Guerrilla Activity

As we race towards the end of the term and an ERO Readiness Audit visit in 2 weeks things become more real and a level of panic or uncertainty could start to set in. Sometimes, thankfully more and more rarely, I can begin to feel a little overwhelmed.

Last Friday we spent a lot of time together as a SLT making sure we had a plan for the final 3 weeks of this term and then for the final term. I had begun to worry about the scale of 'things that need to be done" that were stacking up. These things aren't so much about the essence and structures around our teaching and learning but include things like PA appointment, planning to purchase resources and equipment for a school with nothing in it, preparing a start of year transition from one building to another building, developing a budget preparation framework for a school which is structuring learning so differently, forming an ancilliary staffing plan (reception, data, nurse, sports co-ordinator, student counselling), thinking about a Charter framework that meets compliance criteria but is also a valid document/tool for us, our Board and the community, worrying that I haven't progressed SLT appraisal processes, keeping communication going with our parent community.

After our meeting on Friday I was reminded that 3 leaders had been appointed to deliver on our teaching and learning model and that that was exactly what they were doing. Lea has  helped her team develop a clear understanding of the importance, function and roles of our Learning Hubs and Learning Coaches. All team members understand the importance this element has on personalising learning, tracking and mapping it to give rigour and on providing an environment to support our learners to excel in the dispositional curriculum centred around our Hobsonville Habits.

Di has provided great guidance for her team who have launched into an impressive unpicking of the NZC and have begun to reassemble it to give guidance and rigour to the development of our across-the-curriculum specialised learning modules and projects. I am not sure if that team is fully aware of the ground-breaking nature of their work.

After having overseen the appointment of our Library Leader Claire's focus is now on developing a Smart Toolbox to support the teaching and learning within the Learning Hub, Specialised Learning Modules and Projects. Next term she will have the very important professional learning team to oversee and guide. We have appointed an outstanding SCT, E-SCT, Library Leader and Professional Learning Leader which will plan the on-going learning and inquiry processes that ensure we all remain life-long learners and true to our vision.

These are huge responsibilities. The quality of our leaders and their teams fill me with the confidence that the results of their work will be outstanding and form the strongest foundation for us to build an outstanding, effective and relevant school for our community.

I can get on with the other stuff and hope I can keep up with them!

These realisations meant that spending Sunday almost entirely concentrating on School Charters!! was somewhat enjoyable! As I was beginning to run out of steam 2 things occurred: fit the Charter into a circle (haven't done yet, but about to), and Claire sent around a proposed strategic template for us to consider using as we planned our work.

And then we had Monday!

My team of Amy, Jill and Kylee leapt into the HighnDry and headed towards Learning Network via the money machine to get $200 cash ($40 per team - hey, why not get $220 and give ourselves $20 more) where we met with the rest of the staffs from both our schools.

Lea and Kristyn had organised a series of 20 minute workshops, presented by our colleagues, about what was going on in our schools.

I kicked off with Steve Hacking Spaces and moving from Guerrilla Geography to Guerrilla Cross the Curriculum.

Daniel followed up with a workshop on Individual Education Meetings. These are when learners talk to their parents and teachers about their learning. The teacher supports this conversation and by the end of the hui learning goals are set and responsibi

lity for achieving them is assigned to the learners, the teacher and to the parent. These will go on to form the basis of the next IEM.

Kristyn gave a great presentation on the learners' profile they had developed from the Hermann's Brain model and this was followed up by Lisa giving an excellent introduction into SOLO Thinking Taxonomy.

Then we were issued with our $40 (one team had $60!) and set off on our mission to produce tapa dishes for our colleagues. Our particular theme was decadence!

First stop was the local Countdown where the girls got decadent in the chocolate aisle with a really into it shelf-stacker.

We followed this up with a visit to the other supermarket

to spend our 'surplus' $20

but we didn't have enough money so we bartered down the price of 2 bottles of champers (so support Westgate's King Dick!).

We then carried on the theme of decadence back in the kitchen preparing our decadent raspberry/coconut cakey thing with chocolate genache accompanied by champers with strawberries.

And voila!

All washed down with Steve's Hobsonville Point IPA.

What a great way to end and then start the week.