Bumble's Big Adventure

Well our bags are packed and we are ready to go........ I think Bumble is a little nervous about the plane flight but I love flying so I will reassure him. I have never travelled with Bumble before and so far Pauline, my travelling companion, may soon be ex-friend, has been rather rude about him coming a long - I think she is jealous. I have the best of intentions to ensure Bumble regularly appears on my blog or through the email to school providing an update of our journey but I guess we will see what the reality is. Past experience tells me that finding access to the Internet when no one else wants to hog it in a hotel or an Internet cafe is easier said than done especially when you have more exciting things to explore.

We leave from the "Garden City" on Monday morning to head to the "City of Sails" where we fly out and have a stop over for a few hours in a very large city called H......g K......g. We then head to our first real destination -in a country shaped like a boot and with a lot of very famous buildings and once was the centre of a famous powerful empire. I hope to see a very well known man, even if from a distance, maybe he will give me a wave. Think that is enough clues for now.....

Term 2 2009

Term 2 2009 will be a different one for me. Not sure how I will cope actually. I guess we will find out. I am off on a sabbatical for a term , this means I am given leave to go and investigate an area of interest and refresh my self professionally and personally. So I get to be away from school for a whole term. I will find this hard as I struggle with being away a couple of days. This is part of me being a control freak I guess. Anyway I will be forced into keeping away as I will be travelling for 7 weeks beginning with a bit of refreshment in Italy and Croatia and then onto the UK where I will be visiting and meeting with people who have Nurture Groups in their schools. I heard about the concept of Nurture groups in 2006 and have continued to try and find out more since, not easy and they are generally an unknown phenomenon in NZ and I suspect because of the resourcing constraints they are not a concept that will be actively promoted. A nurture group is a group set up within the school environment to support children with social, emotional or behavioural difficulties to allow them and others to learn new skills to develop successfully in the school environment and society in general. They have been in place in the UK since the 1960's and have had huge success in supporting children to become actively and positively engaged in school overcoming many disadvantages in doing so. I look forward to seeing whether there is anyway the concept can be extended into our schools in New Zealand. I will return and write up what I have discovered in the last few weeks of the term and hopefully manage to stay away from school and let them get on with things in my absence. That might be the biggest challenge of all.

New Learning

Don't you just love learning new things? I do. I thrive on discovering about new ideas and things and I guess I like change and challenge. Today I sat in a meeting with a project manager, an architect and 3 engineers ( I felt old as 2 of these engineers appeared to be rather young but I guess that is a sign I am getting older!!) I found out about spandrels, daylight harvesting, proximity detection and lux measures. I don't know what BMS's are yet or what TRV means but I guess given time I will figure it out. Of course this is all to do with our remodel of the main block and it is incredibly exciting and somewhat worrying at the same time. I think what becomes obvious is the need to be clear about what you want as an outcome and for me we want the very best learning environment we can achieve within the constraints we have to operate within. It highlights for me just how important it is to be able to find out information that is relevant to what you need to know and how we can never ever possibly expect anyone to know everything about their field of interest because new knowledge is being created all the time. They just need to know where to find out more. It reinforces how important it is that we are developing in kids the skills, attitudes and values that will allow them to continue learning, seeking information and creating information as they head to an amazingly complex world. Knowing which questions to ask is incredibly important for all learners. I find myself writing a list of all types of questions before these meetings and asking rather a lot during them and the thing is even with this room full of specialist you can guarantee they all have questions to ask of each other to inform their learning as well. It shows how important all our key competencies are especially those relating to collaborating with others.

Community Whanau Time

On Friday afternoon we held our first real Community Whanau time session. I spent time with a couple of groups and then was able to wander around and see how things we going looking to see what might need some attention. I left school on Friday on a real high because of what I saw. I saw kids, teachers and parents actively engaged in meaningful work. I have been interested in "student voice" for a long time, that is letting students have input and make decision about what happens at their school but also in what they learn. Initially in developing community whanau time we were hoping to ensure that kids were getting an opportunity to commit and follow through on something they wanted be involved in. we have found it is harder and harder for kids to develop these interests due to all the time constraints in their school and personal lives. We also saw this as a really authentic way for students to develop the key competencies of ;

• managing self
• participating and contributing
• relating to others
• thinking
• using language symbols and texts

Students have chosen their areas of interest and being supported by teachers they are deciding what is they wish to develop that will contribute to their community whether it be our school or the wider community. some of these areas are;

• developing the Washdyke Lagoon
• community art - art to improve our environment or that of others - hospitals rest homes etc...
• community service - building relationships with others in our community by visiting and supporting them in some way
• student council
• kaitiaki - looking after and caring for our school environment
• Bay guardians - establishing ways we can ensure Caroline Bay is well looked after
• PALs - physical Activity leaders - supporting younger students with games and activities at break time
• CHAT - Children's Healthy Action Team
• Jump Jam leaders - teaching and leading others in jump jam for learning teams and at break time
• and many others - there are 21 groups in total.

During this time the year 1 students are all taking part in a developmental discovery programme where they are able to spend time exploring a variety of them based activities whilst developing key competencies and in particular their range of experiences that they can share with others.

What has struck me is the depth of thought the students have displayed, they are very aware of what it would be good to do for others and now they are actually being supported to do this in a problem solving way. This all contributes to our vision of Wai learners - motivated, happy, reflective, curious, respectful team players.

Watch this space.............

Wai Learners

Wai learner Awards
This year we are introducing a Wai Learner award for each learning team. At the end of each term one child per learning team will receive the Wai learner award for the term. This award will be presented at the last assembly for the term. The recipient of the award will keep this award for the following term until the new next recipient is announced.

Students who display outstanding Wai Learner attributes will nominated by each class teacher and these will be considered by the leadership team. Students in Learning Team 2, 3 and 4 will also be able to nominate their peers or class mates also providing an explanation for their nomination.
We will present these awards will be on Friday 3 April at 12.40pm. This assembly will be the inaugural presentation of these awards and therefore we have invited the people who have donated these awards along to present them for the first time.

to find out more about Wai learners at Waimataitai visit http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/digital_stories/school_snapshots/waimataitai_school

2009 What will it bring?

This is the time in holidays when I get excited with the anticipation of a new school year and what it will bring. Everyone by now should have had a reasonably good break and be thinking ahead to school and who will be their teacher and in their class for the year. Will there be any new students, any new teachers and how hard will the work be?

Last year I learned about blogging and found out two essential things to maintain a successful blog;
1. feedback and encouragement from others with their comments
2. a regular time set aside to blog so people will actually keep checking
SO I have set a personal goal to try harder with my blogging but I need your help!! I need feedback and possible questions - to allow me to respond otherwise you , may simply get to hear about my latest issue or bugbear.

I am hopeful that 2009 will bring us all lots of wonderful learning experiences, memories and moments that will contribute to an even better year than 2008, and it was pretty spectacular.
I look forward to learning alongside staff, students, parents and whanau of Waimataitai.

Safety and Supervision

I had wonderful pleasure of having my just 5 year old nephew Benji come and stay over the holidays. He is a very active boy and extremely well co-ordinated, totally immersed in any sport and unfortunately the rougher the better. He seems to think I am a really good challenge, likes to wrestle me and tackle me and of course I indulge this, to a point!! We also indulged his insistence to go the the skate park as he had been at Christmas time with my other nephew Daniel whom he worships. I think the skate park is a fabulous resource for Timaru youth and young people although I am cautious about when I take kids to visit. Leaving early in the morning knowing that some of the less desirable role models wouldn't be out of bed yet we turned up to find two other boys there. I was pleased as I knew these two boys and knew them to be sensible kids. After having a discussion and almost altercation over Benji wearing the the knees pads, elbow pads, wrist guards and helmet he ventured out. I do need to make it clear that he is a tough little critter, and has grown up in a very physical and challenging environment - where he has been encouraged to take risks more so than permitted in our very compliant risk conscious environment of schools and playgrounds. We did think the risk of him injuring himself at the skate park was high given his combined enthusiastic attitude, confidence and actual experience in this type of environment on his scooter and skateboard. He was reminded how even adults fall over and break bones. Whilst I was most concerned when one of the other boys came off his scooter with a tremendously hard fall which left him rather shaken and quiet for some time, I think Benji realised that maybe the pads were a good idea at this stage. m Given the number of scraps and scratches on them later I suspect it saved quite a few sticking plasters also. So what is my point in writing about this? Whilst sitting watching, encouraging and boosting him along I had time to think and observe all the others who gradually arrived to do the same, have fun, take risks, try new thing s out and watch how the r"really cool" kids did it. I was pleased when I said to one of the older boys who swore, "hey there is no need for that here," that he did not back chat me but simply stopped swearing. What I noticed also was also the number of adults who also came and sat and just watched from a distance. Some adults who dropped their child off with a snack and obviously a clear time frame around pick up. all of this made me feel more hopeful. Because just as we had provided Benji with his pads and guards until he is more confident and more safe to go with out them these parents and adults were also scaffolding and supporting their child at their stage of development too. I also think that those boys that were down there that I knew thought it was quite cool to see someone supporting this little guy and I suspect felt even more comfortable simply because there were adults around even if they were very unobtrusive. Of course these boys have heard me again and again about the importance of role models but here they were being great role models to my wee nephew and it made me proud. It gave me hope because the day before I had observed a group of boys 6 of them, approximately year 8 "hanging around on their skateboards " with no obvious adult attention , buying fish and chips and moving on in group almost "pack like" I felt concerned. To me these boys looked like they would be intimidating as a group ( without even intending to be) and I wondered what their parents thought they were doing, who they were with and where they were? These kids are legally not able to be left unsupervised if they were at home, yet they are out and about with whom and where? And of course we hear it again and again , the term peer pressure. Peer pressure and group mentality when harnessed in the right direction is awesomely powerful however it can cause many very sensible individuals to do some silly things, not to mention unsupervised at risk young people. The best scaffold a parent can give their child is the knowledge that they know where they are and who they are with and what they are doing and that they will check up!!