Being prepared...Media Training.

Being in the role of principal, learning and leadership are at the forefront of everything we do.  Most principals are happy to work in the background, completely focused on their students, teachers and community.  Probably one of the biggest jobs that I'm sure all principals would rather avoid is being the face of the school in front of media.  We all want the best for our schools but as I'm sure we've all seen over the years, stuff happens that is not always in the best interest of school and Principals are faced with scrutiny in the media.

With COVID being at the forefront of the current media cycle, school leaders have been contacted to seek comment around the Government and Ministries of Health and Education's handling of the pandemic within a school setting.  I was contacted by a journalist from ONEnews to comment on the disruption, barriers and concerns I was facing as a school leader during COVID.  Being inexperienced in working with media, I was reluctant to make a comment, so gave a very general apology for being very busy in managing our pandemic plan so was unavailable for an interview.  Whew...dodged that interview but this highlighted for me the need to be prepared if a brush with the media ever did eventuate.  So after seeking some advice from my BP mentor I was guided to Mr Pete Burdon, media consultant.  I sought his course outline and costings and then shared the information with three other principals in my CoL and proceeded to engage his services for an in-house media workshop.

It was an intense course where we were given a variety of scenarios and were filmed carrying out dummy interviews.   I appreciated the opportunity to review each interview, all the while unpacking and highlighting aspects of my responses I could improve on or in some cases avoid all together.  Doing the interviews with my fellow principals gave us a shared understanding of interview techniques, and insight into what reporters may be looking for and how they may take your responses and rework them possibly to your detriment.

My biggest takeout from the day was unquestionably the three 'R's - Regret - Respond - Reassure.  

REGRET - without apologising/saying sorry which indicates blame, show regret for the scenario/situation and understanding for how the 'wronged' party may be feeling.

RESPOND - indicate how you/the school/the board intend to correct the situation, what will be put in place, actions to be undertaken.

REASSURE - give parties reassurance that measures are being put in place, the situation is being delt with and that health/safety/security is paramount in our minds for our students/staff/whanau/community.

Keeping a level head, giving an initial general response in order to create breathing space for developing amore concise, thoughtful and accurate reply is important to avoid serious fallout.  It's also important to seek help from advisers when unsure or not confident.  If you're ever in a situation where media seek comment or show interest, it's not beneficial to try to put interviews off completely as that could give the media opportunity to mould the story.  It's better to get in front of the story and steer your narrative than give media range to modify or sensationalise aspects of it.

This was a workshop definitely worth taking and the learning is something myself and my team of principals will continue to revisit and practice.

Four, three, two....one - Post COVID

We are almost on the other side of COVID...or so we hope, as a nation.  We spent two weeks at level 2 and are now in level one.  We've been back at school, fully open for five weeks now and our reintegration to our new normal has been slow and steady.  At best we've had 88% of students back at school, but due to illness or parent prerogative this fluctuates greatly.
Since our return, our main focus has been on wellbeing - students and teachers. In class students have been reuniting, getting their bearings and navigating where they are in their learning.  While many of our students were engaged in home learning in some way, shape or form, those who didn't have found engaging in learning full time, a struggle.  I believe that is also the reason for the fluctuation in attendance.

Life back at the chalk face will change due to COVID.  We intend to fully utilise our learning during the pandemic so while we are focusing on wellbeing across the school, we are also evaluating and reflecting on what worked with online learning, what didn't and where to from here.  We have carried out surveys with students and teachers to tease out the new learning we achieved and how we can adapt and embed it from home to school.  We also intend to seek thoughts from parents through a home survey, using this feedback to inform our learning pathways.
There are two things that we have implemented so far as a result of our COVID experiences.  Firstly, we have revamped our mid year report formats to reflect learning at home during lockdown.  The format includes a specific section for whanau to comment on their child's home learning in addition to tick boxes indicating how the child learned e.g: engaged in learning independently, with whanau and completing tasks (both online and hardcopy).  This report is an interim one, we will also write an end of year report based on the old style, which has a strong element of National Standards in it.  Our intention is that next year we will introduce 'live reporting' to parents through an app called Seesaw and this is the second outcome of our COVID experience.  During the lockdown parents were

presented with the opportunity to learn with their children in a wide variety of ways.  One way for us to encourage home learning to take place was to ask parents to share their child's learning on our facebook page.  For many households providing an audience engaged students more readily with a number of families sharing what they were doing with our community.  This provided a catalyst for us to fast track Seesaw in our school.  Seesaw is the educational equivalent to facebook, where student's work is uploaded to the app and parents receive posts in real time showing learning in action.
There is still much to do with COVID providing the platform for many changes within our old school system.  We're excited.  Stay tuned.

Moving from Level 4 to Level 3 - Shifts in thinking

Yesterday the government gave guidelines to what a shift from Level 4 in this lockdown to Level 3 would look like.  For educators it was a lot to think about.
Under alert level 3 students from Year 1 to Year 10 are able to attend school and this is voluntary.  For students of parents who will be returning to work, this will be a relief as it will for students who are unable to learn via distance learning.    The government do advise that children who are able should remain at home.  Children, young people and staff who are at greater risk should also remain at home.
So what does that mean for us?  As an estimate I would say that 60-70% of our families have internet connectivity.  Of those families, a number do not have a suitable device for students to access online learning or they have to share the device between siblings.  Currently we have 2 staff in the senior school who are ready for home learning and are running online programmes during the lockdown.  Our remaining staff are working via phone, text and email messaging while supporting children with hard copy home learning packs and other resources.  For those at school it will look different.  There will be fewer students on school grounds and they will stay in small groups.  Some teachers will will be teaching students at school while others will be providing distance learning.  The biggest concern staff have will be the idea of 'social distancing' in school, especially with younger students.  How can this accomplished?  If we have some students working from home and others at school, how will teachers run parallel programmes?  Does this mean an increase in workload?
There is a lot to think about but the most important thing will be keeping it all in perspective and not panicking.  I know some staff will have major concerns and voice them.  My job will be to keep our sights set above the line, looking for the positives and how we can make this work.  In many respects this is the exciting bit, this is the paradigm shift I talked about in my previous post.  We, our community, are masters of our own destiny in this shift and we need to be open to new ways to learn, new things to learn and be pragmatic in our approach.
When meeting with my teams I will seek their opinion on what Level 3 means to them, what the positives will be, what concerns they may have, how they envisage it might look like in their classrooms, what they would like to do, what they think they may need to make it happen, what questions they have.  I don't expect answers right away, they will need to go away and ruminate on their thoughts and the discussion we will have had...as will I.
Most importantly for me and our team is the wellbeing of all involved.  What is right for us will be of our making and we will approach this with resilience, a positive mindset and a can do attitude!

Education in Lockdown - A paradigm shift

The lockdown came through the COVID-19 global pandemic.  It was swift and scary and we were certainly on the back foot when it was announced.  The coronavirus had been in the news since the beginning of the year, with the virus spreading across the world and really hit NZ early in March.  Things ramped up about a week before the lockdown was announced so during that week, we were making plans, having meetings, gathering ideas for what learning might look like once lockdown started...we knew it was inevitable.  The speed at which it came we were not prepared for, the government gave us literally an hour.  The announcement was made at 1:45pm and school closed to students at 2:45pm.  Schools were then given 2 days to prepare some semblance of learning for home.  Teams of teachers met and discussed what they were going to give to their students and got to work, resourcing, photocopying and writing information to put in packs for parents to pick up from the school office.  It was a very stressful time but staff showed amazing resilience and care in getting things done for their learners.  Staff were instructed to make contact with their families, touch base and offer support with the learning packs that were sent home.  Of the 350 students in the school, 60% of our families picked up their packs.  40% hadn't, so teachers made particular efforts to connect with those parents and try to email the student's learning to them.

The Ministry of Education informed us that the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of the first week were considered school days, the following two weeks were to be considered the holidays (moved forward by 2 weeks) and that learning from home would begin the day after Easter Tuesday - 15th April.
So, it is now the second week of the holidays and I've spent much of my time sifting and digesting a myriad of information constantly being emailed and phoned through from the ministry and other sources.  It has been draining, but at the same time, quietly exciting as the realisation of the shift in educational paradigm is happening as we move through this lockdown.  There is still much to be done and as a staff we have much to learn.  Some staff have been dabbling in the digital space for a while, some have attempted very little in it.  This situation has opened the eyes of many to the affordances that digital spaces offer learning.  We have had online meetings this week, a new experience for many of us.  We have shared ideas to support learning at home, and we have reconnected with families to check online capabilities.  Our government will have a lot of work to do in our community as many homes have no connectivity so learning packs are being delivered to them before Term 2 begins.
It is a work in progress.  A new direction.  A new paradigm.  It's exciting...

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.