Prime Minister Visit

John Key Comes to Waihi College

Today we had the surprise of hosting the Right Honorable John Key to Waihi College.  It is not often that a school gets to play host to the sitting Prime Minister.  After the recent weather the region turned on an excellent sunny day.

Mr Key was welcomed officially in a Year 7 - 10 assembly (and unofficially by anti-TPPA protesters) with a strong rendition of the national anthem.  Mr Cochrane introduced the Prime Minister to the junior school.  Mr Key presented information about life in political office, challenges of running a country and finished with engaging around the flag referendum.  He demonstrated his skills of persuasion by getting a significant number of students to change their minds about not changing the flag.  The Prime Minister was accompanied by local Member of Parliament for Coromandel Scott Simpson.

There were four students selected to ask Mr Key questions.  They were Khan Stevenson (Yr 10), Luke Barakat (Yr 9), Penny Croker (Yr 8) and Bess Humphreys (Yr 7).  The students displaying credible political nous for young students.

Mr Key with the student leaders.  

The official party moved through to the staffroom where Mr Key spent time with some student leaders, offering advice, answering questions, taking 'selfies' and even taking up the challenge of an arm wrestle from the head girl Kate Dunstall.

Mr Key, Mr Simpson and Mr Cochrane
presented the school calves unit by Mr Redwood.  

From there the final part of the visit was twenty minutes up at the College farm unit.  Mr Key spent time with seniors from the Urban Farming unit and juniors from the school calf club.  Needless to say that all of the delegation were suitably impressed with the quality of the education and what we get from our facilities here in Waihi.


This post relates to ERO's School Evaluation Indicators Domain 2 Leadership Condition for Equity and Excellence : "Leadership communicates and models clear and consistent social expectations to support teaching and learning."

NASDAP Conference 2015

Thoughts from Conference

I had been looking forward to this year's Deputy Principal's annual conference.  The theme for this year was 'Disobedience - Jump out of the safe zone'.  The idea being that we should be avoiding getting comfortable in our roles and how our schools sit in education.

The conference was extremely well attended with approximately 350 senior managers from around the country.  The bi-annual conference is a nationwide event covering all the regional areas.  This year was held at Skycity.  

During this conference there was a consistent theme about questioning the perceived limitations of schooling, curriculum and traditional assumptions around education.  This was, naturally, a theme eagerly grabbed by our key note speakers.

I very much enjoyed the speech by Mai Chen who presented an excellent summary of education from the perspective of a parent.  Her story of immigration to New Zealand as a six year old and inevitable rise in Law whilst inspirational was grounded in the nitty gritty of life. 

Mai presented her notion of 'disobedience' as deliberately avoiding getting too comfortable with life.  That when we're overtly familiar with our surroundings and systems that we should "choose which tiger to throw a stone at".  

Nathan Makaere Wallis was another keynote speaker who I found to be excellent.  I have already posted a entry on his ideas (click here).  For me Nathan's core message was about getting young people to cognitively process their ideas/actions/words prior to decisions.  He illustrated this well by describing sitting with a young person and going through the 'game' of "what would you do if insert idea happened?"  The notion being that rehearsal.  [Nathan is coming to speak at the college on the 22nd of next month].  
  
The third keynote address I enjoyed greatly was by Steve Maharey (former Education Minister and current Vice-Chancellor of Massey University).  He presented a very good synopsis of what are the key characteristics of those students who will thrive in the future (critical thinking, self management, collaboration, innovation etc).  

This post relates to RTC #4. "Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice - ii. participate responsively in professional learning opportunities within the learning community." And ERO's School Evaluation Indicators Domain 2. "Leadership promotes and participates in a coherent approach to professional learning and practice."

ERO School Evaluation Indicators (Part I)

Effective Practice At Waihi College

The Education Review Office have recently published a trial document called "School Evaluation Indicators: Effective Practice for Improvement and Learner Success".  As the name suggests this is the office's concise guide to what things they want to see happening in our school to produce effective results.  

The guide has an express purpose of providing a "common language for the interaction and dialogue between a school and ERO about development since the last review."  These are effectively the a-b-c's of effective management and running of a NZ school.  This is the first of two publications (the second companion resource is due out in September this year) that schools can use to confirm their progression and development.  

A common observation I've been able to make in my time in teaching is that when ERO announce their dates for review schools are ready (they had in their last review an indication of how many years until the next review).  At Waihi College our 2014 report indicated that three years would be the time for the next review.  In my experience teachers sharpen up their paperwork and a generally geared up for a review, but there is always an unknown element.  Teachers would say "what wheelbarrow will ERO come pushing this time around?" - that there are things that the review team would 'spring' on schools.  The School Evaluation Indicators  is a document which will take away any surprise element for an ERO visit - it effectively spells out, in great detail, what things they'll be be asking.  

This document is an easily digestible 42 pages which begins in theory.  They base their indicators on several things;  25 years of reviews, modern education research, the NZ Curriculum document, legislation, National Administration Guidelines (NAG's), best evidence synthesis, OECD reports and input from Helen Timperley and Viviane Robinson.  Personally I feel comfortable with the indicators themselves, and feel that they're grounded in sound educational theory.  

I've ordered several extra copies for staff (three for the Learning Leaders), there is one available in Alistair's office and one from mine.  

I've been able to link blog posts to the Registered Teacher Criteria, I will from here on attempt to link (where appropriate) future posts to the appropriate School Evaluation Indicators.  

This post relates to RTC #5. show leadership that contributes to effective teaching and learning

and School Evaluation Indicator - Domain Two : Leadership conditions for equity and excellence and Domain Five : Professional Capability & Collective Capacity.