Reflection of the Year

The year has been primarily about teaming and learning design. Both have been a huge success for Pounamu.

The team has been through many forced changes of mentors and every time the team have coped professionally and personally, by looking after each other. Tetli's growth in teaming has been down to her determination to succeed and through the support of the team. The loss of Rachel for a term was a blow, but we fortunate to have Amy who slotted in superbly and brought her own positive energy and honesty to Pounamu. Towards the end of the year was particularly difficult with Roanna finding life at school difficult, but again the team supported personally and professionally to ensure that she settled sooner rather than later.

The creation of the BPP's on teaming and powerful learning were integral to our success. By the end of term 2 there was a genuine trust within the team which was down to myself deliberately building relationships with team members and also strategically organising mentors to work together. Although Rachel's constant coaching for me around understanding and respecting the personal side of the team was essential. Even though I have improved and I am not convinced I would be able to bring her natural ability to a new team by myself. We complimented each other really well and we respected each other's strengths and weaknesses.

We are very proud of our 'Priorities.' For lots of reasons. It took a clear vision to keep us on track, we knew if we could create this - it would be a game changer for us. The entire term 2 was building the capacities of the students and then activating all the different types of priorities so they could complete them independently. Once we were clear with the why and finally had the how sorted, the creation of the clipboard and organiser was the final piece of the puzzle. By eventually jumping in and setting up priorities from the beginning opened a climate of possibilities. We have never looked back and are still tweaking it to perfection.