Kapa Haka

29/11/16

Okay so this post is really old, I had started writing it but never finished it, so i guess it gives me an opportunity to reflect on this and see if it actually occurred or not.

(previously written)
I have decided that in this half of the year I really want to ensure I have a balance between committing my time to many school activities like school camps, Japan trip and Geography field trip as well as developing myself professionally, so i joined the kapa haka group. I have wanted to learn the school haka for a long time now and never really had the confidence to put myself out there and try it, the same old feelings of being out of your comfort zone and mucking up in front of the kids, especially with something like performing the hake (a culturally sensitive activity which i know means a lot to our Maori students). Below on the right are the words to the haka, while on the left are the words to the waiata. Both have been written by Matua, with relevance to the community and the students of Hornby High, hence where the discomfort and nerves come when performing it.

(now)
Unfortunately I was unable to continue with Kapa Haka in term 4 as the importance of the students getting their work completed before leaving had to be priority, however, i really enjoyed the opportunity to challenge my speaking of another language, and doing it side by side with our students and at times with them as my teacher. I loved seeing the confidence of our senior kids as they thrived in this environment, envious that i didn't see that same enthusiasm applied in all areas of their school life. It makes me wonder how much more can i do to allow these kids to trust me, to allow them to see that we are trying to help them and get the best out of them, for their benefit, I have know for years that our kids are happy to not try and fail, rather than taking that risk and failing anyway. What will build resilience in  our students so that they see what we see in them..

Anyway back to the balance of lifestyles of work vs self, i still see this as important, but i think i care too much about student success that i continue to put my welfare to a side and focus on them. This year saw the last of my mentee kids leave hornby and will see me for the first time in 8 years without a student to mentor, its a weird feeling but perhaps a sign that 2017 is a year to focus on myself a little bit, swing that balance a little bit back in my favour, especially as the school goes through both curriculum, staff and building changes over the next few years.

Tuesday 3rd

Had a go at doing expert groups with my childcare class today because I thought it would get them communicating a little more and the activity forces them to work co-cooperatively with each other. However i felt like it was an epic fail. the students were so reluctant to participate that they individually read the article and wrote their own notes, then when they had to report to others they just gave them the sheet to copy.

A positive about this activity though was the third part , where they had to go into pairs and one reported - filling the gap, while the one person had the sheet of words that best filled the gaps. working together they had to finish this sheet using the knowledge they received during the expert activity. they fact they were able to complete this showed they took in the information they had read about but was not able to share it confidently.

In reflection it is certainly an activity i will try again as it allows the students to take ownership of their learning, confidence in sharing ideas and the ability to write notes in a format that allows them to understand it

Staff Pd - Teaching Criteria

Forms

Staff Meeting on Monday (30th) was a co construction activity that involved the staff answering a survey on examples of what they see as the 12 teaching criteria. It was interesting having the opportunity to actually reflect on how am i showing this, what am i doing in my class to demonstrate this. If you click on the words form then you will see some of my answers

https://docs.google.com/a/hornby.school.nz/spreadsheets/d/1_yqCFRONkaHlsGbnW43gkGcYw_Ikz-bhkJl2Jhf1Rr0/edit?usp=sharing

the link above shows the final results of staff feedback and some ideas that staff are doing and showing in their classes

Blogging a priority at HHS

November 14th
Today has  been a difficult day at school due to the 7.5 earthquake that struck at 12am this morning. Most of the staff have looked pretty shattered coming to school, but having that normality and a sense of routine is important for our community and our students. NCEA exams are continuing as normal, which is hard for the students, as like us many of them will have little sleep last night. One thing we learnt from the 2011 earthquakes  is that ensuring the our students feel a sense of being cared for is important, hence the relational side to teaching is extremely important in these events. Also its important that as a teacher today you are flexible, as well as understanding of students moods and unpredictability.

A week a go today we had a staff meeting that was apart of our Uru Manuka Program. The main focus they have decided on for the school at this stage is to establish our use of blogger. We had to set up a picture that we could install on our sites that would assist our kids with producing a worthwhile and meaning full blog that will give good constructive feedback. Below is what i designed for both my hospo and home ec students

I believe that using these steps the students should be able to understand the requirements that are need for them to met the criteria for each assessment.

Saturday 20th August

So I finally have time to sit back and reflect on a busy few weeks to the start of term three. I even had to take a day off school this week because I was physically exhausted from a busy weekend ( which I'll get to) and my health was fairly poor.

After spending week one getting back into the swing of things after Japan, the school ball was next on the agenda. It was really nice to be a part of this group of young students, because so much was run by and organized by them. It was a fab evening and I've included some photos below of the evening with staff and my mentee

The next event was leadership camp, this is certainly a camp that I enjoy going on. The students are more mature and gave generally come to camp for the right reason. The are wanting to give back to the school, they are ready to take on responsibility around the school and they are starting to appreciate things that have been done for them over the previous three or four years. This year for me was a lot different as I was unable to get current hospo kids to help me out. So I posted it out on Facebook if anyone was interested. What happened next blew me away and words can not explain the appreciation I felt, but three former student all who had been taught by me and we're now working in the hospitality industry offered to give up their days off to come help me. It has left me speechless but at the same time reinstalled my faith in the fact that, as teachers we may not get that instant gratification that we often want from our students, but that at times those special moments come later in life. These three students arrived, took over the kitchen and just got stuff done  they truly are amazing.

Another thing about this year's camp was that it was the first time all form teachers and dean's of the year group were present throughout. We decided it would be cool to take class photos to remember this time together. I really enjoyed being able to get away and re establish that relationship with my form class which had changed since their junior years where u saw them so regularly. I had a core group of kids who I class as my originals, as my class has had so many changes and coming and goings over the past four years. It's so nice to see these guys grow and mature and stepping up into these leadership roles. I can't wait until their final year next year to see what they can achieve. 

On a personal development I have started attending the kapa haka lessons to learn the school haka. It was a really special moment because when this group performs it always gives me chills. But to finally be apart of it and see these kids thriving on this environment and seeing them excel as teachers and helping me as the learner was very refreshing. I look forward to attending more of these and my first performance of the full haka 

forgot to attach this link, we have been talking in staff meetings about maintaining a record of our work and i always worry that i'm not covering all of the criteria so one of our colleges sent us this link to help this this will have to go through it and see if i can add labels or more information to show what i'm doing here over a 12 month period

https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Self%20Assessment%20Tool%20Schooling.pdf

August 3rd
Have not published anything in here for a while life has been fairly busy with lots of school commitments.
Prior to the recent school holidays I was away for a week on Year 10 camp as the head chef for the 60+ students and staff that attended. Below are the Year 12's that went week 1 of camp without me as well as two of the senior leaders that assisted with the camp. It is always a tough job trying to organise and get the food correct with the different food allergies sorted, as well training up the Year 11's who I took away with me this time to ensure they were doing things correctly and getting things done on time. They certainly learnt a lot from the experience and now hopefully understand what goes into the planning and prep for this sort of event.

During the holiday i was lucky to head to Japan with nine of our school students we attending Tokiwagi High School which is our sister school that we have been visiting for over 20 years. I was lucky enough to stay with the Principal and his family. Considering i know very little Japanese it was good for me to be immersed in the culture and try and pick up little phrases and words as i can. It was a tough trip though as i was dependent on my college to help a lot with the translation and when one of our students got sick and ended up being admitted to hospital he had to be there translating and dealing with the insurance claims. This left me dealing with the other eight students and the day to day dealings with them.

Above is the photo of the kids at one of the temples that we traveled to, while the speech is my introduction that i had to do to the staff on the first morning, which was very intimidating and scary as. During my visit to Tokiwagi i also stayed with the Chemisty Teacher Minako and i taught her how to make the traditional lolly Hokey Pokey, she was so excited about it and said she will try and make it with her classes. Can't wait to see how it goes. I will put up a photo when i have downloaded them all.

I am now back at school and it's week two preparing myself for the Leadership Camp and the School Ball

May 3rd

It has been a while since i have posted on here but i think that just goes to show how busy Term One started and the exciting things that are going on at school at the moment. The biggest change is that of the school rebuld. We have taken part in two staff meetings and a Teachers Only Day that was solely focused around the school and how its buildings are going to be designed in relation to how we teach.

A couple of activities that we have had to do so far is 'A day in a life" in which we had to plan out what does a day in my life as my specialist area teacher involve. What activities do we do, how do we present that information and what do our classes look like if someone was to come into it. it has been tough trying to get out of the mind set that its all about flash new gear and individual class rooms for each teacher. Where reality is that so many of our rooms like we know it now will not exist and how our classrooms function will be very different.

The second activity was looking at our activities and how spaces could be utilized to suit these activities. We as staff need to be planning our lessons so they suit what we do rather than creating these spaces and then not knowing how to use them.

A new year new challenges

Feb 29th
So we have been back at school four weeks and I was very kindly remind by a colleague, as she told all our staff that if they wanted a good blogging site re teachers reg to look at mine, eeeekkkkk. So I thought I better update it and reflect on what has occurred in the past four weeks.

Digital technology as a school wide development is huge, HHS is involved with maiakalani who look at getting BYOD up and running in schools. At the end of last year and beginning of this year I have used my time to develop a couple of sites, one linked in with PE and Health called HHS Lifestyles and one for my Hospo kids which you can see screen shots of below, and then with my junior classes getting them to create and design their own sites, where class work and reflections on their practicals can be stored. My reasoning for taking this direction with my students I feel like I wasn't getting enough feedback from them in regards to what they had learnt through their practicals and where they actually making those links from theory classes or not.

It has not all been smooth sailing and getting access to devices has seen the start of this process be a little disjointed and sometimes confusing but I think in the long run it will be easier for me to see just what my students are getting out of the practical lessons in particular.

Another development that I have made is looking at the actual questions I've asked the students to reflect on, rather than just getting them to state what was positive and what can be improved they actually have to look at different sections within their practical lesson, what skills they used, how did the team function, what has changed about their confidence etc etc. by getting them do do this I hope that they will  analysis their work more and actually take time to look at what actually happened in the period

During the holidays I did a little bit of professional development by challenging myself to try and cook new foods from a lovely Japanese cook book gifted to me by departing students. I decided to also keep me honest I would blog about it, if your interested in looking at it you can find it at the blog address below http://myjapanesecooking.blogspot.co.nz

Above is an example of my dumplings that I had a go at cooking which were delicious