A centre of creative excellence

So here we are at the start of a new year, that time for new academic and personal goals, aspirations and expectations. This year Hornby High School begins its first year with its own exciting new vision 'A centre of creative excellence'. When the Board of Trustees set this new vision, it did so with two specific thoughts in mind:

1. A vision is an aspiration, a statement of what we want to be not what we are now
2. Every one of us now needs to determine exactly what this means for us. What will creative excellence look like around the Board table? In Social Studies or Te Reo? In science or on the sports field?

At the start of their year staff will begin their own dialogue in which they try to determine what creative excellence will look like for them as professionals, and for their specific subject areas. A first look in a dictionary may give you something like this (depending on which dictionary you choose to use):

the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness

Sir Ken Robinson, English commentator on creativity in schools, maintains that schools around the globe kill creativity, and has this to say:

Why creativity? The pace at which technology is replacing repetitive human activity means that we need to more clearly understand and develop those things that make us human. Amongst those is the ability to think critically and creatively, things that technology (so far) has not been shown to be able to do.

Now the underlying pedagogy (the way in which we create learning) at Hornby High school comes from the Manaiakalani programme: 'Learn Create Share'. It is no coincidence that creativity sits right in the middle of that sentence. Our underlying approach to causing learning is to help students learn stuff, create something new with that stuff, and then share that creation with the world.

Every junior student at Hornby High School now has their own personal blog on which they will be writing about what they have learned, and share what they have created. Perhaps one of the ways in which as whanau you can be creative from now on is to look at what your tamariki have created, and to comment on it. Even a simple 'Well done' speaks volumes for young learners.

The Woolf Fisher Centre, the research arm of Auckland University, has been gathering data on the effectiveness of the Manaiakalani pedagogy, and the associated use of Chromebooks and devices, to improve learning. You can read more about their findings after three years here:

Click this link to read more 

The data so far is much more positive than we had dared hope: gains in reading and maths at 1.5 x the national level and gains in writing at 2 x the national average. 

So our mission starting right now is to find our creativity, to develop the ability in every student, every teacher, every whanau to come up with original ideas, to create something.

Whatever your perspective, whatever your place in the learning journey of every one of our extraordinary tamariki, dare to challenge yourself, dare to be creative in seeking out new ways of supporting their learning (and our own), dare to be creative in meeting the many challenges that every one of us faces daily.

Ko te pae tawhiti,

Whaia kia tata; ko te pae

tata, whakamaua kia tina

Seek out distant horizons

and cherish those you attain

Robin Sutton

Principal