Kaitaia Intermediate
Making the curriculum relevant
Kaitaia Intermediate acting principal Shaun Stevenson is striving with fellow staff to raise student achievement by encouraging children to actively lead their own learning.
Sharing a vision
I'm 28 years old and acting principal while our principal, Kelvin Davis, is overseas on a Rotary study exchange.
Kelvin is a young principal and his leadership style, in some aspects, is similar to mine. It's goal-orientated, vision driven, and we're not scared to "shake the bush". We are both focused on student achievement, and making sure that staff are familiar with best practice knowledge and that they utilise that knowledge in our school.
I admire Kelvin for the work he has done in improving student achievement and that's probably one of the attractions of Kaitaia Intermediate for me. Kelvin has been at the forefront of a lot of the education drive here in Kaitaia, and he has been making positive changes. Being able to learn from his leadership has been great.
Our school community is really supportive of the school and its vision for the future. Children come to this school from as far north as Te Hapua and as far south as the beginning of the Mangamuka Gorge, so we've a wide catchment area. Our children come from farming or rural backgrounds and a fair percentage live in the township itself.
We would increasingly take the view that if things aren't going right, then we need to look at ourselves, and we need to change what we are doing, and we need to ask, "What can I do for these children?"
Student achievement
Our focus is on student achievement through research driven best practice. Although we have a high percentage of Māori students on our roll we are definitely focusing on student achievement rather than on Māori student achievement alone.
I believe that we are making our curriculum relevant because we are trying to involve children, as much as possible, in their learning and in the learning pathways that they take. In some ways it's a bit scary being a teacher, because we are trying to hand the power over to children and let them lead the learning so that we become more a facilitator, a guide, who hopefully walks alongside them.
We are using formative practices. They're really powerful tools in terms of student engagement and learning. Everything that we try to do here is based around formative practice and it's really starting to make gains. For example, written language is one of our focus areas.
We joined the Kaitaia Literacy Pathway in 2002. At that time our children were underperforming through to secondary in this area. So we have been involving teachers and children in looking at, and using, the national exemplars. We're also using the exemplars that we've been able to compile among all the schools in the area. This gives them some concrete evidence in terms of what a good piece of writing looks like.
Moderation is an important tool for us. We have school-wide moderation where a number of staff members look at a particular text or genre. Staff then analyse what makes a good piece of writing, and we, as a team, moderate it and we do this using a number of different examples. Sometimes heavy debate arises about what levels we think these pieces of writing should sit at, and that's good.
In cluster-wide moderation our lead teachers spend a large part of their time working within the cluster to form benchmarks, and they use the exemplars that are out there to help improve our practices. That inter-school dialogue has never happened before. The benefits from this show when teachers are in class and they are able to explain to the children why this is a level 2 piece of writing, and when they can show them exemplars of what a level 2 piece of writing is, or level 4 or level 5. We are now pushing for consistency across the cluster.
Making the curriculum relevant
We are trying to make the curriculum relevant to our children through utilising what we have in our environment. So we have used the school grounds to develop a native walkway, which is giving our children hands-on experience and it's bringing in our community and former pupils. They plant native trees in the walkway so that we can encourage our native birds to come back. It's been really successful and I've seen children come back after school to water the plants that they planted a couple of years ago. That has been rewarding because they want to be able to come back in 10 or 20 years, and say to their children, "I planted that tree, and that's part of this awesome walkway that we started when we were here at Kaitaia Intermediate".
We are also using the school environment as a context for learning for other curriculum areas too. For example, our Ninety Mile Beach project is one of the projects that Barbara Hall, one of our senior teachers, is leading. This project involves iwi-based hapu, particularly our kuia, who have a strong knowledge about Ninety Mile Beach, and the importance of the toheroa to the ecosystem. We feel very privileged to have our kuia who can share that knowledge with our tamariki.
Our children are able to go to the beach and see for themselves as they have special permits to take toheroa, to see what they are, and find out about their life cycle. They are able to see what some of the things are that attract toheroa, and find ways to attract them back to our region. They learn about pingao and how, by planting these grasses they can help this process. The children are now helping to replant parts of the beach.
Changes
Many positive changes have occurred in our school as a result of these practices. The culture of the school has changed and this is recognised by the children, the community, and the parents. The feedback that we are receiving from all these different avenues is really positive.
I believe that the changes in our children's learning come from the changes in our teachers, and the way they now teach. Being involved in Te Mana programme has helped us to focus on relationships with children in the classroom, encouraging them to become more active in leading the learning process.
One of Kelvin's key roles at the beginning of the year is getting the staff to set goals after discussion with their children. That is setting realistic goals in terms of where they want to be, say mid year and at the end of the year. We constantly provide professional development for teachers to enable them to work with their children in a way that helps the children to reach their goals. But I also believe that it's bigger than that, in a sense, because our children are giving us good feedback about their learning and about their needs for learning.
We certainly have our data, but we've also got some of the things that you can't collect data on, that we feel and we see in school. For example we see the pride that our children have in coming to Kaitaia Intermediate. We have roll-growth, which is positive. And in our minds we are striving to be the top intermediate school, not just geographically, but across the board, in providing the best quality education here in Kaitaia for year 7 and 8 pupils.
Leadership
I think the leadership journey is never dull, and it's continuous. As a leader I have learnt how important it is to keep abreast of the latest research. I have found out how important it is to engage children in learning and then to let them help us, to help them, to become lifelong learners.
When children tap on the door because they want to share a piece of work with me, it's a special moment. I see the look in their eyes, the pride that they have when they are able to come to the principal's office for a positive thing, and it really perks me up immensely. It gives me a sense of achievement that we are heading in the right direction.
