Seeing the View from the ‘Top of the First Hill’: MOE Kahui Ako Leaders Day 29th May

Sonya caught Mary Chamberlain for a photo with some members of her fan club.

From Left: Clara Kim, Leigh Duncan, Mark Hassall, Alaric Nicholl, Sonya Van Schaijik, Mary Chamberlain, Lisa Murphy, Sue Spencer

The MOE Forum day for Kahui Ako Leaders, 29th May was inspiring and energising. Mary Chamberlain from Evaluation Associates was a highlight for the day. She covered so many ideas, but a stand out for me was her emphasis on the vision and purpose in a Kahui Ako. She emphasised the importance of a shared vision, one that is simply stated and sets up an inspirational challenge for all involved. After Mary’s keynote, the day was structured into six different sessions, each one involving discussion in changing group arrangements. This provided excellent opportunities for sharing experiences and swapping notes with other community leaders. As I shared our progress in Auckland Central, I was reminded that we have rich learning to share with other communities, based on the fact that we were an early adopter of Kahui Ako. Our experiences in the different phases of our development have provided authentic learning and understanding of why we are now in our ‘refreshed’ stage. Brian Annan’s presentations around collective advantage and organisational structures, clarified the fact that our six new initiatives are enabling us to drive change forward in 2018 in the ACCoS. New energy is being generated in our community as learning and practice is shared. Our leadership structures, purpose and roles continue to clarify. I felt that the quote that Mary included on her first slide represents where our community is at right now, “When you reach the top of your first hill your view changes and you see different paths, different possibilities”.  It is exciting to be involved, we are at the ‘frontier’ of change in education right now. ASLs finished the day discussing ideas for next steps in the community.

Building Collegial Learning among Kahui Ako Leaders

Yesterday we attended a meeting organised by the MoE to get together members of different Kāhui Ako from around the country. The day was facilitated by Mary Chamberlain and Brian Annan, and they ran a day filled with rich discussion and ideas to challenge us. We were deliberately seated, and asked to move tables regularly, in order to provide us with opportunities to listen to a range of perspectives.  This proved to be one of the highlights of the day for me. At my first 2 sessions I met people who were just beginning on their journeys, those who had well established connections across their community, and others feeling that they were just now getting into purposeful work.  Both Brian and Mary asked questions that got to the heart of the issues around we are trying to do...and why it is sometimes hard to see our way ahead. I especially loved Brian's visual image of the 'melee' as a way to describe the interconnected nature of how we work.  Mary brought us into the 21st Century by posing the question ' How might we demonstrate tangible progress across a rich curriculum'? We were asked to think about the 'Why' of our work. How does having a collaborative, collegial organisation make us stronger than we would we working alone ?
Unfortunately I had to head back to school for parent interviews so missed the second half of the day. If it was anything like the first half, I know I missed a number of hours of insightful and thought provoking interaction with other passionate educators. Kia Kaha, kia manawanui to those who put this day together.

Learner Agency

Our Working Definition
Learners have agency when they have influence and a sense of ownership over their learning, having the ability and opportunity to be part of the learning design process.

The Learner Agency Initiative is made up of 5 schools: Meadowbank, Remuera Primary, Maungawhau, Parnell and Epsom Girls Grammar. The In School and Across School leaders have been collecting student voice on agency and today met at Remuera Primary School to analyse the  data they have collected. Students were asked a range of questions relating to 3 areas: The Learning Environment, Teaching and Learning and Assessment. Their answers were then leveled according to the degree of agency they showed. There was a productive discussion about what actions we can take in order to increase learner agency in our schools. In School leaders will be taking that analysis back to their schools and working with their teachers to effect change.

Collecting Student Voice at Meadowbank School

Discussing the data

Mathematics Professional Learning Groups

Today Andrew Lawrence and Emily-mei Hemstapat two of our Inschool Leaders from Auckland Normal intermediate (ANI) hosted our first Maths PLG across schools. 
The teachers in the Pāngarau/Mathematics Professional Learning Groups from Auckland Normal Intermediate and Newmarket School came together to make connections and share conversations over the hour. 

The session in the  ANI staffroom provided opportunities for approximately 32 teachers in both schools to get to know each other and share their thinking around pedagogy as well as share their learning about mathematics. Our host school provided a fabulous range of activities as well as a chance to chat and make connections over a delicious afternoon tea.

Below are the slides from today’s session.

Where to next:
Emily and Andy have sent out a form asking for contact details so that teachers are able to follow up visits to each others schools. Newmarket School have agreed to host the next across schools session.

ACCoS Happenings Term 1 2018

So- what’s been happening ?

Initiatives Update

Last term saw a massive amount of work in each initiative. A summary of the three key take outs for the term have been highlighted by those leading the initiative.  

Teacher Agency - Catherine and Alaric

• Co-construction of a shared understanding of the concept of teacher agency between the ISLs and SMT of the schools in this initiative, building effective working relationships in the process.
• Co-construction of the teacher agency progression matrix with the ISLs, who then distributed and facilitated the collection of data from the teachers within the 4 schools in the initiative.
• Analysis of data to take place  in week 2 of term 2. Findings therein will guide our work for term 2 and onwards.

Learner Agency - Leigh and Mark

• We have aligned our understanding of what learner agency is, and co-constructed a shared definition that schools can use in their individual approaches.
• Collection of baseline data. We created a learner agency questionnaire to be carried out with a sample of students.
• A teacher survey was created as a self-assessment tool. ISLs undertook to complete this by the end of Term 1.

Where to next : An action plan will be developed after analysis of the data that has been gathered.

Writing - Erin and Clara

• Focus areas for PLG’s established across schools in initiative-Pedagogical approaches to writing-Extending teacher content knowledge-Identifying where the student fits in all of this?

Professional development for ISL’s -focusing on teacher inquiry cycle and developing rich, challenging question and understanding the Literacy Learning Progressions

Networking meeting early Term 2 which will  involve all teachers in this initiative. Intention is to set up across -school cycles of observation and critical feedback between the teachers.

Where to next:

• Creation of a survey for students to gather information on their attitudes towards how we teach writing and looking at effect sizes in relation to pedagogical approaches being trialed through PLG/’s.

Oral Language - Mark and Erin

Have completed baseline data collection at both schools with a random sample of approximately 50 Year 1 and 2 students.

Have established hunch and structural timeline of inquiry for 2018. Some key resources have been identified, including people from beyond our CoL who we hope to involve in future PD.

Planned collaboration and professional development between CPDS and RPS

Where to next:

Action plan being co-constructed and extension of  networking and collaboration  opportunities within CoL , and beyond Col - including ECE.

Mathematics/Pāngarau Initiative - Sonya and Sue

• Identified  maths as a strength in all three schools. Questioned if teachers were catering to the strengths of our learners.
• Historic learning data has been gathered over the past three years and this year student attitude data will be used as a comparison indicator to gauge how successful the initiative is in strengthening teacher pedagogy and content knowledge when teaching maths in our schools.
• Extending  involvement of our parent community. Schools are still working through how this will be part of their action plan.

  Where to next:

• Teachers sharing their learning in school, across schools and across Kahui Ako will be discussed when the teachers come together to share inquiry goals and to begin across schools collaborations.

Working with the Learner -Lisa and Sue

• EGGS staff have now all joined a cross curricular PLG for 2018 which relates to one or more of the 3 strategic aims for 2018: Curriculum design, Pedagogy for Innovative Learning and Building Relationships and Restorative Practices. Student agency is at the heart of all three strategic aims.
• The PLGs are furthering the cross curricular and collaborative connections between teachers.
• There are 14 ISLs and they have each identified how 'Working with the learner' and  'Learner Agency' will be developed within the PLG that they lead.
• Staff are developing their own Action Plans to identify research and strategies needed to enable the above. Staff are at the stage of researching, developing goals and gathering student data, under the supervision of the ISL.
• Cross curricular projects in the junior school are being developed between staff from different learning areas at EGGS this year.

  Where to next:

The two ASLs in the school are continuing to coach the ISLs and periodically meet them all together to share findings so they can learn from each other, and report back to the curriculum group.

Transitioning Early Childhood & New Entrants – Sarah Brown ( ISL at Kohia Tce)

• We have tapped into a need to create of local forum to rebuild relationships with 30-40 people attending our meetings.
• We have  set 13 goals for 2018 and have achieved four of them so far this year.
• We  had  a successful meeting in February on supporting children with special needs. Guest speaker, Felecia Tomich, shared resources and information on how we can support these children at a ECE/NE level.