A Week in My HPSS Life - Monday

This series of blog posts is inspired by Bex who, more than once, has tried to get her head around my timetable. Sometimes the best way to understand things is to experience them - but unfortunately I can't bring Bex here for an entire week - as much as I'd love to! So, I'll walk you through my week, one day at a time. Each day, with its outline, hopefully some photos, and let you into my world.

So let's start at the beginning.

Monday

8:30 - Mondays with Maurie Kitchen Table

All staff in the staffroom, the school waiata is sung. Singing together builds culture, a commonality, community - Whanaungatanga. It's nice, actually. Maurie (or sometimes others are given the slot) speaks to us - so far I've noticed these kitchen tables have something to do about building the culture, upfronting the school culture. This morning's was about cultural sustainability.

Our Teacher Only Day before Easter features Anne Milne's Colouring in the White Spaces - and this is what Maurie koreroed about further.

He shared stories from his past, telling of how he went about building relationships with whanau, and emphasised the importance of relationships. I tend to think no matter what colour a person is, relationship and a sense of belonging is of utmost importance.
He shared different strategies of engaging with another's culture including reading about the history and engaging with the literature.

We were issued a challenge around Culturally Sustainable Practice:
* we're all responsible for making changes - I have to read, I have to learn the language, I have to get into it.

But that makes sense, right? Nothing changes if nothing changes.

We were directed towards an email that Maurie had sent and given about 3 minutes to 1. Write down what we learned from TOD and 2. What one thing we were going to do differently to be more culturally sustainable.

* he aha tatou

We then went on to revisit the definition of what success should look like for students at our school.
staff voice
student voice

Following Maurie, one of our SLT spoke with conviction about the importance of Pasifika, and how Pasifika viewed our school:
"Palangi with a touch of Asian"

We heard that the most important thing for them is to feel happy and proud of who they are, where they come from, of their family, their culture and their identity.

The feedback was that families and students want to learn their own languages because knowing the language leads to understanding the culture.
We heard how humility is valued by pasifika people and how we need to celebrate pasifika achievements - find stories about Maori students and Pasifika students because they won't be forthcoming with them.

Where do the kids get a chance to find out about things that are important to them?

8:55 - Hub Time

Right up until today, our community huis have been on a Monday morning! We're switching this up today - so no hui to write about. Instead, I'll have the full time (from 8:55 to 10:30) to spend with my hub - my 15 hublings who I have pastoral care for.

Being the last week of term, I asked them to reflect on their learning so far this term. When they gave me shallow responses, I challenged them to go further and think deeper. 

They also filled in a hubling voice form which asked them 10 questions about how they thought I was going as a coach. The responses were more brutal than expected, and I put some paper and pens around the room asking for their solutions to the problems.

10:30 - Morning Tea time

I sat in my office with the A3 pieces of paper and thought about what these meant.

10:50 - Block 2 - DBAD101

This is a Level 1 (Year 11) module combining English and PE. Today my co-teacher and I are watching the students and assessing them on their effective communication goals. The students set these goals on Friday, and today we were watching them, trying to catch them displaying the communication techniques they have chosen to improve. I videoed them for a few minutes so we can go back and analyse their skills later.

A lot of my time this block was spent following up students who had missed the deadline.

12:10 - Block 3 - TEENAGE

This block I spent going over the steps involved in writing an in-depth letter. We looked at planning, selecting, testing points to figure out if they were compelling or not. After I spent about a half-hour chunk of the lesson talking through rubrics, planning, and expectations of challenge, the students were set free to work on their own. I gave them a few minutes to get started, then talked to each one of the kids about what they would like to focus their letter around. Some would like to let Chris Hopkins know their thoughts towards NCEA, others think languages or or soft skills must be built into the new education system. Really cool discussions emerged as students and I wondered about issues together, and generated avenues of research.

1:30 Lunchtime

Back to foxtrot to meet the L1 students coming in for a catch up. I also spoke with one of my students about the difficulty he was having in L1 English, and we investigated some alternatives for him to try so that he can find success.

2:10 - Block 4 - TEENAGE

For our second 80-minute block of the day, the students were continuing to prepare their letter info and discuss their ideas.

3:30 - Home time (For students)

I had two meetings on simultaneously: Hub coach training for new coaches and an English meeting. I prioritised the English meeting today, as it had been some time since all 5 of us have been in the same place at the same time.

4:30 - Home time  :)