Ensuring Values Endure

Yesterday was a day where thoughts of making our educational values endure was in the forefront of our minds. We had Mark Osborne visit as one of Hobsonville Point’s critical friends. All the Leaders of Learning (LoLs!!) introduced ourselves to him and welcomed him with our ukuleles before we got stuck into the big thinking.

We started by sharing what we had been doing this week to develop the I Statements based upon the 14 Hobsonville Habits that we want all learners (staff and students) in the school to develop. The brainstorm sheets were spread out on the table and we described how we had split into pairs writing I statements based upon these and then bus stopped them through 2 or 3 other pairs before coming back together as a group and discussing what statements needed to stay and what ones might merge together. Then we showed our document with these I statements where some are in bold as they may go across other habits as well. This is the document we will revisit over the next few weeks as we refine them and then also next term when more staff come on board. Mark also checked to see that we did have plans for involving students in this next year which is of course part of what we are planning. These Hobsonville Habits must reflect the thoughts of all involved as they are a large part of what will empower learning at HPSS.

The next challenge that Mark put to us was how will we know that these values have endured? When visitors come to see our school in 5 years what feedback would we expect to hear to know that these Hobsonville Habits have endured how we want them to? We spoke about seeing learning on walls, not just finished products; the feel/buzz of learning being evident; the habits being in all learners language, not just school leadership; the office and entry space reflecting the current students learning not just dusty old trophies; the cafes and surrounding community reflecting the learning happening in our school; and the importance of the learning being reflected in the car park conversations of families.

At this stage Mark challenged us on our language as we were all talking in aspiration all mode hoping these will happen. To ensure this happens we need to start talking about making it happen rather than hoping it happens. We need to set the goal of what we want and scale backwards to set the milestones that will show we are on the right track.

After this great challenge the LOLs headed out to visit Ormiston Senior College. At Ormiston their learner expectations are represented in their Norms. These Norms were developed based upon Guy Claxton’s work on what needs to be developed for 21st Century Learning to occur.

Ormiston have done a great job in prioritising these norms. They are evident on posters all over the school showing what learning expectations are in this area. Some examples of how these are used are shown below:

I really like this but also have thoughts developing about having student pictures demonstrating our Hobsonville Habits as the background for the posters. I really like the way that ECE and Primaries do this and believe it could be taken successfully into secondary school as well. While walking around Ormiston, Sarah Wakeford and I were talking about how we could get the students creating and regularly updating these posters.

The final impression of embedding these expectations was the great way that Ormiston bases their prize giving on their Norms:

Now there’s a great step in prioritising these and ensuring they endure!