Characteristics of our community -
We are a rural school with sheep and dairy farms surrounding us. Many of our children that attend are generational children whose parents and Grandparents have gone through the school as the younger generation take over the farm. In our classrooms we are multilevelled and I can often have a child for up to 3 years and have siblings in the class. We are seeing a change happen - due to more migrant workers coming into the district for farm work we have more South African and Filipino children attending. We are now 20% Asian children and employ a teacher to work with our ESOL children. We are classed as a decile 9 but the doesn't seem to reflect our families in our Community now yet I know it is supposed to.
Culture of school -
A climate of a school should be unique to any particular school and thats ok but it should be positive, and the culture is deeper, based off their values, how do they do things, how people treat each other. (Warner, 2015). I feel we have a positive climate at school. Our children greet visitors by yelling our 'hello' in the playground as they enter the gat, they open doors for adults, they are polite to each other and there is a true feeling of whanau where older children help the younger children. We have happy children, most of the time and they are working on strategies for those moments when things don't go their way.
Approximately 7 years ago we introduced a new mission statement and after consultation with our community we came up with,
“Making an impact”
Whakahihi ana te haere - Walk tall – Be proud of myself, my school & my community
Whakahau ana te tu - Stand strong – Believe in myself, respect others & be honest
Whakahirahira ana te whainga - Aim high – Set goals and do what I can to achieve these
These statements, underpin our values which are interwoven into our classroom at all times. They are acknowledged and reminded of in our day book, certificates for assemblies, notes in our newsletters. Our children become exposed to our expectations when they enter our transition class attached to our local playgroup and are displaying these attributes throughout their school life.
I am not sure how you would measure it as we do get comments from visitors to our school but is hard to show as official evidence.
Our Principal is very respectful to we as teachers being Professionals and I know that respect is reciprocated as all the teachers work hard, are passionate about their role within the school.
Food for thought -
We love our South African and Asian families and the children are so happy all the time at school but it does pose a problem when trying to involve the families.
In our school we operate with 40 families and when you are trying to get people to come up for governance in Board of Trustee roles or to be on Home and School or fundraising committees is becomes harder and harder to 'spread the work load. Yet I suspect this is hard in any school community no matter what the size of the school.
How we try to get around this is to hold a new family session just after Gypsy Day on the first of June. This is when we traditionally gain new families from Dairying Contracts changing. We also hold a migrant meeting once a term. We phone all our families involved and send out emailed invitations, so they can translate them. Our Principal, ESOL teacher, a classroom teacher and a couple of Board members go and they talk about what is happening at school, explain things in the newsletter, ask the families what is going well, and how can we help them to make things easier.
Our families really appreciate these meetings and things are beginning to change. We now have one of our Filipino Dads on the Board and 2 parents have attended the Home and School meeting.
I believe after reading about the Norms, (Stoll,1998) we endeavour to use these ideas to making our school a safe, positive place for our learners. With a continued focus on our Statement the children will have these ideas placed in front of them all the time. This is always changing, improving as the students go through and as things influence and change from around you. Our staff is a small and stable staff which helps to create our culture. Staff are the consistent entity to build culture and climate as students are the piece of the puzzle that flow through it. (Warner, 2015)
References -
Academy for SELinSchools. ( 2015, Apr 28).What is school culture and climate? [video file].Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-_NvhlcusQ
Stoll (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London.
Your school has an interesting mission statement. I like the way it focuses on self belief and esteem, rather than the usual ideas of being lifelong learners and making a positive impact on the community.
ReplyDeleteOne great benefit of the South African and Asian communities is the exposure of your children to the global village. We feel NZ is isolated, but that is no longer the case.
Thank you Sharon for your comment - Yes - I was just thinking that about the exposure my children have to different cultures and have just written about that in this weeks blog... so different from when I was growing up too. We try to install into the children that they have what it takes.... and learning comes in many different forms, therefore making an impact... in many ways.
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