WHEN TEACHERS AND STUDENTS ABANDON THEIR DESKS . . . Liz Hawes
Editor
John Cleese, of ‘Fawlty Towers’ acclaim, once visited But vibrancy, flashy structures and picture post-card scenery are Palmerston North and famously said, ‘If you wish to kill yourself not what the locals of ‘Palmy’ are here for. The 78,800 inhabitants but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will are fiercely loyal to their city which they have built around do the trick.’ The locals, in humorous an attractively designed central outrage, then named a local rubbish Principal, Lin Dixon, Square. The locals know their city dump after him. has plenty on offer including ample Cleese is not the first to ridicule the affirms the historic links saying green spaces, sports grounds, high central North Island’s most inland cafés, bars and restaurants, that several generations quality city for being dull and depressing. cinemas, a top class public library, It’s been panned by many for its of the same families have museums and theatres and some of lack of vibrancy and charm and the best retail shopping in the country. although the distant backdrop of the attended Hokowhitu Primary Students flock in their thousands to Tararua Ranges enchants and inspires be trained and educated in Palmy, School over the years. passing artists and poets, the city where accommodation and the cost itself cannot boast a single interesting geographical feature, save of living are considerably cheaper than in any other university the Manawatu River – which in 2009 was called out as the most city, and the unhilly terrain makes it easy to get around. It is the polluted in the western world. city where a five minute traffic delay could make headline news.
Ambassadors Tia Humphrey and CJ Reid with School Councillor Jenson Bate
The welcoming face of Lin Dixon, Principal of Hokowhitu School
Palmy is home to the National Rugby Museum and to show its enduring devotion to the sport, recently gained international fame by packing down a world record breaking 1,758 people in a rugby scrum. So we can never say the people of Palmy don’t have a sense of fun or rise to a challenge! Rugby fun aside, by far the greatest cultural and social influence on the central North Island city is Massey University. Massey brings a focus for education and links between town and gown are undeniable. The university’s influence stretches right down to primary schools, as research out of its College of Education infiltrates schools’ thinking. Perhaps that is one reason why Palmy schools are so open to new pedagogies and educational ways of thinking. Hokowhitu Primary School is a good example. One of the oldest in the city, Hokowhitu School opened in 1924. You can meet its first school committee and teaching staff in the school’s front lobby where a photographic display tells its long proud history. Today’s students wear the original school’s bell tower as a logo on their smart red and blue school uniforms. The actual tower is preserved atop the original school classroom block which has been declared a heritage building. Principal, Lin Dixon, affirms the historic links saying that several generations of the same families have attended Hokowhitu Primary School over the years. Respect for their school runs deep. There are stark differences however, between the composition of the school roll in the early 1900s and the school today. The school once comprised a somewhat mono-cultural group
of children. Today 23 per cent of the 365 children are Asian, Pacific or of other ethnicities and 22 per cent are Māori. ‘The world comes together at our school,’ says Lin. ‘We have children from over thirty different countries.’ There are many reasons for the high number of children of different cultures. Some can be explained by the proximity to Massey University. ‘Massey does have an influence on the cultural mix of our students here,’ she says. ‘Many children have parents lecturing or studying at the university.’ That doesn’t account for all the ethnic differences however and Lin is delighted that very recently the school welcomed their first family of Syrian refugees. ‘The family has spent four years in a refugee camp in Malaysia,’ she said, ‘so we are all delighted they will now have a home in Palmerston
Diversity is valued at Hokowhitu Primary School
We sometimes have big collaborative discussions
North and the children will come to our school.’ In describing the family’s first visit to the school, she said they were awestruck to find such colourful rooms and big spaces. ‘The children will soon find that’s normal life here,’ she smiled. She also talked of Interactive
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welcoming children from a Chilean and Indian orphanage. ‘They had never played with toys,’ she said, ‘so coming to school was like being in a great big lolly shop!’ Fortunately Lin has a part-time trained ESOL teacher to help out with English language learning and the school has developed a culture of celebrating diversity. ‘We have such a mix of races and religions here which may not typically sit comfortably together but we don’t have any inter-cultural clashes,’ she said. Successfully integrating many different cultures does not happen without thoughtful planning and at Hokowhitu there are a number of factors that contribute to children quickly feeling comfortable at school. One is the ‘buddy system’ where senior students take responsibility for a new or younger student and become their ‘friend’ and mentor. ‘As well as just always being there for each other, every fortnight the buddies have an hour’s formal time together,’ says Lin, ‘to share experiences and plan little items which they present together on stage. It might be a skit or an iMovie or they might read something together,’ she said. The buddy system has other spin offs too. ‘We don’t have a bullying problem at our school,’ said Lin. ‘Our school values include valuing others and stepping up to be the best you can be. The buddy system is one way all of our senior students can demonstrate those values,’ she said, ‘and at the same time they are modelling caring behaviour to the juniors.’ The system clearly works. Lunch-time and play-time at Hokowhitu are fun. The children are happy to take turns as they play their favourite games. They are engaged and cheer each other on. The playground is conflict free, at least on the day I visit. Beyond the buddy system, of special interest at Hokowhitu School is the pedagogical approach to learning. It is based on the philosophy of student agency where the student is at the centre and in charge of their own learning. It is a highly motivating approach and in Lin’s view, brings out the talent in every child. In collaboration with others, each of them then aspires to achieve
Children love to show their principal what they are learning
Special Guests, Iain Lees-Galloway MP, (middle) and Palmerston North Mayor, Grant Smith (right) arrive to read to the children, in celebration of ‘Book Week’
at higher and higher levels. It empowers the students, engages them and allows them to express their opinions in a respectful way. It creates a culture for the children to feel connected to their school and their life within it and it helps promote positive, caring relationships with others. The concept sounds like a winner, and I am excited about seeing this learning in action. In order to implement this approach, some major organisational changes have been undertaken to accommodate the critical components of collaboration and opinion sharing, alongside the direct teaching and task completion by the children. The first most notable change is that the traditional single cell
classroom is all but consigned to history at Hokowhitu. Walls have been removed and the spaces modified. Some 75 students occupy a single space with three teachers and a learning coach. Entering the space is a little disturbing if your only school experience is a single classroom with a single teacher and a single desk for every student. Where is the teacher’s table? Which way is the front of the classroom? Where are the children’s desks? The answer is, there are no teachers’ or children’s desks and there is no ‘front’ to the classroom. This is a flexible learning space. Nor are there reading lessons or maths lessons. There are workshops for every subject during which a group of children will sit at a large table and have direct teaching time. Then off
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A teacher led collaborative discussion on the Inquiry topic of ‘Matariki’
they go to complete learning tasks related to the teaching. This could take them to a corner on their own, or a space on the floor, or to some other table which they might share with others. I am amazed to see how heavily engaged these children are in their learning tasks. Whether working alone or in groups, they are not easily distracted. Each child has their own personal chart of tasks to complete for each subject. These can be done in any order and can be
Tia Humphrey points out the most popular winter sport for TKT
marked as satisfactorily completed once the teacher has verified it. As each chart of tasks is completed, a new chart of higher order tasks is issued. The third activity involves larger groups of children who are collaborating, sharing and discussing their ideas on an inquiry topic. ‘They learn to think critically and critique each other’s ideas through questioning,’ says Lin, ‘and this often leads to new ideas.’ One would expect that with 75 children in one space the noise levels would be intolerable. Not so. The different working groups are sufficiently separated that the noisier collaboration and discussion group does not impinge on the concentration required for the direct teaching sessions. Cleaning up and moving the groups around, I imagined, might also pose a logistical challenge, but again, not so. With the support of a microphone, a teacher announced the transition which was successfully completed in less than three minutes. The school is organised around five ‘Te Kete’ corresponding to the different year levels. Not all Te Kete are single flexible learning spaces yet but Lin Dixon tells me, they all operate under the same pedagogy, whether the classroom walls are up or down! Lin is very proud of her teachers who are enthusiastic about this approach to learning and unafraid to share their teaching strengths (and weaknesses) with each other. ‘To succeed in this paradigm, the teachers have to be at the top of their game every day,’ says Lin. Having three teachers and a learning coach for each space also means more timely individual teaching for the children. ‘Sometimes, one teacher may be taking a large group for an continued over
activity,’ says Lin, ‘whilst another teacher spends time with I learn that every student visits the library every week. I ask CJ individuals or small groups of children who might need extra why he thinks dinosaur books are so popular. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘you help with their learning tasks.’ don’t see them now because they’re all extinct. That makes them Teachers invest a lot of their time planning, evaluating and more interesting.’ I also learn that this is ‘book week’. This year collaborating to make the system work successfully but they all two special guests have arrived to read to the children. They are say that they would never want to go back to single classroom the Palmerston North Mayor and local Member of Parliament, teaching. ‘What children are achieving through this structure Iain Lees-Galloway. It is not unusual for the mayor and local MP convinces me it is the way to go,’ says to pop in just to touch base. I suggest the mayor of Lin. Tia tells me that the following A class maths expert, Dean Parsons day, everyone will be coming to Palmerston North should school dressed as their favourite would agree. ‘Because I enjoy teaching maths and love maths myself, I am issue an invitation to John book character. And what happens able to share my maths expertise if you don’t have a favourite book with a much wider group of children, Cleese to make a return visit character? ‘You’ll just have to write teaching what I really love most and your own book!’ she says. to Palmy North and this another teacher who is great in Literacy The positivity of the ambassadors or the Arts will have a strong influence time take him to Hokowhitu is irresistible. I learn how the in those areas, so we are all using our learning workshops actually work strengths to benefit more children.’ ‘I Primary School . . . and how kids help each other with couldn’t have that sort of influence in their learning tasks so their friends a single cell classroom structure,’ he said. can be as smart as they are! ‘You manage your own learning here,’ The ultimate test of the pedagogy is to get direct feedback says CJ, ‘and you move up through the grades. You start off in from the students themselves. CJ Reid and Tia Humphrey are proximity learning which means you work close to a teacher. two school ambassadors, assigned to lead me on a school tour. Next you become a novice, an apprentice, a practitioner and then I am amazed at their level of knowledge not just of the school you’re an expert,’ he said. ‘You’re just getting better and better at surrounds and its history but their understanding of everything self-managing learning,’ he says. that happens in the school, including how they all learn and how I hear about the wonders of science and that chemistry is fun. free thinking is encouraged. ‘We are learning about chemical reactions,’ says CJ. ‘Everyone
Children work at their learning tasks in the foreground whilst teachers lead two workshops in the background
Principal Lin Dixon often visits classrooms and engages with the children
does science. We are burning steel wool to watch what happens and doing some taste testing, then we record what we see and taste,’ says an enthused CJ. The pair tell me that the way learning is organised at their school won’t work on its own. ‘You need monitors,’ says Tia. Different people are chosen for different tasks, like moving equipment round, getting out the art supplies, helping in the library and so on. ‘We have twenty monitors to do all that work,’ says Tia. We concluded our school tour at Te Kete Tangaroa (TKT), ‘home’ of the seniors. There I met school councillor, Jenson Bate. He talked about the importance of systems and planning too, to make the school work. Then he introduced me to the latest class statistical investigation. Displayed on the wall was a graph showing the types and student participation rates of winter sports for TKT. Some twenty sports were listed with the most popular showing as basketball. But there was one sport with just one participant. It was Go-Karting. ‘Look!,’ the lone participant said proudly, ‘I’m the only one!’ I suggest the mayor of Palmerston North should issue an invitation to John Cleese to make a return visit to Palmy North and this time take him to Hokowhitu Primary School where he will overdose on positivity and creativity and where the children will give him a fair and frank debate on the virtues of their much treasured city.
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