'Like, it's the creative vibe, man' (5)

I've thought a little about what deliberate and intentional actions we can take if we are to generate a more creative city, a city in which learning is just how we are. It's a complex beast, one in which I am not at all qualified to make grand assertions. But I've been thinking about it. I've asked myself this question: what are the possible levers that we can use to get there?

Maybe these things can (in the language of economics) be classified as macro and micro 'levers'. 

The macro levers are those that operate at an institutional and system wide level. In Aotearoa New Zealand perhaps the best example is the impact on education of Tovey and Beeby, and their work with creatives in schools in the 1950s and 60's (one of the best examples of which must be Ralph Hotere, but there were a number of others). This was action that impacted directly on children and young people, action that (so the literature suggests) resulted in an epoch of creativity in our schools. Did it? Not sure, but it seems to be a reasonable assertion. This was also the time of Elwyn Richardson and his ground breaking work in leading learning through the lens of creativity.

Thinking about this macro level in education poses questions around our national curriculum, and the importance that it places (or doesn't place) on creativity. This then (presumably) impacts on  the mahi within individual kura. My experience was that regardless of whatever curriculum documents say, it is possible to foster an ethos of creativity in an individual kura, as long as there is leadership from the top.

Within the civic or public space we can question the commitment of civic leaders (both elected representatives and salaried professionals) to the creativity, to the efficacy of creativity, in generating economic activity, innovation, and wellbeing, amongst their citizenry. How easily swayed are they to the benefits of such a focus, especially in these cash constrained times when they are being told that the choice between roads and drains, or libraries, pools, and creative public services, is an 'either/or' rather than an 'and'.

That said, they are still able to consider how they fund libraries in particular, and also museums and galleries, and other public spaces and activities, to support creative thinking and endeavour amongst their citizenry. In Ōtautahi Christchurch the public library spaces at Tūranga, and the redevelopment of the network of suburban library spaces, gives us hope. I note that the soon to open Hornby library (the Matatiki Hornby Centre) will be an absolute delight in terms of the facilities that it offers to the locals that might foster and support creativity and innovation with its dedicated 'Creative Activities Room'. Included will be opportunities ranging from 3D printing to sound recording.

These are examples of those macro level levers which generally are out of the reach for most of us.

I wonder also about the degree to which we can pull the levers of civic and architectural design across civic and private projects? When I look at some of the building and space design that we have seen in Ōtautahi through the earthquake rebuild, we see some of the worst and best of building design in particular, from awful tilt slab monstrosities to the creation of quirky innovative spaces that are new, but have the feel of ancient spaces. These are part of that 'vibe' I am talking about.

A signal of the development of Gloucestor Street, and the 'arts precinct' that will include the new Court Theatre, plenty of hospitality, backstopped with Te Pae, a wonderful new convention and function centre at it's west end - more 'very cool vibe'

The old 'New Regent Street', strengthened and repurposed with less traditional retail, and more hospitality, business.. a delightful 'feel' on a sunny day

More relevant and accessible to us as individuals are those micro level actions that we can take. Organisations like Ako Ōtautahi Learning City Christchurch are very proactive in showing some of the possibilities. What happens when you 'join the dots', when you connect people and ideas? What happens when you find guerrilla bureaucrats, awesome people within organisations who are able to activate smaller parts of those organisations, and resources, to support the vision of a more creative city, a city that values and activates learning not only within the formal sector but across the informal sector of learning?

Are we joining enough of the dots? Are we telling the stories loudly enough? Often enough?

AO-LCC is one of several organisations that are working to leverage change. Others include the Greater Christchurch Schools Network, Risingholme providing Adult Community Education, and that group of smaller providers such as Egg Academy, and Creative Trust, the Christchurch Young Writers' School, and Christchurch Rock 'n' Roll Club, and .....  all those smaller rebels that I have mentioned previously,  all alongside an amazing public library network. Ōtautahi is not in any way different from or superior to any other city. It is simply the city I know.

At our individual level, perhaps the best thing we can do is to actively broker conversations with many and diverse groups, as many conversations as we can, about creativity, about learning. We need voices that will echo loud and clear over the top of those who would have us submit to endless machine-like lives. We need to amplify the messages. We need to be persistent and relentless in the messaging, in fostering the conversations.

We need more than words. Individual acts of creation matter, whatever they are, in what ever form or medium we choose.

As Osho said, “Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.”

Going back to my original contention, if we accept that creativity and learning go hand in hand, if we accept that learning can be generated more effectively formally and informally through a creative lens, if we accept that creativity and innovation enhance our lives and our communities as measured with both economic and wellbeing metrics, is there such a thing as a creative vibe in a city, does it enhance creativity and innovation generally in a community, and does it enhance learning in a city? Is it another piece of the puzzle of how we go about building a 'learning city? Could it, would it, help to create a 'learning vibe' in a city? And what would a 'learning vibe' look like, feel like, sound like, in a city?

Perhaps my biggest contention is that whatever we do, we need to be far more deliberate and intentional in doing it.

What is at stake? I couldn't put it any better than O'Connor and his associates:

Like Freire, McLaren (2000) offers critical pedagogy as an antidote to education

systems that “replicates social inequity and creates an unthinking consumer class” (p. 123).
A truly democratic society requires people who are fully conscious, or fully awake in the
world, and Maxine Greene argues it is arts-making which brings the individual into awaken-ness (Greene, 1997). Perhaps it is why some might call art or photography ‘a woke subject.’Martha Nussbaum (2010) argues the moral imperatives sitting beneath a democratic society are based on the creation of empathetic citizens. She argues that empathetic imagination has been systematically ignored, and severely repressed, by neo-liberal models of education. (Page 15)

And with reference to our formal schooling system:

We argue how the true measure of public education is not in individual achievement, but in
the success of participatory democracy. What we risk with the current schooling is creating
classes of people disconnected from a sense that they are able to be active participants in
their own lives. We believe the dangers of such an approach during post-normal times is
obvious as new nationalisms and dehumanising ideologies find fertile ground in collapsing
economies. (Page 16)

These words tell me that we face uncertain and worrying times. Let me finish with some words from the Ōtautahi Climate Action Campus:

"Climate Action Campus, Ōtautahi - Shifting young people’s sense of climate anxiety to climate hope. One of the biggest mitigators against climate anxiety is to take action." 

Source: https://www.growwaitaha.co.nz/our-stories/climate-action-campus-otautahi-shifting-young-people-s-sense-of-climate-anxiety-to-climate-hope

 ... which I'd like to adapt like this:

Could we be a "Creative Action Campus, Ōtautahi - Shifting people’s sense of anxiety to hope. One of the biggest mitigators against anxiety is to take action."

References

'Replanting creativity during post-normal times', O'Connor, Anderson, Freebody and Ginns, October 2020

 

'Like, it's the creative vibe, man' (3)

In this series of posts my aim is to argue for deliberate and intentional actions that support creativity in cities and towns, in schools, everywhere.  I am arguing for public art, for public education, for public library services .. the list could go on.

I can already hear the libertarians arguing that this is all a waste of money, that public art and public education means we have to tax people and so we take away their freedom of choice (in terms of how they might choose to spend the money that they lose in taxes). In doing so they show that they either cannot or will not understand some fundamental aspects of their own free market models. They completely miss the mark in understanding anything at all about public and merit goods in a market economy.

Public goods are defined as follows:

"A public good has two characteristics:

Non-rivalry: This means that when a good is consumed, it doesn’t reduce the amount available for others. e.g. benefiting from a street light doesn’t reduce the light available for others but eating an apple would.

Non-excludability: This occurs when it is not possible to provide a good without it being possible for others to enjoy. For example, if you erect a dam to stop flooding – you protect everyone in the area (whether they contributed to flooding defences or not.

A public good is often (though not always) under-provided in a free market because its characteristics of non-rivalry and non-excludability mean there is an incentive not to pay. In a free market, firms may not provide the good as they have difficulty charging people for their use."   

(Source: https://www.economicshelp.org/micro-economic-essays/marketfailure/public-goods/ )

While the street light example is perhaps the economics teacher's classic example of a public good, public art is also a public good under the economic definition. The fact that I look at a piece of public art doesn't in any way diminish anyone else's experience in looking at it (provided I don't get in the way). It isn't 'used up' when I gain its benefit, it isn't 'used up' by my own act of consumption, so it is non-depletable, and non-rival. It is also difficult or impossible for a private provider to charge for its use because by definition these works are in public spaces. 

Merit goods are defined as follows: 

"A merit good has two characteristics:

People do not realise the true personal benefit. For example, people underestimate the benefit of education or getting a vaccination.

Usually, these goods also have a positive externality.

Therefore in a free market, there will be under consumption of merit goods." 

(Source: https://www.economicshelp.org/micro-economic-essays/marketfailure/merit-demerit-goods/ )

The spill over benefits of increased education will not typically be recognised by those consuming it, and so it will be under consumed.  Increased levels of education are for example related to greater worker productivity, and decreased crime. There does seem to be a causal link rather than a simple correlation with regard to crime. Yet these benefits are often not directly available to the consumer of that education, and so are not factored into decisions about the quantity of education that an individual will consume.

Put simply, to use the jargon of the free market, these are examples of market failure. i.e. the market fails to provide the quantities of these goods that are optimal for society. This is exactly WHY it falls to governments (central and local) to provide these goods. The argument most often is not about whether or not to provide these goods, but rather about how much of these goods to provide. I suspect that many libertarians might argue for none at all.

I won't go into the graphical analysis of externalities of consumption as they relate to this issue. Feel free to dig deeper yourself.

'Like, it's the creative vibe, man' (2)

Way way back .. in the day .. I completed an undergraduate degree in economics. I'd always planned to be a teacher (since aged 7 years, would you believe), but did briefly entertain the idea of being a professional economist. I was never good enough .. whew.. dodged a bullet!! However that body of knowledge to some degree persists in my head (the cynical might say it is seared into my brain and left me permanently scarred), so I hope you'll forgive this wee foray into some speculation around creativity and economics.

The issue of the moment seems to be the efficacy of the education system, and talk about creativity might well be easily dismissed as 'woke', as 'soft', as missing the point about the need for the 'three Rs', to which many educators will no doubt be letting out long sighs and gasps.

I'd have to say that the literature generally seems to be very supportive of the efficacy of creativity as a vehicle, as an impactful approach, to education, and something that benefits society in many ways. So this has me thinking about how we foster greater creativity. This lead to some simple (some would say simplistic) concepts from economics. Why economics? I wonder if the only way to get real change is via the traditional 'market signals' of prices. Do we need to flick the switch of 'self interest' that lies at the heart of neo-liberal economics in order to get the 'buy in', the support that this all needs?

Just a cautionary note: I am not arguing that what you will read below is correct. It is intended as something of a 'provocation'. It is less important to be right, than it is to be engaged, at the moment.

I was struck by a connection with what economists call the 'elasticity of supply'. Alfred Marshall wrote of the concept of time periods in economics. These are not defined by our usual measures of time, but rather by the variability of the factors of production, or inputs, that firms use. Marshall describes the momentary, short run, and long run time periods. Here is a typical undergraduate summary. The  economy's resources or factors of production are typically classified as land (all natural resources), labour (all human inputs), capital (all man-made goods used to make other goods), and entrepreneurship (the willingness to take risks, and to organise production). I have found varying definitions for Marshall's time periods, but the most universal seem to be these:

The momentary time period is that in which no factors of production can be changed.

The short run is that time period when some factors can be changed, but some cannot.

The long run is that time period in which all factors can be varied.

The supply curves look like this:

In the momentary time period, no changes in price will induce changes in the quantity supplied from producers. They simply cannot vary any inputs, therefore they cannot vary outputs.

In the short run increases in price will induce some increases in output, because some factors of production (natural, human, and entrepreneurship, in particular) can be varied. However the producers don't have enough time to vary capital inputs (machinery and buildings are the big ones here).

In the long run an increase in prices will induce larger increases in quantity supplied, because producers have enough time to build new buildings, buy new machinery, invent new processes etc i.e.. they are able to vary ALL of the inputs into production

I have been thinking about a relationship between prices and creativity. I wondered if there might be a similar general relationship between prices and creativity in the economy. I am NOT saying that producers BUY creativity. 

The model I am suggesting assumes that we might have some way of measuring creativity in order to quantify it along an axis. Attempts have been made, but rather than talking about creativity they typically talk about innovation. In an article titled "What’s the Real Difference between Creativity and Innovation?" by Sarah Stone, published on June 16, 2022

"Creativity involves generating original and unique ideas, while innovation is about implementing those ideas to create value. Understanding these distinctions is essential for organizations and individuals looking to remain competitive in their respective fields. "

However if you'll forgive me the looseness here, I am trying to suggest a concept rather than a strictly econometric relationship.

In that momentary time period, there is no time to be 'additionally creative in an economic sense.

In the short run, as prices vary, it is possible to vary to some degree the amount of creativity and innovation, and their consequential impact on production. However because producers have 'staked their claim', 'drawn their line in the sand', with their specific capital investment, they will be unwilling to make many changes their current investments. They will see current plant and processes as 'sunk costs' from which they need to garner a return. Therefore they will be relatively unwilling to invest in new processes, unless in some way they see themselves at risk of being whisked away by the pace of change. The current AI revolution may be a case in point.

In the long run, all bets are off, and creativity and innovation could rule.

So I wonder if the 'chunky' nature of capital inhibits creativity. Once producers are locked into a specific set of capital investment decisions, do they then effectively turn their back on new creative solutions as they seek to recover the 'sunk costs' of their capital investment?

This approach looks at individual markets, but what about the economy as a whole?

So, as prices rise in an economy, do they in fact induce more creativity, innovation if you prefer, from producers? It is of course possible that as prices rise, producers are getting adequate reward from their existing processes and capital investment, and so in fact their incentive to innovate and be creative diminishes.

I adapted an old Keynesian model to the following:

In the longer run as prices rise, they induce increased creativity, which in turn increases GDP and incomes.

Interestingly, the relationship could actually be the opposite. In a paper titled 'Does innovation promote economic growth? Evidence from European countries', Rana P. Maradana, Rudra P. Pradhan*, Saurav Dash, Kunal Gaurav, Manju Jayakumar and Debaleena Chatterjee, 2017, the authors establish that while it seems reasonable that increased innovation leads to economic growth, the relationship can also move in the opposite direction. Increased economic growth can lead to increased innovation. Quoting from the paper Abstract:

"The paper examines the long-run relationship between innovation and per capita economic growth in the 19 European countries over the period 1989–2014. This study uses six different indicators of innovation: patents-residents, patents-non- residents, research and development expenditure, researchers in research and development activities, high-technology exports, and scientific and technical journal articles to examine this long-run relationship with per capita economic growth. Using cointegration technique, the study finds evidence of long-run relationship between innovation and per capita economic growth in most of the cases, typically with reference to the use of a particular innovation indicator. Using Granger causality test, the study finds the presence of both unidirectional and bidirectional causality between innovation and per capita economic growth." (my emphasis)

So IF innovation and creativity tend to go hand in hand (that might be quite a leap), then we might be able to expect growing economies to generate more creativity across communities.

And how does this connect with the concept of the learning city? There seems to be a cyclic relationship between growth and creativity/innovation. Creativity leads to innovation which leads to economic growth which leads creativity which leads innovation which leads to ... ... etc

And I've already written about how creativity and learning seem to be inextricably linked. Is learning the kick starter to creativity? Is creativity the kickstarter to learning? Does it matter? What impact would we have on learning if we engendered more creativity? What impact would we have on creativity and innovation if we engendered more learning? In particular what impact would we have either way if we built a whole city permeated with the creative and learning ethos?

The issue seems to be that we think about the circuit breaker(s) that will set this cycle on it's way.

References

'Does innovation promote economic growth? Evidence from European countries', Rana P. Maradana, Rudra P. Pradhan*, Saurav Dash, Kunal Gaurav, Manju Jayakumar and Debaleena Chatterjee, 2017 

"What’s the Real Difference between Creativity and Innovation?" Sarah Stone, June 16, 2022

Is creativity hard wired?

Our most fundamental survival instinct is fight or flight. Within that context I am going to make a bold, uninformed claim: all human beings are hard wired to be creative. Why? Our very survival over the millenia has come down to our ability to flee from or to confront those existential dangers, those things that threaten our survival,  to our ability to creatively solve problems. 

If that contention is correct (it seems reasonable, but how often have things that seemed reasonable subsequently been shown to be utter tosh?) then for kura I would have thought a big question continues to be 'how do we nurture, feed, encourage, inspire, that creativity in every one of our students?'. I would have thought that we WOULD want to, since our students are the future, if I may use a well and truly hackneyed/over used cliche.

A stroll through our creative spaces, Te Pai Tūhura, gave me the opportunity to 'feast my eyes' on some gobsmackingly good mahi, the result of good teaching, combined with of all of those processes of engagement, of the opportunity work in good facilities, from our senior DVC (Design and Visual Communications) students.

Students created 3D virtual fly throughs of their projects

Our DVC teacher Oscar Richardson (a trained architect in a previous life) tells me this is effectively Stage 1 Architecture School work.... high praise indeed.  This is creative work, this is excellent work, this is a fabulous example of 'creative excellence'. To produce work like this also requires students and staff to have a good values foundation, and this work certainly demonstrates our values of commitment, achievement, resilience, and respect.

This stuff doesn't happen by accident. This stuff doesn't 'just happen'. It happens because we hold high expectations of all of our learners, it happens because we have good teaching taking place in good facilities. It happens because we are committed to Mana Orite, the need for equity for all learners regardless of background.

It also happens because we have clarity of vision about what we are 'about' as a kura, and because we have clarity around our foundational pedagogy 'Learn, Create, Share', which captures the centrality of creativity to learning, and implicitly to equity and wellbeing. 

Three words keep ringing in my head, three words that simply won't go away: clarity, coherence, and persistence, and I think that accurately describes a significant part of what good leadership looks like. Our staff know the story.. 'stay on the bus', as per the 'Helsinki bus theory.

Is creativity 'hard wired' into us as a survival instinct? I have noiidea, but it is an idea that appeals eh!!

Helicoptering?

The annual Manaiakalani 'Wānanga' was held today. This year over 100 educators from Manaiakalani clusters from around the country got together to review data and progress and to share ideas on next steps. The day is always energising and inspirational, highlighting the incredible impact of what we do.

As is so often the case when groups of like-minded people come together (regardless of the interest or purpose) really useful conversations take place over the tea breaks, and today was no exception.

I had a fascinating conversation with Mark Maddren (the original Manaiakalani facilitator for Uru Mānuka), and Aaron Wilson (researcher with the Woolf Fisher Research Centre, Auckland University) and Mark put forward an idea that I hadn't considered before. He pitched it like this.

We are mostly familiar with the concept of 'helicopter parents', those who (with the best of intentions and motivations) hover far too closely over their children (always wanting the best for their children, as we are hardwired to do as parents) but as a consequence denying their children to the opportunity to stand on their own two feet, to make mistakes from which thy can learn, and develop their own coping strategies which will be essential in their adult lives.

Mark proposed the idea of 'helicopter teachers'. If I understood Mark correctly, these are the teachers who try to make things as simple as possible for students but as a result of which they take away the challenge.

Now this is, it seems to me, a fine line. On the one hand a part of our core job is to make core skills and knowledge accessible for our rangatahi. On the other hand we must make sure that those rangatahi still develop and grow the necessary skills for their learning.

We do this by:

• Scaffolding content to such an extent that challenge is removed from the task, or
• Bullet-pointing text so much that there is very little actual reading required, 

We attempt to make success so certain that there is little risk of failure, the result of which is :

• Students don't develop the resilience necessary to face future failure, 
• They fail to learn the critical lesson that success in life rarely comes from those first attempts, but requires persistence in the face of failure, and
• We need to take risks in order to learn, develop and grow

We all do this for the best of reasons. If you believe in the idea of personality types (not sure that I do, but that's a different story), then you'd mostly classify teachers as 'rescuers'. If you don't follow that approach, then maybe it's because we generally understand the moral imperative behind what we do. We have to make sure that every human being that crosses our professional path is able to achieve outcomes that match their potential.

The discussion arose as we were talking about progress in reading. The Manaiakalani data shows that while we are accelerating writing achievement for our tamariki by twice national averages, we are only accelerating reading by 1.5x the national averages. When we present content we will bullet point it, taking out a lot of the words necessary to fully convey meaning. As a consequence students do less reading. We make a judgement call that real authentic texts are too difficult for our students, and so we don't present them with these reading tasks.

All of this means that as teachers we do all the work, not the students. As a consequence we undermine critical learning opportunities.

I fear that this reflects a lack of aspiration for our learners, and possibly even some deficit theorising about our learners. Possibly a better approach is to develop the skills necessary to teach students how to deal with, to read, authentic texts, how to approach and read difficult stuff. I believe that this is more of a problem with those of use who have been trained as secondary teachers (myself included). Yet we are ALL teachers of literacy (reading and writing). So the challenge in our Uru Mānuka cluster oi to create a sharper focus on reading by improving teacher skills around how to support our learners to read more effectively, rather than simplifying the reading tasks in the first place

All of this came from a discussion of the incredible data that is being accumulated on the success of The Manaiakalani Programme in accelerating student success. This is one of the powers of good data, and one of the huge benefits of collaboration. It is an incredible testimony to the professionalism of our teachers.

Robin Sutton
Tumuaki

Principal's Prize Giving address

Tihei Mauri Ora!

Mā te huruhuru, ka rere te manu
‘Feathers enable the bird to fly’

Board Chair, Mrs Kaye Banks, fellow Board of Trustees members, Te Taumutu runanga, The Hon Dr Megan Woods, honoured guests, colleagues, parents and friends, ladies and gentlemen, students of Hornby High School  - welcome to this 44th senior prize giving of Hornby High School.

Kaye Banks, Jonty Ward, Donna Sullivan, Rochelle Jackson and Penny Devine have served on the Board this past year. George Wharerau was elected as the new student representative in September 2017. George relinquished his position part way through the year and was replaced by Shardey Harris who completed the term. In the 2018 student election we welcomed Crystal Edminstin to the Board as student representative. Thank you to you all for for your time, work and wisdom.

The year has seen a number of staff movements. Mrs Helen Boothby left us to work in the United Kingdom early in term 3, and was replaced by Mr Daniel Reizinger. Mrs Jane Turner (History) left on maternity leave, and was replaced by Miss Nicole Eastwick and Mr Sam Stokes.

Mrs Janette Merrin left us for a position with the Ministry of Education, and Miss Alex Aitken gained permanent appointment as HOD Health. Mrs Carla Gibson left us after 4 and a half years to pursue a career in the hospitality industry as a small business owner.

At the beginning of the year we were joined by Tracey Allen, Chelsea Birtch, Raewyn Davis, Aaron Heath, Abbie Keene and Sam Tisch. At the end of term one Ms Keene took maternity leave for terms 2 and 3, and was replaced by Mr Michael Collins.

Mrs Laurie Tafau left us for one year to take up a fixed term position as Assistant Principal at Avonside Girls’ High School, and was replaced by Ms Annabelle Simpson. We also received the resignation of Mr John Minto as he prepares for a well earned retirement. John, I have to say I cannot for a single instant imagine you resting, I cannot picture you sitting still. Thank you for your powerful contribution to our kura, and for your powerful ambition for our rangatahi.

Mr John Simons who has lead the Hornby Technical Centre of Hornby High School since 2014 announced his departure from the end of the year. Thank you John for your sizeable contribution to the learning and development of tamariki from across and outside our cluster.

We also received the resignation of Mr Jon Rogers who looks forward to retirement from 2019. He was replaced by Mr Jack Goodfellow who joins us from Lincoln High School at the beginning of 2019. I will have more to say about Jon later in our prizegiving.

Much of our attention over this past year has been occupied with our school rebuild. Stage 1 of the  rebuild was completed at the end of term 2, and we moved into those buildings for the beginning of term 3. Everything about the design of those buildings was deliberate, and once more i’d like to express our gratitude to the architects Del Love, Abbie Whangaparita, and Simon Richmond, from Stephenson and Turner for their wonderful work turning our vision for curriculum adaptation and change into our physical reality. I’d also like to place on record our thanks to our project managers from OCTA, and Mr Robert Lyall from the Ministry of education, and to the team from Leighs Construction for their wonderful work in helping us to realise our vision.

But a school is more than it’s buildings:

He aha te mea nui o te ao
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata

What is the most important thing in the world?
It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

To our wonderful staff, thank you. You have taken on board a huge workload, you have embraced change, you have been prepared to try different ways of doing things. As I mentioned in an assembly address to the junior school just last week, if we are to realise our vision as ‘a centre of creative excellence’, we must all be prepared to take risks, and your responses to our new environment have shown your willingness to do that, with project based learning, and passion projects, with collaboration and the acceptance that classrooms don’t always need walls and closed doors (although sometimes they do).

And to our wonderful rangatahi, well done. I’d like to read a poem that I also read to the junior school last week. It is one of my favourites, it is a poem that well describes the need to take risks, the need to push boundaries, the drive to find new paths.


The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

You too must take risks, you too must be prepared to look at the world with fresh eyes. You too need to see things in ways that have perhaps never been imagined before. Your academic and sporting achievements which we celebrate here tonight continue to ascend the heights of excellence as you push your own personal boundaries.

One thing I can say, one thing you as students may not realise, is that our new buildings have changed you. They have changed you in a profound way. Parents and whānau, you need to know that at school your children have changed. They are still wonderful human beings. But they are also now ever more respectful, they are now ever more confident, they are now ever more willing to take those calculated risks that are essential to growth and to creativity.

Over this past year we have witnessed perhaps the most powerful force for change, the force of student passion and desire. It is you, our rangatahi, who said “Hey, stop deriding our school”. It is your, our rangatahi, who said “We are good enough”. It is you, our rangatahi, who said “We are proud of our school.” It is you, our rangatahi, who began our #manahoromaka, our #hornbypride, campaign. And it is you, our rangatahi, who have pushed that campaign out to the remainder of the school. Well done .. ka mau te wehi.

Let me tell you a short story. At the beginning of this term we began our interviews with new whānau and their children prior to them entering our kura at the start of next year. I was interviewing a father and son, both of whom were new to the school. The father said “You are proud of this school, aren’t you”. I replied ‘Yes we are”. He then said “When I dropped our enrolment forms off at reception, I could see it in your kids.”

There is one area of change at Hornby High School that does not represent risk, but rather an evidence based shift in teaching and learning that is more powerful than any other I have seen in my 40 years in education, and that is the Manaiakalani philosophy on which everything we do is founded.

The evidence base for the efficacy, the power, the impact, of ‘Learn Create Share’ grows month by month, year by year. The evidence is robust and authentic, the impact of the pedagogy so huge that it accelerates learning by up to twice national averages as measured by standardised nationally normed tests. This is not some piece of fanciful educational hope. This is real, palpable, and world changing.

To parents and whānau I make this plea. The Manaiakalani evidence offers the same conclusions as a much wider range of robust evidence: your connection with your child’s learning has a massive impact on her or his learning. All students across our kura are expected to be active bloggers. A blog is a way of making learning highly visible and accessible to the world, and we know that visibility promotes clearer thinking and active learning. Whānau - your engagement with those blogs is vital. Every child feels a huge sense of achievement and engagement when parents and whānau make comment on their blogs. Please Please please get involved. To paraphrase that wonderful African saying says ‘It takes a village to raise a child’, I would say “it takes a community to educate a child”. Your presence in your child’s education is a great present, a great gift, for your children. Get involved, get commenting.

And in that regard I want to acknowledge the support and confidence of the Greater Christchurch Schools Network who have given a significant grant from their innovation fund to support our innovative initiative to employ members of the community to work with you in your homes, one to one, giving you (we hope) the skills and confidence to get involved with your child’s learning. Being ‘A centre of creative excellence’ requires us to take risks, to try new things. This is new, this is a creative way of helping to improve learning outcomes for our rangatahi. GCSN - thank you.

This all leads me to repeat my words from last year: To the originators and principle 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 not only of equity, but as you often remind us, of liberation for our learners in New Zealand in a powerful and compelling way. If I may take your words, Manaiakalani does more than remove barriers to our learners watching the game, it places our learners squarely on the playing field of their learning. Again, as I said last year, 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.

To my fellow Principals and teaching colleagues across our cluster, thank you for the amazing work you do. The ways in which you enable work across our cluster, the ways in which you practise and model collaboration, are a powerful force for our tamariki, and by doing so you create a rich educational landscape in which our tamariki can thrive and prosper.

To my wonderful colleagues at Hornby High School, regardless of whether you are teaching or non teaching staff, you all do a wonderful job. Teaching staff cause 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. Thank you.

I would again like to acknowledge and thank the trustees of our Uru Mānuka Educational Trust: Mr Garry Moore, Chair, Mrs Janine Morrell-Gunn, Mrs Rose Crossland, Mr Jason Marsden, Mrs Daisy Laveo-Timo and Mrs Jane Ross.  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. Yet again Mr Gary Roberts, Principal of Hornby Primary School, is deserving of special mention for the drive and passion that he has brought to the pursuit of this amazing educational vision. Thank you. Thank you for your energy, your passion, your commitment, and your support.

To our many supporting organisations, thank you. As always, a special mention of the Hub, The Hornby Rotary Club, 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 to our many supporters:

CERT Trust
Mainland Foundation
CSG Konica Minolta Limited
ISS Facilities Services
Westpac Trust - Hornby Branch
GCSN - the Greater Christchurch Schools Network
Orica Chemicals
Couplands
Hornby Residents Association

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.

To our 2018 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

A complex messy business

Education is a complex messy business.

(Source: Creative commons https://pxhere.com/en/photo/968503)

It has always been so. We all have that desire to think back to former days with the belief that those were simpler times, easier times, happier times. And in education speak, there is a tendency to believe that we had it better in those earlier times.

Frankly we did not. We had a system that taught to those with specific academic talents. It left a large proportion of the population disenfranchised. The old school certificate system until its final days consigned 50% of the population to failure. Where is the justice in that? Where is the economic sanity in consigning half of our pool of human talent to a sense of failure because they don't hurdle a specific and narrowly defined academic barrier?

So it is that we push to evolve education. The evolution is driven by a number of things:

• There are the economic drivers whereby business wants more productive units of human capital, or where the economy rewards innovation, new ideas
• There are the social drivers as we see unemployment delivering a range of social evils
• The moral imperative whereby we seek to create greater human happiness through education which, we hope, will create human beings who simply reach for that sense of fulfilment (perhaps Maslow was right)
• The political imperative whereby successive generations of politicians would have us believe that our system is failing to perform, and so needs constant reform. Strangely, that reform pattern seems to be tied to our three year political cycle. Who knew?

Regardless of the drivers, education is a complex and messy business, much like creativity. For Hornby High School our driver is that moral imperative, that desire to see that our students and our whānau are as well served as they can be to lead fulfilling lives.

Our search for that continual improvement means that we have multiple 'work streams' on the go at any one point in time. In fact, if you wanted a visual image, you might think of our educational journey as being much like one of Canterbury's braided rivers, making education that complex messy business.

(Sources: https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/89196579/environment-canterbury-licences-11000-hectares-of-public-land-to-farmers)

The most obvious is our work shifting into the new spaces that we have. The planning has taken long hours, and the shift in itself has been a complex business. Staff have worked hard, and been pushed well outside their personal and professional comfort zones. That we are where we are today is testament to their professionalism and their resilience.

Then there is the work to reform the curriculum, to make the curriculum fit for purpose. This seems likely to see a curriculum that is more contextual, a curriculum in which learning takes place against real world problems and issues, learning that is driven by student passion, and goodness knows we see plenty of that.

Alongside that we are working on continuous improvement in our student reporting. Early efforts so far this year have been driven by two initial desires: to get us through a period of significant staff stress as we relocate the entire school, and the desire to report more often, and more effectively. Professor John Hattie's ground breaking work tells us that feedback is one of the most significant impacts on student learning and achievement.

This work on reporting is connected with our ongoing staff professional learning on how to more effectively engage in inquiry into how to improve student learning, and on how to make better use of data to do just that.

Student reading and writing skills have been a big focus for our work. We continue to accelerate writing at twice the national rates of improvement. Reading proves a little more problematic, and so we are trialling reading interventions that are already proving to have positive impact on reading levels. When a reluctant reader improves reading speed by 40% while holding 80% comprehension in just two months, you know something important is going on.

And then there is the issue of our graduate profiles, those specifications of what we think our learners should look like at Year 8 and at Year 10. It is our intention to develop a Year 13 graduate profile too.

Finally all of this is underpinned by our work to grow our understanding of our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy. We want creativity to be our most critical driver, and we want the 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy to drive everything that we do.

There is a lot of work going on to make sure that 'Learn Create Share' is at the forefront of our minds and our work. And that is why our vision, our aspiration, is the be 'A centre of creative excellence He puna auaha".

Some might think that this work, under the Manaiakalani umbrella is a digital devices programme. But it is not. As the literature on digital learning often seems to suggest, place digital devices in the hands of learners without changing the way teachers teach and learners learn, and you achieve nothing. Change that pedagogy and the sky is the limit.

And in this regard student blogging continues to be the most important thing. The evidence that we have from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre (Auckland University) tells us that the 'Manaiakalani medicine' must be taken three times per week. That is, if a student writes three blog posts a week, then we will have this huge effect on writing, and on engagement and learning.

Excellence is what we seek. Last week's news that our senior girls basketball team won their division one final spoke volumes for the levels of student commitment to excellence in what they do, and to their search for creative excellence.

But for all that, I come back to my original comment: Education is a complex messy business.

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’.

The benefit of persistence

I remember just prior to Christmas 2013 I was in the car listening to ‘Afternoons with Jim Mora’ on National Radio. Mora interviewed Ginny Blackmore, an up and coming young New Zealand singer songwriter. Aside from the quality of her music, I was particularly struck by her description of her journey to 2013. All she wanted to do was write music, and so she left school early, her parents giving their permission on the proviso that she wrote music full time (quite an act of faith from the parents, I thought). Her ‘overnight success’ took over three years and there she was (at the time of the interview) having just secured a recording deal with a major record company in Los Angeles.

This is something I often see. Success is most often found when we follow our passions. I have seen it with my own children and I see it often with teenagers more generally. When asked to give advice on subject choices, we go through the usual issues of aligning subject choices to possible future career choices, but we should also ask what there is in our children's mix of subject choices that ‘spins her/his wheels’? It is a long day at school if there is nothing in the day about which you could be enthusiastic.

Art Costa, an American writer, established what he described as the 'Habits of Mind', a set of 16 habits of 'dispositions' that seem to be common to successful people regardless of culture or age, and regardless of the activity they pursue in life. One of these is persistence, the ability to stick with a task until complete, until you find success. Art Costa’s ‘Persistence’ is perhaps no better illustrated than in Blackmore’s example. Ginny Blackmore knew what she wanted to do, and stuck at it. She sat in her bedroom day after day, working an eight hour day by all accounts, building a body of material that she could take to the world.

You can find Jim Mora’s interview here:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/20131213