Empowering Digital Pedagogy - Setting up Class Blogs at school

PLD for our teachers this year is centred around future focused learning and we have had a number of sessions on 'Empowering Digital Pedagogy'.  We are working with Kyla Hansell and Aireen Ahkui who have introduced staff to working with Google Suite and the apps it entails.  The beginning of

Term 2 was our first introduction with two PD days of "how to use Google Drive" - Docs, Spreadsheets, Slides, Drawing.  This gave teachers an opportunity to familiarise themselves with the apps and dabble with some ways to use them with their students in their classroom programmes.   In term 3 we have now moved into class blogs and during a teacher only day, teachers spent their time learning about what blogging is and what it entails in the classroom.  There was rich discussion around the impact blogs will have on student learning, concerns around the responsibilities of posting students work or images on the blog, educating students and parents on the purposes and outcomes of class blogs, setting up a positive blogging culture and much more.  Kyla and Aireen carefully guided teachers through the process of creating their class blogs and working with the blogging dashboard.  It was completely new learning for almost all of the staff, creating titles, changing backgrounds, setting up URLs...the learning curve was huge.    So, Nga Iwi School blogs are now live and kicking.  I'm excited to see the skills and pedagogy associated with blogging grow across the school and to see our students work being shared with an audience.  Very exciting!!!

NZ Pasifika Principals Association Fono - Wellington 21/22 August 2019

On the 21st and 22nd of August, I was privileged to attend the NZ Pasifika Principals meeting in Wellington.  This was a fantastic opportunity of growth in leadership, cultural competency and understanding.  After arriving in Wellington and settling in, the group of 23 Principal shared a meal and for those fairly new to the group (like me), got to know people and connect on common ground.  It was great to meet Principals from Wellington who arranged the events of the trip.  We started early the next morning, walking to the NZEI building in the heart of the city, where we were introduced to Linda Stewart (President of NZEI).

We began our meeting sharing our names, schools, whakapapa, and something that no-one knows about us.  It was amazing the talents being shared around the table...a number of athletes, musicians, artists, poets, and even a race car driver!  Following our korero, the Principal of Mangere Bridge School, Steph Tafa,  spoke to the group about the history and significance of the Ihumatoa occupation.  An important land issue that involves a Maori historical sight and the debate between Tangata Whenua and housing developers.  Steph's message was not about the politics of the debate, but more the context and significance of protecting the heritage and nature of the land.  It was humbling to listen to her thoughts and experiences and provided an opportunity for us to gain an understanding of why it was happening and what the hopeful outcomes would be.
After sharing morning tea with the Hon. Jenny Salesa, Associate Minister of Education and we had a session where she shared the Ministry and Government's vision and plan for Pasifika education.  It was informative and the Minister answered questions from Principals regarding the impact new changes will have on our students.
We then shared a discussion around the "Tautai o le Moana" project, an initiative currently underway headed by our Association.  This project is 'strengthen the capabilities of leaders to improve outcomes for Pasifika learners and contribute to culturally sustainable practices across Aotearoa'.  Being led through this discussion by Helen Varney (project leader and facilitator), I was excited by the kaupapa and intended outcomes.  I am excited to be part of the project by being one of the many research schools involved.

Developing the Vision

Within schools, it is assumed that everyone is on the same page and moving towards the same goals, guided by the vision.  The vision is guided through a statement that is often ubiquitous and general in its intentions. Our school vision is "To Grow Learning-Empowered and Empathic Children".  As a Principal, new to my position, I needed to gain a swift picture in my mind of what this statement meant to the teachers, students, and whanau I work with - at the same time clarify what it means to me.  When you are not part of the process of developing guiding vision statements, it's important to be able to connect and share the ideas of others.  Having spent the best part of a term familiarising myself with the community, the school's strategic plan, vision, values, analysing data, having formal and informal conversations across the school - an understanding of what the vision meant to the community began to grow in my mind.  There has been a number of pathways that have opened through the process and I am in a position to build on what is already in place.
Starting with students and whanau I have developed a 'Learning Framework' that I have shared with staff on TOD.  The purpose behind the framework is to clarify what learning looks like at our school - where it starts, how we do it, how we grow it, and most importantly why we do it (connecting strongly to our vision).   You may do a double take at 'how we do it' and 'how we grow it'? How we grow it is reflective practice, how we do it is pedagogy.  It's important that we reflect on how we do things in order to grow what we do.  Through my getting to know the structures, processes, programmes and people there were a couple of things that came to the surface giving me aspects of the vision to build on.  The writing focus we have had for the past few years is still relevant, but it was apparent that we had come to the end of our PLD contract and there was still more to be done in increasing student achievement in this area.

The introduction of digital learning was in its infancy within the school.  There were pockets of work being done by teachers, but most had done very little in the classroom with their learners in the digital space.  With the big picture of education moving into the digital space, I had to make this part of our vision going forward.  Combining writing and the move into digital learning was a natural evolution.  The big part is gaining teacher buy-in.  It's a lot to learn when managing a classroom and digital learning has to be done 'on the job' by all involved.  We have engaged PLD facilitators to implement google suite into our school, we've introduced class blogs and begun the task of purchasing chrome books and ipads to boost the number of devices across the school.  The Board of Trustees have been supportive in this move to digital learning and are excited to see it grow across the school.