A few weeks ago, all of the principals, teachers and some Board members of our Mōtu Kairangi Kāhui Ako all got together for what was called a 'super staff meeting'. You may have even seen Suzanne featuring on the front page of the Cook Strait News from Thursday 30 August.

SO:

• Worser Bay School
• Seatoun School
• Miramar Central School
• Miramar Christian School
• Miramar North School
• Kahurangi
• Lyall Bay
• Hataitai
• Roseneath
• Kilbirnie
• EBIS
• Wellington East Girls College and
• Rongotai College

are all formally part of a community of learning, a Kāhui Ako. We are fortunate to have Early Childhood Centres and Kindergartens in the East involved and totally committed to the community. To read more about the whole concept of Kāhui Ako, you can find it here.

The purpose of piling all of the staff into the Rongotai Hall was to hear everyone's voice around successes and also what we see as key priority areas for our work together. The data still needs to be more refined but it's looking very much like wellbeing as the standout number 1, learner/student agency as number 2 and cultural responsiveness as number 3. These areas already feature strongly in our strategic direction and annual goals for 2018/19, so we are right on board with this.

Wellbeing, as you will know, is a priority in this school and we have been building our Positive Education programme for some years. Ximena is our lead on the learner agency work and Suzanne our lead on cultural responsiveness as we pilot 'within school' positions for the remainder of the year. It's likely they will be seeking parent voice, so it would be great to have your brains in this work too!

We throw the word 'collaboration' around often. It's not simple and it's not easy to have authentic collaboration. It will be an interesting time as the schools and ECEs work together to figure all of this 'stuff' out. But, what we do know is, we won't be figuring it out in isolation on the hill, so that's got to be a good thing!