Ako Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch: "... cooperation is the law of civilization.”

“Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization.”

So apparently said Peter Kropotkin, Russian anarchist and geographer who lived from 1842 to 1921.

Perhaps a better way to express this might be with this whakataukī:

Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi

With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive

While cooperation ("the action or process of working together to the same end") and collaboration ("the action of working with someone to produce something")  are subtly different things, it seems reasonable to conflate them to some degree when thinking the education landscape. Learning in formal institutions has in some places at some times evolved towards cooperation and collaboration. Most significantly, I've spoken to a number of tertiary academics who all say that their work is most often the result of collaboration, rarely is it the result of 'solo effort'. In our system however we seem to be deep into the paradigm that learning is an individualistic thing, one where we are assessed on our solo efforts, and our specific knowledge at a specific point in time. Our system goes through a fascinating transformation from cooperation and collaboration in the primary sector, to this individualistic approach at secondary and early tertiary, and then shifts back to the cooperative and collaborative approach at the more advanced tertiary level. There is no doubt that each of us benefits form direct instruction, and individual attention. There are many skills we need to acquire, and much knowledge that we need. 'Knowing stuff' is important, despite claims that this is the 'Google-able' age where with so much knowledge at our fingertips, we don't need to remember anything anymore.

I do believe that there is a consensus amongst educators that effective learning generally occurs when we are able to make connections with existing knowledge, and when we see that learning as relevant to the real world around us.

Engineering this in the secondary school environment is often seen as risky, fraught, and difficult to do, yet it's not only the key to deep learning, but also what we all most naturally do. It is made difficult because of the silo'd nature of knowledge and delivery in schools, and the silos in teaching/learning at tertiary level. The silo'd approach seems to be justified by the need to promote deep deep knowledge, and the view that learning is primarily basically content delivery. 

This seems to fit in with the western tradition, possibly driven by the eighteenth century writings of  Adam Smith on the benefits of specialisation. We have applied a market-led philosophy to learning.

Now don't get me wrong, I am very keen for my doctor, my dentist, that woman that designs the new road bridge, to have deep deep knowledge of their subject area. This sort of specialisation is great when we get to the sharp end of the training of doctors and engineers.

But this system hasn't always worked for some people. I suggest that it hasn't worked well for most. It was fine in our industrial era society when we needed to identify those who might be suitable for management, so that we could separate them out from the 'drones', the workers, who simply needed to turn up to work every day and undertake the same repetitive tasks hour after mindless hour.

Our new 'post modern' era however doesn't need this so much anymore. We need a society that maximises the benefits to society of all human potential. We need to harness the creative and critical capacities of everyone. Not only does this have economic benefit for us all, but it also offers quality of life benefits for everyone.

Why critical and creative thinking? Our world is besieged by problems of a type and scale that we have not faced before. There's an old wisdom that says that you can't solve the problems of today with the thinking that created them in the first place.

We are however locked into this paradigm of learning, believing it is best.  What if it's not? What if we already knew of a better way? What if we understood that formal school learning is only one small part of our learning journey? What if we valued people sufficiently well that we sought to allow them to maximise their own life potential, no matter what that looked like? What of we believed that we could do better?

Maya Angelou is quoted as saying “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” 

What if we already know better? What if we understood that learning happens everywhere, all the time? What if we understood that the co-existence of multiple generations in our society presents us with an opportunity to accelerate learning by recognising the intergenerational nature of learning, in exactly the same way the Māori recognised this with their wānanga which were an essential part of their society pre-colonisation?

In their broadest sense, learning systems are a collaborative endeavour, not a competitive one, So ...

• What if we added to the school system with a coherent, connected, holistic, system of 'just in time', 'any where, any time' learning that harnessed the power of the multiple generations that co-exist in society? 
• What would happen if we made the multiple learning opportunities more visible to all, if we made sure that the connections between the learning opportunities and those who create them led to the widening of the scope, the availability of and access to the learning opportunities that are available to us? 
• What if we had a society in which, as a member, you had no doubt whatsoever that learning is 'the thing', that learning opportunities are everywhere, that your life can be enhanced by learning in whatever way, shape, form, or context that might be?
• What of we finally really valued indigenous knowledge, where indigenous knowledge took its rightful place alongside our western traditions, where we got the best of both worlds rather than writing off indigenous knowledge as superstition?

I almost hesitate to use the word, but is this what true 'democratisation' of education might look like?

I have tried to capture my understanding of the visionary work of Dr Cheryl Doig who conceived of Ako Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch (AO-LCC). Cheryl describes AO-LCC as 'a bloody good idea', and as I talk to her over a long black (the first of the day for both of us) I see someone committed to trying to re-imagine the future in a way that addresses inequity. She clearly has a heart for those who have not been able to speak for themselves. Cheryl describes herself as a 'futurist', and refers me to an article which she says captures much of what she believes and feels. The piece is written by Frank Spencer (no, not that Frank Spencer) who "founded Kedge — a global foresight, innovation, and strategic design firm which pioneered". The article can be found in full here. In the article Spencer says:

“The Official Future” tells us to “think exponentially, act incrementally,” beckoning us to utilize foresight in service of the ever-expanding present systems of quantifying, micro-analyzing, extracting, consuming, and automating. This way of futuring is at the heart of Epistemic Uncertainty. “The Emergent Future” instead challenges us to “think transformationally, act transitionally” to manifest futures-empowered landscapes of care, empathy, reconciliation, and love in our organizations, governments, and social entities, allowing us to align with much healthier expressions of our biological, psychological, and sacred experiences. Of course, this is not in line with the value proposition of our present systems, and most would deem such futures improbable at best and frivolous at worst. Nevertheless, challenges to long-held assumptions take place when individuals dive deeper and deeper into anticipatory imagination and provocation, and this opens the door to transformative realities that profoundly change the perspective of the foresight practitioner. Consequently, the possibility of these new worlds become an internal experience that can no longer be ignored. This is the future thinker’s dilemma.

The phrase “think transformationally, act transitionally” echoes again and again and again in Cheryl's words, and in my mind as I walk away from our meeting, and as I sit and try to make sense of this. So too in my mind is her description of AO-LCC's work in terms of what she calls 'social capital theory'. She tells me that there are three main components to this:

• Bonding - building connections within communities
• Bridging - building connections between communities, and
• Lifting - working with those who have the influence, to make a difference

Here is a link to an additional piece on the difference between bonding and bridging social capital, and some additional in depth reading on the wider field of social capital theory.  I love this stuff, it's big, bold, 'ballsy' (what Ewan MacIntosh describes in the context of BHAGs - Big Hairy Audacious Goals), and it looks to ways and means of changing the system. I find the lyrics to Leonard Cohen's song 'First we take Manhattan' running through my mind.

Having read all of this so far you might still feel obliged to ask why. Why do we need to do this? My career in education has shown me again and again and again how much human potential goes unrealised, wasted, thrown on the scrap people along with the people within whom it resides.  Often is fails to thrive because of social issues, substance abuse, social disconnection, the 'poverty trap', this is a complex issue which there is no one cause (just as there is no one answer, no silver bullet).

And there's the economic argument too. Failure to optimise participation in education (not just formal education) regardless of age, stage, or format, increases the gap between rich and poor. If you are rich you might well say you don't care. However OECD economic research suggests that the wider that gap, the poorer performing is the economy. If we allow the gap between rich and poor to widen too much, the wealth of the rich suffers as does the 'wealth' of the poor. This report from the OECD spells it out. Not all of the econometric evidence is that conclusive (IMF research offers other perspectives), but this seems to be enough to 'hang my hat on'.

So, "Ako Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch" -  connector, visionary, revolutionary, hopefully a change agent that brings together  the influencers in our city to highlight the learning opportunities that are available, and to enhance those opportunities through cooperation and collaboration, because after all - the whole is more than the sum of the parts. If we can do this, how much richer would our world be, how much richer if we saw the results of that lost potential, that creativity, harnessed in a way that enriched not only the lives of those involved but those around them? All it requires is that we shine the spotlight on the benefits of cooperation and collaboration, that we understand that there is a balance between acting in our individual interest, and acting in the collective interest, that we support and sustain each other.  There is a place for both, and as I walk away from my meeting with Cheryl I can't help but go back to my own philosophical position in which in our current 21st century society we have swayed way too far towards a belief in the benefits of self self self and lost sight of the fact that human success is a collective endeavour.

As Kropotkin said: “Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization.”

And the final word must be this whakataukī:

Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari kē he toa takitini

My success should not be bestowed onto me alone, it was not individual

success but the success of a collective

Te Rito Toi 5 .... cultural diversity, the sense of self, and creativity

We were in  Blenheim supporting our daughter running the St Clair half marathon (she managed a PB.. ka mau te wehi, Natasha!!). 

As we wandered in the vineyard area after the event I came across an artist in the process of creating art (painting) as people went about their business of celebrating, eating, and drinking. I plucked up the courage (I don't normally approach complete strangers quite like this) and asked her 'what do you feel as you paint? She looked at me, and I clarified 'not what do you think, what do you feel?' She replied "actually that's a really good question, I haven't thought about it quite like that before". As the conversation progressed it became clearer to me that she had thought about it before, but perhaps not in those terms. I also realised that I had perhaps asked a stupid question; this quote from 'Te Rito Toi Replanting creativity in post normal times' sprang to mind:

Gordon was trying to say the unsayable, struggling with thoughts that lay beyond the capacity of mere words to express. Pavlova, when asked what she meant by her interpretation of Swan Lake replied, ‘if I had been able to say it in words, do you think I should have gone to all the trouble of dancing it?’

(Clarence Beeby, Director General of Education, at the funeral of Gordon Tovey in May 1974).

I told her that, as best I could recall the quote (as a story rather than a quote, my memory isn't that good.)

Anyway, our conversation progressed, and she spoke in terms of her own inner self and her sense of self, how she 'felt' about herself, and life, about the world in which she lived, and her desire to say things that she couldn't say in words (in precisely the way that Pavlova is reputed to have done).

Professor O'Connor and his team have identified 11 dimensions that potentially activate creativity, and I have listed those before.

I have another 'wondering'. Whatever drivers we might be able to describe in our schooling systems, our innate creativity perhaps cannot be activated unless we have a level of self awareness, a level of confidence, in who we are. Specifically I wonder if we need to have a sense that we are culturally located, that we have at least some connection with our whakapapa, before our creative potential can be unleashed. I'm not suggesting that being 'culturally located, culturally safe', generates creativity per se. My wondering is if being in such a state and place is one of those 'necessary but not sufficient' conditions, and therefore if we could avoid some of the tendency to 'kill creativity' if we were better at this?

If so, this adds another dimension to the already overriding moral obligation on schools to ensure that they build and maintain culturally responsive and sustainable environments. Every child ought to be able to bring their cultural back pack inside the school gates. I'm sure all kura try. How well do we do? How well is Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School doing?

Is it also possible, in my own wondering, that creativity comes from an inner conflict as we struggle to see, to know, to come to terms with our own inner self, our place in the world, and our whakapapa? It was interesting to read in a recent edition of 'The Listener' (May 8-14 2021) about the role of conflict in creativity, particularly in group settings.

I'm not proposing that we set students up in conflict in order to generate creativity. It's just interesting.

I have also thought about the role of stress. I wonder if creativity is perhaps more likely to occur in some settings when we are close to the edge of our comfort zone. Is that the 'place' we have to be to find the motivation to seek new solutions, to find new ideas? Is creativity enhanced when we experience eustress (as opposed to distress .. "Eustress is a word used to describe stress that is positive, motivating, and enhances functioning while distress refers to bad and overwhelming stress that impairs functioning." https://www.choosingtherapy.com/eustress-vs-distress/#:~:text=Eustress%20is%20a%20word%20used,overwhelming%20stress%20that%20impairs%20functioning. )

I wonder if schools that support diverse cultural identity more effectively end up seeing higher levels of creativity from students (regardless of curriculum area or kura activity)? Is it possible that schools with more culturally diverse student and staff populations are more predisposed to greater creativity, assuming the other drivers of creativity are activated? How would/could we find out? Difficult, I suspect, if it is (as I suggest) one of those 'necessary but not sufficient; conditions. Mind you, could this be an interesting application of the CAST Creative Schools Index?

None of this is any sort of 'claim', there is no suggestion that any of this is some sort of truth. It is simply what I have 'wondered'. It also strengthens the case for the Manaiakalani pedagogy 'Learn Create Share', doesn't it? Our typically lower decile schools tend to reflect wide cultural diversity. Here's a thought: if any of my other wonderings are true (IF), then are our more culturally diverse schools the potential powerhouses for creativity and innovation across Aotearoa? 

Food for thought, eh!!

 

The power of collaboration

I have written before expressing my opinion that the media, by attacking schools that attempt to be innovative, are simply demonstrating institutional racism. In short the argument goes like this: our education system has historically failed Māori and Pasifika learners disproportionately. There is nothing wrong with those learners, but rather there is something wrong with the system. If our society is to realize the benefits of the skill, the talents, and the humanity, of that section of our population, the system has to change. Attacks on those proposed changes are therefore attacks on attempts to create real equity in society. Economically, socially, and morally, we shoot ourselves in the foot, it is something of an 'own goal' to attack those attempting to create change in our current education systems and structures. Some say why change a system that has worked? To which my response would be 'worked for whom"? Who says it has worked given that there has previously been nothing to compare it with? And anyway, can we seriously claim it has worked when it has failed significant groups in our society?

Today I was privileged to be present when educators from 23 secondary kura from across our region got together to share their evolving practice under the title 'Secondary Flexibility'.  We were brought together under the banner of Grow Waitaha, This is an organisation set up to help schools transform their practice, to make themselves fit for purpose in this new age where the future is so uncertain, in an age when we have much less idea than we ever had about what learners need in order to survive in their future because the pace of change is so rapid. This was an amazing exercise in collaboration that is not normal in the world of education. The previous competitive schools model meant that schools were afraid to share practice in case they gave away an edge to their competitors. We were left with small pockets of innovation that in themselves were limited because it is often difficult to see the bigger picture when trapped in our own bubble. However we continue to see that education at least is stronger when we collaborate, when we share knowledge and expertise. In short, OUR CHILDREN ARE BETTER OFF when we share our expertise. The competitive schools model simply created winner and loser children.

You could observe stuff at the surface level like the passion in the atmosphere, like the desire for change that was visceral to say the least. These are people who totally understand the moral imperative, who understand that we can no longer tolerate leaving a growing proportion of our population behind. These educators were unashamedly sharing their work on the sorts of innovations that they believe will create greater equity in our system. And there were lots of cool things happening. Interestingly we are all on the same journey. It's not as if each school is following a significantly different journey. Rather we are all on the same journey, but adapting the thinking to suit our communities, things like the readiness of community, or staff, or students, to adapt to change, or the capacity to resource change.

We are all talking about systems that build stronger relationships with learners (at Hornby High School we call this Wānanga time). We are all talking about changes that connect subjects across the curriculum (at Hornby High School this is Hurumanu), destroying the subject silos that have been the feature of secondary learning in our secondary schools since.. well , since forever as our teenagers might say.

At a deeper level though I think there is something much more significant happening. I previously wrote that schools are often afraid to put their heads above the parapet for fear of being sniped, of being shot down, by a contemptuous and hideously ill-informed media. Today was different. Today we stood shoulder to shoulder, announcing for the whole world that we are committed to a better education for ALL rangatahi, that we no longer believe the lie that the western education tradition is the best and only way to cause learning. We all acknowledged without saying that there is stuff we don't want to get rid of, but we were all also acknowledging that what we do now is no longer enough, if it ever was.

You see, the impact of this stuff is real. In achievement Hornby High School accelerates writing achievement at twice (yes that's TWICE) national averages as a result of our engagement with The Manaiakalani Programme and its 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy. Hornby High School has maintained attendances at an average of over 90% when attendance rates across the country have been declining. That's called engagement. Maybe, just maybe, we DO know what we are doing.  Maybe, JUST MAYBE, the profession of educators does know what it is doing.

I am proud to be a part of a kura that is pushing the boundaries, a kura that wants the best for all learners, not just a privileged few. And today we saw that we are not alone, and in fact never have been. We now know that we have good company on this amazing journey. We have a whole community of educators with us in this work to change lives and communities.

This is the power of professional collaboration. This is the way of the world, this is the. way forward in our work to empower and embolden our rangatahi, to set them on their journey to better lives for themselves, and for all.

You see, the whole IS more than the sum of the parts. As one famous thinker once said 'you can judge the quality of a society by the way it treats its weakest members.' Today showed that as educators we are determined to treat our young people, some of our weakest and most vulnerable members, in the best way we can imagine.

Necessary but not sufficient ...

What's the secret to school improvement? If I knew the definitive answer to that, I'd probably be on the global speaking circuit earning significant dollops of cash, I suspect. Mind you, I think we all know that there ISN'T one single answer to that, and there never has been.

I have come to believe however that there are a series of factors, some necessary but not sufficient, and then others from which we leverage the significant learning gains for our rangatahi.

I think we begin with the Viviane Robinson framework for student centred leadership. This has been my 'bible' for thinking and for action around leadership since I took up Principalship in 2016, and continues to be my guiding framework. It looks like this:

What do I think this has looked like in our Hornby High School context?

The "necessary' factors I mentioned in my opening paragraph have been, I think, a relentless focus on:

• Relationship building
• Valuing all students' cultures in our school community
• Strong vision, consistently articulated and applied
• Quality physical infrastructure with our whole school rebuild
• Strategic resourcing of key initiatives with suitable staffing
• Effective use of digital technology that is founded on a consistent  and overt/completely visible pedagogy
• Consistency and coherence in everything that we do. That is, there has been NO jumping from one fad to the next. We call this 'staying on the bus'. This metaphor comes from the 'Helsinki bus theory'.
• The demand that we have clarity in our values, and that all of us (staff and students alike) live and apply those values in all that we do, as a basis for strong positive relationships. In our case, we apply PB4L, restorative practices, and restorative circles, to conflict resolution and relationship building. I have consistently talked up the need for kindness.

These things are essential to school improvement, and there are more that we do that I have just not mentioned. Our new school buildings have had a significant impact on the mindsets of our students. I would like to think that more of our students now generally feel valued by our kura, and our country, because they have been given the chance to live and learn in the school facilities that they always deserved. The design we chose for our spaces, a mix of collaborative and single cell spaces, has allowed staff the opportunity to review their pedagogy, and to put into effect things they learned when we encouraged them to 'play in the sandpit' between 2016 and 2019, to try out ideas that ranged from project based learning to passion projects, from knocking out walls in classrooms due for demolition to cross curriculum learning opportunities.

We have seen the dramatic impact of digital technology, and our Learn Create Share pedagogy, on student outcomes, with writing progress accelerated at twice national averages, and reading and maths accelerating at 1.5x national averages.

My current opinion is that these are all things that have been necessary to improvement in our kura. However I suspect that on their own they would have relatively limited impact unless combined with what I think are THE game changers in schools:

• Embedded inquiry
• Curriculum shift
• The Manaiakalani Porgramme

Our curriculum shift is already significant. If anything, this is where e are disrupting education. I often say that I am a believer in evolution not revolution when it comes to organisational change. Why? When we have revolution we are, far too often, left with bodies in the streets. I'd rather we embark on a change journey that sees everyone who wants to 'stay on the bus' still standing at the end (if there is ever an end, that is). So our curriculum is evolving, perhaps more quickly than some would like, perhaps less quickly than others would like, but nevertheless it is evolving. Our junior 'connected curriculum' is more adaptive, more engaging, more relevant. It connects more clearly with the front end of the national curriculum, supporting as it does the development of the five key competencies that we still think are essential to success. In one of this year's junior prize giving speeches, I said this:

I have chosen to talk about this today because your ability to be successful at school is in part determined by your ability to manage your emotions. The fancy phrase we use is your ability to self regulate. Work hard to get better at that. We all struggle with the challenge, regardless of age.

The Manaiakalani Programme has provided Hornby High School with a visible and clearly articulated pedagogy that is proven to make a difference. Without this, the application of digital devices is unlikely to have made much of a difference. My opinion on this mater is strong: placing digital technology into the hands of students and teachers without changing the way teachers work, without changing the way learning is caused (the pedagogy), is doomed to failure. TMP gives us the pedagogy and the visibility that is necessary to make a difference.

And then there is the professional game changer: inquiry. For the non educators amongst readers, this is the principle that teachers inquiring into what they do, investigating hunches about what will improve learning for their students, are far more likely to adapt and improve their practice. The process looks something like this:

Let's face it, NONE of us begins our lives in this profession knowing everything that we need to be successful. In fact, on a side note, I suggest that it is even worse than that, that much of what passes for initial teacher education in New Zealand is not fit for purpose, but that's a different issue. So, as teachers we all need to be curious learners. we need to ask ourselves how we can do this better.

At Hornby High School I believe that what I am seeing is the progressive adoption of inquiry as the driver behind improving what we do. As my colleagues have inquired, made changes, reflected, and then written of what they have done, I have seen reflection that I would describe as transformative. What's more, this has taken place with the support of Professional Learning Groups, many of which have involved collaboration across our Kāhui Ako. This means that we have had primary and secondary trained colleagues collaborating on their inquiries. This is a rich source of knowledge sharing and transfer, and the potential for impact on our learners is huge.

Amongst the benefits of being a Manaiakalani school are that we have a clearly articulated pedagogy (Learn Create Share) around which to focus all inquiry, with hunches often formed based around the mass of great data with which we are blessed. We are able to inquire into what we call 'high shift practices'. In short we are beginning to build a true inquiry culture that focusses on improving outcomes for learners.

That in itself is the high shift practice. I would suggest that while new buildings and digital devices are necessary for transformative school improvement, in and of themselves they are not sufficient. To create those big shifts we seek, we need inquiry, and a future focussed curriculum, and....

Senior Prize Giving 2019

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, honoured guests, colleagues, parents and friends, ladies and gentlemen, students of Hornby High School  - welcome to this 45th senior prize giving of Hornby High School.

During the year Kaye Banks, Penny Devine, Donna Sullivan, and  Rochelle Jackson, were re-elected to the Board, and Simon Evans joined them on election. Crystal Edminstin was re-elected as our student representative on the Board. Thankyou to you all for your time, your work, your wisdom and your support.

The year has seen a small number of staff changes.
Mr Jack Goodlfellow joined us as our newest Deputy Principal replacing Mr Jon Rogers and quickly showed his worth to our kura. Mr Alan Tenberth continued his work relieving for Mr Jonathan Handley-Packham who has subsequently announced his retirement. Mr Russell Cairns joined us in a part time position teaching English for the year, and Ms Gina Cuttance joined the counselling team part time for the year. Ms Cuttance’ position was funded entirely by the Board and reflects their focus on supporting improved wellbeing for students by increasing the availability of counselling support for students across the school.  Mr Corey Kamariera left us to join the team at Te Whānau Tahi, and subsequently Mr Connor Matthews joined us teaching Te Reo Māori. We welcomed Ms Melissa Oliver part time to the staff team working lart time in our Learning Commons Re Pae Rewa. Teacher Aides Emma Grennell and Sarah Nothcote left us to take up full time employment elsewhere.

We are grateful for the contributions that they have all made to our wonderful kura.

The year 2019 marked the completion of the whole school rebuild, with only landscaping and ‘make good’ work to be completed. Our contractors Leighs Construction expect to be clear of our site by March 2020. The company and its team have been exemplary citizens sharing the campus with us as they have undertaken their construction work. We moved into the last of our new buildings, we have called them kahui, late in term 3. Unsurprisingly we immediately saw students focussing on their learning in these new spaces. We were careful in our planning and design to allow for a variety of learning needs amongst students, with a combination of larger collaborative spaces and smaller break out and traditional class spaces. I have already observed increased staff collaboration, and the exchange of ideas and thinking, exactly the sort of start we would have hoped for in these spaces. Our preparation for the occupation of these new spaces has included a great deal of thinking and trialling of different ways of planning our curriculum, we have called it ‘playing in the sandpit’, and we believe that we continue to see improved engagement and achievement amongst students. The new buildings were also explicitly designed to allow a shift to a vertical pastoral system, a whānau grouping in which students from all year levels will be grouped in those whānau groups. Each of our kahui is a pastoral grouping. This change will be phased in over the next few years.

Of particular note has been what we believe is a significant improvement in internal NCEA results at the Merit and Excellence levels (and in fact overall pass rates). One year level has nearly doubled the proportion of internal standards credits achieved at the Excellence level before the inclusion of external results in January, and we have seen a record number of students gaining their NCEA endorsed with Excellence before they even enter the examination room. This reflects deeper learning and higher levels of engagement and aspiration amongst students. This broader aspiration is vital to our student success. Every student needs to aspire to be their best.

To every adult in the room, I beg you, I implore you, to support our rangatahi in raising their aspirations. Perhaps my biggest frustration in my professional life is the amount of almost unbounded human potential I see going unrealised. Talented students settling for nothing near their best means they miss out on fuller richer lives, and it also means that as a society we miss out on those talents.  We are the poorer economically, culturally, and socially. Settle for nothing less than their best.

To our wonderful staff, thank you. You are amazing colleagues, you show yourselves to be the risk takers that our rangatahi need in education. We know that risk taking is essential for creativity to thrive, and I want to make some comment at this point about the media in regards to education and its future, and the notion of risk taking.

We know that in New Zealand we have what has been dubbed a ‘tail of underachievement’. We know that our Māori and Pasifika children are overly represented in that group. This tells us that much about our traditional systems of education has not worked for those children, that this is the fault of our systems and structures, not the fault of those tamariki. We must change and adapt to better meet the needs of these children who are our future. However, most often when a school tries new ways of meeting the needs of these children, it is pilloried, it is attacked, by our media. The result of this is that schools become risk averse. Change is disincentivized. Frankly this is little more than institutional racism, it is the protection of the privilege of the few for whom the system does work, as the media is slowing the change that we need in New Zealand to better meet the educational needs of our tamariki. To steal and adapt the famous quote from the epic movie ‘Gone with the Wind’, “Frankly, we don’t give a damn about those media attitudes”. My colleagues are embracing change.They show great courage in our endeavours. We have not lost our moral compass. We are driven by the moral imperative to do right by every child, not simply the privileged few.

I’d like to once again make mention of The Manaiakalani Programme. In my entire career I have never seen anything as transformational in education. The Manaiakalani Programme is a pedagogy (a way of causing learning summarised with the three words Learn Create Share) that is consistent across our cluster, and increasingly throughout our kura, and it is magnified with the use of digital technology, specifically Chromebooks. With these tools, we are accelerating student progress in writing by twice national averages. That is, our students are improving in their writing twice as quickly as students of their age generally across the country. In reading and mathematics it is currently less spectacular. The rate of progress is only one and a half times that of students generally across the country. But we still have our junior students improving faster than students nationally. Can I say definitively that these improvements are solely the result of Manaiakalani? No. However, consider this. These same improvements are happening for the thousands of students across the country in the nearly 100 Manaiakalani schools. Those same improvements are not happening consistently anywhere else. It would be a funny old coincidence if it weren’t Learn Create Share and the affordances of the digital technology that were creating these transformational improvements. The Ministry of Education has finally accepted the worth of what is going on, and work is afoot to have funding for the scaling of Manaiakalani across the country built into budget 2020/21

We are doing our bit, as staff learn how to best employ the pedagogy to accelerate the learning of your children. Please help us. Please make what we know for many is a significant investment: provide your child with a Chromebook. It is possibly the best money investment you can make in your child.

In this regard I’d like to make special mention of and offer our warmest thanks to the members of the Uru Mānuka Education Trust who have done amazing work to support our work across the cluster, and to the Wayne Francis Charitable Trust who have made the investment into our cluster Uruy Mānuka. They have secured five years worth of funding to support our education leader Ms Kelsey Morgan who works with teachers to continue their upskilling in how to cause learning with our driving pedagogy, and therefore how better to help students to make informed use of the digital technology. This teacher development is essential, because we know that simply putting devices into the hands of learners and doing nothing else will fail completely. The devices impact learning for your children when we also change the way teachers teach. Thank you.

Of note too over this past year is that we have engaged with the other schools across our cluster (Uru Mānuka) to formalise our Kāhui Ako, our community of learning. This releases additional resources that will be put to use to support and benefit our learners, your children, not just at Hornby High School but across the whole community. Thank you to my colleagues and fellow Principals, and to the wonderful staff who make these kura such wonderful places tro be. We are doing amazing things for our community.

I have to say thank you to a growing number of supporters of our kura. This growing list is a symbol of the support, the love and kindness, the faith, that our community has in you our students, our whānau, our staff.

CERT Trust
Mainland Foundation
CSG
Westpac  - Hornby Branch
GCSN - the Greater Christchurch Schools Network
Orica Chemicals
Couplands
Hornby Residents Association
OCS   ( $200)
Wycola Medical Centre
Westpac Hornby Branch
Craig Frampton
David Browne Contractors
Kitchen Surplus 
Hornby Working Men's Club
Hornby Rotary 
Gators Basketball -   ran fundraiser for senior basketball to attend tournament

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, but that achievement represents much about our purpose as a kura..

To our 2019 Prefects, thank you for your leadership and your commitment to the school. You have modelled the very kindness that I think is essential to healthy caring inclusive communities. Your daily actions are an example and an inspiration to us all, you are all a wonderful example of the values based leadership that the world desperately needs. Kia tau te mauri.

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. Thank you for everything you have contributed to our kura. Well done on all that you have achieved. Thank you for the people that you have become.

Kia mau ki te tūmanako, te whakapono me te aroha

Hold fast to hope, faith, and love.

Noreira tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa

Democratisation of education: The Manaiakalani Project, and more ...

Nothing could capture the moral imperative of education better than this image:

It captures the challenge that faces us better than anything else that I can think of, and I've used it repeatedly.

How can we reduce inequality, how can we improve equity? I believe that ONE strategy is the democratisation of education,  making education 'fit for purpose' for everyone, not just those from the European middle class, not just those who have traditionally benefited from our past educational systems. Education offers the opportunity for liberation.

That is the background to my thinking after another great meeting with Cheryl Doig. We discussed a really interesting piece of work that she is involved with called 'Learning City Christchurch'. The name speaks for itself. What does it involve? What would a 'learning city' look like? That's the million dollar question.

Here's my take on it: we want Christchurch to be a city in which learning is ''what we do', the 'we' being all citizens, regardless of age, race, religion, and regardless of the purpose or context of the learning. Such a 'construct' is a very complex thing with lots of inter-related parts.

In Christchurch we have a formal education system that is evolving in ways possibly unique in the country. Secondary schools are increasingly collaborating, working together, sharing practise in order to improve outcomes for learners. Much of this began post earthquakes through the work of the Ministry funded 'Grow Waitaha' organisation, and continues on to this day. This in itself is important work that the Ministry of Education needs to continue to fund.

I recently discovered another exciting piece of collaboration in the making when I had a delightful meeting with Cheryl de la Rey, the (new) current Vice Chancellor of University of Canterbury. She spoke of moves to improve collaboration between the four key tertiary providers in Christchurch. To get more learners into formal tertiary education, regardless of the institution, is winning for the city, for learners, and for the country. Her views were refreshing.

Back to the meeting with Cheryl Doig; we talked of a concept of 'supernodes'.. something that blew my mind, but if I understand correctly it involves systematic development of areas of advantage that the city already has - agri-technology for example with Lincoln University.

So, how does this connect with Hornby High School?

We are already doing great work in the democratisation of education with The Manaiakalani Programme. The outcomes for our learners, regardless of gender or ethnicity, are transformational. Students are encouraged to find their voice, to connect their learning to their own cultural world, to make their learning visible, to coach each other. We are also working to transform curriculum so that it is more relevant, engaging, and effective. These things support development of student agency and efficacy (that is, control and effectiveness). These two things improve achievement for learners.

In this journey we are not alone. Many secondary schools in Christchurch are working to improve the ways in which they cause learning so that they improve outcomes. Whether it is Haeata and their new learning paradigm, or Christ's College and their 'Inspire' programme for their year 10 boys, it is all a part of the innovative educational landscape that we have in Christchurch. I am aware of many other initiatives across the city (and across the country) that are seeing extraordinary transformation in learning. Beyond Christchurch, try Hobsonville Point Secondary School, or Rototuna High School.

What is holding us back? In my opinion one barrier is the media, ever ready to 'bag' any attempts at doing things differently. After all, growing a sense of outrage is the best way to sell advertisements and generate revenue. To hell with the truth. To hell with improvements in society. The net result is that schools and Principals tend to keep their heads down in their attempts to avoid that public media gaze, that pseudo-scorn that the media is so keen to heap on educational innovation. Thank goodness many schools and Principals have the moral courage to try new things.

Well, Dear Media, let me offer that famous Einstein wisdom "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

In schools we are trying to do things differently. Whenever you see change and you 'bag it', you disincentivise that change and improvement. In doing so you create a push factor that resists change and maintains the status quo, that keeps those who have traditionally been poorly served by education down at the bottom on the economic heap. Perhaps most specifically you keep Māori at the bottom of the heap, because they are the people who have been least well served by our traditional euro-centric system. That sounds and looks a lot like institutional racism to me. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's certainly my perspective. And here's the fascinating thing in this regard: things that improve educational outcomes for Māori improve educational outcomes for all (He Kakano)

These are things that help to make a learning city, or to use a Christchurch City Council phrase, a city of opportunity. So too are moves to micro credentialing, to creating a system that 'badges' or recognises small pieces of learning that are important to the learner at a specific point in time, and that may well accumulate towards qualifications but which more importantly focus learning on what matters, not on gaining qualifications that may be largely irrelevant to the learner, and to society.

This looks a lot like democratisation of learning, and equity for learners. For Hornby High School, the democratisation of education comes in the form of The Manaiakalani Programme, in the shape of new connected curriculum, in the shape of a shift in pastoral practices and structures. Other schools have their own journey, as they should. This happens to be our journey. Many schools have the courage to change. Let's not be brow beaten by others into avoiding what is right.

Iti te matakahi, pangāia ke te tōtara pakaru ai (The wedge may be small but it will split the greatest tōtara).

At the very least we all bask in the economic benefits of this democratisation. By crikey, even the OECD agrees. And some of us even bask in the knowledge that what we are doing is morally right.

Ma te hururu, ka rere te manu

Robin Sutton
Tumuaki

What do teachers make?

What's the 'real oil' with these teacher strikes? As a member of the teaching profession for 40 years I've been thinking about this question, and what I see is not a pretty picture.

We have now been through 35 years of right wing free market ideology. The 'benefits' of the free market began to impact significantly on western economies in the 1970s as economist Milton Friedman began his crusade in pursuit of the free market. I well remember using his landmark television series 'Free to choose' with countless classes of Year 12 economics students.  It was the ideology of the day, and it made so much sense.

At the time his arguments seemed to be pretty powerful, and they significantly influenced the policies of the governments lead by Margaret Thatcher (UK) and Ronald Regan (USA), and ultimately the work of Roger Douglas in our fourth Labour government elected in 1984.

The argument was that we should have less government and more 'free market' (where the free market was the sum total of the individual choices of buyers and sellers). Friedman argued (amongst other things) that governments are not well equipped to make decisions for individuals, and that in fact we got the best outcomes for society if we allow the individual to make her or his own choices.

How is that connected with considerations of current industrial action by teachers? The free market view is that all workers are paid what they are worth, and the market will determine that 'worth'. All prices are the result of agreement between buyers (in this case, schools, and the Ministry of Education) and sellers (teachers).

However the view is flawed at such a fundamental level. Any student of economics should be able to tell you that markets only work effectively if a series of basic assumptions hold true. Amongst others, the market model assumes:

• There is consumer sovereignty (that is, buyers have total control over what they do)
• There is perfect knowledge (so everyone knows EVERYTHING they need in order to undertake a trade)
• All resources are perfectly mobile (not just geographically, but also in terms of what they know and how they might be used.. in labour terms, they are meant to be able to undertake any activity
• There are a large number of buyers and sellers, so many in fact that the actions of no one buyer or seller is able to influence the market.

There are others, but that's enough to be going on with. This is called perfect competition. In the context of the real world, this is clearly a load of nonsense. There is actually only one buyer in the state sector, for example, and that is the Ministry of Education (this is called a monopsony.. only one buyer). But even if every school were totally independent in this regard, there are still not sufficient buyers to make that assumption true.

Now how is that meant to work?

Take a parallel example. Let's say we are thinking about widgets. If there is a shortage of widgets the price goes up. This brings more widgets into the market, and reduces the quantities that buyers want to buy, bringing the market to equilibrium with fewer widgets selling at higher prices.

This does not and cannot happen with teachers. The industrial bargaining model prevents prices from moving freely, and you cannot simply conjure up more teachers.

And then there is the argument about 'performance pay'. which I heard raise its head again. 'Ah well, you see, we should be able to pay teachers in relation to the results they produce'. They should be paid in relation to the results they produce.' This argument is so bizarre, I struggle to see how any right thinking human being can continue to consider it, unless of course we understand that those people completely fail  to understand the complexities of education. There are so many impacts on learning outcomes, so many of which are beyond the control of schools and teachers.

Those that know me know that I do NOT accept deficit theorising, the view that we can do nothing because all these things are beyond our control. We make a difference because we focus on the things we can control. Perhaps the biggest flaw with the performance pay argument is that education outcomes are the result of collaborative activity, not the work of one single teacher. So whether it's the school culture driven by the Principal and senior leadership team, the work of each and every individual teacher, the amazing welcome each student gets as she or he passes the staff member on duty at the gate, or the staff member working at the reception desk, or benefits from the fact that the toilets and classrooms are well maintained by a fantastic group of property care specialists. All of these things impact on the educational outcomes that come from the school. So whose performance do you think can be separated out and paid accordingly?

So where does that leave us? It certainly destroys the free marketeers' arguments about the supposed worth of teachers. What's more, it denies the fundamental impact of good teachers on society as a whole. Their 'output' is not a series of widgets that people then buy. Their output is the fundamental fabric of society, the very humanity of us as people, our ability to create a caring world AS WELL AS our ability to be productive units in some economic machine. Yes BOTH are important.

What do teachers make? George Schultz put it so well:

The worth of teachers is to be found in their caring, their humanity. All schools need the same fundamentals to be successful, and this begins with the need for strong positive caring relationships. Schools need people who can empathise, people who can connect with the wide range of tamariki, of rangatahi, that society produces. Those relationships are built over the 6 hours of the school day, AND over happens way beyond that time. They happen with the teachers who spend their nights away giving children that senior geography trip, they happen with the teachers who leave their own families behind to take students to the theatre, or the calculator or maths competition, the kapahaka competition or the choral festival, the outdoor education camp in the mountains or the basketball game on a Tuesday evening.

Add to that the increasing complexity of the teacher's job. Children and their needs are becoming more complex, and teachers are all too often starved of the support resources that our children need. Most weeks, as a Principal, I face the challenge of how to meet the needs of children that the system starves of support. We live with the hope that this week's budget announcements may mean that our children can better access the mental health support and resources they need. When I see colleagues break down in tears of frustration as support is denied the children they try to support, when I see colleagues breaking down in tears of fear at the thought that this lack of resources puts these young people's lives at risk, I know we have sat quiet for too long. I have sat quiet for too long.

This is not an 8 hour a day job, 48 weeks of the year. It is definitely not a 6 hour a day 40 weeks of the year job, as some would suggest. 12 weeks holiday a year? Don' t make me laugh. Everything that happens in the classroom for 5 hours a day had to be planned and developed outside of that 5 hours a day, assessed outside that 5 hours a day, with feedback given to students outside that 5 hours a day. It often happens at ten o'clock at night as teachers sit with their laptop on their knees, having put their own children to bed, or come home from that sports practice or game that had to happen in the evening because there are not enough hours in the 'normal' school day for them to happen, or not enough court space for them to play on before 5pm.

Teachers care, just as nurses, police, and other social support professionals care. Yes they get paid, yes they do this as a job, but trust me when I say this is not and never has been a job you do for the money. People work in education because they want to make a difference, and because they CARE. However, because of their implicit drivers they also need to be able to do that job well, and frustration has never been higher.

Teachers' industrial action is partly based on the need for better remuneration. The shortage of teachers tells us that the money is not enough.  But it is also driven by their innate desire to do the right thing for our learners and whānau, driven by the moral imperative of trying to enable every child to be the best that she or he can be. Actually, we are ALL better off if this happens, even if we are amongst the more privileged in society.

To those who say, 'hey if you don't like it, go and find a better job', I say 'imagine what would happen if we all did that'. The strike last week showed the chaos caused if 50000+ teachers were NOT in our schools. I feel angry when I see responses to strike action that simply support the view that schools are little more than free child care. Schools, and therefore teachers, are the basic driver to social and economic progress. If we take the long view that our 2019 'wellbeing budget' espouses, NOTHING is more important than education because it is the driver of improved social and economic conditions for us all.  It is THE best investment a government can make in society.

To those who say teaching is a 6 hours a day, 40 weeks of the year, job, I say please come and join the queue of people fighting against each other to get into the profession. Oh wait, there are no queues? Oh.. doesn't that tell you something? If this was such a well paid profession, if this was such an easy ride, if the conditions were so good, people would be falling over themselves to get in.

They are not!!!

I regularly struggle wth the teacher shortage. It is NOT invented, it is real. Young people (in fact all people) are turning away for teaching as a career option to such an extent that we cannot find good teachers. Recruitment has become a competitive exercise. The net result of this must be that we create winners and losers in society. Remember that these winners and losers are our children before you go in to bat for competition.

What do teachers make? They make a difference, that's what they make. In fact, they make THE difference. An investment in teachers is the most important investment that we can make in our future. This is worth fighting for, because it is our future. It is the future for our children, and our children's future.

Robin Sutton
Tumuaki
Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School

Are we there yet?

Remember that gnarly old question? The one the impatient children keep asking from the back seat of the car during a long car journey? Actually it's not a bad way of asking where we are in our journey as a kura.

I was prompted to think about this after the amazing fundraising concert organised by our senior students last week, and felt that a bit of thinking and feedback for whānau, and our community more generally, might be useful at this stage in the year.

The first question has to be 'where are we heading'?

We are now in our third year with our bold vision to be 'a centre of creative excellence'. It's big, it's bold, and on its own it's pretty hard to imagine what it might look like. That makes it very hard to understand when you are making progress towards it. So we break it down into more digestible 'bite sized' chunks called strategic and annual goals.

This year's goals are:

Strategic Goal  1 To provide future focussed individualised learning
Annul Goal 1: Embed the culturally responsive pedagogy ‘Learn Create Share’ to develop future focussed individualised learners
Annul Goal 2: Assist every student to develop an appropriate personalised educational pathway

Strategic Goal  2 To promote sustainable community relationships to support student success
Annul Goal 3: Create new opportunities for student/community engagement and community/school engagement

Strategic Goal  3 To encourage inspirational risk taking enterprising leadership
Annul Goal 4: Promote student leadership and followership capabilities
Annul Goal 5: Promote a growth mindset amongst students and staff

So, how do we think we are doing?

Against SG1, we see increasing evidence that our Learn Create Share pedagogy is becoming ever more embedded with our learners and our staff. Blogging is on the increase, and we know that student writing achievement is accelerating (that is, improving at a rate faster than that for students nationally).

Here was an awesome example of the development of blogging amongst our tamariki, with this creative writing from Lasa of Year 8. His blogging is not unusual, and the creativity is pretty obvious.

As an additional measure of the development of better individualised pathways, our Careers and transition department continues to serve students well, helping them to identify better pathways that suit their own needs and aspirations.

Against SG2, and SG3, there is little better as an outstanding piece of evidence than the community fundraiser that we hosted last week. Let me explain why.

The event came from the students. It was not a staff idea. The cause (three muslim whanau in our local community affected by the March shootings) showed that our students have heeded the call for kindness and caring. They showed heart, they showed their values. The attendance at the evening showed that this new way of engaging with our community was enormously successful. There was even a call on the School Facebook page for the event to become an annual event, with a different charitable 'cause' each year. Such is the perception of its success.

The event showed enterprise and leadership, beginning with our head students and prefects, and spreading across the kura.

And the event showed a large number of students prepared to 'take a risk' and put themselves up for public scrutiny with their performances.

You see, we believe that for creative excellence to exist, risk taking is essential. The very act of creativity requires people to be prepared to take risks, after all they are trying something new, they are testing it with others. To do so requires courage, it requires a growth mindset, it requires acceptance that we may not be there YET, but we are on our way.

For me, it is these underlying behaviours that are most important.

We are also seeing this risk taking behaviour with staff in their daily practice. I have written at length about the work of Mr Rees in mathematics. He is not alone in trying new things. Our Year 7 & 8 teaching teams are doing some wonderful work revolutionising our junior curriculum, with cross curriculum work, community impact projects and passion projects.  The early results are even better than we had dared hope, with student engagement skyrocketing.

Increasingly our wonderful staff are taking risks too.

I am known for saying that if we are to improve outcomes for our rangatahi we have to take risks. Doing things the way we have always done them is not an option, because that will only deliver the same outcomes we have always produced. There is too much at stake, too much human potential and too much human happiness being wasted, to simply do what we have always done.

By definition when we take a risk there is a chance we will fail. And that is just fine. Failure is an awesome part of any learning journey. We celebrate successes, and so too we should celebrate failure.

We are also engaging our community in a very different way with the Uru Mānuka Education Trust. We set this Trust up in 2017 to raise funds to support the work we do with the Manaiakalani pedagogy. I'll write more about this amazing group of people in a separate post, but their work represents engagement of a very different kind, it represents a different way of doing things for us in Uru Mānuka.

Our MOE funded study support centre attracts good numbers of students from across the cluster in another great example of community engagement.

We are in the final term of a GCSN (Greater Christchurch Schools Network) Innovation grant funded community engagement project in which we have employed community members to go into homes to support whānau to better engage with their children's blogs and their learning. We have learned a lot form this project, even though it has not yet been as successful as we had hoped.

Stepping back, can we answer the question 'are we there yet'?

Well, I think not. But we are seeing a growing number of the behaviours that we think are necessary to support creative excellence. We are seeing more creativity in those traditional areas normally associated with creativity (performing and visual arts), and improved creativity (as in new solutions to old problems) growing in more traditional areas of our work with student learning.

Are we there yet? Nope, but the signs suggest that we are well on the way.

You usually get what you expect .. arguing for clarity.

For almost three years now our Hornby High School vision has been 'A centre of creative excellence he puna auaha'. It's a big, bold vision. Some would say it's an audacious vision. But a vision is meant to be aspirational, a statement of where we are headed, even if we never actually reach it. It's our guiding star, in the same way that the pole star guided our Polynesian voyagers.

As our 'guiding star', so too is it a statement of what we expect. While big, hairy, and audacious (to quote the phrase from Ewan MacIntosh), it hopefully leaves us in no doubt about what we need to expect from our students, and from ourselves.

And the interesting thing is that what you expect, you all too often get. At the end of the term I saw an outstanding example of this from one of our year 8 students, Kade. When trying to think of a product to create in the soft materials phase of his technology work, Kade imagined a cactus in 3D. He had to imagine it and plan how he would create that 3D idea using a series of 2D pieces. This is no mean feat, and one that actually requires quite a degree of mathematical thinking.

Here is Kade's blog post on the project.

Similarly this past term I saw this behaviour amongst a group of my colleagues, our technology teaching team. They have been challenged in so many ways, not the least of which was to re-imagine how to cause learning in our new flexible spaces (as have our arts and science teams). All of them (technologies, arts, and sciences) have done an amazing job of adapting to their new environment, a brilliant example of one of my favourite Churchill quotes 'We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us'.

The technology team have had the added challenge of re-imagining the very course structures that they deliver. They began that process by adding in what we termed a 'connect' class' where children from our client schools get an initial class of specialist teaching in arts, sciences, or digital tech, before embarking on the other technology work that they have traditionally received.  Whatever else has happened, we know that we have happy children leave us at the end of their technology experience each day.

This has all proved to be hard, but change is hard. Teachers ended the term exhausted, yes change is hard. Teachers ended the term keen to continue to evolve these courses, even though change is hard. And I couldn't be prouder, prouder of them, prouder of what they have achieved so far. And they are not alone as these 'values' are apparent across our kura, across our curriculum, within our amazing teaching team. We have a wonderful staff team, a team that understands the 'moral imperative' behind what we do, the imperative that demands that we push not just for equity, but for liberation for all learners.

In my opinion, much of this is possible because we have clarity of vision, and that vision has created an expectation of creative excellence. This technology experience is an illustration of staff applying the vision to their work, their pedagogy. It is one more example of what creative excellence might look like.

We also have clarity of pedagogy, with our manaiakalani pedagogy 'learn create share'. That is what staff are doing. There can be no doubt in anyone's mind that LCS is the game we play. In fact it is the only game for us in terms of our pedagogy. They have created a new paradigm by activating prior knowledge on how best to cause learning, they have shared their thinking in different ways, that have learned new things, and are applying that new learning to a new 'iteration'. One of the things that makes me proudest is their willingness to fail, to accept that sometimes things don't work quite as ell as we would have liked, and that failure is NOT the end of the world (not that they have failed, because in fact they have not). And now they will look at applying their learning to our next iteration. We have no idea what that might look like, and that in itself is exciting.

Whatever else you can say, I think you CAN say:

• Change is hard
• You get what you expect.
• Clarity of vision makes the journey easier

We expect creative excellence. We are still trying to work out exactly what that might mean, what that might look like. Isn't it fascinating that that is what we seem to be starting to get, because in my experience you usually get what you expect, in education and in life.