Two Years In...

Kia ora,

Time flies when you're Education Programme Leader. One minute I catch myself thinking I'm still new to this role and moments later I feel like I've been doing it forever. Technically it has been two years and one term since I took on the role so I thought I'd share some thoughts and reflections on this time period.

In the spirit of full visibility I am sharing my original scribbles. The first one shows the brainstorm I made while convincing myself that taking this job was the right choice after stepping out of the classroom a year earlier.

I've enjoyed being in class with students and still believe that supporting them to be at home in a digital world is a vital and incredibly fulfilling task. Something that has been difficult is not getting to know students as well as you do when you have your own class. While I don't miss writing reports etc, it is hard to support learners when you don't know them as well as you feel you could.

The reason 'missed opportunity' is there is because I had the chance to step up to this role way back in 2016 (I think). I always wondered what it would have been like so I'm glad I did take a chance.

One of my favourite parts of the job is the opportunity to be creative. I've loved organising poetry slams and podcast episodes as well as student toolkits and film festivals. I appreciate the flexibility that my job offers and the fact that I still have the energy to come up with creative ideas. This was not always the case when I was still in the classroom.

As you can tell for the circling, storytelling was a big part of why I took the job. I really wanted students and teachers in the cluster to have the chance to tell their stories. Through my own personal writing projects I've realised how empowering it is to tell your story and how important this is as a reflective process and something that helps you move forward. I helped create a short film where students tell the Ako Hiko story and what it means to them. The more recent podcast episodes have also been focused on students telling their own stories, something that we've also started looking into with a survey that over 400 of our learners filled in.

The bottom right scribble talks about multiplying others. I'll leave that for the next section...

This second picture shows some thoughts from pretty soon after accepting the job that loosely come together to create a vision statement. The Ako Hiko Education Trust has the vision of accelerating student achievement by increasing access to digital learning but this brainstorm was more about me having a clear idea of what I was bringing to the table.

Having read Multipliers a number of times, multiplying others was also a priority when starting this role. I feel like I've helped to multiply and empower students through teaching them about being Cybersmart, podcasting, offering the chance to be Ako Hiko Ambassadors and taking part in various projects including student toolkits, film festivals, poetry slams and coding challenges. Supporting students to utilise their blogs as a way of sharing has also contributed to this.

Something that I've found more challenging is multiplying teachers. Through in class facilitation and coaching on the Digital Fluency Intensive I'm confident I have multiplied and empowered teachers but it's difficult to know how impactful you're being. I'm always striving to be of more use to teachers and often wonder if I'm being utilised as much as I could be. One way I'd like to empower teachers is by encouraging more sharing. Google Currents is on the way out so I've stopped pushing this but I have created a Google Group for all teachers in the cluster and have started sending a monthly update to keep everyone connected and informed. I'm hoping that this role modelling of sharing may normalise it and encourage others to share more too. I'm currently thinking of how we can use our staff hui and Inquiry PLG time most effectively in this respect.

Shifting to Edublogs was a good chance to multiply and empower lead teachers in terms of their admin responsibilities and I think all our schools are now in a position where they can take care of the admin processes internally. A next step for me is, now that admin is taken care of, supporting lead teachers to be real drivers of the learn, create, share pedagogy in their schools.

By far the most difficult group to multiply has been whānau. We created three workshops in 2020 but only had two sessions at a school before lockdown kicked in again and momentum was lost. Having said that, the Kanorau Digital programme is available online to our families. As well as promoting this opportunity, my focus has shifted towards how we can support our schools to connect with their communities and how we can allow time and space for schools to share these ideas.

The third year...

So my big takeaways from this reflection and some next steps include:

- PLGs and staff hui - how can we use this precious time to encourage useful sharing that will help accelerate student achievement?

- Storytelling - continue to use the podcast to share students' stories. How can we reach a wider audience with this?

- Whānau - how might we support schools when engaging with their families and provide opportunities for schools to share ideas?