Ramblings of a year 7/8 teacher

Week 28 Activity 4 What: During the survey data collection we were very aware of the importance to keep parents identity anonymous, so that if anyone was to know any names it would remain with the 3 inquiring teachers. However, during the analysing stage some parents made negative comments about certain teachers within our school. This brought up the ethical dilemma of do we share this information with the school principal or do we just let it go? So what: So we discussed this as a team and decided that our first priority was to ensure that the identity of our parents and students was kept private as we had stated and made that very clear in the beginning that it would be. We also felt that it was our duty to inform the Principal of the comments that arose, because she needs to be fully advised of any matter that could arise in the future and she is very proactive in ensuring the well being of our tamariki and whanau members as well as her staff. By doing this, it took...

Week 27 Activity 3 Toitū te kupu, toitū te mana, toitū te whenua Without language, without mana, without land, the essence of being Māori would be lost What: Our senior leadership team have been looking for ways to improve parent engagement for some time now, the things we have put in place have never really improved the problem. We made the assumption that, that was down to the fact that parents didn't feel comfortable to come into school and work alongside us. We really kept thrashing a dead horse, because we didn't look outside the box, we just kept having parent hui, home-school-partnership evenings and things similar to that, with very little parent turn out. In recent discussions we have been discussing setting up a school website that parents can download onto their devices and get updates on the go. This has been put on the shelf at the moment while our I.T team look into it at a later date. The Mindlab group that I have been a part of have decided that we can...

Week 26 Activity 2 Inquiry topic To what extent does parent engagement in digital hangarau impact on student success for Year 7 and 8 students at Clendon Park School? Parent engagement is an issue that we have at our school. We have found through research that we need to ensure that parents feel valued and respected to make strong relationships. When this happens, parents feel more comfortable to come in to school and interact with their child’s learning. We are wanting parents to come into school and participate in digital hangarau sessions, so that they have a clear understanding of what this curriculum consists of and how they can support their tamariki at home. Joyce Epstein (2001) describes this stage as decision making and collaborating with community. We believe that this stage will bring many benefits not only for students but for parents and teachers. What: The significant thing that has come out of our inquiry is that we initially thought our parents were intim...

Week 25 Activity 1 As educators we believe it is vital that we reflect and act on our practices and pedagogy to create positive changes. ‘Change does not always equal improvement or transformation. There may be cases where teachers change what they are doing only to find not much has changed for their learners. New actions arising from an inquiry can only be considered good if learner outcomes and experiences have changed for the better. Regardless of the outcome, there is always something to learn from changing practices. The spiral of inquiry is designed to build professional curiosity. There is no place for blame or shame’. Kaser, L. & J. Halbert. (2017) The Spiral Playbook: Leading with an inquiring mindset in school systems and schools. In the previous assignment I said that I would work on the following steps Research online methods on ways to engage parents in students learning Ask colleagues at team meetings about what methods they use to encourage p...