This is my amazing community!

Yay!  This week we get to talk about our community, and our professional community and how we are trying to address those issues in our community.

I love the place we work.  Our school students are amazing.  Michele, our principal has written a short description of the demographics of our students.  

Out of 222 students, the percentage of children belonging to particular groups in March 2017 are:

Samoan: 47.4%

Māori :23.4%

Cook Island Māori 12.1%

Tokelauan: 9.8%

Other , including Filipino, Tongan, Tuvaluan, Pākeha: 6.1%

South East Asian, including Kampuchea/Cambodian, Laos and Myanmar: 1.4%

These statistics, however, do not give a clear picture of the cultural diversity of the roll of Corinna School.  Many of the students have parents from more than one ethnic group. Some may be brought up by their grandparents, who are from another ethnic group; some may be 2nd or 3rd generation New Zealand born Pasifika children who may or may not speak a language other than English; some are new immigrants for whom English is a second language; some are refugees who were professionals and forced to leave their countries for political reasons immediately; some are refugees who have only ever known life in a refugee camp before coming to New Zealand; some are well established families whose parents and grandparents also attended the school; some are Christians; some are Muslim; some are from single parent families; some are beneficiaries living in rental accommodation; some have both parents in the workforce who own their own home; some have had  formal early childhood education and some have not; many have access to the internet; many have television and are open to the music and fashion influences of  youth culture, nationally and internationally.

We do not make assumptions about how the ethnicity, or home environment, of any student may impact on their learning. We believe in their potential to be successful learners, confident in their own identities.

What students have in common is that almost all attend Corinna School because it is their local school and they live close to it. The other commonality is that, regardless of what experiences the children may have had before they attend school, when parents or caregivers enrol their children, they come with hope and expectation that their children will be cared for, be happy and learn well.

(Michele Whiting, Corinna School Description, March 2017)

It shows a great range of cultures and speaks to a beautiful variety of families with their own stories.

Our school culture has been shaped in response to this community.  

Our families are hard working (many working numerous jobs), they are large, often with many children in a family.  This leads to a strong extended family network for many families.  Older siblings look after younger siblings, or grandparents look after kids after schools.  We support this multigenerational strength through our mixed ability learning, as well as a strong value on ‘whanau’.  Corinna has 2 whanau- Ngati Aroha and Ngati Awhina.  We meet each morning in a circle (the older kids surround the younger kids) and we start the day together in a daily karakia/himene.  This ritual has become a visual reminder that we all have a sense of belonging.

We’re also really rich in languages as quite a few of our families are bi-lingual, although this is starting to wane as years go by.  One thing we’re doing in school to support home languages, and be part of addressing the loss of languages, is we try to provide language classes for students- in Tokelauan, Cook Island, Samoan and Te Reo.  We also have regular celebrations for language weeks, polyfest, polyclub and an epic Kapa Haka roopu!  (I always boast about them!  They’re simply stunning).

Now, getting down to the nitty gritty-I know there are a lot of perceptions about this place, this area, these people.  However, I don’t believe those stories are the truth.  Our school won’t accept these beliefs as we believe our community is capable of making it’s own choices, and know what they need and want.  Therefore, we have high expectations for students to take responsibility, direct their learning, follow their passions and feed into the direction they’re going.  This is very obvious in our professional community.  I reckon we have quite a lot of the features from Stoll & Fink’s (Stoll (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. ) work on the norms of improving schools.

We are risk takers, supportive, have lifelong learning, shared goals and responsibility for success.  Our weakest area is probably the ‘celebration and humour’ where we feel good about ourselves.  I think this is something we often think about and feel overwhelmed about.  

What can we do about this colleagues?    

How can we insert a wee bit more fun?  Once I bought in some ‘teeth whitening charcoal’ and we had to brush our teeth (us mindlabbers).  

That was funny and creepy.  We need a bit more fun in our lives I think!