A Week in my HPSS Life - Friday

🎉🎉The last day of term!🎉🎉
💤💤It's time for sleep...💤💤

There's newborn tired. There's special needs tired. There's teacher at the end of term tired. It's its own special kind of tiredness. Pretty sure we've all seen this doing the rounds on the internet before!

Source: Internet

08:30 - Community Kitchen Table

Gathered in spaces around the building four communities of teachers could be found. I found Tiriwa in the kitchen cooking breakfast - smelled amazing. I found Taheretikitiki sitting in a Porohita on the floor in Delta. My community, Waiarohia was in Kilo, and I don't actually know where Onekiritea were. One thing was the same of almost everyone I saw today - we were all wearing black. An email was sent out yesterday from one of the teachers about wearing black today to make visible the stand against sexual harassment in the work place. In a school usually so full of colour and colourfully-dressed people, it was uncomfortable and unsettling to see so much black.

But that's the point - sexual harassment in any form isn't ok.

#MeTooNZ Tweets

So far this year I have worn orange for Domestic Violence awareness, Teal for athletics day, Green for St. Patrick's day, and black for Sexual Harassment day. I'd better make sure my Pink is ready to go for Bullying Day in May, too.

As for our community meeting, today we discussed what we wanted to do with huis next term, our leader checked in with how everyone was feeling about our Learning to Learn topic, and also checked in to see how we were going with our one-on-ones and logging them into Kamar.

09:00 - Hub Check-in and send off

Birthdays! Two birthdays this morning, happy birthday was sung, and my directive from the hublings for next term is to be more proactive about celebrating birthdays and making a big deal about them. I'm also thinking next term I'm going to move spaces, as I have been eyeing up the lab opposite me for a while...

09:10 - Block 1 - TEENAGE

My Level 2 class today had a set series of tasks to achieve as they prepared a piece of writing for their writing portfolio. The task we are working on at the moment is writing a letter to Chris Hipkins, expressing our views on what should be included in the education reform. I had my idea of what it should look like - however every step of the way at least one student has said "I don't want to do it like this. I think..." and this stoked great discussions as the students had to justify their reasons. These discussions led me into areas of exploration that stirred me as well. One student I was discussing work with had the point that relationships are important in teaching. He said he couldn't find any where where Chris Hipkins was talking about relationship in education. I found this interesting, as when I looked at a range of sources, including his twitter stream and his webpage, I couldn't find any mention of relationship either. It was a cursory glance, but it led me to think about the relevance of omissions - the importance of relationships in education was conspicuous by its (perceived?) absence.

I know the Ministry of Education places a huge importance on Knowing Your Student - so why couldn't I find any evidence today?

10:30 - Morning Tea

10:50 - Block 2 - Office Time

I keep calling it office time, even though I'm not always in the office. Fridays are when I meet with my Foundation co-teacher and today we were planning for first week back next term. In a good way our planning session exposed how white we both are, especially when we invited Whaea to come and help us with our planning! We want to explore pepeha and get each student creating a cuff bracelet out of copper that portrays their own pepeha, using Maori symbols and design. It's going to be so cool! But man - do I know nothing about te toi o Maori!! I used to think I was pretty good - I did a paper on taonga in my Art History Honours...

12:10 - Block 3: DBAD101

The same as yesterday, we separated the students into two groups and gave them focused time to get work of each subject complete.

1:30 - Lunch time: Duty in Taharetikitiki

It's a fairly quiet space, so when one of my students walked past who I needed to have a restorative conversation with, it was easy enough to chat with him as well. What I really like about restorative practice is that students and teachers can both get to a place of calm with behaviours discussed and and solutions put in place. For me, it allows me time to settle myself before I have a conversation with the students. It can be trying, because I like to tell students that they're wrong if they've done something they keep trying to find excuses for their behaviour. I have to breathe - not taking the bait is something that I'm getting better - but there were still a couple of times when breathing didn't quite engage the filter...

2:10 - Block 4: DBAD101

Time for PE outside... with a whole bunch of gannets! I was eating some lunch on the run, and had a pot of beetroot and pomegranate falaffel in one hand and a bag of corn thins in the other. A couple of the students saw this as I walked on the courts, asked what it was, and then asked to try it. I have long known the importance of sharing food in building relationships - but I don't usually share with students! Sharing kai has been discouraged in many situations, and so it isn't my natural response. The first thing that came to mind this time was our presentation on Monday about kai and pasifika cultures. So, I let them share my lunch and eat together.

3:29

"Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy! Have a great holiday!"

3:30

We made it through another term - for me my first term at HPSS.
I might do a first term review later in the holidays.
But for now...