BEING A TEAM LEADER

I have now been leader of the Pukeko Team for a number of years.  I can honestly say that this year has, I believe been the mist successful year the Pukekos have had to date and I can put much of this down to the calibre of my team colleagues.

We are an experienced bunch, providing stability, dealing confidently with challenges and open to new ideas and practices.  There has been a high level of trust and professionalism, along with positivity across the team.

I believe that I have provided confident, steady, pro-active and empathetic leadership, working on cohesiveness and a sense of team identity, both with the team teachers and with our learners. I have provided a listening ear. Our children are well supported, both academically and pastorally.

It is easier to be the leader of a team whose member are all acting professionally, and I believe that our team has operated with a high degree of professionalism this year.

In Term 3, Sue asked the team leaders to reflect on their actions and role as a leader and how they consider their teams to be working.  I shared my thoughts with the team and sought their collaborative feedback.

Here's a link to my, and their, thoughts

CLASS CULTURE IN TI KOUKA

One of my goals this year was to:

• Develop a positive, welcoming and holistic culture, along with my team teacher in Ti Kouka,where learners and their whanau feel welcomed and valued
• Incorporate elements of the Incredible Years programme and Restorative Justice PD to engage learners and develop an inclusive environment where children’s concerns and attended to and their opinions and wellbeing matter

Along with my collaborative colleague, I worked hard to achieve this goal. Some of the things I did were:

• In Term 1, surveyed parents about their children's interests, achievements, likes, strengths, etc. This was a well-worthwhile undertaking, as it gave great insight into a number of the children that we did not already have - I would definitely do this again
• conducted successful student-led conferences to share learners' achievements and next steps
• Liaised with parents on a variety of issues and concerns, both related to some children's learning and to some children's personal and social relationships.
• Initiated and followed up on meetings with parents on aspects of concern
• Tried to be available in the classroom before school on a daily basis to greet children warmly and set a positive tone for the day, and to catch up with parents informally, as needed
• Planned for and taught ICE DRIVER with the community - our groups working on their own allegorical vehicles for driving were very successful and a great underpinning of the driver as a model for great learning and social behaviours
• Pro-actively utilised restorative thinking and discussion, rather than punitive actions, when individuals got off track - this was, I believe, highly effective in maintaining positive relations with learners whose behaviour was challenging at times, eg CW
• Consulted with learners and sought their feedback on aspects of our programme, and gave them increased choices about their learning, eg initiating Ti Kouka Time on Fridays, where learners has choice about what self-directed learning they would be engaged in; choices about the direction in which their personal inquiries would go and how they would present their learning, etc
• Utilised school-wide behaviour reinforcement, eg e-tickets
• Celebrated successes, eg reading log milestone,s ladder progress, mathletics certificates, e-tickets, etc

Underpinning all the above, engaged in frequent, ie daily, discussion with my collaborative colleague about how nest to engage with and meet the needs of our learners and how to address challenging and problematic behaviours and get to the bottom of what was underpinning these behaviours.

Overall, I believe that our learners and their families feel welcomed, appreciated and valued in our community.  They are (mostly) kind to each other and supportive of each other and parents are confident to approach us, knowing that their concerns will be addressed.

Concept-Based Inquiry with EduKate

On Monday's Teacher only day, we took part on PD around a concept-based inquiry curriculum, developing our conceptual understandings and making a start on an initial concept-based inquiry for 2017.

The day was great, although I am disappointed that we got so little along the way of developing next year's initial inquiry.  I was also a little concerned at the tone of some of the discussion and felt the need to clarify what expectations will be around the two parallel Y4-6 communities.

I did love the hands on aspect of things and the way Kate tried to tie it in to our DRIVER vision.

Here's a link to the notes I took on the day

INCREDIBLE YEARS SUMMING UP

Just recently, I attended the final day of The Incredible Years programme, which has been part of my PD this year. Overall, I would have to say that it has been well worthwhile, although elements of the course did drag at times.

I was delighted to be doing this course in the same year as our staff has had Restorative Justice PD with Margaret Thorsborne, as elements of both strongly reinforced each other. It also tied in surprisingly, with the cycles if Inquiry, as a key element of effective teacher inquiry is really getting to know your learners.  This, of course is a fundamental part of the Incredible Years  programme, where effective behaviour management is predicated on building sound relationships of trust and caring with your learners, so that when problem behaviour needs to be dealt with, the learner still knows that you care about them as a person and are attending to the behaviour, not attacking them.

It was effective to, at each PD session, work sequentially through the pyramid of teaching that I had featured in a previous post, going from relationships, to low key intervention to higher order intervention. The little film vignettes, although dated and somewhat cliched, had their pace and generated useful discussion! Having time to reflect on own practice and also to discuss with others what had worked for them and what hadn't was really useful. In fact, that discussion time was, I fell, one of the most useful parts of the course.

I have found it really helpful to have the low-key relationship and behaviour management stuff gone over and reinforced, with some new ideas and strategies also introduced. The focus on positive relationships, positive reinforcement and social coaching as a good reminder because, as an educator, I find there are times when I am just focusing on getting through the day and I forget to focus on the positives - so important to keep the positive, upbeat, sense of fun and enthusiasm forefront.

Overall, I am very glad to have taken this professional development and consider that it had positively impacted my pracice.

Emerging Leaders' Summit

What a full on and excellent weekend!  The speakers were all of high calibre

Here's a link to the team leaders' shared Prezzie presentation of the event

Mark Osborne started, with a great presentation on leadership, including the differences between leadership and management.
One of the great quotes on effective leadership that he passed on to us was "Focus on strengths, ignore non-talents and fix fatal flaws."
The primacy of relationships was clear, along with the importance of mentoring.

I was very interested and impressed with his promotion of John Kotter, author of Leading Change. There was excellent discussion of why people may be resistant w=to change of on how they perceive change - is it cognitive (in the head) or affective (in the heart)? Turning it round by seeing change as an opportunity is the way to go. Kotter's 8-step process, although embedded in business culture, still has many elements worthy of consideration and practice in an educational setting, eg identifying a sense of urgency, building a guiding coalition, forming strategic vision, removing barriers to change and communicating clearly how the change has led to wins or improvements.

Janelle Riki-Bennett gave an excellent presentation on cultural responsiveness, acknowledging Maori and Maori and engaging with them on their terms.
It made me reflect on the things we are doing well at West Melton (eg kapahaka, Moira signage, the relationship with the local runanga, marae trips) but the clear need to keep reflecting on how to be more effective.

One of my favourite sessions was Rebbecca Sweeny's on the cycles of inquiry. She really promoted focus very closely on the learners, really taking time to get to know them and more clearly identify their needs. Working collaboratively with colleagues, the learners and their parents leads to more powerful inquiry. I really feel that this session, in particular will be of benefit as I work collaboratively with others through teacher inquiry cycles to improve outcomes for learners.

Finally, Mark Osborne presented again, this time on innovative learning environments, including furniture and spaces. He reiterated the primacy of relationships, even in this aspect of learning, for example by giving learners a sense of ownership in the learning environment.

It was great to have the opportunity to engage in high quality professional development and reflect on new learnings with equally engaged colleagues. A well-worthwhile course to attend!

Term 4 feedback from the Ti Kouka learners

Part way through Term 4, Carolyn and I revisited our learners to seek their feedback on what had worked well for them  supporting and improving their learning in maths and literacy, in the changes to the ladder procedures and also their thoughts on what might help support their learning in 2017.

Their (mostly) very positive feedback reinforced for me that we sere on the right track with core learning.  Many children felt confident that they had really progressed well in core curriculum areas and it was particularly pleasing to get feedback from some of our learners on just how much they enjoyed elements of this core learning. I was very proud of the thoughtful and self-reflective feedback so many of them were able to provide - I doubt I would have managed the same at their age!

Now that the ladder procedures initiated earlier in the year are so embedded, it was great to get such overwhelmingly positive feedback.  Many children felt they had progressed further and had better basic facts knowledge that they would have with the pressure of very limited time under the old system.

It was also interesting to get their feedback on how their learning could be helped next year.  The enthusiasm for outdoor learning (or just time outdoors) is clear and we will need to carefully consider how we can address this next year. I would ideally love to have some outdoor furniture along in front of LC3,4 and 5 - let's see what we can come up with!

Here is a link to the doc summarising Ti Kouka's Term 4 learner feedback: TERM 4 TI KOUKA FEEDBACK