Developing community - a sense of connection and belonging through our experiences

 At our recent NetNZ hui I facilitated a discussion group. The topic was around 'Whanaungatanga'. Now this is a word that has quite deep meanings in Te Ao Māori and we need to spend time unpacking this as an organisation. To my understanding, and I have much to learn in this area, it comes down to a sense of kinship and belonging developed through shared experiences. 


We spent some time discussing:
What does this idea mean and why is it important?
What are the strategies that we have tried?
How do we know when it's working?
Any other ideas we had.

Guiding questions
What are community, connections, and relationships about and why are they important?	Strategies we use?	How do we know when it's working?	Issues/ Questions/ Comments
Need to build trust and need to be connected to share ideas together	Multi-modal ways of sharing	They keep showing up (this is a form of engagement)	Community, how to sustain it?
Whanaungatanga is a special way of relating that has an important connection to te ao Māori	Know when to intervene if a disconnection is arriving	Attendance	How to balance modular courses and developing relationships
Know me before you teach me	The old e-learning days to connect face to face	They talk	Can be difficult to build a sense of belonging when you have multiple enrolments from one school, as these students can clump together
Humans = social creatures	Start with relationships and community as a central thing and keep circling back to this regularly	They give feedback	Lockdown. During this time there were different kinds of connections that developed. Often students were more engaged.
Learning happens in a positive social and emotional environment. In languages, there has to be a safe positive rapport for students to feel comfortable speaking and learning from mistakes	Tell us something about you that you want all of us to know	They come	Having no previous connections might make some students feel alienated at the beginning of the course
Learning that matters is always constructed with others	Flexible course design to allow room for relationship and assessment sits in the background	When you see the online sessions reflected in the work
Belonging to a course/community is building relationships and confidence in learning	Student feedback - seek it and use it	When they ask questions
Relationships foundation to e-learning. Keep coming back to it.	Begin with digital mihi connecting where from	When they interrupt to ask a question
Important as a source of motivation and accountability	Connect with prior learning and celebrate this	Uploading their own resources to the community
Trust	Sharing on a human level	Their feedback (shows they care about the learning and the community
Even participation	Work out who needs extra awhi and support	Feel that they can help each other. (Teacher as a facilitator rather than a dictator)
Belonging is important so that I 'students' know I am not alone.	Humour - make it fun	They'll turn up
Get to know me, don't judge me, work with me, talk with me not at me.	Collaborative spaces	They'll participate
I belong, this is my community, I am connected.	Get to know lots about them and who they are	They'll communicate
Learning as a community, acknowledging what they bring, their backgrounds	Kahoots about each other	Students start connecting on a human level with each other and the teacher
Social/confidence, support/fight isolation	Use Tuakana - Teina relationships to encourage students	They act on feedback (from the teacher and each other and seek it in an ongoing way
Supports, similar interests	Students have to trust you. Shown through: Consistency, positivity, show you care through consistent regular communication, gratitude for the input, and interest in them	The way the students behave, e.g. students running the class when the teacher has technical difficulties
Seeing where you fit, connections, relationships	Use break out rooms for small group discussion to put students at ease, providing a safe space to discuss ideas	They feel comfortable to contribute
Feel confident to share ideas, safety.	First 5 minutes an icebreaker every VC
Trust, so that students feel comfortable. If they feel comfortable they are open to learning	Students leading a starter topic
Belonging and connection are important. Learning a new language requires some risk and vulnerability, it also requires students to communicate. Language is connected to culture -> can't be separated.	Word games
	Create collaborative docs, which increase visibility
	Make video introductions show who you are
	Checking in Checking out each VC
	Remembering what's happening in their world
	Connecting each week discussing topical things
	Staying eternally positive
	Don't overwhelm students, build up to the assessment through learning activities
	Reinforce the development of student profiles and using these during the year
	Using the support of the teacher and the e-dean to help engage
	Be proactive
	Encourage students to share whenever possible
	In Social Studies students can plan social actions as a unique response to the needs of their community
	Invest a lot of time in building community and relationships initially, continually build on this throughout the year
	Students leading things like 'catch up questions'
	Start with small silly things to get them comfortable to talk
	Hit the answer with a question
	Showing you are human and it is ok to make mistakes
	Use jigsaw activities to distribute responsibility and encourage collaboration
	Question time, everyone asks a question at the end

This is completely raw data. I would like to make a thematic analysis at some stage to make more sense of the common threads and key ideas.

I just loved the sharing of practice, across a number of learning areas I might add.

It seems that we already have many parallels with the concept of 'Networked Learning'.

What are your thoughts? Does this spur any thoughts? Can you build on these ideas?

Feel free to add these in the comments below.

Professional context - Our Place

Westland High School is coeducational and caters for years 7 to 13. It has a decile rating of 6 and a roll of 373. We are a small rural school on the West Coast.

Our learners are 20% Māori, 1% Asian, 1% Pacific, 4% Other, with the remaining students identifying as Pākehā. Our contributing schools range geographically from 'just up the road' to 26 kilometres away. We are geographically isolated, however, this has its own unique advantages. Students are connected to the environment with many rich geological features readily accessible.

We are a 'broad church' and arguably have a wider range of community concerns to attend to than a more homogenous urban school.

Our students are connected to the region and the community. Our school site acts as a hub for many community events (community sport, community ACE classes etc). Our Māori students feel a strong sense of identity and are confident with learning  within Te Ao Māori

There is a disconnect between aspirational rhetoric and practice. Westland High School states that it prioritises the success of Maori students, however, a recent ERO report identified significant issues. "This intention is not supported with action planning by leaders and teachers to cohesively support Māori learners to achieve success. ... Trustees and leaders need to work collaboratively with Māori learners, whānau, the Māori community and school staff "

Sadly this contrasts starkly with Māori achievement only a few years ago where Māori learners were achieving at the highest levels within our classes and bucking the national trend for our decile rating and felt happy and confident in their learning at Westland High School. We seem to be in a state of mauri moe (Pohatu, 2011) (withdrawn, disengaged, lacking energy) currently. I have been agonising over this, as I don't think we're doing our maori learners justice.We need to connect with and value our learners and for this to be evident in the classrooms, in the playground, in the way that we do things. We need to communicate through the said and unsaid that we value maori culture and maori learners.

Much like our learners, there is a sense of disconnection amongst staff. We talk about a future focused school, however collaboration is at a low ebb. “Major decisions affecting teaching and learning have been made with little consultation. This has led to a lack of collaboration and low morale amongst staff.” (ERO, 2017) This sense of disconnection and frustration of not being heard and not being communicated to has led teachers to operate within a culture of individualism (Stoll, 1998). Teachers operate autonomously within classroom siloes. There are elements of Balkanism (Stoll, 1998) with small instances of spontaneous collegial support and collaboration amongst staff.

We seem to lack a school wide culture that connects us as a group. Schein (as cited by Stoll, 1998) defines organisational culture as the deeper ingrained ideas and values shared by the group. That is the things that define us, that we just know ‘that’s how we do things’. We lack a central culture as a school. We are currently fragmented and paralyzed as a school and need to regain a sense of common culture and what drives us. This will involve a realignment “a mutual process of coordinating perspectives, interpretations, and actions so they realize higher goals”(Wenger, 2000). While we need clear and inspiring leadership to guide us, we all have a part to play in supporting organisational change.

I am optimistic that if we as a school (in the broadest sense) place the learner at the centre of what we’re doing, we will find the strength to dust ourselves off and connect to our common purpose.

"Hutia te rito o te harakeke, Kei whea te komako e ko? Ki mai ki ahau; He aha te mea nui o te Ao? Maku e ki atu, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata"

Reference list:

ERO. (2017, June 29). Westland High School - 29/06/2017. Retrieved from http://www.ero.govt.nz/review-reports/westland-high-school-29-06-2017/ 

Stoll. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture

Potahu, T. W. (2011). Mauri - Rethinking Human Wellbeing. MAI Review, 3, 1-12.

Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.

'A tribe learning to survive'

"Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression" (Wenger-Trayner 2015) This really resonated with me as I was processing what defined a community of practice. Who is my tribe and what is the 'problem' we are solving in our world?

As teachers, we have many communities of practice. I know that my communities of practice are a broad network. 

(CC https://c1.staticflickr.com/6/5117/7001475448_69bbdb8503_b.jpg)

Wenger (2000) defines the three modes of belonging in a community of practice as engagement, imagination and belonging. That is, what we do together, how we orientate ourselves toward an identity, and how we mutually align ourselves together to work towards a common goal.

The visual art teaching community exemplifies this beautifully for me. From my first moments as a beginning teacher the art teaching community has been a generous broad and accepting 'church', united in achieving the best outcomes for learners. I really value the flexible and organic nature of the Visual Arts community. As a sole charge art teacher, I actively engage with the community as much as possible. The VisArtsNet email forum has enabled me to be a learner and an expert. It challenges me to look at best practice and reflect on my practice.

Reflecting on a very recent week of PD with a community of art teachers, this is just as true today. The whole community's expertise was valued and as a community of educators, we were stronger for it. Though we were a diverse bunch who came from far and wide, we were united in working together to support the best outcomes for students.

I saw many parallels with the principles of Knowledge Building Communities (democratising of knowledge, idea diversity, collective responsibility). 

https://vimeo.com/16930878

There was a  culture of 'progressive problem solving' (Lai, n.d.). Conversation in our breakroom at the PD centred around sharing innovative practice and solving authentic problems that the group really cared about. (Lai, 2014)

It was invaluable to have the time and space to have such focused conversations and to be able to connect 'kanohi ki te kanohi'. This leaves me thinking how can we connect more as a community. Yes, VisArtsNet is a valuable tool, but the email format often facilitates one-way traffic and it is far too easy to simply lurk as a bystander. As a teacher working in my silo of a department in my silo of a school, I wonder how we can facilitate more connection, shared practice and collaboration? What say you, teachers? Are there any creative solutions out there?

Reference list:

Lai,K.(n.d.).Building.knowledge..Retrieved.from http://www.otago.ac.nz/sciences/study/postgraduate/profiles/otago065938.html

Otago UniversityLai, Kwok-Wing, & Pullar, Ken. (2014). Designing knowledge building communities in secondary schools.

Knowledge Building Gallery. (n.d.). Introduction. Retrieved from http://thelearningexchange.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/KB-Gallery-0-Introduction-Accessible.pdf

Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.

Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Introduction to communities of practice | Wenger-Trayner. Retrieved from http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/