Meeting with Elise (Kahui Ako Across Schools Teacher)

Meeting with Elise (Kahui Ako Across Schools Teacher)

Today was our first meet of 2020. We discussed where we were heading as a staff toward our Teaching as Inquiry this year. I explained that based on my reflections of leading staff in Inquiry in 2019, I felt that it is imperative that I support staff to feel self motivated in the direction of their Inquiry. I feel confident in my role as Kahui Ako WSL that I can facilitate staff inquiries to ensure that they are meeting direction of the Kahui Ako and the school targets.
This week, Su Arrowsmith facilitated a staff meeting where we discussed possible areas we may like to inquire into. Next week, we will meet 1:1 to develop and focus these further.
With Elise we looked at the school strategic plan and could easily see how the staff's ideas (as they are now) can fit well into the school's strategic goals. This was exciting, as we could see, how as teachers, we could be taking an active part in achieving the strategic goals. It also allowed us to clarify that the Inquiries we were showing interest in, were indeed based on data coming from the strategic goals and could also come to a natural collaborative goal.
Elise and I started an action plan to move forward in for this term. I will facilitate a staff meeting in the next few weeks with the objectives being:
- Staff can identify where their area of Inquiry would support the strategic goals of the school.
-Staff can identify where the data is that they have to support their area of Inquiry

• Summative
• Student Voice
• Whānau communication
• Observation
• Conversation
• Anecdotal Evidence (books, docs etc)

-Staff will identify areas where they may need to collate more data and set a goal to gather more data in this area.

Kahui Ako Within School Teacher Inquiry

This year as KA WSL we will be undertaking a professional inquiry around developing our leadership in this role. I think this will be beneficial as we become more comfortable in the Inquiry process we are then able to lead others with more confidence. This definitely something I am interested in as I have felt confusion over my role in the past year.

If I refer to the Inquiry Cycle and try to transfer this into my leadership role;

SCANNING: What is going on for my learners?
What is going on for teachers in my school (in regard to their Inquiries last year)?
Based on observations and casual discussions I am going to assume that there was frustration and confusion. Some teachers may have felt frustrated that their Inquiry was not focused on the area of interest for them (and more dictated by me feeling like we needed to fit into the umbrella of Kahui Ako). Some teachers may have felt that the Inquiry process just added to their work load. Some teachers may have found the 1:1 meetings beneficial. How do staff feel about recording their ideas on blogs?
Is this where I now start to gather data? I would be interested to hear ideas on this as I get my head around how this professional inquiry will develop.

Kahui Ako/Manaiakalani Lead Teachers Mtg 16/8

Main points from today's meetings:

Manaiakalani
- Cybersmart Wall: area in class rooms to promote quality blog posts/comments, cybersmart. I will need to follow this up. Get students to compete these posters. Share with staff.
- Visible Professional blogs- Te Hiku. It was decided that it will be an expectation for lead teachers to have their blog links on the Te Hiku site.
- Tui Mai tui atu: Pilot teachers from the previous year will be encouraged to share blogs with another classroom within our cluster.
- T Shaped learning- this was brought up again today, it may be something that we want to look into as we reflect on our reading practice (as this came through in our data). I wonder if this may be something that we look at with Rhona?
T Shaped Literacy Slides


Kahui Ako
- I need to reintroduce blogging time at staff meetings again to encourage more reflection on professional blogs.
- Story Hui- some schools are using this as a part of their Inquiry. I think the way we use coaching conversations is similar to this and I am feeling appreciative that we have acquired these skills from Susan.

We discussed how our Inquiries are working in our school. I reported back on how our Inquiry sat well under the the student agency results. I think the 1:1 meeting with staff members went well and I will set another day for Term 4. The focus will be on checking, set goals with teachers on how they can gather evidence as to weather they have made a difference.

Writing was discussed again as this is a constant issue. How can Inquiries focus on writing in a new and innovative way as this is something that we are constantly faced with?

Kahui Ako Hui 23/5

In this role as Kahui Ako within school teacher I am developing a better understanding of Inquiry. I realise that a true teacher driven Inquiry is established from a need within your own classroom and school community rather than about setting goals to meet targets or about utilising PD that is already in place in our school. However it is creating more questions:

- What is the difference between Inquiry and Goal setting? Does everyone have a shared understanding of this?
- How does Inquiry (that comes from learners in your classroom, fit under CoL Aims and Goals?
-Can we assume that PD that is taking place in a school is a result of a wider inquiry that has already taken place to meet school targets?
- Teachers are willing to be enquirers but how do we ensure that it is a positive thing rather than more (paper) work?

Today we looked at: Why Collaborative Inquiry?
Things that stood out to me:
-everyone being a learner, feeling safe to try new things
-owning professional learning, relevant to our learners and school. This gives us motivation.
- Student engagement- everyone learning together (promotes agency)
- Being co reflective allows us to see things from multiple perspectives, different viewpoint make different conclusions.

How can we record inquiry?
I would like to see other templates but hoping to find a way to record everything on out blogs.
I will make a plan to meet and discuss this with Diane so that I can make a time line/document  for reflections based on stages of Inquiry.

Spiral of Inquiry (made my teachers)



My reflection/action plan from end of Hui