NZAIMS – Programme – Learning Network NZ

WEDNESDAY 9 JUNE	THURSDAY 10 JUNE	FRIDAY 11 JUNE
From 9.30am Registration/Morning tea	8.30am Coffee with sponsors 9-10.15am Keynote Fi McMillan Tales from the Dark Side	8.30am Coffee with sponsors 9-10.15am Keynote Annah Stretton The RAW Project
10.45am Powhiri & Presidents Welcome Queenstown Primary	10.15-10.45am Morning tea	10.15-10.45am Morning tea
11-12.15pm Keynote Angus Macfarlane Breakthrough Leaders are Cultural Advocates	10.45-12pm Keynote Lester Flockton *The Future of Intermediate Schools, The Future for* Intermediate Schools**	10.45-12pm Keynote Ian Taylor Innovative Leadership
12.15-1pm LUNCH	12.15-1pm LUNCH	12pm Conference close and lunch
1-2pm Keynote Melanie Riwai- Couch Maori Student Engagement	1-2.15pm Chris Clay Thinking Differently
SHORT BREAK	WELLBEING ACTIVITIES
2.15pm-3.30pm Keynote Marcus Akuhata Brown Maori Leadership	Queenstown is the Adventure Capital of NZ Check out fun things to do and RE-CHARGE… https://www.queenstownnz.co.nz/things-to-do/
3.30 pm NZAIMS AGM Sponsored Drinks/Happy Hour Dinner at your leisure

TRANSFORMING A LIFE OF CRIME INTO A LIFE OF PROMISE

Founded in 2014 by fashion designer and entrepreneur Annah Stretton, RAW was set up to help break New Zealand’s ever-growing cycle of intergenerational offending, educational underachievement, persistent poverty and violence for a group of disadvantaged women. Through inclusion, community and opportunity, RAW is building hope, purpose and prosperity one woman at a time. We are creating mana wahine.

Creating a Thriving Collaborative Culture in Your School

The success of any forward momentum in a school is dependant on the combined effort of those involved. Creating a culture where educators work together to create progress is full of challenges and also opportunities. It moves us up beyond simply cooperating together to collaborating authentically to strengthen and transform teaching and learning.

Collaborative professionalism and collective efficacy as approaches, are built from a strong evidence base. Yet it is not easy to create a culture of deep collegiate learning and co-creation, where all educators see themselves as collective change agents. Complacency, pockets of discontent and disconnection, mistrust and ‘emotional baggage’ can derail our efforts.

Focussing on the human factor of the school is the key to creating a deep learning culture. Systems and strategic approaches are also vital, yet without the beliefs and behaviours of those in influence creating an environment of psychological safety for practice to shift, we will always be fighting to get people to come out of their comfort zones to learn new ways of working.

This keynote will draw from the latest findings in the neuroscience of trust and leadership and her experience in this space of over a decade. Tracey’s keynotes will look at the pivotal role of trust and connectedness in enabling deep learning cultures. It will focus on key pillar of mindset, environment and dialogue, and ways that leaders can help build this culture through their conversations and actions.

Melanie uses a narrative approach drawing from her experiences as a student, mother and twenty plus years as an educator to highlight examples of practice that promote Māori student engagement and achievement.

Dr Melanie Riwai-Couch is the Kaihautū Māori (Senior Māori Manager) and an education consultant for Evaluation Associates Ltd. She is also a lecturer in the Indigenous Education Masters programme for Blue Quills University in Alberta Canada.

Melanie has a significant profile in the education sector. She has presented at regional, national and international conferences about education, Māori education and improving outcomes for Māori learners. Melanie is an appointed member of the Ngārimu VC 28th Māori Battalion Scholarship Board and a member of the Competence Authority of the New Zealand Teaching Council | Matatū Aotearoa.

Breakthrough Leaders are Cultural Advocates

This presentation will propose that building from success in the past is an influential factor of strong leadership in the present.

Theorists argue that culturally-responsive educational leaders need to acquire specific skills to work across communities and agencies, and contribute to a system that can transform the lives of Māori learners, and breakthrough to the realisation of Māori aspirations.

This presentation will begin by introducing four pillars of learning while critiquing a selection of noted leadership theories. It will progress to converting leadership theory into leadership practice in contemporary, challenging environments. Successful leadership requires craft and know-how, guile and grace. The challenge is to determine what these qualities look like and how they are manifested as school leaders prepare learners for an uncertain, globally-connected world.

Dr Angus Hikairo Macfarlane

Angus Macfarlane, Ngāti Whakaue, is Professor of Māori Research at the University of Canterbury. He has a prolific publication portfolio and has received national awards for his extensive academic achievements and contributions to Māori education. His research explores cultural concepts and strategies that influence professional practice.

FEROCIOUS WARMTH – Connecting Heads and Hearts to Transform Education

The balance of the high performing school leader is a daily tight rope walk. Tracey has been studying high performing leaders over the last 15 years in her work. Her latest research and observation has been focussed on leaders who are able to display both a ferocious commitment to students, learning, growth and outcomes while balancing that with the compassion and nurturing that bring people with them on the journey. These leaders build strong trust and psychological safety, as well as creating cultures with high expectations of learning and achievement.

This keynote will explore the challenges of the balancing act between people and purpose and how to integrate them together to effect transformation and change.

Explicit, yet empowering
Strategic, yet people focussed
Challenging, yet providing psychological safety
Clear direction, yet open to co-creation
Compassionate, yet with high expectations
Courageous, yet vulnerable
Open to influence, yet with purposeful intent
Focussed, yet open to ambiguity and flexibility

As technological developments and globalisation have increased, so has the degree of connectedness between our systems. While this provides many benefits, it has also served to amplify the complexity of the environments in which we all operate.

The challenges that exist in 2020 cannot be addressed through the action of uncoordinated individuals. Furthermore, we desperately need our citizens to develop the capacity to move beyond co-operation and towards deep collaboration. This will require them to be comfortable exploring diverse perspectives as well as debating and arguing rather than prematurely reaching consensus or becoming increasingly polarised. Examples of such challenges include climate change, inequality and more recently Covid-19.

In this talk, Chris will provide examples of ways he is working with school leaders, teachers and students (as well as groups outside of the education sector). These examples will demonstrate approaches to pedagogy and collaboration that can help any team (leaders, teachers or kids) develop capabilities that will help them to maximise the potential of diversity as they build collective intelligence and make better decisions together. This will include some consideration of the metaphors that underpin our approaches. Is the best way to focus on catering to the needs of “individual clients” or act in ways that support a prospering ecosystem?

Chris has spent his entire career helping teams maximise their collective potential to create and test new ideas. In 2015 he founded Education Unleashed to support organisations to be more inclusive as they seek to innovate and look to the future.

His work in education involved pioneering new approaches to support large online groups as they shared insights to build knowledge collaboratively. This work was recognised in 2011 when Chris was named International Innovative Educator of the year by Microsoft, ahead of over 200,000 other nominees.

The Future of Intermediate Schools

The future of Intermediate Schools – The future for Intermediate Schools

The prepositional split in this title suggests two critical and distinctive perspectives on the future of Intermediate Schools. Those perspectives will be illustrated and explored during this presentation, along with some key messages for those who are invested in leading Intermediate schools of Aotearoa New Zealand into the future.

Ian Taylor

Ian was brought up in a small East Coast village on the North Island of New Zealand. He was seven when electricity arrived at his home. It was 1957. The telephone arrived a couple of years later. He didn’t know it at the time but three years after he got electricity at his house, New Zealand got its first computer.

Ian’s story mirrors New Zealand’s growth from its days as an agriculture-based economy. He laboured in the freezing works during the school holidays. Through the swinging 60s and 70s he was a singer in a rock and roll band, before being called up in the army. By 1980, he had completed a law degree and started an entirely new career in television, where he was part of an industry that went from black-and-white film to colour video and on into the digital age.

Fi McMillan

Tales from the Dark Side

In this session you will hear the Patient’s Tale, of the principal who successfully defended her position when her Board did not want her to return to school from sick leave. You will be inspired by the Knight’s Tale of the brave principal who went to Court to challenge her unjustified suspension, and you will be shocked and saddened by the Dog’s Tale.

When you are busy balancing competing demands from parents, students, staff, the Board, the Ministry, ERO and other agencies, it can be hard to find time to look after yourself. Just like any employee you are entitled to have a safe and healthy work place and to be treated fairly and reasonably. Sometimes this gets overlooked. This series of cautionary tales may be alarming, but the tales are, unfortunately, all true. Being aware of some of these potential issues can help you avoid becoming the next Tale.