The Principal Diaries - Getting ConnectED with our community!

When I applied for the role of Principal of Albany Senior High School, one of the points I covered in my pitch at the interview was my ability and desire to build powerful partnerships and networks for ASHS students:

And finally, I am leader who can build powerful partnerships and networks. 

I have experience in developing productive and warm relationships with local schools to establish a highly effective Kāhui Ako. I bring in depth experience gained as a Projects Pathways and Partnerships Leader and as an Impact Project Guide, having worked with the community and business sector to create rich and authentic learning partnerships for our students. As Education Advisor for the 21st Century Skills Lab and as a board member of NetSafeNZ I have experience that spans across the education and business landscape. I have fostered a vast education, community, innovation and business network that will support the growth and expansion of powerful partnerships for this school and it’s learners. 

As a passionate and confident communicator I can continue to grow the reputation of this fabulous school. 

I have long believed that we have need to blur the line between school and work and have learned, through my own work experience (particularly beyond school), that opportunities are as likely to be the result of who you know, as much as what you know! 

On sharing the idea with my Senior Leadership Team it was great to discover that my DP, Ross Martin and Business Specialist Leader, Lloyd Gutteridge, had also wanted to create a stakeholder network but had shelved the idea some time back, so it was particularly awesome to reignite that passion as well, using my network and energy to stoke the flames!

With a kernel of an idea I placed a cheeky plea for help on LinkedIN. Within hours it was clear we were on to something, with friends and connections across Auckland showing a genuine eagerness to get involved. 

On Wednesday 17th November I hosted a Meet the Principal event and we launched the ConnectED network. The event was an opportunity to introduce the concept and to run a session where our students from the ConnectED Committee led a world cafe as a means of co-designing with our community what ConnectED might be. 

ConnectED aims to be a first of its kind, school / business / community / innovation hub and network which will be based at Albany Senior High School.

The aim of the network is to: 

• establish a network and talent register that might mentor and support student Impact Projects
• connect learning across the school with the community and wider world of business
• host whanau community facing educational events about futures thinking and social business networking
• so as to establish ASHS as THE ed-innovation hub on the shore! 

ConnectED is already working with The Mind Lab, 21C Skills Lab, Grow North and Shore Junction. We also have a wide range of community members signed up. 

If you are keen to get involved as an individual, community, business or innovation partner please contact me, Claire Amos at camos@ashs.school.nz We are super keen to hear from anyone keen to co-host events, mentor our students or just basically get involved. 

In the spirit of much of the innovation I have been involved in, it is very much a case of building the plane whilst flying it. Thankfully I have a trusty co-pilot in my Deputy Principal, Ross!

Our next ConnectED gathering is The Mind Lab event - The Future of Education with Frances Valintine on Wednesday 17th October. Go to http://tiny.cc/futureofed to register. We are also super excited to be a location for The Mind Lab's Postgraduate Certificate in Digital & Collaborative Learning. The course kicks at ASHS in November.

Stand by for ConnectED updates in Term Four!

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Leadership and Legacy

It's continuing to be an exciting time at HPSS on our establishment journey. This is the beginning of our 5th year with students, so not only will it be the first year with all 5 Year Levels, it will also be the final year for those students who began as our true foundation students in Year 9 in 2014. 

  

The above visual shows our original thinking about our cohorts once we were complete. While some of the terminology has changed through that journey it still largely reflects our situation. As we develop personalisation and increase specialisation our students move through the Foundation Years, into the Qualification Years and then their Launchpad or Pathways Year. That first group has reached that final stage.

It takes many years to build a sustainable culture, certainly no less than 5, and we are now at year 5. Those initial foundation year students have 1 year left to leave their legacy. My message to them over the years has always been that I know what sort of school I want, but the school we’ll get is the school they create!

I’ve asked them to think about their legacy. Is it to be some sort of foundation art work or trophy or similar taonga to stand in our school or is it the taonga of a sustainable respectful culture.

So many of our Q3 (Year 13) students have taken up this challenge. Last week one of our students organised senior buddies for the Year 9 students in her Learning Community and got the Year 9 students to complete a 'Rose, Bud, Thorn' exercise about their initial experiences of our school. They did this with the support of their buddies. Out of this exercise she was able to identify students who were feeling a bit alone and connect them with others. She was also able to help some sort through some personal relationship issues that had emerged. Following on she has collated all of their responses ready for feedback.

This is an example of her Leadership.

The Legacy component has emerged from her Learning Community Leader working with her to have a Buddy/Year 9 session included in the weekly Learning Community programme. I expect this model to endure in this Learning Community and may well spread to the other Communities.

Our focus, as a school, for the year is on developing a sustainable respectful culture and our focus for the term is developing whanaungatanga. This student has embraced these areas of focus while displaying leadership and beginning to create her legacy.

I really want our Q3 students to be practised and ready for their lives in a very short 12 months when they’re out there! Í’d love to have then coming and going as they please determined by their learning needs! I know that would work for some of our learners but also not for all. This creates a tension. I’ve talked with them about starting the year with a tight hand on the rudder and my desire to have conversations with them as the term and year unfolds re loosening the hand on the rudder for individuals, groups, or the whole cohort.

If the majority of our Q3 students embrace the challenge of Leadership and Legacy in similar ways to that described above, the hand will become lighter on the rudder quite quickly, which, in turn, will be a great legacy that they leave for future Q3 cohorts.

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Whanaungatanga: 3 cool things that happened at school today

Our first 2 weeks at school concentrate on forming and (re)building relationships. We all know teaching and learning is a relationship-based activity so it is important that each new year allows the time and space to do this meaningfully. In fact, our theme at Hobsonville Point Secondary School for our Learning Hub and Learning Community focus for the whole of Term One is Whanaungatanga.

Today 3 cool things were happening to bring this focus to life.

1. Staff koha to new staff.
At this morning's Tuesdays With Maurie (yay at last I got a Tuesday!) our 7 new staff had groups of existing staff randomly allocated to them. After being reminded of our strong and visible principles of personalising learning, powerful partnerships and deep challenge and inquiry group members were invited to share as their koha their strongest or most memorable example of when they had supported the personalising of learning, facilitated learning partnerships for their students from outside our school and witnessed students involved in deep challenge and inquiry.

HPSS Staff Offering Koha to New Staff

It was very cool to see and hear such great sharing. Just quietly, I  was pretty pleased to come up with this contingency plan when I walked in in the morning to find our servers etc were down and I couldn't go ahead with my carefully prepared presentation and had to quickly come up with this (and it was much better than I had planned anyway!)

2. Senior student koha to new students
Throughout the day senior students who had volunteered attended a workshop so that they could prepare to welcome and support our new students. They explored the notion of student leadership and planned in their Learning Communities so that they could run a relationship-building and getting-to-know-our-school programme for the rest of our students- especially those new to our school. They also focused on how they would take the lead at our Learning Community overnight camps which will be taking place next week.

Senior HPSS Students Preparing Their Koha for New Students

Our vision talks  about empowering young people to contribute confidently and responsibly. This group of  Q2 and Q3 (Years 12 and 13) students were bringing that to life in spades and creating a strong legacy for the school they have helped create.

3. Student/Parent/Coach Individual Education Meetings (IEMs)
As has  become traditional at our school, teaching and learning doesn't start until the important players in a young person's education (themselves, their whanau and their Learning Coach) (re)connect and start getting to know each other. This is  the most powerful of the powerful partnerships we espouse at our school and I'm very proud of the time and space we give to this.

Our Year 9 students have had us  visit them in their contributing school, have visited us with their school, enrolled with their parents at a meeting with myself or a member of the SLT, and attended a full day Orientation Day. The IEM  is the next step in that important transition to secondary school. By concentrating on the relationships and taking our time the transition is much more doable.


It was a very cool day! Whanaungatanga everywhere!

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Urgency. Transformation. Optimism. The way for schools.

During my sabbatical visits all school leaders spoke of the 'parent push-back' they encountered. While many spoke of having the confidence of the large percentage of their parent community they had to spend a lot of time dealing with small groups who wished to move their schools back to more traditional models. This is despite all parents knowing what the schools were like before they applied for their child to attend.

I am of the view that expecting and dealing with this type of push-back is an essential part of the leadership of a school contributing to the transformation of education. I also believe that we at HPSS have the confidence of the majority of our parents. Most of them see their kids wanting to be at school, being engaged in their learning, and developing excellent dispositions to prepare them for their present and future.

The frustrations I experience are with groups who do not have a connection with the school forming a view of our model without investigating it. Some of our parents tell me that some of their friends tell them we are a school where kids can do what they like, where there is no testing etc. While we are doing things differently, both of these are far from the truth.

Over the last few days I attended a Minister of Education Cross Sector Forum at which the new Digital Technologies Curriculum was introduced and have read some articles on future schooling etc. All of this has strengthened my resolve for how we are approaching education at our school. But, more importantly, I am feeling for the first time a groundswell gaining momentum and a shared sense of urgency.

It started at the Cross Sector Forum where a group of Lynfield College students from their Robotics Club spoke of their experiences. Even though they ae national and world champions they spoke only a little about their robotics. They talked about how the type of learning they experienced through their interest in robotics "taught them how to lead and taught them how to teach"! They talked about how they were knees deep in breaking down gender stereotypes. They also noted that the fun and passion they experienced in their robotics learning was not replicated across the rest of their learning. That's the challenge for us. If students are motivated enough to spend hours of their spare time having fun, exploring their passion and learning deeply about not only technical skills but inter-personal and self-regulation skills as well, surely we as teachers and schools can be motivated to make this possible for all learning.

This was followed up by Education Minister Nikki Kay who spoke of digital fluency as an essential life skill and that we were now moving past the structure provision phase to the people moving phase. She acknowledged issues of teacher workload and stated that if assessment is a major cause of workload then that was "an easy fix". I love the sound of that. You can read a recent blog post from Claire Amos on an innovative approach which removes high stakes assessment from schools and teachers so we can concentrate on deep learning and supporting students to collate evidence of learning.

Frances Valintine, an Education Futurist (think MindLab), then painted a clear picture of the world not too far in the future that we need to be preparing students for (something which I firmly believe conventional schooling is not doing). She spoke about:

• moving from 'using digital' to 'being digital'
• now time to hack education
• the largest group in the world are Generation Z (currently in schools) and largely being taught by Baby Boomers and Generation X - are we holding them back?
• entrepreneurship is in the DNA of Gen Z
• they see the digital revolution as creating jobs (Baby boomers talk of it destroying jobs!)

While the Digital Technology curriculum is only a part of what a school delivers (though gaining increasing prominence) the messages from the Minister and Frances have filled me with hope. Have a listen to Claire's interview on Radio NZ which captures the excitement and optimism many of us feel.

I really enjoyed seeing one of Frances' slides which captured how schools could lead in this new environment.

 The last 2 points resonate as they ae central to the vision at our school:

1. Create a delightful education experience. Contextualise all learning in real-world scenarios.
2. Develop a student-led environment

This morning I came across this article in the Sydney Herald. It identifies the importance of literacy and numeracy as key skills, but it also identifies the need for the development of another range of skills conventional schools are not necessarily bringing to the fore:

• resilience
• growth mindset
• capacity to fail and try again
• empathy
• collaboration
• creativity

It also, quite correctly, acknowledges great teaching will never be obsolete and that "the relationships teachers form with students, to inspire them and lead them to greater things, will be more important than ever." It doesn't, however, hide the fact that teaching has to be different to be great in this new environment.

And picking up on the workload issue of assessment, we often frame this as a negative impact on teachers (which it is) but this morning I also read this article which describes the impact on a particular student.

So there are plenty of reasons to support the transformation of secondary schools. I am not comfortable with a model of learning and assessing having such a impact on the well-being of the young people we are supposed to be serving. Solutions to this issue will also have positive impacts on teachers. And we can't escape the digital revolution which is occurring right now.

There are certainly pitfalls ahead of us but if we invest in our young people, get out of their way a bit and concentrate on the development of dispositions and ethical behaviour I'm more optimistic than pessimistic.

We also need strong national leadership which partners with us to bring our communities with us. Right now I have confidence in our Minister to play her part and hope she maintains a strong partnership with thinkers like Frances Valintine and listens to the voice and questions from leaders such as Claire Amos (and the many others doing great stuff in our schools).

The future is in the hands of these Gen Z in our schools. I know none of the ones I work with would sell citizenship to the highest bidder or accept that it is OK for people to live on the street or factor in poverty as an inevitable outcome of how we do things in our country.

More optimistic than pessimistic!

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Implications for HPSS - Part 2 - Challenges

My previous post concentrated on the aspects of my sabbatical which provided affirmations for what we are already doing at HPSS. This post attempts to capture what I see as the areas of challenge or further development.

Student Self-Regulation

I have been critical of conventional secondary schools which complain that their students are not independent, self-regulated learners but give them no opportunity to be so. In most schools, up until the age of 18 students are closely regulated by external factors: timetable, bells, rules, teachers. While such factors can make schools more ‘manageable’ and lead to great academic results, they do not promote self-regulation and, quite possibly, contribute to our high university drop-out rate.

I have always wanted our school to be one in which students were given daily opportunities to self-regulate. A simple representation of this is by having no bells. Another layer has been our Floor Time (originally MyTime) programme. It originally allowed students to opt into up to 3 workshops a week to “do whatever I need to do know, where I need  to do it and with whom I need to do it.” It has now become a more regulated time on our timetable with less self-regulation.

My visits have reinforced my view that we need to look for more ways for students to self regulate. I have reflected that too often we may not ‘loosen the leash’ and provide opportunities for self-regulation because not all students will cope so we end up tightening things to accommodate those students. I’d like to flip that and provide more self-regulation opportunities but have arrangements to accommodate those who are unable to manage.

Following are two examples I have been thinking about and want to explore with my staff:

• Learning Hub time be voluntary for Year 13s (and possibly Year 12s.)
• I think a large group would still attend and another large group would make excellent use of their time to continue their learning. A small group would waste the opportunity.
• With the Year 13s (and possibly Year 12s) this would give an opportunity for the senior Hub students (Year 11 or 12) to have a formalised leadership role in the Hub.
• This has the advantage of providing more time in a senior student’s timetable to determine how to use their time best to progress their learning.
• It would also give more opportunity for Learning Coaches to concentrate on developing our Foundation students and preparing them for self-regulation.
• I can’t think of a worst case scenario if this was implemented that would keep me awake at night.
• Non-staffed class time for Year 13 students.
• If a student had 3 blocks of time allocated in a week to a subject/module only 2 of these would be staffed. Direct teaching and support would occur in the staffed blocks and students would continue through the programme, independently, in the non-staffed block. Many programmes delivered at NYC iSchool were delivered in this ‘blended’ approach with access to resources and support made available on-line (as we do now).
• The added advantage would be that students could determine how they would use their 5 non-staffed blocks (assuming they were doing 5 subjects/modules) at any given time. Because of workload demands they might use 2 (or more) unstaffed blocks to work on one subject in one week.
• This provides further opportunity for self-regulation and moves closer to how they have to manage their time at university.

Students as Partners in Learning Design

There is no doubt that when I saw students engaged as true partners in the design of their learning, engagement levels were at their highest. This was sometimes at the level of choosing project topics but moved through the continuum to include planning a full project inquiry, with teacher support, determining the learning context and the product of or evidence of learning. I saw many examples of deeper than expected learning and all schools had excellent attainment levels in statewide assessment/testing.

At Hobsonville Point Secondary School we attempt to involve students in co-designing their learning. Before each semester’s module planning we get students to explore their understanding of the overarching concepts (Identity, Space and Place, Citizenship, Systems and How Things Work, Relationships, Cultural Diversity, Innovations and Transformations) and then to suggest contexts for learning (eg How Did The Universe Begin? How Serious is Climate Exchange? Why Are There Refugees?). Teachers then collaborate to plan modules to offer students. As well, within each module students have a part to play in designing their learning (see blog post comments included in previous post.)

I am finding myself asking how we could both embed and extend this concept further. What does a school look like when students are authentic partners in learning and schooling in general?

At this stage my plans are to:

• Carry out a stocktake of the current situation of “Students as Partners in Learning Design”.
• Explore the concept with the Learning Habitat and gather their views of the current situation
• Gather some staff voice via ‘Kitchen Table With Maurie’
• Explore further areas of opportunity to have students as authentic partners.
• Begin with Learning Habitat and then cast to wider student group.

Some opportunities I have been thinking about include:

• Ambassadors to host touring groups
• Involvement in staff appointments
• Formalise student involvement in feedback to staff re their teaching
• Involvement in restorative practice processes so that impact of behaviours and outcomes on wider student body is taken into account

Parents as Partners

A neat outcome of increasing the strength of partnership with students will be in supporting us to bring parents and the wider community on board. All schools I visited spoke of the challenge of ‘parental push-back’ in relation to their attempts to transform secondary education. This occurred in all schools, despite their vision and models of learning being well-known before families enrolled their children (in fact, most, if not all, of these schools were over-subscribed and had waiting lists).

In discussing this issue at each school the responses were similar. Julie Abraham, at Design Tech, captured the common message with “being unalterably clear on what we are about” and having the courage to stay true to the vision. I have often spoken of the need for a school leader to have a clear moral purpose and the courage to see that carried out. This was a common message from the schools I visited.

I am of the view that the most powerful and effective ambassadors of any school are its students. Because they are immersed in the daily life of a school and continually breathe the air of the culture of the place they know what a school is about and if it is the right place for them. Because I see our students interacting with our many visitors and I hear them talking about the school and their learning I know most of them are fully on board. More than one student has told me that their parents “now understand” and that while earlier on there was a risk that they would be removed by their parents they feel the relief of that increased understanding.

By increasing the opportunities for authentic partnership with our students, I believe they will be even more powerful and effective ambassadors for our school in their own families and the wider community.

Currently we have many practices in place to partner with parents. They include:

• Start the year with Individual Education Meetings (IEMs) and repeat throughout the year
• Waitangi Whanau Celebration in collaboration with Hobsonville Point Primary School
• Fortnightly Newsletter, Facebook updates and School App communications
• Hub Coach communication home
• Parent workshops/conference
• Morning Tea With Maurie

Later this year I plan to focus my collection of parent voice on the effectiveness of the current parent partnership opportunities and ask what else we could do to make it more effective.

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Principles in Practice - Observations from Sabbatical

In this post I try to capture how each school brought to life the principles of personalisation, authenticity and connectedness. I conclude with an elevator statement that captures what is common across the schools.

How Do These Principles Play Out In Practice?

All schools saw a type of project-based learning, with learning connected across a high interest project, as the best vehicle to bring all of their learning design principles to fruition. All believed this led to more engagement and deeper learning.

A range of practices that were driven by personalisation was evident across all schools. The most common approach was to give students choice. At DesignTech High School 2 full days were dedicated to students selecting appropriate Labs. Teachers could use the LMS to direct students to compulsory Labs or students could select the Design Garage (Maker Space), Office Hours (individual or small group access to a teacher, independent work or Fitness.

At NYC iSchool students from all grade levels can take whatever ‘Elective’ which was appropriate to their interest, resulting in Grade 9 - 12 students in the same class.

All schools gave opportunities for students to use multiple ways to evidence learning. There were very few times when all students in a programme had to produce the exact same assessment.

Authenticity was achieved in each school in similar ways. They all ran programmes that were centred around high-interest projects and involved learning by doing. Students work on real-world problems and pose and/or tackle big questions. All schools required students to have some form of public presentation of much of their work and most schools ran an internship programme with whole school or certain year levels out of school.

The connectedness nature of learning was apparent in a number of ways. At High Tech High because the same group of students had the same teachers for all of their subjects the teachers would collaborate and support students to complete their projects across two subjects. Examples are described in this blog post.

At DesignTech they suspend their timetable for two weeks 4 times per year. During this time, known as d.lab, students opt to work on a solution to a real world problem, drawing on a range of subject disciplines.

During 2 days a week at Nueva High School students opt into a range of labs where they have opportunities to pursue their passions in a multi-disciplinary project.

The common feature across all schools was that student inquiry and a rigorous process of project-based learning underpinned the learning model.

• At NYC iSchool their Challenge-based Modules (1 per term) had students focusing on real world challenges so they could build their understanding of big ideas and broad global concepts. It was their view that this allowed for the development and application of 21st century skills.
• At the Science Leadership Academy all courses had students involved in inquiry learning and completing projects that they co-construct with each other and their teachers. This school followed Wiggins Model of Understanding by Design.
• At High Tech High project-based learning was at the core of all learning programmes. Here they followed the Stanford model (Empathise, Define, Ideate, Test).
• Inquiry-based and project-based learning was also at the centre at Nueva High School. Following rigorous design thinking processes students become active participants in learning, identifying solutions where they can make changes for the better while developing the personal and collaborative tools to take action.
• At DesignTech students used a project-based  learning approach, supported by design thinking, to work on local and global challenges, research real problems and develop authentic solutions.

My Elevator Statement

If we want learning to be personalised, authentic, and connected and to be preparing students for their lives in the 21st century, learning must be centred on high-interest projects, drawing on a range of specialist subjects, with opportunities for hands-on application and partnering with the community. There should be a genuine outcome from the learning and students must be partners in designing the learning.

Other Observations (some still to be explored)

• A clear set of principles needs to drive learning design and learning decisions.
• Maker Spaces are key spaces in schools
• Build in time in weekly schedule where students have responsibility to make good decisions and self-regulate. Do not water this down to the lowest common denominator as the majority of students will miss out because of the few who cannot self-regulate.
• A learning design model is vital in providing frameworks and rigour, but students (and staff) must be scaffolded through to be comfortable within that framework.
• Students don’t need an adult in front of them supervising their learning at all times. Some learning can be a blend of teacher and on-line learning (Language learning at NYC iSchool) or of teacher and un-supervised sessions.
• Restorative practices that develop trust and responsibility and require empathy and self-regulation support the development of vital 21st century dispositions.
• Internships and externships provide wonderful opportunities for authenticity in student learning.

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