A Week in My Life at HPSS - Wednesday

8:30

Stories of power loss and stranded teachers - a bit of an exciting start to the day as people were catching up with each other about how they were affected by the storm. Turns out the primary had lost a bit of roof - whoops, didn't notice that this morning when I dropped the kids off! Cold though! I found my toe socks this morning - and wore these with my jandals. :) 

Wednesday morning is PD morning. This morning, two of our LCLs (Learning Community Leaders: Deans, pastoral leaders... I'm not actually sure where they'd fit into the model I'm used to) took us through the Hub curriculum planners. We were given time to look back on our goals from the beginning of the term, and to reflect and evaluate how we were going to go forward next term. I finished two columns, 3 to do. I was surprised at how much I had done - it's easy to get caught up in the day to day and following up with different things that don't end up on the planner, so taking that moment to breathe and acknowledge the things I had accomplished was pretty cool.

The next job - have a look through Term Two's planner. Yus - I've been looking forward to this topic! Learning to Learn!! I've been interested in this for so many years, and collecting information for so many years that I'm looking forward to sharing it with my hub!! I've used the information in my own teaching and learning practises, and I've been longing to teach it so I'm so excited that the opportunity is here this year! :D 

The third section of PD was considering the effects on hauora using Bono's thinking hats. I didn't take a photo so found this one on the internet. We didn't have the purple hat, but I thought it was cool enough to include.

It was interesting. We were split into groups using the coloured hats, and my group was to look at the negative effects on hauora (we got the black hat). Each group quickly presented back, as the LCL also mad the connection between what we were doing and writing an essay. A sneaky way to build literacy skills in to hub - love it!

credit: https://mgrush.com/blog/2017/06/22/debono-six-thinking-hats/

9:30 - Block 1

The kids have a late start every Wednesday morning. I've worked out that we make up for this time by finishing school at 3:30 every afternoon, not 3:15. This is the day they do projects - on site, with a rigorous curriculum. As I don't have a project, this is essentially an office day for me.

The office day starts with my weekly meeting with my PE co-teacher. Every week we sit down and work through what we need to do with the students for the next week. Today we were going through the markbook and checking who's handed in work. We were updating notes on Kamar. She was teaching me about what to look for when assessing the PE kids. We reviewed a video I took of the kids on Monday where they were playing basketball - and I mentioned how I found it less overwhelming to view the video and mark than to mark in real time. I feel this is how I go with most unfamiliar situations - find a way I can control my learning, and once I've got it I can feel more confident with using the knowledge.

10:50 - Morning Tea

Later today because of the late start. :)

11:10 - Block 2 - In the Office

Winter arrived - I went looking for my office-mate's blanket!

Office time = thinking time. I was working through preparation for the next few lessons, and just working through stuff - as we do as teachers.

12:30 - Block 3 - Office time continues.

The students have floor time during this block and as my books arrived from London during this block, I sat with the students working near my office door and opened the package! :) A couple of the students also happened to be my English students, so they were reminded to get on with the English work they were behind on! 

The new books from the National Galley of London that disrupted my thinking time!

The cool thing about opening this package meant that I was sharing something I love with the kids, I was talking with kids whom I hadn't met before, and we were exploring this together. At the moment I'm really intrigued by text adaptations, and one of the books that arrived is Metamorphosis: Poems Inspired by Titian. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I'm pretty sure that there's some way I can work with biology in the future and create a unit out of this.

Wednesday. Thinking time. So Awesome.

1:30 - Lunchtime.

Deeply back in thought, I was retrospectively vaguely aware of my critical friend telling me to stop for lunch. I can't even remember what I was working on at the time - but it had me hooked at the time!

2:10 - Hub Time

This is our second 80-minute block of the week. We started off with a celebrations assembly today, and then came back and finished off our porohita question from yesterday morning. The furniture had been left in interesting places today - and it kinda made a cave-like feel. We girls sat on the floor, while the boys were on chairs. Following that, they finished their forms for me - Floor time selections for term 2, reflections, and student voice. I then gave them time to catch up on assessments, as they requested, and I tried to get around students who I hadn't chatted with for a while and just chill with them.

I was talking with a friend tonight about how much time we spend with our hublings. 80 minutes twice a week and 20 minutes four times a week because relationships are paramount. Relationships are the most important thing, and they're what everything else is based on. Without a strong foundation, we can't have a strong building. The storm last night illustrates that nicely!

3-storey scaffolding (a structure with no foundation) that blew over in the wind storm.
Photo cred: Carrick Hill

3:30 - Home time

Throw the shoes in the drawer and put on the toe-socks and jandals to walk home :)

8:48pm - LBC Whanau: Love you

I've just come back from the farewell of an amazing teacher at Long Bay. Spending time at LBC, the place where my training wheels came off, was like going back to mum and dad's house. It was like whanau. Mum was there, Dad was there, aunties, uncles, cousins... I've always said (and I heard it tonight) that a school is not about the building (or the results... ;) ), it's about the people. I came home filled with aroha at having spent time with whanau I love. Whanau - you know I write these for you. I couldn't bring you with me to HPSS in person, and so many of you expressed desires to know about what's happening over here. So many of you look at HPSS and see glimpses of what we're doing and want to know more. This is my way of helping to remove the fence so that you can see what goes on and how we make it work.
Arohanui tatou.