2017 Prize-giving address

Tihei Mauri Ora!

Ki nga kaumatua me nga kuia, tena koutou

Ki nga mana whenua ki Ngati Moki me Ngati Ruahekeheke ki taumutu, tena koutou

Ki te Kura Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka, tena koe

Tēnā koutou katoa

Our Board Chair, Mrs Kaye Banks, fellow Board of Trustees members, Te Taumutu runanga, The Hon Dr Megan Woods, Sam Johnson, honoured guests, colleagues, parents and friends, ladies and gentlemen, students of Hornby High School  - welcome to this 43rd senior prize giving of Hornby High School.

Whakatauki:

He pakaru a waka e taea te raupine mai

A damaged vehicle can be repaired

Kaye Banks, Jonty Ward, Donna Sutherland and Rochelle Jackson have served on the Board this past year, and they were joined by Mrs Penny Devine who was seconded to the Board.  George Wharerau was elected as the new student representative. Thankyou to you all for for time, work and wisdom, this is important work that you do.

Thanks to our outgoing student representative Rylu DeQuita for the term you have served on the Board.

In education, change is our norm, and this past year has been as challenging as any other in this regard. Hornby High School was one of the first Christchurch secondary school rebuilds ‘out of the starting blocks’, with the first sod turned in May and work now proceeding apace. Large holes have been dug, copious quantities of concrete poured, and steel work has risen from well engineered foundations.

The year has seen a number of staff movements. Mrs Helen Boothby spent the first two terms of the year on a Royal Society Fellowship in science leadership, and was ably replaced by Dr William Naylor. At the beginning of the year we were joined by Mrs Jan Handley (HOD Social Sciences), Mrs Jane Turner (History), Mr Tony Palmer (SENCO), and Ms Mel Lindsay (Year 7). Mrs Janette Merrin returned as HOD Health after a prolonged period working on contract with the Ministry of Education.

At the beginning of term 2 we welcomed Whaea Latoya Graham who joined us as our kapahaka tutor. At the end of term 2 we farewelled Mrs Sue Elley as Assistant Principal, as she left to take up the position as Principal of Belfast School. We welcomed Mr Simon Scott as Assistant Principal early in term 4.

Miss Lynda Seaton, our librarian, left us at the end of term 1 and Mrs Nicole Sowman joined us to fill that role in our very much reduced temporary library facility. We farewelled Mrs Lynda O’Donnell (ESOL and English) on maternity leave, and welcomed Mrs Karyn Langer working part time in the Art department, along with Ms Maryanne Ducray working in ESOL  .

Finally tonight we farewell Mrs Wendy Toohey, a long time servant of the school. Wendy joined the staff of Hornby High School in 1988 and in her 29 & half at the school has taught Commerce subjects in addition to the role she has held over recent years as HOD Careers and Transition. Would you please join me in thanking Wendy for her years of service to the school?

In 2016 the school Board showed its own fortitude and foresight in building our educational foundations by adopting it’s brave new mission for our kura to be a centre of creative excellence, and on review in 2017 affirmed that mission. The mission shows great courage and a deep understanding of where we need to be to meet the needs of students’ futures rather than our pasts. This is also a Board with heart, a Board that places people at the centre of its thinking. I was proud to be a member of a Board that agreed early in the year to ensure that no staff member was paid less than the living wage. Thank you for being so forward thinking in these most critical governance tasks.

I do a lot of thinking about you our students and your future. It’s interesting that in some of that thinking I ended up with some old wisdom. I found myself thinking of the serenity prayer which comes from the Christian tradition. It says:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

And then, because I was a sixties child, the words of George Bernard Shaw spoken by Robert F Kennedy in one of his most famous speeches of the 60s came to mind:

“There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

To the students amongst you, your challenge is to dream. Your future cannot and must not look like our past. Not only is it yours to create, you have no choice but to change it if humanity and the planet are to survive. Change things. Don’t take no for an answer.

That means being confident as a learner and a human being, and that confidence comes when you are well grounded in values. Never forget the values that we try to live day by day in our school, hour by hour, minute by minute, for nothing else will serve you as well in life.

For those of us who work in education there is a parallel message. More testing is not the answer, and I applaud the announcement of the new government on National Standards. Education with passion and purpose, education that validates every student and every teacher, education that allows every student to pursue her or his passion, is the only game in town. Society and governments need to stop seeing students solely as economic units, and instead see them as the passionate human beings that they are. If we can feed their passions, and our own, we will build a more caring more empathetic society, a better place to be.

I am a fan of the writing and thinking or Sir Ken Robinson, globally acknowledged commentator on and agitator for educational reform. In his book ‘Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Schools” he wrote:

“In 1982, Wayne Gretzky was the top scoring ice hockey player in the world. His secret, he said, was simple. Other players tend to race to where the puck is. Gretzky said that he went where the puck was going to be. It’s hard to resist the thought that in the mad rush to standardisation, many countries are now dashing to where they think the puck is rather than to where it’s going to be.” End of quote .

We have an idea of where the puck is going to be, and we need to get there now.

There are many people and organisations that need to be acknowledged and thanked at this time of year. First and foremost are my wonderful colleagues. Regardless of whether they are teaching or non teaching staff they all do a wonderful job. Teaching staff deliver the learning, but that is not possible without all of the many support functions that sit alongside them: grounds and maintenance, security, administration and accounts, community and pastoral support, all completed by wonderful people. Thankyou.

I would like to once again make special mention of the extraordinary work that is going on within Hornby High School, and across our local cluster (Uru Mānuka), with the Manaiakalani programme. The word manaiakalani is a Hawaiian word translating as ‘Hook from Heaven’, and the approach to learning has been acknowledged globally as being a leading global force in educational improvement. It received special mention from The Economist magazine’s Intelligence Unit in a paper titled “Driving the skills agenda: Preparing students for the future.” The pedagogy that underlies the programme, Learn Create Share, and the effect of digital technology in magnifying the impact of the pedagogy, have allowed learners in the Manaiakalani clusters across the country to accelerate their learning by between one and a half and two times the national average for all learners. I emphasise that the impact is magnified by the use of digital devices, Chromebooks, and it is now our school wide expectation that all learners arrive in class equipped with a Chromebook. The impact of the pedagogy and the technology are so huge that one would simply ask the question “Why wouldn’t you?”

In this regard there is another set of thanks that must be made, to the Principals and staff of our partnership schools in the Uru Mānuka cluster. The work you do is extraordinary. You pass to us ‘enabled learners’, children well equipped and ready to learn. Before Communities of Learning were fashionable, before collaboration became a buzzword, you were doing it, and you are still doing it. Thank you.

And once again to the originators and principal drivers of Manaiakalani itself: Mr Pat Sneddon, Mrs Dorothy Burt, and Mr Russell Burt. Your work that has gone before us has truly created a hook for heaven, a force for educational change and improvement that addresses the issue of equity in New Zealand in a powerful and compelling way. You are trailblazers in what at times can feel like a bleak landscape. Keep your lanterns lit, keep your voices strong, keep that spring in your step. Tamariki across New Zealand need you.

Manaiakalani is a great example of the drive for change, change that is evidence based, change that works. It is an example of schools and their supporters saying that we are not prepared to wait for government agencies. All too often political and bureaucratic forces ignore the knowledge and skills of teachers and schools, suffering under the belief that they know better, a view interestingly at odds with the incredibly forward thinking national curriculum. We know what to do, and we will do it ourselves. To those government agencies I say, catch up if you can but we won’t wait for you, our tamariki are too precious, time is too short.

The most recent innovation is the foundation of the Uru Mānuka Trust, an organisation designed to make sure that the Manaiakalani programme is sustainable in the long term for all of the wonderful schools in our cluster. I would like to acknowledge and thank the trustees here tonight: Mr Garry Moore, Chair, Mrs Janine Morrell-Gunn, Mrs Rose Crossland and Mr Jason Marsden.  Mr Gary Roberts, You have all seen the potential for change that is manaiakalani, and have freely and willingly given of your time to make the world a better place. Principal of Hornby Primary School is deserving is special mention for the drive and passion that he has brought to the pursuit of this amazing educational vision. Thank you.

To our many supporting organisations, thankyou. As always, a special mention of the Hub and Hornby Working Men’s Club as long term supporters of our wonderful tamariki. Actions speak louder than words. By your actions you demonstrate your understanding of the desirability of investing in your local community and our collective futures by supporting our tamariki. Please be assured that you do make a positive difference.

Thank you also to our many other supporters:

L CERT Trust

Mainland Foundation

CSG Technology Limited

ISS Facilities Services

Westpac Trust - Hornby Branch

Orica Chemicals

Hornby Rotary Club

Couplands

Finally, to our prize winners, well done. Tonight we acknowledge and celebrate your attitude, your persistence and your achievement. The prizes we award acknowledge only one part of the wonderful achievement represented here tonight, and throughout the school.

I would ask you to take these words, which again come from the Christian tradition, but which reflect so much of our school message to you, regardless of faith and belief. Interestingly you can find the sentiment in almost any faith. This is an adaptation of the words of Sir Francis Drake, written in the fifteenth century:

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

Nothing could be more true in the twenty first century.

To our 2017 Prefects, thank you for your leadership and your commitment to the school, and to all of our leavers - please know that you take with you our best wishes, and the knowledge that at Hornby High School you have your turangawaewae, your place to stand. You are an outstanding group of young men and women. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Noreira tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa

Manaiakalani, Learn Create Share, and digital learning

The history of education in the twentieth century is littered with the corpses of what, at the time, seemed like good ideas. Most of them I suspect were driven by a political imperative, the political desire of some nascent politician to make her or his mark, to go down in the history books as the one who reformed education. All too often these good ideas have been drive by political ideologies that were possibly never fit for purpose.

I also suspect, as a matter of opinion, that they have at times not been driven by any moral imperative at all.

What I suspect we can also say is that often these reforms have at best been driven by what seemed to be a good idea, by what logic told people was correct, what would work, all based on some mental model that had come from who knows where.

Worst of all, again in my opinion, I suspect all too many of them have completely failed to address the things that we know cause learning. Well, now things are different. At least, they are different within the Uru Mānuka cluster, and within the Manaiakalani clusters across New Zealand.

Last week I had the privilege of attending the Manaiakalani wananga hosted by Point England School, along with Principals and staff from almost all of the 50+ participating schools. We were presented with a rapidly growing, reliable and authentic body of research accumulated by the Woolf Fisher Research Centre (Auckland University). The data is clear:

Participation in the Manaiakalani programme for at least three years accelerates student achievement  by between 150% and 200%. Interestingly in our own cluster we are seeing gains of this magnitude within one year. So successful is the programme that it is being promoted globally as an outstanding force for acceleration in educational achievement. Here is what the Economist's Economic Intelligence Unit had to say. So successful is the programme that it is expected to expand to 100 participating schools in 2018.

Why is it so successful?

1. It is based on a sound pedagogy - 'Learn Create Share'
2. It uses technology to magnify student thinking, engagement, and so achievement based on that pedagogy 
3. There is no 3. .. it's honestly that simple.

We are seeing a lot of debate about modern or flexible learning spaces, and about devices. These debates miss the point. Either of them will fail if we do not see sound modern pedagogy being used by competent teachers. These approaches are being criticised because they undermine relationships. Sorry - but feel free to hear the big red buzzer of 'fail' on that one. It doesn't matter what the physical environment, nor the technology in student hands. Good relationships come down to good teachers. Although as we say at Hornby High School, it's not 'relationships' that matter but 'Relationships for learning' that matter.

While in Auckland I was also privileged to spend all too short a time at Tamaki College, the secondary school which is a part of the original Manaiakalani programme. All I can say is 'WOW'. I saw a school filed with amazing young people, confident, polite and caring, and focussed on their own learning. They represent something that we can all aspire to.

The focus on the pedagogy must be single minded. It requires every ounce of skill that every teacher can muster.  At Hornby High School we are already seeing the benefits of Manaiakalani with the students that arrive from our partnership schools in the Uru Mānuka cluster. These schools are using flexible learning environments, these schools are using 1:1 Chromebooks. They are delivering into our hands students who are better able to manage their learning now than ever before, students who are more focussed on their learning than ever before, students who can manage their own behaviour and time better than ever before. How do we know? The research evidence gathered from sources such as the NZCER 'Me and My school' survey shows dramatic improvements in these attributes as measured by the survey. The observations and experiences of our Year 7 teachers confirms this. Does that sound like a failure of flexible learning spaces, and the use of digital devices?

Our Hornby High School vision to be 'A centre of creative excellence' is no coincidence. It was chosen partly because creativity is essential to human progress in the face of technological development. It was also chosen because 'create' is at the centre of the Manaiakalani pedagogy 'Learn Create Share'.

The Manaiakalani pedagogy and programme are being driven nationally by three gifted and visionary people: Mr Pat Sneddon, Mrs Dorothy Burt, and Mr Russell Burt. These are exciting times to be in education. Our tamariki are fortunate to have such people at their service, people who have successfully harnessed the collective focus of the staff of 50 schools so far, with that extra 50 schools coming on board next year.

Be aware though that perhaps the greatest failure in education has been the failure to sustain initiatives long enough for them to take effect. Often these initiatives come and go alongside our three year electoral cycle, yet change of this sort needs 8-10 years minimum to become truly embedded. If we are producing these results now, what might this look like in 10 years time?

Hornby High School, and the Uru Mānuka cluster, are in this for the long haul. Watch out world - we are about to unleash a generation of intelligent, critical, creative thinkers who won't take NO for an answer.

Robin Sutton
Principal

On the pathway to creative excellence

Learn Create Share, the critical pedagogy of the Manaiakalani programme, develops students' key skills as they work towards creative excellence.

In the workshop today we found students of 9Mn learning new skills, creating a specific product (a balance toy) and sharing their work as they progress on their individualised learning pathways.

Students were learning critical skills such as self management and planning (the use of GANT charts to plan their work), the use of tools and machinery (drill press, and welding torch for example), and their imagination, as they worked towards the completion of their individualised product, and the sharing of their progress on their blogs.

The class was technology rich in both a digital sense, and the more traditional hand tools and machinery sense, as students had their hands on a wide range of tools and equipment. The engagement amongst the students was high as they focussed on their individual tasks.

Of special note was what educationists, in their jargon, call 'agency'. That is, the obvious management and control that students were exhibiting over their own learning.

These are all essential ingredients of any pathway towards creative excellence.

Learning to take risks

Last Christmas I saw the movie Moana. Maybe you did too. I loved it. It reminded me of this fabulous whakatauki:

Tēnā te ngaru whati,

Tēnā te ngaru puku

There is a wave that breaks,

There is a wave that swells

It got me thinking and reading about our Polynesian navigators.  These voyagers navigated across thousands of miles of ocean, able to move from one island to the next with no maps, no compasses, no sextants, none of those 'European' inventions that we might think are essential to long distance navigation. We would be insulting to label their techniques as primitive in some way. That implies superiority of the European tradition over the Polynesian, when these peoples were successfully travelling across those thousands of miles of empty oceans while Europeans were often still unwilling to sail beyond visible land masses along the coasts of the Mediterranean, or the Atlantic.

I was fascinated by how they did this. They used a whole range of techniques including use of the stars, the movement of ocean currents and wave patterns, the air and sea interference patterns caused by islands and atolls, the flight of birds, the winds and the weather. From this knowledge they were able to set out on their own journeys of discovery, journeys that involved great risk, journeys that created their own futures. And none of this knowledge was written down as we would know it today. No iPhones, no Apps, no text of any kind, this was maintained by oral tradition.

This got me thinking about our own journey, our journey towards our lofty goal as ‘A centre of creative excellence’. There are lots of similarities. We don’t have a map. While we have clever modern technologies they don’t tell us how to get there. That's down to us, the people. He tangata he tangata he tangata. We have a lofty aspiration, a hope, a dream, that this is somewhere out there, and we have to go find it.

Like the Polynesian navigators, we have to learn stuff. We are creating our own pathways, our own futures. The things we learn we have to share because working together makes us much stronger than we are as individuals. We have to believe we can do this. It’s called a growth mindset.

And like those Polynesian navigators we have to take risks. At this stage in our kids' lives they have to develop the ability to take risks, and to know which risks are worth taking. That’s a part of their school journey.

What does that look like? We had one fantastic example of what it could look like to learn to take risks. Two weeks ago we held our 2017 talent quest. The school prefects organised the event. The highest number of students that anyone can remember for many years came forward and auditioned. Of those, five acts went through to the finals. They now know what it is like to put yourself out there in front of a packed auditorium and perform. The prefects similarly know what it is like to put yourself out there for others to look at. For every one of us, putting ourselves in front of others, setting ourselves up for possible criticism, is a huge risk. We all tend to think that people will hate us, that people will be overly critical about us. That creates anxiety - the pulse quickens, the mouth goes dry, we start sweating. But that’s what we all need to do a little more often.

Our vision includes the word ‘excellence’. For those Polynesian voyagers nothing less than excellence would do. Anything else meant death, For us, for different reasons, nothing less than excellence will do. It is our future. For our students ‘excellence’ means success. It means success NOW. It means access to the sort of life they want. It means giving everything their best shot, because they are WORTH it. It means making sure that every assessment they tackle gets their greatest effort, every time. It means going into the exam room at the end of the year determined to give themselves their best shot, because what they do is for them, not for anyone else.

Who amongst our students will be the next millionaire? The next developer of a world changing app? The next national league or basketball star? The next great advocate for human rights? For the future of Te Reo?

'Learn Create Share' is all about just that. It's about learning to take risks, to create stuff, to learn while doing it, to share that creation with others. The 'creation' might be something physical like a 3D printed object or a sculpture. It could equally be a poem or an opinion written in a blog. The world needs more wealth creators not wealth consumers. It needs people willing to take a risk, to stand up and stand out, people willing to 'Learn Create Share'.

Like those Polynesian navigators, we are steering by our own stars, making our own way towards our destination as ‘A centre of creative excellence’.

A defining question in focussing on creativity

Recently I was listening to a Radio New Zealand interview with a guest discussing leadership. In the interview was a discussion about what created successful organisations. One specific example really caught my attention, and it was the strategy used by Sir Peter Blake in engineering back to back America's Cup wins for Team New Zealand.

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/assignments/has-the-americas-cup-runneth-over-for-nz/10228227/Americas-Cup-battle-of-the-huge-wallets


Here is a lovely description I found on the web:

But Peter Blake was a practical New Zealander and a veteran of ocean sailing and racing so instead of fancy spread sheets and performance metrics, he focused the team on one single strategy:  Will it make the boat go faster?

Every decision was evaluated against that one simple, yet holistic and powerful statement.  The team began to rethink everything they knew about sailing and racing with this one strategy in mind.  Training and team composition changed, equipment size and weight changed, sails changed.  Even the crew comforts were looked at through the eyes of “will it make the boat go faster?”

The results, real team spirit, alignment and focus, and back to back wins in 1995 and 2000.

Source: https://blog.johnrchildress.com/2011/09/27/will-it-make-the-boat-go-faster/

My question is what our Hornby High School equivalent might be.

I think it is "Will it foster creative excellence?" Perhaps this is a question we should ask of every single thing we do. If aspiring to be 'a centre of creative excellence' is the vision, then why would we do anything that didn't ultimately support the achievement of that vision?

R Sutton
Principal

Creativity and risk taking

Our vision for Hornby High School ('A centre of creative excellence') is pretty big. Trying to get there could be likened to trying to eat an elephant (not that I am suggesting really eating these beautiful creatures.....)

How do you do that?" Well - one bite at a time, of course. So we broke the vision down into three strategic goals, one of which is "To foster inspirational, risk taking and enterprising leadership in all members of our learning community".

This goal generated a lot of questions when it was first revealed, and in our own minds early justification lay with the idea that successful people are prepared to give things a try, to take a risk, and be resilient enough to accept failure. This left unsaid the idea that there is a basic relationship between risk taking and creativity, something I made reference to in an earlier blog.

This notion of risk taking can be thought of at two levels. The first is the need to take risks to generate new ideas. In a delightful article about Albert Einstein and risk taking, author Steven Kotler suggested:

When the brain encounters unfamiliar stimuli under uncertain conditions—especially when those are dangerous uncertain conditions—baser instincts take over. As a result, brain’s the rational extrinsic system is shunted aside in favor of the intuitive creative system.  Simply put, in an effort to save our own butts, the brain’s pattern recognition system starts hunting through every possible database to hunt up a solution.

He also suggested:

Risk, therefore, causes the mind to stretch its muscles. It creates mandatory conditions for innovation. It trains the brain to think in unusual ways. It trains the brain to be more creative.

So risk is essential to the creative process.

Risk can, I think, be seen in another way too, one very relevant to most us, and especially to teenagers and education. The simple act of sharing something we have created feels very much like taking a risk. The risk comes from the fear of criticism, the fear that others will 'bag you' because what you have produced isn't good enough.

Here is a personal example. In my recent ANZAC Day address at the local Hornby service, I read a poem (a villanelle, to be precise - see if you can spot the pattern that gives it this form). People in the audience commented afterwards that they enjoyed it. What I didn't say at the time is that I wrote this in 2010.

For reference, here is the poem:

What are we remembering?

Oh Glorious acts beheld in history's gaze
In written tomes of acts performed when brave men fought,
Tales abound of men gone past before their days.

Such chronicles of deeds are writ in bloody ways,
From writers who with backward glance their stories wrought
Oh Glorious acts beheld in history's gaze.

Speakers voice with rapture acts that daze
In ways that prompt imagining and thought,
Tales abound of men gone past before their days.

These tales become more mawkish with time's haze
As fewer marchers march with mem’ries fraught,
Oh Glorious acts beheld in history's gaze.

Ghosts of men long gone absorb the praise
Although 'twas not the act their actions sought,
Tales abound of men gone past before their days.

Sunrise welcomes new remembrance days
Do we march each year because we ought?
Oh Glorious acts beheld in history's gaze
Tales abound of men gone past before their days


On reflection it's interesting that, despite my age, I was slightly fearful of revealing that I was responsible for this act of creativity. How then do we expect teenagers to feel? As school Principal, as the one privileged to lead and be a part of such a wonderful team and such a wonderful community, surely I should be prepared to do what I expect others to do?

All of this I write to support yet again the 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy, the pedagogy that is the foundation of the Manaiakalani programme that underlies our approach to learning at Hornby High School. This is why we identified promoting responsible risk taking as a fundamental part of the plan to become 'A centre of creative excellence'.

The act of sharing is by its very nature an example of risk taking (think about how I might feel having just published  a poem I wrote seven years ago). This is what we are asking of our young people. And so the act of sharing should stimulate even more creativity. It's not a one way relationship.

Having written all of this, maybe we need to challenge the suggestion I have made about responsible risk taking too. Maybe creativity is stimulated even more in the brains of those teens who are prone to hurtle downhill on their mountain bikes, or throw themselves into a tackle on the league field with everything they've got. If we believe what Kotler said in the article I referenced above, maybe the bigger the risk the more we unleash the creative power that lies within all of our minds.

Maybe bullrush should be mandatory in the school playground? Maybe climbing apparatus in school adventure playgrounds should be higher still?

But I never said that.

Robin Sutton
Principal

Aligning pedagogy and buildings for creativity and excellence

It was Sir Winston Churchill who said 'We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us". We have completed detailed design, the contracts have been let, and the contractors are on site for our (almost) complete school rebuild.

We have taken our time to think carefully about the pedagogy that we think should drive learning at Hornby High School. Remember that 'pedagogy' is just a piece of jargon meaning 'how we cause learning to happen'. Our pedagogy is best described by these three words 'Learn Create Share'. - the pedagogy of Manaiakalani. From that we chose to make our mission to be 'A centre of creative excellence'. How have we tried to make the built environment reflect that vision, and that pedagogy?

Our first desire was to try to make the school (well the school entrance) as little like a school as we could. That was the second thing I ever said to the architects, and this is the result - the Waterloo Road entrance to the school as it will appear later in 2018.

Why did I want that? If we are to succeed in engaging whanau and community, we have to break down the barriers that many may feel based upon their own often less than inspiring experiences of schools in decades past. I wanted to make sure that the architecture would present the least barrier possible.

The next question was - how can we create buildings that support creativity?

In it's most obvious form, in our specialist teaching spaces we have placed the creative arts at the centre of those spaces, with sciences, foods, and technologies placed physically around them.

It seemed obvious to us (and the architects) that creating 'functional adjacencies' (don't you just love that jargon? It means making use of the cross-overs or common elements between different departments) would more likely support teacher and student collaboration. So we placed these subject areas together. We want staff AND students to share their ideas around the creative process.

In the more general teaching spaces we have created a mix of small and large spaces that support student collaboration (working together). We have also made sure that there are plenty of spaces that will support student activities creating .. well, creating 'stuff'. So our 'learning hubs' as we currently refer to them will all have areas suitable for lower end sciences, arts and technologies. By 'lower end' I mean those that require less in the way of specialist equipment rather than meaning less demanding. It's all demanding. Our aim is to support the process and the act of creation, whether it be in drama or foods, electronics or painting, chemistry or physics.

All of these spaces surround a whare and a central courtyard. We are a community, a community that values and respects its cultural origins, and its need to work, live and play together.

Our current challenge is to reshape our pedagogy, those approaches that we use to cause learning. We see this as a step by step process. While schools elsewhere in the world have done this, we cannot expect to simply copy their journey and their solutions. No-one has done this before in our Hornby secondary school community, we have to develop our own solutions, our 'Hornby Way' if you like.

The basis for excellent achievement right throughout the school is the development of high level skills in the junior school. One of the strategies we are using to improve those skills at the junior level is to extend our 'connected curriculum' from Years 7 and 8 into Years 9 and 10.  The highly successful business kete, and arts kete, developed and run in Years 7 and 8 are being pushed out to Years 9 (2017) and 10 (2018).

A very successful trial in project based learning in 2016 is being further developed in 2017.

We are trying to take more learning risks; progress never occurs unless we are prepared to take risks. Our third strategic goal is "To foster inspirational, risk taking and enterprising leadership in all members of our learning community". This goes for staff as well as students. And just as for students so it has to be said for staff that 'it's okay to fail'.

We are pushing hard to develop the use of digital tools in our students' learning. Digital tools are acknowledged as an accelerator of learning, as long as they are used with new pedagogies. Using new technology to do what we have always done is, as Alan November would say, simply creating a $1000 pencil. The evidence being accumulated by the Woolf Fisher Research Centre out of Auckland University supports the belief that the technology, combined with the Learn Create Share pedagogy, is an accelerator. Actually it's more than that, it's a game changer for our learners.

So we have shaped our buildings, and we are shifting our pedagogy. When the first of our new buildings is opened in later 2018 we'll enter that phase where our buildings will shape us. We will make yet another step along the path of our journey to become 'A centre of creative excellence'.

Our growing understanding of what creativity looks like

What will it look like once we are that centre of creative excellence that we aspire to be? None of us knows yet. I have given examples of what creativity could look like in the daily life of a school, and each of these still holds true.

However even after only 6 months on the journey we are coming to other ways of thinking about creative excellence too. Here's one.

Creative excellence could involved all members of our community being prepared to take more risks with our learning. Let me give a couple of examples for our teaching staff.

Our music and drama teachers came to us and said, let us work together in common or shared spaces. Let's both work in what until now we have called the auditorium and music rooms. Let's redevelop our ways of working so that we are more collaborative, so that we integrate what we do for the benefit of students. I had already asked the Board to use some funds to support what the Ministry of Education terms 'pedagogical prototyping', which when translated means playing around with different ways of causing learning. The money was tagged specifically to altering the physical structures of our built environment, and the furniture with which we work.

Now if you have never worked in a school you may wonder how hard that can be but trust me, as a teacher that's one heck of a scary thing to suggest. Its one heck of a risk to take because it means working in ways that you haven't done before. It's like asking an engineer to re-imagine the motorcar.

After one term these staff has done amazing things. They have had great moments, and dreadful moments. But they have been risk takers, and they have learned. They are in the process of re-imagining performing arts education within our Hornby High School context within the new space that we have called 'Whare toi whakaari'.

Another example: I have also been pushing for the extension of our Business and Arts kete from just years 7 and 8, to include Year 9 this year, and year 10 next year.  As stand alone units for Years 7 and 8 these have been very successful, building incredibly high levels of student engagement and achievement. But they are not the way classes traditionally work in Years 9 and 10. Staff have been resourced with the time to work collaboratively to think through how this could work. In the last few weeks of the term Heads of Department had a series of those 'aha' moments that can only be described as in the best traditions of 'creative excellence'. We have a definite way forward, an exciting way forward. It may not be our final answer, but we have to take risks to improve, and it's worth remembering (as I say to our staff) that by definition sometimes risks don't pay off. But it's okay to fail!!!! We just have to learn from each failure, to not repeat the same failure.

A final example: Our mathematicians came to us and said "can we knock holes in walls, can we open up the spaces between clasrooms? That would allow us more flexibility to group and regroup students to better support their learning." We said yes.

These examples represent an evolution of practice, the willingness to take risks, that will I think be a defining part of our culture of 'creative excellence'.

It would be odd for us to expect our students to use our Manaiakalani pedagogy 'Learn Create Share' if we weren't also willing to use it ourselves to support our own professional learning and development.

As a footnote, the development of a growth mindset and a willingness to take enterprising risks is one of our three strategic goals. We have seen the beginnings of a return to the willingness of years ago for students to try new things, to perform in public, to put themselves out there and take risks whether on the stage or the league field. There is a long way to go, but such risk taking for our students is also an essential part of their 'Learn Create Share' journey.

And you know what? At the risk of jinxing things, achievement in the school as measured with internal NCEA standards is tracking ahead of last year at the end of term 1. It's early days, but this is an aspirational thing. We need to dream big dreams, to believe.

We are building a broader understanding of what creative excellence may look like at Hornby High School.

Nga mihi nui
R Sutton
Principal

Learn Create Share .. the pathway to creative excellence

Our vision to be 'a centre of creative excellence' is pretty clear, and awareness of this is increasing in our community. Of course as I have now noted many times a vision is a statement of aspiration, of a desired future. It is meaningless unless we have clearly defined and measurable steps to take us along the path towards that vision.

Our strategic and annual goals shape that pathway, and the first of our strategic goals is "To provide future focussed individualised learning", and the first annual goal to direct our action is to "Embed the culturally responsive pedagogy ‘Learn Create Share’ to develop future focussed individualised learners".

As I am out and about in the school my 'personal radar' is finely tuned looking for signs that these goals are driving the learning that takes place in classrooms.

Today was a day marked with a couple of spontaneous and notable signs that we are moving along the right track.

The first occurred when one of our Year 8 teachers came in to my study proudly showing me this amazing brochure.

She handed it to me saying 'There you are, that's learn create share' right there". A group of Year 8 boys had designed and created this information brochure about the school. Their target audience was parents, and the sample was notable because it contained some very creative design elements, and it was thoughtfully executed with both the writing and the quality production.

I stumbled across the second example when popping into a classroom for quite a different purpose. I snuck in to avoid interrupting the teacher's flow, and there she was talking about 'Learn Create Share', with the words clearly displayed on the whiteboard.

 'Mighty oaks from little acorns grow'. (Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, 1374)

Learn Create Share is a vital part of our quest for creative excellence, a vital part of our strategy to accelerate learning for all learners.

Robin Sutton
Principal

Creative excellence: getting involved

Our vision for Hornby High School is 'A centre of creative excellence'.

A vision is an aspiration, a statement of an ideal future state. But it should also be an inspiration, a motivation do something different, a call to action to change the way things are at the moment.

If you don't know what those actions should be, the aspiration is likely to fail. We can't change things if no-one knows what they are expected to do to change them in the first place.

For the next three plus years our Board has set three strategic goals, three big things that it wants to achieve, and these are:

• To provide future focussed individualised learning
• To create and sustain an inclusive learning community
• To foster inspirational, risk taking and enterprising leadership in all members of our learning community

The first of these is the one that explicitly refers to the academic learning that we want for our tamariki, and to drive that we have this annual goal:

• Embed the culturally responsive pedagogy ‘Learn Create Share’ to develop future focussed individualised learners

'Learn Create Share' is the pedagogy of the Manaiakalani programme on which we are hanging so much of our academic development.

Let's think about what that means.

Students have to learn 'stuff'. This 'stuff 'will be a combination of content knowledge and skills, and personal skills (we call these 'key competencies' like being able to work with others, think critically and creatively, or manage themselves effectively). So don't let others convince you that schools don't teach knowledge anymore. That's still the cornerstone of what we do. After all, you can't think in a vacuum, you can't think if you have nothing to think about.

How is this different from the past? In the past knowing 'stuff' was enough. Now it isn't. Now, students need to be able to do something with that 'stuff', that knowledge. They need to be able to 'create' new 'stuff.'

This creation could take many different forms. In an English class it might mean writing a poem, or an essay, or creating a movie clip. In a visual arts class it might mean creating a sculpture. In a technology class it might mean 3D printing a dragon. In a music class it might mean creating a performance. In a business class it might mean creating a small business entity to produce and sell a good or a service. It could mean creating and performing a social action in a way that changes our world for the better. For example, promoting more effective litter control or recycling, promoting the planting of flowers to attract and sustain bees, or undertaking a food collection to donate food to a food bank (these are actual examples that some of our Year 10 students tackled in their project based learning in 2016).

These are the more obvious examples. But what about a maths class? Or a language class?

Well, it could just as easily mean creating a short video that explains how to solve a multiplication problem (any problem, for that matter). In a language class it might mean creating a short video clip that explains a point of grammar, or offers up new vocabulary and how to use it. In the jargon of education, these are called 'digital learning objects'.

It's hard to motivate learners to learn and create unless there is a purpose for that creation. As human beings we mostly prefer being with others, so a really powerful way to give any creation a purpose is to share our creations with others.

And at Hornby High School (in fact, across Manaiakalani schools generally) a really important sharing tool is the personal blog. Every student has a blog, and on that every student is being asked to share their learning and their creation.

These blogs are open to the world, so anyone can see them, anyone can make comment. We talk about having an authentic audience, and about making learning visible. That is the main purpose of the blogs (although they also leave us with a lovely record of learning and achievement).

This is where you as whanau come in. One of the most powerful things that you can do is to get involved with your child's learning. Ask to read their blogs, make comments, give your children feedback, ask questions, offer praise, get involved. This is one of the actions that you can take to improve the learning and the lives of your tamariki.

The evidence supporting the impact of this technology and this approach is growing all the time. The data collected by the Woolf Fisher Research Centre (Auckland University) from across our cluster of schools (we are called the Uru Manuka cluster) shows clear acceleration in our students' writing, reading and maths. By acceleration we mean that they are improving faster than the national averages for children of their age.

That makes sense. Students are more in control of their learning, they are writing more, and they are creating for a real audience. If we want our kids to become better writers, they have to write more. This is powerful stuff.

If you are not sure how to do that, ask your tamariki. We are hoping to run some whanau evenings in which we can help you to understand how to use your child's Chromebook to do just this. Keep an eye open for more information.

Oh, and in the meantime, our heartiest congratulations to every one of you who has made that investment in your child's future by buying that Chromebook. We do understand the sacrifice that this rerquires. Be assured that it really does make a positive difference.

Nga mihi nui
Robin Sutton
Principal

When everyone knows the destination ..... take the first step.

Knowing your destination gives any journey a purpose. What's more, when you know your destination, then it becomes far easier to select a route, a pathway. So with Hornby High School's destination decided - 'A centre of creative excellence' - it becomes possible to plan and begin the journey.

Our journey began late last year when we announced to the world that our destination was our collective aspiration to be that centre of creative excellence, and I take every opportunity I can to lay the same challenge at the feet of every person connected with our kura: what will you be doing that will move us closer to that destination, to that aspirational state?

I lay the challenge at the feet of staff, I lay that challenge at the feet of students, and I lay that challenge at the feet of whanau. At our Mihi Whakatau for our new students, I told them exactly what our vision is, and asked them to think about what creative excellence might look like for each and every one of them. That's a hard question to answer when you are a Year 7 student, maybe 11 years old. However it's a hard question to answer regardless of how old you are, for it's not a challenge that many of us have faced before, it's a question that pushes all of us a long way outside our comfort zones.

Staff began their year asking themselves exactly that question. I challenged them to try to imagine what creative excellence might look like across these five areas of our kura:

• the classroom
• day to day school organisation
• pastoral systems
• co-curricular activities, and
• community and whanau engagement

There was a lot of discussion, and many suggestions came from our brainstorming.  Here are just a very few of the wide ranging suggestions that came from staff.

• Students have a say in what they learn how they are assessed and how they present it
• Students are not afraid to share ideas, trial, experiment and learn from mistakes or errors
• Creativity will be students learn concepts in their own way, presenting in their own way, and sharing on a medium of their choosing.
• Connected curriculum
• Creativity is based on 3  components , knowledge , critical thinking processes and most importantly motivation(intrinsic or extrinsic ). To establish a truly creative centre of excellence students would need to find their own individual drivers and their "why"
• Once a student gains interest there is nothing worse than saying - time's up - pack up and move on to your next class.  Why not allow a student to spend 3-4 continuous hours on a project - which ideally will then include all aspects - maths, science, technology etc
• Classes are based around rewindable learning. Students are set problems/activities/tasks to achieve in an expected time and physical space with the teacher providing support and ideas to solve problems. Classes are designed to reflect this space.
• Vertical whanau groups. Opportunities for whanau, students and staff to gather informally to get a greater sense of belonging.
• Give option of whanau evenings at home or traditional 'at school' parent/teacher interviews

When we plan a journey, we also need to know how we will travel, we need a vehicle to take us there. That question has already been answered: our vehicle will be our pedagogy of 'Learn Create Share', the underlying pedagogy of the Manaiakalani programme. It is no coincidence that the middle word of the pedagogy is 'create'.

In an early walk around classes today I developed a sense of satisfaction at the calm settled nature of the students and their classes. I was encouraged when, on entering one class, the teacher asked the students 'what are we trying to develop in this class?' The answer came back reasonably quickly 'creative excellence sir'.

It will be a long journey, but as the Chinese philosopher Lao is supposed to have said 'a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step'.

And as with any journey:

E huri to aroaro ki te ra,

tukuna to ataarangi

ki muri i a koe

Turn your face to the sun

and let your shadow fall behind you

Starting our journey towards creative excellence

I've been thinking a lot about this creativity thing. We have embarked on an exciting new phase of our growth and development as a school with this new vision as 'a centre of creative excellence'. It connects perfectly with the manaiakalani pedagogy 'Learn Create Share' to which we have 'nailed our colours', and the nationwide data being gathered by Auckland University's Woolf Fisher Centre supports the effectiveness or impact of the pedagogy, and the corresponding use of digital tools, to improve learning.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, we now need to get stuck into a whanau/community wide discussion that helps us to understand what we mean by creativity.

When the vision was first unveiled for staff, a number asked if the word 'innovative' wouldn't be better than the word 'creative'. I was enormously grateful for this response for two reasons.

It told me that we weren't suffering from 'group think', that situation where people think they should just shut up and agree with everyone else. At the heart of our future must lie the growth of our individual and collective willingness and ability to question, to critically evaluate, everything we do.

It also made our Board Chair and I do a double check: is this really what we mean?

We decided that it is what we mean, but it is always worth that double check, everything should be questioned. What does the data say? Is this what we mean?

So now, we need to ask ourselves what we mean with the word creativity. I have been at pains to make the point that the word should NOT be tied only to the visual arts. It applies to everything we do. It applies across the curriculum (arts for sure, but also sciences, phys-ed, languages, English, mathematics, technology and social sciences).

It also applies to our school management and scheduling, to our course structures and organisation, to school governance, and to how whanau engage with the school and how they are supported to take part in the education of their tamariki.

I did a simple Google search on the word, and produced five pages of 'definitions' of what creativity means. Perhaps the most powerful was this:

If you have ideas but don't act on them, you are imaginative but not creative.

So if we are to embed creativity in the curriculum for example, students actually have to produce something. In the visual arts and technologies that has always gone without saying.

What about the social sciences? As our project based learning trial showed last year, getting students to take a social action to improve the lives of others in their community is an act of production. Students had to learn about the problem, and also learn whatever skills they need to help generate a solution.

In Te Reo, could it not be the creation of an app that supports the learning of the language, or promotes its wider use? In science, why not have students create a weekly podcast that highlights science issues that affect our local environment? In physical education, why not the design of a sports programme for younger children in the area? In mathematics, what about the creation of geometric shapes that can be translated into sculpture? The number of options is limited by our own creativity, and nothing else.

Notice that all of these things require 'learning', and once the act of creation is complete, they also involve 'sharing'.

On the question of course design, why do we assume that everything we do must be 'silo'd', that is why should learning be split out into separate 'subjects' (English, maths etc). That's not the way the real world operates. The real world needs people to solve its problems. Why isn't learning structured around the formulation and solution of those problems. Only then should we attach assessment to the student output/production. One sure outcome of this is likely to be increased student engagement. How much human potential do we lose in New Zealand because students are switched off school? Whether you measure that in traditional economic terms, or in human terms, it represents a massive loss for the nation as a whole, and for the Hornby community too.

What would happen if we abandoned courses as we know them today, and caused learning based around projects and problem solving?

The only significant obstacles to that are resourcing for teacher time to initially set these things up, and ensuring that students meet external success criteria for such things as university entrance. None of these is insuperable, forewarned is forearmed.

Is our current year group pastoral system the best way to provide pastoral support for students? What would happen if we shifted to a whanau based system? Society needs us all to look after each other, we are stronger when we work together.

E hara taku toa

i te toa takitahi

he toa takitini

("My strength is not as an individual, but as a collective")

A whanau or 'vertical house' system makes much more sense as a means of providing the pastoral support that our tamariki need if they are to grow into complete adults who are the foundations stones of the caring society that we all yearn for.

It is time to 'get creative', to rethink our solutions to the issues that confront us, and in doing that everyone's vice needs to be heard.

I'm very keen to hear from whanau and stude nts as well. Let's talk!!!