He Kaiwhakarite

Blogpost 2 for Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori

Today I am thinking about how I manage all the resources in our kura in order to  produce outcomes that positively transform learning communities.

Managing physical resources- spaces, finances, administrative systems er all imprint part of the role and if we don’t ensure those systems are in place, operating and regularly reviewed then things can fall over and we spend a lot of inefficient time trouble shooting rather than focusing on learning. So those systems are definitely important.

However it os often said the most important resource in a school are its people. We have staff that have been with us for our entire five years, and others who are new this year, and a few in between. Everyone is at different places of their understanding of the curriculum we are trying to deliver. One of the things we identified last year was that to take our curriculum delivery to the next level we would need to implement a detailed coaching programme for our staff. 

We have trialled lots of different ways to manage this, as the ambition to meet weekly with every staff member and coach them was rather challenging to meet time wise. I know I ended up meeting the people I was coaching in teams to try to manage time for both myself and them. This wasn't always effective as although they may be wanting to work on the same thing they are at different places in their own capabilities. And the whole point of coaching is to ask the questions that get people deeply reflecting on their own practice in order to effect change in their practice.

This term we have redefined our coaching model a little and set up some small coaching teams that will meet every second week focusing on the workshops being taken in a particular learning area and targeting student progress over the following fortnight, On the alternative week we will meet with each person we coach them individually more around their individual responsibilities, teaching and school-wide and their own self management strategies.

I have a reminder in my calendar to spend 30 minutes every Friday making the meeting times for the next fortnight- we are aiming to do a mixture of in non contact time and before/after school meetings. 

 So far, so good. Two weeks in and its working. Ive managed to meet all my teams twice and all individuals at least once in the last fortnight and its becoming much more manageable with a little more focus, purpose and deliberate timetabling.