Why so busy?

What is the one thing teachers (and many other professions) want more of? If you ask this question at any education conference, any gathering of teachers, they will always say the same thing; time. If you ask a teacher how they are, they will likely say "busy". Lately however, I have been wondering if there is a little bit more to our not-enough-time-syndrome.

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I am a busy woman. At any one time, my life is a balance of my Learning Community Leader role (dispositional curriculum and pastoral leader), my role as a science and maths teacher, my role with Edge Work at AUT, my thesis, #edchatNZ, family, friends and chores. I hear colleagues, friends and family rattle off their list of responsibilities too. All those things that keep them so busy! I see them looking tired and stressed, not getting enough sleep, and rarely getting enough exercise or feeding themselves well. What is most striking about this however, is that this business is frequently not seen as a problem, instead, I have noticed that we seem to wear busy as a badge. As if how busy we are is some sort of indication that we are committed to our job, or doing a good job. Sometimes it seems, we us this badge to illicit sympathy, and other times, it appears as a means to validate or qualify ourselves. Sometimes, it's an excuse. Either way, "busy, and you?" seems to have replaced "fine, and how are you?" as an acceptable response in our daily lives.

Why exactly are we so busy? I've been thinking about this a lot lately. We all know about people who have burnt out, who stop teaching, or even who leave education altogether. I have a hunch... (A hunch in this case, being a theory that has not been tested). Are we suffering cognitive overload? Are we so busy ducking and weaving through all the things being thrown at us all the time, that we are too busy to take stock of which things we should actually be doing, and which we should not? Do we keep throwing in more stuff, and never take anything out? Do we actually stop and think whether all the many things we are doing, is actually useful, helpful or important? And if they are important, which is the most important?

What do you think?

I've been working on this busy thing personally. I thought I would share a few rules for how how I manage my busy syndrome in an effort to tackle the work-life balance challenge.

• Sleep. I have a 9:30pm deadline. If it is not done by 9:30pm, it has to happen another day. I need sleep. So do you. Whatever you tell yourself, you are not a medical marvel and exception. The fact of the matter is that in order for your brain to fire on all cylinders, you need sleep. I have found that by keeping to my 9:30 deadline, I do the important things first. And because I have had a decent amount of sleep most of the time, I am able to stay more level headed, more focussed and get things done faster and more effectively.
  
• Eat well. If you want your brain to function well, you need to feed it well. Whatever fuel you put in, is the performance you get out. If you put in lots of sugar, saturated fats and minimal good fibre,  then don't be surprised if you start to feel tired and like you just can't keep up. You wouldn't expect a car to drive or win any races if you gave it the wrong fuel. Why would you expect something different for yourself?
  
• Email. Email is a deceptive demon. If not managed carefully, it can make things feel urgent that really are not. Sometimes, emails actually make more work! Instead of a two minute conversation, it can turn into a long winded backwards and forwards. Sometimes conversations that should happen in person, happens through email and starts unnecessary conflict. And on top of that, sending emails that aren't important or necessary to people who don't really need them clogs up everyone's inbox and wastes everyone's time.
  
• Single tasking. Doing one thing at a time means I devote my full brain power to the task. It means it gets done faster and better. This often means moving away from coworkers into quieter spaces, closing down all tabs that are not needed for the task at hand, and turning off any potentially distracting notifications. If you want to get something done, then stop trying to do a million things at once.

At the end of the day, I also have to remind myself that I am wildly passionate about education. Sometimes, busy is not bad, it is a deliberate choice I make because my head and heart is fully engaged in what I do. And as long as I have balance, then buys might just be okay. 

Diversity, power and the mess in the middle.

DISCLAIMER: I want to be clear that I am not talking about anyone in particular, but rather that I am talking about things that I have seen and heard many, many times. 

My first teaching job was in a very poor socio-economic area in England. You can read more about the school during the time I worked there in The Guardian article that was written at the time. However, just to help you set the scene, the article talks about the the small stature of the children at the school: "One of the most striking things about the children is their stature. Many of them – the boys in particular – seem small for their age, and underweight. It's something other visitors, and even Ofsted, have commented on, Black tells me, and it is undoubtedly down to poor nutrition." It also talks about "the disproportionate number of looked-after children", the school has large numbers of students in foster care. I remember my first day (first day ever as a teacher by myself in the classroom) where a year eleven student picked up another much smaller one and shook him by the collar with a look off pure rage on his face. I later learnt that the angry boy was a refugee who had experienced his own father's execution. The young man he was shaking had insulted his mother. The article talks about this too, saying "An increasing number of pupils, particularly Afghan boys, are arriving at the school illiterate in their own language. "We have children arriving with no teeth, with horrific injuries sustained on their journeys to the UK. They often suffer emotional difficulties as a result."

From here, I continued on to New Zealand schools. The schools that I have worked at in New Zealand were considered to be of high socio-economic status (decile ten). Yet, the issues that I saw in my school in England, plagued these schools too. In all the schools, there have been hoards of disengaged students. Often, because there was no connection between what they are supposed to learn in school, and what is often a brutal fight for survival outside of school. There are kids everywhere dealing with abusive situations as a result of the adults in their lives. Those are just the parents and family situations. It does not even begin to talk about the adults in schools. Just recently in the news there have again been articles of teachers having inappropriate relationships and sexually abusing students. And then, we haven't even talked about the adults who stood by and did not speak up...

The above are more extreme situations of the adults in children's' lives, in my opinion, failing the children they should be taking care of. As an adult, leaving an abusive relationship can be extremely difficult. Years of abuse often leads people to feel too disempowered to break out of their difficult situation. What then of the children with no knowledge of how the world works, not old enough to get a job, etc? It frustrates, angers and terrifies me that so many of the students who are in abusive situations, are both emotionally and physically stuck.

Often, for students who are unhappy, stuck, being emotionally and physically abused, we do not intervene until things are really bad. When a story breaks in the paper, we ask about why more wasn't done? Why didn't anyone notice? Why didn't anyone do anything? I know I have asked those questions many times. Increasingly though, I have realised that to some extent, almost all of us are guilty of propagating the culture that leads to the situations above. I better explain...

Reading Keri Facer's Learning Futures book, this particular section really struck me:

"New stories were told about childhood as a time of vulnerability, a time of innocence, a time of a new generational contract dependence. And reciprocally, these stories about childhood also produced particular stories about adulthood as a time of labour, of secure identity and of expertise. In this story, adulthood became the ‘end point’ to which childhood aspired. The institutions and the narratives of childhood therefore became mutually reinforcing. Such a model of adult–child relations brings risks to children – their rights can be overlooked as they are seen as less than fully formed humans; but also benefits – children are invested in, protected, cared for." - Page 30

I have increasingly noticed in schools situations that may be interpreted as the embodiment of children being treated as "less than fully formed humans". And I worry that I am guilty of them all...

• There are and have been many students that have been unhappy with their relationship with a particular teacher. It may be as as simple as they feel that the teacher does not help them when they ask. It may be as complex as they feel that the teacher picks on them. They may dislike the way the teacher teaches. When the student speaks up about this, we often expect them to just tough it out. We ask them how they are to blame for the situation. How often do we automatically side with the teacher? If this is our reflex, then how often do we continue to feed into a culture where students who speak up with concerns that may well be very serious, are not heard? And to what extent might we be contributing to a culture in this way where the we blame the victims?
  



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• When talking about what students should learn at school, we assume that we, the adults, with all our worldly experience, degrees and other qualifications know what is best for the student to learn. We say things like "you don't know what you don't know" and use this as an excuse to make students learn subjects that they do not show interest in. For this one, it is easy to say 'yes, but...' and you could make some great arguments. The problem remains that as adults we often assume that we know what is best for the students and then act accordingly. However, by assuming, concluding, inferring, whatever you want to call it that we know best, are we again proliferating the attitude that adult's have more say, more opinion, and that their opinions matter more? I do not question that as an adult, we often have powerful experiences and knowledge that our students do not have. The question however, is whether when we engage with our students in those situations, do we approach them as equals with different perspectives and knowledge, or, do we inadvertently suggest that our opinions, perspectives and knowledge matters more? How different would these conversations be if students were automatically treated as equals, rather than the less informed party?
  
• How often have teachers yelled at students but will lose their marbles if a student yells at them? This is holding the students to a different standard, saying that what applies for the adults does not apply for the students. We do not always hold children and adults to the same standards. How might we contributing to a culture of prioritising the adult's rights over that of the child's in this situation? 

An Auckland high school recently informed some of their female students that their skirts were too short. The news website reports that a "female teacher explained their skirts were a distraction for both boy students and that the school needed to create a good work environment for male teachers." I wonder, what kind of message does this send? Female sexuality is not okay but males sexuality is? Is this promoting a culture of "slut shaming"? Or even worse, rape culture with the all too familiar phrase "she was asking for it"? It isn't too much of stretch of the imagination to see how the males and females are not held to an equal standard here. In fact, pop star Ariana Grande recently made the news for calling out a fan on exactly this sort of behaviour.

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The teacher who explained that the skirts were a distraction for the boys, the adults who abuse children, the teachers who are not held to the same standard as the students... They all have a common thread for me - power imbalance. When we are charged with the care of someone, how often do we act from a position of power rather than care? How often does the way we communicate suggest that the opinions, views or feelings of others are more important, simply because they are adult/male/female/the boss/the teacher? When we are dealing with diversity, how often do we act in such a way to establish power rather than understanding, even as we pay lip service to equality and equity?

I wonder why adults make so many decisions for students, even when they are able to think for themselves far better than the adults? I wonder why ill informed, corrupt, ignorant adults can vote, but thoughtful, empathetic seventeen year olds can not? I wonder why sexuality is a public debate? I wonder why we still have racism, sexism and all the other isms... And I wonder how we inadvertently promote racism, sexism, ageism, elitism without even realising it?

Where there is an age difference, culture difference, gender difference, it seems that we are still struggling to really treat 'other' as 'equal'... It seems to me that more often than not, we treat difference as a power struggle, rather than a collaboration. Perhaps, if we got better at engaging with diversity, with difference, we might get better at dealing with the abuse and inequality in society? Perhaps the real question is why it is that we still struggle with diversity so much?

K for Knowledge.

There are some weird things that we require our year eleven students to know. Trigonometry and Shakespeare for example. Now don't get me wrong, I actually rather enjoy trigonometry and Shakespeare. However I am wondering what has happened that without questioning it, we prioritise trigonometry, hypotenuses, radians and angles, iambic pentameter and Hamlet's issues, over the well-being of our students?

I have talked before about my concerns over valuing achievement over well-being, however further thinking around this subject has me wondering again.

• Who has decided what 'knowledge' should be taught in our curriculum? Who decided that we should teach year eleven students trigonometry, or that year thirteen biology should know about Okazaki fragments? Who decided that we should teach algebra to all students?
• Why were these specific things selected for our young people to know? Why not quantum theory? Why not philosophy? Why did we decide to value these things so much that the entire nation should learn them?
• Why is it that we appear to value the mind more than the body? A colleague recently joked that he hardly ever gets any responses based on his report comments and grades for students, because nobody cares about PE. How many parents go to parent teacher interviews and ask about the well-being, the fitness and nutrition knowledge of their child? But many ask about literacy and numeracy... What is really more important?
• How many teachers question the validity of the knowledge that they are imparting? And on the flip side, if they are questioning whether what they are teaching is useful, valid, important, do they actually know? Do science teachers have any understanding of what sets scientific knowledge apart from other knowledge? Other than fair testing that is. 

I know that much of the reasoning that underpins how we prioritise knowledge in our education systems are based on the ideas from Plato, Rousseau, Descartes and others. In fact, the more you read on this subject, the more you realise just how much.

However, there is another model that has been occupying my thoughts lately. I've just started dipping my toes into complexity theory. You can get some more introductions to complexity theory by looking at the videos below. The idea that really caught my eye this evening however was this:

"Care flows naturally if the "self" is widened and deepened so that protection of free Nature is felt and conceived as protection of ourselves" - Arne Naess 

The book explains this quote with "...if we have the deep ecological experience of being part of the web of life, then we will, as opposed to should, be inclined to care for all of living nature"

Quotes from The Systems View of Life. A Unifying Vision. 

Again, this has me wondering. What if society shifted towards a more holistic view, where we considered ourselves as part of a network and existing as a network? How would the world be different? Particularly, in relation to my questions above, if we considered our body as an interconnected network rather than a separation of mind, spirit, body, would we treat it differently? Would be pay more attention to our health and well-being? Would those over bearing parents shift their focus from not enough maths, not enough reading, to not enough exercise? Would the findings from the ERO report that told of schools prioritising assessment over well-being have been different if this was our view?

E for Easter in Education

Take a moment to consider how many of the students in your class were born in the same city or country. How many of the students that were born here, have parents that were born in another city? How many of the students in your class have no religion? How many of the students in your class are very religious? How many of the students in your class are deeply connected to their cultural heritage? How many of the students in your class are not particularly connected to their cultural heritage and might be searching for cultural or other roots? How many of the students in your class have particular traditions that are of special value to them? And then consider the cultural capital possibly hidden within your students. The parts of their identities that 'appear' to have no place in their maths, reading, writing... Yet, Shakespeare, Pythagoras, Pol Pot does.

E for easter has me thinking of the cultural, religious and other factors that contribute to student and teacher's identities that are simply ignored in schools. My own family have many cultural traditions related to easter and christmas. These traditions form a key part of my identity. Although we might never say your religion or your culture is not important whilst we are in a school context, we unfortunately do send negative messages about these critical contributors to identity when we do not acknowledge and integrate them. I worry that by removing the cultural and religious aspects from our academic curriculum, we are suggesting that it has no part to play in the preparation for our futures, the skills needed to gain jobs, pass exams and succeed.

In schools, we often tend to spend more, if not all of our time on academic, intellectual pursuits. As a result, we implicitly send the message that academic, intellectual pursuits are valued above all. You can see this attitude in the performing arts (think Ken Robinson's argument about schools killing creativity), but also in the Education Review Office's recent report around student well being that highlights explicitly how assessment and curriculum are valued over student well being. I have talked about this in a previous post, asking "What type of students our schools and the systems therein will be turning out? If we only teach and emphasise achievement, NCEA and national standards, then what are we teaching kids to value?" I wonder whether the similar messages are being sent implicitly around diversity?

And when we do set out to 'prove' that we value diversity, what does this look like? A map put up in class to show where different students come from? How does this teach students to value diversity and cultural capital? It may serve as a starting point but what long term impact could this possibly have? What about cultural interest groups at schools? Are they open to only students that identify with that culture, or are they open, and are advertised to be so, for any students who wants to learn about and with that cultural group?

Personally, it puts a great smile on my face seeing Asian, South African, Maori and other students performing side by side in Kapa Haka groups. It sees these groups side by side, valuing cultural capital enough to invest time and effort into understanding and empathising with its ideas. Key Competencies for the Future highlighted this idea for me again, when one of the authors talked about how she had always acknowledged diversity in her class, but she had not yet taught in such a way that valuing and utilising diversity became critical to the success of a project. Wouldn't you send a very different message about valuing diversity if this was your approach?

Consider the enormous amounts of immigrants world wide, and consider the ethnic groups that makeup schools in New Zealand (see Education counts for this data). I think it is safe to say that future success for our students requires them to celebrate and utilise the diversity of the teams in which they will work. Not only that, but responding effectively to diversity forms part of your Registered Teacher Criteria.

Given the above, I wonder... How might we embrace and utilise diversity in our schools more effectively?

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Yoga and maths. One and the same?

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I had a rather unusual maths lesson today. Keeping in mind that I have been focussing on well being for my students and I in various capacities, I thought working in some yoga in a maths lesson seemed like a really good idea. Also, working in a cross curricular team with the Health and Physical Education department, it seemed like a unique opportunity for students to physically experience concepts, rather than just talk about them, or worse, just be told about them.

1. Bryce my co-teacher in this module started with a theory introduction about yoga. Building on the ideas of aggression versus competition from the previous week, he explained how western culture has influenced yoga particularly in respect to competition. We also talked briefly about how yoga had been sexualised. With the Health and Physical Education focus on social and cultural factors, there was lots to talk about. West vs. East type stuff!
2. We then went on to about half an hour of yoga. Really basic stuff but finishing off with five minutes of careful breathing exercises. At the beginning, students were told that the idea was to focus on yourself, not on anything or anyone else. The goal was to clear your mind completely, or if you struggled with this, to only focus on your breathing. 
3. Students answered some reflection questions about doing yoga. For example, what does yoga look like, feel like, sound like? Which Hobsonville habits are in use when doing yoga? Purposeful fit really well here because of the importance of focussing your thoughts, breathing and movement. 
4. We returned to class where I read students an extract from Finding Zero: A Mathematician's Odyssey to Uncover the Origins of Numbers.
   "Shunya means zero in our language. But it also relates to the Buddhist philosophical concept of the void, which is called Shunyata. You see, zero, the number, and the Buddhist emptiness - the goal of mediation and an ideal striven for on the road to Nirvana, or enlightenment - are one and the same. Emptiness is a deep philosophical concept, and from it we get zero." As part of exploring the idea of numbers representing things, we also took a moment to discuss the question, "Are numbers real?". This was fascinating and lead to a remarkably heated debate. 
5. From this, we then explored the idea of zero and it's importance in more depth. Students could choose one of two questions to work on. The second is a problem from NRICH maths.  Through this, students were able to begin making sense of place value. They also developed a really clear understanding of the idea that our numbers are only a symbol, and these symbols are representations. Zero is representation of nothing, or the clear mind we were all attempting to have earlier in the lesson. At the same time, five could be represented in a number of ways. I feel like this was great preparation for the algebra concepts later this term as in the past, I have often seen students struggle to wrap their heads around why we introduce letters. I hope that seeing beyond the symbol might be useful.
6. Finally we finished the lesson Steve Mouldey style, with a "what if" question. What if zero was never invented? Although some students could still only grasp at some basic ideas, it was really exciting to have a student ask whether we would have negative numbers without zero. 

Choice of questions students had to work on. 

It's peculiar to think that maths has been influenced so heavily be eastern religion, philosophy and religion, yet more often than not, we have separated the emotional, people aspects from maths entirely. Instead, it is often presented in a rather sterile way. The ideas that we encounter on a daily basis as far more connected than we realise at first glance. It really made me wonder, how much of the 'content' that is so valued in schools, has actually lost all its romance because we have stripped it from its context?

Dancing all over the fixed mindset

 

"There's something curious about professors in my experience -- not all of them, but typically, they live in their heads. They live up there, and slightly to one side. They're disembodied, you know, in a kind of literal way. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads. Don't they? It's a way of getting their head to meetings. If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, get yourself along to a residential conference of senior academics, and pop into the discotheque on the final night. And there, you will see it. Grown men and women writhing uncontrollably, off the beat. Waiting until it ends so they can go home and write a paper about it." - from TED.com

The thing about a true growth mindset, is that we do not just apply it when it suits us. Sometimes we revert to a fixed mindset in different circumstances. Where academic learning is concerned, my growth mindset it is safe to say, is fairly embedded. However, in the case of physical activity, I often find myself in the neighbourhood of the fixed mindset. Excuses like "I don't have sporty clothes",  "I don't have time" and "I am too uncoordinated". Or blaming "work is just keeping me too busy" or "I was just too tired." Whether true or not, the only person that suffers from the blaming and excuses is me.

A friend gave me a book for Christmas. The book is called Giraffes Can't Dance. If you know me, you would know exactly how appropriate this is, tall and spatially challenged (there may or may not be a number of head butting incidents in the past). In fact, very much reminiscent of the passage above from Ken Robinson's famous (must watch) TED talk. However, having the ideas of Carol Dweck's book about growth mindsets firmly on my mind, I thought it was about time I confronted this can't dance thing head on. After all, I love to dance, albeit terribly and at the risk of all those around me. So, Thursday morning I joined in one of the spin (special interest) modules at school. These occur once a week for 90 minutes. Last year I joined in on some Maori classes  at school (post about it here). Despite it being a bit of a challenge, it was well within my normal comfort zone of academic learning. I had strategies in place that I know I could rely on to improve. I knew I would get better with practice and time. Of course, I have very few strategies in place for dance. It is well outside my comfort zone. However, as I walked out of the class at the end of the session, I felt great. Not only had I learnt a few new things about teaching (fabulous dance teacher Sophie and how she utilises the space she teaches in), but I also felt great knowing that I had faced a challenge that makes me feel deeply uncomfortable head on, and publicly.

Of course, through the entire 90 minutes I couldn't get the thought out of my head about what the students might think. But again, that is just a fixed mindset talking, because maybe, just maybe the students might see their teacher actively confront the things she is bad at, and then do something about them, despite the challenge. Or maybe, they might think I'm a total dork. Either way, I'm learning to dance. See you all on the ULearn dance floor in October?! Knowing full well the constant state of flux that the waistline on a pair of jeans can acquire as we get older, it also feels extra good (mentally, definitely mentally) knowing that my super sore muscles since then is further evidence of dancing all over that fixed mindset.

PS: The irony here about academics going home to "write a paper about it" and me writing a blog post about it is not lost on me...

Academics and Achievement > Well being?

Many of us are familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We know that many things precede achievement, problem solving and creativity. Yet, with schools having such a big focus on the latter, it seems curious that we spend so little time on helping students build and develop their well being. You might argue that this is covered in the Health and Physical Education curriculum, but I would really question whether this is sufficient considering the home environments that some our students come from. 

I also wonder, what type of students our schools and the systems therein will be turning out? If we only teach and emphasise achievement, NCEA and national standards, then what are we teaching kids to value? I would argue that the same is true for teachers and other professionals, to what extent are we sending the message that results and achievement are more valuable than well being, happiness and quality relationships?

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This year, I have really enjoyed that working at Hobsonville Point means we are working at developing all of the students, not just their minds in class or the muscles in their sports teams. A large component of my role here is acting as a hub coach (for more information about hub coaches see Claire Amos's post). As this role evolved throughout the year, I found increasingly that it has dealt with friendships and family, with values, morals and respect. As most schools and teachers do, we have also dealt with safety of some of our students. But what really stands out for me about this year was the focus on student well being. The focus of developing student self-esteem and confidence and explicitly learning about respect and managing relationships. By working together in our hubs, we have given students a safe place within the school where they are able to explore some of the more personal things that we all go through as we learn to make sense of an adult world. Together our students have unpacked and reflected regularly using the hauora tools from the health curriculum. Together we identified strategies and unpacked scenarios where our well being might be out of sync, and what we might do about it. We talked about how we might support someone else who might be struggling spiritually, emotionally, physically or socially. 

In our hubs, we also unpacked the Hobsonville Habits. A set of ten dispositions that we aim to help our students develop. By calling them habits, we send the message that they are things we can develop until they become second nature. As a result, I am able to talk to the students in my hub, but also any student in the school, about how they might show more compassion. This might be in the context of looking after the school, our buildings, or their peers. 

Here are some of the activities that I did with my hub over the year in effort to build dispositional excellence:

The Love Wall

• Unpacking the Hobsonville Habit of Purposeful, we read some exerts from Sean Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens (Sean Covey is the son of Stephen Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). The students really loved the book. In particular we focussed on the chapter about being proactive. Over a series of lessons, we then unpacked acting in a proactive and reactive way in more depth. This involved listing some of the proactive and reactive ways that we act in different scenarios. I prompted students by giving them different scenarios and by looking at some movie clips. Mean Girls is great for this one. We also looked at the compass of shame, a great tool that allowed us to explore different types of reactive behaviour in more depth. Finally, we also did some role plays, where we acted out a challenging scenario where the student had to respond using only proactive responses. The rest of the group then gave the student feedback about their responses. And finally, no series of lessons at Hobsonville Point would be complete without some alone time to reflect.
• Some of the simpler activities included the love wall, where every week for a term, students were asked to write something that they liked about themselves, but also something the liked about another student in the hub. These are displayed on the wall of our hub.
• Steve Mouldey also introduced the students to Caine's Arcade. A powerful video of a young boy who created an arcade from cardboard boxes. Students then unpacked lessons from the Caine's arcade video.
• Of course, no dispositional curriculum would be complete without a good selection of TED talks. Our favourite this year was probably the thirteen year old Logan LaPlante's TEDx talk, Hackschooling makes me happy. 

Other things that we explore in our hub is Hermann's brain, a tool which has allowed us to explore thinking preferences. This allowed us to help students explore how we learn, think and act in more depth. 

Most mornings in hubs also involved a quick check in with students. This might involve each person sharing what they most need to focus on for the week, how they are going, how they are feeling about particular events, etc. This often acts as a measure of where students are at, what support they need, whether they might need additional support in terms of strategies to cope or manage a situation, stress management or even referrals to the school councillor. 

Finally, there is also the ever important parent communication. By checking in with students, following their academic and dispositional progression and getting to know them very well through all the team building and discussion, we are able to bring parents and family on board to a much greater extent. Our conversations are often more meaningful and we are able to work together towards supporting our students.

All of the above, is only the first year of learning hubs. So as I sit and reflect about the where to next, I am as excited today as I was a year ago about the potential of the learning hubs at Hobsonville Point. Knowing that I have time and tools allocated to helping my students build their emotional and academic resilience, and their well being, that I can coach them through when they get stuck, and that that I am not alone in this, makes me excited for our students. It also gives me hope for the many under achieving students in our country. In fact, a 2014 Ministry of Education report about low decile schools that are performing well, actually talks about the success of schools who have adopted a similar model. 

Who would have thought that working with students around their whole well being, not just their academic achievement would have such great effects? Perhaps we all know. Or perhaps the real question is who is willing to rattle enough cages to make sure that every child has someone looking out for their well being? 

Quotes from my students: "Throughout the past year, my being has definitely grown and developed into something much better than what I started out like. One of my best highlights about my being is being able to learn more about my Hauora and getting to know more about how each of our quadrants in our Hauora needs to be equal and cared for." "Hub activities were new and different to me, it was interesting to get to know and understand different peoples opinions, to think about what others say and then take into account, how different we are but how we can still interact with each other." "My highlight for my being was that I have a better meaning and understanding of the word “respect” even though I have not fully changed, I am on a road to being a more respectful person to myself and others. I enjoyed learning about the difference between being reactive and proactive with my hub. This was useful because I now can have a look at different situations and understand how I can make the best of every situation." "I have learnt how to manage my emotions.  I have learnt different strategies to deal with conflict."

Extra Curricular Activities - The Bird Club

As teachers we are often expected to get involved in running extra curricular activities for our students. Here is the story of my unusual extra curricular activity, the bird club.



Ignite Talk | Danielle Myburgh from Emerging Leaders on Vimeo.