Kate's Inquiry Blog 2017

Global Trends - Digital Technology This week’s topic seems to be a lot more difficult to share ideas about as I’m having to summarise what the global trend of digital technology is all about and analyse the way it is affecting education in general and our school community specifically. This is not as easy as just ‘telling our story’ about our school and community. The OECD book Trends Shaping Education 2016 suggests that this trend appears to be about the hugely increasing use of mobile and adaptive technologies that allow us to do multiple tasks, innovate, communicate, engage, learn, do our jobs and live in comfort. It is about how our lives and technology can now not be separated and that we depend on it in many ways.  This trend is also about the disadvantages that include, hacking, cyberbullying and disorders associated with the use of technology. For example decreasing attention spans, digital withdrawal disorder and fear of missing out syndrome. Another disadvanta...

This week I am feeling really positive about sharing information and ideas about the school culture and professional environments related to my practice here at Corinna School. We have distributed leadership at our school and my area of responsibility is school climate. I applied to work at Corinna School 29 years ago and have stayed because of the great organisational culture and the way the school community has supported and challenged me to be a better teacher and learner. Corinna School is a decile 1a school for Year 1 - 8 students in Porirua. The roll is about 240 students.There is an approximately 30% turnover of students each year but many of the new students are re-enrolling. The ethnicities of students in the school include about 48% Samoan, 24% Maori, 12% Cook Island, 9% Tokelauan. What these statistics don’t show is that the school community is much more diverse than this. Many of the students have 2 or more ethnicities. Some are N.Z born Pasifika who may speak their fi...

My Community of Practice My community of practice is the Corinna School teaching and learning community We are a group of professionals whose joint-enterprise is a shared vision. Our vision from The Corinna School Strategic Plan is 'Our learning community will be lifelong learners empowered to use all the key competencies to shine in a range of contexts with voice, agency and identity.' This is our joint enterprise and our commitment to it, drives our practice. We are also inspired by our school motto ‘Expect the best’ There are many opportunities for the members of our community of practice to engage in a range of learning experiences. We meet formally and informally. These events and activities include: Informal discussions and learning conversations with colleagues Level team and whanau meetings Staff seminars Leadership meetings Friday morning meetings to share weekly concerns and information Professional development days eg Developing Inquiry Co...

Today we had a discussion about the teacher inquiry assignment. We talked about the reasons why we chose the topic for the teacher inquiry