TE KAHUI AKO O TARANAKI MOHOAO

Hi Team

We have a new logo to go with our new name. Thanks to Tracy for co-ordinating this and Kathryn Mischefski for her creativity.

Our Across School Teachers have been busy following up on lots of Kahui Ako end of year to dos such as collecting school feedback to inform PLD reviews, finding out what schools PLD requirements for 2020 are, checking in on our wellbeing actions.

It was agreed that all schools would participate in the Wellbeing@School Survey and over the last couple of weeks schools have been working with NZCER to analyse the results for their individual schools. Once this is complete we will also analyse the collective results of the Kahui Ako to find out what is working well for our tamariki and what could be improved.

Thank you to Jan Westfield, Rawhitiroa School who is working to:

• complete our 2019 PLD review and
• complete our 2020 PLD application

Reminder from previous Leaders meeting . . Please refer to the minutes for further details.

All data to be emailed to Kim by Wed 20th Nov which is week 6.

Once we have this is in we will analyse as a Kahui Ako and than set some targets for 2020 and beyond.

We would like to form an Assessment Team to work with Ben Laybourn to analyse our data. This team could be made up of Principals/AP’s/DP’s/AST’s??

Our first meeting is on the 19th Nov from 1.00 - 4.30.

If you would like to be involved in this please contact: principal@toko.school.nz

Our facilitators have asked me to provide some feedback about how the PLD is progressing in our Kahui Ako. If your kura is involved in this PLD could you please ask a representative to take the time to complete this short survey.

FEEDBACK

The Emerging Leaders Team for 2019 commenced their hui on April 30th. The programme brought together leaders from Toko, Midhirst, Ngaere, Stratford High, St. Josephs, Stratford Primary, and Koru Kindy, The group have established a caring, confidential, collaborative, cool culture!

To date we have engaged in the following;

• Strengthening relationships (Whakawhanaungatanga)

• Building a supportive leadership network

• Learning from each other and sharing practice (Ako)

• Exploring and developing leadership capability

• Building a professional reading/viewing online community

• Knowledge building across a myriad of areas

• Engaged in dialogue around important conversations

• Been quizzed on our local area!

• Had our Treaty of Waitangi knowledge challenged :-)

• Had some fun

We have had 5 x face to face sessions this year with as many virtual hui on offer. The virtual hui have been invitations to connect online as ‘bridging’ sessions to keep us connected during our ‘inbetween’ times.

It has been my pleasure to work with this group in 2019.

Kia pai o koutou haere koutou mā

Ngā mihi

Kathe

Thank you to Stratford Primary who hosted our Transition to School network meeting on the 24th of October. We were very fortunate to hear from Kate Mills from Stratford Primary (A kahui ako within school teacher) about her work with “Ako mai” an Oral language Tuakana/Teina programme. Judy Brady also presented us with her inspiring inquiry “To what extent do I support ngā tamariki to transition to school?” Great to see so many early childhood and new entrant kaiako support our network and attend.

CHANGES in 2020 ...As a group we have agreed that we need to take greater ownership of our work together. We will be changing our format of our transition so each centre or school will have a chance to host and present. This way the leadership will be distributed and the topics presented will tap into the strengths and interests of our group. Any queries please email penny@ngaere.school.nz or deborahc@sps.kiwi.co.nz

Penny Andrew - Across School Teacher

penny@ngaere.school.nz

I have seen some great examples of Student Agency across our schools and classrooms. We are all on a similar journey across the Kahui Ako! The next steps being beginning to visit each other in class to share some of the great practice and ideas. For some the journey is just beginning so I am concentrating on completing a website as a one stop shop for resources, tips and next steps to gain more student agency.

Below is a link to a fantastic reading “Learner Agency” The 10 conditions written by Core Education. It provides teachers or learning teams, school leaders, educators and learning communities with a shared understanding of learner agency, and provides practical tools for tackling and/or embedding the concept of learner agency within education systems.

The Learner Agency Student Survey is ready and available for teachers. This can be used as a tool to gauge where your students are at and look at next steps in your classroom and on your Learner Agency Journey.

Thanks so much to all of you who have taken the time to fill in the short survey about Teacher Only Day 2020. This will give our team much needed information to ensure that all of the Break Out’s during that day are both relevant and well attended. If you haven’t had the time to fill it in here is a link to do so: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeRm3qImp91Vr94J-u6gOrRAy1XQ96LDpy0DGOAnZ7V75tT7g/viewform

We have been really fortunate to have had local Kathryn Michefski design our new Kahui Ako logo. We are proud to display the logo on the website and all of our documents!

Tracy White - Across School Teacher

tracyw@sps.kiwi.nz

It has been a very productive time working on transitions, both into and out of our secondary schools. It has been wonderful to have had so much support from our contributing schools with our attempts to be more careful and proactive in the gathering of rich data and stories about all our ako so that our secondary schools are more ready for our new tamariki in 2020. Thanks! SHS has been able to do a much better needs analysis for the whole 2020 cohort. SHS has taken a different approach to their ‘Orientation Day’ and I am working to better connect others in the system who are there to support our learners (such as the RTLB service). We hope that these changes mean that our students and their families are more confident in the transition from primary school next year.

At the other end of the system, we have been involved in the ‘Taranaki Roadmap 2050’ project and have some opportunities to engage in the very progressive plans around ‘people and talent’. The significant challenge of building a low carbon future provides some amazing opportunities for our young people. Organisations such as Taranaki Futures sometimes find it hard to connect with a group of schools given how complex we are as organisations, so they are really pleased that we now have a single point of contact in central Taranaki to help build a whole-community approach to helping our young people plan for their futures.

Angela Roberts - Across School Teacher

ra@stratfordhigh.school.nz

To date we have appointed one person . Congratulations to Joanne Lourie who has been our first appointment. We are in the process of re advertising at the moment.

Latest FAQ

Tracy White has resigned from this role and we wish her all the best on her new adventures. Tracy has been integral in setting up the work of our Across School Teachers, she has worked in many of our schools, set up our Kahui Ako website and opened up lots of conversations about learner agency. She will really be missed!!! On behalf of us all I would like to thank her for all that she contributed to our commodity of schools.

We are looking for someone who can work or be willing to learn in the Learner Agency Space. This is a great opportunity for someone to further develop themselves and their leadership.

The start date can be negotiated. We will be running two short workshops so teachers can find out more about this position. We will have another position become available mid way through next year so these meetings are a good chance to ask questions and start thinking about whether this could be a good option for some teachers.

Please feel free to talk to Tracy, Angela or Penny about these roles.

AST Information Meetings:

These will be held on:

29th October - 3.30

5 November - 3.30

Venue: Stratford Community House. Please rsvp your attendance to: principal@toko.school.nz

Job Description

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Position Outline

Application Form

Our Kahui Ako have booked John Parsons to come and work with our cluster of schools. This date is saved in the Kahui Ako calendar. More information will be coming out closer to the time.

For more information about John please follow the link: http://www.simulate2educate.co.nz/

Last month we shared our Kahui Ako waiata and what it means. We are now asking all kura in our Kahui Ako to learn the last verse. We have created a video or Rumatiki singin this song to assist kura when learning this. We plan to sing this song at our Teacher Only Day in 2020.

Tracy link to website??

We are excited to announce that we are bringing Marg Thorsbury back to work with educators in our Kahui Ako. Educators will need to commit to a three day workshop.

It is important that the three day workshops be attended by people at the top if you want to change the direction of your learning centre and move from punitive to relational. You need to be there and take at least one significant staff member.

All staff at Taranaki Dio are trained in restorative practice including their boarding staff – they de-escalate “stuff” all of the time. We use it in our personal lives and we are approached by students to have a “restorative”. We are not all experts but want to have the best possible relationships with students, colleagues and parents.

Marg’s website https://www.thorsborne.com.au/

Marg’s blurb from her TED talk

When harm is done (by us or others to us), reconnecting is only possible when we are a) willing to communicate with the other b) honest about what happened (no blame or excuses) and how it has affected us and finally c) being willing to express our vulnerable feelings about what happened.

Marg is a passionate advocate for healthy relationships, conflict resolution, restorative justice and relational leadership. With a long history first as a teacher and counsellor, and now as a consultant, she works tirelessly to help school communities and organisations understand what emotional health and wellbeing looks like, sounds like and feels like.

She is widely recognised as an international pioneer and expert on school & workplace bullying, and has played a major role in the introduction of restorative practices into schools and workplaces in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, USA, Canada and UK.

If you are a little school and would find it hard to cover the 3 days leave then talk with us about what the bigger schools could offer to support you

Registrations are open for this now:

REGISTRATIONS

Fiona Green

fionag@taranakidio.school.nz

This has been sent out to all Leaders. Please make sure that you have these dates locked in and that you are registering your school to be involved. These dates will be transferred onto the Kahui Ako digital calendar at the end of the year.

2020 PLD Calendar

Restorative Practices - Marg Thorsbury - 16th - 18th March 2020

3 day Workshop for Educators in our Kahui Ako. The Kahui Ako will cover all registration costs. The single cost to schools will be relieving costs.

Principal/ECE Leaders PLD 7th November - 2 - 4.30 Shakee Pear

Leaders Meeting - 11th February - AC - Cultural Capacity - Kathe Tawhiwhirangi

TOD - Mini Conference - Friday 6th March

An overview of dates for 2020 and booking s for 2020 has already been sent out.

Lead Principal - Kim Waite

Support Principals - Graham Sands/Fiona Green

Email: principal@toko.school.nz
Website: https://stratfordcol.wordpress.com/
Location: Central Taranaki
Phone: 0273483550