows aren't safe from being used to capture our thoughts and planning. As well, we have had to amend existing and create new tools to capture our thinking as you can see below.

Brown paper and whiteboards!

Have also been busy interviewing applicants for our PA role, enrolling students and tonight attending a BOT meeting. Tomorrow morning we are hosting a breakfast for our contributing primary school leadership teams, having a staff party at Casa Amos. On Sunday we are having a lunch with our newly appointed staff who begin next term, which I am really looking forward to. AND ON MONDAY WE HOST ERO.

The year passes

Like a worm through the mower;

Hell for the quick!

Mincemeat for the slower!