Next steps for Teaching as Inquiry for Allandale School

Today Tania and I, as the in school teachers  for the Whakatane COL, begin the process of developing a more robust Teaching as Inquiry programme within our school.

We started with what were the MOE's requirements and what were our school requirements?

Then we quickly moved on to our own school history of using Teaching as Inquiry. Allandale School has had years of using Teaching as Inquiry, with varying degrees of success. These times were generally supported by external providers and/or Ministry driven. 

We talked about why Teaching as Inquiry is beneficial and what we needed to provide our teachers with to support them to intrinsically use this process of thinking rather than requiring them to hours of doing stuff that is not valued. During this stage we talked about the importance of manageability and sustainability. We identified possible barriers towards Teaching as Inquiry (red room thinking).

Tania and I talked about relational practice theory and read articles about the importance of teachers feeling that their passions are recognised, where communication is clear, where their creativity is valued, where their time and organisational skills are important and causing learning through humor and engagement is paramount in their workplace. 

A CULTURE of CARING

CARING for ourselves

CARING for our colleagues

CARING for our students 

CARING for our community

For this to evolve we had to support a...

COLLABORATIVE APPROACH

SHARED OWNERSHIP 

Then we went all the way back- back to the beginning! At this point Drew and Teresa joined us to share in our thinking and discussions. With all this thinking in our minds (and all over the board room) what could Teaching as Inquiry look like at Allandale School? 

And the answer is...

Teaching as Inquiry at Allandale School is...

driven by teachers

 focused on teachers passions

takes many different forms

looks energetic and inspiring 

opportunities to explore new learning and knowledge

using our colleagues has experts 

documented as to the teachers desires

shared to our staff

Teaching as Inquiry at Allandale School is PRAXIS reflection that is acted on and this action collaborative, shared and celebrated with our staff. 

WOW what a day! Where to now? Let's start collaboration! Share as a SLT and then with staff to get their points of view  and then start again.  

Thank you Tania Doherty, great thinking. 

Thank you Drew for providing us with a day. 

Thank you Drew and Teresa for sharing this day with us.