Ready, Set, Go!

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

My Learning Hub, now known as Reweti

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Moving from the Big Picture to Teaching and Learning Practices

This week has seen us continuing our big picture thinking but also now starting to focus in on what that will look like in the classroom.

On Monday we had a team trip into town for a mystery day out. The ferry ride through the rising fog was a good metaphor for what we would be going through over the rest of the day.

After breakfast together we were split into 2 teams and given a map of checkpoints and clues to decipher. Basically it was a 2 hour adventure race around town finding the checkpoints and taking interpretive photos to represent what we found. The checkpoints all turned out to be pieces of art around town and afterwards we found out that it was actually the Auckland Waterfront Sculpture Tour. Our team then made this video to represent our interpretations of the sculptures:

After a quick bite to eat we then headed to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise for a Design Thinking workshop with Peter Harrison from the Better by Design team. Walking onto their floor we got a hint at what was coming by the large poster on the wall giving tips for creative conversations:

Tips for Creative Conversations

Tips for Creative Conversations

This was an awesome 2 hour workshop introducing us to the ideas of Design Thinking. Continue reading

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.

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Curiosity and my brain

Today we were lucky enough to have Julia Atkin spend the day with us at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. First of all working on articulating our core learning values and then discussing our results in the Hermann Brain model.

This diagram shows the model that we used with Julia to develop a clearer articulation of our educational values:

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Working through this model gave me a clearer picture of why I have seen value in Guerrilla Geography over the last 12 months. Initially I thought this looks really interesting and a fun way to engage students with their learning but I intuitively knew there was more to it. Today I finally drilled down to what is underneath this idea that gives it such value for me.
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