Corinna School Community

This week we are discussing and analysing issues issues of socioeconomic factors, school culture and professional environment in relation to our practise.

Corinna School

Corinna school is a Decile 1a, Year 1 - 8 school located in Waitangirua. Our school has had a growing roll of 240. The roll is expected to continue to grow in 2018. At the beginning of 2017, the roll surged when 40 students enrolled in the first week of Term 1. This seems to be linked to housing, the movement of families back into the area, or extended whanau coming from overseas to live together. Our community can be transient and each year there is approximately a 30% turnover of students.

The percentage of children belonging to particular groups in March 2017 are:

Samoan: 47.4%

Māori :23.4%

Cook Island Māori 12.1%

Tokelauan: 9.8%

Other , including Filipino, Tongan, Tuvaluan, Pākeha: 6.1%

South East Asian, including Kampuchea/Cambodian, Laos and Myanmar: 1.4%

These statistics, however, do not give a clear picture of the cultural diversity of the roll of Corinna School.  Many of the students have parents from more than one ethnic group. Some may be brought up by their grandparents, who are from another ethnic group; some may be 2nd or 3rd generation New Zealand born Pasifika children who may or may not speak a language other than English; some are new immigrants for whom English is a second language; some are refugees who were professionals and forced to leave their countries for political reasons immediately; some are refugees who have only ever known life in a refugee camp before coming to New Zealand; some are well established families whose parents and grandparents also attended the school; some are Christians; some are Muslim; some are from single parent families; some are beneficiaries living in rental accommodation; some have both parents in the workforce who own their own home; some have had  formal early childhood education and some have not; many have access to the internet; many have television and are open to the music and fashion influences of  youth culture, nationally and internationally.

Our school does not make assumptions about how the ethnicity, or home environment, of any student may impact on their learning. We believe in their potential to be successful learners, confident in their own identities.

What students have in common is that almost all attend Corinna School because it is their local school and they live close to it. The other commonality is that, regardless of what experiences the children may have had before they attend school, when parents or caregivers enrol their children, they come with hope and expectation that their children will be cared for, be happy and learn well.

These are the issues that arise from the socio economic status of our school’ s community and how the issues have been acknowledged and supported:

Rich language and cultural experiences: We acknowledge, respect and celebrate all cultures in our school community in a variety of ways, such as  kapa haka and polyfest clubs and preformances, providing language classes in Te Reo, Samoan, Tokelauan and Cook Island Maori, celebrating language/ cultural weeks with students and whanau etc

Strong Sense of Whanau: Our community are very close. Many are related or know each other through church, cultural and community groups. Many parents also attended Corinna School as students. They are very supportive and are always willing to help each other in times of need. We have strong Samoan and Tokelauan Parent groups, who regularly do volunteer work at school and help organise and run events.

How these issues impact on your practice? How have the issues been addressed?

We build strong relationships with outside agencies to support students and whanau: SWIS, PHN, CAMHS, Housing, WINZ

Healthy food policy, canteen/ Canteen Manager, student cooking classes and garden club

Learning through play: Inquiries based on student passions, strengths

Home Language classes, celebrating culture and identity, Polyclub, kapa haka, Noho...

Whanau, Mixed ability learning

Key competency focused, strengthed focused

Whanau engagement/ events such as Language week events, Fiafia nights, Masterchef Challenges.

Chromebooks: Global citizens

My Community of Practise

Community of Practice: Corinna School Teaching Community

My community of practice is the Corinna School Teaching Community. This community is made up of 11 full-time teachers, 5 teacher aides, and 2 administration staff. Corinna School is a full primary school located in Waitangirua, in Porirua. We have a growing roll of 240 students. Our students and whanau are predominately Maori and Pasifika.

Our shared domain is our school’s vision, which is  “ Our learning community will be lifelong learners, empowered to use all the key competencies to shine in a range of contexts with voice, agency and identity” (Corinna School Strategic Plan, 2017).  Our vision is what drives our teaching and learning practises, and our community of practice enables us to deepen our knowledge and expertise in this area. (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p.4).

My Community of Practice meets frequently, in a variety of different forums and sub groups. Each has a defined purpose and helps us to achieve different aspects of our school vision. We meet formally and informally in activities and events, such as:

• Leadership meetings
• Whanau Meetings
• Level Team Syndicate Meetings
• Whole Staff Meetings
• CoL Meetings
• Teacher Only Day Seminars
• DMIC Professional Development Seminars
• Professional Courses such as Mindlab, Learning through Play
• Professional online/ social media networks such as Longworth Education, Mindshift, Edutopia.
• Staffroom discussions over lunch and coffee
• Discussions/ reflections/ observations with my co- teacher

In these collective events, we produce a shared repertoire of ‘experiences, stories, tools and ways of addressing recurring problems’ (Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, 2015). These include:

• Shared Information of our Student Management System
• Behaviour Management System: Glasser’s Choice Theory: Reflection and Relationship Building
• Key Competency Rubrics
• Corinna School Curriculum
• Teacher Inquiry Journals
• Student Learning Blogs and Learning Stories
• Collaborative Planning
• Shared Google docs such as PMI’s, minutes, IEP’s, Special Programme Notes

I feel a strong sense of connectedness and belonging to my community of practice. I firmly believe in our school vision and am passionate about working collaboratively to ensure our vision is achieved by every single member of our learning community. However, for this to happen, it is vital that our Community of Practice has a shared understanding of what this looks like, sounds like and feels like, and agrees with how we’re going to get there. It's this understanding that strengthens the connectedness.

I have several different formal and informal roles in my community of practice. They vary depending on the group, and the activity or experience.  I am a classroom and senior teacher, and our school SENCo. I have supported my school in several change initiatives including developing our knowledge and pedagogy in digital and collaborative learning and ILE’s.

I try to be supportive of all initiatives, activities and events taking place in our Community of practice, however, my contribution can vary depending on workload and priorities, my learning and teaching passions, skills and strengths. We have a distributed leadership approach in our school so everyone has an opportunity to lead and take on different roles and responsibilities. I am often an innovator or early adopter and thrive on challenge and change. I enjoy encouraging and supporting others to jump on board the waka and to feel confident to try new things.

Examples of Students Learning Blogs

Students will share their learning using Learning Stories. Students can use a variety of tools to record their learning stories. They will then be encouraged to share their Learning Blogs with their whanau and ask for feedback. 

How can students share their academic identity with their whanau

This was a discussion we had at a recent staff meeting around how students can share their academic identity with their whanau. This gave us good food for thought in regards to our teacher inquiry.

TEACHER INQUIRY DISCUSSION

We have been throwing around a few ideas about what to do for our teacher Inquiry, based on research on our Literature review which ended up being on " How do National Standards Improve Outcomes for 21st Century Learners?".

In our research, we found that a key outcome of National Standards was to report to parents. This was supposed to support parents to engage with their child's learning and encourage them to help their child at home.  Studies found that this wasn't true.

Therefore we are wondering how we can achieve the goals of the national standards policy, by finding a more meaningful way to report to parents.

WEEK 18: Literature Review Question

What to choose? What to choose? What to choose?

We're having lots of discussions around what our topic of inquiry could be around. We had really wanted to continue focussing on PBL: problem, project, passion, peer and play based learning but are struggling to find many peer reviewed research on this topic, especially for students Year 6-8. 

Most important for me, is choosing a question that is still highly purposeful and also meets our overall goal of fostering engagement and accelerating learning for all students.

So now we're thinking about researching why some children have great ideas for writing but struggle to record them.  It is a useful topic to explore for us as it has implications for their recording of information and ideas that arise from the kids play and passion projects. From these discussions, we have come up with some exciting questions (still working on : What is the optimum learning environment that empowers students to be writers? Of course this might change as we start doing some more reading

Learning conversation about our Literature Review

This was a group discussion we had when we were thinking about doing our literature review on how to engage reluctant writers.