Introducing City Senior School at The Launching Pad

In November last year I was lucky enough to attend the SingularityU Summit in Christchurch. It was an awesome three days. It reignited my love of futures thinking and served as a swift kick in the pants.

I wrote this blogpost. 

I went back to school.

I felt unsettled.

I needed someone to help me process my thinking.

So a week or so later I called up my friend and now business partner and co-founder Brett O'Riley. I knew Brett had attended the SingularityU Executive Training in the US and I also knew he shared my frustration at the seemingly glacial pace of change in education. I shared my thinking and a vision for a school that was part school and part innovation co-working space. I wanted to know why we weren't leveraging digital technology to support more self-directed study in a social learning environment. I wanted to know why schools weren't more like GridAKL? Why are young people still in uniforms "PAC-MANing" their way through disconnected and fragmented timetables of learning? Why? Why? Why?

It was over an afternoon of discussion that we landed at an idea - why don't we open a school? It was a throw away comment at the time. But it also planted a seed.

So this is how it all started.

Then, suddenly it seemed to make a whole lot of sense. We (Brett and I) share a passion for digital technology and innovation. Brett has massive amounts of experience and expertise in the business innovation sphere, I had a whole lot of passion for leading educational change and fair amount of experience in setting up a school - thanks to what I thought was a once in a lifetime experience with Maurie Abraham and the team at HPSS. And with that, and a dash of "Screw it, let's do it!" - City Senior School at The Launching Pad was born. Okay, there might also have been about six months of massive amounts of planning and application forms and generally burning the midnight oil with Brett and others to get this thing across the line. 

So, what is City Senior School?

City Senior School will be an urban inner city STEAM school with a focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths. It was also have “green” sustainability philosophy which will focused on through Green Innovation Projects. City Senior School will be a school that is characterised by its student’s partnership with business and industry, and the employment pathways it creates.

Our Vision

Innovate. Connect. Contribute.

The mission of our school is to nurture and support our young people with a particular focus on becoming agentic, innovative and creative global citizens who can confidently contribute in our rapidly changing world.

Our Values and Principles

WE Innovate

• Online learning 
• Self-directed learning
• Experiential learning

WE Connect

• Social learning environment 
• Building partnerships
• Connected learning

We Contribute

• Community connection
• Sustainability focus
• Service learning

Our Curriculum

Students will experience three curriculum foci:

• STEAM curriculum - delivered through a mixture of online modules and face to face teaching,
• Green Innovation Projects and workplace engagements with local technology businesses both onsite and in Wynyard Quarter and the CBD,
• Whanau Mentoring (which will focus on Te Reo, tikanga, communication skills, self-management, well-being, ethics and futures thinking)

Our (draft) Year 11 Timetable 

NB. Students will move to an increasingly fluid and flexible timetable as they develop their ability to engage in self-directed learning. 

City Senior School at The Launching Pad

City Senior School will be located within The Launching Pad which will also be a co-working space for startup companies in the tech and innovation sector. By co-locating students and industry we will be able to support to students to work alongside and with their business partners and mentors.  

There are hundreds of companies, organisations and NGOs within walking distance, requiring workers with STEAM skills that will be engaged by the school to provide project and career pathway opportunities for students. Our foundation partners, include Auckland Theatre Company, Datacom, Microsoft, Media Design School and IBM who are all in close proximity. 

City Senior School as an Innovation Hub

The City Senior School Innovation Hub will be a multi-purpose space that will be dedicated to bringing together educators and students to explore innovative practice. 

This may include:

• Pop-up workshops designed and facilitated by City Senior School staff and students.
• Industry and School Educator connection events.
• A space available for teachers and students to come work alongside City Senior School staff and students. 
• A space for educator meet-ups and TeachMeets.
• A space for third-party professional development providers.

And yes, City Senior School is a Partnership School

City Senior School is a Partnership School (sometimes also referred to as a charter school), which I know will be a point of contention for some. As one who steadfastly refuses to be binary about these kind of things, I have come to believe that Partnership Schools are an opportunity for innovation that simply doesn't exist anywhere else. Yes, of course we should be investing in evolving existing schools, and innovation is happening all over the place. However, I strongly believe there is also space within the education landscape for small prototype schools which are free from the constraints of existing structures - small schools that can be agile and can share their learning with everyone. I believe that education should be free, it should be taught by highly skilled registered teachers and that we should, as New Zealand schools, be using the New Zealand Curriculum and National Certificate of Educational Achievement. So that is what will happen at City Senior School. Yes we are a Partnership School, we are a Partnership School that will have 100% skilled registered teachers teaching the NZC to work towards NCEA....plus a wide range of other carefully curated international microcredentials. 

And while we are on the topic, we don't get 2-5 times the amount of funding of a state school. We are funded at the same rate as a Decile 5 school, just simply bulk funded. 

So now what?

Lots of excitement, planning and preparation! I will start full-time as Principal from Term Two 2018 along with a fellow senior leader with a view to appointing our first contingent of teachers who will begin in Term Four. City Senior School will open with up to 100 Year 11 students in 2019, building up to a roll of 300 Year 11-13s by 2021. Enrolments will open in mid 2018. 

If you are interested in joining our mailing list, feel free to sign up here!

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How might we disrupt secondary education in New Zealand?

Today I am writing a *brief post to simply try and get myself rebooted and back writing on a weekly basis about the sort of stuff that keeps me awake at night, keeps me thinking about education pretty much 24/7. I admit it I am obsessed and happily so.

The topic outlined in the title is one such topic, often causing me to toss and turn at 4am. It is a topic I have avoided tackling here because it is so complex and brain hurty.

But before I get to the how, let's start with the why. The reason why we need disrupt education is because we need to change education. The reason we need to change education has been covered many times in many places (see here and here) - basically the world is changing, industry is changing, schools are not. Okay they are. But at a pace so glacial I am not convinced we will see the widespread and deep seated change we need unless something happens to disrupt on a system wide level.

So what (short of something catastrophic like war or natural disaster) might cause the level of disruption that might result in something akin to radical educational change?

Here's a few ideas (please don't mistake inclusion of ideas as approval of ideas - this is simply a indulgent "ponder piece").

Charter or Character Schools?

A couple of weeks ago I had the unexpected pleasure of a visit from David Seymour. Unexpected because I didn't think he'd actually front and unexpected because I didn't expect to find him so interesting. No. I am not a fan of charter schools. In fact the reason from Mr Seymour's visit was actually a direct result of the blog post I wrote about Why the hell can't we just have more character schools - An open letter to David Seymour and whilst he didn't change my mind about my preference for character schools over charter schools (in fact he even conceded that maybe character schools "could" have been the answer) he did raise the rather interesting notion of charter schools being a virus (yes I also snorted at this analogy) but actually, he had a point. There are many ways to lead innovation and change and as far as he was concerned the concept of charter schools has the power to be infectious and therefore spread change. Personally I don't think charter schools are the virus I wish to see spreading, but if we replaced charter with character I think he could be on to something. Think about it, small agile institutions are where we see innovation happen - the large corporations often feeding off the small agile companies by adopting innovative practice by gobbling up these companies - think Facebook or Google who have adopted a PacMan like approach to becoming innovative by literally consuming the small and agile start ups. How might we translate this approach in the educational landscape - activate a vast number of small agile character schools around the country that might prototype and then be absorbed into larger less agile schools?

Communities of Schools?

Can the networking of schools lead to transformed educational practice or might it simply embed and strengthen the status quo? On one hand IES has the potential to form genuine communities of learning who might be able to develop a genuine community for the learner, wrapping around their learning journey from entry into ECE to graduation into tertiary or industry. However, forming a community might not be enough, without intervention and demanding innovation, you may just strengthen the status quo and enable communities to build barricade which enables them to fortify and resist change even more effectively than before. Bigger doesn't always equate to better and a network can soon become a net that further stymies innovation and risk taking. As a member of the 21st Century Learning Reference Group (who wrote the Future Focused Learning in Connected Communities report) I did try my best to campaign for a future-focused innovation focus to be wrapped around the initiative, but alas my pot-banging fell on deaf ears. Whilst innovation is mentioned in the plans, I worry that the "improvement agenda" will dominate - and my concern is that "improvement" in isolation can be achieved through some less than forward thinking means - think rote learning, narrowing of the curriculum and either greater adversity to risk-taking. In fact all we may achieve is more of the same but with increased hierarchy and fewer overarching leaders for the ministry to deal with. Efficient? Maybe. Innovative? Probably not.

Assessment Reform?

I have oft harped on about the potential for future-focused assessment practices (see here) as being the tail that just might wag the dog. In fact "reimagined assessment practice" could very well be the disruption that is required. The thing that won't provide this disruption is tweaked assessment practice, aka digitised exams. Again, I am concerned that we will take what could be revolutionary (i.e. forgoing exams altogether for multi-media portfolios of learning) and turn it into the banal (i.e. doing your exams online). We will do this because we don't want to "frighten the horses". Personally I'd rather frighten them than bore them to death.

Of course such reimagining is nigh on impossible thanks to the buggers at our NZ universities. University requirements are so prescriptive one could make mistake them for being all lofty and rigorous. Bullsh*t. They are simply easy to compile into an innocuous grade point average that puts all the work back on us, the secondary educator (at the free place of study), so the student can have the honour of being a "bum on the seat" (at the overpriced and spectacularly underserving institution). Like we are suffering some sort of servitude to the mighty tertiary princesses shouting "Let them eat cake!" as we scurry to serve up the exact requirements. Okay might have got carried away, but you get my point - why the hell are we stymying innovation and creative assessment practices for our young people to simply meet their scurrilous demands. Why can't we roll around in the joy of helping our learners to craft a rich portfolios of learning and let the the universities do the work in assessing the portfolios themselves?

What else might we do? 

I like that Teacher Led Innovation Fund - maybe we could breed some more of those babies?
What about getting crash hot innovative educational specialists partnering with BOTs on all key appointments in schools?
What about limiting Principal tenures to five year periods and incentivise moving to schools in need?
What about incentivising movement across the board, make it possible for job sharing, job swapping, industry experience etc. Teachers can be a stagnant (safe) bunch.
What about rethinking the notion of times, terms and locations of schools?

Am interested in what you think. Maybe you don't even agree disruption or transformation is necessary or you think glacial change is okay?

*Oops. What was meant to be short turned into a rave...at least it got me going and I sense there is much more to come.

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Why the hell can't we just have more character schools - An open letter to David Seymour

Source: Ministry of Education Website

Dear Mr Seymour,

I am writing to you today because this article makes me really really angry. I am passionate about leading educational change and I would love to see New Zealand education develop in such a way that we may be able to offer New Zealanders a richly diverse range of schooling models. I absolutely love the idea of schools being available to meet the diverse needs, interests and passions of our young New Zealanders. I would love to see STEM (Science, Technology, Education and Maths) and STEAM (Science, Technology, Education, Arts and Maths) schools become  a larger part of the educational landscape and would even love to see how these might be supported, sponsored and invested in by the very innovators who might benefit from the skills of the graduates such schools might produce.

As you may (or may not) know Designated Special Character schools were created under the New Zealand Education Act of 1989 (see section 156). This allowed for character schools to be established such as Kura Kaupapa Māori (Māori-language immersion schools), schools with a distinct values based on a religion and the establishment of other schools that "differs significantly from the education they would get at an ordinary State school" such as Discovery and Unlimited. And here's a novel idea - the children even get to be taught by fully registered teachers! And guess what, it also already allows for a whole range of highly specialised industry experts to teach in that school. I have read that section of the act closely and I reckon they could even partner with school financially (see Unlimited's IT Hothouse for an awesome example).

Here's a novel idea. Why done't we simply pop the 'AC' back into charter and get on and innovate with a whole range of charACter schools. You might even find that the teachers and unions would have a new found respect for you, simply because you show respect for them - the fully registered teachers of New Zealand. Then we could become besties and lead an educational revolution hand in hand that saw the government supporting our existing schools and character schools leading an educational revolution. I would love to be a Principal of a revolutionary character school if it were a STEM school, or a STEAM school or in fact any of our fabulous school schools because I believe they are capable of revolutionary change as well (come visit us at HPSS - we're giving it a bloody good go). I absolutely agree we need change, in fact I think you and I probably want many of the same things, I just wholeheartedly believe charter schools are undermining rather than helping to lead the charge. Let's you and me lead a new revolution where we get the government to recognise the potential in our long-term existing structures. I might even shout you lunch (serious offer even).

Kind regards,

Claire Amos

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