Transcript

NAPP 2010 - WESTERN HEIGHTS HIGH SCHOOL LEADERSHIP TEAM

"How do we reduce that gap, because yes we have managed to increase the levels of achievement of our Māori students, but at the same time, we’ve increased the achievement of all students, and we’ve yet to narrow that gap significantly.

We decided around that time to do our own survey around what our students felt was holding them back.

Russell Bishop and Te Kotahitanga and everything else that came during 2004, we realised that it’s the teachers who make the difference.

We want to make sure that when our students leave, they have as many pathways open to them as possible, and hence a lot of our planning goes around student retention.

The trend seems to be: term one the engagement is high; term two it wanes off a little bit. When Kapa Haka time comes along, engagement is down the bottom. Exams come along, and then all of a sudden bang.

The school has been involved in other initiatives – we set goals and targets for ourselves, and we certainly invested quite a bit of resourcing in the deaning side of the school, and in appointing extra guidance councillors and careers advisors as well.

Pedagogical savvy, being continuously responsive, all those things there, with great relationships. And those were the things that we emphasised as far as Māori student engagement and achievement was concerned.

It was also refreshing to hear the word ‘pedagogy’ (laughs).

It was nice to see the emphasis on the art of teaching. What do we do in the classroom?

It’s about being culturally responsive, but responsive also to your environment, and we had the bit of advantage in that the environment that we were in is our environment.

Using the cultural landscape that Western Heights High School belongs to, how can this inform our context for learning, curriculum decisions, school environment, and contribute to our ideal Māori graduate profile.

And Māori students succeed when they are able to be Māori in all learning contexts, and see themselves reflected in the environment and the curriculum. And that’s probably one of the most important little that we’ve sort of come through. Māori feel safe to be Māori.

I think that what people have discovered now is that what is good for Māori is good for all students, it’s good for all students, and that’s something that we have to hold on to.

We have become culturally responsive for Māori, and therefore for all. So it seems.

Kia ora.

Every year we identify certain targets as key targets, and those ones we actually pin up in every classroom wall. When a teacher walks into a room, when a student walks into a room, next to the white-board they will see a key target (sic) for that particular year.

It was essential for us to get that data together, certainly to identify what was working well, and what was not, and therefore to help us set our goals and our targets.

When it came time for them to describe their goals, we wanted to know what their teaching and learning goals were too. And we wanted to know how those goals tied in with the annual targets which were now going to be very important to us.

Every staff member had to select a class and really hone in on the specifics of that class that they were choosing. What has happened to the girls in the class? What have been their achievement rates? What has happened to the boys? What have happened to the Māori? What have happened to the non-Māori? Why do you think those results are the way they are? What would you do to change it up? And they all had to submit those to their HoDs. The HoDs had to combine that with their curriculum results review, they summarised that stuff, they got it to us, we hand it on to the board, and we had meaningful data to work with. And some accountability eh?

The students are cognisant of their results; well we try to make it through the use of co-construction with the Kotahitanga that becomes one of the standing items. Bring your data, bring your Astol results".