Week 26 - Current Issues In My Professional Context

Week 26 - Current Issues in my Professional Context

I am the founding principal of Whakawātea which is a total immersion te reo Māori full primary school that started life as a private composite school in 1994 with 12 students.  In 1997 we gained government status as a full primary school of special character.  Currently we now have a roll of 139 students, with most of the students being of Māori descent other than 3 American and 1 Tongan.  We are located in suburban Hamilton, close to Waikato Hospital with most students living within the city, however some travel from as far as Raglan and Te Kauwhata.  Whakawātea has a very good reputation academically, behaviorally and from an innovation perspective within the wider and educational communities.

From the outset Whakawātea has been dedicated to it's vision statement, "Ko te tamaiti te pūtake o ngā mea katoa - the child is at the heart of everything."  We can evidence that we as a learning community live and breathe this vision.  In basic terms it personifies that the needs of the student shall be the first and major consideration and we have found that documents such as Tū Rangatira, Ka Hikitia, Tātaiako and Mātaiako support our aspirations somehwat.

Whakawātea is made up of 8 classrooms and English is taught as a subject to the 3 most senior classrooms once per week.  Their are 9 teachers inclusive of the myself, the principal who is responsible for teaching English.  7 of our teaching staff have full registration with 1 having provisional registration.  There is 1 teacher aide who assists in the junior classrooms and we see the school as having two main sections with the 4 junior classes and the 4 senior classes who also meet weekly as syndicates.  Our school has joined a geographical learning community (Kahui Ako) with 5 other primary schools, 1 Intermediate and 1 Secondary school.

Stoll declared, "a school’s culture is shaped by its history, context and the people in it."  (1998, pg. 9).  This has certainly been the case for Whakawātea who have many people still involved and where the vision is a strong as ever.  An enhancement though has been the implementation of a PB4L framework to support this even more and assists those new to Whakawātea to grasp and support our vision.  This has been in the form of our Ngā Manu Amorangi (5 Birds) that we have been embodied in our physical environment, are known to all including our newest 5 year olds and symbolises everything wonderful in the potential of being wonderful humans and wonderful Māori.

The 5 birds represent aspirations of human greatness;  the Kōtuku personifies emotional intelligence and doing whats right; the Kiwi represents servant leadership and when you do good, good comes back; the Ruru personifies a person who loves learning and learning for life; the Kea is curious and chatty so represents the sciences and language whilst the Pīpīwharauroa personifies enterprising attributes and risk taking.  As a community of practice we constantly reference these birds and their traits and implicitly teach their overarching attributes and use them as a way of promoting and celebrating behaviors such as these in our students with community exhaltation of these weekly and each term.

This in turn personifies how Stoll describes culture in that it is "how things are and acts as a screen or lens through which the World is viewed.  In essence, it defines reality for those within a social organisation, gives them support and identity and creates a framework for occupational learning." (1998, pg. 9).  

  

References

Stoll. L. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, 

University of London. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture