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.