When you build a kura culture of creativity

Teachers have always been creative to some degree. Our teaching team at Hornby is creative. I'd like to think they may even be more creative than the norm. I'd like t think that they may be because we use a pedagogy that has creativity at its heart (our Manaiakalani kaupapa, and our pedagogy of 'learn, create, share') and and because we pursue creativity as our vision. It may be that by making creativity explicit our staff feel that they are given tacit or explicit permission to be creative.

I see it in many many things that our team members do, not just our teacher4s, and this week I had the absolute privilege of seeing this example from Michael, who is one of our visual arts team. This example is special (they all are, by the way), because Michael is a visual artist, with no real training in literacy teaching. 

Yet he has accepted the challenge to support his learners with their literacy, in this case their writing. He is upskilling himself in this mahi, and he is synthesising others' ideas to create resources that he thinks will support improved writing from his learners.

In this case he morphs visual arts prompts with writing, in this scaffold (he has now created a series of these as a part of a prolonged piece of mahi to support learners' growth. I love the resource, I love the passion, and I love the philosophy. It shows a teacher who sees himself as a learner, as we all are.  It shows a teacher embracing his own inner creativity to support our learners. 

This is the power of having a strong, easily understood, often articulated, vision focused on creativity: he puna auaha a centre of creativity. We end up with creativity permeating all that we do.

And the most amazing thing of all? He is not alone. We have a whole team filled with this ethos. This is how you build a culture of creativity, and this is how you support that improved learner wellbeing, those improved academic outcomes, for learners that is the promise when you put creativity at the centre.