NZ 2019 Principals Conference

Notes from Principal Conference:

3/7/2019

Challenge: 

What do we do for Maori? Iwi at Auroa Primary School? How do we deliver Te Reo at Auroa Primary School.    Do we meet the needs of our students, what else could we do to address the Well Being of our students? Yes we have Kapa Haka now but what else could we provide to students.   What else could we do? Thinking outside the square for Maori students?

Minister of Education:

Appraisal: This is a Low Trust tick box of requirements.   Ministry is providing the flexibility to manage ourselves; accord and agenda.   Decile system - equity process system. Support staff lack of specialists. Donations to School for Schools Decile 1-8 have been replaced by a $150 grant to schools, Auroa currently does not receive this grant but the Ministry is looking at pushing this out to all schools.   Camps and Camp related activities are exempt from this however the school cannot charge for additional activities (we currently do not charge).

Educational Members of Importance: Clarence Beeby - education no matter who and no matter what.   Education being broad and empowering for students.

Renaissance and Reinvention: Importance of ‘AND’ the link.   PLP should embrace achievements in education and classical arts, literature and science.   VUCA - Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.     Cecila Lashlie - Education Campaigner.

Yong Zhao - Keynote Speaker

‘What works may hurt”.    Warning labels education, focus on one object.  This has consequences for the other areas of the curriculum.   Education to medicine - all medicines are a version of poison, is all education doing good for all students? Subjects vs Subjects? Cognitive vs Non Cognitive, instructional vs. educational, short vs long term.   What a great idea by Chris Thompson. Frequency/Age/Retirement. Children are less likely to discover unexpected outcomes Can teaching cause damage to learning? Choice of outcomes for students are very important.    In Easter Island the civilizations focus was on the statues at Easter Island to the detriment of the community.   International Mathematical Studies: What do test scores matter? Why are test scores the most important, as scores increase what do we lose? 

Entrepreneurship Confidence: Low in countries with high test scores.   Test scores go up and then as a result then creativity suffers.    Life satisfaction VS. Pisa scores. Homogeneous. Education is a sausage maker, bacon is an innovation.    Traditional Virtues of US Education (Golden and Katz 2018). Local decisions are made not by a national mandate.    Test scores don’t measure important things; Extreme Genius - Extreme Deficit. Unproductive success and productive failure; always think about the task/ask questions if it cures and it hurt does this method work? For whom? Details? Information? Quality of Education system cannot exceed the quality of the teachers - PISA study.    One size that fits all - the effect of the teacher cognition and non cognitive abilities of students achievements. Almost all research of test scores are slanted in favour of certain groups of students. We should revive the humanity in education.

Digital Technologies Staff Meeting PD

Staff Meeting. This took place in week ten. Ideally it would have perhaps been better to take place sooner in the term but it scheduled meant this is when it was (perhaps could have advocated more for an earlier time). Two staff members were absent and the staff meeting was further complicated by a powercut which took place at 3:45pm which removed Wi-Fi and prevented the group discussions from being recorded. There was a sharing aspect of the staff meeting with a request for staff to bring an item to share from the Digital Curriculum that tied in with the resources. 

This wasn't successful as most staff didn't bring something (however this could be remedied by staff completing the slideshow at a later date which I can send a reminder out about).   The other issue that could have been followed up on was the staff who undertook the PD.  It was clear from the discussion that was centred around the Mindlabs PD for the Digital Curriculum that while it had been completed by some staff, which I believe was two others, it had not been looked at by most staff.    Given everything that happened and the follow up etc its something that I want to positively pursue to ensure that everyone makes the most of the opportunity.   I think the PD aspect from Mindlab is an exceptional resource but need to promoted as something positive for the staff as an opportunity. 

I haven't received any feedback on the PD at the moment however I think the experience and the slideshow and the building of it was positive, but the approach and the sharing of it and the delegation of the tasks could have been driven better (perhaps I could have followed up in person with additional emails and spoke more directly to people about completing the sharing part of the session).

From here:

• contact staff to ensure that the feedback was completed (during the holidays)
• provide staff with a reminder opportunity about the Flipped PD and the opportunity to gain a PD qualification, linking to the helpfulness of the task.   
• Use the 'Digital Fluency Playing Cards' which have been purchased by the school to further enhance the understanding and discussion about the Digital Curriculum
• Get feedback about the staff meeting from Senior Manangement who were there (KT) and feedback from Senior Management who were not there (JC, KB) about the slideshow.