Hornby Cluster

Hornby Cluster Schools Get Together

Today the Hornby Cluster Schools gathered at Hornby High to hear Pat Sneddon, the chairperson of Manaiakalani speak and share the story of the Manaiakalani journey.  

Brief explanation of what Manaiakalani is:

In 2007 our initial cluster of schools wanted to find a way to engage the children in our mostly Decile 1A community in their learning. Digital Learning proved to be the ‘hook’ to guide our whole community to better educational outcomes.

Some of the crowd ready to get into it.

Pat began with sharing how the Manaikalani Journey began and took us through to where it is now and where it is going.  He shared stories about the Tamaki area and how the need for liberation of the low income learner emerged. One concept from stories of the time was around Rangatiratanga, taking charge of your own circumstances.  The tangi of Te Arikinui Dame Te Ātairangikaahu led to thinking about how we can be as good at educating the living, as we are at burying the dead?

The Tamaki Transformation Programme which included  Glen Innes, Panmure and Pt England, identified that the infrastructure had many issues and the area had a number of things that were not right.  A group was put together made up of government, community groups etc. who looked at infrastructure and what was working well. 

In 2009, Principal of Pt England School and Manaiakalani Convenor Russel Burt, invited Pat to visit his school.  He was greeted by children who then told him about their learning. They shared about how they were beginning to learn digitally.  It seemed too good to be true as the learning taking place was astounding.

Some reasons for everybody not being involved at the time, included issues such as cost of retraining teachers from an analogue to a digital world and finance.  Pat's response was if I get it for you would you come?  He did, they came and here we are.

Pat shared this video from Russell Burt which looks at moving from subsistent living to capital building by design.   Move out of subsistence to capital building.  This is significant as this is part of the purpose and goal for Manaiakalani schools.

Stuart McNaughton and Wolf Fischer Research-significant research has and continues to take place within Manaiakalani and outreach cluster schools.  Click here to read research findings to date.

We are part of five clusters across the country.  These include schools in the West Coast, Papakura, Mt Roskill and Kaikohe. Thirty eight schools across New Zealand are currently on the journey to use digital technology to accelerate learning for their students.  

We need to know what we are trying to achieve with being part of this outreach.  

Collaboration across schools and boards is essential.  Some things that have been put in place such as wireless in homes, could not have been done without collectivity.  

Within this process, opportunities for creativity and collaboration are abundant.  Positive for teachers to be able to learn from each other.  Learning is visible.  

Initiatives to support and develop teacher capabilities:

*innovative teacher

*digital teacher academy  

This process is built on this structure:

Whanaungatanga-Relationships

Kaupapa-Purpose

Putea-Resources

Where to next?  Outreach+ is the outreach programme being made available to all New Zealand decile 1-2 schools.  Our performance as leaders and teachers counts.  We need to be able to prove the case that what we are doing is working and we are achieving our goals. 

Key focus: 

What happens to and for the learner?

We can't do this alone...so we collaborate.

Hornby Cluster Schools...a positive start and well into this new journey.