15 May 2020

Post date: Jun 02, 2020 11:0:48 PM

Sir Ken Robinson in his book 'Creative Schools' sets out a new vision for how education must be and can be transformed to enable all young people to flourish. Although his experiences aren't in the NZ education setting, and we have already made good progress in educating for tomorrow rather than 'when I was at school', there is still plenty of work to do.

Like many of you will be experiencing in your own workplaces, we have been given a good reason now to re-look at what we do, why we do it, how we do it and move, move, move. It can take confusion, dissonance and an unsettled experience to make this happen. The phoenix rising.

In speaking with my colleagues, it's not just me thinking this. The catch cry is "We don't want to go back to the way things were!" We have witnessed so much learning, so much growth and sown many 'opportunity seeds' for the better. As I mentioned at the start of the week, we talk about kaizen change..... what does 10% better look like? Changes need to be thoughtful and taking us up and on - not just for the sake of it. Our staff have been capturing the good and the gold that has come out of this period of forced change. We haven't been able to rely on what we usually do, neither have our children or yourselves.

I have had some great messages from you already about what you are learning and noticing about your child/ren and the way they are approaching their learning, the motivation and the self direction. They are all unique and all at different stages, so I know this won't be the same experience for all of you. What's important is to recognise that teaching is a science and, not only does it take 6 years to train for, it involves a whole lot of knowledge in, feedback, modelling, building up (what we call scaffolding) and on we go. In the busyness of home learning, you most likely won't have time for this - you may indeed be over it by 11am, so many corners may have to be cut, and there isn't the chance for repetition, repetition..... some of it may have been just a bit tough, I get that.

So, very soon, we will have a chance to have a fresh start and I hope the home school relationship has been soldered together even stronger than before, with a deeper mutual appreciation!

Please spend a moment before the time passes to capture the good and the gold of what you have experienced, and let your child's Base Group teacher know, as we would love to paint a full picture.

My most commonly used phrase of all times is "What you focus on flourishes", so let's focus on continuing to build the school (figuratively and literally!), so that our children too have the best chance of flourishing as whole little people at school...... and at home.