State-of-the-art schooling in a Wellington suburb Liz Hawes meets with Dr Lesley Murrihy, principal of Amesbury School in Wellington, one of the newest schools in the country. They discuss the vision for the school and how that impacted on the design and building process and they explore the learning spaces to observe how they have shaped and continue to shape the pedagogical style of this very modern approach to 21st century learning. Most schools have a clearly defined office and administration block, which is generally the first port of call for visitors. Amesbury School, located in the well-heeled, fast-growing suburb of Churton Park in Wellington, has one too, but once inside there is no door marked just ‘Principal’s Office’. Fortunately, Lesley Murrihy is on the lookout and emerges from one of the school’s sizeable learning spaces to greet me, ‘We don’t have a dedicated office for the principal,’ says Lesley. ‘In fact the whole senior leadership team shares one room, which frees up considerably more space for kids’ learning. It also means that
we can model collaboration which we expect of our staff and students.’ She breaks into a smile of genuine joy. It is a smile I have met before and signals that we are entering a learning environment where the children and their learning needs come first, second and third on the priority list. We settle down for a chat, not in any principal’s room of course, but in a space the size of a seminar room. ‘This is free at the moment,’ says Lesley brightly, ‘and we can spread out a bit!’ It is a room which the school wouldn’t have, if each staff member of the leadership team had their own separate offices. I quickly feel relaxed and in no time am referring to Dr Murrihy as Lesley. It seems the natural and expected thing to do. ‘Actually,’ says Lesley, ‘all the teachers, including myself, are called by our first names. Some would find that unusual or even disrespectful, but we expect everyone to be respectful in their relationships with others, whether that is teachers, children or parents, and so it is just not an issue for us.’
Principal Lesley Murrihy with students
Relationships have been the key to the whole Amesbury School project. ‘We have been so fortunate in having such a wonderful team to work with on the building school project,’ says Lesley. ‘Right from the beginning the architect and design team have wanted to build an environment to match our vision for 21st century learning, taking account of research and our pedagogical stance. We wanted the team teaching an open-spaces approach to learning because to equip our children with the skills for the 21st century, we needed Internet technology to be prominent and individualised learning opportunities to be maximised. We also wanted maximum natural light because the research indicates a correlation between environments with a high degree of natural light, and children’s achievement levels.’ The contractors too have all been thoroughly supportive of the school board’s vision and at the end of the project commissioned Jeff Thomson, famous for his corrugated art work, to produce a map of New Zealand, on screen-printed corrugated iron, bolted together with pieces of Meccano, to present to the school as a gift. ‘It was a terrific gesture,’ says Lesley, ‘and just demonstrates how much everyone involved had immersed themselves in our vision for the school and their determination to see that through.’ The ample windows give view to the spread of outdoor fields and newly laid sports courts. It is a generous flat outdoor space, too new to bathe in the shadow of mature trees or gardens. After all, the school has only been operating for a term. It has only just let down the balloons from its official 10 May opening. The expansive grounds are a shared facility for the Amesbury School children and the local community, and the brightly designed school hall is available for public hire. ‘We are proud that our school and its facilities can be shared with the local community,’ says Lesley. ‘We like to think that our school is central to the community and that our community feels comfortable at our place,’ she said. So, what is the vision for Amesbury? ‘To be a leader in 21st century education,’ says Lesley. ‘Our school is about learning for life and learning to live. It’s about joy in learning and joyful living. We have deliberately chosen a purpose-built learning environment which gives us the flexibility to teach in differently configured spaces, to personalise learning for the children and to allow team teaching to flourish,’ she says. We take a tour of the school and observe different groups in action. My first impression is one of freedom, of light and of different textures. There is no clutter, no enclosed feeling, and there doesn’t seem to be much school furniture about. What furniture there is I have seen in many schools before. It is unmistakably Furnware’s brand that dominates here. ‘We have chosen the furniture to fit with our flexibility approach,’ says Lesley. ‘Much of the furniture is modular and can be reconfigured differently for different purposes.’ I observe a number of regular Furnware style chairs and tables about the rooms, but also in big numbers are brightly coloured square and round-shaped soft seats. ‘It depends what the children are doing,’ says Lesley, as she nods to a teacher reading to a group of children reclining on the soft furniture. In the same room but in a different area is another teacher with a maths group. ‘Our flexibility approach allows us to place same ability children together for their learning,’ says Lesley. ‘In this maths group
Amesbury School entrance
there is a mix of ages but the same children will not necessarily be together for other subjects,’ she says. The pedagogical approach is based around team teaching, and using the strengths of every teacher to maximise the benefit to all children. It is entirely possible for any of the teachers to be leading a lesson for any group of children any hour of the day. My mind immediately shifts to the hot topic of the week, which is the suggestion of performance pay for teachers as an incentive for lifting performance. ‘It would be difficult if not impossible in this environment to try and measure which teacher had made the greatest contribution to a child’s achievements,’ said Lesley. ‘You simply could not apply a performance bonus system to individuals here. It would have to be shared across all of the teachers.’ Lesley is not a principal who believes that performance bonuses are applicable to the teaching environment anyway. ‘We all work collaboratively and many schools use a team teaching approach to a greater or lesser degree. Also, if you are going to use children’s achievements as the measure of teacher performance, there are many factors both inside and outside of the school that influence children’s learning, for better or worse, so to try and extrapolate just the teacher’s contribution is pretty impossible for anyone.’ ‘Do you ever have issues with children being distracted by other groups in the same room doing different learning tasks?’ I ask. ‘The children fairly quickly become focused on what they are doing and of course the teachers are all accustomed to this environment now,’ says Lesley. ‘But if we did need to separate groups because of noise or distraction, then we can do that. These large spaces can all be made into smaller spaces by drawing across a soundproof partition, but we find that we don’t do that very often,’ she said. ‘The children are working in these large spaces all the time and they get used to other activities going on in the same space. If people come and go from the room, they hardly notice, whereas in a regular classroom, if someone walks in, the children are immediately distracted and off task.’
‘Independent learning and empowering children to take charge of their own learning is a philosophy we aspire to here’
Practising the waiata to acknowledge the speakers
My next question is to understand how the children know where they are supposed to go, since they don’t have a ‘home’ classroom. ‘Every child has a whānau group, which you might call their ‘home class’, says Lesley, ‘and first thing in the morning they meet with their ‘whānau teacher’. This is the teacher who takes responsibility for the roll each morning and for the pastoral care of the group. Parents will seek report and advice about their child’s progress from this teacher,’ she said. ‘Otherwise, the children each have their own timetables which includes review and reflection time for each learning activity.’ I wondered how five-year-olds would possibly manage to keep their own timetable and schedule of lessons, but my scepticism was unfounded. There on the wall were the timetables of the
youngest students, who use moveable magnets to signify what they are doing, where and when. Whilst a high level of supervision accompanies the children initially, before long they are manipulating their own timetables quite competently. We wander out of the room and into what we might call a hallway, but this area too is occupied with learners and learning activities. A group learns a new waiata while they have a guitar lesson. The guitar chords and the words of the waiata are displayed on a flat screen on the wall. These large touch screens are a feature of every room. They are the information source of everything that goes on in the school, and as the system evolves, the children will also be interacting with this information to include their own.
Children each have their own timetables
Flat screens are plentiful throughout the school and well used
‘Independent learning and empowering children to take charge of their own learning is a philosophy we aspire to here,’ says Lesley. There are two other important themes evident at Amesbury School. The first is the strong emphasis on biculturalism and the second is the place of Internet technology. ‘We have a strong commitment to biculturalism at our school,’ says Lesley, ‘which is our way of showing our understanding of our obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi.’ Lesley is proud to say that every one of the children can present their own mihi, and have learned a number of waiata. They understand basic protocols of how to welcome visitors to the school in a culturally appropriate way and have learned karakia and a haka. ‘It is very important that the children learn to respect and understand Māori culture, and appreciate the values and practices involved,’ says Lesley. ‘Becoming part of the globalised world is an essential aspect of 21st century education and it begins with embracing our bicultural heritage as New Zealanders, whether we have Māori students in our schools or not,’ she says. I observe that the roll of Māori children at Amesbury School is minimal. ‘We want all our children – who come from many cultures – growing up proud to be New Zealanders. Not just paying lipservice to tikanga Māori, but genuinely embracing New Zealand’s bicultural heritage and able to walk through their lives as bicultural New Zealanders with head held high.’ Internet technology is at the heart of the 21st century learning model for Amesbury School and this brings both strengths and challenges for the teaching staff. ‘We have a level of transparency here that is rather unusual,’ says Lesley. ‘The students have nearly all of their work “in the cloud”,’ she says, which is accessible from their own homes. They can discuss their work with their parents, with their friends if they wish, or other family members and use that feedback to make improvements. ‘It’s very empowering,’ she says, ‘but at the same time, we are putting ourselves as a staff under a high level of scrutiny. The teachers’ planning is accessible to parents, and even brainstorming sessions, but we aspire to be as transparent as possible and to share as much information with our parent community as we can so that they feel involved in what we do.’ The school’s website hosts a blog which keeps everyone up to date with what is happening in the school, reports on events includes photos of significant moments and encourages the community to comment. These are facilities which Lesley hopes in time, will become quite natural and normal to the everyday operation of the school. The aim is to have a school that is well connected at
every level. In its very short lifetime, it has made very big progress towards meeting that goal. My final call was to the school hall to watch the children preparing for the big opening day. There I saw Principal ‘Lesley’ in amongst the children, as several teachers guided the children through the practice session. They were making sure that those children taking special speaking roles were confident and supported, that everyone knew when to sit, when to stand, how and when to sing their waiata and for the boys how to conduct themselves to perform the haka. It was impressive to watch the dynamics of team teaching in action with the entire school as the class, and the principal, the ultimate leader, centre with the children. If leading is about empowerment of teachers in order that they can empower the children to in turn become leaders, then Amesbury School will be producing some great leaders of the future.
Practising delivering a mihi to the manuhiri
Modular furniture that can be reconfigured for different purposes
Detail of the gifted artwork: Mecanno New Zealand/Aotearoa by Jeff Thomson