The Pieces of the Puzzle
As shared, we believed that we needed to make sure that before we implemented our new vision, we needed to have starting point. Any starting point needs to be based on current realities. The best place that I have found to start is bringing an objective approach to current realities and expectations. The first port of call is meeting with staff. They are the ones that are best placed to give the best type of objective feedback, the ones that have to work with the decisions that are made and the ones who can give clarity to current realities. A meeting was called in June 2012 with all teaching staff to discuss what our current realities were. This was a great success. My AP and myself were very honest about our own failings as leaders, the restrictions that we found that we were operating under in our current set up and our firm belief that with the staff sitting in front of us that we could, collectively, move forward to better places. We placed in front of our staff a very rough sketch of the vision graphic that is shown below and an edited version of our vision statement. We believed that we needed a starting point to generate discussion, to show that we are serious about moving forward, to show that while we may have identified shortcomings that we held to the belief that if you have a problem then show me a solution so staff could also see that our problem solving capacity was purposeful. We tried to generate good discussion, but understandably there was much about the culture of our school that over a period of years saw staff being used to a top down approach of leadership and not being empowered to have a real voice in the direction of the school. This was a reality that we were aware of and knew that we had to change. We invited staff to join us in setting up a "Future Focus Team". This open invitation saw a colleague join us to begin an exciting process. The first piece of the puzzle was in place. We then decided to tackle two large curriculum areas: maths and inquiry learning.
Maths
2009 was my first year at Morningside School. I was one of the first cohort of teachers trained in the Numeracy Project while working in Nelson in 2002. Though the training was challenging, I knew that this approach to teaching maths was the way forward for maths education. I left Nelson during June 2005 and went to Shanghai to teach and to become a vice principal of an International School. When I came back to New Zealand in 2009, I observed that the Numeracy Project was not embedded in school practice and culture in not only my school but many others. After speaking to teachers and my leadership team, we made the decision to pursue an intensive three year maths professional development programme with Peter Hughes-an author of the Numeracy Project and a lecturer at the University of Auckland. This saw every teacher enrolling at the University of Auckland to complete a maths paper each year in 2010, 2011 and 2012. This approach to whole school professional development set into motion a self review process that was purposeful and targeted to student achievement. This approach to whole school professional development also assisted us in using better and more refined approaches to gathering data to support self review. This added another piece of the puzzle in allowing us to focus our overall objectives collectively as a staff and for the staff to see that as a leadership team and as a focus team we were committed to making substantive changes to school culture.
Inquiry Learning
I also recognised that as our evolving ICT hardware and software was being updated and as we were adding new staff that we were losing consistency with inquiry learning. I trialed four different approaches in my team over a two year period to determine what would best meet the needs of our children and curriculum coverage. My AP and I also visited a number of schools to understand the approach that these schools had taken. We were slowly building up a good understanding of the direction that we wanted to be heading towards. At the end of 2012 my principal invited staff to make a proposal to concentrate on an area that they had a particular professional interest in that would also support the needs and direction of the school. Resources and professional development support would be given. Two colleagues decided to focus on Inquiry Learning and reaching conclusions about the best approach to use in the school. My AP and myself were also invited to assist with this focus. Each colleague took a different approach building on work that they had previously done in their classrooms. After many discussions and school visits made by all members of the leadership with our two colleagues, we eventually firmed up our inquiry process. Pivotal to this was the approach used by Kath Murdoch. We developed a planning guide and held two staff meetings that focused on making sure that the choice of language that we used to define the process was well understood by all staff. This was invaluable. And secondly we made sure all staff were clear on what was expected to happen at each step of the inquiry process. This was also an excellent way in assisting us in seeing where parts of the process were weak in understanding and where parts of the process were strong. We adjusted accordingly.
Monday 24 February 2014
Saturday 8 February 2014
Staff Meetings-Continued Focus, Continued Drive, Continued Collaboration
Staff Meetings-Our driver is our vision
This is the fourth draft of our vision graphic. It has been presented to the board and is our launch pad for all future growth. I will discuss this more in upcoming posts.
Our key driver for all aspects of what we wanted to achieve was the implementation of our new school vision. However, we believed that this could not be done effectively until we raised our professional expectations for all teaching staff. Our number one focus was to have our staff unpack the New Zealand Teachers Council Registered Teachers Criteria. The leadership planned a staff meeting schedule that promoted collaboration and staff presentations so that we could gauge levels of understanding. It also gave us an excellent opportunity to see how well our staff were working together. We paired staff together and told them what their criteria was and when they were expected to present this to their colleagues during Term 1 2013. This pairing of staff also gave us an opportunity to see how well staff worked with each other, and with an eye to 2014, it also gave us an opportunity to see how effective some individuals were when working with different colleagues. This gave us some really good insights. We entrenched this approach for all staff meetings for the rest of the 2013 school year.
Staff Meeting Topics: Continued Reflection and Planning
At the start and during every term I would sit down with my AP and plan every staff meeting topic. We would reflect on our purpose for these meetings, how they are tied into our vision, expected outcomes and the format that these meetings would be take such as group work, jigsaw activities, presentations or a show and tell. This was-and still continues to be-a very thought engaging and productive process. We always aim to make sure that we keep things very simple.
We have two approaches when selecting staff meeting topics. One is what we call "Taster" sessions. These sessions were opportunities for us to give our colleagues a small taste of a larger topic that we knew we would revisit at at later date. "Taster" sessions focused on topics such as pedagogy-what pedagogical approach would be the best approach for our children and for teachers, 21st Century Learning-our aim here is to look at current thinking, especially with knowledge and how this is used, and Child Profile-we focused on profiling our children so that we understood traits and what we need to do to cater for need. These topics will be revisited this year. These "Taster" sessions also allowed us to trial resources and to make sure that we had a delivery style and approach that gave us small insights into what would work in the future.
Our second approach is our "Moving Forward" approach. These staff meetings are planned so that our absolutes are worked on and implemented into school practice and culture. Topics included the work we did on our Registered Teacher Criteria. This work saw us develop and implement a new performance management structure that has been implemented in 2014. It is an excellent tool. I will discuss this later. We also worked on our new Inquiry Learning structure and have developed our own approach for Morningside School that meets the needs of our children. This has been implemented in 2014. An outstanding approach that we are all excited about. We worked on Teaching As Inquiry. This has been unpacked to make sure that terms and process are understood. This has been entrenched in our classroom description documentation and attached as a vehicle for evidence in our performance management process.
In forward planning all of our staff meetings we have also been very flexible. After every staff meeting we debrief and evaluate all aspects of the meeting. It is a given that we do this. It provides us with rich opportunities to process the meeting format, the topic, the pairings, the feedback and comments during the meeting when we work with staff and to think about whether we need to do more work or to change the topic for the next staff meeting. We look at the next up and coming topics and decide whether to either continue with our meeting schedule or what we will change. My motto "Festina Lente"-hasten slowly-guides me in making sure that we do not rush our staff, we remain focused, we remain flexible and we listen and gauge effectiveness in the moment and change when and if we have to. Staff meetings have also seen me grow as an adult educator, as a leader and to take risks, to implement my ideas and those of my leadership team and to see my staff having buy in and seeing the purpose for doing all that we are doing. We work hard and I am having so much fun. But most importantly for me, I have the opportunity to assist in the implementation of our vision and purposeful targeted growth for my school community.
This is the fourth draft of our vision graphic. It has been presented to the board and is our launch pad for all future growth. I will discuss this more in upcoming posts.
Our key driver for all aspects of what we wanted to achieve was the implementation of our new school vision. However, we believed that this could not be done effectively until we raised our professional expectations for all teaching staff. Our number one focus was to have our staff unpack the New Zealand Teachers Council Registered Teachers Criteria. The leadership planned a staff meeting schedule that promoted collaboration and staff presentations so that we could gauge levels of understanding. It also gave us an excellent opportunity to see how well our staff were working together. We paired staff together and told them what their criteria was and when they were expected to present this to their colleagues during Term 1 2013. This pairing of staff also gave us an opportunity to see how well staff worked with each other, and with an eye to 2014, it also gave us an opportunity to see how effective some individuals were when working with different colleagues. This gave us some really good insights. We entrenched this approach for all staff meetings for the rest of the 2013 school year.
Staff Meeting Topics: Continued Reflection and Planning
At the start and during every term I would sit down with my AP and plan every staff meeting topic. We would reflect on our purpose for these meetings, how they are tied into our vision, expected outcomes and the format that these meetings would be take such as group work, jigsaw activities, presentations or a show and tell. This was-and still continues to be-a very thought engaging and productive process. We always aim to make sure that we keep things very simple.
We have two approaches when selecting staff meeting topics. One is what we call "Taster" sessions. These sessions were opportunities for us to give our colleagues a small taste of a larger topic that we knew we would revisit at at later date. "Taster" sessions focused on topics such as pedagogy-what pedagogical approach would be the best approach for our children and for teachers, 21st Century Learning-our aim here is to look at current thinking, especially with knowledge and how this is used, and Child Profile-we focused on profiling our children so that we understood traits and what we need to do to cater for need. These topics will be revisited this year. These "Taster" sessions also allowed us to trial resources and to make sure that we had a delivery style and approach that gave us small insights into what would work in the future.
Our second approach is our "Moving Forward" approach. These staff meetings are planned so that our absolutes are worked on and implemented into school practice and culture. Topics included the work we did on our Registered Teacher Criteria. This work saw us develop and implement a new performance management structure that has been implemented in 2014. It is an excellent tool. I will discuss this later. We also worked on our new Inquiry Learning structure and have developed our own approach for Morningside School that meets the needs of our children. This has been implemented in 2014. An outstanding approach that we are all excited about. We worked on Teaching As Inquiry. This has been unpacked to make sure that terms and process are understood. This has been entrenched in our classroom description documentation and attached as a vehicle for evidence in our performance management process.
In forward planning all of our staff meetings we have also been very flexible. After every staff meeting we debrief and evaluate all aspects of the meeting. It is a given that we do this. It provides us with rich opportunities to process the meeting format, the topic, the pairings, the feedback and comments during the meeting when we work with staff and to think about whether we need to do more work or to change the topic for the next staff meeting. We look at the next up and coming topics and decide whether to either continue with our meeting schedule or what we will change. My motto "Festina Lente"-hasten slowly-guides me in making sure that we do not rush our staff, we remain focused, we remain flexible and we listen and gauge effectiveness in the moment and change when and if we have to. Staff meetings have also seen me grow as an adult educator, as a leader and to take risks, to implement my ideas and those of my leadership team and to see my staff having buy in and seeing the purpose for doing all that we are doing. We work hard and I am having so much fun. But most importantly for me, I have the opportunity to assist in the implementation of our vision and purposeful targeted growth for my school community.
Monday 3 February 2014
The Start
Welcome to my blog!! I am using this blog to detail our journey here at Morningside School in Whangarei that has as its focus collaboration as a culture of learning, teaching and of community. 2014 is the start of a journey of collaborative teaching teams and the further development of a culture of collaboration in our school. 18 months of self review and professional development have got us to this point. I have included the word kotahitanga in my title. This is te reo maori and has many meanings. I like one meaning that this word has and that is unity. By collaborating with common purpose we draw closer together and unite in forging best outcomes for our community. I have also included the word connect. Collaboration and kotahitanga-unity are powerful vehicles but can only be made purposeful when we make the effort to connect with each other. Key attributes for this are to be found in the New Zealand Curriculum Key Competencies especially Relating to Others and Participating and Contributing competencies.
My name is David van de Klundert. I am the Deputy Principal of Morningside School. Morningside School is a decile 3 contributing (Years 1-6) school located in the suburb of Morningside. We have a growing school roll and have started 2014 with 205 children.
So how did we get to this point? I will detail this throughout this blog. The first place that we started was looking at our existing vision plan. It had reached the end of its useful life and was not in sync with the current direction that the school was heading in. Lots of different factors started coming together in 2011-12 such as a new approach to whole school professional development that saw possibilities for approaching pedagogy in a different and more meaningful way, a need to update our performance management systems to an evidence based approach, the introduction of National Standards and the updating of indicators in literacy and maths, visits to other schools to look at modern and collaborative learning environments and the continuation of our journey with ICT and many other aspects of daily school life. This saw us in 2012 setting up a Future Focus Team made up of my Assistant Principal-Ali Booth, a teaching colleague-Gina Kitchen and myself. This team was charged with developing a new vision graphic. The journey had begun.
2013-A Change in Focus
At the end of 2012 we reviewed our team format. Essentially we had a junior team of four classrooms and a senior team of four classrooms. In reality, even though we were doing good things, we were running two schools in one school-a junior school-Years 0-3 and a senior school-Years 4-6. We looked at how effective communication was across the two syndicates and the school. Syndicate meetings were being held every second week with staff meetings being held every other week. We found that there was a lot of communication that could be shared across the two syndicates that were applicable to the whole school such as whole school sports days, nuts and bolts or house keeping items. In general we found that time was being wasted when such things as field trips were being discussed that only two classrooms were involved within a syndicate. For 2013, we made the decision to have a staff meeting every week. The focus for these staff meetings would be purposeful whole school professional development. Our eye was firmly on the ball in relation to our eventual goal of turning the school into a high performing collaborative environment. The expectation was communicated to all staff that if you have a need that needs to be addressed be it in relation to classroom programme, behaviour, technical issues, big or small problems then you communicate with the person or people that can assist. We also provided and updated existing tools to assist with communication. We utilised our scheduling board in our staff room across two terms more effectively and ensured that all relevant dates were placed on this in a timely fashion, we gave clearer expectations for the delivery of termly documentation such as classroom descriptions and assessment data and made sure that staff-when they could-gave forward notice of when relievers were in their rooms.
The next aspect of this was also making sure that staff were communicating with their parents and caregivers with more expediency when issues related to individual attention needed input from school and home. The impact of these changes was better than hoped for. All staff knew what the expectations were and that being proactive instead of being reactive in communicating delivered great results for both students and all staff. Less time was being wasted and communication was being targeted by individuals and groups to the relevant points of assistance. This then meant as a leadership team we were able to use our staff meeting times with greater purpose and focus. Our staff just got on with the job.
Welcome to my blog!! I am using this blog to detail our journey here at Morningside School in Whangarei that has as its focus collaboration as a culture of learning, teaching and of community. 2014 is the start of a journey of collaborative teaching teams and the further development of a culture of collaboration in our school. 18 months of self review and professional development have got us to this point. I have included the word kotahitanga in my title. This is te reo maori and has many meanings. I like one meaning that this word has and that is unity. By collaborating with common purpose we draw closer together and unite in forging best outcomes for our community. I have also included the word connect. Collaboration and kotahitanga-unity are powerful vehicles but can only be made purposeful when we make the effort to connect with each other. Key attributes for this are to be found in the New Zealand Curriculum Key Competencies especially Relating to Others and Participating and Contributing competencies.
My name is David van de Klundert. I am the Deputy Principal of Morningside School. Morningside School is a decile 3 contributing (Years 1-6) school located in the suburb of Morningside. We have a growing school roll and have started 2014 with 205 children.
So how did we get to this point? I will detail this throughout this blog. The first place that we started was looking at our existing vision plan. It had reached the end of its useful life and was not in sync with the current direction that the school was heading in. Lots of different factors started coming together in 2011-12 such as a new approach to whole school professional development that saw possibilities for approaching pedagogy in a different and more meaningful way, a need to update our performance management systems to an evidence based approach, the introduction of National Standards and the updating of indicators in literacy and maths, visits to other schools to look at modern and collaborative learning environments and the continuation of our journey with ICT and many other aspects of daily school life. This saw us in 2012 setting up a Future Focus Team made up of my Assistant Principal-Ali Booth, a teaching colleague-Gina Kitchen and myself. This team was charged with developing a new vision graphic. The journey had begun.
2013-A Change in Focus
At the end of 2012 we reviewed our team format. Essentially we had a junior team of four classrooms and a senior team of four classrooms. In reality, even though we were doing good things, we were running two schools in one school-a junior school-Years 0-3 and a senior school-Years 4-6. We looked at how effective communication was across the two syndicates and the school. Syndicate meetings were being held every second week with staff meetings being held every other week. We found that there was a lot of communication that could be shared across the two syndicates that were applicable to the whole school such as whole school sports days, nuts and bolts or house keeping items. In general we found that time was being wasted when such things as field trips were being discussed that only two classrooms were involved within a syndicate. For 2013, we made the decision to have a staff meeting every week. The focus for these staff meetings would be purposeful whole school professional development. Our eye was firmly on the ball in relation to our eventual goal of turning the school into a high performing collaborative environment. The expectation was communicated to all staff that if you have a need that needs to be addressed be it in relation to classroom programme, behaviour, technical issues, big or small problems then you communicate with the person or people that can assist. We also provided and updated existing tools to assist with communication. We utilised our scheduling board in our staff room across two terms more effectively and ensured that all relevant dates were placed on this in a timely fashion, we gave clearer expectations for the delivery of termly documentation such as classroom descriptions and assessment data and made sure that staff-when they could-gave forward notice of when relievers were in their rooms.
The next aspect of this was also making sure that staff were communicating with their parents and caregivers with more expediency when issues related to individual attention needed input from school and home. The impact of these changes was better than hoped for. All staff knew what the expectations were and that being proactive instead of being reactive in communicating delivered great results for both students and all staff. Less time was being wasted and communication was being targeted by individuals and groups to the relevant points of assistance. This then meant as a leadership team we were able to use our staff meeting times with greater purpose and focus. Our staff just got on with the job.
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