Cultural Responsiveness PD: Connections

"The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen"

On Monday 27th January, I had the pleasure to be part of a school wide PD on Cultural Responsiveness. Here the facilitators Whaea Jo and Whaea Chris shared their stories. The activity that followed was for us to pair up and share with our partner, our name, fun fact, where we call home.

I shared about my German heritage, I am named after Albert Smidt who arrived in Samoa with his family. His Son Bismark married into my Fathers family and there my German heritage began. I also shared my Mothers surname actually changed to Wilson as my Great Great Uncles tried to join the army but their name "Leota" was too difficult and too "Non" European.

These stories and all the others shared by everyone else gave us all an insight to each other, gaining connections through similar stories. For example, the story of my Great Great Uncles was similar to others who had their names changed.

This highlighted a great way for us as educators to share connections with the tamariki we teach. The activity was not forced and and we were not pressured to share more than we wanted. It was a perfect way to model this type of activity with our tamariki.

I am strong believer in finding connections with our tamariki, this is an activity I will put into my practice. Making our tamariki, especially our Maori and Pasifika learners whom these connections are essential.

If I look back to my schooling, those teachers who made the effort to know me, find a common ground and make connections, are the very reason I wanted to be a teacher. I felt heard, appreciated and important. So I relate my last point to the saying at the beginning of this post, to listen is powerful, to listen is essential, listening is what I will do more of.

How Sharing Leads to Learning

Wow! The launch of our year 10 PBL groups has been so AWESOME! I am reminded the opportunities that we give each other through sharing our ideas and asking questions.
This video is a great motivational message if you are a bit unsure of the purpose of sharing your blog posts - or commenting in our community.

Project Based Learning Launch 2017

This year to kick Project Based Learning, we thought to have a big and exciting Launch. It would run differently to the 2016 Launch where myself and 3 colleagues shared topics the students could choose. No, this years was going to have LIGHTS, DJ, GUEST SPEAKERS and LOLLIES! It would have the feel of your typical New Age Christian Churches Youth Service, only without the Sermon! 

The goal was to inspire our students! Get them excited for PBL!

The idea came from one of the PBL work days myself and two colleagues had to set everything up. We were asked if there would be balloons and then that sparked something for me. What if we had people come in, not teachers, but people doing work in communities. Then from there it was all go.

My colleague and I contacted people we knew, this made it easier to organise the guest speakers. The DJ was the hard part, a close friend pulled out so I had to hire one. Thankfully our Principle who had given us the time and resources we needed to run PBL, pulled through on the cost of the DJ. 

The Launch ran smoothly, some really enjoyed it, some did not. But overall it was something that we can grow and run better next year. I was very proud of the work we done and pleased students responded to the speakers we had come in. Matt Brown, Sarah Brown and Bruce McFarlane came in and spoke about their passions. 

What went well
Lollies were a hit (Of course they were, its a sugar hit in the morning)

Matt Brown, an ex-Hornby pupil who does amazing hair art. His words about finding their WHY was impressive 

The DJ added a wow factor to our students 

The video on "Starting Each Day Making Your Bed" was great

Work-ons
Getting students fully engaged for the whole time 

A range of speakers that our students can relate to - Bruce's work was amazing but his message was lost on most students 

Were all our students inspired, no, so what can we do to reach them?

I am thankful for the support from colleagues and our Senior Management, I really am looking forward to building on this for 2018 IF given the opportunity.

Take Action!

11 November 2017

Our first action was to organise a time to speak in assembly about the help line and how to access it when you are feeling low. We came across a disabler when organising this action, some teachers did not think that we should share our message in this way. Therefore, we needed to go back and do more research around the best way to deliver our message.

When looking at the Ministry of Health website it states “It’s OK to talk about suicide. However, talking about the details of a suicide (like the method) can put vulnerable people at risk.” This is exactly the angle that we wanted to look at this from “It’s okay not to be okay, but it’s not okay not to talk about it.” This led us to looking into other ways to share our message. We thought that maybe a way to overcome this disabler is to instead share a message in the morning notices.

The notice we asked to include was:

“WHERE TO GET HELP:

If you are worried about your or someone else’s mental health, the best place to get help is your GP or local mental health provider. If you need to talk to someone, the following free helplines operate 24/7:

DEPRESSION HELPLINE: 0800 111 757

LIFELINE: 0800 543 354

NEED TO TALK? Call or text 1737

SAMARITANS: 0800 726 666

YOUTHLINE: 0800 376 633 or text 234 ”

We feel that this was a good outcome for our first action. A large range of students heard the message and were given access to a helpline. What enabled us to do this was being able to share a message in the daily notices, our research around what is appropriate to say and support from our English teachers to write the message.

On reflection we think that this was a good way to share our message. We are excited to get on to our next action for this project - The Shoe Project. Look into this more here: yeswecare.nz

What can we do?!

Checking in - These are the action plans that we have created for our project focusing on preventing teen suicide in our community.

“It’s okay to not be okay, but it’s not okay not to talk about it!”

Steps needed to achieve the goal.	What will help us achieve this goal?(Enablers)	Possible barriers and how they could be overcome.	Who is responsible for this step?	Date this step will be achieved by.
Have a meeting with Mr Rogers to book an assembly slot to share the numbers and information about lifeline.	Miss Aitken letting me out of class to see Mr Rogers. Mr Rogers being in his office.	Mr Rogers says no to our group presenting this information - we could overcome this by asking the Deans if we can present in Dean’s assemblies. Mr Rogers being away - we could overcome this by emailing him to book a slot.	Kelsey, Alby and Scott.	1/11/17
Create a demonstration - like what they did in town with the shoes for the teens who have taken their lives in town.	Knowing the numbers. Getting the shoes. Finding the time and place to have this demonstration. Brainstorming with teachers where would be the best place for this.	Wet weather - having a postponement day	Kelsey & Alby	11/11/17
Make some pamphlets and share these in the community to raise awareness of the demonstration that we are doing.	Creative excellence Having the facts and information correct Printing budget Distributing these in our community	Not enough money to print - could email or create a website. People won’t help distribute - put in a common place where access is not an issue.	Scott and Alby	20/11/17
Create a “Share happiness day!”	Talking to Mr Rogers about having this day and what it entails. Have fun things to promote happiness around the school - candy, music, high fives etc.	Not enough money for things - have free things like music, high fives, hugs, smile station etc.	Kelsey, Alby and Scott	Before 10/12/17

All of the possible barriers have been sorted out and our action plans have been checked by our teachers! Look out Hornby, here we come! Let’s spread the happiness!!! Just like Coke did in the video below!

"Stay Woke"

At Hornby High we have been asked how we can have a positive impact on our community?

To do this first we had to choose a topic. I chose teen suicide because it is something that I think affects too many people in our community and I would like to find some way to make a difference.

We had to work in groups that had a similar vision to us. Other people that had a similar vision to me were Alby and Scott. We formed a group called “Stay woke”.

To help us understand teen suicide further we needed to find websites that gave us information on what is what and what you can do. Here is a list of the websites we found:

Website Name	Link	Date we accessed site
Stuff	http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/85305366/The-highest-rate-of-teen-suicide-in-the-developed-world	20/10/17
Stats Nz	http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/snapshots-of-nz/nz-social-indicators/Home/Health/suicide.aspx	20/10/17
Stuff	http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/85452513/canterbury-records-most-suicides-in-new-zealand	20/10/17
Depression.org	https://depression.org.nz/help-someone/	20/10/17
health.com	http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20452135,00.html	20/10/17

We then had to answer some questions about our topic:

Who is affected? Family, friends, teenager, community

What are the issues? Loss of life, negative impact on community.

When and how did this start? It has been happening for a while but with the rise of social media and cyber bullying it is becoming more prevalent.

Where is it happening? All over the world. The statistics for Christchurch in particular are really scary.

Why is this happening? Teens with depression or anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, teens seeing no other way out.

Then we had to say what we plan to do to help solve this issue:

We want to make a difference in our community by providing students a safe place to talk about their issues and know that: “It’s okay to not be okay, but it’s not okay not to talk about it!”