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.