School community of Culture

For this blog I want to mainly focus on the community of culture within my area of our secondary school.

I hadn’t really thought too much about how the culture became what it is until I watched the video -School Community of Culture.

After watching this video, I have come to the conclusion that the culture in our Learning Hub area has been deliberately created it has not happened through default.

I wanted a climate that was positive – a place where students wanted to be. A place where they saw themselves as successful. A place with a positive tone.

I wanted a place that was welcoming to other students, staff, whanau and the wider school community.

So how did I achieve these initial goals?

Within a week of my employment I changed the name from Learning Centre to Learning Hub, as I see a hub as a positive, stimulating, gathering place where people choose to be.

While the Learning Hub is a place where our students with additional needs spend portions of their school day all the students there are very different in their needs, attitudes, dreams, abilities and values.

To ensure that everyone is safe we have worked hard on the key competency –Relating to Others. We have created units about ourselves, our families and our ancestors through family trees, shared meals, guest speakers and speeches. My student’s know its ok to be different and its ok to need and to ask for support.

Apart from the students who call the Learning Hub home we also have students come to us from the mainstream school for support of varying degrees.

Again, we have worked hard on making these students feel at home and especially hard at making them feel it is ok to go there. This use of the hub is probably the most demanding because it is here that we all need to understand that we are all different, we all have different belief and value structures and no one person is better or less than another. For the mainstream students it has been a positive learning curve seeing the needs of my students and how hard they have to work to achieve the little things. It is also an important lesson in how different we can all look on the outside but at the end of the day we are all integral members of our school community and for us to experience success we all need to support each other and work together.

The learning hub wouldn’t be the place it is without the support of our great SMT. From the principal down, the special needs area of the school is seen as an important part of the school culture. The students are valued and celebrated. There achievements are acknowledged and celebrated at school assemblies, open nights, newsletters as are all the students at our school.

It is heartwarming to see our students at break and lunchtimes being included and supported by groups of students throughout the school.

People, both educator professionals and other community members always make comment on how the climate of the hub is so warm and welcoming and they notice how happy and engaged the students are.

The positive climate is a credit to our students, their whanau and the whole wider school community.

References:

Ministry of Education (2016) Effective School Evaluation - How to do and use internal evaluation for improvement. Wellington: Ministry of Education.

inclusive.tki.org.nz

 Ministry of Education (2014) Success for All - Inclusive Practice in secondary school. Wellington: Ministry of Education