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.