MIT2020 - My MIT Presentation

Here is a recording of my Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher (MIT) presentation for 2020 and below are links to the digital tools I developed as part of my MIT journey to design a tool to support Year 8 students to be better self-managers who will transition with confidence to high school.

Taha Challenge - a digital tool to encourage Year 7 & 8 students to manage themselves during lockdown by completing a series of challenges based on the Māori health model, Te Whare Tapa Wha (April 2020)

Get Ready!  - a digital tool to guide and assist Year 8 students in their organisation and preparation for Leadership Camp in Term 3 (5th -8th August, 2020)

A huge thank you to Dorothy, Matt and each member of the 2020 MIT cohort for your advice and unflagging support throughout our design thinking adventure this year.

He rau ringa, e oti ai te mahi  

Many hands make light work! 

UPDATE: May 2021

Before leaving Pt England School at the end of 2020, I prepared a new  Get Ready! site with updated digital content all set to roll out for 2021. The school camp for Year 8 students at Pt England School went ahead in May (Term 2, 2021) and anecdotal feedback from students suggested that the updated site had (like the original version) been useful for both students and teachers in their preparation for the annual leadership camp.

Looking to the future, I'm now convinced that a digital tool based on the Get Ready! site could be modified to support the Year 9 transition and bring to fruition my original design thinking  The key component being the tuakana-teina  relationships between current and past students.  

I am now aware of successful student mentor programmes using older students such as  at Wellington East Girls High School (with Year 12/13s) and in the  MATES Junior programme  (with University students). Both of these initiatives involve regular face-to-face contact to build up close relationships over time.

My vision would be to offer a digital platform with current Year 9/10 students (tuakana) sharing their advice and experiences on how to cope in the first year of secondary school through a set of multi-media resources they create and feature in.  Incoming Year 8s (teina), their whānau and teachers could then access the tool anytime - not just within school hours - for guidance from their older peers on effective ways to cope with the first year of secondary school.

I anticipate that the main challenge will be convincing colleges and  feeder schools of the value in collaborating with each other to leverage the tuakana-teina  connections between the Year 9/10s and intermediate students from within their learning community. 

Ultimately, I believe the effort to get all schools on board will be worthwhile especially if this tool can  equip successive cohorts of Year 9 students to have a positive experience when starting secondary school and give them a toolkit of ideas and information to help them stay the distance and ideally finish their schooling, right through to Year 13.

So, who's ready to tag team and take up the challenge?

MIT2020 - Google Meet (May 25th) - Getting back on track!

Today another Google Meet with the MIT2020 mentors and crew- a chance to check in and see how everyone is after lockdown and how our projects are tracking.

We are all at very different stages with our projects - some progress, some success and some stuckness. Despite my recent revelations, I am definitely feeling firmly in the 'stuck' camp and took advantage of the opportunity to meet one on one with Matt. 

Exploring how to support Year 8 students to confidently manage the transition from the primary to secondary school learning environment is a too broad and was causing me a degree of overwhelm! Matt  advised me to narrow the scope of my project to just one aspect of self-management skills and Matt also suggested to make it practical for the students by linking it to a single even in their lives  e.g. the annual Year 8 Graduation in Term 4.

Taking has advice on board, my next steps are to:

• Research the literature on self-management skill sets (e.g time management and organisation skills)
• Link the Year 8s self-management skills to their preparation for the upcoming Year 8 Camp (scheduled for the start of Term 3).

Reaffirming my MIT 2020 Challenge

Reflecting back to the challenge statement (v2) from March - to provide a 'one-stop' shot for students, teachers and whanau to access a toolkit for self-management and staying connected that is based on Te Whare Tapa Wha - the Taha Challenge site was my attempt to meet this brief. 

I was not convinced that this tool completely hit the mark in terms of connecting students in a meaningful way so I decided to park my first prototype and explore other possibilities.

One suggestion was the PATH (Planning Alternative Tomorrows with Hope), programme brought from Canada to Aotearoa/NZ by  Katarina Pipi  over a decade ago. The idea is to tap into the dreams and aspirations of a person or organisation and with the help of a faciliator, create a plan of what they will need to do to/overcome to achieve their goal/s. Pipi has used PATH successfully with youth, whanau, hapu and iwi throughout the country.

 

I also came across the Te Rito Toi project, set up to support teachers to work with children when they first return to school following major traumatic or life changing events such as the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes but has since been used following the Christchurch mosque attacks and more recently COVID 19. This initiative inspired me to support students to build stronger connections between them and their whanau  (both immediate and extended) to record family stories/histories/events of importance to them.

In the end - I felt I was going off in too many tangents and I desperately needed to refocus! 

I am convinced the way forward to successful transition to high school is to figure out how to best support our intermediate students to manage themselves. With this in mind,  I found my way back to my original (pre-COVID) challenge statement!

Year 8 students need self-management skills to confidently manage the transition from the primary to secondary school learning environment.

The next iteration of my design project is to find a tool that will support Year 8 students to develop their personal capacity to manage themselves independently.