Today the MDTA's were invited to the Manaiakalani Annual Hui, held at the Panmure Yacht & Boating Club. It was a great day, with lots of different speakers having their bit, all coming together to share the message of the work Manaiakalani has done over the past year.
First up were the student ambassadors from each of the 12 schools. They each shared part of their learning which demonstrated use of digital affordance, the learn create share pedagogy, amazing teacher creativity or student creativity with their blogs.
Next up were the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers, sponsored by the SPARK Foundation. They each shared about the research they have been conducting this year. I created this sketch-note to help myself remember key things that different people presented that I thought were awesome/inspirational;/thought-provoking.
After morning tea was the team from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre presenting data collected from the 12 Manaiakalani schools and introducing the next set of ideas and goals to work on. Again, I created a sketch-note to record my thought process while they talked.
After this, Russell Burt, prinicipal of Point England School, put things very simply. We know how to move the 'bottom' students to the 'middle', and only some of us are doing that, and now the team from Woolf Fisher had just told us how to get the 'middle' students to the 'top'. Russell's message - JUST DO IT! It is for the benefit of your students. You as a teacher choosing not to do the things we know will work because you don't like them, agree with them, whatever, is to the detriment of your students, so get over it, and do it for your kids.
After lunch, Dorothy talked the crowd through the Manaiakalani Outreach clusters. These are groups of schools around the country which want 'our recipe' for success with low decile low achieving students. Although it is not that simple, these outreach clusters are now on a fast-tracked 3 year programme modelled from the Tamaki cluster so they can accelerate their students as well.
I created another sketch-note the record snippets of the discussion as it went along.
Overall, it was an awesome day at the annual hui. I learnt a lot about Manaiakalani (when I thought I knew everything... ha!) and definitely got some food for thought to reflect on for my own practice.
Kia kaha Manaiakalani!
Well said Ashley! Making shifts in student learning is definitely possible. Teachers just need to have a drive for raising achievement, as you have already experienced the shift in our class. We know that it is not easy! Knowledge is the best gift we can give our students.
ReplyDeleteYou have curated a comprehensive, multi modal, summary of the day Ashley. It is very useful for those of us who were there to look back on and I suspect you will refer to it from time to time. I know it will be of interest to people who were unable to attend as well.
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