Week 8 - Wins of the Week

 Week 8 - Wins of the Week

I've just finished off my contributions to the Principal's Report in anticipation of our next meeting on Monday 20/9 and upon reflection I am really delighted with how much we have achieved in Lockdown.  We haven't missed a beat!  

I participated in an International Forum last night on Coaching and Wellbeing and one of the topics was what are we grateful for in Lockdown.  I love crossing off outstanding tasks from my 'To Do Lists' and I've been fortunate to be able to attend to a number of tasks - Professional Growth Cycle Review, Induction/Onboarding, Local Curriculum Development (to name just a few).  Super important tasks, that in the business of a normal working week often get pushed aside attending to the here and now!  

On a personal front this family time is amazing and it's a considerably slower pace for my busy household.  We've changed around our routines over the past two weeks and have incorporated a family fitness challenge (squats, press ups, sit ups etc...).  I could barely get off the couch for a week! In addition I am stoked that Sean has taken the time to start guitar lessons for my girls (Jaime and Lily).  Lily initially didn't engage with much enthusiasm but we had a conversation about the process of learning and what it means to be teachable!  As is often the way Lily is coming around to the idea and is enjoying the one on one time with her dad.  

My wins of the week 

1#  The Disconnect-Ed Day we have implemented to support staff and student wellbeing is going down a treat with everyone.  Me included! It gives me an opportunity in the week to slow down the pace of all the Google Meets and to have some catch up time - for things like blog posts :-)

2#  I really enjoyed the Six60 Pepeha Singing we did yesterday with Paulette.  I always love Te Wiki o te Reo Māori week and any opportunity to improve my Reo. I really enjoy that this time of year brings about a whole lot of new video, music, apps and games in te reo. Yesterday Ms Paulette Corbett supported our staff with learning Six60’s newest single, Pepeha, which has taken off this week! It’s attracted major radio play and is now sitting at 17th in the top 40 singles chart. The bi-lingual track is a great way to learn both about pepeha, (the connections Māori use to introduce themselves) and it also repeats the chorus in both English and Māori – so is easy to follow.Check out Jeira, who created and shared this video of her engaged in the whakarongo Wero.

3# Stay Interviews. For the last 6 or 7 years I have engaged annually in Stay Interviews with staff at each of the schools I have been Principal at. These are a fairly time intensive process as I meet with the staff in a one on one situation. I use a really simple framework that I read about in a Harvard article one day. It's called the SKS model - suggestions for things we should STOP (S) at NWS, things we should KEEP (K), and ideas/projects/initiatives we could consider STARTING (S). It's always a super rewarding and fascinating process as you get insights into individual teachers perspectives and the schools next steps.

Roll on Week 9 and hopefully our last week of Lockdown!

Day... whatever of Lockdown - Father's Day/Te Whare Tapa Wha

 Day... whatever of Lockdown

I'm not sure what day of Alert Level 4 that is for Tamaki Makaurau but I'm confident we are well into our second week now.  Yesterday was Father's Day and it was a change of pace and also approach as ordinarily we would have had a big family celebration, some kind of event out and then a lunch or dinner at a restaurant.  With the realisation that this couldn't happen, I committed to cooking a dinner.  Now this doesn't sound like an incredible event (or maybe it shouldn't be), but I am a terrible cook so this declaration of love and commitment to our Dad was going to be quite the extravaganza.  We settled on Lasagna for the main course and some Lemon Friands for the dessert with Haagen Daas Blueberry Ice-cream.  Everyone in the house agreed that this was an acceptable approach given that we also have the world's worst oven (while we wait for the kitchen renovation to happen).  

Now you might be wondering why our Father's Day dinner is appearing on my professional blog.  Here comes the connection... I have been looking at the wellbeing model te whare tapa wha.  I think the dinner with my family was a good example of something I did over the weekend that supported both my own and my whanau's wellbeing.  

Here is the overview below of the model....

The Maori holistic model of health, te whare tapa wha, reminds us all to take care of all of the different aspects of our lives to support our wellbeing. 

What is te whare tapa whā?

Te whare tapa whā is a model of the 4 dimensions of wellbeing developed by Sir Mason Durie in 1984 to provide a Māori perspective on health. The 4 dimensions are:

• taha tinana (physical wellbeing)
• taha hinengaro (mental wellbeing)
• taha wairua (spiritual wellbeing)
• taha whānau (family wellbeing).

With 4 walls, the wharenui (meeting house) is a symbol of these 4 dimensions. The wharenui’s connection with the whenua (land) forms the foundation for the other 4 dimensions.

Image credit: Mental Health Foundation, NZ

By nurturing and strengthening all 5 dimensions, you support your health and wellbeing, as well as the health and wellbeing of your whānau.

How I see the Father's Day dinner...

As I was cooking the dinner, my eldest daughter Jaime joked that she'd never seen me cook a Lasagna before.  Given that she's 14 years old the joke was that I cook as often as we seen Haley's Comet.  So I felt quite proud that I was giving this a go, and also that I was doing this with Jaime.  We joked a lot in the kitchen about the mess (I should really have taken photos), how long it took - over 3 hours, and also the fact it would have been loadsssss easier to buy a lasagna from Countdown.  Oh well... it was the gift of giving and love that's also important in this experience.  

Amazingly, the lasagna was delicious and everyone enjoyed the jokes at my expense.  Maybe... (just maybe) we give something new a go next week on the kitchen front.  

I think my wellbeing focus today needs to be less food.  

I ate through the pain last night.   

Time and Place - Maori Achievement Collaborative

 Time and Place

I love that feeling of finishing up a meeting and walking away thinking... that was such a good use of time!  In a word - buoyant!  

Earlier in the year three of our Board were fortunate enough to attend the New Zealand Schools Trustees Association Conference in Rotorua.  In the last session of the day I meet the Principal from Mangere East and we started chatting about our Bilingual classes and different suggestions for:  professional development, networking,  support agencies.  Stephanie suggested I reach out to "MAC - The Maori Achievement Collaborative.  This is a non-profit organisation, a professional learning and development pathway by principals for principals focussed on changing education outcomes for Maori students.   In all:  "Leaders helping leaders to become better leaders!".  Tini, Maria and I meet with Phil Gordon for our initial 'getting started' meeting and I felt really inspired.  

Phil, Maria, Tini and I shared our hopes and aspirations for Te Whanau Puawaitanga, and Maori (all the students) at NWS.  We had some really positive korero across a range of topics and I reflected on Tini's comment as we finished up the Google Meet:  NWS is in the right space, right time for the next part of the journey. I had a real sense of it all coming together!  

Thank you Maria and Tini for your passion and commitment... the following feels appropriate. 

 Celebrating - Innovation and Learn, Create, Share

Day 6 of Alert Level 4 Lockdown and I'm finding a rhythm in my day.  My little bubble has settled in a routine - exercise, work/learning, lots of eating, and games in the evening.  Tonight my people are playing Connect Sports and I feel a little lack lustre after getting my first vaccination.  I've headed off to my bedroom to scroll through our class sites, blogs, and to check out what everyone has been up to in Distance Learning land.  

I am delighted and incredibly proud of all the amazing - Class Sites,Blogging, Learn/Create/Share, Innovation, and great learning that's been implemented.  

A shout out to:  

• Helen and the Room 7 class site.  The graphics are fabulous and it's really easy to navigate the site.   
• Flo is literally the Google guru, and I've just joked to Maria that it won't be long until Manaiakalani is offering our Flo a job!  Very cool to see what you have done with Padlet and also Google Data Studio Flo.  In fact, I can't wait to see what you come up with tomorrow!  
  
  
  
• Robin so clever to use Fale points to celebrate, reward and create a sense of fun and competition in your programme.  Let's hope Kowhai step up their Blogging game!  
  
  
  
• Our wonderful Learning Assistants are all underway with commenting on the students blogs (Room 11, 12, 13, 21 and 22)  and they are enjoying the opportunity to connect with our students via this platform.  

So much to celebrate today.  Well done to an amazing team.  

 Learn, Create, Share

I missed yesterday's Lockdown post, but in my defence I've been feeling a bit poorly as I've had a head cold.  I spent most of yesterday working my way through a Neon (TV) series I've had my eye on.  But here I am today... back into it!  

I've just been in commenting on our Senior/Matamua class blogs, and I'm super impressed with Room 21's - Learn, Create, Share.  I was also really inspired by Chloe and her bravery to give the Toolkit on Minecraft a go (Learn) and to share it on her blog.  So here I am sharing the story on what, I've been giving a go! 

Second confession.  I'm a terrible cook. I also have a woeful oven (does that sound like an excuse) at the moment while we are waiting to move and renovate our cottage... but that's another story, for another blog post.  I digress...  What I was going to say was that I have been inspired to try and learn a new skill a day over Lockdown.  Now I decided baking isn't my 'thang' and in fact, my family would thank me for not trying out any new recipes (mean aren't they).  I did however decide that I wanted to learn how to 'braid'.  As in hair braiding.  I love watching Youtube videos of amazing hairstyles... and I often think, I'd love to do that on my girls.  

I'm quite late on arriving at hair braiding (and fancy stylz), as my girls are 11 and 14 and I'm not sure the 14 year old will actually agree to me doing it any longer.  But hey, as the saying goes... never too late!  

So for the last two days, I've committed time each day to find some new YouTube clips and to practise new hair braiding techniques.  Rewindable learning is the best.  The ability to stop and watch something over and again is super helpful - I LOVE it.  

So I'm going to be as brave as Chloe is and I've posted a pic of my 'Dutch Braid' - first night attempt, on my model (Lily).  

Thanks Chloe.  Learn, Create, Share!  

Here is a link to Chloe's Minecraft post

Feedback welcome on techniques to make the braid tighter?  Or any Youtubers that you think I have to check out!

* I also think that if I do this everyday for the entire Lockdown that I'm bound to get better :-)

 Lockdown - Alert Level 4.  Here We Go (Again)

So much can change in the blink of an eye!   Today marks the third day of Alert Level 4 Lockdown for Auckland.  

I am going to use this "opportunity" to get up to date with my blogging and to commit to a daily blog.  Let's see how I go with that! 

Reflections... What a week! In the words of Ron Burgundy, "That escalated quickly." But there is a #winoftheweek to be found everywhere.

My wins of the week are:

* Family time - you can't beat it.

* Sunshine (18 month old puppy) is enjoying having us at home, and over the past two days we've been out for 2x, 2 hour walks.   * Photo credit to Lily, who took this picture of Sunshine for one of her Distance Learning tasks.  

* The amazing responsiveness from our school community to adapt to the sudden changes.  

* Our teaching team has have 'pivoted' so quickly to move to online connection and learning.  

* The NWS Senior Leadership Team - who get on and do their thing.  Everyone doing their bit for the collective good

* Catching up on some admin that I've been remiss with over the past few weeks.  

* Sean is back into the swing of yummy lockdown dinners.  Tacos tonight.  

Look after yourselves,  I special thought to our Lynfield College Community at the moment who are right in the middle of the COVID-19 hotspot!

Be kind, be strong, be you.  

Google Accreditation - Week 9 DFI.... survived....

 

Google Accreditation - Week 9 DFI... Survived...

Completely fried! That's how I feel as I sit to complete my final blog post for D.F.I.  Today was 'External Recognition' day and this was an opportunity for the participants of the 9 week Digital Fluency Initiative to complete the Google Level 1 Education Accreditation certificate.   

... I passed!

...Relief

The exam is a mixture of multichoice and scenario (using the Google Suite) based questions. The test was as intense as the course for me (not helped by having a head cold and feeling a bit flat at the end of a long term)!  It starts with the multichoice questions and I had to be careful not to overthink those and to follow good exam technique...

1) Which are the two obvious choices you can rule out

2) Read the question carefully - consider how many choices it is asking you for...

3) Select the 'review question' button and take the opporting to go back and check the answers (if time allows).  

Tip - Ignore the countdown timer for each question.  You have enough time to complete the exam with plenty of time to check and recheck your answers... if you aren't over it by then :-)

Once you are through the multichoice questions you are into the scenario or practical application questions

• Google Docs
• Spreadsheets
• Classroom
• Calendar 
• Sites
• Bookmarks
• Forms 

There were ten scenario questions with a number of requirements to complete in each question.  I felt I made a solid start in the google docs/forms and calendar sections but I did need to take some time in the Bookmark section. I haven't previously set up a bookmark folder and added pages in, so I needed to take my time in this part of the test and step myself through this process logically.  

The trickiest part for me was the spreadsheet and initially I got myself all confused and in a tizzy.  It was the to the point where I had to stop, have a biscuit, a quick break and some very firm self talk that I needed to calm myself down and go slowly.  Once I had my 'head' under control, it was fairly easy to step myself through the requirements. 

I thought there was some interesting 'language' choices in what the questions asked you to do, which I felt could be a bit of a trip up if you weren't reading the questions properly.  Jeremey described the test as a 'logical' exam... and upon reflection I think that's also a good way to describe what it is asking you to demonstrate.

My exam technique clearly is a little rusty and it was good (if painful) to put myself back in a 3 hour test space.  It was a reminder to me about what my own children are going through weekly at College.  I am going to be a lot more supportive and sympathetic when they are complaining about testing week at school!

D.F.I has been an incredible experience for me and I've thoroughly enjoyed the past 9 weeks.  It's certainly taken me outside of my comfort zone as all good PLD does, and I've learnt so much.  A big thank you to Jeremy, Dorothy, Vicki and Jakub for their support along the way.  NWS gave Jeremy/Dorothy a box of chocolates each and explained that each chocolate was for a question asked.  Jeremy cheekily suggested that each chocolate was for one of my tabs that is open!

...maybe when I am feeling brave, I'll give Level 2 Accreditation a whirl :-)  not today though...