Te Kotahitanga Report July 2011
Te Kotahitanga at Gisborne Boys’ High School has completed its second cycle of classroom observations, feedback sessions, co-construction meetings and shadow coaching with our first and second cohort of volunteer teachers.
In support of the practices of Te Kotahitanga within the school, the Principal and Lead Facilitator from each of the 17 schools in phase 5 attended a Hui at Hopuhopu in the Waikato. The focus of this hui was to reflect on what we had learnt this far as participants in Te Kotahitanga and to develop new learning to inform and plan a way forward. As a reflection to the processes explored at the hui a professional learning hui is being conducted during week 7 of this term with the Board Of Trustees and Senior Leadership Team.
The purpose of the hui is for the participants to gain a deeper understanding of Te Kotahitanga and the sustainability of this school reform through GPILSEO. In essence GPILSEO is an acronym of the theoretical model which is used in Te Kotahitanga that suggests that in order to ensure the reform initiative (ie. Te Kotahitanga) will be sustainable and scalable a number of interdependent and interacting elements need to be in practice. These elements are:
G Our goal and a vision for reducing disparities through improving achievement for Maori students’
P Embedding a new pedagogy at all levels of school and community
I Need to review and change our structures – timetables, staffing, organisation to support the school reform
L Leadership that responsive to the reform
S Spread: we all need to be part of the reform
E Evidence: We need to use tools that produce evidence
0 We all need to own this reform
As part of the E – evidence that we use to inform us: professional development around the use of interpretation of e-asTTle is the focus of our staff professional learning this term. E-asTTle is an educational resource for assessing literacy and numeracy (in both English and M?ori) developed for the Ministry of Education by the University of Auckland. Quite simply e-asTTle will provide teachers, students, and parents with information about what our student’s know and how we can use the information to better improve our teaching practices, engagement and learning within the classroom. Students at year 9 and 10 have been tested for reading comprehension. We will repeat this testing with all of our junior classes at the end of the year.
Whanau Hui
Thank you to all the parents who came to the library last Thursday in response to an invitation that was sent out in the mail, inviting you to come and share your thoughts with regards to the four broad questions that we asked you to consider, namely
1. Why did you choose Gisborne Boys’ High School?
2. What do you want your son/ward to achieve at Gisborne Boys’ High School?
3. What makes a good teacher?
4. Is there anything that you would you like to know more about?
If you were unable to attend I would like to invite you to email your response in to the following address christinea@gisboyshigh.net Your response will be added to those already collected and a summary of responses will be included in a future newsletter