After all that time deschooling, deconstructing and designing we have finally crossed the start line this week. Monday was our official opening day as Hobsonville Point Secondary School became a real school!
Most of the first 2 days has been spent with my Learning Hub of 9 students (for a great description of Learning Hubs and how they operate see Megan’s post). These are the students for whom I will act as academic and pastoral mentor for the next 5 years and I am rapt to have such an awesome bunch.
My Learning Hub, now known as Reweti
After reintroductions and getting to know each other activities we talked about a name for our hub. Our hub is part of the Taheretikitiki Learning Community which is named after a famous waka from our local area. After discussing various options we chose Reweti which is the marae where Taheretikitiki was carved.
As Reweti hub we then took off on the Adventure Race exploration of our local community. The only 3 checkpoints that teams didn’t have to get to were A, B and V – see the map below:
At each checkpoint, a challenge was set such as counting windows, taking creative team photos and unscrambling words that turned out to be the school values. 3 hours of exploring was (very hot and) hard work but by the end we had really gelled as a hub, learned about the surrounding area and had a lot of fun. The key for me was seeing the hub bounce back after such a hot activity and complete some great reflective activities in the afternoon. By the end of Day 1 they left for home tired but happy – that’s the perfect end of a 1st day for me!
Day 2 was spent once again working in our hubs but also within our wider Learning Community. Reweti started our day by finishing off 3 of the checkpoints that we didn’t complete yesterday, including their favourite photo of the whole activity at the local playground:
We then focused in on the 4 aspects of Hauora (wellbeing):
Moving round the 4 stations, students reflected individually on these 4 aspects and stored them as their first reflections of the year.
We then worked on activities introducing the ideas of 4 quadrants of thinking to each other: Metacognitive, Innovative, Strategic and Relational. I led an activity on metacognitive, where we focused on how people think differently. The students then split into 3 groups becoming experts on a quadrant each and teaching the rest of the hub about their aspect.
Innovative Thinking as “Outside the Box” thinking
Taheretikitiki community then had a workshop on Digital Citizenship with Georgi our Library Leader. Focusing mainly on digital manners, the students once again seemed to get a lot out of the session while also having a lot of fun. See the HPSS students work on digital pet hates, see http://padlet.com/wall/digitalpethates
Our final session was then focusing on the values that the students had been introduced to on the adventure race yesterday: Innovation, Inquiry, Collaboration, Connectedness & Excellence. Once again, discussion and sculptures were in abundance as students explored these ideas and then helped each other gain a deeper shared understanding.
Never again will Hobsonville Point Secondary School have it’s first 2 days. ANd I truly believe they were 48 hours of awesomeness. Imagine what the future holds: Ready, Set, Go!
Steve Mouldey 