Friday 2 September 2016

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

In lieu of a PLG session today, I did some reflection on a busy week.


On Tuesday, Latai and I presented at a session at the University of Auckland run by the team of 23teaching that focused on the shift to Innovative Learning Environments (ILE's).  We spoke about the power of collaboration and co-teaching in an ILE space and it was fitting that we co-presented this!  We spoke about the importance of knowing both yourself and your practice so you can be confident to communicate effectively with your colleagues and you have the self-awareness of how your behaviour may be perceived and the impact on your learners.  A great insight that we came up with was that we are the role models for our learners for the skills of collaboration so how can we ensure that we are being consistent with our behaviours.


On Thursday, we repeated our team effort and ran a toolkit on the use of Stop Motion Animation.  A toolkit is a workshop that teachers in our schools can run to help build our knowledge and capacity in the various tools we use in our learning spaces.  We chose to run this workshop as we thought it may help empower some teachers with the confidence to use these techniques for the upcoming Manaiakalani Film Festival.  Really cool to have the support of some of our hub mates who came along for the session!

Add to this week both our school cross country yesterday and me attempting to get all my raw footage for my entry in the film festival today and I may have been dead on my feet by 3pm.  However the power of the collective really got me through this week and it is great to have a critical friend at school who is willing to not only lend a hand, but also critique and offer alternative suggestions.  Both sessions to have present to colleagues and the public would have been daunting enough but knowing you have someone that has your back really helped boost the confidence and allowed me to take risks.

I will look forward to giving you an update in the later weeks on how my film festival entry is going!

4 comments:

  1. You two are quite a team! Not many first year teachers would have had a week like you described. I am delighted to see you making the most of the opportunities presenting themselves. You really have 'put wheels on' our term 3 whakatauki "Connected Learners Share".

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    1. Thanks Dorothy, am very lucky to have Latai at school with me - we do make a great team! Look forward to connecting with you next week to get your expertise for the film festival!

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  2. When we finally get ten minutes to stop and think about everything we are doing, it really is crazy. No wonder we are exhausted and so keen to have a rest in three weeks! Sounds like a productive week Heath, look forward to seeing your footage.

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    1. Agree with you on the stopping and looking back - amazing at what we can achieve in a week too :)

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